Podcast #57: Unnecessary Filler

Chris: Welcome fellow storm riders. You are officially a rider on the hypnotic storm. Welcome to session number 57 of Brain Software with Mike Mandel and I’m Chris Thompson. He’s preparing to carry the hypnotic storm into the desert, can’t stand unnecessary capitalization and can’t say that he isn’t entirely unsure that there isn’t something that hasn’t been misunderstood in that sentence. Welcome to the centre of the hypnotic epicenter, Mike Mandel.

Mike: Hello, hello. What’s going on? what’s all this shouting? We’ll have no trouble here. It’s great to be back Chris. Those are three interesting points. We will ignore the stacking negatives of the 3^rd one. That was beautifully done though, I’ll give you a solid 10 out of 10 on that.

Chris: Thank you.

Mike: Taking the hypnotic storm to the desert, yes. Chris and I will both be appearing live in Las Vegas in August for Hypnothoughts which is promising to be a phenomenal conference if you are at all interested in hypnosis come on down and you hear me present a couple of times and hang out with us, we’ll have a blast.

Chris: Absolutely. We left a plug for this before. It’s not our conference. It’s Scott Sandlan’s conference.

Mike: We have a great job.

Chris: I believe it’s htlive.net is the URL and it’s something like 300 bucks for several days of all inclusive, all kinds of awesome hypno…

Mike: and jocularity in general.

Chris: Come hang out with us.

Mike: Yes, let’s get to these unnecessary capitalists Chris. It drives me ravely mad.

Chris: unnecessary okay. And then I promise we are getting into some very cool discussion today that will involve some hypnosis and some personal development and all kinds of great stuff.

Mike: All of the above.

Chris: So unnecessary capitalization, what is that Mike?

Mike: Chris, it drives me crazy because you know with graphology, it depends on someone ideally using cursive script. So they’re going to reveal all these 200 different personality traits that interlock in different ways creating a personality. Sometimes people only print in which case it’s problematic because certain traits completely disappear but there are some traits that actually show up even in emails and in type texts. Did you know that?

Chris: Well I do now because I have an idea of what you’re going to be talking about.

Mike: Yes, unnecessary capitalization is a classic one and when you see people putting capital letters at the beginning of words that have no reason to be capitalized because they’re not names or place names or anything like that just the sentence with another word, me and its capital M and then a few other words that are all capitalized.

Chris: I would imagine it especially in the capital M for me.

Mike: That would be indicative of something true but when I see an email with tons of caps, it raises a red flag for me right away. in fact, red flags just going up all over the place. That is the trait of wanting to be perceived as important without doing anything to earn it. so this is the person, he sits back in their laurels, thinks they’re great, wants everyone else to treat them as though they’re great even though they’ve done nothing whatsoever towards this. and so I’m saying all this because it drives me crazy when I see it and it also causes me to red flag emails right away. we get emails all the time from all over the world and occasionally ill get one that is replete with unnecessary capital letters and as soon as I see it Christopher, the warning bells go off loud and clear. The red flags go up so if you unnecessary capitalize, realize you are attempting to be perceived as more important than you are and your handwriting is giving you away.

Chris: And it’s interesting because this can be completely unconscious. Is this not true?

Mike: All writing is essentially unconscious, is it not?

Chris: No, what I mean is if you’re typing, you’re not planning to capitalize those words. You’re just doing it. you’re not saying oh I’ll put capitalization here just because oh what the heck, it looks good.

Mike: Right it’s like the unnecessary quotation marks. Remember we got an email late last year from a man and on every line; there were at least two or three words with quotation marks around them. Things like well if I’m going to the so-called conference to study so-called hypnosis.

Chris: And he didn’t use the word so-called…

Mike: No, no. that’s me putting me…

Chris: Yeah Mike is marking out he quotes with so-called.

Mike: You know I’d like to work with a live so-called class with other so-called people. I mean it was crazy. I just wrote back to him and said, I can’t figure out who are you quoting. You see quotation marks are only to quote someone. They are not for emphasis. They’re not to make something seem so-called special or so-called more interesting.

Chris: People seem to use quotes as markers of emphasis these days and it’s just… it’s wrong.

Mike: If you must emphasize, use bold or use italics or something.

