How to Talk Yourself into Almost Anything
hello i’m jonathan chase hypnotist on
and off stage
in this ted talk i’ll show you the
really useful subconscious skill
hypnotist called suggestion
and how you can use that to talk
yourself into almost anything
people know we evil stage hypnotists use
suggestion especially when doing the
dark deeds like
seduction and divesting people of their
life savings
no don’t laugh seriously some people do
think that’s what we do
and i’m not saying we couldn’t i’m
saying that usually
we don’t well i haven’t
obviously that’s because of people like
me hypnotizing thousands on stage and
turning them
into well basically children playing
i remember at a business lunch where i
was speaking being
asked if i thought it was ethical to
manipulate people and force them to do
things they wouldn’t naturally do
i had to say no i wouldn’t think that
was ethical or for that matter
entirely necessary actually what i do is
discover people’s true nature
and allow them to be that wonderfully
imaginative creative
experimental person they actually are
experiencing the moment i’m not having
anything and i certainly don’t need to
force anyone i’m just giving them
permission
to do what they really want to do
experiencing their imagination
usually although certainly not always in
a sleep-like trance state but always
using the tool of hypnotists and mind
manipulators that we call
suggestion now a suggestion is the
induction of an idea
action or feeling in your mind without
you noticing or maybe you do notice
but you don’t stop the idea taking root
induction means to bring around to
create
in subconscious terms we create the
state where our imaginative mind is in
full control without the interference of
our
intellect or brain for example
close your eyes and just imagine a
little tiny money spider running about
on the cheek of your face and it’s
running about and it’s tickling and it’s
moving the little peach hairs on your
face
and you can feel it moving up towards
your nose okay
open your eyes the suggestionist knows
that because your subconscious is always
listening
what we say matters so does how we say
and the conscious brain will be unable
to resist the induction
especially if it doesn’t notice it being
done
so when you touched your face although
it’s likely you have already
i certainly know you wanted to even if
you’re resisting
well in that case you’ve accepted the
spider suggestion
back in the 1980s working in the showbiz
background i
was a roadie a stagehand even serving
behind the bar
one summer season on jersey in the
channel islands i was
at an after show wind down in the hotel
de france
bar and there i had my first close-up
experience of stage hypnotism
i’ve seen a lot of stage hypnotists from
the audience the
the great robert halpen in glasgow
martin st
james on the tv and of course the
imagine
kreskin the first of my heroes that
stated
all hypnosis is suggestion and the
acceptance of suggestion
on this evening in jersey the hypnotist
was robbing caldwell robin was and still
is a comedian
a comedian and a hobby hypnotist and was
inducing that’s giving suggestions to
one of the rudy’s girlfriends in the bar
she was deeply entranced and he
suggested that posthypnotically
a small electronic toy dog a child was
playing with
would bark and instantly turned into a
full-grown male lion
he bought the girlfriend trance pointed
to the dog
and the little boy press the back button
now i had no idea what you would do if
you totally believed a fully grown lion
that appeared in a hotel bar just inches
away from where you’re sitting
but i suspect it may be something
similar to what she did it took robin
about 15 minutes shouting suggestions
had her through the locked lift door
on the top floor to get his gum out
now i was frustrated star and i’ve been
in love with show business since the age
of 10.
but i told myself i can’t sing condoms
can’t play musical instruments and i’m
not funny or fit enough
to do stand-up but mentalism and
hypnotism had
always intrigued me so i asked robin how
did hypnosis work and he replied it’s
just suggestion
and he told me the very simple
suggestions he used
a few minutes later i came back and said
okay i’ve got the barman on the floor of
sleep what do i do now
also there was jay roughly a nice
throwing gaff from liverpool
awesome hypnotist who agreed to mentor
me and teach me the stagecraft
it was at that point the dream pilot
jonathan chase
was born now the important thing here
was
my self-suggestion had not always been
that i would find a way to get my own
act and get on stage
in fact far from it myself suggestions
the insidious inside voice that you and
i both have
the voice that can be your best friend
and your worst enemy
had always told me that the wings were
the closest
i don’t get to be in the name on stage
and for years those
unproductive suggestions had held me
where i was
however hypnosis helped change that and
the
i can’t do that litany became my of
course i can epiphany
and since then a few decades of
subconscious
study show business ciu a best-selling
book of six
shows in the west end in las vegas have
strengthened my
of course i can sell suggestions so what
is self-suggestion
well every day you talk to yourself more
importantly about yourself
you affirm your beliefs you explain your
behaviors you predict your future
you persuade cajole order and suggest
behaviors good and bad constantly and
consistently
to yourself and you’re very good at
being you
for this reason alone you can be very
good at being the
you you really want to be
and all you need to do is to use the
techniques of self-suggestion that
you’re using
right now to be who you currently are as
i’m about to show you
how often do you think you talk to
yourself 70 times a day a hundred
hundred thousand actually you talk to
yourself so much
there aren’t any individual bits we can
count
if you really pay attention for a moment
you’ll notice your
rationalizing voice your bodily
functions voice your last conversation i
had was
it’s a real party in there just imagine
what could happen
if all of them are on your side for a
change
this internal conversation goes on
constantly
and with as much effect as a master
hypnotist can have
even if it’s not as fast self-suggestion
is about talking to yourself
deliberately when you need it most
and it doesn’t take a huge leap of
imagination and intellect
to figure out that if giving yourself
bad suggestions you can
can keep you where you don’t want to be
then giving yourself
good suggestions can get you to the good
place
let’s begin by fixing what’s broken
anytime and every time you say or think
anything bad about you
immediately correct it out loud
especially when you’re in conversation
with other people like this
i have a terrible memory for names no
actually
i have a brilliant memory for names and
i’ll never forget yours
