Many years ago, I received an unusual hypnosis request from a prospective client. She didn’t want to use hypnosis to stop smoking, reduce chronic pain, or lose weight. She wanted to increase her company’s already considerable success.
She owned one of the most successful firms in her field. Was she happy about it? Yes. But there was one little problem. One business division was performing pretty badly. Okay, really badly. Okay, about as bad as it gets.
And that bothered her. A lot. After all, she had this successful company despite the one division’s poor track record. If this division turned around, then her company would be doing incredibly well.
You might be thinking, “She should replace that division’s manager.” Well, she was that division’s manager. She told me that she believed that she had a mental block that prevented her from doing well running that division.
Was this true? Did she have a mental block? We were about to find out. After she went into hypnosis, I spoke with her subconscious mind and then to an even deeper subconscious part. Her subconscious part practically handed over the keys to the kingdom on this issue.
The subconscious part told us about the mental block, how the block was created, and why it was a useful block to keep around. By the way, before she went into hypnosis, she hadn’t put all these pieces together. But as her subconscious was speaking, her conscious mind began to really understand the issue more deeply.
Before this, her conscious mind knew bits and pieces of the puzzle, but her subconscious was putting the pieces together. That’s what the subconscious does so well; connecting the pieces so it all makes sense.
A moment ago, I mentioned that the subconscious part explained why it’s good to keep the money block around. That’s standard procedure for a subconscious part to want to keep the problem. I asked her part some questions that began to gently help her subconscious part to view the block differently.
By the way, in hypnosis work, there’s a stereotype that the hypnotist tells the client what to do, and then the client just makes the change. In reality, hypnotists need to prepare the soil before planting the ideas of change.
And one way to prepare the soil is to ask good questions during hypnosis. The hypnotic state makes the questions even more powerful. Heck, the hypnotic state makes anything related to change a lot easier.
After my questions, her part began to view the issue differently. Her part decided it’s time to get rid of the mental money block. It’s time to improve that under-performing business division. Wahoo!
(“Wahoo” is a technical term that means the client is doing well. It’s also the super secret code name for Yahoo!’s upcoming browser; shhhh, you didn’t hear that from me, and don’t tell Marissa Mayer.)
Months later, we had a follow up chat. The client told me that the under-performing division was doing incredibly well. The profit increases in that division were huge.
She said she was so pleased at her results that she wanted to buy me a yacht. I said, “That’s very generous of you, but I can’t accept that; I’m perfectly happy with my dozen yachts.” Okay, I’m kidding; she never offered to buy me a yacht. And I didn’t have a dozen yachts back then; I think I only had nine. 🙂
In my opinion, just about everyone has money blocks, even billionaires on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. I made a lot more money when I was working in equity research on my path to my dream job: becoming a hedge fund manager and then owning a hedge fund company.
Despite making more money in equity research, I’ll admit that I’m happier being a hypnotist. Do I have any money blocks? You bet! Any human being does. At the same time, I know that blocks can be overcome, just like with the client I mentioned.
Usually I overcome my own blocks through simple, or advanced, self-hypnosis techniques and some non-hypnosis techniques as well. But when an issue is too tough for me to handle on my own, I go see a professional.
Sometimes I see a hypnotist, and sometimes it’s a different professional. And after they help me solve it, I often think, “What took me so long to ask for help? I could have solved this way earlier if I’d asked for help.”
Now if I’m struggling, I remind myself to not be a hero, don’t listen to my ego, just ask for help. I have an independent spirit, so asking for help doesn’t come naturally to me.
But I’m getting better at asking. And it’s been good for me. If you need some help, and you wanted a sign, let this post be that sign. Ask for help from a friend, another professional, or me. You don’t have to do it alone. You can solve this faster with some help.