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Cal Banyan: Hello everybody. Carl Banyan here. Carl Banyan's hypnosis extra and I am back with Erika Flint and I'll tell you what we are going to talk about today. We are going to start off with how am I going to get on to something else but I definitely want to cover this. I'm calling this episode Praising Hypnotists and Hypnotherapists Around the World because of your unique qualities. Let me tell you about Erika. Erika is way up there in like in Bellingham, Washington. She is what I would describe as a rising star in the profession. She has just gone fulltime a few months ago. She already spoke with the National Guild of Hypnotist. She started off with a regular certification training up there in Washington, found out it wasn't enough, took our 5-PATH® 2.0 course, our DVD set and all of a sudden, everything she started doing was working. And then she actually went through our Week of Power Course and got live through our online set up through the Internet watched was on a live class but from up there in Bellingham, Washington, and now she is actually training for us and she is just doing great things. How are you doing, Erika?
Erika Flint: Hey, Cal. I'm doing great. Thank you for that introduction and it's great to be here today. It's cold up here in Bellingham like it is, I think, across the country right now but I'm doing great. Thank you. And let me tell everybody about you. Cal Banyan is the hypnosis celebrity because of his fame in the profession and not just because of all these great training videos. He is also won every award in the profession. He is an author, he is a speaker, he is a trainer and he's been on television and radio promoting hypnosis and promoting his books. He is the trainer of some of the best in the profession and he is still training, he is still speaking, he is still doing all sorts of amazing great things and he's had a profound effect on me and my practice because as he mentioned, I went through 5-PATH, I started seeing clients, went fulltime and everything has just been going great since then. I love the work that I do with hypnosis helping people. And so, Cal, I love this topic: Praising the Hypnotherapists Around the World. So, good idea.
Cal Banyan: Thank you very much, Erika. And by the way, I haven't won every award on the profession but I am working on it. I'm doing my best. You know, that's what it takes. You just have to go out there and do your best and I've got a list here of seven or eight things that I just want to dedicate an episode to you folks out there who are doing the work every day, be it part time or fulltime, two days a week or five days a week, or six days a week because, you know, the personality and the soul of the hypnotist is special. Not everybody can be a hypnotist. Consulting hypnotist, hypnotherapist, we use all these terms interchangeably. The person who uses hypnosis to help normal everyday people with normal everyday problems so they can be happier, healthier, wealthier and more successful. So my first one is put others first. This is an absolute requirement. If you are absolutely a selfish person and you are first all the time, this is the wrong profession for you. The hypnotist always puts his/her clients' needs first. For example, if that individual isn't the right fit for you and what you do, then you refer them on to someone else.
Now, you would lose money. You might lose future clients because if you did well with that person, they would, you know, say nice things about you and refer family and friends, but if you thought inside of yourself that that person would be better off with someone else or anything, you always put your clients first. How do you feel about that, Erika?
Erika Flint: I think that's absolutely true. I mean, we've got to do what's best for our clients at all times. And if you know of somebody that can help your client or a person that comes to you for help more than you can, you know, somebody in your area that specializes in that or does something, you know, you just know for certain that they can be helped by somebody else, I agree. You need to refer that person to them.
Cal Banyan: Right, Erika. It actually goes more than just referring people out. That is just an example. In every single case, you need to put your clients' needs first because that's part of being a professional. Second, hypnotist, you are courageous. I mean, at the core of you, you are courageous people because for one thing, you are picking a career that's outside of the norm. You are not an engineer with, you know, all these engineers that have paved the way before you. It's already a profession. Or a psychologist where, you know, you become a psychologist and the profession has already been paved. You are courageous in that we are still in a very pioneering stage of the profession. And so it's not for the weak of heart or the faint of heart. If you are a hypnotist and you've been in this profession for a while--in fact, even if you are just coming in to this profession, you are a courageous soul. How do you feel about that, Erika?
Erika Flint: That's absolutely true. Beyond what you are saying about, you know, the profession isn't fully, you know, we are pioneers, right, not fully accepted by mainstream yet. A lot of people still think that we do the things that are popular in Hollywood, right? But every day that you go and help your clients, you are doing some courageous things. You know, you are helping them. You are putting yourself out there and, you know, I know that when I'm in front of a client talking with him, I am there 100% of the time and there are times when you don't always know exactly where things are going to go but you just do it. You know, you get the good training and you do it and you do it anyway, right?
Cal Banyan: Absolutely. So , you know, you are this put other people first, courageous, entrepreneurial person like brings the next one: entrepreneurial, and it goes hand-in-hand with courageous. You know, many people who come into this profession, they have taken a safer route previously. So many people come to our profession after high school or tech school or after college. They go into something that made a lot of sense at the time. It might be, you know, social work or it might be engineering or whatever it is. And it was kind of the safe thing that made sense at the time, but at some level, it didn't fulfill. It fulfilled one thing. You got that paycheck every week or every month however you got paid, but at some level, it didn't fulfill that desire inside of you to be maybe have your own--to build a profession, to have your own business, to have that entrepreneurial type lifestyle. I love the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Before I was into the world of hypnotism, I worked at Lutheran Social Services and before that, I worked for another kind of social services kind of situation. Before that, I worked at the North Dakota State Hospital and I got a check, I got a check, I got a check.
