Category: Psychology

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Psychology

Bill Clinton Congruency Clip

Check out this clip of Bill Clinton responding to a heckler. Notice his congruency. I love it.

0:05 – Clinton: “That’s not true!” (this is perfect. he interrupts it right as it comes in.)

0:11 – Heckler: “You know it’s true!”

0:14 – Clinton stretches out his arm slowly, with his palm facing down, and says in a parental tone, “Now will you just calm down.”

0:26 – Clinton: “Now let me tell you somethin… If I were dying of ambition…”

0:38 – Clinton: “And let me tell ya somethin else! Let me tell ya something else!” — He’s tapping into this urge for people to have “real” politicians who have normal emotions, and are -upset- just like they are, at certain “ills” of society. Clinton frames the Heckler this way:

0:45 – Clinton: “If you can find a better way to treat any human being including myself …

0:50 – Clinton: “I did not cause it, I’ve been tryin to do something about it, I’ve treated you and all the other people who have interrupted my rallys, with a hell of a lot more respect than you’ve treated me, and <inaudible>”

Notice his body language at different points… initially it catches him off-guard, but he gets more confident at every step. I really like his technique here.

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Hypnosis and NLP Psychology

Are crowds suggestible?

I was reading a Psyblog post talking about the myths of crowd psychology. One of the common claims is that crowds are suggestible.

From Psyblog:

2. Crowds are suggestible
The idea that people in crowds have heightened suggestibility is also a relatively common myth. People are said to copy each other, looking for a leader, being open to others’ suggestion about how they should behave, perhaps resulting from a lack of social structure.

Schweingruber and Wohlstein simply find no research to back up this claim. If there is some truth to the idea that people in crowds are suggestible, no one has managed to demonstrate it empirically. One scholar has asked why, if crowds are so suggestible, they don’t disperse when asked to do so by an authority figure.

[PWC] What do you think? Are crowds suggestible?

Maybe there is a prevailing belief or conviction that states that when in a crowd, people should ignore authority and follow their emotional convictions. Perhaps crowds are only suggestible to certain TYPES of suggestions – such as words like “Terrorist” or “Fire” that trigger instant emotional response and a “wake up” signal to the conscious mind.

Also, lets think about what it means to “study [crowd psychology]”

Crowd psychology, in this instance, is being used as a nominalization. The standard test for whether or not something is a nominalization is, “can you put it in a wheelbarrow?” or “can you hold it in your hand?”

The word “crowd psychology” has a lot of ACTIVITY associated with it. There’s a lot going on there. When you study the mind, does the mind ever stop? And multiple minds, certainly you have some voices here and some voices there.

One scholar has asked why, if crowds are so suggestible, they don’t disperse when asked to do so by an authority figure.

So I dispute the way that “crowds” is being used in this context. When you nominalize words, they get frozen in time and instead of a “movie” you get a “picture.” And more importantly, you lose a LOT of “data” when you go from a movie to a picture.

Also notice how this is structured. Always look for structure. “Such and such simply find no research to back up this claim” — that could only mean that they did a meta-analysis of all of the secondary data / existing research, and said that there wasn’t enough conclusive evidence, to date.

Comments?

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Hypnosis and NLP Psychology Uncategorized

How many times a week to do Hypnosis?

Question: “How many times a week is an optimal time to practice hypnosis, and how do I get people to volunteer to be hypnotized?”

My reply:

As much as possible!

AND, only as much as you have fun with it.

Here are 7 guidelines to follow for getting people to volunteer:

  1. Don’t practice overt trance with your family. Go practice with
    strangers, or light acquaintances.

  2. Always match people’s expectations. Develop your approach
    and practice walking up.

  3. Reframe. Hypnotists get paid anywhere between $100
    and $3000 an hour (these are real and typical rates
    for some people), and probably more. You are
    PROVIDING A SERVICE. Don’t waste your time talking
    someone into something. If you have to SELL,
    you’re already in trouble.

  4. Get commitment and consistency from people FAST. You want
    them to commit to you showing them something, or to them
    staying in the same spot for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Talk to them about how comfortable people feel when they’re in
    hypnosis, and how it opens up an entire world of possibilities.

