You know that feeling… When you are at the beach, and however hot or cold it is, as you stroll up to the edge of the sea, whether going for a swim or a paddle… You sense and anticipate the temperature of that water… And what you expect will dramatically effect the actual sensation when your toes meet the water for the first time…
This coming weekend sees my latest hypnotherapy diploma start. It has been fully booked for a while and I am eagerly anticipating getting started with them all.
One of the first lessons I teach on my hypnotherapy training diploma is all about creating expectation.
Before the hypnotherapy diploma even begins, I write asking them what they expect from me as the tutor and what their expectations of the course are. I also state some of my own expectations from them as hypnotherapy students… Also on day one, we discuss one of the most important things… Our hypnotherapy client’s expectations.
I tell my students that it doesn’t really matter who you are, how much you know, how much experience you have had being a hypnotherapist or hypnotising others, the client expects something, and you have to make sure it is positive in one way or another.
Many schools of hypnotherapy, particularly cognitive behavioural hypnotherapists believe that hypnosis as a phenomena is purely about meeting expectations and behaving according to those expectations.
This essential piece of understanding does not only apply to students of hypnotherapy or professional hypnotherapists. Even if you’re just having fun with hypnosis; learning it for your own use, for your own self-improvement in some way, to communicate more persuasively or anything else, this is one concept that can be expanded to many other areas of life.
To create a positive sense of expectation in another person (a client, a child, a co-worker, etc.), act confidently…. It is as simple as that. Behave as if you know the outcome… This is not too dissimilar from the notion discussed last week when I wrote about the placebo effect in hypnotherapy.
Behave in a way that assumes the most positive and desirable outcome. Believe in it so that you demonstrate congruence… And you’ll create an abundance of expectation. And when people expect things to happen… Those things tend to happen.
I tell my hypnotherapy diploma students that even if they’re not really sure that they are doing things totally correctly, with hypnosis it doesn’t matter much. You cannot do any harm wielding hypnosis! You can if you are incorrectly applying certain therapeutic interventions, but in and of itself, hypnosis is no force for evil.
The simple yet profound process of acting as if you know what you’re doing, and focusing on the client and not on your own thoughts and memories… that’s how you create a sense of congruence and confidence.
If you are not convinced in your own abilities, when a client arrives at your offices, you might be spotted as being nervous in some way and not create the kind of expectation that you need for really effective hypnotherapy.
That’s one of the reasons all my students conduct case studies and get lots of practice before they go out into the world as a qualified hypnotherapist…
When any therapy client knows he’s about to get results…. When they can read it and hear it with every fibre of who and how you are…. Then what they expect is very, very likely to happen… Expectation is an incredibly hypnotic facet.
Non state theorists and researchers have expectation as central to the efficacy of hypnosis. many of those authors I have written about before here on the blog.
Earlier this year, Keith (my business partner) and I made some big decisions about the direction of our business. Keith had asked me for an important meeting.
Him and I sat alone in my office sat at my desk and he was nervous. If I am honest, he made me nervous because he told me he was. When I told him that I was pleased with how he was dealing with this, he told me that I may not be when he had finished proposing what he wanted us to do with our business.
So I got nervous.
He expected issues with me and I started feeling like I was going to have issues too.
Keith and I have had a long, close relationship, and we want to take our business together to an entirely new level and so Keith presented to me some ideas and thoughts that he believed were the way forward.
I loved them. We have since implemented much of that plan and are revelling in what we have done and our business and the businesses we took on at the same time are currently thriving despite this uncertain economic time.
I loved the entire process and they way that we are going ahead with a very new way of working together. There have been and are going to continue to be some challenges ahead for us both, and we are both going to encounter all kinds of fun and games on the way to where we want to be… But let me tell you what got me on board at that time…
Despite being nervous about talking to me, despite his worries about how I would respond… I have that effect on people, my students will tell you that it can be an invigorating experience to spend time in close quarters with me… He expected it to be successful.
Keith expects the entire thing to be successful to the levels that I want and need. He expects it to the extent that he was utterly congruent and determined and believable in every way – I was and am on board entirely with how we are changing things in our business.
We both now expect. We have high expectations and I wanted to share this with you today…
You, my regular reader… Are going to be given a great deal more from us. We have so many exciting things in the pipeline that we are going to share with you, I think you’ll be as excited about it as I am right now.
So I’ll be back soon announcing some other things that are going to be different around here.
You do realise that my aim today was to create expectation for what we have in store for you soon, don’t you? 😉