Chris: Now there’s a reason make that you always hold people to a higher standard in communication in the field of hypnosis and that is because…

Mike: Well words are our tool in hypnosis and in the English language, you can say more things in more ways and with more shades of meaning than any other language and I say you need a good toolbox where you are speaking accurately and clearly and to throw these things out the window is too shotty work.

Chris: You just want to build credibility and if you write in a way that is unprofessional, inaccurate, wrong, it doesn’t help credibility. It doesn’t help the industry.

Mike: Pretty well beaten this host. So let’s move on.

Chris: So unnecessary capitalization. One thing we can also say about it before we move on is when it comes to handwriting, something you teach in graphology and the class in September in Toronto, weird writing, weird person.

Mike: Weird lower zones below the baseline, really weird person. That’s right.

Chris: Some of these shows up in text.

Mike: Check out our courses online. Yeah we do have that coming up in September. It’s a weekend long graphology course. You’ll learn some cool stuff.

Chris: Now before we get on to some of the hypnotic discussion. Let’s just announce the winner of our podcast competition. So on podcast 56 if you recall, we did a couple of context free humor bits. One of which is the tag teaming which we’ll explain… we won’t really explain it but we’ll let you just go back to podcast 56.

Mike: Go and listen to it again.

Chris: And the other one was stacking negatives which we used in the intro which is a lot of fun so go back to 56 if you want to listen to those and learn how to do both things. Anyway we had a great submission from Matthew in El Paso.

Mike: OH yes the young Texan.

Chris: Right in Texas and so, it just so happens that he’s got a buddy who also listens to our podcasts so the two of them decided to just deploy this at some point at a pub I guess probably shortly after listening to our podcast. The quick [unclear 6;32]  version is they were at a pub with a friend of theirs and I guess over a beer, this guy why am I saying I guess.

Mike: I don’t know.

Chris: Let’s add that to the list of things we’re going to talk about. I guess, I guess. It’s a horrible… I’ve got to change that.kay so they were at a pub and a friend of theirs brought up this idea that him being a PC guy can’t understand why anybody would pay so much for apple products and e was ranting about how apple products are all overpriced and so, they fired back Mike with something like right, a few months ago I took my grandmother to play bingo and this one lady just kept yelling bingo even though her card wasn’t full and it annoyed everybody. It’s exactly the same thing.

Mike: There is no difference.

Chris: Which anyway, we love that submission so…

Mike: He sat there looking stunned and freaked out and when he tries to clarify of course all they do is repeat what they’re doing with even greater fervor and intensity which just drives the person to the corner. So what is he getting, the download of his choice.

Chris: Yes absolutely. So we’ll e-mail you Matthew of course in case you don’t listen to this one.  We know you’re listening.

Mike: Only one Matthew in El Paso, Texas.

Chris: [laughs] So it’s just wonderful. Do you want to recap what this is or do you want to just tap people to go back to podcast 56.

Mike: No they go back and look at it yourself. Go listen to it.

Chris: That’s quite funny. So you’re agreeing with someone and then you’re driving the car and notice…

Mike: And we’re talking about it even though we said we would let them go back.

Chris: I know it’s the nine…

Mike: Let’s get on to some questions from the mail bag.

Chris: First well, you want to go to the mail bag first or the hypnosis and the news bit that we wanted to cover?

Mike: I’m a real believer that one should always begin with the mail bag.

Chris: [laughs] that’s great. Let’s start with the mailbag then so we’ve got a question from Michael and I’m just going to leave his name as Michael and not read the last name because we’ll this is a personal question. so, I’m going to read it and you can respond Mike. I work a 9-5 job and for the past year, I’ve been listening to audio books and podcasts at work mostly everything I listen to is related to the power of our minds and my thinking has certainly become stronger. I’m very much in a routine and pretty much do my job unconsciously. It has only been recently that I’ve been feeling that I’ve been living in the third person. I’ve googled some keywords and immediately found depersonalization and derealization. The question I have is could my routine have anything to do with this feeling and the fact that my job has absolutely no fulfillment or could it be possibly related to my newfound awareness towards the power of my mind? have you or anyone you’ve known experienced this and have you had any recommendations? any advice would be much appreciated. You guys rock.

Mike: Excellent. Now didn’t he also say something oh I’m not depressed or…

Chris: No, no.

Mike: Or unhappy with my job. Did he say that in the PS?

Chris: No, that’s the entire email. The discussion about depression is another thing we had on the agenda.

