Brain Software Podcast 40: The Chris and Jeff Show

Chris: Welcome fellow storm riders, you are officially a rider on the hypnotic storm. This is Chris Thompson and welcome to session number 40 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel, otherwise known as the Chris and Jeff Show.

Mike: That’s our new name, the Chris and Jeff Show.

Chris: He’s obsessed with the music of Palestrina, makes a scalding hot Thai red curry and owns picks used by three of rock’s greatest guitar heroes. He is the center of the hypnotic world epicenter, the rider on the hypnotic storm. He is none other than the wizard of hypnotic storm, Mike Mandel.

Mike: He come to earth in human form sounding 30 or 40 years younger than the 60 years he really is. Actually no, I sound old today Chris. My voice is shot. We’ve just done a live webinar and are now doing our podcast. I’m fighting a bit of a cold, a bit of a sore throat but I’m still here for you. I’m not dead yet folks, not dead yet.

Chris: Spreading your flu viruses to me.

Mike: Hey I want to explain why we call the Chris and Jeff show. Now the reason why is just stupidly, I started calling Chris “Christabelle” for awhile. I couldn’t decide whether to spell it Christabelle or Christobelle. Your thoughts on this are appreciated listeners but I’ve stopped calling him that on the program. So, I won’t mention it but I did want to say that I started sending him e-mails and I started spelling Chriss, putting an extra s. So there’s two ss then it had Kriss and then a couple of e-mails later Krysse and just making it stranger and stranger.

Chris: Chryss.

Mike: Chryssee. So Chris sends me an e-mail, just calls  me Jeff which I thought was absolutely brilliant going from no intermediate steps, just right from Mike to Jeff.

Chris: [laughs] I just thought it would be a great interrupt. You were just smoothly transitioning my name from a normal spelling to just-

Mike: Right to the nuclear weapons. Anyway, welcome everybody we’ve got a great show for you today. We’ve got a bunch of material to cover as usual. We’re hoping my voice holds out.

Chris: Yes, it will. Let’s dive into the hypnosis stuff and right before we do, we want to make sure everyone out there knows we had an awesome handwriting analysis, graphoanalysis course in Toronto about a month ago now actually.

Mike: Yes it’s actually a graphology. Graphoanalysis is a trademarked term.

Chris: Thank you.

Mike: Graphoanalysis. But it was a good graphology course. We’ve got some great feedback from people saying they’re using this new practice already. Didi said she was skeptical but she took the course because I was teaching it. She said she is blown away with it all.

Chris: It’s crazy.

Mike: Everybody’s having a great result with this so we will do it again. It will be a 2-day course. Somebody came in from Philadelphia for it but we have upcoming the next Architecture of Hypnosis course in Toronto at the end of November. Chris, you’ve got the dates there.

Chris: Yes. We want to make sure that you’re all aware the next Architecture of Hypnosis is a 5-day course but it’s being split over two weekends. So, it’s a Saturday Sunday followed by a Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Mike: So, even if you’re coming from out of town, you just have four days off in between. You come up for a whole week to Toronto, hang on, we’ve got world class [unclear 2:55] museums and art galleries and all kinds of cool stuff to do.

Chris: It actually does make the course easier to digest because you’re drinking from a fire hose the entire time that you’re in this class. Mike is teaching you so much material so it actually is appreciated by a lot of the people to have the Monday through Thursday off. That said, the dates are October I believe if I’m getting my dates right here. it’s November 23^rd. I need to check the calendar here. November 23 and 24 followed by November 29, and 30 and then December 1.

Mike: And it’s going to be here before you know  it. we are getting people booking already, confirming and putting in the deposits already. Go to the website and check it out. We’ve got a student from Texas coming and typically, these are extremely well attended and you will have the time of your life. Come and study with the hypnotic storm riders, Chris and Jeff in Toronto.

Chris: Chris and Jeff. [laughs] I’d just also want to point out. A lot of people have e-mailed saying “Well, how big is the class?” I think there’s a lot of people who envision that we’re going to have thousands of people packed into a room. That is not the way we run these classes. We’re talking a couple of dozen students here.

