How to Overcome Mental & Performance Blocks

I could say to somebody who's a smoker, smoking's terrible for you. Is that going to change their behavior? They cognitively understand it. They heard what I said. The behavior doesn't change. But accessing the subconscious and upgrading the subconscious beliefs changes external behavior. — Understood. Grace, walk us through how and why hypnotherapy work hypnotherapy works for certain work performance issues. — Hypnotherapy works for any issue that stems from the subconscious. So as we discussed previously any habit, any emotional response or any belief. So in the workplace obviously your habits play a big part. If you have a habit of being late that's not going to bode well for your professional advancement. If you have difficulty communicating with your peers and your colleagues or you have debilitating social anxiety or self-worth issues. If you have decided on day one that you hate your boss and you can't communicate with them, all of these things build and build and then we take them home. So, we work so much that having a workplace issue is not an isolated event, right? It's going to become pervasive through the rest of your life. It can impact your sleep, how you're eating, and your relationships at home, too. So, we use hypnotherapy to work on again any issue in the subconscious. It's just that because we have a successful business, a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs are coming to us for support because they see that we were able to do something challenging in the business world. Now, that having been said, when students graduate from my hypnotherapy school, we hire them. One of the reasons why we do that if they're at the top of their class is because in any other context, in order to be a successful hypnotherapist in this day and age, you also have to be a successful entrepreneur. And by far and large, the mindset that — requires someone to be an excellent hypnotherapist has nothing to do — with the mindset and the skill set that requires you to be a successful business person. And very early on in our school, I just said, "This is so ridiculous. I can't have these powerful women, and I say women because we've got about 250 students and two of them are men. " So, — you go. — We can't have these powerful women coming to our school, graduating, and not doing the work just because they're struggling to build a business. So we teach business fundamentals but we also hire people to come work for us. Now the people who work for us typically are still working for isolated issues that people want to solve like nailbiting, like fear of flying. It's more myself that people come to work on workplace issues and peak performance. — Okay. So I come to you I'm a big time CEO. I am just nailing every part of it. But the big issue I have is that I have problems effectively communicating with some of my staff because I'm blunt. They think I'm rude. They think I'm angry at them. And I need help. And I went to Grace and Grace tells me — I say, "What would you like your experience to be like instead? " And typically the response is, "I want everybody else to change. I want all of my employees to be completely different than they are. " And I say, well, we can't change them through your hypnotherapy session. If you want to be an effective leader, an effective communicator, only you can change through this session. And typically what happens is we go into childhood where they were not listened to, they were not understood, they were bullied, or even there's just this drive that made put up blinders and they couldn't see anything else. And so we either have to heal these emotional issues from childhood so that they can become more communicative, more empathic and understanding or we have to take down those blinders and say there are other people in this ecosystem and you can't create it without them. [snorts] So sometimes the only way to get somebody like that to reach their next level of peak performance is not to lead with be a better person, try to understand what's happening with your team, but to say to take your business to the next level, which is of the utmost importance to you. You must hear your team and that reward is impetus enough for behavior to change. — Now you just explained that to me and I got it and it made sense, but I wasn't under hypnotherapy. So why or hypnosis? So why the hypnosis part instead of you just telling me that — just the conversation in my experience does almost nothing because the subconscious patterns exist. — I could say to somebody who's a smoker, smoking's terrible for you. Is that going to change the behavior? — But accessing the subconscious and upgrading the subconscious beliefs — changes external behavior. — Understood. So, give me an example of a CEO or someone in the workforce who came to you with a problem and how they benefited after going through hypnosis. — I really actually love working with female CEOs. Oh, nice. — So much and I have quite a few of them

right now. So, the way that I currently operate, it's very different from my original model, but a client will come to me, we'll work together for a year. So, it's going to be 42 sessions. They can use it over the course of the year, but it's also quarterly in person with me. And in the first inerson full day, VIP day, we map their subconscious highs and lows from today all the way to the day they were born. So all of the trauma in their life, all of the peak happy experiences in their life. And over the course of the year, we address every one of them. — Wait, the Okay, hold on. I got to turn over to the clinical psychologist here. How are we addressing every high and low traumatic experience from childhood? — I don't know. I'm waiting here. Now, I don't mean that we give everything its due, but we will have a session at least. I mean, if somebody is 54 years old, you know, there are some years nothing major happens. It's like, oh, it was a good year in college. We don't have to revisit that. So, if somebody's 54 years old, there might be six or seven events in their life that shaped them in a negative way. Okay? A divorce year, a year something happened with a child, a year that their dad left. These are big years that are having subconscious implications in their life negatively now. Yeah. — But there