Paying It Forward

Photo by Sara Fogan

A couple years ago, someone in the car ahead of me at my local Starbucks® drive-through paid for the coffee I had ordered. It was right before Christmas, and the line was long. People were stocking up on caffeine and sugary snacks in preparation of an anticipated long drive to their holiday destinations—or just to wait in even longer lines at the airport. In my rear-view mirror, I could see a driver tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Was he keeping rhythm with a song playing on the radio, or was he simply impatient for the line to move again?

When it was my turn to pay and pick up my drink, the cashier cheerily told me that the customer in front of me had paid for my order. Would I like to do the same for the person behind me? I was so touched and excited and happy about this random act of kindness that I immediately said yes. I wondered what would inspire someone to just buy a drink for a complete stranger. Was it holiday spirit? Or, was it something more? Looking back I can imagine that my subconscious mind was immediately whirring, translating a kind gesture from one person into an inference that a similar reciprocal gesture would be expected for the next.

When I got home, I learned that someone in another state had initiated a paying-it-forward movement at his local Starbucks. Individuals had been buying drinks for complete strangers for many hours until someone reportedly declined the barista’s suggestion/invitation to continue the trend. Branch managers went on the record to say that staff were not supposed or allowed to suggest that other customers should pay it forward like that because people were feeling pressured and bullied to purchase items they couldn’t necessarily afford—or want—to buy. I could understand that perspective, too. But it made me think: what inspires people to randomly do something nice for someone else? Presumably, the person on the receiving end of this arrangement gets a gift of something--extra time, extra money, a desired object. But, what does the person bestowing that gift get out of it?

Speaking for myself, I experienced various physiological sensations of delight: increased heart-rate and a gasped intake of breath, tingling in my arms and up and down my spine. I couldn’t stop smiling. I was so temporarily overwhelmed by that random act of generosity that I was easily persuaded to accept the barista’s suggestion that I purchase the order for the people in the car behind me. (Yes, there was a second or two of concern, wondering/worrying how big that order would be, but I talked myself out of that anxiety by reminding myself: “It’s Christmas!”) And to my own surprise, when I handed my gift card over to pay for that order I felt another wave of happiness and delight. I literally felt lighter, energized, optimistic, inspired. I truly understood what this expression means: “It’s better to give than to receive.”

Since that day, I have tried to pay it forward as often as I can. Whether it is inviting a customer with fewer items than I have to stand ahead of me to pay for groceries or hold a door open for someone else that is what I will do. I might pay a compliment to a stranger, post an endorsement to praise the service I have received from a local company or wave a car in the next lane to merge in front of me when traffic is heavy. And sometimes I even purchase an item of food or beverage for a stranger just because doing something nice for someone else is also a way to express appreciation, respect and gratitude for all that I have in my life. These things don’t really take any time and don’t have to cost any money, but the mutual reward of giving and receiving an unexpected, random gift truly is priceless.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016

Selling Girl Scout Cookies at the 88th Academy Awards

 

Did you watch the 88th Academy Awards on television last night? Remember when Oscars’ host Chris Rock encouraged (challenged) attendees to purchase Girl Scout cookies to help his daughter’s Girl Scout troop earn the most donations? Turns out his sales tactic was very successful, because by the end of the night the troop had made over $65,000 in sales and donations.

This scenario reminded me of 2014 Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres asking television viewers to retweet the group “selfie” picture that she took of herself with a handful of Oscar nominees during her broadcast. According to a CNN report, 2.7 million people took on her challenge, and the Twitter platform actually crashed for a few minutes. Just as her challenge was a publicity success for Samsung, the camera manufacturer, Rock’s was likely a marketing coup for Girl Scouts. Of course, last night’s cookie sales also became a great opportunity for me to illustrate how suggestibility and hypnosis work in real life.

In a previous blog titled Gullibility, Suggestibility? Hypnosis, I explained how an authority figure could create a hyper-suggestible state in another person and use this state to persuade that individual to behave in a particular way. (If you have ever gone car shopping, you have likely experienced this kind of sensory overload.) Last night’s host was well-armed to make a good sale: his charisma and biting humor, combined with a socially political environment and several naturally occurring elements to facilitate group hypnosis, literally enabled him to “rock” those cookie sales. 

