World Leading Hypnotist: Trick Yourself Out Of Bad Habits

can we rewire our brains absolutely I've got the access codes to your unconscious mind I'm never doing that again and that's it in that moment their life changes your Days on television as a hypnotist program themselves really quickly to turn around unwanted behaviors challenging cynicism some of the things are real simple let me do a quick thing with you now and people watching or listening if you close your eyes oh yeah it's possible now integrate that new super part into you when I started doing this nearly 40 years ago it was Voodoo and if you want to quit smoking hypnosis now proven to be the most effective way in the world to quit from my own challenges problems I've sometimes had a big learning and brought it back into something that I can use to help people life is absolutely amazing try and find out how much pleasure you can [Music] stand well Paul this is a real pleasure to welcome you to high performance thank you Jake hello lovely to see you and Daman lovely to see you too what is high performance do you believe when somebody's in a sort of a peak State when um athletes call it being in the zone musicians call it being in the groove psychologists call it being in flow when you're involved in an activity to the peak of your ability sort of the rest of the world disappears you know you move in the right way you think uh the the the thoughts in a you know a really good sequence and you are uh you're actually in a state of Excellence is what I would say should we all aim for that like do we need to aim for excellence we don't need to uh but it's a good idea to because firstly it feels good right you know when even when you're watching someone else in a peak state right if you have the reference experiences say as a sports person you're watching you know someone performing an athlete really really well you enjoy them to some extent if if you're watching you're at a concert and you appreciate the music the musicians in in the groove you join them in that flow that Groove you know that Peak State and so it feels good uh and um so yeah so it's a it's a good thing to aim for because it makes you feel good and it makes other people feel good a lot of our listeners will be familiar with you from your Days on television as a hypnotist and I'm interested if you tell us a little bit about how you describe what you do now okay so you're absolutely right I my I began My Life as a radio broadcaster then I became a uh an entertainment hypnotist comedy hypnotist and I then moved into self-improvement television and I became an author and nowadays what I do is I teach hypnotherapy I have the largest hypnotherapy training organization in the world I do motivational events I'm a Hired Gun and and I still write books uh or make audio video products that either help people to overcome a problem to sleep better at night to become more confident to quit smoking Etc or aspirational so no matter how good your life is right now I've got the access codes to your unconscious mind and I can crank your life up and make it even better not install my model of happiness in you but help you become the best version of you I know that you work with some of the most famous people on the planet right we all assume well they don't need Paul McKenna cuz they've already achieved great things they must already be happy no I feel very honored to have worked with some some spectacularly talented people and sometimes they will have a problem like everyone else they just want to quit something or they just want to get over a phobia or other times they'll they're already brilliant to what they do but they want to be even better they want to have the edge so for example Roger adultery is not an unconfident person but when he walks out into a stadium and performs for people he wants to be in a peak state of performance so he uses um one of my trances as does um James Cordon you know and again I can speak about this because they've spoken about it publicly so they want to be in that Peak state of performance uh when they're actually doing their job can we talk about some specifics then when it comes to the work you do I mean I was I was listening to the news the other day and this shocked me 8 million people in 2023 in the UK have taken anti-depressants yeah one in 12 in the United States on anti-depressants there was a recent survey that said globally we've never had so much but we've also never had so little purpose yeah and there is well did you describe it as a moment ago a biological biological there's we're in a psychological pandemic we're in a psychological pandemic how have we got there well firstly uh because this a big question by the way and yeah quarter of the country is taking some sort of psychiatric medication now and I am not qualified to say whether anti-depressants are a good or bad thing of course for some people they definitely help them through a difficult time now there's no doubt that anti-depressants uh selective serotonin reuping inhibit iors do do um alterrain chemistry but um I think what's happened is uh a lot of issues that really should be dealt with by psychologists hypnotherapists or modern sort of U yeah counselors if you like have been treated by medication and that's not bad by the way because there's some wonderful medications but um rather than people spending time doing talking therapies which um uh in some cases more expensive than than a than a pharmaceutical medication um you can understand why and also work quickly people have gotten into the habit of using uh medication however um uh you know as a therapist who practices talking therapies and and and you know some of these new what we call psychosensory therapies I I think it's uh it's something that that will become more popular in the future because we went down some some really weird routes thanks to Sigman fr you know who thought that we just sit and talk about our problems and analyze them and somehow you know that will cure people now there's no doubt getting something off your chest makes you makes many people feel better but going back over and over and over all your problems is a bit like throwing someone with a broken leg down the stairs until they feel better because you're you're sort of you're reinforcing it by going back over it so um for a long time people thought the solution to overcoming problems was analyzing it and now we've moved past that now it's about recoding or reping so um uh if you tell me you've been through a horrific experience and you can't stop thinking about it and it's in your mind all the time rather than just sit and talk about it and go over it and over it and reinforce it what we do is we make it so it's un important it's coded differently so that you go yeah I something bad happened to me but it doesn't bother me anymore and so um how we've got to the place where we are where your question started where we have a massive proportion of people taking medication is um partly economic partly cultural partly a whole load of different things um it's nobody's fault but if the medications work so well why are we taking more and more of them so for people who are already doubting themselves hearing us have this conversation thinking well the tablets will work for me because my brain doesn't have the capability to be rewired I'm not strong enough I'm y I'm not there what would you tell us and more importantly them about the power of the human brain okay so firstly we we do need to put in a caveat which if somebody's clinically depressed you actually need to see um a qualified professional right um but what what I say to people um in relation to the work that I do firstly uh a lot of the problems that people have in everyday life