And although it was really cool and fulfilling in many ways, nothing really fulfills, for me, in a work environment, the same as being the captain of your ship. Being the captain, you making the decisions, you being the leader, you being the main contributor. I just love it. I don't have a boss that tells me what to do. I just know that I provide my own motivation. I come up with my own creativity. I decide what needs to be researched. I take the gamble on the ad. I teach the courses. I can tweak the courses on the run. I mean, as I have an outline as I’m going through the course, I'll get an idea, I'll write it into the outline, amend the outline for next time. It's fabulous. So this entrepreneurial kind of situation, if you are a hypnotist and you are not getting a regular check because you've been hired somewhere which makes up about ninety-nine and forty four one hundredths of you, congratulations to you for being a hypnopreneur. What do you think of that, Erika?
Erika Flint: I totally agree with you, Cal. I absolutely love being a hypnopreneur, being an entrepreneur. I love the aspect of, you know, it's up to me but I feel so alive, right? It is all up to me. I can do whatever I want. If I want to promote something over here, I can go on and do that. If I want to create a class, I can go and do that. If I want to go speak, I can go and do that. You know, the world is right there for you to do whatever you want. And there are lots of opportunities but it's up to you. You've got to take action. You've got to do it. And that kind of--there is some courage in there too, so, you know, when I think of an entrepreneur, I think there is some courage that comes with that, too.
Cal Banyan: Beautiful. So Erika, all these things are true about you and they are successful about anyone that's truthful about anyone that's being successful. Erika, you put other people first. Erika, you are courageous. Erika, you are entrepreneurial and here is the next one: persistent. There are so many things that are going on in our lives. People calling for our attention, people even telling us that our goals are not valid or that we are crazy for being hypnotists, but we are focused, we are determined and we are persistent and if you are in this profession after any length of time, congratulations to you for being one persistent son of a gun. How about that, Erika?
Erika Flint: That's absolutely true, Cal. And with persistency, you know, you don't always get the results you want every single time, but you be persistent and you keep going because, you know, like there are some things as an entrepreneur, you are going to put marketing material out there, you are going to put things out online, , you are going do new adventures like you are like, "I am going to try this out and we will see what works." Not everything is going to work but be persistent. It doesn't mean that you failed at anything at all. It means that you get feedback, right? And then you are persistent and you keep on making things better. So persistency is absolutely part of this.
Cal Banyan: You know, so many people, they’re only aware of what I have done and succeeded at, but there are so many things. My staff knows we try this and we try that. We try this and we try that. Something starts working, then we tweak it, we put more energy into it, but so many things don't work or don't work at first and you must go back to them over and over again. You must be persistent. Okay, here is something that I think is really cool. So a bit different from what I've been talking about and that is hypnotist, you are an open-minded individual. That's right. You are an open-minded individual. You have an open mind because most people would not give the career a chance. I mean, remember when you were first thinking about getting into this career? All these people will be going and say, what? You are going to be a what, and they just want to close you down right away. But you are an open-minded individual that you could go to a trainer and learn these different things, read books and just be open-minded that there might be another way to be successful in helping others besides psychology or besides NLP or besides counseling or whatever it is. What do you think about that, Erika?
Erika Flint: Absolutely and I think you can take that one step further because when we are working with our clients, we have to be open-minded, too. You know, we don't want to have any set ideas exactly about what a particular client. You know, they are going to come in the door and you listen to them and you are going to figure out how to help this person, but you've got to be open-minded about it because your clients are going to surprise you, right? And so if you have -- if you pigeonholed your clients in any way, that's a mistake. So you want to be open-minded when you are working with your clients, too.
Cal Banyan: Absolutely. So, who’s the hypnotist? The hypnotist is someone who puts other people first, courageous, entrepreneurial, persistent, open-minded and number six on my list is self-developer. You are someone that you don't have to go to school for four years or two years or eight years to develop into a professional. You are a person who says, "Okay, now, I'm ready for this book." Or, let me say, you focus on self-development because that's what it takes to succeed. You must step up, learn more things and be a model of success. That's a really important thing. The self-developer continues to work on him/herself to try to turn their office into a model, their business into a model, themselves into a model, so that other people can succeed by learning from what you've done. So you are self-developer so that others can benefit from what you've done. How is that, Erika?
Erika Flint: Absolutely, Cal. And you know what? I look for -- I learn from the world around me. I don't think that, "Oh, I'm going to go take this class and that's where I learn." I learn everywhere I go. If I'm online and I see something that somebody is doing that caught my attention, I'm going to think, "Oh my gosh. Is that something that I can do for my own business to help bring in new clients, for example, or tell people about a class that I'm teaching?" So, I'm constantly, you know, open-minded about where I'm going to get my learning because it comes from everywhere.
