We may ask; “Did you hear me?” to which they quickly respond with; “Huh? Yeah…” Parents sometimes experience this when they are correcting their teenager. The teenager rolls the eyes or looks everywhere else except for in the eyes of their parent. All too often this happens. Not only has it happened to us, but we have also done it to others.

Who Are You Really Listening To?

We have all been there where someone is pouring their heart out to us and we are genuinely listening, but then something pops into our mind (out of nowhere it seems!) and we begin to dwell on it. We start carrying on a conversation in our head concerning a situation or circumstance going on in our life, forgetting about the conversation we were having with the person across from us. This can all happen in a matter of minutes. This leaves the other person feeling like they are not important and are a burden to us.

I believe we all desire to be genuine listeners and to resist the temptation of carrying on a conversation in our head while talking with someone. The simple fact is there will always be something we can dwell on in our mind while others are talking to us.

If we acknowledge this first, we will prepare for its arrival and can deal with it appropriately. It is similar to a nation receiving intel on how and where an enemy is going to attack. Once they have the information they can be prepared for the enemy. In our case the enemy is the very thoughts of our mind.

How to Give Your Undivided Attention

First off, whether we say it aloud to the individual or simply to ourselves, we must acknowledge the person being very important to us and so therefore we are all ears before them. They are so important they have our full undivided attention. Attention is divided when we are so called listening to them while we are really listening to our head.

Full undivided attention is when we are giving both our ears to the person and listening to every word. If we can establish that people are important and we really do care about what they are saying, we will listen better. This is not to say things will still not creep up in our mind, but that brings us to the next step.

We can be all ears for the person we are talking with and still things will pop up in our minds. Sometimes this is triggered by something the person said. Sometimes it is just a worthless thought. No matter what type of thought it is I have to shut it down because I am presently in a conversation with somebody else thinking about what they are saying. I can come back to myself later on. We have the ability to take every single thought captive and that’s what we must do.

Are the Lights On But Nobody’s Home?

Okay, how do we do that? When you find yourself drifting into a conversation in your head, bring it to a halt. In other words stop thinking about it and go back to thinking about what the person is saying. We daydream when we have been dwelling on the thought too long.

The ‘lights are on, but nobody is home’ phenomenon sets in because we have given too much time to the thought which crept in our mind. Stop the thought. While yes, it is true that God has created our brain to have the awesome ability of thinking on many things at one time, we can only focus on one thing at a time. We can only focus on one thought at a time. If we allow ourselves to dwell on the thought in our mind rather than the conversation at hand, we will be focused on the thought. We have to stop the thought.

Try this exercise. Take a moment and think about where you would like to go on your next vacation. What would you like to do? How much fun would you have? Okay, so you got the dream vacation? Now, what do you have to accomplish at work or home tomorrow? What did you notice took place when you went from thinking about your dream vacation to work or home? What happened in your mind?

Did you switch gears from vacation to work? You were so focused on creating that dream vacation and then you easily began focusing on work or home. This exercise is what we must practice when having conversations with people. It will help us to stay focused on what the individual is saying.

Listening for Real

The next thing we must do is be a genuine listener. The conversation in our head is a big obstacle to good and quick listening, but if we do not genuinely listen we are no better off. Genuine listening not only involves cutting off the thoughts in our mind and focusing on the person. It involves not interrupting them while they are talking.

All too often we jump in with our own experiences and thoughts about what the person is going through or dealing with in the attempt to help them. This is not genuine listening. Genuine listening involves allowing the person to get off their chest what troubles or concerns them without interruption.

Many times people are simply looking for someone to listen to them not offer advice or solutions. We are not genuine listening when we are looking for the place where we can interrupt the conversation with our advice and our solution to help the person out.

This may be a form of listening, but we are really listening for something we can relate to, have experienced, or have knowledge of in order to tell the person what they should or should not do. This is not genuine listening. Genuine listening is staying within the boundaries of thinking and focusing only on what the person is saying. There are no preconceived ideas or interruptions.

True Listening is a Gift

It is easy to go off into la la land and it is easy to interrupt with advice and solutions. It takes practice, practice, more practice, and good effort to be a genuine listener. A genuine listener truly cares about the individual talking to them. Remember, be quick to listen and slow to speak. The gift of listening is one of the best presents we can give to our spouse, children, friend, relative, co-worker, employee, etc.

Tune in to what the other person is saying.

More than a few people who’ve seen me speak have been surprised, but I’m an introvert by nature and an extrovert by training. I’ve had to pick up these skills to overcome my awkward social skills and that’s why I like to share what I’ve found to work, and what I want to learn more about.

Here’s something I’ve found to help me open up conversations, give people a lift, and raise my self-esteem at the same time.

How To Give A Good Compliment

There’s nothing like a warm, sincere compliment to make your day. Instead of waiting for one, why not give one out? Take it from me, the more you give, the more you find you’ll receive.

