I’d like to add that your ability to connect with an audience is directly related to connect with yourself and your own experience. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Lately I’ve been making plans to build a tiny house similar to what they make at Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. One issue is the plumbing on something that’s more or less off the grid. After reading a book on humanure, I realized our plan as a society is to separate ourselves from our own waste and transport it off to treatment facilities when your yard or garden is where it really ought to go. We’ve removed ourselves from that part of the cycle of life.

In the past year or so, I’ve taken to eating more raw food. Rather than vegan, I’ve headed down the raw-paleo path. As a people, we’ve generally separated ourselves from our food supply and production. Most of what we consume comes out of plastic bags and cardboard boxes instead of from the ground or from an animal. I can tell you, I notice a huge difference when I switch over to processed or cooked (dead) food for a meal or two. We’ve removed ourselves from that part of the life cycle.

Over the years, I’ve studied violence. As I’ve mentioned, I was an army medic. I’m also now an instructor candidate with Target Focus Training which teaches how to handle violence by creating injuries in the other guy. Through those experiences, I’ve seen how deluded most of us are about life, death and violence. Most people hope the police show up in time if something ever goes terribly wrong. We’ve separated ourselves from the reality that criminals have no problem using violence to get what they want. We see news about more people killed in our various wars. It seems like most people don’t realize none of those people died peacefully in their sleep. We don’t even get to see flag draped caskets anymore. We’ve removed ourselves from that part of the life cycle.

Over the last year, I’ve been using running in Vibram Five Finger Shoes. My muscles had to relearn how to run but once I adjusted, I’ve never had another stress injury. Evidently, the vast majority of foot, ankle, knee, etc problems people attribute to running are actually caused by their expensive footwear. If we went barefoot or nearly barefoot, all that goes away. You were made to experience the world through your feet as well. Imagine if you lived your life with your hands in oven mitts all the time. How much sensory input would your hands miss out on? Locking our feet up in allows us to ignore where we’re going and tromp through life totally unaware. We’ve removed ourselves from that part of the life cycle.

Steve Pavlina is the number one personal development blog by most any measure. He recently posted on Intimacy and Label-Free Relationships. We’re separating ourselves from really connecting with other people by our use and dependence on labels. I highly recommend his post to you.

All that’s to say, if you want to connect with your audience, connect with yourself first. It’s not about perfection but progress. It’s all about your effectiveness and ability to impact the world around you.

All the copywriters had a pattern of doing research, writing and editing. That’s no shock. The difference came in how much time each copywriter spent in each area.

Funny to find that there was almost no consistency between our copywriters. There was a wide range of anywhere from 40-80% of their time spent on research and then 20-55% on writing. One guy even claimed he didn’t do any editing at all (not recommended). The lesson here is to find your own way. As long as you’re getting good results, it doesn’t’ matter.

A common theme developed on what it’s like for top copywriters when they write. There was always some kind of core emotion involved in the creation process. Sometimes each segment had its own state of being (detective, conversationalist and editor). Others, it was a simple enjoyment and fascination with the entire process.

That strong emotion could be described as a flow state. Athletes know about being in the zone. It’s the same thing. It’s where your ability comes up against a commensurate challenge and everything else seems to fade away while you fully immerse yourself in the experience.

What if you’re new to copywriting and don’t know how to find that flow experience? Look for it in another area of your life. Maybe you’ve lost yourself in a dance, a painting or while cooking. What’s it like during that activity? Consider what brings on that flow state for you. If it’s music, a feeling, etc apply that to your writing.

Our copywriters have other qualities in common too. Take time of day for writing. Isn’t it true that the early bird gets the worm? Or how about the old saying, “Early to bed, early to rise…”

The pattern was that there was very little consistency there either. Many copywriters like to knock out an hour or two of writing first thing in the morning. Some say though that they do their best writing in the afternoon or evening once everyone else is gone to bed and all is quiet. So it’s really up to you to find your most productive time.

What’s the consensus on how long should you keep editing things? Some writers pride themselves on getting a job out in a day or two. Others revise and revise… until the company finally calls and asks for it to be submitted.

The bottom line is to get out there and do it. Yes, brush up on your skills but don’t worry that you’re not doing things in the optimal amounts or times. Find what works for you and gets going.

If you’d like more than the course alone, now you can get hypnotic writing coaching and hypnotic writing critiques.

