Lance Armstrong motivates Vince Vaughn in the film Dodgeball by invoking negative emotions that Vince feels a compulsion to move away from. Or maybe it’s just silly and funny.
Be careful however as this way of motivation has two problems. The first is that you need something compelling to move towards otherwise you will only move forward until you are no longer feeling pain, then you fall back into your old habits and don’t take action again until you’re experiencing pain again. (This is the classic pattern of the yo-yo dieter. Diet until you are thin, no pain from being overweight, start eating again, feel pain, start diet again, etc.)
The second issue with this way of motivating yourself is that it’s not a good thing to focus on things you don’t want as that’s inevitably what you’ll end up with. So use this sparingly!
My apologies for continually harping on about money and economic matters, but the reason why the western economies are in such as mess is down in part to confused ideas about money and wealth. A good example is the terms we use to describe certain kinds of money or ways that money or wealth are represented.
For example; why is it that credit cards (credit has positive connotations if you look it up in a dictionary) actually put you in debt to the bank? While debit cards (with which you can pay with your own money) actually use your own credit.
Even from the banks point of view, using a credit card leaves you indebted to them while using your debit card allows you to use the credit that you have stored with them.
And does owning a large amount of mortgages mean you have accumulated many assets (yes, if you keep collecting interest) or a liability (when people start to default on their mortgages).
So when you buy a house, have you invested in property as an asset (when house prices increase), or have you taken on a liability (maintenance, bills and increasing cost of mortgage repayments)?
The answers aren’t black and white, it’s up to you to make up your mind depending on the circumstances. It’s just more evidence that you have to question the prevailing ways of describing the world.
In the second part of the documentary Frontline Persuaders, marketers explain how advertising has moved away from explaining the features of products and towards the emotional benefits that a consumer gets from buying products.
The idea is to create meaning system for consumers through which they get identity and an understanding of the world. Douglas Atkin explains how he started to research cults, fans and devotees in order to find out how people become involved in them in order to create that devotion in consumers for brands. People that love Harley Davidson, Mac’s and the Grateful Dead all have something in common that explains their rabid devotion.
Douglas breaks it down into two key points:
1. People want to belong.
2. They want to make meaning (of their lives and the world around them).
It’s easy to think of brands and advertising that try to sell you a lifestyle, a belief-system, a way of thinking about life and the world. I don’t know how you’ve experienced advertising but I’ve always found it pretty transparent. ‘Buy this and you’ll be cool, you’ll be part of the in crowd’. And to be honest I’ve always found it pretty offensive. Someone is telling me what I’ll BE when I buy their product!?
The creepiest part of this documentary is the engineering that is applied to the Song Airline brand. In stead of saying something is great, employees are encouraged to say: ‘That’s so song’. I don’t care what kind transcendent lifestyle experience it is to fly with Song, that’s all it is at the end of the day, an airline. All in all, highly pretentious. And as the presenter points out, despite millions spent on marketing and advertising you’d find it to difficult to come by evidence that shows how successful this kind of marketing is at selling particular products.
What is does succeed in doing however is creating the mindset in many people that purchasing certain things and services actually enhances you personally in some respect. Don’t buy into that.
The first part of the documentary Frontline Persuaders explains how an airline is looking to start a new branch of it’s business to compete against other low-fair airlines.
They show how they have built up a profile of their ideal customer in order to get an idea of how to best market their airline. They probably built up this profile using market research data and information about spending habits from supermarkets, shops and banks.
As one of the commentators points out, it seems that a lot of advertising is becoming more and more focused on grabbing our attention in any conceivable way just to get through the noise of all the other advertising out there. I’m sure we all remember some really interesting, shocking or funny ads, but can’t remember what they were supposed to be selling. Marketers will say that it’s more about gaining repeated exposure with consumers, but that’s something that’s hard to measure.
Contrast that kind of advertising with traditional sales letters, where you can measure the success rate of different kinds of copy and adjust it to get the best results.
PBS has a really good 90 minute documentary on their site about how advertisers, marketers, think tanks and politicians are using the latest ideas in psychology and memetics to persuade you to buy their products or vote for their political party.
I’ll write an analysis of some of the concepts and ideas presented in the documentary at some point.
Although hypnosis and trance have been in use for thousands of years, it still suffers from many misconceptions and misunderstandings that shroud it in mystery for the average person. But slowly mainstream science is starting to investigate it more thoroughly and you can read about the latest research at Mind Hacks
The editorial of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute discusses a recent study that found that hypnosis can be successfully used in breast cancer surgery to reduce pain, nausea, painkiller use, tiredness and emotional impact of the surgical procedure.
I’m still incredibly fascinated by the fact that someone speaking to you in a certain way can affect your mind by literally changing where blood flows to in your brain.
To be honest, on my more paranoid days I wonder if certain groups of people have been using hypnosis on an unsuspecting public for a while. Just listen to the ‘unspeak’ of politicians or the mesmerising phrases used in advertising. Maybe they just spread a meme that ridiculed the idea to keep people from taking it too seriously?
If you want to learn this powerful skill (drug-free pain control / powerful sales techniques / protection from unwanted influence / engaging copy-writing) then I suggest you check out probably the best course by the best Hypnotist around:
Igor Ledochowski’s Conversational Hypnosis
The term memetic engineering was developed by Leveious Rolando, John Sokol and Gibran Burchett who were researching and observing the behaviour of humans after they were exposed to to certain memes. Memetic engineering is the analysis of an individual or individual’s behavior, the selection of specific memes and the distribution or propagation of those memes with the intent of altering the behavior of others.
