Brain Software Podcast 43: The complete insanity of yesterday’s mainstream hypnosis

Brain Software hypnosis podcastWelcome to Episode 43 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. This must be our most sarcastic episode ever, since we spend quite a lot of time discussing some of the garbage that has been published about hypnosis over the years. If you ever wondered why hypnosis isn’t always taken seriously, just listen to some of this crap and you’ll quickly realize what the industry is still fighting to overcome.

Here are the show notes for this episode:

  • Mike and Chris just wrapped up the video recording of an awesome lesson on stage hypnosis as part of the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy. Mike spilled his guts on how to conduct a stage show after performing about 5000 shows throughout his career (and counting).
  • We spent some time talking about what we call “hypnosis garbage”. There seems to be a real lack of good quality hypnosis demonstration out there, which is the only possible way we can see some of the stuff that’s out there being considered good.
  • Yes it’s true that some hypnotists actually teach you to stand behind your subject when hypnotizing them. How are you expected to calibrate? It’s idiotic.
  • Another dursative failure, from our perspective, is when people take valid hypnosis skills and try to turn them into something so complicated you need all kinds of DVDs and flash cards to learn them. It’s ludicrous. Hypnosis is really not that complicated. There are a lot of marketers creating all sorts of filler information. It isn’t needed. It really isn’t.
  • We discuss hypnosis scales, which are also useless. Mike brought a copy of the Aron’s Master Dept Scale into the studio, and I’ve included a photo below. This stuff is totally meaningless.
  • Mike gives us a nice impromptu demo of how easy it is to make hypnosis sound casual and conversational. Chris follows up with a pretty good example of how to transition from a question to hypnotic language

 Empowering Question: What are you waiting for … I mean really … what are you waiting for …and how will things change once you just get on with it. Closing metaphor: The story of the little boy and his ball of gaffer tape. Please leave a rating for this podcast in iTunes!  Go leave a rating in iTunes, and send in your questions by emailing questions (at) MikeMandelHypnosis (dot) com. Aron's depth scale

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Raw Transcript

Chris: [laughs] Welcome fellow storm riders, you are officially a rider on the hypnotic storm. This is Chris Thompson and welcome to session number 43 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. He drinks alkaline water, hates Microsoft operating systems and has performed nearly 5,000 stage hypnosis shows. He is the hypnotic con, the center of the hypnotic world epicenter, the original rider of the hypnotic storm; he is none other than Mike Mandel.

Mike: Yes Chris, entering the octagon at a little higher than my normal… weight that I like to be running about 170. I’m about 184 right now but I can still neck crank just about anybody listening to me. We’re glad to be here. We’re talking about hypnosis, NLP, changing your state, learning, having a great life, all of the above. Where are we starting?

Chris: We just found an amazing lesson. It’s part of the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy. It was the most I think thrilling lesson because you spilled your guts on all of the secrets of 40 years of doing stage hypnosis.

Mike: Pretty much we did a lesson. If you’re in the online hypnosis academy, you will hit this eventually if you stay with us and the entire lesson is just on how to use hypnosis for entertainment whether it’s in a 6000 seat auditorium or for three friends at a party. You’ll be able to do it.

Chris: I just think there’s so many golden, little nuggets in there even for just things like being at the center of an audience and controlling the conversation. This stuff that you’re teaching can be applied to more than just a stage hypnosis.

Mike: For sure, yeah.

Chris: Even though it’s a lesson on stage hypnosis [unclear 1:46]

Mike: That’s the intention yeah.

Chris: It’s so powerful and I can see why we saved that lesson for at this point in the course. It’s lesson 18 for those of you listening because so many of the concepts that we’ve taught earlier on in the course.

Mike: They all dub tail into this.

Chris: It would’ve been too much to throw this at the beginning of the course. So anyway, enough of the commercial.

Mike: Right. Check out our online academy. Go to mikemandelhypnosis.com

Chris: Slash academy. It was a lot of fun because it really does teach so many of the little insider secrets that I should say, we actually just filmed the commercial too right? To advertise the academy. Let’s spill it here for people. We say hey, there are no insider secrets about hypnosis.