Mike: We do not meet in a hotel ballroom. We’re in an actual classroom in Toronto and you’ll have a blast.

Chris: Everybody who takes the class gets to build really good relationships with all the students and with us and it’s just a phenomenal experience. You get to personally talk with everybody. You’re not just going to see Mike at a distance and wonder if you’ll ever be able to have a conversation with him. You will be in the classroom conversing with everybody over and over for the entire five days and you will really love it. it’s just a tremendous experience. I can’t say enough about it. So, if you’re worried about there being too many people in the room, absolutely not the case. We keep these classes small. Let’s get on to the topic at hand here today Mike, hypnosis and all kinds of stuff.

Mike: What do we got? What do we start with?

Chris: Let’s start with … we had a question about getting people to threshold. This question came from Victoria in Sydney and she wrote in and said, “This is related to weight management. In your experience Mike, what are the most effective ways or perhaps your favorite ways to get someone solidly to threshold so talk about what that is when you’re answering it and if they’re not quite at threshold, is there a best method to test if someone is solidly at threshold? I understand the wobble around threshold often points to the problem. For example, it’s hard to stay at threshold if you believe ‘I have the fat gene and cannot get lean’. This limiting belief will make it difficult to allow. It’s up to me to feel available to them which is part of threshold that Mike will get to.” I’m going to stop there because I think it just goes on.

Mike: Yeah that’s some good stuff. Threshold is the place you want to get your subject/client to  which is three components really, the simplified version. Something has to change. It has to be now and it has to be me.

Chris: Which is exactly what Victoria was hinting at. How is it that you get the person to believe that it has to be me if for example they’re convinced they have the fat gene. So I’m assuming she’s bringing this up because she probably has had clients given that she specializes in weight management, who believe that they have the fat gene and they can’t possibly get thin.

Mike: Although obesity is unknown during times of famine. It does not exist. It never exist in concentration camps.

Chris: So that would be an interesting metaphor reframe.

Mike: Right, it certainly shows that it is not a gene.

Chris: So a challenge to Victoria would be to go out and research this topic about obesity being non-existent during famine and use that with subjects as a reframe.

Mike: I had one client once who told me, he was in for phobia cure and he said he wanted to work on his weight too but really grossly obese and he said he wanted to work on his weight too but realized it was impossible because his problem was his glands and I said “You’re right because each one of them weighs about 15 pounds now” and he sort of laughed about it and he said, “Well I have an under active this and under-active that.” I said, “No. You’ve got an overactive fork.” And it’s true. Without sufficient caloric intake, you cannot weigh too much but anyway, back to threshold.

One of the simplest ways of getting someone to threshold, do not see any client unless they’re willing to change. That’s one of the things that make it difficult to see me. I don’t talk to just whoever wants to work on a problem or anyone who wants an appointment. I ensure that it’s difficult. It’s going to be inconvenient for them because it’s inconvenient for me to fit everybody in and I said, “This is the only date I have open if you can make it on that.” “yeah. Yeah, I will.” And you’ve got to convince me that you want to change. I put the onus on them. If you can’t convince me you want to quit smoking, if you can’t convince me you want to get over this anxiety and live a productive life, I’m not going to deal with it.”No I want to” and their very act of convincing you will often fire their convincer strategy and they will then be a threshold.

Chris: Okay let me ask you a question to modify this slightly because for someone like Victoria who I believe in the e-mail she sent, she specifically works with people on weight management so this is her full time job. It’s going to be difficult for her to tell someone it’s going to be hard for me to fit you into my schedule. You don’t do full time therapy anymore mike right? you do a lot of other stuff.

Mike: But you can be so busy helping people who really want to change.

Chris: Yes. what I’m also thinking is can she do something on the intake form for example to have people go through some sort of ordeal, some sort of work filling in some sort of answers to questions to convince you that they are serious about changing.

Mike: Well of course. You just nailed it with that Chris. How would you do that?

Chris: I would have spent a bit more time thinking about it but just off the top of my head here, I would put together an intake form that had questions on it like how is it that you know, convince me you’re responsible for your own weight and something like that.

