Today we are pleased to announce a huge announcement, the start of a brand new blog. But this is not just “any” old blog, because we’re filling it with tons of free hypnosis videos, tips, techniques, and cutting-edge information for you to enjoy.

In about 2 weeks, we are releasing a new course called “TRANCED OUT: The Instant and Rapid Inductions Home Study Course.” To celebrate -finally- having this course done (it has taken us a long time to get this ready for you), we started up a blog and we’re loading it with all the free stuff that we’ve wanted to give away for a while now.

There will be new content posted on the blog every single day for about 2 weeks until we officially release our course, so we’ll be posting another video tomorrow, but RIGHT NOW here are 3 great things to look out for on the blog:

• 1. The “You Are The Hypnotist” video. This is a content-filled video where I take you behind the scenes and describe to you one of the most important ideas that will make you much more effective as a hypnotist.
• 2. The “Welcome” video. This video welcomes you to the blog, and tells you what it is all about. Watch this video to find out the true story about why we created the blog and the course.
• 3. The Pre-Interest List. This is our list that you can join to keep updated on the newest happenings. As a bonus for joining this list, we are giving away for free a nearly Two Hour “Troubleshooting Instant and Rapid Inductions” audio. You won’t want to miss it.

I won’t go into any more detail on this because it is covered extensively in the welcome video!

Here is the Website Address so you can go visit it now:

www.HypnoticInductionsBlog.com

See you there!

As hypnotists and NLP practitioners we’re constantly trying to nail things down. If somebody says they just want to be “happy”, we need to know what that actually means. What makes me happy might drive another person to the depths of despair, and vice versa. The same is true in the field of personal development. Personal development isn’t a final destination It’s a process involving a set of skills, and just like any other process, personal development skills can be learned – once you know what they are.

Strange as it may seem, it’s only in recent years that the question of healthy personal development has been looked at in any depth. For much of its history, psychology (at least in the West) has tended to focus on unhealthy or problematic states of mind. This is understandable, but it left a huge gap in our knowledge and some even bigger misconceptions. Many people believe that their personal development is entirely random and outside their control, or even fixed at birth like their star sign. Fortunately, thanks to the work of pioneers like Martin Seligman in the US and Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell in the UK, we now know the skills a person needs to grow and develop in a healthy, positive way.

1. Tolerating Uncertainty

Human beings just don’t like ambiguity, which is odd. You’d think we’d be used to it by now – every single person who’s ever lived has faced uncertainty, and until we develop reliable psychic powers, that’s likely to be the case for a long time to come. True personal development means accepting that state of affairs, and relaxing with it. Rather than dreading the future or jumping to premature conclusions, the healthy response is to be comfortable at those times when you simply don’t know what’s going to happen. As Sean Connery says in The Untouchables, “don’t wait for it to happen. Don’t even want it to happen. Just see what does happen.”

2. Challenging Emotional States

At the risk of sounding clichéd, emotions are like fire – a great worker, but a terrible boss. Personal development really does depend on being able to challenge unhelpful emotional states as they arise. Fortunately, nature has endowed us with the ability to do this, via our critical thinking faculties. You’ll never escape your emotions, and neither should you want to, but you can ask yourself if they’re justified, and you can change them if they’re not.

3. Relaxation

We’re constantly bombarded with information and novelty, so much so that we can begin to feel very anxious if we’re not being stimulated in some way. This is like driving your car flat out and never checking your oil and water – sooner or later the engine’s going to overheat and burn out. Learning to relax properly is a vital step in anyone’s personal development, and I’m afraid watching TV or playing Grand Theft Auto doesn’t count. I’m not suggesting you enter a Zen retreat, but five minutes of self hypnosis a day will do more for your well-being and development than any amount of web surfing. Finish reading this article first, though!

4. Paying Attention

This is connected to the above. Modern culture seems to conspire against the human attention span. So many cell phone conversations to have, so many browser windows to open, so many links to click. In practice, this means we’re never where we actually are, and we miss an awful lot. Worse, attention is a finite resource than quickly become exhausted, leading to all sorts of mental and even physical problems. Your personal development depends on building up those attention muscles.

5. Gaining Distance

Can you step back and observe your actions and behaviors from a neutral standpoint? Are you able to detach yourself from your problems or do they totally overwhelm you? Can you envisage a future when your problems are simply no longer there, or does it feel like this is the way it’s going to be for eternity? The human mind has the unique capacity to detach and contemplate itself. Developing this observing self is an important step in personal fulfillment.

6. Thinking Creatively

This doesn’t mean painting or writing poetry, necessarily. What it does mean is the ability to make connections, arrive at solutions and find better ways of doing things if the thing you’re doing isn’t working. It naturally follows on from the other personal development skills, since an enhanced attention span increases the amount of experience you have to draw on, and the ability to detach yourself allows you to consider multiple viewpoints.

