Hypnosis

Try not to enjoy reading this post

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Hypnotist Mike Mandel says that there is a magic power word, which you can use to get people to fail. What’s more, if you find yourself using this word to describe your own actions, expect that you will fail also.

What is this magic word?

I’ll tell you but be careful. The word is “try.”

Mike has all sorts of technical explanations for the destructive power of try. But my best evidence (and maybe yours, if you give it a try) is just by looking inside my own brain software. Whenever I found myself saying, “I’ll give it a try,” or “I’ll try my best,” deep down, I found I was expecting to fail. And often, fail I did.

I’m telling you this for two reasons:

First, it might be worth kicking the word “try” out of your own vocabulary, down to the curb with the rest of the head trash. It might take some time to find other words that will express what you want to say. But when you do, you will probably find the effort was worth it.

Second, if you write copy, then you can use the word “try” to get other people to fail. Why would you want to do such a cruel thing? Well, a classic example is the three-pronged road at the end of so many sales letters:

“So here are your options now. Option one is you can go back to what you were doing before, pulling your hair out and picking at your skin while your unsolved problem mounts and your family looks at you with growing suspicion each passing day.

“​​Option two is you take the breakthrough system I’ve just described to you and TRY to implement it yourself. But you know how that’s going to turn out, don’t you?

“​​And then finally, you’ve got option three, which is to accept the risk-free offer I’m making you today. And then just try not to shout with joy when your problem is finally solved…”

Finally, I’d like to announce that I write a daily email newsletter. Try not to sign up for it. But if you find you aren’t successful, then click here and follow the instructions.

How to make magic more fascinating

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I just watched an impressive magic show that appeared on Britain’s Got Talent.

The magician, a guy named Marc Spelmann, walked up to the judges. He asked one to choose a crayon for a box. He asked another to pick a card from a deck of 52 different animal cards. He asked the third to mix up a Rubik’s cube. And he asked the fourth to circle a random word in a book.

By the way, this might be off topic, but did you know that Siamese cats have an incredible property not seen since the days of 1980s Matchbox cars? It’s true. Here’s what I mean:

Siamese cats actually have heat-sensitive fur. That’s why cooler parts of the cat, like the tail and the ears, are darker that the warmer cat bits, like the belly and the back. It has something to do with a mutated enzyme involved in melanin production. Maybe this means you could color-correct a Siamese using nothing more than a hair dryer and an ice cube.

Anyways, getting back to the magic show. Once each judge had made some kind of random choice, the magician went back on stage and showed a video. The video was recorded two years earlier, and showed the magician’s kid.

In the video, the kid was drawing with the exact color of crayon the first judge chose. She was sleeping with the animal shown on the card chosen by the second judge. She was playing with a Rubik’s cube that had the exact pattern the third judge had just mixed up.

​​And when asked what message she would like to give to the world if her daddy ever made it to BGT, the kid said, “hat,” which was the random word the fourth judge had circled in the book.

Now, I heard about this whole performance by listening to Mike Mandel’s hypnosis podcast. Mike and his business partner Chris discussed the video because they thought it was a great example of using hypnosis-like principles. But where’s the hypnosis?

Well, right after the magician had asked each judge to make a random choice, and right before turning on the video showing his daughter who predicted all those choices, he told a quick story. It turns out his wife couldn’t conceive for 5 years of IVF.

​​Finally, when she did conceive, she was diagnosed with cancer. So while she was pregnant, she had to go through chemotherapy. There wasn’t much hope. “But this is real magic,” the magician says. Both his wife and his baby survived.

And so ends the story. And then the video comes on and you see the kid playing with the crayon etc.

Hypnotists Mike and Chris said that this is a great example of how you can stir up an emotion and link it to a suggestion. The magic show would have been good without this story. But injecting emotion and drama in the middle, even though it had nothing to do with the actual performance, made it over-the-top better.

So maybe keep this in mind. ​​A little bit of gratuitous emotion and drama might be something you too can use to make your message, or offer, or even magic show, more fascinating and more impactful.