by Jason Linett
These were examples of organizations finding a creative way to demonstrate a necessary goal. You can do this to shift your thinking about your own perceived personal conflicts.
An executive shared with me that he felt self-conscious and anxious in social environments at work. The stress and fear he experienced would turn his face into an incredible shade of red, like a tomato, thanks to his Irish complexion. If he was nervous, it was obvious to everyone around. We could have spent our time focusing on how to cope with the problem. Instead, the focus was on a creative solution. In our coaching session, we uncovered the source of this fear was his concern that he wouldn’t remember people’s names. If a name slipped his mind, his body responded with fear and increased blood-flow to his face.
He smiled with delight as he hypothesized, “What if I became world-class at remembering names?” Rather than shining the personal change spotlight on the secondary issue of the fear, we focused his unconscious efforts on becoming a better listener, being in the moment with people, and installing important information in his memory. In addition to generating a creative solution to dissolve a problem, he turned a weakness into a strength!
I was inspired by his story as he rapidly improved. The blushing was no longer an issue, and he was more visible and influential at work. Want to know his secret to remembering names? He listened. He wasn’t focused on what he was going to say next. He wasn’t running his own mental programs. He was mindfully in the moment and genuinely cared to know the person. He attached genuine emotion to meeting new people as they would help advance his career, build a better community, and improve the lives of his family. “When I’m meeting someone new, they’re the most important person in the world to me at that moment,” he said. There was no need for memory tricks. The social anxiety and blushing issue rapidly resolved itself .
The best problems in life are the ones we create ourselves. I helped the vice president of a company overcome his fear of public speaking. I helped him become more influential and effective in his speaking, so his unconscious mind had no reason to hold onto an unnecessary fear. He wanted to overcome the speaking issue to become more visible at work and be considered for future promotions.
“I’ve got a brand-new problem, Jason!” he excitedly shared when he a called me a year later. The speaking challenge had been long resolved, and he was successful in getting a massive promotion. The new position, however, came with a new problem. He had to manage a team of people who did great work together but did not get along. He laughed as he told me that even his three teenage sons weren’t as unruly as his staff. “You don’t have to like each other, you just have to work together,” he told them at work. He explained that he could handle the stress while on the job. “Hey, it’s worth an extra $60,000 a year to have to deal with this,” he joked. By comparison, a part of the creative solution to dissolve his problem was to appreciate it was a more manageable challenge than the one he originally had. We worked to reduce his stress and leave the challenges of the day at work where they belonged.
A hypnosis client of mine released the weight and frustration of losing and gaining back the same 20 pounds over and over. He was yo-yo dieting. When success seemed imminent, he would backslide in his momentum and gain the weight back. He knew it was a simple formula to adjust his eating and exercise habits. There was no secret to burning away the excess fat on his body. Unfortunately, some life event would pop up, he’d lose momentum, and suddenly realize he had gained the weight back.
What was his creative solution? He now focused on becoming fit rather than losing fat. He focused on the new creative solution rather than the problem. The result? He easily achieved a lean body fat percentage while gaining a significant amount of muscle mass. Success is contagious. His story helped inspire me to get into strength training.
My wife and I had the issue that our children would sometimes eat everything on their plates other than the vegetables. It’s not that my children are picky eaters. They can be rather adventurous at times trying new foods. The creative solution was to tell them we were going to start doing something fancy with our meals. The nicer restaurants bring your meal out in courses! The first course would be the vegetables, then they’d bring out something new. We’d highlight this feature if we were dining out with them. Rather than get into an argument and throw logic at them on the importance of good nutrition, it was a perceived treat that we were eating in a fancy way .
Let’s go back to my story of opening my business and signing the big scary lease. Rather than focus my attention on “How am I going to afford this?” I shifted to “What business opportunities can I create so the expense is no longer a concern?”
Where can you put your attention now? I’m not suggesting you play the game of ignoring a conflict. Unattended problems may sometimes get worse.
Bring your thoughts back to the conflict you identified at the beginning of this chapter. Here’s a creative way to think about it. You’re already a different person than you were when you started reading this chapter. Your body is an incredible physiological system that is always generating new cells to replace the ones that die off at an automated pace, so you don’t have to worry about it. Your skin is different. Your organs are different. Your mind is different. Even in the subtlest ways, the physical body you’re in now is already different than it was moments ago. You’re always in a stage of physical change. Your mind is always adapting to new ideas and situations.
Just because something was one way before is no reason it has to be that way now. What creative solution are you going to focus on now ?
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ Compile a list of possible roadblocks that might be holding back your personal or business success. The action of simply writing them down may be transformational for you. The magic of disassociation happens when you can view the conflicts on paper rather than just perceived thoughts in your mind. A client of mine was struggling with her productivity due to the extreme fatigue she was facing. She burst out laughing as she wrote down the sentence, “I can’t get to bed at a reasonable time.” The idea that this skill wasn’t within her abilities became ridiculous to her. She easily created the ritual of giving herself a specific bedtime.
