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Does Money Buy Happiness?
According to researchers like Martin Seligman, Daniel Kahneman and Ed Deiner, money may be able to buy happiness, but only to a .....
According to researchers like Martin Seligman, Daniel Kahneman and Ed Deiner, money may be able to buy happiness, but only to a .....
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www.iwanttoquitsmoking.c
om The Stop Smoking Hypnosis people.
The ancient
Greeks certainly had their share of eccentrics. One of whom has
been known by his peculiar notions of hospitality. King
Procrusteus had some peculiar notions of propriety. If one of
his guests was shorter than the king's bed, Procrusteus would
have them stretched to fit. If the guest was too tall, the good
king would have his surgeon chop the extra bit off.
As hypnotherapists we
have good reason to believe in the fluidity and resourcefulness
of human consciousness. A human being can eliminate a long
standing phobia, adopt a new positive belief, or obliterate a
nasty stubborn habit in only a few minutes of trance time. We
have experienced those kinds of benefits for ourselves as well
as assisting our clients in making profound life enhancing
changes.
There are hypnotherapists
who are certain that all of their clients have past life inner
children causing current problems, that all of their clients are
possessed by spirit entities with multiple personalities, or
that all of their clients have a raving case of pet iguana envy.
Unfortunately, all human beings do not conform to any one of
those models.
Those hypnotherapists
have mistaken their model for the "Truth". And, of course, being
human, they will have their certainties bolstered by every
success, and tend to blame failures on the something other than
the mismatch between reality and the model. Perhaps the client
is "resistant" or "not ready to change". "One size fits all" is
a useful generality with certain items of clothing, but it falls
short when applied to humans desiring a change of habit.
Anyone who is familiar with the work of Milton Erickson
will know that he had an approach radically different than the
"one size fits all minds" model. To him, each client was unique.
He acted as if individual unconscious minds were like puzzles
consisting of a unique set of needs, values and beliefs. Each
one opening via a different approach. For example, a client may
need to "resist" being "controlled" by the hypnotist, so
Erickson would give them some unimportant suggestion to resist,
which then allowed them to be compliant with Erickson's other
suggestions.
A dear friend, and a very fine hypnotherapist
recently told the author that she could "never yell at a
client". Yet, there are occasions in which a few sharp words can
achieve wonders in disrupting a client's smug "I can't do it",
or even precipitate substantial positive change. Some of us feel
like we are glued to our chair during a session, or that we
would never touch a client. Yet, since other hypnotherapists
regularly do just those things with success it must be possible
for the rest of us to do so as well.
One of the
presuppositions of NLP is that the element with the most
behavioral flexibility in a system will control the system.
Thank goodness that the presupposition is not true! It is only a
model, but it is a powerful way of thinking about certain
aspects of the client hypnotherapist relationship. Models are
testable, of course. By becoming more capable and willing to
engage in an increasingly wider variety of behaviors, hypnotherapists
can discover that they can increase their effectiveness with
those uniquely varied and impossibly stubborn human beings who
drop by the office asking for miracles.
One of the
author's favorite requests for a miracle on demand comes from
the client who wants the problem that they are creating to cease
while tenaciously clinging to the belief that it's impossible.
Of course, they also expect only the problem to melts away while
everything else in their lives remains the same. These clients
frequently benefit from humor, confusion techniques, and
eliminating their limiting belief sets through reframing and
NLP's slight of mouth patterns. When a hypnotherapist
demonstrates odd, playful, and slightly unorthodox behaviors it
gives clients a subliminal message that yes, they can take a few
baby steps outside their self constructed boxes.
Milton
Erickson and Dave Elman heartily disliked each other during
their lifetimes, which is understandable, given their
diametrically opposite approaches to hypnosis. Athletes and
coaches know the value of cross training. A runner gains in
ability by strengthening the upper body with weight training. A
cyclist becomes more capable by adding running and yoga to the
weekly training schedule. Similarly, there is value for the hypnotherapist to
study the techniques and philosophies of Erickson, Elman, and
the other schools of hypnotherapeutic thought. Not only does it
give a one the ability to have a second, third, or fourth
technique to pull out of the bag for the unusual client, such
study stretches the mind into greater flexibility. The more we
can think outside of our normal universe the more we will create
workable solutions for our client's problems.
Hypnotherapists
routinely encourage clients to stretch their thinking, adopt new
beliefs, and behave in new and healthier ways. In other words,
we encourage them to become more mentally and emotionally
flexible. It only stands to reason that we should demonstrate
those very qualities in our professional lives. If a picture is
worth a thousand words, how much more so a living example of
mental and behavioral flexibility?
Cross training for
hypnotherapists
can certainly include learning experiences outside the field.
For example, the author has been privileged to study
improvisational comedy with Robert Lowe, a world class improv
teacher, and innovator in bringing improv to corporate settings.
Applying some of the principles of improv to client sessions has
proven to be a great boon to the author. Sessions have been more
fun for both himself and clients, and it's been much easier to
create unthinking reverse double whammy comebacks to unsettle a
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limitations. And, experiencing the improv teaches at a gut level
such vital lessons as, spontaneous response, there's no one
right answer, and if what we're doing falls flat, it's possible
to start all over again fresh in the next moment. The genius of
the improv being that students learn those lessons by living
them on stage.
Learning any discipline that teaches
metal flexibility enhances our effectiveness. We have all had to
deal with the abreactions and idiosyncratic responses to
ordinarily and innocuous concepts can that crop up so
unexpectedly. And, then there are the clients who just seem
determined to be impervious to our normal approaches. Which
means that even with a repertoire of the best scripts
improvisation, creativity, or just stepping into another
hypnotherapy model can be a save the day necessity.
We
all know that there is a tendency of humans to stick to the
familiar. It's true with clients, who will cling to familiar
painful habits and feelings even while asking for help, and it's
true with hypnotherapists who find a model and settle in with it
as the only way to work. Yet, there's hope for us all. We don't
have to try to fit all of our clients on the procrustean bed of
our favorite methods. We can choose to cross train, choose to
learn new skills, and choose to step out of the ruts of familiar
thinking, and in so doing, achieve more of the greatness that is
our potential as humans and hypnotherapists.
Wesley Anderson, DCH can be contacted through
Healthy Life Centers at (888) 865-1870 and www.iwanttoquitsmoking.com
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About the author:
Wesley Anderson, DCH can be contacted through Healthy Life
Centers at (888) 865-1870 and www.iwanttoquitsmoking.com