Mike: And make them realize they’re the cause not you. you have to find out all the things that will happen when the change and ask them the consequences.  “What will happen if you do not change, how will you feel, how will people look at you?”. You have to play along all the positives and negative. The positives – what will happened if you change and the negatives -what will happen if you do not change.

Chris: I would also probably want to…

Mike: (coughs off microphone) Listen to my voice (his voice is rough).

Chris: Yeah its horrible. I would want to pre-empt the “I’ve tried everything” excuse because people are going to say “Oh I’ve tried everything”. Well of course, nobody has tried everything. That’s impossible and everything is an infinite list.

Mike: Right. if someone said “I’ve tried everything”, I’d say “So you’re ready to lose the weight now.

Chris: Yeah.

Mike: It’s funny .. you’ve stopped all the trying and you’re ready to do it now.

Chris: Yeah exactly so I would probably want to use on the intake form something to the effect of what have you already done that hasn’t worked in the past.

Mike: Yeah it’s good to know that.

Chris: And that way you can lead that. You can basically use this as a yes set and compliance set right when you’re then talking to them after. What have you tried that hasn’t worked and so, then you want to get them on the page where they agreed that here are all kinds of things they haven’t yet done which are going to result in them managing their weight.

Mike: Right. she’s really talking very nicely here. Victoria’s mentioning about people who sort of wobble around that point where they’re almost at threshold. They’re just not quite there and one of the keys here is to really, really emphasize just those two things. What’s going to happen if you don’t do it today and what’s going to happen if you do change everything today? How are you going to feel? How much better if you turn it back into a kinesthetic state and give them a nudge that way. And the way you can tell and let me close at this point the way you can tell that they are at threshold is they’ll be congruent. Their body language, their words, their tonality will all be sending the identical message to you.

Chris: And you can use this obviously in everyday conversation when people are complaining to you about their problems. You can ask them the same kinds of questions. “Well, how will you know when you’ve overcome this problem?” You don’t have to be a therapist to know this.

Mike: Yeah sure that’s your evidence criteria? How will you know? what will you see here and feel when you’re over this?

Chris: As opposed to why questions which you stuck.

Mike: Right and remember too Victoria. One of the key questions is when you put them a cause, have them realize that the excess weight is not something that is happening to them. It is a behavior that they are maintaining so when you get them to recognize their at cause, their the locus of the change, the focus of the change, then you can say to them the magic question, “What’s next?” And that is really powerful. What’s next? Well, I’m going to change the weight. That’s right. Let’s do this hypnotically and let you crave good foods and lose the desire for the bad stuff and so on and so on. You can make someone if you don’t want to eat chocolate again. Didi has made her whole career out of this. it’s fantastic. Didi Vergados is the weight management guru here in Toronto and she lost a ton of weight, looks absolutely fantastic and maintains that and she says if you want to quit eating chocolate or pizza or whatever, I can make you hate it and she can. And there’s ways of attaching so much disgust to a particular thing, you will not eat it anymore. But I think it’s really good to combine that with the desire for healthy foods and how great they’re going to feel. Let them get an inkling of feeling already amazing based on what that state’s going to be like.

Chris: I want to just touch on the beautiful reframe that you gave earlier which is to not have people to look at weight as something that has happened – past tense – to them but put it in the present tense.

Mike: It’s a behavior they’re maintaining.

Chris: Yes I love that. It’s a freaking awesome reframe. So, putting in it present tense makes it not only here and now we can change it.

Mike: Yeah it’s not out of reach.

Chris: It’s not in the past and therefore unchangeable.

Mike: It’s not carved in stone in the past and isn’t a future certainty.

Chris: It is a process that they are maintaining right now.

Mike: And we’re back Chris to the thing that we said on the webinar. You know John Grinder says “How am I exquisitely maintaining this behavior?”

Chris: That was the [unclear 12:45]

Mike: How am I exquisitely maintaining this behavior whether it’s an argument with a spouse that goes on and on and on or continuously piling on more and more weight. How am I exquisitely maintaining it?