were also happy years. Their wedding day, even if they got divorced later, it might have been the happiest day of their life up to that point. Going in and strengthening subconsciously the happiest moments of our life also give us resources to tap into that when everything feels bleak. — Okay. — So, it's very exciting. I love it so much. The outcomes are phenomenal. And here's one of the reasons why it's so different. Typically a client again comes for one problem and they want one solution. I want to stop biting my nails or smoking. But working with CEOs in this way they just say okay I'm already at the top of my game. — I can't continue to allow subconscious issues to get in the way of my relationships of my health of the next level of my career. And at this point I've had the best education. I have all the team and the resources available to me. What I don't know is the subconscious stuff that's getting in my way. A whole year on that. Yeah. — Okay. So, you spent a whole year on this, but g give me uh give me as best you can a before and after with one of your clients. — So, someone who I mean it's fascinating. We're talking about imposttor syndrome. These are people who you would think were so tremendously confident. And what happens is if they want to pivot or they want to add something new to the business or do something outside of the scope of what they've done every single day, there's so much pressure — to succeed that there is such a fear of failure and they can't ever express it. So a before and after is somebody who has to put on a tough face all day every day be the leader who after the fact goes to somebody who actually is more vulnerable and because of that becomes an infinitely more powerful leader. They create connections with their team. Now what that means you know day-to-day life I mean I've had people lose 50 pounds totally change the way they eat heal broken relationships. people who I mean it was just a rotating door of employees in and out who actually now have a team who's invested and want to stay more money I mean lots of things going up but really it's this self-reflective piece of what are the things I've never looked at that are getting in the way of my next level of happiness genuine happiness because they know now it's not tied to the three letters CEO — right — if you like psychology and learning about mental health and want to learn more while meeting other people who are interested. Explore your membership options using the link below this video or visit medcircle. com. Now, Dr. Romany, a lot of that sounds like elements of therapy. Coming back up here, pastor. Yeah. So, how does uh when you hear that, how why — what about that would indicate that it is effective and it works from your experience? — I mean, if it works for if the client at the end of it says they've had again, and here's where again, I want to say this with all respect. This may or may not be about theta waves and subconscious. This may simply be that they felt heard — and supported and empathized with and safe. — You know what I'm saying? So, one of the biggest issues in any kind of treatment work, all the therapy researchers struggle with this is what is the ingredient? What's the active ingredient? What's the secret sauce? Why does therapy work? Because there's one thing thousands of therapy studies have shown therapy works. That's the that if you looked at the metaan an analytic work therapy works. So the next question is why does it work and that's the one where there's been a bit more of a struggle and there's different camps. Some people are very technique focused. It's this thing we do. The others and I have to be honest with you this other camp is what I adhere to is it's the relationship between the therapist and the client and it doesn't matter what you do. — As long as this is good you're good. We

do teach our students the primary importance of building rapport because if the client doesn't trust you, they're not going to access that relaxed meditative state anyway. They're going to one eye open and saying, "Who am I in this room with? " So, it is definitely a very important part. I will say just for the viewers who might not have heard this before, one of the reasons we access what's called the theta state is because when you're producing beta brain waves, which is what we're producing right now in normal conversation, normal awaken consciousness, we're typically also in the stress state, the same state you discussed before, the fight, flight, freeze, which is our least adaptive, least malleable state where we take in the least amount of information versus this theta state, which is meditative. You are actually very open to new information. You're inventive. You're imaginative. And you do feel so relaxed and safe that there is a surplus of energy to create neurological links in the brain. So what studies have found with hypnotherapy is you're feeling safe, but you are actually rewiring your brain. You are actually making new neurological pathways in your brain based on new beliefs. — Okay. If we know the comfortability with the therapist is important, — how can a client uh foster that comfortability in a session? — I think the client has to learn to trust themselves. And unfortunately, we live at a time where the thing I'm about to suggest is all but impossible. In an ideal world, you would interview three therapists and pick the one you're the most comfortable with. But that means paying three people's fees for people who have HMO coverage. You go to whoever they assign you to. So I understand that that's a luxury that's not available to people. So on the flip side is if you are assigned to someone or you call the number out of the you know that you found online or whatever is that your responsibility hope is to trust yourself enough to say — I don't like this person. This doesn't feel good to me. Maybe someone else does, but and I tell people that I say on at on our at the intake session, I'll always say to people, this is an opportunity for me to get information, but more importantly, this is for you to decide whether or not this works. And I swear to you, and all I hold sacred, you deciding that this doesn't feel right is totally okay. I my feelings will absolutely not be hurt because a lot of people will actually stay with a therapist