☞ I’m serious about what I’m about to suggest to you. Based on your list of conflicts, brainstorm for a few minutes the most ridiculous strategies or mindsets to observe the situation differently. Exercise creativity here without editing. Know that throwing out the “bad ideas” will help you arrive at the good ones. Inside one of those silly ideas may be something brilliant that changes your life.
☞ Reach out for help. The journey of an entrepreneur doesn’t have to be a solo adventure. Talk the situation through with a friend. Buy a training program to learn better solutions. Hire someone to help you. Do the self-hypnosis you’ll learn later in this book. It comes from a position of strength to accept there’s something you can’t yet do on your own. The most important word of the previous sentence was the word “yet.” You’ve got this.
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BE HYPNOTIC
How can a hypnotist help you grow your business? Through the streams of my live sessions and events, plus my digital-access programs, I’ve hypnotized more than 250,000 people. I’ve used the skills of rapport and modeling to track what makes people successful. I’ve asked athletes, politicians, actors, entrepreneurs, and CEOs from all walks of life: “What’s the one thing that makes you the most successful?” The strategies that I’ve unpacked from studying these people has helped me easily triple the size of my business and go on to build a million-dollar brand.
You’re about to learn that hypnosis doesn’t have to be just a process. It doesn’t just have to be the experience of coming to my office or flying me to your place of business to work with you and your team. Of course, I’d love to meet you. I’m easy to track down!
You’re about to learn that hypnosis can become a state of mind. It can become a philosophy. It can become a way of looking d
ifferently at the world around you. It can become a mindset I like to call “Hypnotic Tenacity.” That mindset in which you are absolutely certain you’re going to make something happen.
Allow me to share with you how you can “Be Hypnotic.”
But first, let me tell you the story of a man who calls me up and explains that he’s stuck. His professional tone informs me that there’s a challenge in his business. He’s lost his motivation to scale up his company in recent years. He has several big-picture ideas, but he’s caught in analysis paralysis. He has “too many good ideas,” so where should he start?
We meet for a series of private sessions, and, suddenly, things are different. It’s like a firecracker’s fuse is ignited. He’s completing tasks on time. He’s motivated to complete jobs. He’s easily knocking things off his to-do list.
It’s now the sixth time we’ve met, and he’s on a roll. In the theme of “Creative Solutions,” we’re no longer discussing his previously perceived problem. All of our processes are focused on solutions. The process is working better than he imagined it would.
The rapport of our working relationship is running deep, so I decide to become a little confrontational. I ask a question that he has been skirting around since our initial phone call. Something obvious has been left out of all our discussions. “You realize I have no idea what you do for a living, don’t you?” Up until this moment, when he’s spoken about his fears and anxious feelings, he has been vividly descriptive. If I’ve asked what specific tasks he does in his daily work, he has generically branded everything as “running my business.”
We’ve spent hours in the room together releasing some serious conflicts he had held onto for years. It’s painfully obvious I still don’t know what line of work he’s in. In response, he simply smiled and said, “Isn’t that interesting?” To this day, I still have no clue what line of work he was in. At least he promised it was legal.
This story is the perfect transition to officially introduce hypnosis. I first encountered hypnosis when a hypnotist did a presentation at my college. That sparked a never-ending quest of learning all that I could about the power of the mind.
I cobbled together a demonstration of hypnosis, which I would do for friends. At one of my first presentations, my wife, who I was only dating at the time, expressed, “That was good. However, you should work on the expression on your face that telegraphs, ‘Wow, it’s actually working!’” I was inspired to seek out a community, and I became certified by the major hypnosis organizations around the world.
And yes, I’ve heard the joke many times before: “Did you hypnotize your wife to fall in love with you?” No. Though our son was a HypnoBirthing baby, as she naturally gave birth without any pain medication !
I began my career with motivational programs for schools and colleges, which has now evolved into my corporate presentations. By mixing education and audience participation, we can deliver a positive message in an unforgettable way.
I soon opened Virginia Hypnosis, one of the leading hypnotherapy centers in the United States. I continue to work with dozens of clients on a regular basis for the goals of quitting smoking, motivating new behaviors, and overcoming fears. Many of my clients are executives or athletes seeking high-level mental coaching.
Don’t let the word hypnosis scare you. As I work with top performers in these industries, I often find that some of the most successful people out there are already hypnotizing themselves. They just don’t call it hypnosis. They call it creative visualization. They call it getting into the right frame of mind or getting in the zone. Thanks to Dave Elman, an early twentieth-century pioneer of the profession, hypnosis is most often defined as the “bypassing of the critical faculties of the conscious mind and the acceptance of positive selective thinking in the subconscious mind.”
