Igor: Before we carry on down that path, I'd like to have a chat about something which
is of great importance to our work as hypnotherapists.
It's a fundamental understanding.
It's a point of view that no one can prove or disprove.
However, in my experience, if you adopt this point of view, and I certainly have, it makes
your life as a hypnotherapist infinitely easier than not.
It is your choice.
Whether or not you accept it, it's entirely your choice, but I'm want to present you the
frame of reference I use and why I use it so that you can adopt or not as you wish.
Does it makes sense?
Speaker 2: Sure.
Igor: All right.
Let's highlight in black.
There's a different between what people do and what they try to achieve by doing that
thing.
There's a difference between how people behave and the intention, the purpose for that behavior,
what they're trying to achieve through that behavior.
For example, little Johnny is five years old, goes to a new school.
He walks up to some kids, says, "Hi," and they're mean to him.
Happens again the next day.
He somewhat falls into this unpleasant rut where he's the kid that everyone picks on.
So after a few weeks, maybe a few months of this, what does he do when he goes to school?
He walks in, and he's mean back first before they're mean to him.
You can see that happening, right?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Igor: Little Johnny grows up, he leaves school.
He grows up.
He grows older, and then when he gets into his older years, he's this unfortunately bitter,
old man who's sitting or walking around playgrounds shouting at kids.
Is he a bad person?
Speaker 4: No.
Igor: You can clearly see what he's doing is he's trying to protect himself.
He's running out an old pattern that he's never managed to master.
He doesn't need to be mean to kids anymore, does he?
He doesn't need to protect himself from that anymore.
His behavior has become useless or pointless at this stage.
However, the intention he's trying to do to protect himself emotionally from harm, that's
a good thing, isn't it?
While as at the same time, his behavior, being mean to kids, that's a good thing, is it?
You see how that works?
So the belief or the point of view that I happen to have, and you're welcome to share
or not is aside from some, shall we say, issues where their biology is a case where there's
brain damage or something like that, in the average person, shall we say, every behavior
is motivated by a positive intention.
No matter how bad the behavior is, the intention is always a positive, good thing, something
you would approve of, something that is respectable.
The behavior, however, may be atrocious.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Every behavior someone engages in will have some kind of positive intention, something
that that person needs that is good for that person.
The irony is this.
Most negative behaviors like that don't actually serve that intent.
They're actually inadequate for reaching that outcome.
That's why they're stuck in a compulsion with it.
Here's the problem.
What happens when you say to someone, "You need to stop doing that."
What if you go to the old man, old Johnny now on the playground is telling off young
kids and someone comes up to him and says, "You have to stop talking to kids like that.
It's not right."
What is he hearing?
Speaker 5: You're not [inaudible 00:04:31].
Igor: "You have to stop protecting yourself.
That's not right," because to him, the same thing, at least the way the unconscious mind
is reasoning at that point.
You see where I'm going with this?
That's why he'll resist it, because to the extent you try and change the behavior only
and you're not taking care of whatever the behavior is trying to achieve, well, there's
a void there.
However, what if you were to walk up to Johnny's unconscious, the one that's running this whole
thing?
You manage to get into a dialogue and show Johnny's unconscious mind that if he behaved
in a different way, he was nice to kids, not only would he protect himself from them being
mean back, but actually, his reward would go far beyond that.
What do you think the chances are that if the unconscious mind accepted the idea that
his behavior would change?
Speaker 5: 100%.
Igor: Pretty certain, right?
Because we'll all do the things that will get us the best result to the extent that
we know.
So, we need to be able to separate this idea of how people behave from what they're trying
to achieve by it.
Once you can get past their behavior and look at their intentions, you gain the power to
transform their behaviors very easily, because the intention is satisfied.
So, this
idea
of
behavior versus intention, does that
make sense to you guys?
Could you see it kind of in action in your own lives, the people you've met, and so on,
things like that?
So once again, this gives you hopefully another facet of that general idea, that general saying
that what you resist will persist.
What you accept, you gain the power to transform, because what people resist is this.
They're resisting something.
"I will not smoke now."
That's willpower stopping your smoking, right?
"I will not smoke."
They're resisting their behavior.
How well does that work?
It doesn't work at all, does it?
It will persist because the intention has not been satisfied, but what you accept, you
gain the power to transform, because when you accept all this, you're also accepting
this.
This is what transforms that.
Do you see how that works?
It's true in our own personal lives, how we deal with ourselves.
It's true of other people.
Of course, I can sit up here and pontificating, "Oh, look how clever I am."
I get stuck in the exact same loops as everyone else does.
I'm no special guru in the mountain, but I can tell you that as a therapist, this makes
your life a heck of a lot easier because when people come in complaining of a behavior,
as soon as you find the intention behind that, your ability to change the behavior, it's
easy.
Does that make sense?
Does this make sense to you guys?
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 7: Yes.