are now quite easily solved using modern psychological techniques like hypnosis like neurolinguistic programming NLP right um and and now these Psy sensory techniques where you tap on various acupuncture points or you touch the side of your arms these sort of things and these work really well for a whole host of everyday sort of modern problems and if you want to quit smoking hypnosis now proven to be the most effective way in the world to quiz right um so I think it would be great if more people were using them in fact when I started doing this 35 nearly 40 years ago it was Voodoo right and people certainly in this country wouldn't go see a therapist would mean you're mad and there was a big stigma around it nowadays um the invention of the label coach means that people can get help they can say you know I've got a coach somebody who's helping me access my resources to be a better version of myself whereas therapy is seen largely to help people with problems that they can't seem to overcome and so um both have a role by the way and what I do is kind of a mix of both really so can we rewire our brains absolutely yeah I mean I hear people say rubbish like it takes 21 days to get a habit I've seen people in 21 seconds change you know they they've literally have gone you know what I'm never doing that again and that's it in that moment their life changes or they meet someone or they come up with an idea or they suddenly see a possibility in that moment everything changes so you know I'm down on conventional old-fashioned analysis cuz I meet people who've been in therapy for 20 years and they can talk to you like a shrink and they'll say all this psycho Bab I've got this unexpressed R chorge my father and I'm dealing with it no um all I'm interested in is the output right hasn't made any difference to their behavior what what a modern psychologist hypnotist and neurolinguistic programmer does is help somebody to literally reprogram their mind in the same way that about half of what you do every day is a habit right you don't think to yourself shall I clean my teeth this morning you just do it yeah so some of those habits or programs if you like help us like you learn how to as a kid tie his shoelaces open the door Etc so you don't have to learn how to do it every day and you store the program in the unconscious uh and some of the programs we have are unhelpful overeating drinking too much smoking insomnia lack of confidence Etc and through Modern psychological techniques you can progam program somebody or teach them to program themselves really quickly to turn around unwanted behaviors to be able to uh feel better more of the time hey there it's Jake kit listen if you want even more from Paul McKenna download the high performance app right now for free from the app store for some exclusive content where he guides me through a process where I try and stop doing something that I know is really bad for me see what happened on the high performance app and you can find so much more exclusive content right there let's get back to the episode I actually think we need to pass this over to you Paul because you people are chewing into this having seen the name maybe having seen the trailer maybe having listened to that first couple of minutes is thinking this could be the conversation that changes everything for me mhm so if that's what they're thinking yeah what what should we be talking about please you tell us psychological technology has taken this dramatic kind of Quantum Leap recently um and and so it used to take six months to cure phobia for example now most phobia is not even 60 minutes right because we understand more about how people um uh make themselves frightened and how they can make themselves unfrightened and confident and so um we're gearing up to I mean what's really interesting now is with artificial intelligence and the way our species is going we're going to go through we're going to go through again a a massive change in the species from which we can never return where there will be a marriage of cyber technology human physiology Etc The Singularity and you know some of that's very exciting if we look at say the many of the developments in medicine fantastic if you look at Warfare then it's very scary right um but um I um I tend to be an optimist right I I you know I think um uh when I look at say I like the guia theory that the the Earth is a living organism the days and nights of the heartbeats the rainforests are the lungs the oceans the blood supply and there are about the same number of communication connections on the Earth right now as there are neural networks in a brain so we're the global brain we're neurons in a global brain and and um uh what's interesting is to me is that I'd say the two big problems in the world right now were certainly selfishness and you know fear-based aggression greed stuff stuff like that right which is polluting our planet and friend of mine he he did a few years ago he took an aerial shot of Los Angeles and and cancer cells and he put them side by side and their structure is similar and so uh right now we're in this age that the Chinese called way Chi which me it's two characters danger opportunity so I think right now we've got all of these amazing possibilities um you know I'm I'm fascinated by um human development as well as as well as actually you know understanding how it is that we can overcome human problems in uh you know the context of my work as a therapist but also kind of where we're going you know where we're we're going as a species and I think there's a lot of things to be excited about there's some things to be absolutely terrified about um and you know only the future will reveal that your new book that's come out I think is really quite powerful and it's powerful in the way that we were saying it's common sense but it's not always common practice for people to understand it and I'm thinking in relation to that what I I I think that directs us around the opportunity element of what you've just described so I'd be interested if you wouldn't mind tell us some of the principles that you talk about in the book that any of us can adopt and employ within our own lives okay so over the years I've had the opportunity to work with all kinds of superachievers um you know as well as people who are you know with problems and um these are people from the world of of sports the Arts you know business Etc and one of the things I like to do is model how somebody does something if it's excellent if somebody's doing something dysfunctional I model how it is their ups setting themselves or holding themselves back and then change that but um uh the idea is if you can model somebody who's a model of excellence and codify it and then teach it to other people in a fraction of the time that it took your model of Excellence that's a great thing that moves the species on and so um this new book that I've written uh success for Life the secret to achieving your true potential is really about seven main areas self-belief right confidence um that sort of stuff then you've got Clarity a lot of people are not sure about what they want when you ask them a series of questions they go to their values they suddenly get clear about what it is right uh then there's um connection that's connecting to other people connecting to life uh you know that's where we get our vitality and life force from there's also a determination you know a lot of people who are procrastinators it's not they're lazy they're just frightened to make the wrong decision which is a decision um but when they're clear and you get their self- sabotage and those aspect of them that are holding themselves back suddenly uh they get determined and motivated then there's