Session #39: Linda Lee Plank-Morgan Interview

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 39. Jumping in with Linda Lee Plank Morgan, welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette. Your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business to. Sets. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. All right. Hello and welcome back.

It’s Jason Lynette here and excited once again to be bringing you someone that chances are a lot of you don’t know yet, and be sure you noticed that Mofi, if you don’t know her yet, Linda Lee Plank Morgan came and met with me here at my office and then also took my class really only at this point about a year ago, and as you hear her story of.

The key phrase here is just jumping in, jumping into the profession, jumping into the community, and just really making things happen. So, congratulations, Linda, on everything you’ve done so far in, uh, the prior year, and I know that this year’s gonna be fantastic for you as well. Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

On this session today, especially as I know, well, chances are the majority of you out there listening to this program might be stuck in that analysis paralysis position, whether it’s you don’t yet have training and you’re looking for that training option, or perhaps you’re already trained and certified and just have it done anything yet with it.

And as you hear Linda’s story, it’s just a fabulous example of just jumping in. Making it happen and knowing along the way that we can always modify, we can always make changes. It’s kind of how we live our own personal lives as well. Let’s jump in. This is jumping in with Linda Lee Plank Morgan.

I had gone to see a hypnotist myself when I was younger, and it was just such an amazing experience because I had been seeing a counselor in a more psychiatric setting. All they wanted to do was make me re talk about everything. And I found out a really, uh, painful process. So when I went to see the hypnotist, it was completely different.

She didn’t need to know all the details, I didn’t have to talk about it all. She simply took me in and I was able to resolve my own issues and. Right myself. Isn’t that amazing? And I just walked away just so profoundly impressed with the modality itself. So it’s always been in the back of my mind and it, that goal would rear itself again throughout my life.

And it was usually when, okay, your job’s going to be downsized, . And it was like, Okay, should I go ahead and get my training and become this thing? And I took myself out of it, and then I did another job. That was done away with. I was always working contractual work. And so finally this past year, it was, um, well two years prior to this last year for training, it had come back up and I started really seriously researching where am I gonna do my training?

And luckily for me, I didn’t go with my first choice. I waited it out and was led to you and I had my training through you, and that was it. I was done, I was ready. And I wanna be a hypnotist. No, I love the component of. So much that’s out there that you get the job and that’s gonna be the stability. You get the job and that’s gonna be the safety net.

And that’s a wonderful illusion, . I know, right? No, I can remember. I think I might have told you this at one point, there was a time when we were first moving to Virginia from Baltimore and we were in the process of buying a condo. And I’m sitting across the table from a Wells Fargo mortgage broker. Who looks at me and says, You have to realize that your income is volatile because you’re self-employed, and you might go out of business rather quickly.

And at this point, I already had more information, so I got to ask him, Didn’t you tell me that Bank of America laid you off two months ago? Yeah, yeah. Whose job is more risky? He used a few expletives in my direction and then quickly approved the loan. So, But I think that’s that. This is probably one of the best times ever, I think, to be an entrepreneur, to be your own self-made person to really launch things and make out of it what you want it to be.

I agree, and I think a lot of the people that are. Out there looking for services are also recognizing that I don’t have to go to the standard big name person. They’re kind of fed up with, you know, where this, everything’s been leading. As far as these big name companies, you know, they’re starting, in other words, they’re starting to go back to small businesses.

They’re starting to embrace the small businesses of their. And seek out professional services within, you know, walking distance of themselves as opposed to driving to Annapolis because that’s where, you know Whole Foods is. And so I agree with you. I think more people are very open now to seeking different ways and that’s certainly been.

Well, it’s icing on my cake, that’s for sure, because they’re fed up with the diets, they’re fed up with, you know, the weight loss centers. They’re fed up with everything that didn’t work. And more and more hypnosis is becoming, you know, well known. And they can Google me and find me very readily and, uh, gimme a call and they get the results.