Chris: Which is probably a useful question for anybody dealing with weight management clients to ask their clients.

Mike: Yup, for sure. And then of course, back to “what’s next?” What’s next puts them back at cause and makes them realize in fact every therapist, every social worker, every counselor should be saying that at the end of every session. What’s next? “Well, I’m going to go and make up with my son. We haven’t talked two in years.” Whatever it is put them back at cause and actively pursuing the goal.

Chris:  That is beautiful. Okay let’s move on. We’ve got a question sent in to us through our SpeakPipe page and if you want to send us just mention this. if you want us to actually play your questions as we record them here, if you want us to play your questions, send them to us in audio format and the way to do that I go to speakpipe.com/hypnosis or you can go to mikemandelhypnosis.com and you should see a little tab at the right hand side that says send us a message. If you send us your question and it’s clear done through a good – don’t do it in the windy weather over your iPhone or something because we won’t hear it clearly but if you do it from a nice environment where we’ll get a good sound from you, we will be happy to play your question on the podcast. Anyway, with that said, Julius sent us in a question from Speak Pipe. I don’t have his permission to play it and the sound quality was not exceptional but I want to restate the question and have you answer it Mike.

He asked, “Is hypnosis real? I want to learn street inductions fast inductions.” My guess here is he’s been watching YouTube videos where someone walks up to another person, kind of yanks on their arm and yells SLEEP and they become this robotic follower of every command.

Mike: Right.

Chris: And there’s a lot of stuff that’s missing obviously.

Mike: And there’s little elves showing up in a few minutes and they’re bringing me a brand new iPhone. No, the reality is of course street hypnosis can be done. We did it at Dundas Square last year in Toronto which is Toronto’s Times Square, working with people we just met, trancing them out, making them forget their names, ride roller coasters, all kinds of things. It is real but not everything you see on YouTube is real but there is a lot of wild and willy things happen where you do not see all the preframe, the work that’s gone in advance to prepare people for it and so, you really have to prop a subject. You can’t just walk up to someone and yell sleep and yank their arm because they’ll probably punch you in the head or something. You have to clear some space first and get some momentum moving in that direction.

Chris: That makes a lot of sense. So, if you want to learn rapid inductions or instant inductions and there is a difference, then I suggest you join the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy.

Mike: We do teach them.

Chris: You will learn. Oh man it’s just by the time you get to I think it’s lesson six, you’re learning some incredibly powerful methods of doing hypnosis on the street or just impromptu hypnosis. We don’t like to call it street hypnosis but just impromptu hypnosis and you’ll really understand the principles. The people who have joined the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy so far have been writing to us saying wow, these lessons are just so incredible. They’re just so clearly laid out. They’re entertaining and they’re in bite-size chunks and people who have been studying hypnosis for a long time have written in saying this and people are absolute new beginners. I guess that’s a redundant comment isn’t it? new beginners – they have written in just as much saying how much they’ve loved it. So that’s https://mikemandelhypnosis.com/academy if you’re interested in joining and can make it in Toronto.

Mike: And we will accommodate you.

Chris: Let’s see what else we’ve got on our list here. John Grinder’s method of learning through saturation. That was a note that we wrote down. Let’s talk about that Mike.

Mike: Yeah a few years ago, I was messing around with my Stratocaster and practicing some Blues scales and I really applied something Grinder toppy which is saturation and whereas I was playing the scales over and over and learning some different licks now on the guitar, what really made it click was when I saturated my brain with the Blue scales constantly and I would in the background in my house for days on end have PB King and Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Roy Gallagher, and all these blues greats just playing different songs random mix and I wasn’t listening to it. it was purely unconscious. the idea was I was getting saturation then I built in the physicality by playing the scales with my left hand over and over and over again so that I had the hand strength to physically do what was necessary, bending the strings and so on. But when you put the two together then when I sat down and played, all of a sudden, the saturation kicked in and I was producing all these guitar likes that these other guys have played even though I hadn’t consciously learned them and John said that saturation is the key. You have to build on the physicality, you have to build on the practice but saturation is what makes the difference. So anything you have to learn (for example)… right now, I’m prepping for a future next handwriting course and I’m doing it by saturation meaning I’m reading books on graphology over and over and over – multiple books, highlighting way, way over the top, being anything I could consciously remember and the saturation will ensure the information gets in so to make your hypnosis work better, saturate yourself with it – watch programs on hypnosis, watch DVDs on it, read books on it, cover every conceivable angle even though you won’t remember it all consciously.

