Insider Tricks: Polishing Your Hypnotic Stories Story telling is not only an age old process it is an important part of hypnosis. In your studies to become a great hypnotist it is important to really focus on your ability to tell a good story. Stories and hypnosis go together very well and story telling will be a powerful and important part of your job. The stories you tell will be used to do many things you have already learned. They can assist you in any of the steps in the 4 Stage Protocol. A good hypnotic story will absorb attention, bypass critical factor, create an unconscious response and put the unconscious response into action. Stories will also give you a place to seed ideas and place suggestions. They will allow you to have a frame set in order to mirror the problems and experiences of the people around you so they can identify with the characters and put the solutions you suggest into action. All of these things are just the tip of the iceberg in what good story telling can do for you in Conversational Hypnosis. The stories you tell will often be the backbone of your interactions with the very people you are trying to help to better their lives. In this context it only makes sense that you should be the best possible story teller you can be in to influence people in the best possible way. Good story telling is in essence a win-win situation for you and your clients. As you have been learning you have probably been practicing telling stories in some way or another. Since you have had a little experience it is time to start to polish up those stories and really make them shine. One of the most important things you will need to remember to do this is to avoid at all costs the restriction of your unconscious, your creativity. There are tricks that will help you to keep your creativity flowing and free. The first trick to this is don’t try to be good. This may sound a little odd when the purpose of this article is to enhance your story telling abilities. What this means is that there is a set of rules that we have covered previously and you need to stick to those rules. Trying too hard to be good at telling a story can often times be self defeating in that you will diminish the natural flow of the story. Don’t destroy your stories by trying too hard to make them the best stories ever heard. If you stay with the rules instead of trying to be good you will tell stories that are good. The second trick to telling hypnotic stories is to let the muck come out. There will be a certain amount of muck within you that will need to seep out in the beginning phases of your story telling. This muck is made up of all the things you think of and ponder that are not socially acceptable to say in conversations with the people you interact with on a regular basis. This is a natural process that happens to all story tellers that are really great, so just let the much flow. Don’t be surprised when the muck comes. This muck is dirty. It can be a combination of obscenities, morbid thinking, swearing, sexual perversions and all other types of socially unacceptable thoughts that we never discuss with other people. The fact is this is going to be unavoidable and you ultimately are not responsible for your stories. Stories are created by the unconscious so you need to free yourself here completely. Adopt the attitude that you don’t care what others think of your dirty, dirty muck. Do not criticize yourself for the stories that evolve from this muck. Do not censor yourself in your story telling, just open your mouth and let the muck fly. If you don’t get it out you will pollute the flow of your creativity and that is the first no-no you were warned of in this article. The third trick is going to be for you to visualize the scene. You can probably tell I am now going to tell you to ‘go first’ for this trick. You are right it is important that you can not only visualize the scene but also put yourself into it. Make sure to visualize it all so you are creating a reality for yourself and your listener. The fourth trick to story telling is to keep things inside ‘the circle’. This is a simple idea that is fairly easy to follow. When you are telling a story each piece of information you give will have natural associations attached to it. These associations are the things in the circle. All the rest of the things that are not associated with the pieces of information you are giving need to be left out of your story. The best way to illustrate this is to give you an example. If you are telling a story and you set the scene as you are living in the ocean there are automatically going to be associations that go with that idea. Things that will be around you will be fish, water, sand and seaweed. There is also a broader aspect to this circle of surroundings that the listener may not expect that can also be possible. These things could include a submarine, a body floating in the water and a pirate ship. These are all in the circle. Things that are not going to be in the circle are dogs, furniture, semi trucks and camels. This is an easy way to follow your own story; all the future twists and turns in the story will already be laid out for you in the things that are associated with every thing that comes before it. Finally the last trick to follow for story telling is to just keep talking. You will always have subject matter in the associations with the elements you have previously told in the story so let it flow. Just keep talking. Now that we know the insider tricks to polishing your stories lets add a few insights to them to get the complete story on polishing your stories. The best way to become an exceptional story teller is to train your brain. In this you are conditioning your brain to grow new neurology and make new connections that will let the stories come naturally with practice. A good insight to keep in mind with this is to avoid blocking or wimping out. These are ways that will hold up your story telling and bring it to a stall, boring. Blocking is when you keep doing the same activities over and over again simply because you are afraid of moving on to the next idea in your story. Wimping out is when you keep circling around the same idea repeatedly running in the same circle. Remember that you have a preset story line provided by you unconscious and the association with the aspects of the already existing story. You should not be afraid to move on. The final concept and second additional insight into story telling is to just take it one step at a time. There is no need to panic because you don’t know the rest of your story as you tell it. Taking it one step at a time will be easier for you and your listener. Each next step is presented to you in the list of associations that spring from the previous step. If you are keeping it inside the circle you will have all the answers you need. There is no need to know the whole story at any time in your story telling. By following these insights and tricks and combining them with the rules for telling a story you will advance in this area powerfully. The best thing to do is just stick to the rules, tricks and insights and your stories will grow from your unconscious beautifully. For more information please visit http://www.conversational-hypnosis.com |