Mike: Well I have confused all these people and these wonderful questions.

Chris: Actually, you start answering. I’m just going to check email to make sure.

Mike: Well depersonalization syndrome is something quite well familiar with. I helped someone deal with that back in 2004 I think it was working with a rock star and it’s a fairly famous case I’ve alluded to in the past and he suffered from depersonalization syndrome which was a profound sense of dissociation because it was   traceable to smoking so much dope and regardless of the fact that you can get marijuana legally in a lot of places now I think including Ontario if your doctor prescribes it. the people I know who smoked dope all the time trend to become kind of dopey. I find it makes them passive and withdrawn. Well in his case, he had withdrawn so much Chris that he was actually no longer to kinesthetically access his own life. In other words, it seemed as though his entire life was occurring on a movie screen. He was dissociated from everything.

Chris: That’s what Michael sounds to be describing but it caused not from.

Mike: Not as far as we know but the thing that’s interesting is he’s putting it in the context of doing a mindless repetitive job right?

Chris: Perhaps although I just checked the email and you’re right. he did have a PS. I am not at all depressed about my life or my job.

Mike: Sometimes Frodo we must discover these things for once. Health. Anyway, so what… he’s talking about the work environment – the routine environment – and that’s where he’s noticing it. now, he asks if this is an extension of him just becoming more self-aware which had probably is that to a degree and it may also be the very fact that he’s just able to dissociate in order to get his job done well. he’s probably dissociating from what may feel an essentially meaningless task. Now hat you do not know here Chris is that I kind of find interesting is when someone forms a letter of alphabet with a descender. A descender is in the letter like a small letter g, this is cursive script or y where a loop goes down. It forms below the baseline, a stem goes down comes back in a loop and then off to the right. that’s how they’re typically done. If those loops are extremely short, I’m not talking about the volume of the loop if they’re short. That is someone who is well able to do a simple repetitive task over and over and over without it getting to them. So my guess is Michael you’re not crazy – to use a medical word. My guess, my opinion is simply you have found a way of coping with this with a job that isn’t particularly stimulating to you with your level of intelligence and you found a way of dissociating form it. I don’t think in my opinion it will be anything beyond that.

Chris: It could be. Now the other thing is when somebody. We were talking about this earlier. Let’s say somebody is used to having a standard meal all the time repetitively eating the same meal.

Mike: When you say standard meal…

Chris: Whatever standard meal is for them. They always eat the same thing. let’s say it’s something boring. Nothing particularly exciting and then they go out and have a gourmet meal. Somebody cooks them a delicious, amazing meal and so they have this taste for something different and then they go back to the same old, boring meal.

Mike: Which is horrible now.

Chris: Now they’re aware of a higher level of quality of eating and they’re not there. So is it possible too that because he’s listening to all these podcasts and audio books and development material that he’s now discovering that there are other things that he perhaps would like to do and what he really needs to do is stop and evaluate what do I want?

Mike: Yeah that’s a very good point Chris because the law of comparison certainly kicks in here although typically the law of comparison is when things are directly checkable next to each other. Their proximity to each other but in something like this, your meal for example works quite well as a metaphor or an analogy here that could very well be the case. And it is certainly true that when one raises the bar to a huge infinitely high level like you’ve been saying it’s been infinite. What’d you say minus infinity here in Toronto.

Chris: Oh the temperature.

Mike: When you raise a bar in anything really, really high by comparison, everything that is not that seems drab, boring and so on. And you know, in fact Robert Chaldini gives a great example for this. say you’re going to buy a pool table and you finally talked your spouse into letting you have a pool table in your basement. You have these dreams of having your buddies around. You’re all going to have beers and chalk up your scores on the board and this is going to be your normal Wednesday night now and it’s really exciting. So you go around to pool tables r us or whatever the store is and when you get there, you say oh I want to spend 3000 bucks on this pool table and can I get a pretty nice… yeah we can get you a pretty good one for that but before I show it to you, I just want you to see our absolute rolls Royce super high end pool table.

Chris: Sure.

Mike: Not that you’re going to buy it. I just want you to see what the possibilities are. Now the amateur would thing that you start by showing the person the cheapest one and say oh for an extra 500 dollars you can have this and for an extra 300 you can have this and you keep working your way up with options until you’ve bought a more expensive one. Well, the clever salesperson knows how to use the law of comparison and instead he shows you the absolute ultimate one so that when you now look at the one you’re planning on getting, it looks like crap.