energy and health I mean one of the things that we know uh again through again it's it's a sort of modern area of psychology medicine is something called psychon neuroimmunology that's um pni and that's where psychology and and Medicine overlap and so through visualization techniques for example you can enhance your immune system right there's been there's tons of research on this now and then and finally happiness right so everybody wants to be happy um but uh a lot of people think that happiness will come from having more stuff or more status or things like this whereas our inherent default setting is happiness and we kind of get in the way so what I do is I ex I I explain this I get people to do exercises uh you know and I speak in hypnotic language so metaphor is the stock and trade of a hypnotist right and then I I I build uh there's a whole load of audio techniques with this but a trance and a trance that gets you to access all these superstates and what happens is as you hit the End of This Book you get Euphoria right because suddenly you've stacked all of these great things on top of each other and you can see a great future you feel full of positivity you're you're literally turbocharged you know if um you and so some of the things are real simple I mean some of the the let me do a quick thing with you now and people watching or listening at home right so if it's safe and appropriate to do so if you close your eyes and imagine a cinema screen in front of you and on that screen I'd like you to watch a u that's operating at your true potential or close to it yeah a u that's in the zone in the flow that's right look at the way look at your posture the expression on your face the light behind your eyes look at the way you connect with people the way you gesture hear the sound of your voice and then when you're ready float over and into that you step into that you and see through the eyes of your more confident optimistic joyous creative self that will optimize you here your internal dialogue strong and positive and feel how good it feels right and then from this place imagine another cinema screen in front of you and are you that's operating in an even higher level of potential are you that's there a sort of a a superpower you yeah look at the look at your posture your expression light behind your eyes once again that that that Aur of confidence and Charisma of happiness and joy that you're exuding that's right and way you connect with people your gestures everything then float over and step into that you that's right see through the eyes of your optimized super self hear your internal dialogue strong and feel how good it feels and notice where the feelings are strongest in your body and wherever they are give them a color and then imagine moving that color in your mind up through your neck and around your head down through your shoulders into your arms and hands and fingers down through your chest into your legs and then double the brightness and double it again and double it again until you are glowing with this color and then imagine taking this into the rest of the day imagine taking it into next week Imagine taking it into your home life your social life your work life imagine taking taking it into challenging situations or dealing with difficult people imagine spreading it into your future forever more and then when you're ready you know just come on back out feel good yeah it does can I jump in though because when you spoke about the word trans yes I'm conscious that for me it goes back to that idea of Voodoo or something to be hesitant or just or and and I think the way you've just EXP it there is powerful and I and and it's it can feel very self-affirming MH I'm interested in almost challenging some of that like that cynicism that's inherent in our culture that would get in the way of us accessing some of these resources you describe well I mean you're absolutely right A lot of people um well not so much now but but for a long time people were had understandable fears about hypnosis they thought it would you know it they might U do things against their will they might blurt out some secret uh they'd lose control they'd go into a trance and never wake up and all these sort of misconceptions and uh the idea is is that H modern hypnosis gives you more control over your mind if you like the people who want to control you uh and do it surreptitiously and and manipulatively are politicians salese you know cult leaders those kind of people and uh uh and and use people like me to show them how to do it right and um and so we live in an age now where you know there's a lot of manipulation that takes place um by people not with our best intentions but theirs instead so are we being manipulated then by people that want to do it and we don't even know it's happening oh absolutely I mean you know just look at look at political campaigns look at advertising you know look at look at just um the way um the values of say the people who run big Tech you know shape our world right so um um by the way it's not like they're men in some you know uh cigar Filled Room you know leatherbound chairs you know plotting to take over the world I'm not some conspiracy theorist but yes um uh modern persuasive communicators uh learn specific language patters you know years ago I looked at the language patterns of margarth Atcher Adolf Hitler and Tony Blair now the content is different of course right but some of the structural stuff was the same right like what for example well you know just um for example uh politicians speak in terms first of all they speak in V vagaries right you know we all want freedom we want Liberty we want Justice we want to feel the things right or they'll use assumptions you know they'll they'll use assumptive language hypnotists do I don't know when you're going to relax into a trance and How Deeply you're going to relax but as you relax you'll notice it's the right trance for you right so what I've done is I've hit three assumptions there in a row which is beyond the limits of what's called trans derivational search so your mind is to go on on this search and try and make sense of it and after three it just goes yeah all right this tring happening now so again um uh you know people like Tony Blair um Bill Clinton Barack Obama they are all trained in NLP you know they they're Immaculate communicators and in a way a politician does need to be that's their job is is to inspire people uplift people it's not all bad and evil you know but of course um you know it's when it comes to selling products um you know people that sell products their job is to get you to buy something and so they make it seem as attractive as possible if you're a legal Advocate your job is to put the best case for your client to to the court you know so um communication skills have been around since the beginning of time it's just we've become much more sophisticated in our use of them and now with things like social media it's possible for good and bad communication to spread more rapidly so would you tell us for anyone listening here then how they can harness these patterns so I love the assumptive nature of the language I like the um I like the idea of talking in vagor is yeah what else could our listeners take away and use say if it was about getting your kids to do homework or whether it's about you mean so in really practical terms well you see the thing is kids learn by what you do not by what you say right and so they're going to learn by example and uh uh there isn't a kind of one-sized fits all but um hypnotists use um we we call it hypnotic language which is persuasive language so for example you build agreement um you see this in commercials you know you want value for money you