Hypnosis is not Mind Control

It is nothing but rush, rush, rush, this morning. So, my attention is somewhat out of focus for the moment.

So, I thought I would quickly sum up why hypnosis alone is not brain washing for those who may be thinking it is the ends to the means. There seems to be a lot of teenagers (at least they sound like teenage boys on the phone) who are fascinated by the concept of being able to force others to do their bidding. I admit in high school it would have been very pleasant to have snapped my fingers and make my Calculus professor believe all my wrong answers were correct. But alas, had I perfected my hypnotism skills back then, I still would have struggled with the subject.

The key to hypnosis is suggestibility - the acceptance of suggestions given during a hypnotic session. It is a person's free will to accept or decline such suggestions. For there even to begin to be the semblance of mind control, there has to be a lot more manipulation than just suggestions. If I suggest that you become my slave and you do so, you have chosen to do this.

This is the challenge for the modern clinical hypnotist. It is finding a route for the suggestions to be accepted by the client. This is why there is not a 100% sucess rate to the profession. Sometimes it is hard to find the right way to input a suggestion that the client's subconcious mind will accept.

So, if you are in a trance and someone suggest that you do something totally against your free will or that you do not accept, you simply will not do it. A good resource for this is the Mythbusters' TV show. In season five, they put this concept to test - can hypnosis make you do something against your will - and they busted the myth.

Hence with all this in mind, another person cannot control your mind. Hypnosis is not the same thing as mind control.

Brain Surgery or SEO

Looking at my five-year business plan, it is time to tweak it and consider the always present need to bring in more clients. For the past couple of years I have sort of had a sole proprietor / Harriett-Business-Owner attitude – the I-can-do-it-myself adage. Most of the business is a one-woman show. Me, me, me and me. For the most part that has been all that was required, but things seem to be amping up on the Internet. I admit (though it is hard) that there is much that is over my head. And when one reads more about programming, software, and SEO literature than hypnosis books, that is a bad sign. Hence, it is time to reevaluate my methods.

Yes, the dreaded search engine optimization(SEO) no longer makes any sense to me, nor does ranking. No longer is it about great meta tags (descriptive words the search engines use to find you) or just adding links to your site. You should have this type of link and not that one. You need to do this, you need to do that. Good grief. But I do understand its importance.

And it seems like it could be very expensive to dabble in this. The return of investment (ROI) could be a shallow pool rather than a deep lake, and I want the deep lake. But in this case, I know I cannot swim in those depths. So maybe, just maybe it is time to hire someone who can swim it for me – someone who can handle any Internet campaigns with programs like Google Adwords and even keep the results of the search engine’s high through organic optimization.

I do know however, that I am not ready to bring on new employees (business seems to get a lot more complicated when you do this) and as good as it would be have a marketing person in general, on the monetary side of things that may not be the best choice. So, I am more towards the camp of hiring companies who specialize in various aspects where I need the help. It is sort of like seeing a general physician for brain surgery. Who would you chose? The brain surgeon has all the resources you need. Best to just go that route.

USWeb, a search engine marketing company, could be a really good brain surgeon. LOL. That is, they specialize in SEO and though they are a large company and for all that they offer, their fees are competitive. In this instance, bigger may be better. Though their reviews say that when you use them, it feels like you are dealing with small company, you have the advantage of a lot more resources.

So, that is what I am contemplating at the moment.

Silva Mind Control

It is finally cooling down here. The tea in my cup feels wonderful as it goes down, warming everything on its journey. But it is the sort of morning where one could easily sleep it all away.

Mind control. Hypnosis. Am I propagating that they are one in the same? No. They certainly are not. So, for anyone reading this blog who may be new to the idea of clinical hypnosis, hypnosis has nothing to do with mind control...and yet (Dr. Knight are you rolling your eyes?) it does.

Hang on before getting all upset, you hypnotist out there. First let me start by saying a few years ago I heard about a program called Silva Mind Control (now the Silva Method). It has been out there for awhile, but I had never paid much attention to it, avoiding the whole idea of mind control. I got into hypnotism not as a need to control others, but to help them help themselves. So I figured this program was to be avoided.

Duh. I finally became a little brighter and met some hypnotists who were trained in the Silva Method. Mind Control. I was totally off base with this program. It is not about controlling other people's minds, but having control over one's own. Brilliant!

Here's what the Silva Method is all about:

The goal of the Silva Method is to teach you how to use more of your brain and activate the untapped areas of your mind.

This system seems to utilize self-hypnosis, meditation, visualization, relaxation and on and on. So, I think it is interesting to put the idea of self mind control out there. So many people feel they have no control over anything, even their thoughts and feelings. Just think how empowering this would be. And isn't that what we do?

If anyone had anything to add about this method, please do add it. I have only cursory experience.