The coaching will include the course, a review of all assignments, email contact and a critique at the end. At this point I think it would be fair to have a one time payment for six weeks of email consultation (one email per day) and no deadline to get the critique in… all for $500 (includes the course).

Critiques will be unique in that I’ll especially pay attention to hypnotic writing uses and opportunities. I’ll also look at copywriting basics as well as anything else in particular requested. While this won’t include rewrites, I will make suggestions for improvement or places to use hypnotic techniques. I will review the same letter twice for the price. Critiques not already included in coaching start at $250 for a sales letter less than 10 pages. Any other critiques can be priced relative to that.

If you’d like to get your feet wet before you get anything else and want more than the content on this blog, I’ll answer individual questions related to hypnotic marketing for a nominal $10 fee.

Here are those services for quick reference:

• Hypnotic Writing Coaching
• Hypnotic Writing Critiques
• Be A Hypnotic Writer Home Study Course
• Hypnotic Writing Questions

If you’re interested, the order page is here or in the sidebar:

Hypnotic Writing Services

by Rob Andrews

What are the correct kinds of words to use covert hypnosis?

Using words that cause someone to see things in a different way is one way to influence how they feel and think. This is called reframing.

A famous example of reframing is glass half empty, half full metaphor. This reframing from viewing the glass not as half empty, but rather as half full, helps people see the positive side of something.

You can use reframing for more complex things by changing some very simple words in a sentence. For example, think about the difference between these three sentences:

It’s very pretty outside today, but tomorrow it’s going to rain.

It’s very pretty outside today, and tomorrow it’s going to rain.

It’s very pretty outside today, even though tomorrow it’s going to rain.

These sentences describe the same things, but the small change of only a word or two makes you think about the weather differently. Go over these sentences again and be sensitive to how each one makes you feel about the weather today and the weather tomorrow. Can you feel the different attitudes they bring out?

There can be many ways to reframe things.

Choosing words that expand the frame cause the person listening to see the bigger picture.

Like, when a person is at a store and is worried about buying a pair of shoes because she knows that a store across town has the same pair for a few dollars less, you may say something like, Wow, I know that the other store has the same pair for a couple dollars less, but that’s an hour away. How much gas do you think you would use up driving over there?

You can also reframe the context of a situation.

Friend: Man! I really wanted to go to the beach today but its so windy outside it wouldnt be any fun.

You: Ya, it wouldn’t be much fun sitting on the beach in the wind, but look at the wave! It would be a great day for surfing!

And there is also the content reframe.

Friend: What a jerk! That man blew by us doing 100 mph. Can you believe some people!

You: He sure was going fast. Did you see he had his emergency lights on? I wonder if he was going to the hospital.

So you can see how changing the language you use can actually change someones attitude about things.

One powerful type of conversational hypnosis is reframing.

Reframing let’s you distract the listener’s conscious mind and causes her to listen to her subconscious brain.

There is no obvious hypnotic trance here like you would see in overt hypnosis, but nevertheless, this use of words in conversational hypnosis causes the listener to respond to things using her subconscious mind.

Learn more about conversational hypnosis and reframing, and try it out.

Author: Robert Andrews publishes articles to teach the power of conversational hypnosis. Learn more about this amazing form of covert hypnosis

When you think of sales, marketing or persuasion, what comes to mind? Do you get excited about the value you’ll get to share with people or are you worried they’ll think you’re just a pushy sales person? What’s behind that concern?

Over the course of my various careers, I sold knives, vacuums, cars, insurance, B2B services, and real estate. What I learned from one industry to the next was that you have to believe in your product and in yourself. If you don’t, something needs to change.

The way to believe in your product or service is to focus on the value people gain from it. The simplest check is to ask whether the value people receive is more than the money they’re giving you. Another measure is the amount of time or money they can save with your product. A more abstract comparison is how good they might feel from owning your product. As long as you know in your gut that they’re gaining from doing business with you, you’re golden.

The way to believe in yourself is to forget about yourself. Really. Of course you take care of personal hygiene, but when it comes time to interact with your customer, it’s no longer about you. The confidence you want in that scenario comes from focusing on serving your customer. They don’t care about your hangups. They have their own problems and if you want them to have the best experience, your best bet is to look for ways to help them solve them. If you’re focused on the other person, you’re not focused on your self – being self-conscious.

The highest form of service to your customers is to empathize with them. Understand why they feel the way they do and you’ll see how to best serve them. No amount of NLP magic will change those fundamentals.