1) Make your compliment specific.

“That necklace looks really good on you” makes a bigger impact compared to “you look really good today”. The more specific the better, it makes the person feel like you notice them.

2) Back up your compliment.

Don’t just stop at “that necklace looks really good on you”. Your compliment becomes stronger when you say why you think so; “that necklace looks really good on you because it matches your eyes”.

3) Ask a question with your compliment.

And if you want to use it as a conversational starter, ask a question about the subject of your compliment; “that necklace looks really good on you because it matches your eyes. Where did you find it?”.

Why Giving Compliments Raises Your Self-Esteem

It takes confidence and self-esteem to notice good things about others and to make the first caring move to tell them about it

When I first started giving compliments I was awkward and shy about it. I kept wondering if I’d offend them in some way or make people suspicious about what I wanted from them.

I’ve since discovered that a sincere compliment is always a welcome boost to someone’s day. There will be those that reject it or will even argue with you, but that’s usually their problem and not yours. A compliment is like a gift, if someone doesn’t want your gift you’ll still end up owning it. The best way to accept one is also like a gift, just say ‘thank you’.

You’ll also find when you start noticing good things about people, you’ll notice more good things about you too! And the more you do, the more your own self-esteem will grow.

How did I shift the beliefs of a woman with a death wish into one so excited about living she took up salsa lessons? How did I persuade a man who had been carrying the burden of guilt for over 40 years that it was time to forgive himself? How did I use the power of words to propel my coaching success to become the fastest promoted senior coach in the history of one of the largest training companies in Singapore?

In the Secrets of Changing Minds series I reveal step by step the key communication tips & strategies from NLP and indirect hypnosis you can use to change minds and transform beliefs.

Become A Time Traveller

I thought I’d finished this series with the most important key, but it turns out I still have something left to share

Changing someone’s mind doesn’t just mean changing their perspectives, it can also mean changing the way they think through time.

People can be stuck in a way of thinking not just from a perspective, but also from a fixed focus on either the past, present or future. A sneaky way you can change someone’s mind is to use your language to change when they’re focusing on as well as what.

Look Back From The Future, What Do You See?

To get people to change their state from feeling stressed over a present problem into a positive focus on solutions, I’d ask something like this;

“Imagine tomorrow that you’ve already resolved this problem successfully. How would things look, feel and sound differently?”

You bring them forward in time and get them to look back at now as if it’s the past, and ask them what’s different.

How Have You Already Achieved This Goal?

If I needed to help them find steps towards a desired outcome to which they have no idea how to get to, I’d ask;

“So imagine in the future already having achieved this goal, looking back at now, what were the steps you took that helped you get there?”

So instead of looking from the present to the future and planning how to get there, we focus on the successful future already accomplished, look back to the present and plan backwards.

How Would You Know When You’ve Already Made This Change?

The 2 questions above work when the other person already knows what she wants. But what happen when she doesn’t? That’s where the miracle question from Solutions Focused Brief Therapy works very well:

“Imagine that tomorrow somehow, in some way, this whole problem has been overcome. How would you know that things are different? What would you see, hear or feel?”

How You’ve Been Sold With This Technique

This technique is often used in sales. Someone might say;

“I know it looks expensive now, but after you’ve used it for years and saved all the maintenance costs you would have paid with the other machines, you’ll realize it was a fantastic deal.”

The 3 Keys To Changing Minds Through The Future

Confused? You might already have noticed the 3 keys to shifting time as a way to change someone’s mind.

1) Talking about the present in the past tense. Looking back from the future at now, so that what you’ve learnt reading here adds to your magic bag of mind-changing tricks.

2) Presupposing a more positive future. If you’re going to make a future, might as well make a good one. You use the trick of going into the future to presuppose a positive one in which problems have been solved and outcomes achieved, and look back at the more problematic present to see how you got there.

By the way, pessimists are great at this technique, only they often create a worse future to look back from!

3) Noticing what’s different. The core question is to notice what’s different about having a positive future experience compared to a negative present one, so you have the keys to knowing what needs to be changed and what a good change would look like.

In actual fact, no-one really travels to the future, but by using this trick of orientating them to a better future they can experience now instead of a present in which they’re stuck, they activate the wealth of positive states and resources which they already have.

Still confused? Well, confusion is the first step towards new learnings Leave a comment with your questions so you won’t be confused after.

How did I shift the beliefs of a woman with a death wish into one so excited about living she took up salsa lessons? How did I persuade a man who had been carrying the burden of guilt for over 40 years that it was time to forgive himself? How did I use the power of words to propel my coaching success to become the fastest promoted senior coach in the history of one of the largest training companies in Singapore?

In the Secrets of Changing Minds series I reveal step by step the key communication tips & strategies from NLP and indirect hypnosis you can use to change minds and transform beliefs.

