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Thursday, April 5, 2018

Suggestibility on Prime Time

(This blog was originally posted on March 3, 2014)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Did you watch the 86th Academy Awards on television on March 2, 2014? Remember when host Ellen DeGeneres asked viewers to retweet the group “selfie” picture that host Ellen DeGeneres took of herself with a handful of Oscar nominees during the broadcast? Did you do it? If so, you weren’t alone: according to a CNN report, 2.7 million people took on her challenge, and the Twitter platform actually crashed for a few minutes. The event was undoubtedly a major advertising and publicity triumph for the Oscars and the company that manufactured the camera they used to take the shot (Samsung)—not to mention the host. This incident was also a great opportunity for me to illustrate how suggestibility and hypnosis work in real life.

In my January 16, 2014 blog about hypnotic modalities, 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.) She may not have literally sold an item to her audience, but Ms. DeGeneres did a very handy demonstration of group hypnosis with just a few elements naturally occurring elements:

1. She had authority. As the Oscar host, Ellen DeGeneres had access to all areas of the stage and the audience in the auditorium. A celebrity herself, she also had charisma and charm that helped her to build a rapport with the guests as well as television viewers at home.

2. She had a message. The role of any host at a party or event is to help the guests feel at ease and have a good time so that, hopefully, they will want to come back again. The Academy Awards may be an American event, but it is known around the world. No doubt the Academy and the television network wanted to receive positive reviews and feedback so they could do this again, next year. What better way to get this message out than to take a photograph of some of your guests having a good time and share that image with everyone you know (or who wishes they knew you)?

3. There were plenty of environmental stimuli to overload the subconscious mind and create the hyper-suggestible state: the excitement of being nominated for or having won an Academy Award, or the disappointment of not winning that Oscar, after all; the visual overload of being surrounded by beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes; the amount of time the nominees had already spent posing on the red carpet before the awards began; the anxiety/stress that they must have been experiencing while they waited for the award to be bestowed in their category; waiting and wondering who would win an Oscar; the glamorous environment in the Kodak Theater and the stage… You get the picture.

4. Ms. DeGeneres used the right language to get the group of nominees to do the photo with her. Not only did she have the advantage of being the host for the night, but she knew how and when to cajole one of the A-list actors sitting in the front rows to join the group. Soon, some actors just jumped into the shot without waiting for an invitation.

5. Watching the scene from home on our televisions or computers, etc., it looked like everyone in the shot was smiling and having fun. Didn’t you wish you could have been in on that picture, too? (Or one just like it, but with your friends and family?) When Bradley Cooper finally snapped the picture, the audience at home and in the theater was ready and waiting to be asked (or told/playfully challenged) to retweet the image so many times that Twitter couldn’t cope with all the traffic.

6. And hey, presto: 2.7 million people accepted and acted on Ellen DeGeneres’ suggestion.

Now, that is impressive.

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/.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Words of Wisdom, Part 2

(This blog was originally posted on February 23, 2014)

Me with Chris Cox at the Equine Affaire

Pomona, California in 2009

Photo courtesy of Sara Fogan

In Part 2 of this blog, I will share more advice and words of wisdom from a few of my favorite horsemen and horsewomen. Again, while these pearls of wisdom were originally spoken in the context of training horses and riders, the main theme of each of these messages is also relevant for, and applicable to, many other human/life experiences.

Gina Miles: “Ride past the last jump. Have a plan for where you are going.” Whether you are riding your horse on a Grand Prix jumping course or you are driving to the grocery store, it is important to know not only where you want to go and how you plan to get there. It is also imperative that you know what you are going to do once you arrive at your destination. Life carries on and time passes whether you are doing something or not, so keep setting new goals that will continue to motivate you to succeed after you have accomplished this one.

Gina Miles also advised: “Don’t let one mistake ruin the ride; go on to the next movement.” Everybody makes mistakes; the trick is to not allow one error paralyze your progress. If you can’t remember information to answer one of the questions on a test, don’t waste time worrying about that problem. Answer the other questions on the test, and go back to tackle that item if you have time. Once a mistake has happened, it is over; but there can and will be other opportunities to regain your advantage if you allow yourself to move on. As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously advised his compatriots during World War II: “Stay calm and carry on.”

Monty Roberts: “Low adrenaline equals high learning; high adrenaline equals low learning.” I use this advice every day, whether I am handling one of my trainer’s stallions or dealing with rush-hour freeway traffic. I know that the more calm and relaxed I feel, the better I can focus on what I need to do to accomplish my goal. The key to achieving a goal is to maintain a low-energy state so that high-energy emotions (e.g., fear, frustration, anger, excitement) do not get a chance to interfere with what you are doing.

Monty Roberts also believed: “If you give yourself fifteen minutes, it will take all day. If you give yourself all day, it will take fifteen minutes.” One of the biggest lessons I have learned (repeatedly) from this advice is, it is important to devote my complete attention to the task I am working on while I am doing it. Have you ever noticed how quickly a series of small projects can explode into a major endeavor—especially when you try to accomplish these projects at once or in rapid succession? Multi-tasking has its place, but that place isn’t every place or all of the time. Show yourself some respect by honestly assessing your physical and emotional ability to accomplish a specific task; based on this information, make an honest estimate of how long you believe it will take you to do that one task. When you go to work on that project, allow yourself twice the amount of time you originally estimated it will take, so you don’t have to feel rushed or otherwise pressured to complete the job. (You’ll probably complete it within the original time estimate, too.)

Jane Savoie: “You have time.” It is easy to get so caught up in the excitement of an experience that you can’t (or refuse to) stop doing it. Put on the brakes, anyway! Ignore the temptation—no matter how strong it is—to rush through the training or keep repeating what you have just learned so you can “perfect” it. Everything takes time to learn and even longer to master. A young child or a young horse has a short attention span to learn something new, but adults can also become overwhelmed and burned out when they focus a lot of time working on just one thing. Spread out the amount of time you work on a project so you can approach it from a fresh, enthusiastic and focused mind-set. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so the saying goes; but it was built. You have all the time you need to complete your project, too.