Dressing the Part

(This blog was originally posted on December 28, 2014)

Photo by Rick Hustead

         Whenever I have to get something done, I dress the part. When I was working as a magazine editor, I wore a suit to work just about every day. I don’t know why I started doing that. Perhaps it was because, having just returned from England after living abroad for seven years, I was used to seeing professional people looking like they had somewhere important to go. Monday through Friday, on the London Underground, at bus stations and walking around the city, everyone looked so chic. (Of course, people dressed the part in Los Angeles, too; but since most people drove cars out here it was hard to know how they really looked from outside the vehicle.) But I also discovered that it was easier for me to get and maintain that mind-set for my work throughout the day.

My days as a magazine editor are long over, but I continue to dress for whatever part or role I am playing on a given day. If am going to give a presentation about hypnotherapy or work with my hypnotherapy clients, I wear business attire. If I am going out to the barn to ride my horse or just hang out with him and do chores around the barn, I put on my “horse clothes”: i.e., britches, shirt or sweater, half-chaps, Mountain Horse Jod boots. Right before I get on Galahad, I am also wearing gloves and my Troxel riding helmet. If I am competing in a horse show, I wear specific riding gear for that: white britches, white blouse and stock tie, black dressage coat and my tall dressage boots—plus white leather gloves, hair-net and stock pin. If I am going out for the evening, I wear appropriate attire for whatever the activity or event I am attending.

Finally, dressing the part helps to increase my self-confidence in my ability to do whatever task is at hand. When I was dressed like an editor—or what I thought an editor should wear—I also looked and acted like an editor. As a hypnotherapist, it is important to me that I can convey a sense of confidence, experience, calm and support to my clients. Sometimes, I also wear a name badge to reinforce this image when I work with someone for the first time. When I’m at the barn, I feel more confident and secure about my activities knowing that I am wearing protective gear that is specifically designed to prevent serious injury if I fall off a horse or get kicked or stepped on.

Guess what? I even put on something that tells me (and my subconscious mind) it’s time to relax and unwind from the stresses of the day when I am just planning to hang out at home reading or watching television. I know that my SCM should “know” how to relax as instinctively as it knows how to do most of the activities I mentioned above. However, sometimes I even have to remind myself that it’s okay to just do one thing (or nothing) at a time. In a way, the clothing functions like the critical area of my subconscious mind, as Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., described in his Theory of Mind. This is the area of the mind that rejects any unknown or unfamiliar (painful) information for the SCM. So, to put this model into effect, when I am at work seeing a client, my official attire reminds my mind rejects distracting message units about the time I will spend with Galahad later in the day. And when I am with my horse, my riding garments remind me to focus on him.

Especially the boots: they have a reinforced steel toe to protect my feet in case I start thinking about something other than my boy, who likes to remind me where my attention should be focused should it drift away from him.

                                                                                                                 

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/.

© 2017

Masters of Suggestibility

(This blog was originally posted on May 2, 2014)

Photo by Jennifer Berkowitz

Have you ever attended a really good concert? Rock, pop, country—it really doesn’t matter what the genre happens to be—have a lot in common: The singer(s) and other band members engage the audience through their music and banter; and the audience, which typically comprises devoted fans wearing T-shirts or hats with the performers’ logo, knows every lyric to every song they ever wrote. There is always plenty of activity going on, on-stage: musicians or back-up entertainers are dancing, lights are flashing; there are changes of costume and/or scenery. There may also be a video screen projecting images or scenes from a previous gig to look at and further overload the audience with an impossible number of visual and auditory stimuli (sensory overload). By the time the band is halfway through the first song, the audience is mesmerized and the singer(s) have become masters of their fans’ suggestibility.

Several years ago, my friends and I experienced one of the best and, for me, most interesting concerts I have ever been to. (I will get to that in a minute.) I think that anybody who has ever attended a Bon Jovi concert would agree that this band puts on an incredibly entertaining, rocking show. They went through a catalog of about 20 songs, practically nonstop, for two hours. Even when lead singer Jon Bon Jovi—who is one of the most energetic and charismatic performers I have ever seen—disappeared offstage for a couple of minutes to drink some water and change clothes, the band rocked on loudly and exuberantly until he popped back into the spotlight and continued to work the audience. Most if not every other person at Staples Center that night was a devoted fan of the band and knew all of the lyrics to their songs. All Bon Jovi had to do was hold his microphone out at the audience and thousands of voices would automatically sing along with him.

But by 11 p.m. or so, the night was wearing on, and everyone’s ears were probably buzzing from the loud noise. Exhaustion was starting to set in. After all, most of the fans in this audience were in their late-forties or fifties, if not older. We had been at work all day and we still faced a long drive back to wherever we lived so we could get to bed and then get up early to start another workday, the next morning. Meanwhile, the band was still going strong and cranking out one song after another. Bon Jovi must have felt the reduced energy in his audience because this is when he suddenly encouraged everyone to get up and sing and dance with the music. “I still have a whole catalog of songs in my head to go through!” he told us. Of course, the revelry started up again and we continued to rock on until the concert was over.

This was when the concert became truly interesting to me in terms of being able to observe behavior and suggestibility. I was fascinated to witness and impressed to actually experience the hypnotic modalities I have studied, hard at work on everyone at the Staples Center that night. Here was a very charismatic and talented band whose lead singer was literally telling thousands of people what to sing or say or do without really ever having to issue a direct instruction to the audience. There was no question that Jon Bon Jovi was running this show, because he was standing/walking/dancing around the stage (special place or authority), wearing either his trademark jacket emblazoned with the stars and stripes motif or leather vest (special clothes or authority) and singing those Billboard hit songs (special words or doctrine) or reminiscing about highlights of the band’s storied career. Bon Jovi only had to point his microphone and those of us with emotional suggestibility immediately got the inference: he wanted us to sing along with him! (So we did.) Later on, when he specifically told (instructed) his audience that he wanted us to continue to enjoy the music we obliged and stood to sing and dance some more (physical suggestibility) until the gig was over.

Hmm… I wonder if I was hypnotized?

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/.

© 2017

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.

• “Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad.” – P.D. East

• “A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.” – Latin Proverb

• “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” – Vincent van Gogh

• “There are blessings in all experiences—the losses and the wins.” – Troy Amdahl

• “Wise men don’t need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.” – Lao Tzu

• “People will do as you do, not as you say.” – Bruce Van Horn

• “Good things take time.” – Lolly Daskal

• “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia." – Charles Schulz

• “Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi

• “Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.” – Confucius

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/.

© 2017