Full text of world class hypnotist Dan Candell’s talk: Hypnotize Yourself at TEDxAuburnMiddleSchool conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Dan Candell – Hypnotist
Welcome everybody. My name is Dan Candell and I am a hypnotist.
Now before you all get really freaked out, I want you to know I’m not going to make you quack like a duck. I’m not going to make you cluck like a chicken. And most importantly, I’m not going to hypnotize you to make you hand over your wallets and money to me. So you can rest assured.
But I would rather teach you something very very important that you can use. And that is how to really take control over your life.
You see, I’m going to teach you something tonight that I’ve actually been using since I was in seventh grade. And that is the ability to hypnotize.
I want you to ask yourself what it would be like if you had this ability to hypnotize. What would you use it for?
Now most of you are probably thinking about how you would use it on somebody else. But tonight, I’m going to be teaching you how to use it on yourself: how to hypnotize yourself, so you can achieve and accomplish your fullest of potential.
You see when I was in seventh grade, I had a learning disability. And I stumbled upon this tool called Self-Hypnosis. And I actually hypnotized myself to get better grades. Now I teach it to people — over 70,000 people all over the world I’ve taught this craft to help them learn how to: gain control of their lives; feel more empowered, inspired and accomplished.
I’ve used it now to help athletes, businesspeople and students, just like yourselves. So ask yourself, if you could accomplish something better, what would you do? What could you use it for?
Ask yourself if it just — if you just started thinking a little bit better, how you could achieve your fullest of potential?
So when I teach you this tool, when I teach you self-hypnosis within the next nine minutes, I want you to develop a better picture of yourself and ask yourself: what you’ll be able to accomplish.
If you’re student, maybe you’ll be able to get better grades, eliminate exam anxiety, or develop a superpower memory.
If you’re in business, maybe you’ll be able to do better, be more productive, and as a result make more money – which everybody loves money, right. Absolutely.
But what I really want you to realize is this: it all starts with how you think.
You see I find that many people go to bed stressed and they wake up worried and anxious.
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Raise your hand, if you have ever gone to bed stressed and woken up anxious about something? Absolutely. Every single person here has.
I find that’s a big problem in today’s society. Because when we’re not thinking good about ourselves, we’re not feeling good. And when we’re not feeling good, we’re not doing good.
So what I want to teach you is how to control your thoughts, program your mind much like you would program a very high efficient powerful computer.
Would you like that? Yes, okay.
So before I teach you this tool, I want you to know that you’re already telling yourself something that has programmed you. You’ve been exposed to programming, in essence, hypnotized, since you exited the womb.
You have been exposed to programming not only by society, not only by religion, not only by advertisers, not only by your peers, your parents, but also by yourself.
So you are already telling yourself something that is creating a thought. And that thought creates a feeling about yourself; and that feeling then creates an action. And it can also influence your body.
Now we really do become what we think about.
If you picture this: you’re walking into school and you have a test to take that day. Your teacher, the day before, told you that it was going to be the most difficult test you’ve ever taken. So now you have that in your mind. You’ve created that thought. And you’re thinking to yourself: no matter how much you study you’re destined to fail.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are sending those messages to other people outside of their realm. It’s time to control it, to eliminate that external program and to learn how to start programming ourselves. To start thinking better, so we start feeling better. To start feeling better so we start acting better. And it really is congruent.
So now I’m going to teach you: how you all become what you think about.
So I want you to follow along with me for a moment.
If you can, take your hands, clasp them together just like this (gesture). Good!
Take your two index fingers and put them out just like that (gesture). Wonderful.
As you do this, I want everyone to look at me for a moment.
Now in a moment I will count forward from one up to three. On my count of three, I want you to do three things. And don’t worry this isn’t going to put you to sleep, or cast a spell on you.
But on my count to three, I’d like you to separate your two index fingers, look at them, and then listen to my voice. When you do, you’re going to see something absolutely amazing happen. Get ready! Here we go.
One. Two. Three.
Separate your fingers. Look at them. They’re going to touch.
Imagine what it would be like for two rubber bands attached to your fingers pulling them closer and closer together. Imagine what it would be like for magnets to be attached to your fingers pulling them closer and closer together. Closer and closer together until they touch.
That space between your fingers gets smaller and smaller. It may happen slow, it may happen fast. But when your fingers touch, you can take them apart. They’ll actually touch faster the second time. Watch as it happens now.
