Hey Justin! I'm sorry you couldn't find many things you could apply to your practice. That's a bummer. But you mentioned that you want to get into hypnotherapy. I know you mentioned you're learning from Anthony Jacquin (magic and Street hypnosis) and Jeffrey Stephens. When it comes to hypnotherapy for change work, it requires a degree of sophistication with the tools and years of implementing the basics. See, without a strong foundation, you won't be able to get the change you're looking for without going to scripts or simple suggestions. Change work is a whole other realm from hypnosis itself. It's not a "let's stick a suggestion here" or "direct command there". You have to delve deep inside the human mind and understand it's underlying principles and mechanics. For example, how do you get someone to make better decisions? That's the basis for change work. It's about them deciding to do something different and if you stick to just suggestions and trance, it just won't cut it. You have to understand how people are motivated, demotivated, how they backslide, how they construct their reality and how to leverage their views in order to necessitate a change. Jeffrey Stephens is very old school in the fact that he teaches lots of techniques. I saw a video where he mentions the importance of telling people what to do and command them around to become the authority. And change agents are not an authority. We are telling people what to do, that's setting yourself up to fail. If just telling people what to do made any difference at all, we wouldn't need therapists and skills that take years acquire. It's not a game of throwing techniques at people or simply visualizations in hopes that it will make them want it.

Rewiring the brain starts at the time they decide to do something else. But it's not that either. You have to give them a specific strategy for dealing with that change. YOu can't just say, "Now you're a nonsmoker" And boom. That's very classical hypnosis and it will fail the majority of the time. In the real world, you need skills, lots of skills. You need to understand specific strategies that will drive the person through lasting change and then equipment them with a strategy to deal with backsliding. Not suggesting "When you smoke again you'll decide to become a nonsmoker" We aren't computers and people don't change by giving them commands. They have to make decisions. So you need a strategy to deal with their chemical withdrawal, their lifestyle (ever see family member screw up someone's change? Happens all the time), how they're going to handle people trying to get them to smoke again, how to keep their motivation up and running, creating context markers to remind them of why they quit and how to maintain living a healthy life and of course what you're going to replace smoking with instead. You can't just take behaviors away from people. I'm sorry, this is a fantasy. You need to replace it with something else. The neurotransmitter are all and the circuitry is set up for smoking. Now when they enter a context when they used to smoke, you need to make sure something different kicks in immediately to propel them away from smoking but towards the other behavior. Then you need to set up motivation for that said behavior and make sure you take something through that strategy many times so that it rewires itself in the brain. We learn by repetition. So you need to be able to take someone through the strategy many times before they leave your office so that when they enter the context in real time, they'll choose the behavior they've already linked up in the brain as replacing smoking. Do you get how intricate this is?

This isn't going to take you a few months and "Oh now I'm ready" It's going to take years of studying the basics and foundations that will make you great. You need to be able to organize your foundational learnings so that your work rests on them. The majority of the people who fail at change work or are always asking question like "I can get people to quit smoking but now I need a phobia cure scipt" are the ones who have their foundations all broken up. They're not solid. I can say they're even transparent. You need to be able to master all the basics of communication and how change occurs in the brain. It's not about throwing suggestions at them and hope something sticks. It's about taking the pieces of how learning happens in the brain and forming it to meet your needs with the client. So that you're helping your client learn to behave differently. It's skill game. You need to study how learning occurs in the mind. How does one choose one behavior over another? It's about signal value. You need that new behavior to have more signal value than the previous behavior. That means, when their in the context of smoking for example, their brain has to say, "I want to go jogging now! OH! I'm really excited. Let's get some water to bring with us" instead of "I'm a nonsmoker! I'm a nonsmoker! I"m a . . . screw it I need one!!!" That's what will happen. A lot of those quick techniques work not because of the technique. But because the people already want to quit and are willing to do what it takes to maintain that. So your work is 90% done. It's from THEM though. . .not the technique.

In this regard the Erickson tape I showed you has things in their about how erickson used to work. It gives insight into what he used implication for and how we thought through his work. That's the main thing I wanted you to get from it. You need to start learning how to think more effectively. Here's the model I use for my change work with people:

What do they want?
What resources do they have? (Time, past experiences, people, books, learnings etc)
Where are they now in relation to that goal?

That's the first step. You need to get a premise on what you're doing. You need a step by step process for thinking through your work so that you know what you're doing. Just throwing techniques at someone with no way of testing it through is a foolish way to work and many many many hypnotherapists do it. They don't know what they're doing. But being able to see exactly where you are in relation to there goal is key to being elegant with change work. Once you ask them questions like, "Ok, what do you want?" "What's going on currently to keep you from that?" You now have where they want to go (Goal) and where they are currently (Present State) so now your job is collect resources in order to get them from where they are to where they want to go. Do you know how to do this? Of course not because you haven't practiced yet! Which is exciting because you have so much to learn. You're just getting started and you need a good teacher to help you with this. If you keep going to people like Jeffrey Stephens, Ross Jeffries, Steve G. Jones and others you won't get it. They'll throw techniques at you and step by step procedures that have nothing to do with how change occurs in the brain. Keep in mind, they're probably great intentioned people. But I tried them already for years and haven't gotten anywhere. For example, Ross Jeffries mentions language patterns. But he never goes into the underlying principles behind the language patterns and why they work. How to use them appropriately and how to decide one language pattern over another. He doesn't teach that. Don't you think that's the MOST important piece? He's looking to make a buck that's it.

I'm going really hard on this one because so many people think "I can do change work as long as I know some techniques" Wrong. You don't need techniques. You need to learn how to apply principles in creating such an experience for the person that they salivate with passion to pursue that goal and then push their ass through it! lol

I can give you some really useful ways to get started but it'll take practice and time. You HAVE to be willing to do that or you won't get it.

Let me know! : )