Having spent a much needed and truly wonderful anniversary weekend away with my wife… I arrived home in time to enjoy my garden basking in the sunshine and looking in need of refreshment… So the sprinklers came out for some corners of the garden and the hose pipe with its variety of settings got sprayed here, there and everywhere…

The fruit garden, my rose beds, the hanging baskets, inside the greenhouse (summer bulbs are popping their heads up!), in the summer bedding areas and so on…

In one corner of the garden, I get hypnotised more than in others… Outside the utter zen-like bliss of spending time flitting between mindlessness and mindfulness, is one area that hypnotises more than others, and let me explain the reasons behind this phenomena…

Ok, so I have a row of four penstemons… Penstemons are beautiful and though they do not originate from these shores… They are very characeteristic of an English cottage garden. Aside from the beauty and general loveliness… Why might these penstemons be hypnotising more so than the other beguiling aspects of my garden?

These four penstemons were a gift from someone very close to me… He had bought them at the same time as buying some for his own, much loved garden… Most importantly, he had bought them while attending a lecture by one of the world leading authorities on penstemons… I know, I know, I initially thought the same: “zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”

However, the lecturer and world authority that lives in a neighbouring street has hand reared a selection of penstemons and I have four of these beauties in my garden, in a row, not too far from my brightly coloured, flowering Rhodedendrums… As I get close to them, I water them in a more meticulous way… I am careful… I make sure the siol is fed and I weed that area more thoroughly than elsewhere… Why oh why?

Well because they mean so much. Not only were they a gift from someone I love dearly, who had obviously been incredibly thoughtful… But they were grown by a world-leading authority… (and talk about a niche, eh?!)… Anyway, such a perspective that I have, influences my behaviour massively… It changes how I feel about them and how I treat them. What is going on here?

Authority is very hypnotic… It is a hypnotic principle, it is a point of much discussion in persuasion fields and the world of influence and the reason advertisers use authority figures to sell their goods…

The moment that someone demonstrates that they know what they are talking about, that they are the person with the expertise and the moment they congruently state, “I am an expert in this field,” this principle of authority begins to work powerfully in their favour and their statements and communication begins to take on the force of hypnotic suggestions.

So now, that influence extends itself through my plants!?

Because I have high expectations of these plants, I treat them in a way that is likely to enhance that happening… My mindset and expectation begins to create the reality in and of itself… And I see it happening, yet allow it to be so…

Ok, so I guess I also feel some responsibility to ensure they bloom beautifully this summer, they were a gift after all… But you know what I am talking about and I am sure you also know that when authority is in town, people react and respond in some amazingly hypnotic ways…