Hypnosis and NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) practitioners have discovered just how important using just the right words can be in influencing others in precise, powerful, and positive ways.
Imagine precious little three year old Suzie Darling innocently asking “Why?” to whatever her mother says. At that age it’s simply a request for information, however tiresome it might be for her parents. Little does Suzie know that in a few years that “Why?” is going to be turned around on her with a vengeance.
Time passes. Suzie Darling’s eight years old, and now it’s Mom’s turn to ask “Why?”.
“Why didn’t you clean up your room after school, like I told you to do?”
Suddenly that innocent little “Why?” has acquired a sharp edge of accusation, and we all remember how just how little good an honest “I don’t know” will do as an answer.
So some years later Suzie’s all grown up. She married and has a good job. And, what happens when Joe asks her “Why” she filled out the paperwork for the new A-1 widgets that way? She automatically gets a tiny bit defensive.
Joe was merely curious, and with his innocent question he unknowingly set off an old response. Even though Suzie “knows” it’s a simple request for information, lingering traces of the eight year old’s feelings from Mom’s “why’s?” resonate to this day.
So how can Joe safely satisfy his curiosity? Simply by rephrasing. If he had asked, “What was the purpose of cross filing the A-1 widgets with the crumpet displacers on page 2?”, Suzie would have happily supplied him with her reasons, and both would have felt good about their conversation.
Human minds make associations. Flags remind us of Mom, and apple pie because they’ve been mentioned together so many times. And, a great many seemingly innocent words can inadvertently evoke none too desirable feelings at times.
So now that you’ve taken the first step, and become aware that eliminating “why”questions can promote more positive responses from simple requests for information, what are you going to do? True, putting your new knowledge into practice will take a little effort, but surely by now you can imagine the rewards vividly enough to be motivated to take action.
Curious about other hot button words? How about the “right/wrong” and “good/bad” concepts? Imagine if your boss said, “That doesn’t really fit what we need here. Go ahead and move the eggs in the large cartons.” Instead of, “That’s all wrong. Put the eggs in the large cartons.” Which of those two would make you feel the best? Which of those two would motivate you to do your best job for the boss?
In becoming aware of the power of words like “why”, you can begin to appreciate the value of choosing words with care. By now, it's become easier to appreciate how a little verbal precision can make a decided difference in the relationships that we care most about.
The good news is, that by taking a cue from hypnosis and NLP and putting in a little effort, new more effective speaking habits can be established a word or two at a time.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Hypnosis Self Help Secret # 1 Pattern Interruptions
The human brain learns habits, that is patterns of behavior, throughout a lifetime. A great many of those habits are useful and worthwhile. Who would want to have to re-think the matter of getting dressed in the morning each and every day?
And then, there are those patterns of behavior that are not so useful. For example, do you know anyone whose eating is triggered by sensations of boredom, or who procrastinates important tasks, much to his or her later sorrow?
If you ask people who behave in those ways if they could do something else, typically the answer will be something like, “It’s just what I do” or “I know better, but I can’t seem to make myself do anything else”, or “When I’m in the situation the consequences just don’t seem to matter. It’s later that I give myself hell for doing it AGAIN”.
We all know just how easy it can be to change a habit, and just how hard it can be to change a habit. Moving from one house to another means adjusting thousands of habits, where we sleep, the stores that we shop at, and the route that we drive home from work are all different. All those habits change in the blink of an eye.
Yet, there are those pesky habits that seem to cling on no matter what: that snack after work, the credit card spending, waiting until the last moment to get something done. Will power doesn’t seem to work to overpower those habits for very long.
The good news is that our brain is always fooling us about time. It’s always later than we think. To clarify, here’s a passage from Training Trances, by John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn.
In a series of ingenious experiments (Benjamin Libet) demonstrated that conscious awareness occurs only about a half-second (500 milliseconds) after the time a stimulus is introduced. This makes sense in that it takes time to develop the electrical activity which eventually results in conscious awareness. Here’s the interesting twist. Even though a half-second elapses from a time a stimulus is introduced to the time we are conscious of it, it appears to us as if no delay in awareness has occurred, and we are accurate at identifying the time and the stimulus. We make a subjective referral back in time….
And, why is it good news that there is a little lag time between a stimulus, its subjective interpretation and a response? Simply put: in that split second we can consciously choose to interrupt our normal (habitual) response.
One of the most highly respected hypnotherapists of our time, Dave Dobson, teaches a simple technique to interrupt an unsatisfactory habitual response. It’s as simple as a sigh. Have you ever thought about the purpose of sighing? Animals and humans both can be observed to sigh on occasion, and the value of a sigh is simply to release pent up emotions. A sigh briefly interrupts the emotions of the moment.
So far so good. Yet there’s more to Dobson’s wisdom. A key to asserting conscious control once we’ve sighed and interrupted that pattern for a moment is, simply to step back and laugh at ourselves. We give the habit power by taking it, and ourselves, seriously. A simple thing to do is imagine how silly it would be to try to fit into our favorite clothes from when we were three years old.