Chris: And you talk yourself into spending more money.

Mike: Because people buy with emotions and justify the facts.

Chris: Logic.

Mike: So it’s always comparisons happening and you’ve sort of gone a little bit astray there Frodo but we will continue.

Chris: Absolutely. In fact, real estate agents will often take new clients to homes that might be overpriced and crappy and then they’ll show them better homes. Now you’re doing and finishing my sentences. [laughs]

Mike: isn’t that annoying?

Chris: Yes it is. Is this something you want to talk about? [laughs]

Mike: It’s funny when you just do the last syllable or just the T. is this something you want to talk about? and it goes tuh. You can drive people nuts with that. My wife will probably stab me in the head if I ever do that again. I did it for an entire afternoon. She was ready to kill me. she’d say something is dinner almost ready? and she’d hear me from the other room, ready…

Chris: You just use the laws of… because we can think much faster than we can speak. [laughs] that’s really good Mike. Okay let’s continue on. What else do we have here? let’s talk about the idea of threshold because recently we have an email. We’ve been getting plenty of emails from people. Stop it.

Mike: [laughs]

Chris: Let’s get back to being serious because we have to justify our time in front of the computer here by actually helping people, not just making jokes.

Mike: All right. I always forget Chris because I run my life this way since I was 5 years old.

Chris: So we wanted to talk about this. this is a really important one. Sometimes people will send us an email and it’ll say something like will you see my friend bob because he is depressed or upset, whatever it is. He has an issue…

Mike: And it’s usually a pretty heavy one when we get these emails.

Chris: And you know he just needs to get a conversation or a hypnosis session. Whatever it is and yeah if you could just get back to me and let me know when you could see him or when you could see her or whatever it is, that would be great and so our response would typically be, depending on the situation, sure we can help you.

Mike: Have your friend contact us.

Chris: Have Bob email me or call me or whatever it is at this number, at this email address, etc.

Mike:  Right because we’re talking about threshold here and we run into this all the time. there’s people who Chris sees clients. I see clients occasionally and a lot of the time, it’s not the client directly. It’s someone who like Chris said is acting on behalf of the client. Very oftenly, the would-be client doesn’t even know that we’ve been communicated with

Chris: And if the sender of the email is not willing or not able to hand off the communication to the person who requires the help or let’s say does and then the person that requires the help doesn’t email us, doesn’t call us, they don’t want help. They are not at threshold.

Mike: Right and you know Chris, threshold is when something has to change. It has to be now and it has to be now. if it isn’t those three, oh I realize it’s got to change, it has to be me but it’s not now. they’re not at threshold. Or something has to change, it’s got to be right now but it isn’t me, it’s you and that’s not threshold and you know Chris, without all these emails, I can’t recall that we have ever had one where we have said, have the person contact us directly and we’ll see if we can help and the person has actually done it. not even once and I do not do third party interventions with anybody. I have an abysmal track record. My wife and I were looking at evidence on this. helping coupes in their marriage – all different things. Oh I know if you talked to her Mike, she’ll listen. You just drive up there. Look, it’s not going to work. Back in those days, I used to get talked into it and I have a record of dealing with I think 10 people based on the intervention of a third party. Oh Mike, I know you can help him and out of 10, I failed 10 times. Absolute 0 kill ratio there so I just don’t do it anymore and then people try to get me through guilt to say well, it wouldn’t hurt to try. Actually now, it would hurt to try because it’s wasting my time when I could be doing something valuable for someone else.

Chris: So exactly. Let’s bring this back to the point then which is if somebody is looking to get access to your time and you calibrate that they are not totally a serious or that it involves some third party that’s not yet into this situation, always throw back some task for them to do because a lot of the time, the task won’t get done and your time won’t get wasted.

Mike: Well Chris, you’ve got a case where one of our martial arts students had a weight problem and he supposedly wanted to lose the weight and you had calibrated that they didn’t seem to have a lot of focus here and you had given him a simple task which I thought was really clever.

Chris: Yeah, you want me to talk about that?

Mike: Redirecting the river through the stygian stables like Hercules had to do. Yeah talk about that.