Mike: There really aren’t. This whole mythology, if you study with [unclear 2:31], you’ll get the real secrets. You’ll get Milton Ericson’s lost arcs that nobody has discovered but him. This is absolute nonsense. It’s like the lost secrets of self-defense and there aren’t any. It’s just a matter of learning correct techniques and mastering them. There’s only [unclear2:47] inept hypnotists and trainers out there and the people who have got it together.

Chris: We wanted to start by diving a little bit deeper into some of the hypnosis – for lack of a better term – garbage that’s out there.

Mike: Oh Chris get me going on this. For those of you listening, we’ve talked about this day after day and we’ve been watching all kinds of videos online. There is a man; I’m not going to say his name. He’s a lovely person. Well, he’s no longer with us but he was a very nice man but the stuff that is online, how he has built this reputation of being so freaking brilliant is beyond me. I can only presume it is because the standard has been so low that when somebody comes along who can do adequate hypnosis, they seem to be freaking genius. Chris, I watched him do supposed oriental hypnosis and he’s banging a gong and waving it around people’s heads and then he’s making their arms lock with energy and it’s all about mechanical advantages, nothing whatever to do with energy. I’m just watching like why do people worship at this guy’s freaking shrine? It’s just unfortunate because we’re going to be reading excerpts from a book today which is not by him but it’s by one of his compatriots and it just shows what typical hypnosis was in the ‘40s and ‘50s and unfortunately still is in so many instructor’s minds and techniques.

Chris: And of course we discussed this podcast ahead of time. you shared with me some of the things that are…

Mike: I read this to you. Unbelievable stuff.

Chris: That are in this book is horrendous. So here is the thing, I’m looking atr this book that mike’s got and it’;s written. I don’t know if you want to say it was written by.

Mike: No I don’t want to say it.

Chris:  [laughs] When was this written?

Mike: I just want to attack core technique.

Chris: This book was written at around 19…

Mike: In the 40s.

Chris: 40s and 50s.

Mike: 1948, 1949. Republished in the 50s.

Chris: How old was Milton Erickson in the 40s? well he was in his 40s because Milton Erickson was born in 1901.

Mike: Yeah something like that.

Chris: While all this junk was being published, it’s not like people didn’t understand hypnosis or the good hypnosis.

Mike: Some people did.

Chris: Some people clearly don’t and still don’t but there was excellent hypnotic skill in the world in the 1940s in the hands of Milton H. Erickson.

Mike: Of course Chris. Yes, you’re absolutely correct and that’s back when Milton’s even said himself, he was way too directive in his early days. He began to get the more permissive methodologies that so many hypnotists are unable to master because they’ve not been taught properly and they’re taught that it’s too difficult or not necessary or irrelevant or as one hypnosis instructor says, Milton Erickson bored people into trance. Actually, no. Warren McGill bored people into trance. You can see him on video admitting that’s what he did with at least one induction where he has the person draw the face of a clock and he stands behind the guy with his hands on his shoulders. This is archaic stuff that deserves no time at all and I’m only giving it time to show it needs no time. in this book Chris, you’ll notice there’s a picture of a woman hypnotizing another woman and she’s standing behind her. Behind her again like McGill was when he said he bored people into trance in the induction.

Chris: If you’re standing behind somebody, what’s the problem with that?

Mike: You can’t calibrate their behavior. You can’t calibrate their external analog. You can’t see what’s happening in their expression. You’re standing behind them for crying out loud. How much can you read from looking at the back of their head and my answer is whoosh! Nothing! We’re talking about bad technique and the reason we’re talking about this is so many people are either still stuck there in this archaic stuff from the past that is a waste of time and when I read you some of these excerpts from this book…

Chris: Try not to laugh too hard.

Mike: You’ll understand why some of these people became so huge because all they had to do was average hypnosis compared to this idiocy and then there’s the other end of the spectrum where people are brought up Milton Erickson’s techniques and some of the newer stuff but they then complicated it and made it subject with you know flash cards and thousands of DVDs and made it so difficult that it makes them seem smarter but in reality, the complexity makes it harder to learn and unnecessarily so.

Chris: I think that’s a really good point mike. There are people out there who are marketing Ericksonian hypnosis techniques as if they are complicated and you have to learn with a box of – I’m going to exaggerate a little bit here but you know…

Mike: Dozens.

Chris: Dozens of DVDs where you’ll spend a n entire hour breaking down one simple little thing as if it’s this complex thing.