want reliability you want a product that you can trust you want the Okie Koke 2000 right because you've said yes to the first three things you're more likely to say yes to the fourth right so if I'm hypnotizing somebody I'll say you've come here today for a reason and you're sitting here and you're listening to me and you're aware of certain Sensations and very soon you'll be noticing changes so I've put three things that you can say yes to and the fourth of is a statement of Direction but again a good salesperson does this I walked into a shop the other day and chap said I noticed you looked at the jackets first and then you looked at the coats you're obviously looking for something maybe these will interest you and I maybe these will interest yeah cuz he got me to say yes the first three things I was more likely to say yes to the fourth brilliant can we go through some of the um well actually seven elements of the book I think it' be really valuable for people to to walk away with some some real some real thoughts and some real tips and things that they can take into their into their own life so you mentioned self-belief first of all feels like the golden bullet It Feels So elusive how do we how do we develop our self belief well uh first of all everyone has confidence um to some degree like but they might not have it when they want it and where they want it so for example when you're walking around a supermarket you don't go oh should I get the corlex or should you just do it you do it without thinking when you're sitting talking with friends you're not worried about being judged so you're natural and authentic right so everyone has that but sometimes in some environments people go I got to speak in front of all these people and they go into an unresourceful state so basically this book is about learning seven power States so the state of confidence self-belief being authentic so again you know when I wrote a book about 20 years ago about confidence I I would tell people I'm writing about confidence and and and people said things like this they go oh a training manual for our souls is it and I said what do you mean those confident people are in your face I mean no no no those people are very unconfident they're trying too hard naturally confident people are authentic they're genuine you know they they're not they they're comfortable in their own skin so again through visualization processes like the one we just did and the other thing as well one of the reasons that people don't fulfill their true potential is either they they're not thinking big enough Rich enough right or they're holding themselves back they have some self-sabotage they have some programs deep in their unconscious mind that they're not worthy or that that that somehow it'll all be too much that they've got a little imposter syndrome stuff going on H and so they sabotage their success hold themselves back and again that's that comes from one part of the person wanting to achieve and the other part going hang on we want to protect you you know if if you just suddenly get up and start toying to everyone and you know what if you what you know you you might not know what you're talking about or you might get criticized so we'll just hold you back and keep you shy right so what you do is you get the two aspects of the self together through a a really simple process it's a an NLP technique and both of them fulfill their positive intent so tell us how to do that Paul okay we do it now if you want so please is there a part of you that wants to achieve something and a part of you that sort of you don't need to tell me any of the details a part of you that holds you back do you think yes yeah so if you place your hands like like this yeah there you go now if you close your eyes for a second don't go off into a trance but I'd like you to put the part that wants to achieve in one of your hands yeah that's it so it's your right hand is it yeah that's right the part of you wants you know to go out and do particular things achieve and succeed and accomplish stuff in the world but then there's another part over here this part that not sure that holds you back that limits you and actually wants to protect you and keep you safe right so it's intent is positive both aspects of you have a positive intent right and now what do is bring your hands together that's right bring them together so they're overlapping that's it there you go I'm going to come around here there we go that's a good and then what we're going to do is these two aspects of you are going to figure out how it is they can work together so you can succeed and Achieve but at the same time you're protected and what'll happen is in a moment it'll be like a click or it'll be like oh yeah it's possible you won't necessarily know there you go you won't necessarily know how but you know it's possible and now there you go as it good now integrate that new super part into you and I'd like you to see what it's like to succeed and Achieve but also to have all the safety and protection that the part that was sabotaging or stopping you was doing so both aspects are working together so instead of driving down the street and slamming on the brake you Ease on the accelerator ease off the accelerator Ease on the brake ease off the break there you go that's it there you go when you're ready just come on back so when you think about succeeding and achieving it feels different than it did yeah right so what we've done and by the way this is deceptively simple I've seen this one thing literally create the most mindblowing change in a person suddenly you know they they they couldn't get into relationships and then bam they meet the right person and get married and have a happy time or they they just weren't nothing was working for them in business and then suddenly they get an idea they just get focused it's because these parts within us are aligned and not in Conflict how did it feel yeah it was yeah it was so I'll tell you it was like I I'm quite shy at heart so I sometimes go into environments where I have to meet people and I'm I can be quite reticent to Sure sort of I'll hide in the corner or make an excuse to escape from there as quick as I can so that's often one of the parts so yeah that's so when you think about to be a bit more sure sure when you think about going into those environments now what's the difference of just so the as you were describing it it was almost like acknowledging that shyness and saying it's often just feeling not necessarily selworthy but it's it was about going into an environment and not feeling I have to be loud or dominant but I can go in and just be myself and be authentic in this so you could see that you you could you could imagine being in the environment and feeling different yeah definitely right now the neat thing is is so you imagine that one scenario there your brain you see generalizes right you learn how to open one door you can open all doors right so what it'll do is it'll go oh if I can feel like this in this environment maybe I can feel even better in other environments and so when you look back on this in years from now you'll suddenly go maybe it was that day when I was sitting there that led to this uh different feeling and set of experiences in my life going forward yeah really nice okay that was great the big sort of thing for me there is when you talk about you know someone lacking that self-confidence that even the the negative selft talk is your brain trying to protect you sure you know it's a positive thing in a in a sort of strange way and I think as soon as we can think hold on every time my brain says I'm not good enough it's looking after me yeah and then you can accept it I think more and hopefully learn to