Chris: so, we won’t use names obviously but there was a young man and he wanted some help. He said he wanted some help with losing weight and is aid no problem. I’d be happy to help you and here is how we’re going to do things for the first few two days. I need to get a baseline from you. I don’t need to change anything about your behavior at all about how you eat, how you move, etc. all I want you to do is for the next three days when you have something that you’re about to eat just take a quick photo of it on your phone and then send me the photo on Facebook messenger.

Mike: so you didn’t even make any constraint as to what he could eat. All he had to do was just consistently follow through and take a picture of his food before he ate it.

Chris: Yeah just send me a photo of what you’re about to eat so that I can know what we’re starting with because then we can start to make the necessary changes to improve the quality of your life, etc.

Mike: That was nicely embedded. So analog mark, how many did he do?

Chris: One. So this was at night. This was the… there was no eating happening at this point in the conversation and I surmise he did not go home and eat any food. In the morning, he sent me a photo at around 11 am and confirmed that this was the first food of the day and I said wonderful, keep going. I’ve got nothing else. And so, I did not get involved.

Mike: But the point Chris is it’s your fault. It’s clearly your fault.

Chris: SO that’s an example of putting the ordeal back on the other person to do something… if you’re going to require my time to help you, if you’re asking for my time, now I’m going to ask you to do something first to show that you’re serious.

Mike: They’re going to out you at cause. Remember the great Milton Erickson, the greatest hypnotist of all time, he had a subject or client in his case patient because he was a psychiatrist and a medical doctor. A patient who would lie awake at night not be able to sleep and he gave the subject the task of get a bottle or a can of Johnson’s floor wax and some old rags in your hardwood floors in your house and when you go to bed, if you look at the clock and it’s anytime after 11 pm and you see that time, you could get up and wax your floor all night on your hands and knees. Now, the weird thing is Erickson would demand people did this stuff and they would do it. they would do it. like he’d say to someone why don’t you get up there and get these shears and go and trim the rose bushes all around my house. The person who crawls around their hands and knees covered with thorn you know punctures around cursing him with every part of their being but they’d still do it and they’d get a therapeutic benefit from it. so anyway, the man cleans the floor. He does the ordeal and the next night he looks at the clock and it’s quarter after 11 and he gets mad and he gets up and waxes the floor again and then the third night, he just gets up and he says I’m just going to close my eyes for a few minutes and clocks right out and wakes up in the morning and then all he had to do was leave the Johnson’s floor wax beside the bed and the rags and he slept through them the night from then ion. Now, the key is Erickson prescribed an ordeal that put the client, the subject, the patient back at cause. He was no longer someone who life was happening to. he was taking authority and control in his own life. The Greek work is excusia.

Chris: Now let’s go back to the example of taking photos. If your job is take photos of your food, show me your baseline of what you’re eating so I can help you. well, you can imagine what are… what are their excuses going to be. There are going to be things like well, Chris you don’t understand my life s very stressful. My boss is very demanding on me and this is happening and that is happening and of course, all that to say and how does that affect your ability to take photographs. Yeah it doesn’t right?

Mike: It’s all distraction. All red herrings yeah. Unbelievable.

Chris: so what else do we have…

Mike: let’s look at some of these linguistic things that drive me insane.

Chris: Oh yeah. We had this on our list.

Mike: Chris and I caught ourselves saying I mean and if you want to hear someone say I mean way more times than you ever want to hear them say I mean. Watch the amazing movie my dinner with André where Wally Shawn plays himself. I think he is incapable of framing a sentence without the line I mean.

Chris: because it’s redundant. If you’re going to say what you think or say what you mean, you don’t need to start by saying I mean.

Mike: Right.

Chris: We know you mean it because you’re saying it.

Mike: If you didn’t mean it, you wouldn’t be saying it.

Chris: Do we start by saying I’m kidding when you’re about to tell a joke? of course not.

Mike: It drives me nuts. It’s unnecessary. [laughs]We had a minister at church I used to go to many years ago and this guy would say you know we have all this freedom folks but I’m not saying you should all go out there and rob banks. I’m not saying that at all and id want to yell, then don’t say it. you see you can tell what someone isn’t saying because they don’t have to say it. they don’t have to tell you they’re not saying it.

Chris: Which we use as a tool when we’re using language, we could say do. I am not going to tell you that you need to write down everything you eat and document it so you’ll focus on it.

