Selling Girl Scout Cookies at the 88th Academy Awards

(This blog was originally posted on February 29, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Did you watch the 88thAcademy Awards on television? Do you 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 Scout 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 clinical 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/.

© 2018

Body Syndromes: Fight and Reaching Syndrome

(This blog was originally posted on October 16, 2015)

Image courtesy of Microsoft

According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., whenever a person represses or does not express an emotion the displaced energy from that experience is converted into a physical “symptom” of that emotional trauma. The phenomenon is called a body syndrome. There are no nerve endings in the brain; however, sensory perception (e.g., smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch) that begin there send electric impulses that carry this information through the body. These impulses ultimately begin to manifest physical discomfort in areas of the body that are specifically associated with a certain repressed emotion. Once we are aware of which emotion is being manifested, we can treat the syndrome, the Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder stated.

The Fight/Reaching Syndrome affects the arms and hands. Physiological symptoms and diseases that are characterized by these syndromes include: arthritis, blisters, nail-biting, rheumatism, skin rashes or warts.  According to the premise of Body Syndromes, the symptoms of someone who has a Fight Syndrome manifest the sufferer’s subconscious need to defend her- or himself, such as from verbal or physical abuse. Someone who is metaphorically “reaching” for something that is unobtainable, such as a rejecting lover or a promotion the person was denied, might experience one of those physical ailments as a manifestation of Reaching Syndrome.  

People generally do not know what causes this presenting issue when they seek hypnotherapy. Since it is out of my scope of expertise as a certified hypnotherapist to recognize/identify specific symptoms that have a psychological or physiological basis, I refer clients to an appropriate licensed professional to make this diagnosis. However, once this other expert has ruled out a medical etiology of your symptom and provided an appropriate treatment, I can continue to work with you in hypnotherapy with a follow-up referral from that licensed professional. In addition to providing complementary therapeutic benefits and help to alleviate and/or control your discomfort, I can also use hypnosis and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques to help you achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. 

My first step to treating someone who is manifesting a Fight or Reaching Syndrome is to explore what the client is subconsciously fighting or reaching for. Once the possible cause(s) or motivation(s) has been established, I would use systematic desensitization to help the client neutralize the intensity of the stimulus that triggers his or her physical symptom of this syndrome. I would also incorporate guided therapeutic imagery and teach the emotional freedom technique to increase the person’s perception of being able to control and prevail over the emotional triggers of this syndrome. Therapeutic guided-imagery techniques would also be useful tools with which the client can explore different options for resolving the conflict so he or she could focus on and achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals.

               

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/.

© 2018

Thoughts of the Day

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.

• “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” – Mark Twain

• “Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.” – Mary Browne

• “Beauty is how you feel on the inside and it reflects in the eyes.” – Sophia Loren

• “Man is only great when he acts from passion.” – Benjamin Disraeli

• “When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.” – Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

• “Sometimes we just need to experience life without questioning everything.” – Lolly Daskal

• “Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching.” – Unknown

• “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.” – Ray Kroc

• “A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams

• “Instead of asking ‘What’s the problem?’ ask "What’s the creative opportunity?” – Deepak Chopra

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/.

© 2018