NOTE: This transcript has not yet been proofed read and may contain typos. It will be updated as soon as proof reading is complete.
Cal: Hello, everybody. Cal Banyan here. Cal Banyan's Hypnosis Center. If you're watching this video anywhere except calbanyan.com, you ought to go there right now. I'm here with Erika Flint, and you know what? We've got a cool topic. I think it's kind of deep. It's how we activate the transformational shift in our clients, and we're not talking strictly hypnotic techniques. All right. Let me introduce you to Erika Flint. She's the brilliant, the amazing Erika Flint, with a background in a totally non-related field, kind of sort of. She comes from a Silicon Valley world of software engineering and problem solving, and one day she had an epiphany: "You know what? I got this stuff down pat. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start working on the most massive, most powerful computer in the world, the human mind." She went out and she sought hypnosis training.
She was trained locally in Bellingham, Washington and then she decided that wanted to actually do the work. She found our 5-PATH 2.0 DVDs, and then things started clicking. She started seeing clients, and that wasn't all she did. She came to our live course online. Did you get that? She didn't have to leave Bellingham, Washington. She went through our live course online and then she got the bug so bad, within one year she was able to leave that profession she'd been in for a decade, go full-time in the profession, and now she's an instructor. By the time you're watching this video, I think she will have wrapped up her very first hypnosis certification course. How you doing, Erika?
Erika: I'm doing great, Cal, and I think, yeah, it will be right near the end. Maybe the last weekend this episode will come out. I'm really happy to be here today. Thank you very much for that wonderful introduction. 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 wonderful training videos that he puts out every single week, 417, something like that. Now, he's the hypnosis celebrity because he's won almost every single award in the profession which is really quite remarkable. Almost 19 years in the profession now, which is great.
He's also appeared in both television and radio talking about one of my favorite books. He's also an author the book "The Secret Language of Feelings" which I love giving to my clients because it helps them have a deeper understanding of the emotional work that we're going to do in hypnosis. He's also the trainer of the some of the best in the profession. He's had a profound effect on me and the profession because as he suggested, I took a different training course and then I took 5-PATH and I felt confident and comfortable seeing clients. I've been running with it ever since. I'm having the time of my life. I love being here with you today, Cal, so thank you very much. Great to be here.
Cal: Awesome. Gosh, you know, I'm just sitting here thinking about how next week, next month, next year, maybe ten years down the road, 20 years down the road people are going to be watching the videos, listening to the audios, reading the transcripts, and I'm just kind of overwhelmed with this feeling of how people, through our little bit of effort, through our proper mental attitude and belief in what we do, we are going to be transforming people's lives for decades and never even perhaps ever meeting them personally. That brings us to the topic today of how we transform our clients. Get her started.
Erika: That's right. The reason that I kind of came up with this idea, because you've got to understand that when a client is coming to see you, okay, they're coming to see you for weight loss or, I don't know, stopping smoking or something like that. We know as hypnotists that there's often very likely an underlying root cause that is bigger than why they think they're coming in, right? When a client calls me and starts talking to me about why they're coming in, it's very important from the very beginning I have an end goal in mind for my client that is much bigger than what they think. In their mind they're thinking, "Oh, I'm going to lose some weight." In my mind they're going to lose weight, they're going to inspire their community and their family. Everybody's going to lose weight. Everybody's going to be happy. It's going to make a big difference, not just in their life but in the lives of everybody around them, because the shift that is going to take place in their life by going through hypnosis is going to be transformational. What do you think about that, Cal?
Cal: Yeah, that's right. I've got a bumper sticker. It says, "Shift Happens." Okay.
Erika: Oh, that's funny.
Cal: That's right, you know.
Erika: I like that.
Cal: In the world of psychology we have this idea of systems theory, and it's like we look at families. When we start working with one person in the family and moving them towards health and wholeness, and just operating at a better level it shifts the whole family. Is that kind of what you're talking about?
Erika: Yeah, absolutely. It goes beyond that, right? That's just one example. This is really about reigniting inside your client their existence, their power, their ability to be their best selves. When they come to you, oftentimes they're coming to you as the hypnotist sometimes as a last resort, right? If you give them this hypnosis and this gift of helping them out with that one thing that they came in for, then that can kind of set themselves up for a huge transformational shift in their entire life. Let me tell you the technique that I'm talking about here. First of all, you start with the end goal in mind. As you're talking with your client, you're not just thinking that you're going to help them lose weight.
You have this attitude of knowing that it can be bigger and better than even your client has in mind, because you know that you've seen it. You believe as the hypnotist, so this is the second thing, that you can make and help them make. It's not really you as the hypnotist, right? You are guiding. You are the coach, right? You are helping bring out the innate power that's already in your client. You have to believe in your clients. Week after week, you've just got to keep believing in them. That kind of belief within you just starts spilling out as you're talking to the client. It can get them excited just by them being around you. What do you think about that, Cal?