Now ladies and gentlemen, you can take your hands apart. I know it’s a freaky feeling, but shake your hands out. Just like that good.
If that worked for you, you’ve just been hypnotized. That’s it, that’s all it is!
I find that people have this fear about hypnosis that they think it’s actually mind control or the work of the devil. They think that it’s sleep or being unconscious. But you go into hypnosis every single day, several times a day.
If you drive, think about this. You’re driving to your destination; all of a sudden you zone out. You end up at your destination. You don’t even remember how you got there right? That’s called Road hypnosis.
How about this? You see somebody texting on their cell phone. You walk in. That person is so focused on that text message. You start talking to them but they have no clue what you’re saying, right? That is hypnosis.
Hypnosis is just a natural altered zone focused state. And I’m going to teach you now how to use it effectively and efficiently.
At night as we fall asleep, we go into a natural zone state, a natural receptive state. And just like this exercise that you just did, where you thought about something, and it happened.
You see, your thoughts became congruent with your bodily functions and actions. The same thing is true at night when you fall asleep.
When you fall sleep, you go into a natural receptive state. So I’d say let’s use that receptive state. For the last five minutes as you’re falling asleep at night, instead of worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow or being anxious about what’s going to happen next week, I want you to think of what you would like to accomplish to be better.
I’d like you to make a little movie in your mind of what the ideal you would be like.
Now if the ideal you sounds a little intimidating, just think about what you want tomorrow to be like, how you want tomorrow to go.
If you have something that would otherwise stress you out, let’s say maybe going for a job promotion, or going for a job interview. Maybe going in to take a test exam, or quiz in school.
And you think naturally or normally that you’ll be stressed out about that. See yourself at night as you fall asleep going into that job interview with your head held high! And imagine what it would be like for you to walk out lending that job.
If you’re taking a test in school… imagine walking into that testing room, filling out the exam to the best of your abilities, using that as an opportunity to show what you know and walking out knowing that you did well.
When you begin to formulate these pictures in your mind, you have a better chance of things going that way. As you fall asleep at night, you go into that focused zone state.
So my friends, I tell you today let’s use it. Let’s start thinking better about ourselves. And when we start thinking better, we’ll start feeling better. When we start feeling better, we’ll start doing better.
When you do this technique at night and it only takes about five minutes, that’s all you have to do. But it’s only for the people who really want to do better, right! And you all want to do better, don’t you? Absolutely.
So what I’d like you to do is just practice this. Try it out. Make it a ritual for when you fall asleep at night, make a little movie in your mind of how you want tomorrow to go, or how you want to be as your ideal self.
It could be a goal that you have in mind; it could be something that you’d like to just accomplish and do better at.
But when you play that picture over and over in your mind, it will be more likely to become your reality, and then thus you have hypnotized yourselves. That’s it.
Hypnotize yourself into being better, doing better, feeling better, and thinking better.
So ladies and gentlemen, I tell you today when you do this exercise — and this is an exercise I’ve been doing every night since I’ve been in seventh grade and it works.
Once you do this exercise and you make it a nightly ritual, you’ll notice within about two weeks, you’ll start to feel more empowered, more inspired, more confident, and more motivated, and more productive.
Maybe you’ll be getting better grades. Maybe you’ll be making more money. Maybe you’ll be getting more work done, a lot easier quicker and faster.
I teach the same technique to athletes to business people to help them achieve their full potential.
And to the casual observer, hypnosis might look like you’re putting people to sleep. But by doing this exercise, what you’re actually doing is awakening a part of your mind. And as a result, you’re also awakening within you: hidden skills, attributes, resources and talents that you might not even know that you have had at your disposal.
And you can start using those for your benefit.
So I tell you tonight you can program yourself at night for what you want to do tomorrow. You can awaken your mind. And as you awaken your mind, maybe you’ll even change the world you’re living in.
Thank you.
Resources for Further Reading:
How To Teach Your Mind That Everything Is Available To You: Marisa Peer (Transcript)
Danna Pycher: Healing Illness With The Subconscious Mind at TEDxPineCrestSchool (Transcript)
Activating Your Potential for Greatness: Fabienne Fredrickson (Full Transcript)
Unleashing Your Potential: Molly Fletcher at TEDxEmory (Full Transcript)
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