Chris: Listen to podcasts on it like this one.

Mike: That’s right. Chris and Jeff Show.

Chris: This is now episode 40so there are a lot of podcasts. I mean that’s a lot content coming from who I believe is the best hypnosis trainer on the planet here, Dr. Jeff. [laughs]

Mike: [laughs] Dr. Jeff or just Jeff.

Chris: That’s funnier isn’t it?

Mike: I think it is.

Chris: So saturate. Now if you’re interested in more than just hypnosis, I think most of the audience listening here, they’re very fascinated and curious about hypnosis but most of us …meaning you listeners …aren’t going to use hypnosis for your career and some of you, most of you are in many cases, just interested in learning how to be better communicators, better presenters, better speakers and the same thing applies here doesn’t it? listening to the podcast that we’re recording here for example and the power language that Mike’s teaching you and all these other –

Mike: [Sarcasm] And all the NLP stuff which apparently doesn’t work.

Chris: Yeah exactly.

Mike: It’s not that it doesn’t work. It’s just that it doesn’t exist.

Chris: let’s spend a few minutes on that.

Mike: Let’s talk about that Chris. You go ahead.

Chris: Oh man so we have talked about this already but let’s refine it a little bit. there was a post on… I can’t even remember what it was and I don’t even want to give the guy credit for it really because it just boggles the mind how crap science this is. The problem that I see with anything to do with hypnosis or NLP or let’s just even say persuasion tools or influence. Whatever it is or getting into peak state. These are artistic things. We’re not claiming …. nobody has ever claimed that these are scientific things in terms of how they’re applied. There is science to explain how it works obviously but you don’t ingest hypnosis or NLP like you would take Tylenol or Advil if you had a headache. You have to apply it by doing all kinds of things – calibrating, understanding the needs of the person, matching their model of the world, building rapport, etc. etc. etc.

Mike: Right and that somebody has apparently claimed that or he has proven that NLP doesn’t work or doesn’t exist or whatever. It’s a communication model.

Chris: and what part of NLP? What exactly was tested?

Mike: Was he testing anchoring? Was he testing the Meta Model?

Chris: Testing eye accessing?

Mike: How is he testing it? you know the whole idea is that I’ve heard people say the eye accessing patterns don’t work. Well, it’s really unusual because I found since 1993 that they’re completely consistent and I get amazing results all the time!

Chris: Once you calibrate the person.

Mike: Once you calibrate the person. People seem to get a bee in their bonnet about this stuff. No, this doesn’t exist and I’ve heard people. They’re arguing against homeopathy we test and 10 people had flu and it didn’t work. Well they don’t understand how homeopathy works. You don’t throw influenzinum 30c at every single person. You have to calibrate their entire symptomology. Do they feel like there’s a tight band around their head causing their headache? Yes, well if that’s the case you give them gelsemium for flu. It’s different and if their eyes are bright and their pupils are dilated and their face is red, then you’re going to give them belladonna for flu. You can’t give one thing to everybody. You have to deal people like individuals and to take something like NLP and make a blanket statement like it doesn’t work or it doesn’t exist, it shows the ignorance of the tester more than anything else.

Chris: Let’s say somebody is listening to this podcast and they enter into a discussion with someone else who’s read such a study that NLP doesn’t work. What are some good questions that people can then use which are NLP type questions?

Mike: Well of course, use the Meta Model.

Chris: Back at them and actually demonstrate.

Mike: Which aspects of the study do you agree with? Well all of them. specifically, which ones? What part of NLP did they test? Well I don’t know. Ah so there are areas of the study you don’t know anything about and yet you formulated this. [laughs]

Chris: [laughs] So you just used the Meta Model.