Awesome. So let’s kind of rewind things for a moment. You, Yes. Finished up the training and here’s where you are now. Let’s go with the positive first. What would you say has been the best step, the best thing that you’ve done from training up until this point? In terms of getting the phone ringing, in terms of getting clients coming in.

Okay, so you’re talking from a business point of view? Yes. Jumping in. I started off so scared of the whole idea before I took my. The whole idea of being able to really do this, Can I really do this? And of course, most of that is just my junk. And this whole thing started for me because I myself had a virtual gastric band applied, and I started dropping pounds and realized, Oh, my weight loss journey has nothing to do with my weight

It has to do with the dead weight that I’m shedding. And the body just responds. And it was changing my point of view about everything. I was dropping fears and. Taking this risk and believing in myself in a whole new way. Well then when I took the, the training, the actual training itself, going through those practices with my peers, and it felt so right.

It just felt very, very natural and very normal. And so then I remember you saying you can’t be afraid of just doing something because you can always change it. And I thought you. That’s the way I’ve approached a lot of things in my life and I kind of have a mantra that’s written over my computer.

Everything is temporary, and so I took that and kind of ran with it. It doesn’t have to be sexy, Linda just gets the website up. You can always change it. You can always tweak it. As a matter of fact, you’re going to, and I started then recognizing through this whole process that change is the only. Because I’m changing, I’m constantly evolving with each client.

I’m just getting tweaked into another direction and another concentration, uh, taking on new techniques, working a lot in neural plasticity now. And so it’s just, I guess, opening myself up to the idea that. Failure’s not something bad. Failure is just one more catalyst for that constant change. So when you embrace that, you’re not so afraid of it.

So that was my biggest one. Well, especially that point of view of it always can be something different. I think it was Sean, Michael Andrews on here that I’m one of the earlier podcast sessions quoting the line he has about you Always wish you could call back your first client and say, I got. Yeah, not the first one, but maybe the third one.

The first one probably wouldn’t take on now. . Oh, . No, but from that point of view, that absolutely there’s something artistic to all, There’s something very artistic to all of this in terms of just that process of where we start and what we’re interested in. And especially, you know, on the business side, if it doesn’t work, we do something else.

We take the lesson, we move on. But there’s gotta be something up there. There’s gotta be something out there Otherwise, Well, this is where I’d kind of politely make a friendly jab at the secret that you still have to let the universe know you’re out there. Right? You can put that good energy out there, but there still has to be the action step, otherwise they can’t find you.

Mm-hmm. , and that’s what I started with because I was, I wasn’t working at all while I was trying to build this practice. You know, I had no income, so I was always kind of thinking out of the box and that creative aspect was always a part. So this is what Jason would do. You know, WW j d is Jason. In my world, we’re not pre those bracelets, so I always ask what would Jason do?

and I may not be able to do what Jason does right now, but that’s what I will do. But right now, I’m not going to just sit and wait until I have the money to do it better or do it fancier, do it more thoroughly, or maybe even more effectively. I’m gonna do something otherwise I stall. And just me as a person, if I stall through a fear cycle or you know, a negative thought cycle, that’s suicide.

But as long as I’m constantly reworking it, reat, attacking it, doing something, then I feel productive. I’m empowering myself and I’ve got this positive stuff going. So it started with the website that, Where’s the free website? I started asking questions. Someone led me to Yahoo. Looking back on it. That’s something I’m gonna change.

I’m not gonna stay with it. But that was what I needed to get it up. It was free. It was somewhat friendly to the end result isn’t exactly what I’m looking for, but they have my information and that’s where I had to start. And it’s okay. That’s all. Okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be. The first step I have to, you know what I’m trying to say?

Mm-hmm. . So I got that website up and then the next thing was I have to get in front of people and I took the route of Park and Rec because it’s right around the corner from me. It was free. They had availability. They were all very excited about the idea of having a hypnotist come in again Monday morning quarterbacking looking at it.