The third step is, immediately after we laugh at ourselves, to simply forget about the old pattern and get busy with some useful task. Wash the dishes. Get some work done. Not only does that further interrupt the pattern, it gives us a new one. How much more productive would we be if we had the habit of interrupting old less than fulfilling habits by accomplishing some useful task?
Don’t accept these ideas on faith. Try them on for yourself and determine just how effective they are for you. And, give yourself enough time to test these ideas thoroughly. A habit that has been repeated 100,000 times might take quite a few interruptions to extinguish completely.
And then, there are those patterns of behavior that are not so useful. For example, do you know anyone whose eating is triggered by sensations of boredom, or who procrastinates important tasks, much to his or her later sorrow?
If you ask people who behave in those ways if they could do something else, typically the answer will be something like, “It’s just what I do” or “I know better, but I can’t seem to make myself do anything else”, or “When I’m in the situation the consequences just don’t seem to matter. It’s later that I give myself hell for doing it AGAIN”.
We all know just how easy it can be to change a habit, and just how hard it can be to change a habit. Moving from one house to another means adjusting thousands of habits, where we sleep, the stores that we shop at, and the route that we drive home from work are all different. All those habits change in the blink of an eye.
Yet, there are those pesky habits that seem to cling on no matter what: that snack after work, the credit card spending, waiting until the last moment to get something done. Will power doesn’t seem to work to overpower those habits for very long.
The good news is that our brain is always fooling us about time. It’s always later than we think. To clarify, here’s a passage from Training Trances, by John Overdurf and Julie Silverthorn.
In a series of ingenious experiments (Benjamin Libet) demonstrated that conscious awareness occurs only about a half-second (500 milliseconds) after the time a stimulus is introduced. This makes sense in that it takes time to develop the electrical activity which eventually results in conscious awareness. Here’s the interesting twist. Even though a half-second elapses from a time a stimulus is introduced to the time we are conscious of it, it appears to us as if no delay in awareness has occurred, and we are accurate at identifying the time and the stimulus. We make a subjective referral back in time….
And, why is it good news that there is a little lag time between a stimulus, its subjective interpretation and a response? Simply put: in that split second we can consciously choose to interrupt our normal (habitual) response.
One of the most highly respected hypnotherapists of our time, Dave Dobson, teaches a simple technique to interrupt an unsatisfactory habitual response. It’s as simple as a sigh. Have you ever thought about the purpose of sighing? Animals and humans both can be observed to sigh on occasion, and the value of a sigh is simply to release pent up emotions. A sigh briefly interrupts the emotions of the moment.
So far so good. Yet there’s more to Dobson’s wisdom. A key to asserting conscious control once we’ve sighed and interrupted that pattern for a moment is, simply to step back and laugh at ourselves. We give the habit power by taking it, and ourselves, seriously. A simple thing to do is imagine how silly it would be to try to fit into our favorite clothes from when we were three years old.
The third step is, immediately after we laugh at ourselves, to simply forget about the old pattern and get busy with some useful task. Wash the dishes. Get some work done. Not only does that further interrupt the pattern, it gives us a new one. How much more productive would we be if we had the habit of interrupting old less than fulfilling habits by accomplishing some useful task?
Don’t accept these ideas on faith. Try them on for yourself and determine just how effective they are for you. And, give yourself enough time to test these ideas thoroughly. A habit that has been repeated 100,000 times might take quite a few interruptions to extinguish completely.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
How AT&T is Using Covert Hypnosis Technique With Customers
In my several calls to AT&T's customer service something all the representatives said made me think “covert hypnosis”! It was even more noticeable on the recording for the phone menu.
In a previous post, How to Use Hidden Hypnotic Commands in Normal Conversation, I described how by simply changing the way one says a chosen set of words in a sentence can add a second message that s understood only at the unconscious levels of the mind. The technical term for the second message is “embedded command”.
Apparently, someone in AT&T's marketing department has learned about embedded commands. So, now every customer service representative is saying some variation of, “We want you to be very satisfied with AT&T.” I was asked several times if I was “very satisfied with AT&T's service”.
The AT&T employees are using extra verbal emphasis on the words in bold, which makes them hidden hypnotic commands. I suspect that the embedded commands are the idea of some savvy marketing person, and that the customer service representatives are unaware of how their words are intended to bypass the conscious minds of customers.
The way to prevent yourself from being unduly influenced by embedded commands and covert hypnosis techniques in general is to simply be aware of them. Awareness gives you choice.
In a previous post, How to Use Hidden Hypnotic Commands in Normal Conversation, I described how by simply changing the way one says a chosen set of words in a sentence can add a second message that s understood only at the unconscious levels of the mind. The technical term for the second message is “embedded command”.
Apparently, someone in AT&T's marketing department has learned about embedded commands. So, now every customer service representative is saying some variation of, “We want you to be very satisfied with AT&T.” I was asked several times if I was “very satisfied with AT&T's service”.
The AT&T employees are using extra verbal emphasis on the words in bold, which makes them hidden hypnotic commands. I suspect that the embedded commands are the idea of some savvy marketing person, and that the customer service representatives are unaware of how their words are intended to bypass the conscious minds of customers.
The way to prevent yourself from being unduly influenced by embedded commands and covert hypnosis techniques in general is to simply be aware of them. Awareness gives you choice.
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