To recap, find a product you can believe in and look for ways to serve people. Then people will appreciate the value you provide.

We’re all trained by our educations to look for problems. Mistakes were the most frequent things pointed out in our work. Follow any weekend warrior sporting event and you’ll plenty of folks beating themselves up over the shot they missed.

The simplest presupposition there is, is existence. When you talk about something, there’s a presupposition that it must exist or else your statement won’t make sense. If I ask you if you saw the frogglewomp, you’ll rightly ask me what one is. You’d be assuming that there is such a thing until you had a chance to check it out (Google says there’s no such thing if you’re wondering).

When you’re communicating with people, there’s a strong tendency to talk about what we’re noticing, what we think the other person might be noticing or what we’d like them to notice. If we’re noticing problems and talking about problems, that’s what the other person will notice too.

The thing of it is that if you’re the one sending the message, the other person is usually going to go along with your presuppositions. If you say call me if you have any problems, the person is then going to be looking for problems. If you say call me with any success stories or other feedback, the other person will be more inclined to expect good things.

If you want people to expect to have a good experience with you, it helps for you to presuppose greatness in as many of your interactions as possible. The way to form a habit of that is to notice things that are going right. Tony DiCicco, coach of the US Women’s Soccer team, wrote a book called Catch Them Being Good. If you get in the habit of noticing good things, you’ll notice more good things. You’ll communicate positive expectations more often.

In the interest of disclosure you’ll need to convey things that you can’t put as positive a spin on. At least that’s what my parole officer says (just kidding).  When that happens, do your best to reframe it as a positive, talk about it in the past tense or nominalize it. All those techniques are covered in my “Be A Hypnotic Writer” course.

Instead of only noticing the shot you missed, notice what you did right in the approach and what you’d try differently the next time. Notice that you had the guts to try.

The point is to presuppose greatness more often. Talk about it and people will assume it exists. They’ll set their expectations accordingly.

Give it a try and see what happens.

Whenever you tell people not to do or think something, they have to go inside their head and make a representation of it before they can negate it. Even if they decide not to do it as you recommend, they’ll still have experienced whatever it was like to make that picture, sound, feeling, etc.

Some folks will even go so far as to say that the subconscious doesn’t process negation at all. It will get you what you focus on even if you’re thinking of avoiding it. I’m not sure how we’d know that for sure either way but it makes sense.

Instead, whenever you find yourself telling people what you don’t want, stop. Ask yourself what you do want and feature that. Most of the time that will accomplish the same logical argument without causing them to make an undesirable representation.

It’s funny sometimes that people don’t consider the images they’re inadvertently putting into people’s heads. A friend was recently heating up some wax and half-jokingly said not to eat it. My response to comments like that has become, “I was just about to, I’m glad you said something.” That lets them make the representation in their head of how silly their statement was without me having to resist it directly.

This is different than taking a problem/solution approach. That works too. You’ll have to test it to know which converts better for your particular context.

And I wish whoever came up with the purple elephant example would have picked something else because I don’t represent that very well in my mind. I think I’m more likely to resist and wonder why the heck we’re talking about purple elephants. Why not “don’t think of a car” or “don’t think of pizza”?

So when you’re editing your copy, make sure to filter for negations and see if there’s something else you’d prefer your reader to be thinking about.

In outlining that script, I took several things into consideration:

• Scripts from Paraliminal recordings
• The acquisition protocol from Expanding Your World by Dawes and Gordon
• The New Behavior Generator protocol from Dilt’s Encyclopedia of NLP
• The time recommended to allow the brain to reach the theta frequency

The acquisition protocol (AP) is:

1. Assess the ecology of having the Ability.
2. Connect having the Ability to satisfying one of your Prime Motivators.
3. Identify a PAST SITUATION in which you really needed the Ability.
4. Access the Criterion/Definition/Evidence and the Sustaining Emotion, then step in the PAST SITUATION while holding those elements in your experience. Practice this until you can access them easily.
* Recognize how in satisfying the Criterion you are also satisfying your Prime Motivator.
5. Access reference experiences for any Supporting Beliefs, and take them into the PAST SITUATION.
6. Run through the Primary Strategy and External Behaviors in the PAST SITUATION, and practice them until they are working for you.
7. Recognize that the Enabling Cause-Effect is true.
8. Practice the entire Ability in other past situations, until you are sure that you can easily access the elements.
9. Think of any real-world difficulties that could arise (difficulties that could stop you from manifesting the Ability), and practice overcoming them by using Secondary Strategies.
10. Identify the next time you will need the Ability, and rehearse manifesting it in that situation.