Mike: So much filler. Filler, filler, filler complications or archaic techniques that are ridiculous, that are half digested and people are still stuck with them. So what we intend to give you in these podcasts and in our training is the best techniques, the best of Erickson, the best of the direct stuff. We strip it down, we cut the garbage out the same way Bruce Lee took all of the classical kung fu, stripped it down, made it simple and directing came up with his Jeet Kune Do as a means of just rapidly taking control of the situation. We’ll do the same thing with hypnosis. You’ve got in your hand Chris a rather interesting depth scale.

Chris: right, let’s talk about this.

Mike: You know my theory on hypnosis depth scales.

Chris: Yeah do you want me to say them?

Mike: They’re nonsense. They’re a complete waste of time. There’s the Friedlander-Sarbin scale. There’s the Lacron Bordo scale which I think divides people it no 50 different levels of trance they can reach. There’s the Davis-Husband scale if I’m not mistaken goes to 30 levels and there’s all this… who knows yeah Harvard scale. The point is they’re all a waste of time. Now looking at this scale…

Chris: We have. Can I say what it is?

Mike: Why don’t you read it out?

Chris: Mike found this in his hypnosis paraphernalia box or I don’t know what [laughs]

Mike: It’s my shelf. My bookshelf.

Chris: Your shelf.

Mike: I hate the thought that people think I’m now walking around with a cardboard box filled with hypnotic paraphernalia.

Chris: [laughs] it just sounds hilarious.

Mike: Clarify that immediately.

Chris: You sent me a picture of this and said, we’ve got to talk about this on the podcast. What I have in front of me here is this laminated and we’ll put a picture of this on the website mikemandelhypnosis.com. You can click on the podcast tabs. Look for podcast 43 and I’ll include a picture. I promise.

Mike: Of the scale you don’t need.

Chris: Erin’s master depth rule. And so it’s essentially a laminated ruler but decorated to look like a hypnotic depth scale.

Mike: There’s six level of hypnosis Chris.

Chris: Yes, there’s six levels so there’s levels one and two, three and four, five and six and each of those, so one and two together are considered the 20% of the population who can go into a light trance. Then you have levels three and four which is 60% of the people can go into a medium trance and then you have the final levels five and six who can go into a somnambulistic trance.

Mike: At least they’re not saying somnalism that McGill said online once. When you see this, I don’t think he was joking at all. Now if you look here, you’ll see hallucinations and you see negative hallucinations level five and six. This is why this is such nonsense. First of all, level six says plenary or comatose trance via suggestion. Comatose, now we’re using a painted word. We’re telling the prisoner in a coma, bad thing to say. Plenary trance is the [unclear10:17] state. Okay so if you want to say levels, yeah maybe that’s at the bottom. Who knows? It really is irrelevant. When you see here level five hallucinations, positive hallucinations. Now what are positive hallucinations? Seeing something that isn’t really there. And if you want to go to the level below that, wow level six. You can create negative hallucinations. That’s amazing.

Chris: Which is not seeing stuff that is there.

Mike: But this is craziness because the reality is they’re exactly the same thing.

Chris: And I think we talked about this on a podcast before.

Mike: I know but this has come up, this master rule depth scale nonsense. If someone sees a black cat hallucinated on this desk in front of me here, he has to delete the desk underneath the cat and not see that. He has to negatively hallucinate the desk and positively hallucinate the cat. Likewise, if I wish to not see your laptop sitting there on the desk, I have to negatively hallucinate the laptop but also positively hallucinate the desk underneath it. They’re identical. It’s the same thing in every conceivable way but once again, it’s oh you got the depth. You got them to level three. Well, he went to level four this time. guys, I’ve had level five stuff happen when people are wide awake. It’s purely confirmation bias and what I mean by that is if you have a very strong belief about something, you will attempt to support that belief by your behavior all the time. if you believe that all Martians are shoplifters are evil and beat their children, every time you see a Martian I the street – I’m saying that so we’re not picking on any particular race – I’ll do it. I’ll pick on my own. If you believe that all white people are evil and thieves and beat their children, every time you see a white person, you’ll be looking for evidence to support that and you’ll be saying, there’s one of those child beaters. Look how he just looked at that kid and the kid was frightened right away. You can see there’s a history. He’s going to that store. I bet he’s going to shoplift. Your confirmation bias will cause you to see this stuff everywhere. It’s the same. If you believe depth scales are real and true and accurate, all the things that come filtering through your perceptional filters when you’re doing hypnosis will support this nonsense. You’ll be looking for things to support it and you will systematically delete anything that shows it not to be true.