  6. Get the right venue. Organized venues with too much corporate
    control are not the best. I.e. don’t try to do too much hypnosis
    in the grocery store, although Walmart might work because
    nobody is minding the individual isles.

    Walking outside is perfect. Going into bars to do hypnosis can
    be hit or miss. I don’t recommend malls because of their many
    rules, plus rent-a-cops. Go to venues that make sense, like a
    gentle dialog at a coffee shop.

  7. Fake it until you make it. Every hypnotist has had something
    not work. Get over it. It’s what you do next that matters.

Thanks for the question.

PWC

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Hypnosis and NLP Psychology

Primary and meta experiences, overview

Primary experiences are experiences that are related to the external world, or the territory.

The prefix “meta-” means “above” or “about.” It is a state about something that happens inside of your head, as opposed to a primary state which must be anchored to the external world. A quick example of this is that if a person is seeing themselves in an image inside of their head as if it were on a movie screen, they are meta to the screen. They’re not actually inside of it. Only when they view it as if it were really happening and with them inside of their body, do they start to experience the primary states.

Note that meta does not mean dissociation, but dissociation is very very important. Skillful hypnotists all use dissociation on some level.

People dissociate from their consciousness. It is a wonder to me that most people do not understand just how powerful the ideas of “conscious” and “unconscious” are. “Your unconscious now” is not just a command, but it presupposes that there is some part of you that is unconscious-ness. It focuses attention to the part of the mind that, by definition, they don’t have all of their conscious “stuff” there.

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Hypnosis and NLP Personal Development Psychology

Posts from the TrancedOUT forum

Time Boxing by pokerwithoutcards

Time boxing is the act of sectioning off a particular amount of time for an activity.

One way it can be used is to stop procrastination and move into action.

In other words if you tell yourself, “I am only going to spend 30 minutes on this project,” you might spend more than 30, but the promise that you have permission from yourself to quit after that time is very reassuring. It gets you to take action.

The other way it can be used is to control how your working. I forgot what the “law” is called, but essentially there’s a doctrine that states that a task inflates itself to the amount of time allocated to it.

That means if you act as if you have unlimited time for a particular task, you will spend a long time on details that perhaps does not impact the final result that much if at all.

If, instead, you allocate a certain amount of time, you will do ONLY those things that are necessary to move it into completion.

Example:

“I want to clean up my house”

Problems: Too big chunk, unspecified, looks/sounds/feels like a big task.

Solutions:

a) Chunk down. “I will clean off this desk, that desk, and this other thing.”

GET SPECIFIC. Get as specific as you need to be. If it appears overwhelming, keep chunking down and do a few steps at a time.

You can solve any goal by simply taking it a few steps at a time. The biggest challenge in anything that you have to do is to GET STARTED and take action. Make a plan, and then LAUNCH immediately.

b) Time box. “I will spend only an hour today cleaning up the kitchen. If I get the kitchen clean before then, I get to stop. If I’m still working in the kitchen after an hour has passed, I get to stop.”

By setting up rules for how you will do it, you actually DO something towards the task, and you relieve yourself from any guilt.

Use these things in your life, and you will be successful.

Taking Action by Exiled

Hey Everyone,

When most people think of personal development we think about self help tapes, Tony Robbins, motivational speakers and so on. The reason is most of those things mentioned all have something to do with the field of personal development.

We spend thousands of dollars and invest our time into changing our lives for the better. We got to these events and reads the books learning new techniques, new ways of thinking and taking notice of how we are feeling.

The Personal Development field is one of the biggest money makers in the world. Millions of tapes, books and speakers are providing their message. The truth is most of these people are successful and have followed certain blueprints that lead to them being successful.

Other times the person is only successful because he is a really good con artist, but hey the con artist was smart enough to think of the idea in the first place.

Okay, back to the meat of this post.

We go to these events and we get pumped up and ready for massive change. In other cases, we ready the books and listen to the tapes and reflect upon our lives while listening. Once we finish we know things are going to be different. We know our lives can never be the same.

Then when we fast forward a few months into the future these same people are in the same place they were before or worst. Why? Why spend the amount of time, energy and money for these products yet some people never even finish the tape set. Why?

