Covert hypnosis is the ability to influence other people unconsciously. This program shows you how to do that by using techniques such as getting a person to focus on one specific piece of information or idea, or offering them a choice between two ideas. You are trying to resonate, or bypass, the critical factor of their rational logical mind and hit those drives and those core desires that
motivate human behavior to get them to do what you want them to do, and what is in their best interests.
There are two stages in the Covert Hypnosis Model (diagram below) where the rubber meets the road. The first is turning desires into outcomes and the second is turning outcomes into actions. You can make mistakes in other areas of the model and get by. Here, you cannot. This is about making the first happen!
Metaphor
Transform VocabularyStory
Competent Confident Not Arrogant Leading Questions DISTRACTIONKEY: CONTEXT/ENVIRONMENT CHANGE
Multiple Maps
Outcome Stimulate Desires CAUSE All Possible Outcomes Roads ACTION HABITS Bigger BELIEFS Easy + Bigger ACTIONS Decisions (Choices) Beliefs (Attitudes) Action (Behavior) Cause Reduce Meaning Failure REGRET PAINYOU
Body Language Build: Trust Comfort Liking Fascination Admiration Elicit Desire Elicit Outcomes Elicit Obstacles Elicit Resources Create New MapsPROBLEM 1) Big Picture 2) Their (words) 3) Their (metaphors) 4) Their (effect) 5) Body Language 6) Excuses and Legitimate Reasons 7) Their Drivers/ Desires 8) Their Maps I Create Movies
The Covert Model for Change
The Model in a Nutshell
1. Perform an Intervention following the Covert Model for Change. Establish rapport with your client/customer. Show that you care about their
wants/desires/needs. Let them know you will help them reach their goal. Follow the Covert Hypnosis Model to elicit their desires, outcomes, obstacles, and resources.
Utilize these Techniques with their Desires in Mind
Distraction. Utilize bizarre tools to help people over obstacles. EMDR is a tool that may fit in here. You can distract the left-brain into confusion (a main tool of Ericksonian Hypnosis) while they are performing an unconscious action, and introduce new material, and thoughts, and lay down new neural pathways.
Leading Questions. Every person a real estate salesperson talks to can be said to be “thinking about moving” often, since everyone passes For Sale signs, and sees properties for sale all the time. Therefore, you can take advantage of that by saying something like, “You have been thinking of moving all year, and now, what are the features that are most important to you?” This presupposes that the person has been thinking of moving. He may or may not have been, but he will now.
You can create questions that seem to make sense and that fit somewhat to their experience, and, therefore, the prospect will come to believe that it’s true.
Elizabeth Loftus has provided many great research projects on memory. Fact: People think thousands and thousands of thoughts. Because you suggest it, the individual constructs possible memories of what you have suggested. They will then tell you precisely what you have suggested.
As early as one year old and maybe earlier, infants "fill in" where their senses have left them without information. Because of this, our brains adapt to our environment. Unfortunately, this means that our memory is our "story" and not anything like a VCR on "play." Two people seeing the same catch in the end zone will tell you two completely different points of view as to whether the foot was "in" or "out."
Police officers will happily tell you of hundreds of times two people see
completely different events even if they are married, best friends or standing right next to each other while an event happens.
During a recent study of memory recall and the use of suggestive interviewing, UC Irvine cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus successfully planted false memories in volunteers of several study groups -- memories that included such unlikely events as kissing frogs, shaking hands with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, and witnessing a demonic possession.
Her success at planting these memories challenge the argument that suggestive interviewing may reliably prompt real memories instead of planting false ones. A pioneer in false memory research and Distinguished Professor of Social Ecology at UCI, Loftus presented her latest research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting.
Loftus conducted her study by having volunteers conduct a set of actions that mixed the common place (flipping a coin) with the unusual and even bizarre (crushing a Hershey's kiss with a dental floss container). Later, her research team asked volunteers to imagine additional actions they performed that day, such as kissing a frog. At a future time, participants were asked to recall their actions on that specific day. Ayanna Thomas, a doctoral student in Loftus'
research group, found that 15 percent of the study's volunteers claimed they had actually performed some of the actions they had only imagined.
In another study, Loftus showed how false memories can be planted with a visual. Loftus and her colleagues exposed volunteers to a fake print
advertisement describing a visit to Disneyland where they would meet Bugs Bunny. Later, 33 percent of these volunteers claimed they knew or remembered the event happening to them. (Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. character and has never appeared at Disneyland.) The false memory rate was boosted when
people were given multiple exposures to the fake advertisement. In one study, 36 percent of those given three exposures said they met Bugs Bunny, compared to only 9 percent in a control condition. Loftus' collaborators on this study included Kathryn Braun-LaTour, Melissa Grinley and Jacquie Pickrell.
These studies continue three decades of research by Loftus proving that memory is highly susceptible to distortion and contamination.
Creating Stories/Movies. Your goal is to appropriately get the idea across that your client is competent and confident. We say appropriate because there are certain situations in which a person just is not competent and we don’t want them to believe that they are. For instance, a 15 year old will not be competent to drive a car. We will not encourage that they are. But, a 45-year-old man can, and should, believe that he is competent and confident enough to ask an attractive woman on a date.
Transformational Vocabulary. Use appropriate transformational vocabulary. If they say, “There is a cloud over me all the time,” you can say, “there is always a silver lining in every cloud.”
2. Create Multiple Maps (use emotion) to lead them to their outcome. Be thorough, eliciting ALL obstacles using probing questions. Elicit resources and include all of these in the MAP(s) you create.
The reason almost everyone fails to reach their goal is because an obstacle appears, which was not charted on their map.
Pain is a far greater motivator than pleasure. This emotion should be utilized to gain momentum and eliminate inertia. Percolate the outcome with emotion.