Chris: In fact, weren’t you just telling me about a so-called hypnosis demonstration using energy [laughs] or does this come back to the whole oriental hypnosis? [laughs]

Mike: It’s crazy stuff. I am baffled by why these things stay alive when they’re so counterscience, counterintuitive, countersanity and people just, wow! Look at that. Oh it’s amazing. She couldn’t move her fingers apart. Well yeah, it’s mechanical advantage. She’s gotten close to her body. There’s a reason for this stuff. Anyway, I don’t want to go in this with too much depth but I think we need to go through this book Chris because we looked at the scale. I want to just read some of the actual excerpts of this book which will not be named but it is an actual book in my library and I was highlighting it to show it to Chris. This is the kind of thing that was taught in the 40s and 50s and this is why some people became huge in hypnosis without really being that good because if this is the standard, anything better than this is perceived as the best.

Chris: And again, keep in mind that Erickson was alive and masterful back in the day that this book was published.

Mike: Yes he was.

Chris: So this shouldn’t have been the standard but unfortunately, for some people it was.

Mike: It was. You’ve got to realize one of the things they’re teaching here is something called Chevreul’s pendulum. Now Chevreul’s pendulum is where you hold a pendulum with a finger or something suspended from it. It can be a piece of thread or a chain. It doesn’t matter what you’re using to hold the ring. Anything. Anything that can dangle from your hand. You rest your hand on the table, you imagine it swinging back and forth like you’re nodding your head and it will. You imagine it going in a circle, it will. You imagine it changing in direction and it will. This is radiosthesia or idiomotor signaling. The idea is producing micromotions that are causing it to move. There’s nothing magical about it.

Chris: Micromotions in your fingers that are causing it to move.

Mike: To rotate. Correct. This book actually recommends that you get a pendulum and you hang it from a pen or pencil and then you hold the pencil horizontally between your fingertips and your thumbs of both hands with your elbows out from your body and your feet together and a chart below you on a table. This complex nonsense and imagine and focus and make it swing all this different directions through your concentration and if you do that, standing upright with your feet together and your body relaxed, your elbows not touching your sides, it’ll hang straight down and you fixate your eyes on this point, the ring or the key or whatever it is and you imagine it’s moving for several minutes and if you keep doing this everyday eventually after just a few minutes a day, you will increase your concentration power and become a really good hypnotist. What’s the connection? What on earth is the connection? What am I missing here? I can swing… you know, why don’t I get a bolus and swing it around my head and bring an ox down by tangling its legs and call that making me into a better hypnotist.

Chris: It sounds like…

Mike: I meant bolero. That was the word, not bolus. Bolus is what goes through your intestines.

Chris: Why don’t I take a little eye dropper and just drop little droplets of liquid.

Mike: When you do that for three minutes a day Chris, you’ll become a better hypnotist and he actually says, explain to your subject that your pendulum has been chemically treated or endowed with magnetic properties so it reacts to sex. What on earth is he thinking Chris?

Chris: It almost sounds like mesmerism. Just explain away a bunch of crap.

Mike: He gets into that as well.

Chris: Oh let’s talk about that.

Mike: He says when you do the following backward test which is a well established…

Chris: Suggestibility test.

Mike: Suggestibility test going back a long, long time or the person tilts their head back, stares at a point above their head on the ceiling, closes their eyes. It displaces their balance, the suggestion is given to swing back and forth until they tip back into the hypnotist waiting hands and he says, wow! You’re an amazing hypnotic subject. Fine! Well, this book actually says make sure you do this on an individual only.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: In other words, don’t do it on a group of 20 people. Duh! You want 19 of them falling, smash their skulls in and you’re going to catch the one. Just absolutely amazes me.

Chris: Read the conflicting statement about mesmerism.

Mike: We’ll get there.

Chris: And then mesmeric passage.

Mike: Here’s one. I’ll let you address this one Chris. An expert hypnotist, an expert now should be able to hypnotize 80% of susceptible subjects in three or four attempts. In other words, you can get so good Chris that you can get 80% of people if you just persist and do it three or four times on them.