Why would people spend so much money and time and then not change anything about their lives. These people have received great information, but how come most people never become successful or become rich?

Is it because this information doesn’t work or is it because you got ripped off. One could say these things but I tend to think thats not the problem at all. Remember, knowledge and information isn’t power. Someone once said Knowledge and information is nothing more then unorganized information.

For some reason people tend to think all you have to do is gain some new information and success is bound. Well thinking positive may be better than thinking negative, but if you just sit on your butt and hope you may never see success.

So what is the difference between those who make the information work and those who don’t. Its really quite simple and its how I’ve done pretty well for myself. Its nothing more than two simple words, which are “Taking Action”.

I know some of you are like I already know that, well if you do how come your not where you want to be. Gaining information is just the first step, the second step is to act upon this information and take action. You must take action every single day to reach your goals.

Some people tend to think you must make massive amounts of action and that’s not the case. Just a little step each day in the right direction and you will get there. Some people tend to take action for a few days and then stop when life starts to get hard.

The real winners are the ones who take small steps in the right direction with each step getting you closure and closure. Some people who want to get in better shape try to make it a habit to get on the treadmill everyday for 30 min when they never stepped on one in their life.

So instead of doing 30 min every day why not just get on for 5 to 10 min and get your body and mind used to the idea.

In realitiy, nothing can get done without taking action. It all starts with a idea, but without action a idea is nothing more then just a idea. So gather information, know what you want and just take action.

Now this doesn’t mean everything will be perfect in your life, but how can you get down the road if you don’t leave the house. Personally it is the people who move toward what they want and take action that seem to be the ones who can say this self improvement tape worked for me or Tony Robbins changed my life.

We can’t blame them for supplying the information and then when it doesn’t work blame them because we didn’t take action. So once again TAKE ACTION and move toward change. Once again this is just my opinion and we all know there are many ways that lead to the same road.

REPLY by pokerwithoutcards:

It took me probably 20 times hearing my good friends say this to me before I got it. They kept saying, “Take action, bro, you need to stop thinking and do things.”

And now I understand the value of it. Most people only contemplate and they do a bunch of future predicting about how it’s going to turn out.

Felix Dennis says in his book “How to Get Rich” (he is a multi-millionaire) that ideas hardly even matter if the follow-through is good. In other words you could have a shitty idea with great follow-through and make it work, but..

EVEN THE BEST IDEA IN THE WORLD WILL NOT WORK IF YOU DON’T FOLLOW THROUGH ON IT.

Oscar and I had an idea for a coaching program. Are we at the “ideal” place in our business? Of course not – we always want to be bigger and better.

Are we MUCH farther ahead and better off for taking action and LAUNCHING? Yes. And we’ve had a TON of fun in the process and we’ve met a lot of great people.

If you read, listen to, or watch enough self improvement stuff, you will hear this point over and over again. You MUST take action and -do- something.

Yes, it won’t be perfect at first. It’s just bound to happen.

Now I can stand up in front of a room and, with true authority tell people what works and what doesn’t. Theory-based knowledge is great for mental stimulation, but useless in the real world.

Thanks for the post, Josh. Great topic.

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Psychology

Seven plus or minus two: the psychology of short term memory

Studies have shown that human beings can hold seven “bits” of information, plus or minus two. So if you’re really talented you can hold nine, and if you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed you can probably at least hold five.

So, what is a “bit” of information? I’m not going to try to define that scientifically, although I’m sure it’s been done before. However I will suggest that a bit could be a thought, an idea you’re trying to hold onto (whether that’s consciously driven or unconsciously), or just paying attention to the space between your toes.

I was reading an article at PsyBlog about this characteristic of short term memory, and it noted something very interesting: That a six-month old infant can only hold ONE bit of information at any given time.

Is this an advantage or a disadvantage? If your world only consists of one thing, that might mean you can’t get too complex with your thoughts. But then, complexity leads to confusion and thinking you know things. An infant doesn’t think they know anything, and as a result they are like silly putty, which as you know will absorb the ink from any section of the newspaper that you want to press it down upon.

Let me know your thoughts.

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