So, let’s break that down for a moment, and find out what conversational aspects of hypnosis we can find in that.
First of all, the entire piece revolves around an ‘agreement frame’. Now, if you think about the brain or the human mind as having two rooms in it, the ‘No Room’ and the ‘Yes Room’. When people are in the ‘No Room’ they are more likely to disagree with you. They want to find issue. They kind of have this need to disagree with what you’re saying.
Also, when they’re in the ‘Yes Room’, they want to agree with you. It’s actually easier for them to carry on with what you’re doing, than to create the mental energy that they need to be able to disagree with you, to break that state of mind.
You want people in the ‘Yes Room’. Because then they will actually be responding to you, and agreeing with you, and following through with your ideas. And how do you do that?
The first thing we’re looking at is creating something called a ‘Yes-Set’. A Yes-Set gets people in the habit of responding with a ‘yes’. It nudges them, bit by bit, into the ‘Yes Room’.
All by itself it doesn’t mean that people will simply agree with whatever you’re saying. But it begins to nudge people in that direction.
How are we doing it in this case?
Well, we’re presenting George with information that he must say ‘yes’ to: We’re asking him to sit down, we’re telling him he likes his work, we’re listing a whole bunch of things that he can’t help but agree with. So when we start implying that there’s a solution, at some level his mind is saying ‘yes’ to that too. And that is where the solution gets created.
Now, we’re also using ‘embedded commands’. In one example we’re saying that “…it’s not right that you shouldn’t feel good every time you do that…” And, in fact, that’s a suggestion for him to feel good whenever he meets Joe, his current rival at work. Embedded commands, or more importantly ‘embedded suggestions’ are messages you can implant within messages. So that consciously they hear one thing, whereas unconsciously another message is being delivered. These are very powerful things that we’ll be dealing with soon.
There’s also a lot of use of implication, and assumption, in what we’re doing. Notice for example that we’re implying that the promotion won’t be given until something happens to resolve this conflict. But I’m not saying it out aloud. And even before I give him a chance to consciously analyse whether this promotion thing is a useful carrot or stick to employ, we’re changing the topic entirely. We’re distracting him from conscious analysis of what’s happening.
This ‘distraction principle’ is very, very important. It allows us to use implication in all kinds of other principles to do something I call ‘seeding suggestions’ or planting ideas in people’s minds. The idea is you’ll plant an idea or seed in the ground, and before they get a chance to dig it up and throw it away – in other words, to critically analyse your ideas – you distract them. You distract them and move onto something else. That idea now begins to take root. You give it time to grow a little bit; maybe through repetition – re-implanting the same idea in different ways over time – so that, by the time it comes to you actually stating this idea out clearly or maybe giving an instruction, you have something to work with.
We’re also using ‘metaphors’ here. Remember we talked about storytelling being a very powerful hypnotic process. Well, you’re beginning to deliver a little bit of that when you create the analogy of, you know, dog training. You’re using the person’s own metaphors in order to help them make movement.
Finally, we’re also using ‘confusion’; partly as a distraction technique to take away from the actual ideas we’re presenting, but it’s also a very powerful way to overload the conscious thinking so that all that they can do is follow you suggestions.
In this example, the confusion, is created by such things as using ‘double negatives’ (“…you shouldn’t not feel that…”), or playing on the words like ‘left’ and ‘right’ (“…you know it’s not right that you should feel this way, until you’re left with certain thoughts or ideas inside your mind…”).
This basically makes the mind work double-time to try and figure out which of the meanings of ‘right’ and ‘left’ are actually appropriate. And whilst their conscious mind is analysing the appropriate meaning for ‘right’ and ‘left’, the unconscious mind is free to respond to the suggestion.
So that’s one example. Let’s look at another example in the next session.
Excerpt from: The Power of Conversational Hypnosis
