As you focus on these words, you feel yourself getting sleepy,…..… sleeeepy,………..….sleeeeeeeepy.
No?
Does hypnosis even work? Can I really make you squawk and dance like a chicken?
At its most basic level, there is nothing magical or mystical about hypnosis. It’s not mind control. You can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. It is simply the focusing of the mind and the quieting of the mental chatter that tends to rattle around our heads most of the time, allowing us to gain access to the deeper, more primal, levels of the consciousness.
It’s what athletes call being “in the zone”; the state of intense focus and awareness that allows the athlete to react without thought and perform far better than they can with conscious effort.
It’s the state that a great movie or novel can induce, one in which we are so absorbed by the story that we completely shut out the world around us, immerse ourselves in the experience, lose all sense of the passage of time and uncritically accept the most outlandish twists of narrative.
If you ever driven for thirty minutes with barely any memory of the journey or spent hours lost in an intense video game, music or dancing, you’ve been in a hypnotic state.
So what does that have to do with speaking?
So often in business, or in life, our ideas, our suggestions, our visions are dismissed by others before they are fully and honestly considered. The modern world is a complex, frenetic place and we are all overwhelmed with information. It is human nature for people to save time and energy by instantly categorizing what they hear or see into known groups, so they can mentally process them as all the same.
You might be presenting a novel way to invest in gold futures, but many will hear the word gold and instantly categorize you as just another “goldbug”. They’ll dismiss you without even listening to the specifics of what you are trying to say.
You might be presenting a plan to purchase some specific parts from overseas, but many will instantly think “outsourcing”, and lump you in with every other plan to send production jobs out of the country.
You might be trying to raise funds for a worthy project, but many will instantly think to themselves, “We can’t afford it. Not in this economy.” They’ll shut down before you can even demonstrate how important your cause is.
If you could just get them to listen, without instantly categorizing and rejecting your ideas based on their own preconceptions, they just might see the merits of what you are suggesting.
That’s what you have the power to do. You can lead them into a type of hypnotic state that will allow you to really communicate with them; to plant your words deep into their minds.
You can give them a single point of focus by drawing their attention to you and your voice, to the exclusion of everything around them.
You can speak with the calm, measured, powerful voice of authority that allows them to trust you.
You can use stories to immerse them in an experience that makes your point far more vividly than you ever could with your claims.
You can pull them in until they are so intensely focused on you and your words, so open to your opinions and arguments, that they really hear what you are saying.
Real hypnotists, if there is such a thing, will scream, “That’s not hypnosis”, and that’s fine with me. Call it focus. Call it a flow state or being in the speaking zone. Call it mystical mesmerization, if you like.
No one is going to do anything that is against their own interests, just because you told them to. But when you grab and hold the undivided attention of your audience, you have the power to communicate at a deeper and far more effective level than you do when they are only half listening.
You have a fighting chance to get your point across.
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