Although it’s difficult to predict which memes will take off, it’s certainly possible to follow guidelines and rules to craft your message so that it is as ’sticky’ and ‘contagious’ as it can possibly be.
A good example of memetic engineering is described in this article: Meme, Counter-meme. It describes how Mike Godwin created a maxim in order to counter unproductive discussions on internet forums.
If you are on FaceBook you can join the new Meme Weaver group I’ve created. Then you’ll be able to meet other Meme Weaver readers and share your own ideas, thoughts, videos and articles.
If the above link doesn’t work just type Meme Weaver into the FaceBook search engine.
I had been interested in NLP and Hypnosis for a few years when my friend Magnus invited me to go on a two day Mentalism course by Igor Ledochowski. (Mentalism is the blend of Psychology and magic that performers like Derren Brown and David Blaine practice). Although I have only a passing interest in practising magic I know that many effects make use of the way human psychology works and that’s what interested me most. So we drove down to London for the weekend to see if there was anything for us to learn.
Now Igor is amongst other things an NLP Practitioner and Hypnotherapist and it turned out that some of what he would be teaching would involve using some of the skills from these disciplines. I felt quite a lot anticipation when I sat down in the room with 40 or so other people because I had heard that Igor was good at putting people into deep trances. Well it turns out he is phenomenal at it.
He started off by telling us a story about how Milton Erickson discovered his particular method of hypnosis.. But this wasn’t an ordinary story. Because as I was sitting there, listening to the words, allowing them to run through my mind, I started to feel my arms getting heavy. This feeling started to creep around my body and I found my attention completely transfixed on Igor. I was going into trance and so where the other 39 people in the room. I couldn’t believe what was happening and fought to regain control over my body. But the only part that I could still move was my left big toe, everything else felt warm and good. Yet I couldn’t move a muscle. Out of the corner of my eyes I even saw people’s heads drop towards their chests as they nodded off, and all he was doing was telling us a story about how some other guy discovered how to put people into trance.
That was the first time I had really experienced deep trance and it was one of my first ‘Seeing the Matrix’ moments. When you have an experience like that it makes you realise the power of the mind and how little most people know about it. I wonder why hypnosis still has such a pseudo-scientific image as it’s obviously very powerful and is being used increasingly in the context of mainstream medicine for things like pain control. If I were paranoid I’d think that the powers that be don’t want us to have these kinds of skills and knowledge.
So what where the three things I learned?
1. Go into the state you want to induce in others.
People naturally follow each other into various states; energetic, relaxed etc. So if you want other people around you to start feeling relaxed and at ease you have to feel that way yourself first. Once you do that you’ll find that your voice and body language will reflect this and the people around you will start to feel the same.
2. Pace and Lead.
Hypnotism is nothing more than leading someone through different states, and in order to do that you need to first describe what the other person is experiencing in that moment. For example: ‘You are sitting, reading this sentence, saying the words in your mind’.
Then you lead them into a new thought or feeling; ‘and as you’re sitting there reading this sentence your mind might wander off and start to think about in what ways learning this skill could be useful’.
3. The hypnotic state is something you do to yourself.
This literally blew my mind, though now it seems obvious. A hypnotist isn’t sending out magical brain-waves to put other people into trance. They only help us find that state within ourselves. We are the ones that are creating the bodily sensations and thoughts. That’s why the more you trance you experience the better you get at it.
Remember those people that were nodding off during Igor’s story? Those were actually the people that have been practising hypnosis the most. They’ve built up the skill that allows them to go in to trance very quickly.
Those three points raise many interesting questions. First and foremost: Are people putting themselves in and out of trance all the time naturally? What do you guys think?
Anyway, if you want to find out more about Igor Ledochowski and how you can learn these ‘Jedi-level skills’ yourself, check out his site: Conversational Hypnosis.
For the first part of this article go to Gurus: The Good the Bad and the Ugly Part 1
The Bad and the Ugly
Now as I wrote about last time there seems to be enormous power behind committing to a goal, but don’t let it get too far. Sales tactics employed by gurus often involve implying that if you don’t sign up for their courses or buy their books then you aren’t committing to your goals and you won’t be able to reach them.
They try to put you in a bind, which isn’t really fair if you can’t afford it. I’ve had people try to encourage me to take out loans or use my credit card to sign up for courses costing thousands of pounds. Not a nice thing to do in my opinion.I wonder how many people get in to financial difficulty because they fail to think critically in a situation where their emotions have been pumped up.
To be honest, at some seminars I see people that haven’t smiled or felt good in years. When someone gives them permission to be happy they go all out. It’s fun to watch but they have to realise that the guru didn’t wave his magic wand and make them change. They did it themselves. It’s a bit of a head-trip when you find out how much we are in control of ourselves and how much control we willingly give away. For example when I first became interested in hypnosis I thought it was the hypnotist who was doing something to his client, then I realised that it’s the client that is doing all the work. I was a little bit disappointed at first, I thought hypnosis was a sham… until the full implications hit me.
Some people feel disappointed when they hear that a person they respect or look up to has done something they don’t approve of. No matter how succesfull they appear to be they are still humans. Infidelity, drug-use / abuse and bankruptcy will occur in their lives in the same proportions as the total population.
If you are disappointed it can be an indicator that you are investing too much into another person. At the end of the day you should only take on board what is useful for you and discard what is not. You are responsible for your own life as they are for theirs. Learn to separate the message from the person delivering it otherwise you’ll leave yourself open to disappointment and disillusion.
Finally be wary of any organisations that encourage cult like behaviour. This usually includes separating you from your family, not allowing any disagreement with the leaders, pressure to recruit new customers / clients, coercion into donating more and more money or your free time to their cause.