Mike: Right. I used to do that with clients when ill be dealing with someone on the phone who was wondering whether to hire me to come in and do a fairly expensive keynote for them and pay all my expenses. Well you know we’re considering a couple of other speakers. And I said that’s fantastic. I’m glad you are. I want you to do that. I’m not going to say that I’ll be the best speaker you’ve ever had. I’m not going to say that. I want you to find that out for yourself and they would always hire me because they’d want to find out too.

Chris: Absolutely.

Mike: And it puts the onus back on them to discover that.

Chris: So I mean…

Mike: Terrible, terrible. Yada, yada.

Chris: It’s an unconscious pattern by the way and I just want to come back to this because I think I even said it. I have to go and listen to this. rewind and lsitrn to it again but I’m pretty sure that as we were talking about the idea that why would someone say I mean and then I went I mean la, la, la. [laughs]

Mike: Another meaningless la, la, la which is right up there with the yada, yada, yada

Chris:  And blah, blah, blah.

Mike: You’ve got to blame jerry Seinfeld for yada, yada, yada because everyone started doing it after that. It was quite funny for awhile but when it became goriger, it was really, really annoying but blah, blah, blah is another I’ve been jumping on my wife’s case about this because she’s been saying this one. Oh go to the cottage and blah, blah, blah and I’m saying you’re not saying words. You don’t have to say blah, blah.

Chris: So if you want to be an elegant communicator…

Mike: Or eloquent communicator.

Chris: You’ll say elegant, eloquent, you will say actual words. You will say what you mean without preframing it as I mean.

Mike: Yes otherwise you’re in danger in your elegance and eloquence of offering an allegiance to them and you do not want that. So yes, say words. Watch out for blah, blah, blah. That’s a terrible one. The one I can’t stand too. Ive only heard one guy do it. he used to do it all the time and he’d get into these Ken Sweatman stories that were extremely long. It wasn’t ken but he was saying tada, tada, tada like it was a tada, tada, tada right and he’d say. it was filler while he thought. So we got into the store tada, tada, tada, we sat down and tada, tada, tada, and… it’s like saying and so on and so on. Its filler. This is filler. Cut the filler of your…

Chris: What would you prefer people say instead?

Mike: Words.

Chris: Give me an example. Let’s start with I went to the store and… insert filler here. What would you say if you were to tell something?

Mike: No filler.

Chris: So you would just say I went to the store and you would not put in the filler because it’s unnecessary.

Mike: Absolutely.

Chris: It’s a waste of space. It’s a waste of time.

Mike: Just like umms, long umms. The other one that bugs me is the right. Not the one that you use but when people say…

Chris: Oh I understand what you mean.

Mike: So we got there right? and we were sitting around the tent and so it’s getting dark right? and when they do that my antidote is I immediately go right.

Chris: And you lean in.

Mike: And lean in really…

Chris: As if it’s an actual question.

Mike: Yes so we get to the tent right? right.

Chris: That’s correct.

Mike: and keep dockering quickly after that. What about the yeah, no?

Chris: That is one I cannot stand. It seems so common these days. Someone will be telling a little story about what happened and then they want to shift gears and they go yeah, no so we’re really looking forward to your visit next weekend. What is the yeah no. It’s like this change of conversation that’s about to take place and they use yeah no as the segway.

Mike: Terrible. My brother in law he would actually do this four, five times in a row. I’m not kidding. So yeah, yeah, no, yeah.., no, yeah. It’s like I went to drive my thumbs in his eyes.

Chris: so what should we do when we hear that?

Mike: Other than just drive your thumbs to his eyes? I don’t have a solution Chris other than to…

Chris: That’s our question for you today folks. What should we respond… not what, that is an incomplete sentence. How should we respond?

Mike: I don’t know. it’s the same as when I said when you’re clasping my face and stress if you can see. To me, it’s as annoying as the sentences that go up. Now in hypnosis, we have a sentence rise at the end which becomes interrogative. It becomes a question. you’re sitting on a chair? tats a question right? if you say it flat line, you’re sitting in that chair. It becomes a statement.

Chris: We’re going to dinner.

Mike: Right. Now when you drop something at the end, it becomes a command. Sit in that chair. So you’re dropping it. when people do the questioning interrogative end of the sentence, going up when it’s not necessary, I can’t stand it. so they were like sitting there and they went outside and we were like in the yard and a bunch of people. We’re going on like. Is there a teenage or 20 something woman in the world in western society who is able to speak without saying like continuously?