7. Communication

Effective communication really is the royal road to personal development. Making yourself understood to others and understanding them in turn will make your life considerably richer, easier and more fulfilling.

There are many ways of acquiring these essential personal development skills. I’ve talked about some of the more effective methods on this blog already, and I’ll continue to do so in the days and weeks ahead. Rather than a “how to”, this article is “where to”. As I said at the beginning, an important part of our work is nailing things down. Personal development may not be a final destination, but you need to know you’re following the right signs along the way.

A short story for you guys, from Timothy Ferris’s “The Four-Hour Work Week”:

An American business man took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boar were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of the fish.

“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.

“Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.

“But… What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”

The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing , and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you bould buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”

He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, the distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will all this take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years. 25 tops.”

“But what then, senor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”

“Millions, senor? Then what?”

“Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fisihing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…”

Since my last article on voice training exercises had some good responses, I thought I’d continue by talking more about a hypnotist can improve their voice.

This time I want to talk about emotional undertones in your voice and the different states that are possible to lead someone through just by using the voice. Our model for this is Tony Robbins. That guy is amazing with his voice. He captivates the audience, mostly with his voice.
Do you think Tony Robbins knows how to do playful? outrageous? excited? teary-eyed soft moments? huge rushes of adrenaline? You KNOW he does, if you’ve listened to him.

The emotional undertone of how you are speaking can be so very important, because by altering how we pause at certain moments, or whether our voice is soft and tender or in-your-face intense, we can get people to feel differently.

Using this in hypnosis, at some times we want to be very calm. “You are now floating in a boat, calmly at sea, gently drifting along, as if all the cares in the world float away with the passing clouds…”

But at other times you want to make an impact with them. You want to get emotional. “You are NOW a non-smoker and you’ll be a non-smoker for the rest of your life! Your hands are STUCK together. You are UNABLE to speak your name!”

And my guess is that Tony did not start out being able to do all those emotions. I’m going to guess he practiced them. A LOT. It’s like an actor in a lot of ways, you practice the emotions you will need, so that when you need them they are there for you, and you can do excited, or angry, or apathetic, or loving, or any other emotion, in the moment.

Do most hypnotists that you know have that much of control over their voice and how they command attention? Do you have it? If you don’t then realize it’s another thing that you can learn. Just as you have been learning hypnosis, you can also learn to have a great control over your voice. So when it comes time to pound that message into someone that they will get all the changes you have suggested to them, you’ll be able to do it, no problem.

Now here’s another voice exercise called the Alphabet or Vowels exercise. You will say the vowels, but the way you will say them will vary. First you start out with very pleasurable feel-good tip-of-the-orgasm type feelings, and then you do anger, and then you do like you are begging someone for a request and you really need them to do it for you.

So how could you say “E” (and hold the note) and make it sound like you were a little kid, curious about the world, discovering something new? If this isn’t an experience you have a reference for, invent one. Then imagine if you were a 30-something woman and you had just been treated to a day at the spa, and hold that same vowel with that in mind. Then do it like you are commanding someone to do something.

Obviously this is hard to describe over text, and maybe I will do an accompanying mp3 with this to demonstrate how it is done if there are enough requests! Enjoy.

In my work I am often confronted with people of different belief systems. One of the biggest shifts in belief systems comes with the topic of spirituality or religion, and essentially whether or not a person believes in God, and what their specific beliefs are in that area. If I do find out that a person has a belief in metaphysical things, I like to pull out this one tool that has helped me a lot.

It’s called the War Overtangle Prayer by Dr. Judith Swack, and I find that it oftentimes will provide that healing through hypnosis just by saying it.

Now this is a little bit controversial because some people don’t think religion has anything to do with hypnosis, and I would tend to agree, -but- belief systems have everything to do with hypnosis, and what you are doing here is believing something so fully that it becomes true. If you have the spiritual beliefs that other things will happen, then that is what this is designed to use and to nurture.

Ultimately this is something that I have found has worked very well for my hypnosis clients, and I use it myself as well. If you are the type of person who is skeptic then just skip to the next post, but I decided to post it for those who will use it,  because it’s a very valuable tool and more than anything– it works.

Here is the prayer that is said out loud:

I ask my angels and guides to please gather up all overtangle material,
and all dark-side entities,
and everything they feed on,
and everything they attach to,
In a net of holy light.
In a net of radiant light.
And haul them off to the light,
and fill me in with healthy tissue
all the way out to my skin
and to the boundaries of my energy field.
And I ask my angels and guides to please escort me safely and protect me
throughout the rest of this lifetime
and all subsequent lifetimes so that I will never again catch another overtangle.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It is done, it is done, it is done.