Was it the best opportunity for me? Maybe, maybe not. In other words, I didn’t get a lot of monies out of it. I didn’t get a lot of clients out. But what I did get out of it was I stood up in front of people and allowed my niece to knock together a few times. Mm-hmm. and, you know, I got my elevator speech together.

I, I fine tuned my approach to weight loss through a couple of those classes that I gave. Then I started doing meetups and then I got busy listening to what Jason was saying, You know, you gotta get out and meet organizations. So I joined Chamber of Commerce, which was wonder. Uh, Women to Women in my area, which is an Offspring Moment’s group from Chamber, uh, Cal Resources, which is a free network in our area for all the businesses, people that just network.

Once a month we get together and brainstorm and, you know, pass cards. And what was really cool about that one is you can be the sponsor for that one if you want. So when I get a few bucks together, Here’s my door prize. Make sure I’m one of the top three this week so that everybody knows about me. I don’t have to.

Only handing out cards. I’m gonna be, uh, you know, introduced and the chamber. Of course, they give you opportunity to speak at each one of the events and, uh, introduce yourself and tell ’em something new that’s happening. These are just opportunities to get my face. In front of other people’s spaces and also just the opportunity of getting out there and doing that stuff.

Absolutely. But just the more you do it, the better you get at it. Absolutely. You know, it’s that, it’s that balance of working with a client, perhaps with a fear of public speaking on mm-hmm. on one side of things. We could help him to feel a whole lot more comfortable when they’re up there. But on the other side of things, there’s also just the fact it’s a skill.

Mm-hmm. And there was a sort of a preview class that I did recently prior to the recent certification course and. I had extended the offer for a couple of the students to say, Hey, this event is next weekend. If you want to come feel free, just show up. And it was kind of interesting that I had one of the students there, and you’ve seen me enough so you know that I do this too.

The whole tactic of it goes, Wow. Some of the same jokes in the same moments. I’m like, well, you know, you kind of learned the routine and it just works. , Right? Being in the moment. Being in the experience. That’s right. And I don’t always expect the same guy at the same events either. So it’s. If you’re becoming redundant in my life, I’m becoming redundant and years, and isn’t that wonderful.

Right. That’s just also that connectivity throughout, you know, my little community here, which I’m finding is pretty widespread, you know, I’m, I’m now seeing people from Anne Arundel and Charles County, St. Mary’s County. Even though it’s a Coward County event, they also show up for the same reason. Well, it’s the same here as Northern Virginia that I can go to the mm-hmm.

I could go to the Alexandria event and the Arlington people are there, The Springfield people are there, and I technically live out in Burke and I’m there. So Right. These events are gonna pull people who want to be there for a business. Let’s jump back for a moment though, cuz there was something that you hit upon.

Okay. That I’d love to chat with you to see if this has been something you’ve been finding just in the structure of change with your clients that you mentioned that you had done virtual gastric band as client. and the experience was not only were you losing the weight, you were also losing some of the side issues as well.

Mm-hmm. , and I think this is something that it’s very rarely discussed, I feel in hypnosis that we tend to be trained to compartmentalize the issues that you need to come in for this one or that one. But once we have that foot in the door for change, once the change is in motion, Then it just starts to break other things loose as well.

There’ll be some nice benefit, benefits of side effects, positive side effects along the way. Have you been having that type of experience with some of your clients as. Yeah, it’s interesting when I first started seeing, you know, which my concentration, I really have, my heart is very much in it for, for those that need to lose weight because of my own personal journey.

And so I remembered what it was like for me. And so when my, when I met my first few clients, it was very by the. Right. And the second time I would meet, the more I started realizing, you know, this is, there’s a lot of layers in this. I’m, I was aware that there’s emotional stuff that comes along with weight gain.

The physical manifestation of of weight comes from deep within. But what I really started recognizing is, Don’t box them in, Let yourself be free enough to go with that moment. I have, I always have an outline for the next visit that notes after each, uh, client at for the next visit. And that kinda gives me some direction.

