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"When the story is in your mind, then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what’s happening to you.
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- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
"Metaphors are the gentlest, most elegant way to begin talking directly with…[the] Unconscious Mind.
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- Tad James, Hypnosis
"Throughout human history, symbols have been employed to trigger emotional responses and shape men’s behavior
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- Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within |
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Another powerful intervention for achieving ego-strengthening is the use in hypnosis of Storytelling, Metaphors and Symbols. Over the last 5-10 years, Storytelling has become a significant way to enhance team-building, promote diversity, develop leaders and managers, convey corporate culture, show how things are done, develop pride in work, etc. While stories are hypnotic themselves in that they produce altered awareness, when they are used while the listener is in a hypnotic trance, the effect is magnified many times over.
At times, the hypnotized participant may be asked to review his or her “old story,” a once useful but now dysfunctional narrative full of erroneous or corrupted beliefs. Then the hypnotized individual or team might be asked to create or co-create and rehearse a “new story” that promotes new values and functional perspectives.
Using Metaphors (talking about one thing in terms of another) is another, more indirect way to convey an important perspective or value or skill. The indirection may distract or confuse the conscious mind that is slow to make connections between dissimilar things; but such metaphoric indirection is the language of the subconscious, which is quite capable of making many connections among a variety of perspectives, etc. And it is the subconscious that we need to reach to make changes in our patterns of operating in the workplace.
Thus a leader who has trouble letting go of a useless idea may be told about the way hunters catch monkeys in one African country: the hunters put a bunch of bananas in a cage with bars spaced just far enough from each other to allow a monkey’s hand to pass through. If the monkey reaches in and grabs a banana, his full hand cannot then pass back through the bars. Only if he lets go of the banana can he get free.
Symbols may also be used in the hypnotic trance to focus and inspire leaders, managers and teams. The symbol may arise during hypnosis or from another source; in any case, the Business Hypnotist helps the participant to magnify the presence of the symbol in the mind of the participant. The Business Hypnotist also helps her or him find a “trigger” in the internal or external environment that will bring up the symbol from the subconscious when the individual needs it as a resource. For instance, a Leader may learn in hypnosis to use a feeling of anxiety in his stomach or the sight of a certain, unpleasant colleague to trigger the emergence in the Leader’s mind of an award designating one of his major achievements.
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