What's keeping you from achieving the success for your practice? Do you even have a practice yet? What's stopping you?

Is it fear? What is fear? Fear has been described as an acronym representing False Evidence Appearing Real. What are the basis of your fears when it comes to achieving your goals as a hypnotist? Do any of these sound familiar?

"What if I can't hypnotize someone?"

"What if they come to me with something I've never worked with before?"

"What if the session isn't successful?"

"What if they don't want to pay what I'm charging?"

Before we address some of these, let's establish a baseline understanding. If you have been through any formal training, then you probably have all of the skills you need to hypnotize someone. The only things that can really undermine your success are a lack of confidence or a lack of rapport with your client. You have to approach hypnosis with full confidence in yourself and your ability to induce trance, and that should be easy. It's easy, because I'll let you in on a little secret...when someone comes to see a hypnotist, they are already in trance. That's right, the induction started the moment they realized the potential for hypnosis as a way to help them achieve their goals. That shift in perception creates an opening in the mind to be more receptive to suggestion by the hypnotist, which means that by understanding that a hypnotic state already exists, your job then is to merely highjack the trance they are already in and move forward. So really, you can't fail, because the state you are trying to create already exists.

So we just addressed the first fear question about not being able to hypnotize someone, lets move on to the others.

No one starts in this field knowing everything. You are going to get things that you have never worked with before, and that's great! These are opportunities to grow and expand your skills. If you went through my basic training, then you have a dynamic scripting protocol that you can utilize with 90%+ of the vocational and avocational issues that people come to you with. Chances are, most of your clientele (unless you begin specializing) will come to you for one of 3 things stop cessation, weight loss, or stress management. If they come to you with something that may have a medical underlying cause, then get a doctors referral before you work with them, or refer them out to a colleague. In fact, don't be afraid to refer people out when you need to, either because of a new area that you are not comfortable with, or because of scheduling conflicts. If possible, sit in on the session with the other hypnotist, so you can learn more about how to work with these new requests.

Now, lets talk about success of a session. Keep in mind that hypnosis isn't something we do too people, it's something we do with and for people. We act as guides through their subconscious, and at the end of the day, it is the client's responsibility to own resolving the issue. Of course there are many things that we can, and should, do to help facilitate success, like helping them to uncover the initial sensitizing event, or potential secondary gains, or even core beliefs and values that may be in contradiction to their desired changes. As long as you approach a client with a positive intent to help them achieve their goals, then you are doing the most good for them. You can also help level set some expectations by helping them to understand that some changes take longer than others.

Let's address the fear of money. Many new hypnotists are afraid to ask for money for their services, or when they do, they put a low price on things. Face it, our clients could never afford to pay us the real value of our service. Think about it. If you help someone quit smoking, which potentially adds an additional 10-20 years to their life, how can you put a monetary value on that? Yet, you need to charge something, because unless there is a perceived equitable exchange of value for your service (it doesn't always have to be money) then your clients will de-value it, which could hinder their acceptance of the change work and undermine their goals. Plus, you have to make a living, and if you're not getting paid for hypnosis work, then you have to get paid doing something else, which limits your ability to serve others on a larger scale.

That's a lot to think about, and hopefully I have provided some insight to help you overcome at least some of the limiting beliefs holding you back.

Michael C. White, C.Ht.