Chris: The only time you should use that phrase is when you’re comparing. It’s like such and such and such and such.

Mike: Right, you’re making a comparison or that you like something but when you’re saying I’m sitting there and he’s like coming in the door.

Chris: Like a marker. Like I just used it correctly there.

Mike: Why is he coming in the door? Which one is it? so anyway enough of this soapbox pontification. We will step aside from it.

Chris: I did want to make a comment about that though. The intonation so remember was it one or two architecture of hypnosis classes ago, I started making substantial investments in post-it notes and bring them to class because then when people are going through and practicing their hypnotic techniques with their partner, I can write something on the post-it note like slow down and stick it on his forehead. That way I don’t interrupt their practice. I just stick it to their arm or their shoulder or whatever and they can read it and look at the feedback later. So then when we’re having our open frame discussion, people are going to understand without a discussion. No I didn’t intonate but that’s one thing we will see with people who tend to talk like is that they’ll do hypnosis and you’re sitting on a chair and you’re starting to really relax. That’s right and it’s this constant intonation upwards.

Mike: There was this state hypnotist, a Michael c. Anthony who was freaking brilliant. The best stage hypnotist in the world. He absolutely is. He brought this guy to my attention and this guy obviously picked up on Milton Erickson’s that’s right which is the universal amplifier. So those who are not familiar with this, when someone starts to go on a trance, you say that’s right and it amplifies whatever’s happening and if I see his eyelids fluttering, I’ll say that’s right. well this guy did an upward intonation. Sit in the chairs, that’s right and you’re beginning to relax, that’s right. oh I cringe Chris. Everything is cringe worthy. He don’t get to this. you were talking about stories that we tell ourselves just before we were talking about this.

Chris: Yeah. We were just looking at some of our past notes of podcast show ideas and one of the questions. I wouldn’t even say it’s a question, it was just some context that I reminded myself of from our notes. This isn’t making any sense at all.

Mike: No, not at all.

Chris: [laughs]

Mike: We’ll edit that out.

Chris: Which really means we won’t. We’ll leave it all in. so people will tell themselves all kinds of stories and I read – I can’t remember where I got this but it’s are you using your stories or are your stories using you? that’s what I had written on my notes and I wish I could remember where I read this. I love the line because it makes a lot of sense. Are you using a story and obviously you want to us a story that’s helping you, not hurting you or is your story using you? in other words, has your story become something that is limiting positive effects in your life that you could be having?

Mike: So I get your point. I guess another way of looking at this is are you telling stories to yourself that empower you or are you letting these stories get in your life and disempower you that you’re not really questioning. The people who say things like I never have 10 minutes to myself. They just tell that story all the time.

Chris: Or nobody’s hiring. The carnie is dead. There’s’ no jobs out there. I’ll have to stay and…

Mike: Nothing works out for me. how does that belief serve you? It’s interesting. A very interesting book I’m reading right now. I’m going to talk about this on the next podcast Chris so make a point of writing down projection. I’ve been reading the projection principle which is a very interesting book and the psychologist who wrote it whose name I do not have in my fingertips at the moment talks about how when we change our behavior, it then changes our thinking so the two are in a loop with each other and it gives the example. If someone treats you badly and they have this idea in their head. The story that they’re telling themselves is you’re not worthy of being treated properly. If you confront it assertively but not aggressively and say look, you’re going to start treating me differently. You’re not saying you’re going to like me. you’re the very act of treating me differently even though they’re doing it intentionally and not from the heart. That begins to change the way they feel about you.

Chris: That makes tons of sense.

Mike: So they treat you with respect, they’ll start respecting you which guess what? it replicates the loop again. It goes around the loop and causes them to do more activities that treat you with respect. in fact, we are so affected by the behavior of other people. If you want someone to like you, you know what is way more important than affirming them or which is quite surprising, it’s counterintuitive. Instead of affirming them so that they like you, the number one thing that makes people like you. you know what it is?

Chris: Tell us.

Mike: How they feel about themselves when you’re present.

Chris: When they’re around you.

Mike: How you make them feel about them. Not how you make them feel about you.

Chris: Right, exactly.

Mike: that’s a really nice sweater you’re wearing.