Cal Banyan: Absolutely. Next on my list. You see yourself as being worth investing in. Now, this is an attribute people don't think about all the time but on the first day of my classes, I congratulate those who are there. And I'll say to them, "You know what, for every one of you that's in this class, there is others out there who never made it. For one reason or another, they didn't see themselves as being worth investing in." You hypnotists out there who have been certified or have purchased a distance learning course, have invested a significant amount of money, be it a few hundred dollars, a few thousand dollars or more, there is something you knew that's different. So many out there they go, "Oh, I probably won't do anything with it or I'll probably just get started and stop." But something inside of you said, "You know what, I am worth investing in. I'm worth spending that $2-3,000, you know, which is a pittance compared to what you are going to be making in the profession if you fulfill these other criteria, so you are worth investing in and you know it. How about that, Erika?
Erika Flint: Absolutely, Cal. And you know, I think for a couple of things, some people don't take the time, right, to think about investing in themselves, and so I think it's really important that when you think about investing in yourself, it's actually an investment. You are actually getting something out of it and this is something that you can do every single day not just by taking a great class and investing in yourself over the course of a few weeks or weekends or something like that, but investing in yourself every single day and this is, you know, something that I talk about with my clients. It's like, "Look, if you invest in yourself every day with self-hypnosis or doing something good for yourself, it's going to pay off." And this is the same thing. You've got to look at what you are doing for yourself as an investment.
Cal Banyan: Perfect. We are on the same wavelength here. All right, I am going to have one more but I want to give you an opportunity first. As I am reading through these, you are probably getting some ideas of maybe one or two attributes that you'd like to add to the list. Now, I didn't tell Erika what my list was ahead of time. I said just be more spontaneous. Did anything come to mind that I haven't put on the list yet?
Erika Flint: Well, one of the attributes that I think is really important to do this work is just, you can call it kindness or compassion, so it's just a deep, deep care for yourself, for other people, for the planet and it is just a real sense of your ability and your ability to connect with somebody else on a level that is kind of based on love and kindness and compassion, so I would add that to the list.
Cal Banyan: All right. Yeah. So caring, compassionate, empathy, wanting to see other people succeed. Absolutely. All right. Here is my last one for today and, you know, we could go on. There is probably 50 great attributes of hypnotists. If you can think of an attribute that you think is important that I didn't list here, Erika didn't list here, just put it down in the comments below and add it. Let's see, You are a tough solider. Hypnotist, you are a tough solider in so many ways. All the things above that I mentioned but you are in the trenches, especially if you are doing the heavy-duty work like 5-PATH or time tunneling technique after having someone talk about their echoes with 7-PATH self-hypnosis. You look those emotions right in the eye. That client might be crying or they might be in a state of fear, but you move forward, tough, like a soldier on a mission. You are going to help this person get through this problem. They've tried everything else. They've tried the counselor. They have tried the self-help book, they have tried the priest, they've tried everything they can think of before they came to see you, the witch doctor. I mean, the hypnotherapist.
And so you are the tough solider or the tough sailor, the tough airman, the tough marine of that personal change. And so I really admire anyone and respect anyone that is really doing this kind of work on a regular basis and just keeps stepping it up, get better and better. All these attributes are like muscles; as you use them, they become stronger. They become more reliable, ore finely tuned. So hypnotists, I just congratulate you on being the person you really are inside and manifesting that every day in a way that helps yourself and helps other people succeed. All right, wrap it up, Erika.
Erika Flint: All right. Well, Cal, I just wanted to say, you know, one reason that I think we can be these tough soldiers is, at least from my perspective, I know that I can help somebody so even when they are crying, I can honestly and with kindness and compassion and everything that I know how to do, I know that they can be helped with hypnosis in one way or another and so that's a wonderful feeling inside. It's great to be able to help people like that. Well, thank you everyone for joining us here today. I am Erika Flint. You can find me at cascadehypnosiscenter.com or Erikaflint.com and we would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear, you know, topic ideas for upcoming episodes and I'd love to hear your feedback on this particular episode by leaving comments below.
Cal Banyan: Thank you very much. So everybody, I want to see you in class. We have a class coming up at the end of February. Let's see, it's February 23 through March 6, 2015. We have the week of power, that's the advanced class. I'm reading down at my monitor that's why I am looking down. A week of power advanced hypnosis May 3 through the 19, 2015. If you are watching this video and those classes have passed, just, on this website on calbanyan.com, just go to the schedule of training upcoming events and you'll see where I am and what I am doing and how you can join me either live onsite at the Banyan Hypnosis Center or online. Love to see you there either way. All right, that's it. Thank you very much Erika. Happy birthday to me. Hot today. Bye. Over and out.
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