not not listen to it necessarily well see the thing is I think you made a jake a very good um point there because basically every dysfunctional Behavior has at some level of positive intent right so for example if I'm phobic of I know flying there's a part of me that's trying to protect me because it thinks it's unsafe even though you know we know statistically it's very safe or say for example smoking right um the positive intent of smoking is it's a very good Stress Control mechanism it's just got a massive negative long-term Health consequence but uh you know smoker I'm freaked out I have a cigarette I feel calm so it's int there's a positive intent there but there are other ways to get calm without cigarettes so in a sense what we're doing is a negotiation um we're saying look I understand that part is interfering in your life for me for years I kept getting into the same kind of relationships and you know then eventually went hang on the common denominator here is me isn't it um so uh and I'm I would sabotage it early on because I was frightened of being hurt and then when I you know I I did a similar sort of negotiation few other things happened uh finally I not only got married got happily married and and you know again it was it was a little while recognizing that I was sabotaging this it's actually one of your one of your seven points connection yeah and people might be listening to this going well Paul's got it all figured out that's how he's written his book and had all this incredible success in his life so I think it's it's important for you to say like you've you've had issues with these things oh God yeah I mean you know again I I really appreciate you saying this because uh I don't have all the answers you know I have some but problems challenges are how you learn and grow you know the I'm I I Buddhism you know the Buddha was not a God he was a man who perfected himself and and you know the only way you can do that is by getting it wrong by going places where you got to go where it isn't to find out where it is and so I do not have all the answers um I have some absolutely and and uh you know and actually from my own challenges problems catastrophes I've sometimes had a big learning and brought it back into some sort of so you know something that I can use to help people like can you counsel our coach yourself or do you need to externalize it and get help from others it's a great question I mean sometimes yes right sometimes I come up with something and I'm so pleased with myself like other hit we ring each other up and go guess what I can do right but um very often it's hard to actually uh when you're inside a problem to think your way out of it and see and it's and in the same way that um like the other day I was having believe it or not my haircuts right and the lady said to me you know this mindfulness and works for me and I said um do you think I should cut my own hair she went what do you mean well should I cut it myself she no have have a hairdresser to I went well it's the same with if you're anxious and you're trying to relax let a hypnotists do it so for example in my world like there's there are people who are like there's one guy who's great at relationships that I know another guy that's brilliant at eating sordas other guy that's fantastic with phobias and then there are some people who sort of try and do everything you know as well but generally it's better to go and see the expert I think cuz first of all they're going to be able to they'll they'll take the stress out of it they'll be able to do it and also you might learn something in the process so yeah occasionally I do something to fix myself um when I was living in the United States um uh I had to go back and forth every other week to Los Angeles and I and that's a long old flight so I programmed my mind to go into Quick Time right you know when you're queuing in the bank it feels it's taking forever or you're uh you're online and it or you out with friends and wow look at the time time is faster and slower given our perception so a Champion Sports person will be able to go into slowtime Jackie Stewart famously said I've only ever driven fast twice in my life in both times it scared me you know anyone who's in a combat sport will go into slow time uh Etc so I went into I'd get on the plane and I'd go to fast time so I'd make the journey you know I'd say right I'm watching a film I'm eat something I'm Tap Away feels like there isn't really enough time you know and so the the flight went really fast right so sometimes um I'll think up something that is useful in relation to a problem or other times I'll try and enhance something I'll say now that's really good like the other day I was working with this guy and I put this in this book superachiever and he said to me you know I I've got all this Career Success but I'm just not happy and I put him into a trance and I said I want your unconscious mind to go to the times when you were happiest and find the building blocks not just the serotonin dopamine Etc find Environment people and the mix of things connection contact you know intimacy Etc and he he came out wow I I went to these times I'd forgotten about and with my kids and were this and we were in nature and and but then from that I went oh okay um I I'm going to use that as a device to just instruct people's unconscious minds which I T and the trance in this book so it goes on a search it finds all the happy times and it builds more of them it basically computes if this sort of stuff makes me happy how can I Quantum it in your book you talk about the three Circles of connections I was very fortunate to when I lived in Hollywood I I I'd always wanted to meet um Robert Evans you know legendary producer there's a fantastic movie about him the kids stays in the picture and and uh what one day I got a phone call and uh but Bob Evans would really like to meet you this is like you know getting a call from the Pope in Hollywood this guy was behind The Godfather W The Godfather true great love story you know he's just oh he was fantastic and he he was you know the larger than life you know character he was amazing right and I became friends with Bob and you I'd go over and sit with him but in the most beautiful house and he had he was super smart guy great stories and he he had this kind of very big voice you know to like this and one day he said to me um because Henry kissen just said make three circles make three circles kid the first one's big that's your acquaintances the next one's smaller that's your friends and the real small one's your real friends people who be there for you you got to be there for them and um I went away and I did it right and I went oh I have more real friends than I realized but the majority of them are here in Europe right and I do have some real friends in LA but anyway I I went oh it's a really interesting way of looking at it it's not a bad thing to have acquaintances or friends but but knowing who they are and um and so actually me and my wife decided to move back to Europe as a result of that um and so it's one of those processes that's very interesting to do and particularly in a place like Hollywood Los Angeles which is all about everyone connecting with each other networking leveraging you know everyone's thinking what can this person do for me you know they're all thinking like that because it's a town of overachievers but there's that lovely line in the book where you where you recount the advice of that it's actually secondhand it's Simon Cowell's Dad yes would you tell us about that sure uh s you know Simon's a fantastic uh person he's incredibly uh kind and generous um he's he's very candid you know which of the circles is he in in your life oh Simon's