After all these years practicing hypnosis I’m still baffled sometimes when I ponder the question: what makes it work? Why is hypnosis so effective? And I’m still looking for answers, that’s why this article on The Power Of Suggestions really captured my attention.
When we expect a specific outcome, we automatically set in motion a chain of cognitions and behaviours to produce that outcome—and wrongly attribute our success or failure to its cause.
Now one way of looking at this statement is to say: Oh, well, that just shows hypnosis is baloney!
But it’s more accurate to look at this statement and say: Wow! Our expectations can change our cognitions and behaviours in such a way that we make the expectations come true.
And if we are looking at hypnotic suggestions through this particular lens, we could say that hypnosis is basically the perfect “expectation design technique”. And I do like this line of thinking because it takes the “magic” out of hypnosis – and allows to explain hypnotic phenomena in a reasonable, scientific manner, rather than conjuring esotheric, pseudo-scientific ideas.
For some reason we humans tend to underestimate the power of our subconscious mind. Transformative change can happen a lot easier and a lot faster than we think.
“We realised that the effects of suggestion are wider and often more surprising than many people might otherwise think,”
– Maryanne Garry, psychological scientist
Once you understand the effects of hypnotic suggestions have on your life, you can learn to use hypnosis to improve yourself a lot faster than you could without hypnosis. Find out how you can become more hypnotizable.