who are you here’s laughter here because
then you’re emulating that emotional
state
where your inner mind starts producing
in your brain
a substance called dopamine that’s a
neural transmitter which helps your
brain actually
create connections our intellectual
conscious logic system doesn’t
understand humor
it runs away from embarrassment and so
gives over control to your
emotional subconscious and don’t worry
about what the other person in the
conversation thinks
just see this as an opportunity to
program yourself to be better
actually this is an ideal opportunity to
help the person or people you’re with
because
if they ask you why you’re doing this
just tell them
chances are they’re using unproductive
self-suggestion anyway and telling them
how to repair that
has to be good now i can’t stress how
important it
is to correct unproductive
self-suggestion and to do that
out loud and right away do this enough
and your brain will start to run the
good suggestions automatically
when that happens you’ve changed your
mind
okay so we can repair
but can we also create something that
isn’t there and confirm the stuff that
should be part of us yes we can
to do this we use the process of
speaking aloud to ourselves and we
combine that
with the deliberate routine and ritual
using the technique of mine which
once you’ve got it in place will do a
lot of suggestive work for you
without any effort in the early nineteen
hundreds
emil cui a french psychologist coined
the phrase that
even made it into a john lennon song
every day in every way i’m getting
better
and better to make this suggestion work
courage suggests that you repeat the
phrase aloud
10 times in the morning on waking up and
10 at night just before you drop off to
sleep
this use of habitual ritual has sadly
been
pushed aside by much more complicated
routines
so let’s learn to do this fast and then
effectively
but before we do there are one or two
common mistakes that have led to this
style of auto suggestion not working
and so becoming discarded so let’s avoid
the following
flooding your brain obviously the more
you practice the better you
get then the less you feel you need to
do
to do more but work on one thing at a
time and give yourself time to
appreciate the effects
giving yourself unbelievable and
impossible suggestions
some of your goals could be remarkable
and fantastic even though you may
never get there that’s fun and fun is
vital
however even with quantum abounding the
universe has laws and that means it has
limits for instance
you can’t levitate i know you can’t
to prove this after this talk stand up
lift one foot off the floor
now lift the other foot up at the same
time
now as you get up off the floor under
the limits of gravity
it’s a fact you can’t fly live
underwater or in space unaided and you
can’t grow the odd
extra arm or eye no matter how useful
that would be
no stem cells don’t do that at least not
yet
in saying all that obviously you can be
confident
wealthy happy and probably more healthy
than you are now
you can be more popular better at
relationships and free of the emotional
limits you’ve gathered and the last
thing to avoid is giving up
when things appear to be taking too long
tests nasa conducted with its astronauts
in the early days of the space race
discovered that the optimum time for the
brain
to turn a routine into a reality was
around
30 days so stick with it
don’t give up too soon i’ve known six
weeks to go past name
why you suddenly realize that you’re
behaving differently you’re noticing
more opportunities for you
and have a lot more of everything than
you did before
however i did say we’d make this work
faster
and we can certainly make it work more
easily
and to do that we’ll use my rapid
repetition routine let’s make it a game
take the courierism every day in every
way i’m getting better and better
shorten that down to the important
phrase better and better
and then shorten that down to a single
word in this case
better is probably the best keyword
now say better out loud to yourself and
repeat it so fast and so often
it stops making sense follow me
better better better better
better better better better better
better better better
did you notice how it stops being a word
and just
becomes a sound and your subconscious
mind is still
running the whole phrase you’ll sound
and maybe feel a little demented doing
this so pick somewhere you won’t get
arrested in or thrown out of
if that’s not possible shove in a couple
of earphone buds and
sing it under your breath bear the bed
about the bed about a bit but
who knows when your mind your
subconscious is saying your keyword then
it’s just like your other self
suggestions autonomic
happens without thought and it likewise
is extremely effective now this works to
get the thing into your imaginative mind
like a steam train
it’ll even get to the point where you’re
just thinking about your keyword
and that will run the whole routine
automatically then you’re really firing
on all cylinders
now you may be thinking so all i have to
do to resolve all those life
limiting issues i have hanging around
and put into place
self-propelling success drives all i
have to do is say the opposite of what i
don’t want to be seeing
really yes let’s finally fine-tune your
suggestion skills and really make them
work for you
sadly it’s not possible for me to use a
talk like this to explain
all the possibilities but i can give you
some examples of the sort of
self-suggestion correction you should be
using for the most common things i get
asked about
as with all things there’s a little
known trick or secret if you like
that makes the way something is done by
a professional
look easy and get better results
the trick here is used by stage
performers all the time i call it
emotive emphasis
that weakens and strengthens yourself
self suggestions in awesome ways for
example
bad might be don’t matter what i do i
can’t lose weight
good my body’s getting fit and fantastic
bad would be nothing i do ever work so
just
the way i want it to good would be every
day i achieve
amazing success bad would be i feel
really anxious about
exams but good would be i get
wonderfully excited
in the examination room bad emotive
emphasis
words are in english of course which
might maybe try
but should don’t can’t hope neither hard
goody is or have do when can will now
easy awesome amazing fantastic and of
course whatever words are in current
culture
you use to emphasize good emotions even
sick and dope
so remember always repair unproductive
thoughts and suggestions as they happen
make rapid repetition one of your habits
think of a productive phrase about
yourself and reduce
that down to one word repeat the word
over and over as fast as you can until
it just becomes a
meaningless sound carry on for 60
seconds or so
continue till change happens you know
you can change your mind and if you do
that
you can change your life