by Shel Horowitz
Why did Cindy Johnson (Fran Johnson’s) inch away slowly from Jeff Glaze (Decorative Products), wrinkling her nose? Why did Joanne Goding (Moss Nutrition) insist that her name was “Bob?” (she actually needed to read her nametag to correct herself). And why did Jeff’s son Justin forget the number 7, saying that five plus two is eight?
All three were among the eight volunteers hypnotized for over an hour by Anthony Galie, the Family Business Center’s featured presenter at the October 23 meeting at the Log Cabin.
But it wasn’t all fun and games. For about the first hour, Galie presented a serious message about motivation and business success. Among his key points:
- The subconscious is stronger than the conscious brain; hypnotism is one of many doors into the subconscious and its power.
- The subconscious cannot be forced; if you try not to think of elephants, elephants will dominate your thinking.
- Getting motivated is easy; staying motivated is tough—just ask anyone who’s ever made a New Year’s resolution to lose ten pounds. “At a speech, most people lose their motivation on the way to the airport.”
- Highly motivated top producers “work at it every single day. They’ll tell you exactly what they do [to keep motivated] and how they do it—and when they stop doing it, their motivation wanes and goes back to normal.”
- While these high achievers have all sorts of different techniques, one common thread is that they not only set written goals, they also review them and write them down two to three times a week! “If you’re not currently doing this, and you start, your production numbers will be bumped by 20%. And it takes only half an hour—is that worth it?
- If you’re not a writer, or even if you are, there’s an alternate path that might work better: “Tonight, script out some goals for yourself. And then get a hand-held tape recorder and read those goals over and over again or burn yourself a CD that’s five minutes long. Your goals, your voice. If you don’t know how, ask any teenager. Play it at least once a day. You want to grow your business, get it down and drill it into your subconscious mind. It takes about half an hour to write the goals and make the CD. You don’t even have to listen to it. Just have it droning in the background. But the more you focus on your goals, the more you’ll start seeing ways to make that a reality. If you actually did that, at the end of a couple of weeks, you’ll know your goals inside out, upside down, and backwards.” Just as we remember commercials of our childhoods, decades after they stopped running—’wonder where the yellow went’ hasn’t run in 42 years—so, through this self-hypnosis process, these goals will become just as deeply ingrained.
- Reset your personal image so it’s in harmony with these goals. Otherwise, you’ll lose all the progress you make; when Oprah loses the same 40 pounds over and over again but gains it back in a year or two, it’s because she images herself at the higher body weight.
- When you’re irritated with a client, or nervous before a big presentation, you can use self-hypnosis techniques to calm your mind and perform better.
To choose his eight subjects, Galie asked the crowd to do a couple of exercises: one, using the power of the brain to move two fingers on opposite hands together, and the other, to let one arm sink under a heavy weight while the other floated up, attached to a fleet of imaginary helium balloons—and quietly moved through the closed-eye crowd, noticing who responded well.
Galie led his subjects on a series of group exercises: going to a hot, humid beach in Florida with 101 degree temperatures and a serious bug infestation (sweat visible on some foreheads), and then immediately afterward, a frigid mountain top with no winter coat. He noted that these exercises can produce measurable body temperature swings of several degrees. He also gave individual instructions to each person, which is how Cindy couldn’t tolerate proximity to Jeff, Joanne forgot her name, and Justin couldn’t say the number 7.