Cal: And them get excited by being around you. I remember that there was a time a lot of people were getting started off, and you have a client this day and maybe the next day you don't have a client. Then you have a couple clients the next day, and there's a lot of space in between clients. Then I worked up to a point where I'm going client, client, client, client, client, day after day after day. There was a transformation that happened inside of me when I was seeing that kind of success over and over and over that no matter who came into my office, no matter what problem, that I just knew that they were going to be successful because I was just successful with the last one, the one before that, the one before that, the one before that, the one before that.
I knew that my techniques were powerful and effective. This person comes in, oh they're all frustrated. Maybe they're feeling a little bit depressed about this issue. That's why they come and see you is because nothing else has worked. There you are with that beaming confidence because you know that you've got the tools that are going to work, the ability to make it happen. You start having them look at things differently and you watch that hope begin to develop inside of them. That's a really important part of Phase 1 of 5-PATH is developing that hope, getting overcome that stagnation that's inside of them. Cause you've got to believe in them sometimes before they can believe in themselves. There's this interpersonal resonance that happens that as you are hopeful for them they become hopeful in themselves. That's the first step in getting transformation is to move people from that hopelessness into hopefulness. Isn't that right?
Erika: That's right. I kind of get a little jazzed just hearing you talk about that. Absolutely, I mean some clients come in and they have lost hope and it may be that nobody ever believed in them, or nobody ever supported them. Then here, you, as the hypnotist believes in them and knows, just like you're suggesting, Cal, knows that you can help them. That is just remarkable. The next thing that I do, it's not necessarily a one, two, three thing. You've got to have the end goal in mind, the huge transformation. The second is believing in your client. The third is use language that is transformational with them. I always use words like shift.
You're going to feel or see a huge shift in your life, or things are going to shift for you in small or big ways that you might not even realize that yet. This is going to be transformational. When you walk out of the door here today you're going to feel a transformational shift in your life like you've never felt before. Okay, you do that in hypnosis, right, but you can do it outside of hypnosis too. Start using some of these words: transition, build, building a platform or building a foundation for continued success the rest of your life, perception, a pivotal moment. I just wrote down some of my favorite words that I like to use with clients that have to do with these. Any others that you like to use, Cal, that I've missed?
Cal: Well, yeah, and one thing I want to highlight is this isn't just words you use in your hypnotic suggestions. This is stuff you should be using on the phone. This is stuff you should be using in your pre-talk. This is the things you should be doing in your pre-hypnosis interview. This is things you should be doing in the hypnosis and post-hypnotic interview, and any other work you do with them on the phone or meetings at the office to create that expectation that shift is going to happen. We can use things like lifting, easing, expanding, becoming ability to unleashing of ability to discovery, discovery of inner path, of inner talents and these kinds of things.
Your words pre-hypnotically are very powerful because they're in a unique situation. They really don't know what to expect from you, so their mind is open in a way that they aren't in usual situations, like if they're talking to a friend or they're talking to their doctor. They know what they expect to hear from them, but when you become this light of energy and expectation, then it ignites through that interpersonal resonance, the light within them. Correct?
Erika: Yep, absolutely. It just made me realize one of the ways I do this is I repeat myself over and over again. I use the word "shift". Shift is my favorite. People get it. Of course, you've got to do things your own way. I don't do the exact same thing with every client. Of course not. It's very individual, but shift is my favorite word right now for this. When I repeat it to a client, like you're saying, on the phone, when I see them pre-hypnosis interview, the pre-talk, in hypnosis, so this brings me to the number four, when they come back after that first session, and this happens very often. It happened just last week. Somebody came in after the first session and said, "I had a huge shift in perception of my life." She said, "I'm seeing everything different now." I said, "What changed?" and she said, "I don't know, I just feel differently."
I said, "Yeah, you've changed. You had the shift." When somebody comes back in and then repeats back to you the words that you've been saying over and over again inside and out of hypnosis, then you know that you've made an impact. They feel it too. When that happens, you want to validate their success and then build on it. So just say, "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's the shift we were talking about last time, right?" Get them to get excited about it and talk a little bit more about the changes that they are witnessing in their own life. What about that, Cal?
Cal: Perfect. I'm going to give you a super insider technique. That is as you're using your favorite transformational language, listen to their language to see if they're putting it in their own words that's just as powerful. For example, a mechanic, the word shift might be yeah, that's just right, but someone else, a chemist or someone else that is a baker. They have equivalent language of their own that means the same thing. Start using their language along with your language because when you find their own language that means the same thing, then it is accepted as true more quickly. It's not like they don't have to buy into your thing. They are now buying into their own highest wording. What's the models of getting to where they want to go? Shifting to that higher level, so watch for those words. If they fit, if they mean the same thing, then begin to integrate them into how you're speaking to them. How does that sound?