Chris:  So let me get this right. 80% of those subjects who are already deemed susceptible.

Mike: Right. Only take three or four times.

Chris: Will be hypnotizable after the third or fourth attempt.

Mike: If you’re an expert.

Chris: If you’re an expert. [laughs]

Mike: Everybody else can just you know bite the one because it’s not going to work for you.

Chris: [unclear 17:26] I think my dog is an expert hypnotist and I don’t have a dog.

Mike: You don’t have one yeah. My grandmother’s an expert hypnotist and she’s dead. Now listen, sex seems to be a factor also. We have more female subjects than male subjects. What? There is no correlation between gender and hypnotizability. That’s absolute nonsense.

Chris: What other supposed correlations are there?

Mike: He said, whether a person is brunette, blonde or red-haired has no bearing on their susceptibility to hypnosis. Really? Boy! That’s an eye opener for me. I wonder if people that drive in the passing lane as oppose to the curb lane if there’s any connection there or people that think of Jupiter when they eat cereal. Do we need to have more studies done in these areas Chris?

Chris: This is fascinating.

Mike: Drives me mad. Listen to this, climate and nationality. I hate to offend anyone but this author claims the French, the Spanish and the Italians are especially good subjects because they are hot blooded racists.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: I think that goes in the category of what we call real science, doesn’t it? Listen to this…

Chris: And you wonder why hypnosis can get a bad name.

Mike: Oh yeah and this was foundational for so many years and that’s what the people like the dean of hypnosis and that came of? Why they seem so freaking brilliant because they were so much better than this? listen to me… he said if you know that someone doesn’t smoke, even if he has not expressed himself to be against smoking – so you got somebody who does not smoke even if they’ve not expressed themselves that they do not like smoking, to be on the safe side, you should not smoke yourself when you’re hypnotizing them.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: Oh really? What’s he talking? Is he talking tobacco? Is he talking crack cocaine? It’s like maybe nobody’s taken that into account. Unbelievable! And this is mainstream chris. This is absolute mainstream at this time. People would’ve read this and thought well, that’s a really good point. I’m going to make sure I don’t smoke and I make sure I catch those other 19 people who are falling on their heads. He actually brings back the term monoideaism which goes back to braid who also said hypnotism. He says never – this is an actual quote – never slap a subject’s face to awaken him.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: Well that’s his. Let me give you my one.  Never kick a subject in the crotch to awaken him. This could have a bad effect.

Chris: There’s more though. There’s more isn’t there? What if you can’t awaken them. What do you do when you can’t awaken a subject?

Mike: Oh yeah we’ll get there.

Chris:  And honestly, we’ve got to get to some serious stuff.

Mike: I know. Well, this is serious. It’s very serious to me. I’ve got to find this and fortunately, I’ve highlighted it so I can go through these in order. Oh this is the one. This is brilliant. He says, if you can’t wake somebody up and again, he says the same line that the avuncular man who hypnotizes online who is now dead says and believe me, an avuncular manner is no substitute for school. Just being a nice, friendly uncle kind of guy isn’t a substitute for being actually skilled and when he says, on the count of three your eyes are stuck together. Stuck together!

Chris: Your eyes.

Mike: He means eyelids.

Chris: Oh eyelids.

Mike: Well this guy says the same thing of course because literacy is not really the hallmark of the average hypnotist but he says here, what if you can’t wake the person up? Now, first of all, you’re inept if you can’t and secondly, I’m thinking oh please don’t say you’re going to blow on their eyelids.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: This is what the [unclear 20:37] blowing in their eyelids will bring them out of it. Yeah, if you’ve got really rank breath perhaps and he says here, sometimes blowing sharply on the closed eyelids will awaken the subject. I thought he’s actually said it but then he goes further. He says, you may raise the lids and blow short, sharp breaths directly on to his naked eyes. Buddy, you open my eyes, hold them open and blow on my eyes and spit in my face and put germs in my nasal lachrymal duct, I’ll neck crank you the next [unclear 21:07]. This is terribly stupid but it gets worse.

Chris: What if this still doesn’t work Mike?