Chris: Thank you. Thank you Mike, that makes a lot of sense. Nice pattern drop. There was something I want to bring up on that whole point when you said you’re going to start treating me differently, you’re going to behave differently around me.

Mike: Treating me with respect yeah.

Chris: You see this is actually dealing with the symptom. Not the symptom I should say the quantifiable and measurable – I don’t even know what word to use here Mike. I’m lost for words. What else are you lost for? Oh no as opposed to saying you don’t care mind read. Instead of mind read, that’s what…

Mike: You think I’m no good.

Chris: Right you don’t care about me. You don’t value me you’re projecting your perception of how they feel on to them. Maybe that’s what you mean by projection I don’t know.

Mike: Well we’ll get to that next podcast.

Chris: You’re mindreading as opposed to actually commenting on something that you can witness that can…

Mike: Something quantifiable.

Chris: something that can’t be thrown away as oh that’s just your opinion or whatever.

Mike: Right verifiable behavior. So by changing the behavior, the feelings then follow which is very, very interesting and it’s you know a lot of people fall in love and then three years later, oh I don’t want her in my life anymore. I want a divorce, I don’t love her anymore. Love is an action. Its nota syrupy feeling. A syrupy feeling is get you together in the first place. Real love is work and it’s putting – I said this before. My definition is putting the wellbeing of another person ahead of your own and when you do that through activity, through treating that person as though they’re more important than you, guess what? the feelings follow very, very rapidly. So buddy, we’re almost rounded up.

Chris: Yeah let’s wrap up here. we’ve gone on for more than half an hour.

Mike: Will you give us the empowering question of the day?

Chris: Oh right the empowering question of the day is ‘ what is the biggest blind spot in your life right now and what are you prepared to do immediately to correct the situation?’ ‘ what is the biggest blind spot in your life right now and what are you prepared to do immediately to correct the situation?’

Mike: Excellent. Get out there and do that.

Chris: All right you’ve got a metaphor.

Mike: I’ve got a metaphor Chris and this is a metaphor of the woodlot. Many years ago, there was a farmer who had a wood lot at the back of his farm. He had a dairy farm and in other words, he had a couple of acres of fairly elderly trees; birch, apple, ash and maple – all of which were hardwood trees and very good for firewood and a friend of his was over one afternoon and said, have you ever thought of selling some of the wood out of that wood lot? the farmer said, no, I never had. he said, you can make quite a lot of money on it and this is when wood was about 75 dollars for a face cord. So, he said make a crib that holds exactly a face cord. I’ll come around with my chainsaw, cut up the wood, split it for you, season it and he said ill do it for nothing just because you’re my friend. you can sell it right off your property and make a little extra money. That seemed like a good idea. And so the man did as he said, cut the wood into 18 inch lengths, split it, seasoned and dried it’s tacked it for the farmer and the farmer stacked it into the crib that held a face cord of wood and he began selling them for 75 dollars a face cord. And he got an idea, he discovered if he took out one piece of split log, nobody would notice it was missing and he’d still get 75 dollars for the cord. And so, he built another crib and he put this piece of wood in the crib that was his own and over time, it began to fill up and feeling rather greedy, he got the idea well what if I took two out of each cord? and people still bought and paid the full price and it went to three and four and five and soon he had removed so much wood, there was only one piece of wood left inside the crib and still, people were buying it and he was charging 75 dollars and then he got the idea why must I give them any wood at all. I can sell with an empty crib. And so, he took the last piece of wood out and put it in his own crib and then people stopped buying. They looked at him with blank expressions and no one would buy the wood and he was aghast. He was losing money but then he remembered he had his own face cord in his own crib that he filled from these others. He had a full cord of free wood that he could sell for 75 dollars.

Chris: Thanks Mike and thanks everyone for listening. This has been podcast episode 57of brain software with Mike Mandel and I’m Chris Thompson. Make sure you head on over to our website Mikemandelhypnosis.com. One L in Mandel. Sign up for our email list where you can get a copy of Mike’s free brain software eBook and lots more stuff that we have for you there. Go to iTunes, leave a rating for the show and most importantly, enjoy your future and do everything you can to live a more awesome life.

Mike: And quickly, Chris and I still see clients. We see a lot of clients around the world by Skype. If you have some generative change, things you want to do better, we can be hired to help you.

Chris: Get in touch with us.

Mike: Get in touch with us through our website. Have a great one.