Mike: The question here Chris   that there’s people listening right now who don’t even know what NLP is and they’re struggling and treading water, trying to keep their head above water just to make sense of what we’re even talking about even though my voice is going and my question to you is, what are you prepared to do to make their lives more enriched with the Meta Model right now? (Transcription note – this is a joke related to a prior podcast)

Chris: Well what I’m prepared to do is suggest that they listen to podcast number 39 so they have a full understanding of that language pattern that you used because it was so much fun.

Mike: Thanks buddy.

Chris: The Meta Model is one aspect of NLP and just think of it logically. By asking good questions, you elicit better information. Does it make sense that that works? Of course it does.

Mike: But the irritating thing is or they’ll reframe it and say well, this is cognitive psychology.  Well the elements that are like cognitive psychology, they have no problem with. Sure, call them whatever the hell you want. I don’t care what you call it. my point is I want people to feel better. I want people to have better lives. That’s my concern with all of this.

Chris: Because honestly, we couldn’t give a crap if we called it NLP or something else.

Mike: It’s just that irrelevant to me.

Chris: It’s just “the stuff that we do that works.”

Mike: Yeah, the stuff we do that works and I really don’t want to contact the hundreds of people I’ve worked with to get over phobias, anxieties, and relationship problems who have really good lives now and tell them guess what? some academic sitting on his ivory throne is determined that this doesn’t work. Therefore, “You’re still busted and broken and you probably need to be on drugs.”

Chris: You just gave to call them and say that you didn’t actually use NLP Mike. You just used that fixing thing that works.

Mike: Well there is that.

Chris: [laughs] We’ll just call it something else. Whatever, it doesn’t work. Supposedly, it doesn’t work.

Mike: Now you’ve asked me about this Mister Floyd thing.

Chris: Yes

Mike: I wanted to touch on this because we talk about bending reality and warping reality and I’ve done that many, many years and as Chris [unclear23:30] mic for a bit closer here for my voice’s sake and as Chris well know and testify, the Swissongi story is an example of just messing people’s heads from a very early age.

When I was a little kid, a girl named Lynn up at Lake Simcoe. We were about four kids hanging around. I didn’t even know whose house it was. She was like a year or two older than us. We all created this game called Mrs. Floyd and she was Mrs. Floyd and scared the crap out of us with this game. Well, I haven’t seen her since I was like 8 or 7 or something so I kept the game going for the last 53 years and I played it with my sister’s kids when they were little kids. Now, they’re married and in relationships with kids of their own and I played it with all manner of kids and the problem is Mr. Floyd is too superbly designed to be a scary game. It’s too good and it became so frightening I’ve had to stop playing it and the reason why is …I’m going to demonstrate this Chris… is the difference between two movies that are both the same story. One is the original story that will be called, “The Haunting”, and it’s from the book of the same name by Shirley Jackson. “The Haunting of Hill House” was actually the book. It became the movie, “The Haunting”. I think it came out in about 1963. It’s a black and white film with Claire Bloom and a few other actors on it and Russ Tamblyn. It was remade in probably the 1990s and the first version in black and white is about a billion times more terrifying than the remade one with all the special effects. Now why you think that is?

Chris: Oh why do I think a black and white film might be more scary?

Mike: Why do you think this particular one is? What mistake was they made in the new one? Any idea?

Chris: No, I haven’t seen either but my initial gut when you said black and white versus special effects, I think that black and white leaves a lot of information out and you have to fill in the blanks.

Mike: Ah you’re on the right track. You are so on the right track. See special effects, they made all these visual things that were really scary but the original film, The Haunting, which I recommend all of you rent, you see nothing.

Chris: So you have to imagine it.