Mike: If it still doesn’t work Chris, according to this book, in extreme cases, place a small fan –not a large one- in front of the subject. This is an exact [unclear 21:22]. Prop his eyes open and allow the cool air to hit his face. How do you prop somebody’s eyes open. You use toothpicks? Is it clockwork orange where you’re doing some sort of horrendous ocular distention and forcing the person to stare at violent images. This is some of the most and believe me chris, in 40 odd years of full time hypnosis, I thought I’ve seen every idiotic thing imaginable. Hypnotists never, ever stop surprising me. So let’s just end with two final points. Mesmerism, he’s writing the mesmerism here as is…

Chris: No maybe. What is…

Mike: Mesmerism. A whole nonsensical idea that you’re moving magnetic currents to the body and that’s what was causing trance to occur and braid came along and says it’s fixation of the eyes and actually, it’s fixation of attention and a number of other things happening but this guy now tries to bring back mesmerism as the avuncular one does too. He says, you’re going to pass your hands, moving these currents, passing your hands, your palms and fingers across his face and body and then he says, but without actually touching him. So you’re waving your arms over this guy’s head and downward so he’s downward pass to induce trance and he says, in most cases, the passes should only be made after the eyes are closed.

Chris: You can’t see it.

Mike: There he says first of all, you’re not going to touch them and their eyes are closed to which I’ve written wtf? Next to it and then he says, it must be stressed that the passes have no real value. He’s told you to pass your hands in front of the person while their eyes are shut, they can’t see you doing it and it has no value. That’s probably the least useful chapter in an already dursative book and I’ll end with this last thing. Vilch’s method, Chris. If you get a very religious subject, it helps to do your induction in 16:11 King James English saying thee and thou. Now I am not making this up. I know I’m on a tirade with this folks. This is so insane but this is so typical fro so much the older hypnotic literature and that’s why we’ve seen such a dearth of good hypnotic ability and it is the people who’ve been rooted in the foundations of Milton Erick son and the great and the scientist of hypnosis and human givens theory and a lot of the modern people who moved away from this garbage are not warmly embracing this is something we should still hang on to. It’s nonsense.

Chris: Having said all that [laughs]

Mike: Feel better now. You’re going to have a stroke.

Chris: [laughs] Your face is a little more red than I usually see in everything. Let’s talk a little bit about what is the best way really to learn hypnosis because we started the podcast it is not a bunch of secrets. It is not a bunch of text.

Mike: A boxful of DVDs, thousands of flash cards, memorized scripts.

Chris: It comes down to…

Mike: It’s about connections.

Chris: It’s about connection. It’s about learning to communicate and learning a few, simple strategies.

Mike: Yeah, principles, principles, principles. Principles are large chunks. There are ways to dealing with something without having to have specific rules and regulation and scripts and so on. In the martial arts, when chris and I do the British special force jujitsu system, we do not think we have a defense for every attack that comes in. instead, we have some principles we can apply regardless what the attack is, whether it’s a kick, a punch, a grab, a strangle, whatever it is and we can take control of the situation, dominate our opponent, shut them down in two seconds. That’s how it works. It’s the same with good hypnotic technique. You don’t need a lot of rules, a lot of regulations. You need some principles that you can apply no matter who the subject is in front of you, no matter what the issue is and get them into trance because you’re building a powerful communication loop with that person and transforming them as a result.

Chris: Let’s end with before we do the usual empowering question and closing metaphor and all that.

Mike: And the usual stupid ending.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. Let’s do a little role play here. You’re a hypnotist or you’re a hypnotist. I was going to say I’m your client or I’m just your friend and I come to you. Again, you’re a hypnotist and I can be either/or. I want you to explain this in the terms of hypnosis is communication so whether it be a formal client and hypnotist relationship or it’s just you talking with a friend knowing hypnosis and taking advantage of the tools you already know and my situation is I am really stressed out about let’s say a job that I don’t like because we’ve talked about that before and we’re having a conversation or I’m in your office.

Mike: Yeah and I just happen to say yes, Chris and this is just off the top of our heads and I’ve talked about this. I’d say Chris you know and that sensation that you had over there about that job and as you continue to put that aside for a moment and think of all the wonderful times that you have excelled and being able… I mean really able to overcome those difficulties in not a self-serving way but the kind of way that your family is built up and there’s a responsibility. Your personal transformation can make their lives better as you become to overcome this now.

Chris: Right.

Mike: Now I’m slipping in a hypnotic language in an ostensibly normal conversation and I’m layering it on and I’m really laying it on thick for the sake of this.