1.    He had authority. As the Oscar host, Chris Rock had access to all areas of the stage and the audience in the auditorium. As an A-List comedian and celebrity, himself, Rock had just the right amount of charisma and charm to help him build rapport with the audience even as he challenged specific individuals to buy cookies based on their estimated income, etc.

2.     He had a message: His daughters wanted to sell Girl Scouts cookies and earn the highest donation compared to other rival troops. Everyone loves Girl Scout cookies, right? Plus, those cookie sales would all go to an excellent cause: donations help the good deeds/activities that Girl Scouts represents.

3.    There were plenty of environmental stimuli to overload the subconscious mind and create the hyper-suggestible state. There was the excitement/anxiety/stress of being nominated for or having won an Academy Award, or the disappointment of not winning that Oscar, after all. There was plenty of visual overload (stimuli) coming from being surrounded by beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes and the amount of time each nominee had already spent posing on the red carpet before the awards began and the glamorous environment in the Kodak Theater and the stage… You get the picture.

4.    Rock used the “right” language to challenge, inspire, encourage or even goad the people in the Kodak Theater to buy a box or boxes of cookies.

5.   Having already spent hours posing and doing interviews on the red carpet before the ceremony, then sitting through more than an hour of award presentations, members of the audience were probably already hungry. (That’s not even counting the days or weeks some celebrities reportedly spent on strict diets to be able to fit into those tight-fitting gowns.) Remember, when we are hungry the blood-sugar level starts to dip, which can induce a state of hyper-suggestibility to environmental factors. The attendees at last night’s Academy Awards ceremony knew that the next opportunity for food would be at the Governor’s Ball and other post-Oscar receptions was still at least a couple hours away. But here were 20 Girl Scouts walking around selling boxes of yummy, sugary, tempting treats. If you have ever been hungry when you went grocery shopping, you know how much easier it is to succumb to temptation of buying items that aren’t on your shopping list. Chris Rock had his audience—and their pocket-books—exactly where he wanted them.

I have to admit that while watching the scene on my television I started to really wish I also had a box or two of those Thin Mints to nibble. I wonder how many boxes of cookies the Girl Scouts have sold today, thanks to a certain Oscar host’s stellar sales pitch last night.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016

Thoughts of the Day for February 26, 2016

Photo by Sara Fogan

      Every now and then I like (and need) to take a few moments and remind myself about what is really important to me, in my life. If you follow me on my Calminsense Hypnotherapy Facebook page you may have seen some of these quotes before on this page, or will in the future. Many of these Quotes of the Day are beautiful examples and illustrations of the work I do as a hypnotherapist, so I will probably draw on them in future essays.

• “I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by disbelief.” – Gerry Spence

• “Never get bored or cynical. Yesterday is a thing of the past.” – Walt Disney

• “Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears.” – Richard Wilkins

• “Some people come into your life just to teach you to let go.” – Unknown

• “You are not responsible for the choices that other people make.” – Doreen Virtue

• “Right now, you may not be where you intended to be, but it’s where you need to be in order to get where you want to go.” – Steven Aitchison

• “Always go with your passions. Never ask if it’s realistic or not.” – Deepak Chopra

• “Be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.” – W. E. B. DuBois

• “The most rewarding and reliable way to appear interesting is to live an interesting life.” – Paul Dormody

• “Today I create a new life with new rules that totally support me.” – Louise Hay

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

Don't Second-Guess Yourself

Our ability to remember facts and information is astounding. Millions of pieces of information enter the human brain each day; some of it is processed and internalized as memory and the rest is “dumped” as irrelevant (unrelated, unfamiliar, an "unknown") to the "known" facts we have already stored in the subconscious mind. Other pieces of information get buried so deep that we’re surprised we actually know or knew it in the first place until someone asks the right question and jars that little nugget loose from its storage area. Or, we recently learned the information but it isn’t immediately accessible to the conscious mind, which sends us into a panic and then self-recrimination for not having “remembered” what we were supposed to know.