But the more I started coming from the point of view of just rewiring period, then it kind of puts the minimum box, another box, but it. Opens up so that there’s a flexibility no matter what surfaces, I’m kind of gonna attack it very similar. I don’t know if I’m even making sense at this point. No, that does.

Oh, good. Well, it, it comes down to when we start addressing things, and it almost goes back to your original story about how you got into hypnosis that. There you were at that session with someone who was treating you or not quite tweeting, working with you from the perspective of the context of what’s going on as opposed to the individual content of who are the players in the story, what happened when, Right, That you’re noticing more and more the the contextual quality of the change process.

Absolutely. And it’s so multi-layered, even though there’s a lot of similarity among, let’s just say weight loss clients, there’s many patterns there. There’s a lot of similarities. Um, there may even be similar sources, you know, coming from trauma or something like that, but, I think the biggest aha moment for me was one day I was sitting in my chair and I’m talking to this person who is already induced, and I’m thinking, What do I do now?

You know, I’ve tried everything that I’m aware of today and I’m not quite getting the answers I’m looking for, and she’s not getting the results that she’s really wanting. And this was a very resistant, um, client on top of it. And I just decided, you know what? Ask. And I started asking all kinds of questions and the next thing I know, she was telling me what she wanted and what she needed and, and what was in her way.

And that was a real breakthrough for me. From this side of it, from sitting in the chair, my chair and recognizing, you’ve always said, don’t go in writing the, the client, but I come from an education point of view, so I tend to talk too much . That’s been my, you know, something I had to learn. At that moment, I just shut up.

I let her start doing the, the real talking and it changed the way I approach every client. Now. Now, just so the, just so as we’re listening to this, was this, let them talk during the intake interviews portion, or actually during the process? Both. I’m learning to listen during the intake. Mm-hmm. . Not teach, but going in once they are induced, really allowing the subconscious to come forward and do its work.

I tell my clients, I’m an honored guide. You already know what you need. You already know probably how to even fix it, but it’s hard to get out of our own way, especially in the conscious mind. So in the subconscious mind, I’m just gonna guide. And take you there. And then I may ask questions and you’re gonna direct me so that I can guide you.

And it’s a, it’s kind of a symbiotic dance. It’s beautiful actually. What’s that approach too that I, I’ve been playing with this phrasing in the office more and more these days of they’re already an expert on the issue. Yeah. And to be an expert on the issue in many ways, they, they have the path out of it.

They just don’t know they have the path out of it yet. Right. Very true. And for me as a, you know, your original question, About my techniques and, and how I looked at this. That was the big moment when I recognized you don’t have to be the lecturer. You’re not being as effective by constantly teaching.

That’s really not your place there, you know? And it was a shift. It was a nice shift for me. And so now working in rewiring, there is nothing, I don’t think there’s any subject matter, at least not that I’ve come. It doesn’t boil down to, okay, you wired yourself one way for a reason. You know, that reason’s no longer serving you.

Maybe now it’s even becoming destructive. So change to the neural pathway and establish, you know, a replacement behavior and start being repetitive with it, you know, and, um, really get that root. I had a gentleman as a good example, who was a ex-police officer. He needs to leave a great deal of weight so that he can have his knees replaced.

This man couldn’t quite grasp exactly what it is we were trying to do. He wanted to understand the how, right. Rather than just simply do the guidelines. And so I approached it completely different this last time. He came in and I said, You know, the very first time you heard a bank being robbed in the, the bell go off, What would you have done before you took your training?

Before you were officer candidates? What would you have done? He goes, Oh, I would’ve gotten outta the car running the bank and got. I said Exactly. But after you took all of that training, then what would you do? And he immediately went into step one, Step two, I would park the car two blocks back. I would get out, I would walk along the side of the building.