Erika: Yeah, that's a really good point, Cal. I'm glad that you brought that up because when I pick up on this, when a client repeats something back to me but uses their own language I write it down and I highlight it actually, because I want to have that kind of front and center in the notes before I see the client again. I'll write something down like, "The client uses this type of language or wants this type of behavior," or that type of a thing. So I make sure that I repeat it back to them because like you're saying, it resonates. It goes really deep into them when you repeat the same language that they've used with you. Thank you for bringing that up.
It's really so amazing when you have a client that comes back in that's had such a huge shift, change in their life. They're just on fire, they're so excited and they're just like, "All right. What's next? Give it to me. I love this hypnosis stuff. I haven't had this type of feeling in a long time. Things are really flowing for me. It's like lining up the dominoes and everything fell into place and now my life is headed in the direction I've always wanted it to go. What's next, right?"
When that happens, after they've kind of had their first little change, you want to make sure that you tell your clients in whatever language you want to use this time, is that the shift took place because of something they did, right? A lot of clients will try to give you credit for it. They'll say, "Oh, it's all because of you, Erika." Or it's, "Thanks to you." You can take a little bit of credit, of course you're doing work and you're doing great work with them and you can say, "Thank you, I love my job. I'm professional." All that sort of thing, but I think it's really important to make sure that the client knows that it was their own innate power in them that allowed this transformation to take place.
Cal: That's right. I'll say, "Remember, you did that. You did that. I could not make you happier. I could not make you smarter. I could not give you insights. I can coach. I can guide, but you have to be willing to do that thing and sometimes it's very uncomfortable. Sometimes very frightening. You're the one that did that. You're the one that had the courage." When you give them that kind of guidance they own the change. They will also want more. They'll say, "Fantastic. Let's work on this." You move from issue to issue as they say, "Wow, if I can quit smoking this easy, or this quickly, or this powerfully, or that's not even the point. If I can quit smoking and benefit in all these unexpected ways, wow. How can I keep doing that?"
One of the things I work with when clients first come in, or as they want to continue to work on other issues and we're trying to decide to work on, I'll say to them, "Okay, what's the one thing that when we're successful making that shift, making that change, would have the most positive effect on your life? That's what we should work on next."
That works perfectly if you're beginning and they come in with a laundry list of things they want to work on. That's where you start. If you just finished having success with this one issue, and they want to keep to growing and they're deciding on another issue then that's how you do it. What's the one thing that when we're successful with that, it's going to have the most positive effect on your life? Why would we start or work on anything else? Does that make sense?
Erika: Yeah, I love that. What I wrote down too, after that is this idea that the client has the potential to continue allowing this type of change to take place in their life through things that we can give them as hypnotists, right? We can teach them self-hypnosis. We can teach them the underlying ideas by why some of this shift is taking place in their life, right, and give them some education or give them the tools so that they can continue to be successful. Reigniting that flame or hanging onto it, and rekindling it all the time, day after day. They're just off and running, right? Now they are successful. I love it when a client comes in and says, "My husband noticed a difference," or "My sister noticed that there's something different about me." They can tell. It's deeper. It's really deep down inside and you know that that person is going to be an inspiration to other people just by living their own life.
Cal: Awesome. Well, you know what? I think we're starting to run out of time. I just want to go on and on on this topic. This is going to lead to referrals. You start working with one member of the family and then they want to send in their spouse, and their kids, and their uncles, and their aunts, their brothers and their sisters. The very best form of marketing is results, excellent, excellent results. When you know what you're doing that's what you can get. All right. Why don't you wrap it up?
Erika: That's right, Cal. It's very personally rewarding to help people make this type of transformational change, and I have a lot of gratitude for this work and for the help from 5-PATH. From everything I've that learned to be able to do this. It's better than I ever imagined being a hypnotist. I absolutely love it. My name is Erika Flint. Thank you for joining me here today. You can find me at erikaflint.com or cascadehypnosiscenter.com. You can also find me on ourhypnospace.com where I lead the hypnosis marketing group. I'd like to see you there. Thank you very much for joining today.
Cal: Thank you so much, Erika. I'm just feeling full of gratitude. I just want to say to you folks out there who are listening and watching, if you have ideas, questions, please send them up to us. We want to make this program useful, relevant, and exciting to you. One of the best ways to do that is just join ourhypnospace.com and go to the Ask Cal group, and you can leave topic ideas. You can leave questions. Then we can make this the best possible show for you.
I want to see you in class. I want to see you at the NGH Convention. Please check our class dates here on this website. Also, check for early registration discounts. We like to get in as a first-come first-served basis. Finally, thank you so much for spending this time with us. We're so honored to be a part of your personal change, your ability to change others, and your professional abundance. All right. That's it. Cal Banyan, signing off.