Now one of the keys to making this work is emphasizing the words and really believing what you are saying. Probably the most important idea is at the end when you are thanking the angels and the guides, and you are proclaiming to the world “it is done, it is done, it is done.”  This is the structure of ritual magick as well.

Also note that I purposefully inserted line breaks at the point where you pause for effect. So when you are teaching this to your clients, get those pauses in there, because it makes it more powerful psychologically, which makes the whole technique work better.

Usually I will tell a client to do this prayer once or twice a day. The ideal client will be someone who has religious/spiritual beliefs, and has some issue that they can’t seem to get rid of. Yesterday I gave this script to a male client who was very religious, had tons of anxiety, and wanted to get better with women (one of my specialties is working with this type of client). I decided to give it to him when he mentioned praying, because a prayer is something that he does all the time anyway, and it’s already got a ton of energy and belief built around it that I can utilize to make the hypnosis that much more powerful.

You might be surprised that this is really easy hypnosis healing just through saying a few words out loud — Try it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

This is the light switch technique: a self hypnosis how to.

You may already have a way that you do self hypnosis, but this is a great self hypnosis induction that you can use that I’ve found to be very effective. The other day I was at a hypnosis training, and one of the things we did was a very effective technique called the light switch. It’s great for instant self hypnosis.

Here are the steps:

1. Imagine that you have two big bundles of wires coming down from your brain, and that the wires then split off and go into every nerve and fiber of your body.
2. One bundle of wires goes and controls all of the core functions of your body, like your blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. We’ll leave that bundle alone. And the other bundle connects to every single voluntary muscle and nerve in your body, so that if you were to shut off power to that second bundle, all of your nerves would relax instantly!
3. Now lift up the index finger of your left hand, and imagine under that index finger is a light switch that will either turn off or on that entire bundle of voluntary muscles and nerves. Right now that light switch is in the ON position.
4. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and go into a light state of hypnosis.
5. To deepen your trance, turn off that light switch, and allow all of those muscles and nerves to relax completely, as if all of the electrical power had just been cut off.

You may even want to imagine what it is like when the power suddenly goes off in your building. Feel that feeling of complete and total darkness, and have that happen every time that you switch that light switch off.

Now, one of the best ways to do this technique is to get someone into hypnosis using for example the Dave Elman Induction, or using your instant induction techniques (such as the ones in our upcoming 5-DVD set, join the mailing list) and then to give the suggestion of the light switch being there, and right as they turn off the switch you lower your voice and guide them even deeper into it.

Ideally you’ll test and go back and forth a few times, so the person can do self hypnosis very effortlessly, without having to have additional self hypnosis training. Go test this out and let me know what you think, in the comments.

It seems like we are constantly being bombarded in the news that America is in fact “in a recession,” and that means that we all have to feel bad and mourn about how many jobs are being cut.

In fact, people seem to believe that they themselves must take this recession personally, even if they have a secure job or business, and even if the rest of their life is going great. Weird, huh?

When it rains, it pours.

From the positive living camp, Norman Vincent Peale wrote that “problems are a sign of life.” And if we dig deep enough into our philosophies, isn’t it true that most of this money-stuff is on the surface?

And here’s a question – if we COULD let it go, … should we?

I think we should. Emotionally, at least. To release the emotions so that the flow of life can return.

And one of the great ways that some people are letting it go, and giving themselves permission to do so, is through hypnosis.

Either self-hypnosis through a set of steps, listening to recordings,

Or being hypnotized by a professional. (Hey, did you know that I do phone sessions?

By the way, here is a great self-hypnosis method that you can use, to calm your nerves…

Stand shoulder-width apart… put a little flex in your knees… Inhale very deeply for about 5-8 seconds….

Now begin to exhale slowly, close your eyes, and focus on your heart beat.

And in the moment, notice everything about the external environment… what temperature is the air?

Then, let all of that go, and focus exclusively on your internal body. What do your organs feel like inside of you? What is happening to the hair on your skin? How are your eyes relaxing inside your eyes?

Keep your throat, your jaw muscles, your facial muscles, your eyes, and your forehead completely relaxed…

And breathe for a couple minutes for 10 seconds in, 10 seconds out.

Then open your eyes…. SMILE….

Look right up at the ceiling … shake your shoulders out a bit, and wiggle your body. Get some blood circulating, and feel your body ready to take on whatever comes along.

This can have some great effects.

Have fun.

I now have… count ‘em… SIX white boards mounted in my house.

Two big 3′x4′ white boards, one medium one, and 3 small ones.

Frankly, I’m running out of things to write on them.

I have a white board for “to get” things (groceries, etc)… I have a white board for my action items, I have a white board for planning, I have a white board for calendar dates…

The two big ones have various things on them at different times.