a real friend Simon's been there for me whenever I've needed him and he's wonderful and he said my my father said that um Simon's father uh Eric had said everyone's got a sign above the head saying make me feel important and uh you know one of the bestselling self-help books of all times How to Win Friends and Influence People one of the sort of simple principles is actually listen and connect with somebody rather than sort of tell them how great you are you know connect listen Etc and and I thought that was just a beautiful metaphor make me feel important because um it's a nice thing if you lift other people's energy up they like you they might not remember what you said to them but they'll pretty much remember how you made them feel that I want to talk about creativity it's another one of the key seven yeah uh blocks in the book and you know as someone who considers themselves to be a creative as a broadcaster and you know podcaster and a few other things along the way I get I do get these periods of block I get these periods of real like inertia and I don't know where they come from I don't know why they're there um I imagine I'm not alone what what can the book do for me in that space people have this idea that you've got to have a bow TI work in an ad agency you know and be colorful to be creative no look if you drive down the street you're creating a journey right um if you um you know sit and look out the window you're creating a viewing experience I mean you you cannot not be creative everyone is creative all day long right and um some people are creative in a way that is mysterious to others so for example we're a left brain dominated culture which is logic linear sequential thinking and so right brain people abstract you know thinkers artists poets Etc you know to the left brain people they it's miraculous how do you come up with these songs or think of these amazing plays or or things like that poetry and so creativity is a state it's a neurophysiological brain body state right and uh uh what I found when I lived in Hollywood was I ended up working a lot with creative people who said I'm just blocked right and um I would say okay I'd like you to remember exactly what it was like when you when you wrote your three biggest hit songs or your three biggest blockbuster movies I struggle to remember the when it felt easy yeah so thing that's why somebody like me would guide you through it right so so what you do is you go back to the moment before you were super creative right so for example you know they'll go well I I came up with the idea for that when I was doing this and I say right go back see what you saw hear what you heard feel how you felt the other part's a negotiation right so um I remember very famous songwriter one of the great songwriters came around to see me one day and he said you know thing is I sit down to compose and in the morning nothing and then I got friends coming over at 7 no no hang on I've got to go off cuz I've got a hit song right and so what I did with him was I said may I talk to your Creative Energy you know if we were to give it a name and he said it's the force it's like a force it's like I Channel it through me I just it comes so I've got no control it just shows up I said I want to talk to the force please he went sure and I said so look um I appreciate what you do and right now you know on a scale of 1 to 100 what percentage you went 10% I said could you take it to 20 30 40 we got it up to 100% I want to write songs hang on tone it back down again now there are all sorts of different aspects of a of of of a human being that not necessarily all aligned so you'll go part me wants to go to the cinema P me wants to stay at home now it's not as though there are two people there these are two ways of of describing uh aspects of self process if you like and so I said look I I wonder if we could ask you to show up at particular times and I'd like you to imagine now being by the piano or you know being by the keyboard or whatever it is and and then invite the the force to come on in and it came and um I remember uh I didn't I didn't know it was going to be this straightforward but it was and then like a few months later I got a call one night and this guy from a a big American band and he said hey man you know I understand you got this creativity thing going on I said yeah but I mean you know it's late and he he said look you got to help me I I got to make this Al moment and so I went okay may I talk to the creative part please you went yeah um you I understand you do a job i' like you remember times you creative is there any objection to you feeling that Creative Energy knowing that's it fantastic anyway I hadn't heard I I I had a number for him I called him about a month l i called his his agent actually about a month later and I said I just want to know how how he's doing he how he's doing how he's doing he won't stop writing you know he's he's in the studio all the time like and and so sometimes a simple negotiation uh which which seems like it's taking place in the waking State whatever that is right um is what a hypnotist does it's like a negotiation in a way it's because I speak fluent subconscious mind I suppose would be a way of putting it and so with creativity you are creative but you might get in your own way so for example one of the ways that people get in their own way is they try and get an idea down and make it perect while they're doing it and they'll critic it while they're trying to be um brainstormed right so you get the critic out of the way and you just get it down and then you critique it afterwards Walt Disney strategy was this he'd dream something up then he'd step into another subpersonality he'd slag it off and then he'd go into the third position of realism well if that's going to work how will it work and so these are simple strategies that when you read them you go yeah I could do that you know um uh and you know look at the the Paul McCartney strategy when he he came up with the the ballet you know he was asked in an interview how do you write a ballet he won't sit here on opening night curtain goes up what do I see what do I he and then and then it comes from there this conversation reminds me how often we over complicate stuff in our own heads and actually really a lot of what you're saying and this isn't me dumbing it down it's like it's it's kind of simple stuff if we know the tricks right yeah absolutely um you know in the same way um there are things that you do that are really straightforward and easy to you because you know that's your world yeah um you know I I find this one of my friends he's a you know kind of a genius in business right and he starts explaining to you well there's this and then you do that hang wait wait hey come on keep up and to him it's it's he doesn't understand that not everyone is able to think so clearly about all these different mathematical decisions and so you know it's what what you're used to but you're absolutely right I think a lot of the problems people have these days are are uh from being tortured by their own minds and so uh you know they'll have a thought they'll have a thought about a thought about a thought and what particularly we find you know since the pandemic is people have become great at catastrophizing going hang on this the war the economy if you open the newspaper turn on the TV you're under attack right and which equals ratings doesn't it you know the more emotive it is and so um I like there's a great saying by Mark Twain which is I've been through some terrible experiences in my life and some of them actually happened right because because because a lot of the time things that we worry about understandably because we're trying to protect