Mike: It’s all in your imagination and the human mind has far more terror. You’re right. okay high five. far more amazing special effects than anything you can produce in a studio and it is all implied and inferred and is way scarier. So, I designed this Mr. Floyd game along those lines. Now the idea is I’m Mr. Floyd, the friendly, old, retired schoolteacher who sits outside his house whittling and the kids come by on their  way to school and as they come by, they say hi to Mr. Floyd and then they say hi on their way home again. On their way home, they always ask him the question, “Is it going to be a good night or a bad night?” Most of the time, Mr. Floyd says it’s going to be a good night and the kids relax and happy and they go home and they come back the next day and we play again all in one day and a number of days. When they come back, if it’s a bad night, there’s the problem. The genius of the game is Mr. Floyd is the only one who can protect them from this upcoming horror but he is also the one who’s trying to kill them.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: So there’s this ambiguity that the kids find so terrifying. So they would come back to me and say it’s going to be a very bad night and they go, “Oh no.” and Mr. Floyd immediately starts a countdown. They’ve got two minutes and 30 seconds which of course I just make up the time. they have to fulfill this ritual otherwise, I become evil Mr. Floyd and kill them.

Chris: [laughs] That is so horrible.

Mike: They’re rushing around. “I need three twigs the same size and a reddish colored stone and a picture of a cat” and these kids are running at a hundred directions at the cottage and they come back and if they’re not back in time, just as they’re getting to me, I’m “Muhahahahaha” turning into evil Mr. Floyd.

Chris: Awesome … we have to talk about the restaurant game!

Mike: We’re going there. We’re going to play it today. So they’re running back to evil Mr. Floyd, the agent of their destructions, the only one who can help them. Well the problem is we played it at the cottage this summer and it was too scary. It went horribly wrong and I felt bad about it because I like kids. I don’t want to scare them. The thing is I terrified a couple of kids without even playing the game. They start, “I don’t want to play. It’s too scary.” And then they started asking me and said, “Well what would it be?” and I started describing the game and one of the kids, Jordan, she said, “Are there other people in it?”and I said, “Yes. There’s two other people. one you know and one you’ve never met.” And they’re just freaked out like this.

Chris: [laughs] just the way you say it and make eye contact.

Mike: Yeah they said, “Where are they?” I said, “Well one’s at the boat under the tarpaulin and the other’s in the woods watching.” and they got way too freaked out. Heather said to me, “Mike, you idiot!” She said, “You’re a freaking hypnotist. Stop messing with these kid’s heads.” And I go on and apologized to them. We’ve never even played the game. Discussing it was enough and I look over their shoulder at the woods and just started quietly nod like this and they’re like “What? What?” spinning around. I mean this is in broad daylight.

Chris: It’s the congruence of all this right? actually, this just makes me think when we were having lunch with my wife and she was asking something about you were telling a story about your dad. How your dad used to psychologically keep you in line by telling you.

Mike: He was like the master of psychological torture.

Chris: And so without going into the story, my wife asked Mike, “Does that mean that if you don’t raise your voice, it works better?” and what was your answer to that?

Mike: Absolutely. He never raised his voice once but he kept me under complete control.

Chris: Yeah so instead of yelling, you’re just calm and you just state things as they are.

Mike: And the implication is far more terrifying.

Chris: It sounds much and if you think about any scary character in a movie you’ve ever seen, they don’t say they’re yelling and shooting. They just talk like this [speaking slowly, quietly].

Mike: Like Hannibal Lecter. Dexter. You know what? My friend James B. is an online guy on Jazz FM radio and he can listen to it worldwide Jazz FM out of Toronto 91.1 great Jazz station and he’s an online guy, on-air guy in the morning and just a wonderful, wonderful friend and he showed me a thing that is really scary. He had two music boxes and he says listen, nice right? and he just turns it up and turns the other one on and they whatever the tune that turns up. He says it sounds nice doesn’t it? I said yeah. He turns it both at once… suddenly scary. Two music boxes, different tunes over each to her… Horrifying. Firing all these anchors on scary movies.

Chris: That’s bizarre. Oh that is really bizarre. Okay do you want to talk about the laughing game before we end this?

Mike: the laughing game is fantastic. I recommend you do this. the laughing game is you’ve got a bunch of people together. Get at least 4 people. you can do it as few as two. The more, the funnier it is. Get about 10 people for an evening out, it’s hilarious. Each person puts in a sum of money. Let’s say $10 for an evening’s entertainment. Someone begins timing. They set an alarm on their iTune that’s going to go off two hours later.