Chris: Oh yeah.

Mike: I wouldn’t be that obvious. I’d be much more subtle about it but that’s hypnosis. It’s getting to unconscious resources. It’s not making people you know as Normal McGill says, hold a pen in their mouth and stare at the tip of the pen and [unclear 26:51]. It’s like where do people come up with this stuff?

Chris: In the context of an office in a formal hypnosis session, you could do a bunch of pre-talk would be then to lead me through some exercises, induce trance.

Mike: Casually.

Chris: Yeah, you can casually lead me through these things and then talk to me and have me overcome this stressable situation and if it was a buddy at a bar over a pint of beer and he’s telling me about you could casually….

Mike: Open up the resources, transform his situation, open possibilities, enrich his map of the world.

Chris: Right.

Mike: And make his life a lot better.

Chris: Right. I mean you can even engage the hypnotic language by just starting to ask a question. well have you ever noticed that as you think about these problems you’re facing at work and wonder how quickly you can pass through those problems and put them aside and just notice where else you’re going in life and as you get to those other paces and you think about the people in your life who are going to help you get to the place that you’re going to really start enjoying your life, you can notice that those things just don’t bother you the same way that they used to. I just made that up too. I don’t know.

Mike:  That was pretty good. Yeah.

Chris: You can shift whether it’s conversational from an everyday talk to a never-ending sentence of leading the person to do this confusion.

Mike: To cascading states. Yes.

Chris: And hypnosis is a communication skill. It’s about using language properly.

Mike: And it’s an amplifier of experience so anything is stronger in hypnosis.

Chris: It’s not passing magnetic waves through your subject or…

Mike: No, it isn’t speaking.

Chris: Blowing into their eyes.

Mike: Or speaking King James English at the person because he’s religious. It’s like okay, we said enough about this. Let’s go to our empowering question. I want you to read the empowering question.

Chris: The question for today. Empowering question for podcast session number 43 is: What are you waiting for … I mean really … what are you waiting for …and how will things change once you just get on with it? What are you waiting for … I mean really … what are you waiting for …and how will things change once you just get on with it?

Mike: My closing metaphor for you is a story of a boy. This is not the one I was going to originally tell. It’s one I was going to tell a few weeks ago. Once upon a time there was a boy. He was very tall and he was kind of an outsider and he wore enormous plastic glasses and this boy loved to play with the other children in his street and neighborhood but they thought he was kind of weird because they played baseball and football and they played soccer and basketball and volleyball and even shot marbles and they had balls of all different sizes and colors and shapes and he had a ball of his own. He made it out of gaffer’s tape or duct tape. A huge ball of silver tape and it kept getting torn and broken and he kept sticking more and more pieces on this ball of tape until eventually, it was bigger than he was. This ball of tape was six feet in diameter and it was his best friend and he was really happy with this ball of tape and the other kids would be shooting marbles and playing baseball and football and soccer and volleyball and they’d see him wandering down the street, rolling this enormous ball of tape and they go, oh no, here he comes again. He remained an outcast because of this but when he grew up, he became very technologically astute and he decided to create something for computers which were in their infancy at the time and so, keeping his enormous pair of glasses, he decided to make an operating system but the only model he had was his ball of gaffer tape. And so, he made an operating system that closely resembled an enormous ball of tape and there’d be holes in it and periodically, about every 10 minutes, it would crash and fall apart and it raged people. And so, he found a way to send them a few fresh pieces of tape every week and the operating system became an enormous ball of tape and when it got so big, he couldn’t roll it around anymore. Guess what he did? He created a brand new one out of a different kind of tape, scotch tape or masking tape or surgical tape until that became too big and torn and he’d sent more pieces to stick on the enormous ball of tape but his friends, they got out of that altogether. They got rid of all the balls they played with and they got something that looked like a ball but it wasn’t. it was an apple.

Chris: Thanks everybody for listening to podcast session number 43 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. We want to remind you to head on over to our recently launch, redesigned mikemandelhypnosis.com website. Tons of free stuff for you. You’re going to love it and you can also head on over to iTunes because we would love for you to leave a review. Write a review for our podcast and rate it five stars if you think we deserve it because we want to get this podcast out to the world and have everybody live a glanitive and full and enjoyable life. That’s it. We will see you again on podcast number 44 coming up.

Mike: Thanks again.