That’s a lot of technical jargon. Let’s break it down. The “bypassing of the critical faculties” refers to an automatic response in spite of conscious awareness. We do this on our own every single day. You could be driving in your car thinking of everything other than driving your car. You still end up where you would like to go. You could be watching a movie. You know everything up there is fiction. It’s all made up. The actors are wearing costumes and playing make-believe. We know it’s all fake, but we still get swept up in the story.
How does this apply to personal change? Think about the problems a person may be facing as they come into my hypnosis office.
It’s no secret that cigarettes are unhealthy and are slowly killing people. Yet some people are buying them by the carton and smoking a full pack every day. They’re bypassing conscious knowledge to follow an unconscious habit.
It’s a natural part of life to experience stress, frustration, or even boredom. Yet there are some people out there who feel this emotional reaction; they know the feeling has nothing to do with food, and they’re eating as a subconscious distraction. They don’t consciously think, “This food is going to make me happier!” They know it’s only a temporary distraction, yet many people fall into this emotional eating trap.
Fears work the same way. Some people are afraid of flying. Statistically, you are safer in the air than you were driving to the airport! Consider the most common fear: public speaking. I’ve had executives in my office whose names were plastered on the outside of tall buildings and printed on the payroll checks of all their employees. In spite of their obvious authority, they would shake and stammer while speaking to their team.
These are all examples of people naturally bypassing conscious awareness. Through the patterns of hypnotic language and utilizing hypnotic phenomenon, I’m helping that person facilitate a change to integrate the knowledge they already have. Take those things you’ve already been saying to yourself, and this time, let’s make them actually stick!
A man was in my office several years ago with the goal of quitting his two-pack-a-day cigarette smoking habit. We’re having a friendly conversation about his intended goals. His tone suddenly shifts. “You’re just going to persuade me,” he accuses. “Of course I am,” I reply. “I’m going to persuade you to do those things you’ve already decided to do. You just haven’t yet been able to do them on your own. Sounds like a good use of your time and money, doesn’t it?” He laughed. I’m happy to report he’s still a nonsmoker many years later.
Hypnosis is in a renaissance of acceptance and understanding around the world. There are news stories released on a daily basis of people making positive breakthroughs in their lives. It’s no longer in the category of deciding whether or not someone “believes” or “doesn’t believe” in the process. There are more than 280,000 studies to be read on Google Scholar speaking of its efficacy. Studies in neuroscience now suggest amazing evidence as to what regions of the brain are activating in the process. From an evolutionary psychological perspective, it’s a state of mind that has been around ever since there were people. We’ve only labeled it with the word “hypnosis” in the last 150 years.
It’s a skill that people can learn to use to help others or even themselves. I have a passion for sharing it with others. I’ve trained and certified hundreds of students around the world to master the skills of hypnosis and to launch their own businesses helping private clients. I’ve received awards for being a leading educator and innovator in our community of hypnotists.
Hypnosis is a state of accelerated learning. The mind can rapidly integrate new beliefs and new understandings to fast-track personal change. Some people would say it takes 30 days to install a new behavior. I would say those people might not be using the best of methods.
The stories and themes I’ve shared so far are how my local business flourished during my start-up and scale up phases. Remember the vaudeville sentiment I previously shared: “The amateur changes their act and the professional changes their audience.” The truth is, it’s not just one or the other. As you take your message to a larger community, it must adapt to fit the desires of the new audience and the changing medium. I piv
oted the skills I was using in my private office, classroom, and speaking engagements to a global audience with a new project carrying a name that might sound familiar.
Work Smart Hypnosis.
The hub of that business is “The Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett.” It’s an industry-specific program broadcasting to the micro-niche of hypnotists around the world. This media project became the platform for my online training programs which are viewed internationally. I have thousands of hours of content online and, at any moment in time, someone, somewhere in the world, is listening to me or watching me. My business is running even while I’m speaking on stage, working with a private client, or spending time with my wife and kids. The podcasts and training programs were my asset that leveraged invitations to travel the world teaching what I do. The visibility of live training programs and private services increased as I continued to launch several digital-access membership programs.
Even though my businesses were given titles such as “Virginia Hypnosis” or “Work Smart Hypnosis,” I became the brand. People were buying the “Jason Linett” brand. As soon as I embraced the positioning of my own identity, the combined revenue over a few years totaled more than a million dollars. The “Willie Nelson Effect” I introduced in the lead generation chapter became my life. I would attend a convention of new people, and they already knew me. My live training events and private sessions would begin as if continuing a conversation we’d been having for years.
WORK SMART became a command statement. Work with intention, focus, and purpose. Apple inspired their computer users to “think different.” By shifting my thinking to WORK SMART and think differently, I discovered a correlation that all people in business need to embrace.
The way you are here is the way you are everywhere else. The amateur changes their act, and the professional changes their audience.