What To Do When All My Smarty-Pants NLP Tricks Failed

It’s what you must have from the start and it’s what pulls you through until the end. It’s the simplest key and also the hardest of all. The most important key to changing someone’s mind is just to care.

Not as sexy as giving hypnotic commands, but true.

I rose fast through the ranks of the Akltg coaches, becoming the faster coach ever to be ranked senior coach in the Patterns of Excellence programs. I was a little snotty as I became an NLP elite; I knew more about NLP than most of the coaches and I knew it.

But being the snotty NLP encyclopedia I noticed coaches that didn’t have my gigantic (awe-inspiring really) arsenal of NLP tricks up their sleeves…who still got wonderful results with their participants. What was going on?

I wondered over that for a while, until I gradually came to understand it: those coaches cared. And that caring, more than any coaching technique, was the key ingredient in helping their participants make changes happen.

People are smarter than we give them credit for. We may not always notice it but there’s an inner intuition that lets you know when someone is ‘right’ or when someone is ‘wrong’, you know when someone is acting with your interests at heart or not.

In all my experiences of coaching children, teenagers and adults it’s always been the same: if you can’t come from a position of caring you can’t affect change. If someone senses you’re coming for you more than for them, they’re going to switch off.

When you want to change someone’s mind, change it for them, not just for you. You’ll feel better for it, and you’ll succeed more often.

How did I shift the beliefs of a woman with a death wish into one so excited about living she took up salsa lessons? How did I persuade a man who had been carrying the burden of guilt for over 40 years that it was time to forgive himself? How did I use the power of words to propel my coaching success to become the fastest promoted senior coach in the history of one of the largest training companies in Singapore?

In the Secrets of Changing Minds series I reveal step by step the key communication tips & strategies from NLP and indirect hypnosis you can use to change minds and transform beliefs.

The People You Love Are From Another Planet

I hate to be the one to break this to you but, you know the people you love whom you think are speaking the same language as you are? They’re actually alien invaders from another planet!

Ok, so…maybe they aren’t alien invaders. But they might as well be speaking an alien language, and sometimes it’s even better to treat them that way. Why?

Think of a chair. Really, think of one. Did you think of the one I was? I was imagining the red, slightly worn one on wheels in my room. Fair bet it wasn’t the same. What about an apple? Red or green? Orange? The fruit or the color?

Ok, maybe specific objects would be a tough stretch. But it gets even stretchier when we start moving on to abstract ideas…love anyone? You think we’re thinking of the same thing? Really? Justice? Responsibility? Respect? Courage? Compassion?

We think it’s obvious that when we speak, we’re thinking of the same exact thing, and oftentimes, that’s when misunderstandings happen. And if you don’t understand what people mean, you don’t have a chance of changing their minds.

How To Really Understand Your Best Friends

We all know that everyone has a different map of the world; we all see the world differently and believe different things about life.

So the real question is; how do we navigate other people’s territories so that they become part of our maps?

Well, the answer is simple really, just ask.

Yup, just ask. Sorry for the lack of NLP/hypnosis fireworks.

But how many of us really do?

And more specifically, what do we ask for?

This is where NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) helps loads. You ask for what NLP calls an evidence procedure, things that you can see, hear, and touch.

How To Make Your Loved Ones Feel Loved The Way They Want To

For example, love is such an abstract word. Yet we all want to feel loved, don’t we? And isn’t it also true, that we all have different ideas of what feeling loved really means?

Ever had the experience of quarreling with a loved one, because you thought what you did was loving while she/he didn’t? I know I have.

So what you’d want to find out is how she knows that she’s loved, the way she believes it’s loving, not the way you think it is. There are 3 ways you can ask:

1) How do you know when you’re being loved? What do you see, hear or feel? Is it when someone brings you to see new sights? When she says in that special tone that she loves you? Or when he holds you close?

2) How do you know when someone is being loving? How do you know when someone is being loving to you? When he or she is doing what?

3) What must happen in order for you to feel loved? What must happen, not what you’d like to happen, that makes you feel loved? Must needs come before wants, and these are the first rules you must know to understand their definition of love. Must someone see you at least twice a week? Call you everyday? Give you surprises every once in a while?

You want to turn the noun ‘love’ (an inactive thing) into an action (lov-ing), and therefore something that can be seen, heard and felt.

Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

If you don’t know what someone means by ‘love’, it’s going to be hard to make that person feel loved in the long run by assumption. It’s the same for all the abstract ideas we have, of satisfaction, friendship, respect, responsbility and so on.

If you don’t know what someone means when she says ‘happiness’, you won’t be able to deliver, and only after understanding someone’s model of the world can you have a chance to change their minds.