It’s a regular activity for me to erase them regularly – generally I’ll brainstorm a LOT, and after the board gets filled, I’ll either write or type the contents of the whiteboard, or I’ll take a picture of any diagrams that I can then have on my computer.

In addition, I have right now about 4-5 different notepads on my desk, along with a wire-mesh container holding about 20 pencils and pens, scissors and highlighters. I also have a container for paperclips.

More than that, I have 2 different files (an expandable file, and a hangable folder file), and a comprehensive set of binders.

I have 5 different “desk trays” in two different rooms.

To say I have put in a lot of time into being organized is an understatement.

The thing is, I really like being organized. It improves my productivity a LOT. But, I am not by personality an organized type of person. I’m just trying really hard

What have you done in your life to become more organized?

There’s something funny about the phenomenon of rapport. Once we have rapport, we tend to want to follow what other people are doing, and they in turn follow us. The stronger the rapport, the greater the degree of the effect.

With me, I have a strong group of friends. And my friends tend to pick up trends together.

A couple years ago, I was getting heavy into multiple blog-marketing, because a friend of mine had made a lot of money in that arena. It never panned out long term for me, but I invested a lot of time and energy into it. I bought lots of different types of programs to run the stuff automatically, I tried out several different web hosts and types of hosting.

I also have a lot of friends who are hypnotists. As a result, once in a while I’ll be studying hypnosis constantly for a week just because that’s what we’re all doing at that time. We’ll get together and that’s all we talk about.

Right now for me, the trend is the stock market. It’s this cool new thing. We are all getting brokerage accounts, talking about banking and the latest news all day, and we do stock picks and find out what is going up and what is going down. We talk about getting overseas accounts, and storing our money in Euros instead of Dollars, and lots of technical mumbo jumbo.

Of course this is particularly fun because I just took out about 10 grand from my shares in AIG. For a couple weekends I was really sweating because I wasn’t sure if they were going to go bankrupt or not. Everytime I sweat though, I remember that Warren Buffet said: “When others are fearful, get greedy.”

I could go through my entire life and talk about how I picked up different hobbies or activities one way or another, through the influence of rapport. But the content – all of the particulars and specifics – is not important. The process is what you have to pay attention to. How do we become addicted to these things?

And I realized that it’s like a game for me. It’s this whole social thing, where all of your close friends are doing this thing, and so you end up doing the same thing.

This is why I have emphasized so many times the importance of spending your time around powerful and successful people. Not only do they give you good ideas, but they “wear off” on you. Just like you can’t walk into a printing factory without getting ink all over you, you can’t walk out of a conversation with these people without being changed for the better.

But the problem comes when you have a good friend that you’ve had for a while, but they’re just not motivated, they’re just not “there” with you. You really only have two choices – to bring them up to your level, or to sink down to theirs. Inaction only produces the second choice.

And so I’ve spent lots of time getting my friends excited about things, because I want to keep them around me.

What trends have -you- noticed in your social circle? What’s the newest thing to do, and what is the range or spread of the types of things that change? With me and my friends, it’s usually some sort of activity. What we’re spending our time doing.

With other groups of friends it’s clothes, or the newest TV show. It’s a new sex technique shared by girls in Cosmo, or a new urban word of the day that everybody tries to use.

It’s very interesting to me how we adopt and use these patterns. It’s very hypnotic. It happens unconsciously, and it’s every where. From the way you walk down the street, to the way you either make or don’t make eye contact, from the types of people you feel close to, and the various ways that you categorize where you are (how do you know you are where you are right now?).

These things affect all of us. So your homework assignment is to go look for the ways you are being influenced by your friends and by rapport.

You’ll find out some amazing things.

Thanks,

Taylor

Zen masters often have students who train with them for years. And after 10 years of training, a student may not be able to do what the zen master can do, but they can at least see what they are doing and recognize it. This is a core principle that has been true in my life. As I get more accomplished in all areas, what amazes me the most is not what I can come up with, but what I can observe other people doing. I have these passionate moments where I recognize what someone is saying, and the structure of it intrigues me, and generates a certain reverence for that line of thought.

As I’ve been reading Josh Waitzkin’s book (“The Art of Learning”), I can closely relate to how he feels in certain chess positions, observing the champions, and pioneering his own style. I personally have only glimpsed that in chess, but I have started playing the game again only because he is so congruent when he writes about it, and he taps into a part of my experience that I have felt is only available to “intelligent” people.

The irony is that our patterns, or our habitual ways of processing information, will inevitably shape everything in our lives for good and bad. These programs can cause us to become warm and loving or harsh and coldblooded. But these same patterns have a beautiful complexity to them. That when we stop and analyze them, they provide countless hours of entertainment, just as it is in a tough chess position, or developing an idea to change the world.