ourselves as we talked about earlier are never going to happen there are emergencies we're preparing for that are never going to happen and uh I I suppose in a sense um part of what I do is help people reset their thinking so that there's their bandwidth which has taken up with too many survival thoughts suddenly when you take that out of the way there's room for creativity Joy you know happiness you know all these sort of really amazing States and emotions we have had some of our guests Tom Daly for example spoke to us around the art of catastrophizing though so working out what could kill me going for an Olympic medal yeah and then sort of coming up with contingency plans so I'm interested that your view on that but equally is there a ratio then that we should acknowledge some of the parts that are trying to protect us by catastrophizing but then the ratio to allow that joy and creativity and spontaneity to come in well it's it's a really great point because you're absolutely right if a part of you is worried and concerned about something it's function is protection the job of fear is to say be prepared if I'm about to step off the curve and there is a bus coming I want fear to pull me back keep me alive I just don't want to live in it right and so um you know for example Richard Branson does this upside downside thing so um you know when he thinks of when he's about to make a business decision right professional Risk Takers are not Reckless they're people who for a living they weigh things up so say for example uh you want to ask somebody out on a date now downside is they might reject you so you'll feel bad for an hour or two or a day or two whatever it is the upside is they might say yes right and then you can have a relationship you might have an amazing life so the downside is the three the upside of 10 when you have that that big difference take action if it's 50/50 I'd be much less inclined to take action and so um uh it's again it's it's one of those things where you sort of nobody gets it right all the time right you have to sort of sort of weigh it up but um in any sort of um achievement of things first of all you have to know what you want secondly I think you should um imagine having it and do an ecology check ecology is the study of consequences so if in achieving this goal will I cause problems for myself and other people in which case it's not a good goal to have also the goals got to be maintained operated by you you know some people's goals are to make everyone else change to make me feel happy so it should be I'm going to do this in order to achieve that and then once you've imagined achieving it what you do is you literally back engineer it so what I do with people at the moment because I noticed a lot of people post pandemic had lost their focus because they couldn't make plans that everything goal post were moving right so I go I want you to go fact you know go off into the go off a year into the future and imagine you've had one of the best years of your life if that's true what must have happened in regard to your health mental and physical your relationships personal professional your career your finances your spiritual life your general levels of happiness and so because you've taken the limiters off people go wow yeah if all that happened it would be great and then you go now come back three months what would have needed to have occurred then three months and three months and three months and then suddenly they look at their life and they've got a compelling future over the next year so again these are things that seem simple but took me a while to hone this and practice this to find out where it could go wrong and get it to work on most people most of the time I want to touch on health and energy I think there's two things that we are you know people would say they want more of it's better health and more energy yeah how can these techniques give us them well okay so um there's some simple things every biohacker will tell you that it's sleep it's diet it's exercise and its state of mind those four things are are the main things to to look at and uh you know years ago I used to get up and attack the day and you know burn out regularly I was treating life like a marathon now I treat it like a series of Sprints and I have not had a cold who been on well for five years now uh by making these simple changes you know uh I uh even when I had the the the virus you know I was just tired for a few days so um it's kind of what I don't do you know I don't burn out uh as much but also um I listen to my body uh and um and I practice I visualize myself in good health right and again there there you know there are a whole load of things that I could point to people who do meditation regular self- hypnosis uh tend to be in Better Health if they're visualizing themselves they tend to cope with stress better 50% of the reason why people end up at the doctor you can trace back to stress right so if I could give people just one thing in the world it would be to turn off the unnecessary overwhelming stress and to be able to go into states of deep calm and peace so that they can replenish themselves so um as well as that on this trance I talk to the immune system and I ask it to optimize right and again the unconscious mind knows exactly what I'm talking about you don't have to know about macroasia and kity cells Etc it knows how to optimize see if I cut my finger right I put a plaster on it it's not the plaster that heals my finger it's my genetic code you know it's it's the it's all the aspects of me that do it all the plaster does is protect so very often we can treat things that manifest physiologically through pschological means right you know because there are all kinds of things which are caused by stress so the main thing is basically reduce stress reduce toxins uh don't wear yourself out you know simple stuff like this would you just give us a few of the key things that you do in your daily life your daily routine yeah get you to this place of not being ill well okay so uh what I do these days is I get up and I I juice first thing in the morning green juice and uh I uh I I'm I'm uh and and uh I make me and my wife a juice um then I if I'm hungry I have some breakfast and um I do a walk-in nature I walk with my dog and I do gratitude list I walk around I think of all the things that I'm grateful for like my health my friends where I live in the world uh you know the the job I get to do I think of the the small things like that first cup of tea in the morning which is fantastic and by doing that I'm reinforcing at the unconscious level that my life is abundant and if I'm feeling a bit low I just go back over my list and it lifts me up right so it's a really good idea to think about all the things you're grateful for because far too many people are thinking about what they don't have they can't do Etc that stops you getting ill no no I'm saying what that does is so it's a good question is by being in an optimized state of mind right you're going to be healthier yeah it's um so what stops you what gets you ill is um too much stress too many toxins and also let's not forget some people are genetically pred predisposed to some things right right so you have to put that in the equation but what was a turnaround for me in my life was was stopping burning myself out working to excessively and and uh um instead of as I I use the metaphor of a marathon and now a series of Sprints with recovery time you know what I also do that I find just works for me is things like acupuncture um and uh I'm I do meditation or use one of my own trances you know and people say to me but by the way there's um yeah people say to me they go you know isn't it weird listening to One I