Being a hypnotist, you may think that my next statement is peculiar.

“There is no power in a suggestion.”

Yesterday, I was doing one of the hundreds of radio interviews I do each year on the topic of hypnosis and one of the hosts asked me if I ever used my “power” to influence someone to do my bidding.

My response was that I have no power to make anyone do anything. He said, “But you have the power of suggestion.” I said there is no power in a suggestion itself. The real power of a suggestion is the timing of its delivery.

How many times have you offered valuable advice at the wrong time?

There was no power in that suggestion. All suggestions are inert, unless they come with proper timing.

The old axiom of “The teacher will be there when the student is ready” aptly explains this phenomenon.

You can have the best suggestion a person will ever hear in their lifetime but it will die on the vine if given to an unfertile mind at the wrong time.

The key is to prepare the soil so your suggestion is received without resistance, so you can use what is also the key component of telling a joke – timing.

The mistake we all make is throwing up on people. That means we offer unsolicited advice without any sensory acuity as to whether that person is in a frame of mind to receive it. We just want to have our say when we want to say it and we wonder why they don’t follow our sage advice. Reminds me of a story I’ve told a few times . . .

Suppose a wife wants her husband to take her to a new movie on a Friday night. She hasn’t said anything yet and it’s Friday. She looks out the window and sees her husband coming to the door. She also notices that he has steam coming out his ears. She guesses he’s had a rough day at work. But nonetheless she wants him to take her to the movies tonight so she asks him as soon as he enters the door. How effective is her suggestion?

Perhaps you just laughed at how stupid her strategy was but may not recognize how often you use a similar strategy.

What if upon noticing the steam, she joined the conversation going on in his head and said something like, “Honey, it looks like you’ve had a bear of a day, please tell me about it.” She lets him launch into his story as she prepares him his favorite beverage and leads him to a comfortable chair. Possibly a soothing shoulder rub is involved. When she notices the steam has subsided and he’s back to his normal self, she says, “There is this new movie I’ve been dying to see and I would really like you and me to see it tonight.” What are her chances for that suggestion taking hold now versus a half hour before? Much better!

That’s the real power of suggestion.

You must pay attention otherwise you are scattering seeds on hardened soil.

Now this may seem like pure common sense to you, and it is. The reality is how uncommon the practice is.

I don’t know if you’re ready to hear this suggestion or not, so put it on ice until it makes sense to you – Become aware or you’ll be talking to thin air.

All the best,

John

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One of the biggest complaints we make is that of being stuck. We treat it as though it’s a physical condition, which is rarely the case, unless you’re stuck in snow.

Stuck is having our thoughts stuck in place. It’s the second cousin to being bored. Reminds me of a story . . .

It comes from my old radio days when we actually played records. Every now and then, at the most inopportune time, the record you were playing would get stuck in a groove. It would play the same phrase over and over again. Whenever I hear “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John, I think back to when I was in Syracuse, New York in the world’s dirtiest, radio bathroom. I was playing that song on the air and it got stuck. I’m sure it was comical to others seeing me running down the hall adjusting myself to get back into the studio to remedy the situation, but it wasn’t fun at the time.

Being stuck is never fun. It’s being possessed by a repeating thought.

The reason it’s paralyzing is because there is no room in your mind for a remedy. Your mind is fond of playing broken records.

You can’t do anything about it unless you become observant of your thoughts.

If you are stuck in life, you are stuck with the same thoughts. It’s really that simple. I know there’s a mantra that says, “Change your thoughts; change your life,” but that always suggests to me that we have some control over the thoughts to put in our mind. We don’t. Think of the last time you “thought positive” and failed.

Rather than select the thoughts you want to think, which only lasts as long as the life of a fruit fly, become like a cop on a stakeout listening to a wire tap. If you’re in that situation, you can’t participate in the conversation, you can only listen. When you passively listen to your thoughts, without engagement, your thoughts begin to flow because they are not meeting any opposition.

When you attempt to cut off your thoughts, it has the same success rate as attempting to stop a thunderstorm – none. Just observe them as they pass by and you keep movement in the equation.

Becoming aware of your thoughts doesn’t change the situation you are in but it keeps your thoughts flowing. Do the arithmetic. What’s most likely to get you to a solution – stuck thoughts or ones that are flowing?

The law of averages suggests that a flow of thoughts is more likely to produce a solution than one that’s stuck.

Train yourself to observe your mind. It’s always looking for an argument. If you engage in the debate, your new thoughts will have to wait as you busy yourself staying stuck on point.

The quickest way to get unstuck is stop arguing with your thoughts. It’s always a stalemate. Let them flow and you have a better chance of finding a solution downstream.

All the best,

John

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We all create something every day. Whether it’s a creation that benefits mankind or just plain ill will, the creative spark comes from the same source.

We may consider our creations paltry or say we have none at all. That’s just not accurate. If you are a living, breathing, thinking human being, you create.

Most of our creations come through the filter of conditioning, making them re-creations. Most often we are like the bored, stage actor doing HAMLET for the 735^th time. We keep parroting the same lines.

Sometimes we break out of our predictable patterns and put a new twist on an old dance step. That’s creativity seeping under the door.

Creativity is neither good nor bad; it’s like Switzerland – it’s neutral.

The question is: “How do you use it?”

You can use electricity to light a city or electrocute yourself. The source is never accountable for its use, we are.

Are you using this commonly available resource to recreate yesterday and turn it into tomorrow, or are you open to creating something new?

No one has more creativity than you. At the beginning of this game of life, we are all given the same amount of Monopoly money. How well we use it determines the quality of our creations.

Using creativity to create something new begins with knowing we have unfettered access to it. The only thing that stands in our way are the canals we’ve dug to channel it to the same place every time.

So how do we get our creativity to flow in a new direction? For starters, notice the direction it’s flowing in now.

We get so used to living on automatic pilot that we don’t see that we’ve created the life we’re living. Once you notice that you are the creator, rather than a victim, that’s when you are at the doorstep of creating something new.

The old expression of “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” comes to mind. That means to notice where you are and also notice that you’ve taken part in the digging. These are the beginning steps of reconditioning.

Once you’ve noticed and taken responsibility as to where you are, you’ve made a space for creativity and it begins to flow in.

Instead of “Poor Me” being the foundation of your life, the act of noticing transforms it into a creative command called “Pour Me,” and a new foundation begins to pour. The active ingredient that comes out of becoming aware is creativity.

The eye opening piece is that we have created the life we have. The transformational piece is to acknowledge that. That’s when you begin using your allotment of creativity to renew rather than re-do.

All the best,

John

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