I would be meanwhile calling for backup. I would be scanning for, you know, who else might be involved and what civilians are are around me. I said, And all of that is second nature. Now. Do you have to go through all those steps? And that’s when he really understood that this conditioning that he took in training to become a police officer, every aspect.

I said, If you think about what I step one, step two you. He goes, I get shot before I got to step, whatever. But because it’s conditioning, You just automatically go there like driving your car or a doctor or a nurse. Turning off that they go into automatic pilot knowing exactly what the steps are when they hear Code Blue.

When I was able to bring it in that language for him, he com completely got it. He goes, You’re trying to train me . I said, Well, who’s trading who? There you go. I said, If I went home with you, Then I would be training you cuz then I could be in your ear all day long, but who’s really training who and whom?

And he said, Oh, that’s why you want me to think about whether or not I’m getting that old habit signal in my head when I reached for cookies. I’m like, There it is. So he really understood at that moment. And it’s more about asking the questions than it is about talking through the solutions. Exactly.

Knowing what questions to ask, you know? Well, it’s just chunking it down to those specifics. They say, This is my issue. But then asking when, then asking how, Then getting those details the same way that you were able to break down that experience of how would you go into that building if you really needed to.

It’s mm-hmm. , it’s breaking that automatic cycle and installing a much better. Exactly, and you know, he, we worked together to establish, you know, a nice anchor device. He understands. Soon as he hears the old signal, acknowledge it. You know, reach for your anchor com, your interrupt device. Bring yourself down, and the minute the brain is busy on doing nothing, ask that really important question.

What would I rather be doing right now? What is my real motivation? What is it I’m wanting to achieve? And at that point, we have some established responses for him now so that he can say, I’d rather be taking a walk and building my, my muscle up around my knee. There it is. Okay, Now you’ve got your replacement behavior.

So do it over and over and over so that it becomes second nature as well. Not bad for being in this stuff for only about a year. Are. Thank you. I feel really, really blessed. I still sit in awe. I shake my head after each one of my clients. I smile all the time. I can’t wait to work, you know, 16 hours a day because I’m finally doing what it is I really love.

It just fits. It fits so well. It really does. And when I don’t know what to do, I do wwjd. You know,

That’s you. That’s not me. . Well, you know what? There’s something else I have to bring to the table here, though. Yes. It was hard for me to get past not knowing right, what to do. There was a period of time when not knowing what to do was scar. and I finally just started calling people, opening, you know, joining, you know, hypno women and h those thoughts and reaching out to the community.

It was scary the first time I had to post and say, Okay, I’ve got a client and I’m not sure what to do with because how was someone gonna look at me? And you know what, that was just silly because you, nobody looked at me. Everybody said, Oh yeah. I’ve had those experiences too, calling people that were in my training class.

They’ve been, you know, I’ve got two or three people in my training class that I had with you that have become resources for me. One, just simply, okay, I need to say this out loud because I have no idea what direction to. I’m not looking for him to give me any solutions. He’s just astounding for it. And so recognizing the openness of our field, the generosity of the veterans has been mind boggling to me.

It’s just amazing to be a part of a field that is so open, especially to the newcomers, but to each other. I watch veteran Ask Veteran, you know, and, um, taking he ego out of it made a big difference for me because I’ve never done this before. And that’s okay. If you’ve never ridden a skateboard, you might fall down.

You might ask about, where do I put my foot? How do I take a hill? How do I turn the corner? You’re supposed to, Because I wasn’t born with this knowledge. So reaching out to others was a big deal. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com. Hey, it’s Jason Lynette here with one last quick favor.

Just a quick request if you would head over to the iTunes listing. For this program and leave a quick review. That is the number one way to help us out. That helps to bump up the download, spread the awareness around this program, and well simply, it just makes me quite happy. So do us a favor, Head over there right away.

Just go to work smart hypnosis.com. At the very top of the page, click the iTunes button. That’ll take you right there. Leave your review. Thanks so much.