Chris: Mike, you said iTune.

Mike: iPhone.  Starting again … you can tell I’m sick, can’t you? Set an alarm on their iPhone to go off two or three hours whatever. Until that alarm goes off, you’re allowed to laugh, joke, whatever you want but if you laugh, you have to laugh like an insane lunatic like this “Muahhahahahaha”. if you do not do that, your name is stricken from the list and everyone else keeps doing it until there’s one person left. When the alarm goes off, whoever’s still left splits the money and sometimes it’s one person gets like $100. So there’s an incentive to stay with it and it’s a lot of fun. You can be laughing in a regular manner and as long as you catch yourself in that laughing, change it.

Chris: Transition.

Mike: Mike Smith and I used to sit after class and he’d be at a restaurant ordering food and we put $5 on each which was back then in those days in 1973, you could buy a car for $5 and a house but he’s sitting across the table and he starts to order coffee and he sees me trying to catch his eye and he starts laughing. The waitress is standing there and he says, “the coffee and muahahaha ….” And she looks at him like he’s insane which makes me laugh so I go, “muahahaha” and we both go, “muahahaha” and it’s so funny because it gets worse and worse and funnier and funnier and you get the whole table laughing like mad scientists. It’s brilliant.

Chris: And of course you’re sitting there at the table and like there’s two people out of 10 left and so the other eight are trying to make everybody else laugh and [joking] “isn’t the real issue” they start throwing at you “and isn’t the real issue here that there are some people who don’t have the luxury of the time to be out at bars having fun?” [laughs]

Mike: The real question is what am I prepared to do about it?

Chris: [laughs] So of course you get them laughing hysterically. So lots of fun. Alright lots of silliness but a couple of good answers to some real hypnosis questions.

Mike: The empowering question I’ve written for this Chris.

Chris: Yes let’s do the empowering question.

Mike: I think you should deliver the empowering question today. I want to hear you do it glanitively. So,  listen guys and let this resonate with you. these are meant to do something for you.

Chris: This isn’t the one that we came up with on the webinar but I’ll ask this one anyway. What’s the most emotionally powerful memory from your childhood, and what does it teach you about how to have a better life…now? What’s the most emotionally powerful memory from your childhood, and what does it teach you about how to have a better life…now?

Mike: Nicely done Chris.

Chris: You’ve got a closing metaphor for us, Mike?

Mike: I do. A number of years ago across the skies of Saskatchewan, there was an immense roaring sound. Farmers came out of the small towns, came out of their small fields and looked upward and three huge shapes were soaring across the sky in the gathering sundown… gathering darkness making a roaring sound beyond belief. They moved across the sky faster than any vehicle on earth could and the men watched these three things fly over their fields in a perfect formation moving east until they were gone over the horizon. Someone thought they were meteors but meteors don’t go horizontally. They fall to the ground, they didn’t fly in formation. And a couple of hours later, they were reported over New England and United States. Hundreds of people saw them, maybe thousands. And the three shapes then turned sharply and flew in formation roaring in sound down the New England sea board and were spotted over Brazil and a couple of hours later having been seen by thousands of people, they turned left and made a short turn in unison over the Atlantic ocean toward the coast of Africa and were not seen again and it would be so easy to discount them as aircraft but this was before World War I, before even the simple World War I biplanes had taken to the sky.

Chris: Thanks everybody for tuning. This has been Brain Software with Mike Mandel session number 40 otherwise known as the Chris and Jeff Show. You are our fellow hypnotic storm riders and we want to make sure that you’re entertained and educated on these awesome podcasts. So send us in your questions. You can hit us up on our website, you can also use our speak pipe page. http://speakpipe.com/hypnosis. Most important thing though is I want you to share your opinion on this podcast with other listeners. So head on over to iTunes. Head on over to iTunes or head on over to our website and you’ll find a link to this show in iTunes and write a review. We would love to get your hopefully five-star review on this podcast.