The New Behavior Generator (NBG) protocol is:

1. Ask yourself, “If I could already achieve my new goal, what would I look like?” (Do this while putting your eyes down and to your left. Ad)
2. Picture yourself achieving your goal. (Look up and to your right to help stimulate your imagination. Vr)
3. To help you visualize:
a. Remember a similar successful achievement.
b. Model someone else.
c. Picture yourself first achieving a smaller part of the goal.
4. (Move your eyes up and to the left or right. Vc or Vr)
5. Step in to the picture so you feel yourself doing what you pictured. (Put your eyes and head down and to the right as you get into the feeling. K)
6. Compare these feelings to feelings from a similar past success. (Keep your eyes and head turned down and to the right. K)
7. If the feelings are not the same, name what you need and add it to your goal. Go back to step 1 and repeat the process with your expanded goal. (Move your eyes and head down and to the left. Ad)

The main differences I noticed is that the NBG starts out with an undefined goal and incorporates a lot of elicitation for calibration while the AP starts as a well defined goal (acquiring a defined ability) and so can be more specific about calibration and outcomes.

After giving each step some thought, I decided not to use the NBG and stick to the AP as closely as possible. I considered including steps 4-7 of the NBG but realized that you don’t need to look for a feeling of success to acquire the model.

It’s the chicken and the egg problem of teaching children math. It seems that modern educators believe that you teach children self confidence first and then they’ll be able to successfully learn math. Most of us that got “good” at math learned it the opposite way. We learned to solve math problems and that gave us self confidence.

It’s also like motivational speaker Zig Ziglar says regarding motivation vs education. He says you always educate before you motivate otherwise you only get a motivated idiot.

Obviously those things aren’t mutually exclusive. It just seems like emphasis on education before motivation yields better results. And in the end, most problems are issues of education, not motivation. I think we call things motivation problems only when we don’t understand conflicting motivations or there’s not enough education to take the proper action.

As long as you feel the sustaining emotion and the rest of the model is effective, you’ll be able to perform the ability.  You can feel as successful as you like when you’re getting the desired outcome of the ability.

Of course that’s just my opinion so I’m happy to hear others.

I have a friend who’s interested in learning copywriting so I gave him the model and walked him through the acquisition protocol using a little trance work.

We’ve had our share of political discussions in the past. When I asked him if he wanted me to use hypnosis to make it go easier, he asked if he’d wake up libertarian.

I realized that most people only know about stage hypnosis… you know the kind where a magician makes people cluck like a chicken or go a rigid as a board. Well, my experience as an amateur hypnotist tells me that’s just for show. Most of it is more the variety of spacing out while driving or getting engrossed in a good book. It’s just a more focused state of internal awareness.

I expect to finalize my copywriting model in the next few weeks. It’s going to include an audio that uses hypnosis to smooth the acquisition process. It can be acquired without the audio if working in trance seems spooky to you. I’m including directions on doing it either way.

He said the following headline had at least 8 presuppositions:

How Many Of These Secret Thai Chicken Recipes Have You Tasted So Far?

See how many you can find before you look at the way I unpack it…

***********************************************

1. There are such things as recipes.
2. There are more than one ("how many")
3. It’s possible to taste them.
4. You’ve tasted some.
5. You’ll taste more in the future.
6. They are chicken recipes.
7. They’re Thai recipes.
8. They’re secret recipes.
9. You’ll find out what the recipes are ("these").

How did you do?

The reason you might want to do this in a headline is the idea of the mind being able to keep track of 7 (+/- 2) chunks of information at a time. No doubt some of the chunks will already be in use just by the activity of reading. If they can’t distinguish something as a separate piece of info, they’ll generally accept it without question.

Fortunately, there’s not much in the headline that anyone would object to anyway. Maybe a reader could ask if there really are secret Thai chicken recipes. I mean secret recipes? It’s not like they’re KFC or Coke with a secret formula, right? But then if you’ve taken up the remaining slots available to separate things out, they won’t even notice there could be something worth objecting to.

Of course that’s something else that needs to be calibrated and tested. You’re not going to an elephant into the living room without anyone noticing just because you used a bunch of presuppositions.