How did I shift the beliefs of a woman with a death wish into one so excited about living she took up salsa lessons? How did I persuade a man who had been carrying the burden of guilt for over 40 years that it was time to forgive himself? How did I use the power of words to propel my coaching success to become the fastest promoted senior coach in the history of one of the largest training companies in Singapore?

In the Secrets of Changing Minds series I reveal step by step the key communication tips & strategies from NLP and indirect hypnosis you can use to change minds and transform beliefs.

What Is Hypnosis?

Wow. Hypnosis. Is it some Force-like mystic power that grants you dominance and power over hapless bankers and nubile virgins? Unfortunately, the truth isn’t as glamourous (or as nubile). Trance is a lot more common than you think…in fact, you’re in a trance right now.

Hypnosis can be defined as an intense state of concentration towards a singular focus, so much so that external stimuli can be blocked out. The fact is, you’ve been in many trances before. Becoming totally immersed into a movie, so much so that you feel, worry for and even cry over those characters as if they’re real, is a trance. Not seeing the keys that you’ve lost on the shelf right in front of you is also a trance…after all, you just hallucinated that something that is there, isn’t!

Even reading a self-improvement blog, to the extend of not noticing how the bottom of your soles are feeling right now, is also a light trance

The Biggest Myth About Hypnosis

Is that you can be hypnotized into doing something against your will. The father of modern hypnotherapy, Milton Erickson (who was one of the leading models for NLP), did his own research starting in 1932, lasting a period of four to six years in which he hypotized subjects from upwards of 300 to 500 times.

He found that you could not hypnotize someone against their moral will, and that you could not hypnotize someone to do something they knew would harm them. In fact, some of them became downright uncooperative when asked to do so!

But Alvin, what about those TV shows where they make you cluck like a chicken and quack like a duck?

What you may not know about these shows is that the hypnotists have to do suggestability tests; only those who are willing to let themselves go and follow the hypnotic suggestions are selected to go on, and often enough, these folk are usually extroverted, enjoy performing and also know that they’re perfectly safe (last I checked, quacking like a duck is quite safe…quack).

Why Use Hypnotic Commands To Change Minds?

I come from the indirect school of hypnosis. The direct schools are those you see in the movies, where the hypnotist goes ‘go in a trance now!’ and things get all swirly and gooey.

The indirect school of hypnosis is a tad more elegant, and would say something like ‘I wonder if you would go into a trance now or later?’ instead.

What’s wonderful about the art and skill of giving indirect commands is that they work great on resistant people. In hypnosis, the general rule of thumb is that the more resistant the person, the more an indirect approach works.

So How Do You Give Hypnotic Commands?

Hypnosis is an art, and just like any art form, has its levels; from the simple but wonderful crayon drawings of a child, to the masterpiece of a Monet. It also serves many different uses, from the decoration of a flower arrangement to the functionality of a Ferrari.

While there are many different ways of inducing trance and giving hypnotic commands, here are 3 quick and easy ways using the technique known as an embedded command; a hypnotic command hidden in an otherwise innocent sounding sentence.

1) Using your tone of voice. Imagine hearing this sentence: ‘This discount is good for only 1 more day (spoken in your normal tone of voice), it sounds like a good deal (spoken in a deeper tone), doesn’t it?’

2) Using pauses. ‘Talking about it this way…you, like me…can imagine just how this can work.’

3) Using gestures. ‘And just by getting a sense of this, (start nodding head) you can really begin to understand how this works (stop nodding head), and feel how much hypnosis can help you kick ass’.

There are 2 simple reasons why this works;

i) these are things that people already do…unconsciously. So you’re using previously unconscious langauge consciously, to fully use all of your communication prowess and supercharge your message.

After all, words are only 7% of your communication, so you really need to learn how to direct the other 93% so you send out a powerful and congruent message…right (shaking head left to right)?

ii) hypnosis works on your unconscious mind, and even though you might not pick up on the emphasis on these words consciously, your unconscious mind does.

But What If You Get Caught Hypnotizing Someone?

When I first started doing this, not just in coaching sessions but in everyday life, I was dead worried that I’d get called out for speaking funny.

They’d be all like, ‘hey, why’re you speaking like that…why did you emphasize those words “you like me”…are you trying to hypnotize me? Why, you sneaky little-!”

But you know what? That never happened.

I found out a pretty significant truth: except for those with an heightened sense of awareness (who are in the minority), most people care more about what they say than what you say.

At least, I hope that’s a truth, and it’s not just me (shucks).

Give Everyone You Know A Hypnotic Command…Today!

Does it sound a little difficult to start? After all, you have to watch your tone of voice, when you pause when talking, and how you gesture. Who does that?

Trust me, when I started out, it felt like a lot too. But I started by just picking one thing I’d work on that day, like varying my tonality, practicing and experimenting with it to see how and what works. And slowly but surely, I became better and better at it.

So, why not you? Gain the power of changing minds by giving hypnotic commands…today