Students recognize this phenomenon as a version of “tip-of-the-tongue syndrome.” It often happens in moments of stress, such as during a test. Musicians and actors experience a similar experience if they suddenly blank out or forget a portion of the music they are supposed to play or a line of dialog they need to recite. This can also occur during moments of leisure or recreation. Even though the stakes are comparatively lower, the perceived pressure of getting an answer right or hitting the right note and not let anyone down can produce a lot of pressure.

This evening, I met some friends from my professional network group, NRG, for a meal at a local restaurant and play a game Trivial Pursuit. There were approximately nine teams in the restaurant, including ours. I admit that my knowledge about many of the topics was not as good as a few of my teammates. What surprised me most of all was when I realized I knew—or thought that I knew—an answer to a question even though I have no knowledge or expertise in the topic. Another time, even though I was positive that I had the correct answer, I immediately started to doubt my certainty and lost a bit of confidence when it was time to submit the response. Everyone is counting on you; you said you know this answer. You lived in England for seven years, you should know this answer. Quick, quick, the moderator needs the answer!

Fortunately, thanks to my hypnotherapy training and years of helping clients overcome this exact same challenge, I was able to talk myself down from the panicked ledge I found myself on. I knew that I knew the answer, and that the first answer I gave was most likely the correct one. I had to trust my subconscious mind to produce the information about this topic that I had stored there. I knew that if I wavered, if I continued to question and re-examine my reasons for suggesting that response, I was more likely to give the wrong one. It had been so easy, when I heard the question, to come up with what I knew and believed in my bones to be the correct response. I had to trust that gut instinct, and go with it. I was right. (The answer was United Kingdom or Great Britain. I can’t remember the exact question, but it had something to do with 10 Downing Street being the residential headquarters of the place of government for which nation.)

Another question later in the game was about the United States StockExchange. The acronym NASDAQ popped into my mind right away. One of my friends also playing the game was much more knowledgeable about stocks and investments, so everyone deferred to his expertise to provide the correct answer. The term he provided sounded reasonable and right. Wrong. If I had given my answer and my teammates had agreed to submit the response, we would have won that point. But I hadn’t spoken up because I doubted that I might, just possibly, be right.

This experience was a good reminder that the human brain acquires and processes so much information that even the most unlikely tidbits and facts may very well be stored in the subconscious mind. We just need to give ourselves permission to take that deep breath (or several) and take a leap of faith, or trust, or whatever, that we do know what we’re talking about. Sometimes, often, we know even more than we think or know that we know.

For information about this topic, I invite you to read my blogs titled Hypnosis and Memory Recall and Hypnosis to Overcome Test Anxiety.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016

The Paris Window

One of my favorite techniques to help a client find out what is really going on in the person’s life—i.e., the cause or foundation of the issue he or she wishes to address—is the Paris Window. This is a diagram of a box containing four squares. Each square features a question that is designed to clarify and bring the subconscious motivation behind the unwanted behavior into conscious awareness.

This is what a Paris Window looks like:

Q: How do you feel about the problem? 1.	Q: How do you think other people feel about your problem? 2.
Q: How do you feel about how other people feel about your problem? 3.	The Actual Problem 4.

I use the Paris Window during the cognitive (alert) portion of the hypnotherapy. It is a particularly effective way to discover any underlying, subconscious motivation(s) behind the person’s unwanted behaviors that may be preventing the desired behavior change. One benefit of this technique is that it is very visceral: the person can literally watch a story about the origins or basis of this subconscious resistance evolve while writing the responses to each question (ideomotor response). Once the issue is revealed, I discuss it with the client in terms of his or her beliefs and feelings about the problem/conflict, motivations to change or get rid of the unwanted behavior and strategies to accomplish this. Finally, when the person is in hypnosis, I incorporate specific suggestions in his or her hypnotic script to help the person implement these new beliefs or behaviors to help actualize this self-improvement goal.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2016