no that's my voice in my head you know hear it all the time yeah except I'm very relaxed when I'm talking to myself in a trance you know instead of worrying about something so would you tell us as well about that 8020 principle because I think this links to your metaphor of a of a series of spins rather than a marathon right so um Wilfred peretto was a 19th century Economist and being an economist you know he's thinking mathematically he finds that 80% of the peas he harvests from his garden come from 20% of the pods and he wonders if this hold this principle holds true in other areas and and it does sometimes it's 7030 or 9010 but 8020 is a pretty good Benchmark So 20% of your carpets walks on 80% of the time 80% of the things that a computer does is down to 20% of the software 80% of the cost of crime is down to 20% of the criminals 80% of the money you make is from 20% of your efforts 80% of the fun you have in life will come from 20% of the environments and 20% of the people you know right the most fun 80% of the problems the grief and and on all the stress again will come from 20% of the people so isolate who they are and just don't spend as much time with them or whatever those environments are that that stress you out unnecessarily so the 8020 principle is a it's like a a rule of thumb but it's a really interesting way of interrogating your life in terms of you know some lot of people use this in business they then do an 8020 of the 8020 but it's it's a it's a really interesting way of just doing a stock take on your life and going oh oh hang on that's where the fun and the good stuff is I'll spend more time there and that's where the grief is can you give us an example of of of that in your life Paul where the 8020 principal plays out well when I first learned about this about sort of 25 years ago whatever it was I looked at all the various business interests I had and I went oh that that's the that that that's that makes the most money and this that stresses me out and that's all and so I'm going to focus here so from business point of view it made a big difference um then also I I I basically in those days I went through my phone who takes my energy up who takes it down mostly speaking because some people you know can take your energy down on occasion because they have a friend who needs lifting up oh God they drain me right so I just wouldn't send them my new phone number right and I do things like that and then uh the other use of the 8020 was oh yeah there are things I do that are not have no commercial you know gain at all right but I like doing them and they make me feel good and so I do those yeah so it's it's because I made it sound like some sort of Excel spreadsheet approach to life which you could consider it is but you know it's not purely about Commerce it's it's really about Feelgood yeah um and and so that's how I've applied it in my life so Paul quick far our questions your three non-negotiable behaviors that you and the people around you should buy into but people who are selfish to the point that they're like sociopathic they they really don't care about the collateral effects of of their own you know Relentless desire and ambition uh is is another thing that I find deeply reprehensible um you know I also do you know one of the other it's going to seem a little more Petty now entitlement you know people who' just got that that entit thing that that that that I again it sort of gets me um but um yeah I just I think um yeah I think um cruelty bullying condescension yeah and finally entitled so those would be three for me very good what's your greatest strength and your biggest weakness it's a mix of basically uh adaptability and tenacity right so um in terms of uh my life if I look back over it somebody pointed out to me recently said you've reinvented yourself a few times and I said I never set out to I just adapted because life took me in different directions or my interests are in different directions weakness um you know I'm I'm going to say that I I see the best in people to a point sometimes where I'm a bit gullible you know and literally I I you know I want to believe that everyone is inherently good you know and and so that's the F nice trait I think you should stick with that that's a well J one of those things so I'm not going to let it destroy my my faith in human nature but it has got me into trouble a few times let's say yeah you could go back to One Moment in your life where would you go and why would you go there well you know I'm going to say something like the moment I got married you know and I looked into my wife SI and we connected and it was so beautiful we were exchanging our vows on the beach and it was like wow you know um I mean also the moment you know we realized we were in love with each other this some of those have got to be like the high is so high other some of the other big Highs are when I help somebody with something that say everyone else has given up on them and this is a really hard thing and they suddenly have a phenomenal breakthrough and I I mean again I can't quite describe it's like one of the greatest feelings on Earth you know it's um it's a beautiful thing I I think those are sort of my top so if I had to pick one I'm going to say the beach with my wife what advice would you give to a teenage Paul just starting out on his journey well i' just say it's all going to be all right mate you know I used to worry so much about everything and try to overachieve I say hey it works out great you get everything you want it's fine you know life is going to be absolutely fantastic and you know you you're about to live this you're what a ride you're about to have you know it's going to be fantastic I mean the piece of advice when whenever I'm asked what's the one thing you would tell people it's you get more of what you focus on you know and you know too many people are thinking about what they don't want these days and I don't want to be overweight I don't want to be you know shy I don't want to be whatever it is and not thinking I do want to be confident or I do want to be in control and these sorts of things and that leads us really nicely to our final question after this fascinating conversation thank you for it you're one Golden Rule your message really you'd like to leave ringing in the ears of people who've enjoyed this conversation I like the Dal Lama says kindness is my religion right and I I think you know right now we've got so much hate going on in the world we just need more kindness and again all right here we go Gandy my life is my message so if you want to look at uh you know in in a way rather than some some words and platitudes you know uh what what have you done in your life have you have you had an effect have you done something positive so try and I I mind try and encourage people because you know my my job these days my main job is I teach people how to be hypnotherapists and uh I'm teaching them how to get people to be kinder to themselves to to uh overcome problems and challenges to uh realize that you know there's a lot to feel good about and and so yeah I think that's the sort of the message I have is um life is is is absolutely amazing try and find out how much pleasure you can stand what a great what a great one how much pleasure can you stand thank you so much thank you thank you it was such a pleasure really was pleasure thank you Paul

Channel: High Performance

Views: 176,012

Keywords: Podcast, The High Performance Podcast, Jake Humphrey, Damian Hughes, Liquid thinker, hypnosis, hypnotism, paul mckenna, derren brown, hypnotise, diet, bad habits, smoking, alan carr, quit, addiction

Id: u-Dt1QGXXnU

Length: 61min 0sec (3660 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024