Selling Myself

There are times when the Internet feels like one big catalog. You can order anything and everything (and if you do not enjoy shopping in general, like me, it is a godsend). And so, with this in mind, my intern and I are discussing the concept of creating an online store. I suspect many of you have these, so any thoughts or opinions would be helpful.

From what I have disseminated from the growing list of resources, one’s success with an online store has as much to do with ecommerce software as it does the actual the products. Even knowing a little coding is nothing in the scheme of finding the ultimate shopping cart for your customer. I do not know about any of you, but I find this all a bit daunting.

I have looked at various ideas from free shopping carts and vendors who do not require much, but it gets complicated when it comes to creating an actual cyber store. I spend enough time marketing that I do not want to spend my time on complicated Internet resources. It needs to be relatively painless from my end, look professional, provide reliable service to customers and have a user-friendly back-end.

A potential solution is from Ashop Commerce. What I like about them is similar to the reason I like the idea of online storage of files – the software does not live on one computer, but is assessable by several. It means I do not have to cart stuff between the office and home, worrying about having this disk or that, it is all there, online - everything – the store, the shopping cart, the files and the back end.

Essentially, they do it all. Working with their templates (this blog for instance is a template), you upload logos and such, set up the store online, which is hosted on their servers. You can sell tangible goods, downloads, anything and it covers it all. They provide the shopping cart. The customer pays through it and you fulfill the order.

So, I like the ease of this. Anything to make life, especially the business side, a little easier.

The Mind of this Coffee Drinker

The coffee just is not black enough this morning.

Since we carried lucid dreaming forward last week, I think this week we will carry through the weekend concept of mind control, what it is, what it does and does not have to do with hypnosis, and whatever other tangents strike my fancy (or yours depending).

The article about the gentleman who claimed to be hypnotized by robbers and gave them $1000 is what is has brought this to my mind. First let me say, it was not my diagnosis that hypnosis was involved, nor I have read anything other than what I posted as my source. He stated that he was hypnotized to give up the money. This is definitely the darker side of the art, which has led me to thoughts about being manipulated to do things against one's will - sounds like mind control (whether sort term or long).

This led to my Sunday question about your thoughts on mind control and what it is or isn't, and if you wanted to talk about hypnosis in regards to it that would be fine as well.

For those who believe that I am perpetrating a myth or anything negative about hypnosis, I fear that you have misunderstood. This blog is all about exploring various concepts, right or wrong, but what is out there in regards or relation to hypnosis (including sister-modalities, business, or how it affects my life or yours). And maybe it is taboo to put hypnosis and mind control together, but I think not.

Here is why: when a client sits down in my chair, they very often have either no idea or preconceived notions about what they are going to experience. Some have done some well- founded research and end up telling me my pre-talk. But the ones seem to believe very strongly in the idea that hypnosis is mind control, and that some how, I will do some technique that will turn them into zombies and will cause them to be different. They will come out and voi-la, presto chango. They will be someone else. It is as though they come in believing that they are going to hand over their minds to be to brain washed, essentially. So, I think it is good to have an open discourse on the subject and how what we do is not brain washing, but perhaps it is also just as well to have open discourse on what mind control really is.

A Question of Mind Control

Let's get philosophical today. After reading about the esoteric robbery and hearing various peoples' thoughts on forums and such, where do we stand with our views on hypnosis and mind control. Most therapeutic hypnotists say that one cannot be hypnotized to do something against one's will.

The question is:

Do you believe in mind control, that someone else can control another person's thoughts, actions and reactions?

Answer this however you desire. It can have hypnosis undercurrents or blatant NLP processes...or not.

For me, I would like to believe that one could break any sort of manipulations if one desired, so no, I do not buy in to ultimate mind control. Others can manipulate you, but once you are keen to this and do no longer want to be "controled," it may take a little while, but you can get out of it.

Your turn.

Backing Up

Yesterday, we discussed what to do with large files and how to get them to others via the Internet. Paul provided another source, which is helpful because choice is always good.

This got me to thinking about large files and the idea of backing-up data. Because I do keep digital files (both video and audio), it starts to take up a lot of room. Currently, I have external hard drives at home and at the office for these (I have heard that by burning them to CDs or DVDs degrades the data). But you know what, this is such a pain! Sure enough, I will be working at home in the early mornings and need something that is on the storage drive at work or vis versa.

So, I have been looking for a larger solution for this and may have found one in a backup site online called Anytime@Anywhere. They offer different storage options for various size needs. The files are also encrypted, so they are pretty secure. This is done on the client (mine or yours) machine so not even Anytime@Anywhere has the passwords. And they are Mac (and most operating system) compatible.

I am going to try their free trial and see how it goes. Feel free to also try Anytime@Anywhere offsite backup. I would like your take on this as well.