because they don't want to hurt their feelings. I've done that, — you know, and it's and so I'm thinking if a therapist feelings are hurt by you leaving, they need to they need some help. They probably shouldn't be a therapist, — right? — But I do tell them that you have you need to kind of look forward to this, if that makes sense. You know, even if it's going to be painful, uncomfortable, it works when you look forward to it. Because the fact is, if you don't look forward to it, you'll magically forget your appointments. There's reasons for that therapeutic resistance, but I it is that that relationship becomes the core of it. And then all the other things that we curate a therapy relationship around. It has a certain amount of time. Every like I'm having a great time. Why don't you stick around for another couple hours? We don't do it. It go it lasts as long as it lasts. It has a set time. There's rules, you know, there's rules around it. But all those rules notwithstanding, it's that comfort in that space for both therapist and client. The therapist's likability factor matters too. — Yes. — How much you like the client. I mean, yeah. — Right. Have you had somebody come to your office and say, "I need to do better at my job. I don't know what my problem is at my job, but I need to do better. Help me. " — All the time. — Okay. What does your process look like? — What does better mean? Like really, it's baseline assessment. And we'll really break that piece down. Like it's what we call operationalizing. taking something as vague as better — and breaking it down to what the component processes of better are. Then to assess the feelings around that. How do you feel when you think about going to work? How do you feel at the end of the day? How do you feel on Sunday night? I use Sunday night as a metaphor. Whatever that time is when you're about to start another long spate of work to get them in touch with those feelings and then break down other specters of the work environment. What are your relationships like at work? Is it satisfying? Is your work meaningful to you? take all those pieces and then find the blocks. I think of one case in particular of a person who actually loved the job she had and found it very meaningful, but she kept showing up late and she was getting to the point where it was like it was the kind of job where showing up late was not an option. Like it would put other people at the workplace at risk and she was getting precariously close to losing this job. So, well, I mean, obviously an armchair therapist is going to say, well, maybe she really wanted to lose her job, which wasn't that far from the truth, but we really started breaking down the why are you late and keeping a lateness diary and all of that because it was she only actually lived 10 minutes from the job, so it wasn't even like an unpredictability thing. And it really came down to her feeling relatively incompetent at this job and the job just going to work was very upsetting and stressful. So she was doing what anyone

would do, avoiding an uncomfortable experience. — The dis then we broke down the discomforts. It's always about breaking things down. The next breakdown, why is it uncomfortable? Well, it turned out that she was doing the job serviceably, but the way the leadership was organized just was not a good match for her. And so her belief was, you know, I have no right to say that. Maybe they're nice people and there's something wrong with me. She ended up getting fired. — Mhm. you know, so it ended up exactly the way she thought it would be. — It took her some time to find new work, but in the new position, exactly the same responsibilities, exactly the same. Nothing changed, — but the people were lovely, — and she hit it out of the park, — you know. So, that became a really interesting learning experience for breaking it down, recognizing [clears throat] the pattern, saying, "You're going to get fired if you" and she's like, "I know I am. " And she did. And then seeing that how different it feels when that one piece was addressed. we got down to the critical ingredient which was her fear around those difficult workplace relationships. — That's so fantastic to hear. Uh did she come to you because of a workplace issue? It was something else. Yes. So when we talk about getting peak performance in the workplace, we're really talking our life because it's all interconnected. — Absolutely. Yeah, — I think an example that'll resonate with everyone is this idea of, you know, if you think of two different basketball players and there's one who every time they I don't know why I'm using sports analogy because I don't know anything about sports, but every time, you know, they're on the line and they have to make the basket and then they'll win the game, they choke, right? Or LeBron James, — that's when he shines the most. That you can actually program your subconscious responses to be that when the pressure comes on, you thrive. But that takes conditioning. That's not a magic bullet. It doesn't happen overnight, but it is something that you can visualize, okay, the board's not happy, and you visualize yourself handling that, remaining calm and composed, or you don't even have to be in a position where you're addressing the board, but it's your you're going for a job interview, and they're going to be asking you a lot of questions, and there's going to be a lot of rounds, and you're going to feel scrutinized. And you know, if it's a place like some Silicon Valley startup, they're going to have you doing these brain exercises. If you're freaked out, it's going to negatively impact your scores. So, just thinking in peak performance terms of conditioning yourself to excel when the pressure comes on, right? When the flames go up. Yeah. — And that helps you in all aspects of your life because at some point in your life, things are going to blow up. — But we naturally avoid those pressure scenarios. Dr. Romney changed my life when she said, "Kyle, you have to practice empathy when it doesn't matter. " She goes, "When the stranger on the airplane is just for whatever reason spilling their heart out, that's when you need to show up because that's where you can get your practice in so that when somebody you know calls you, you've already been you've already practiced. You know how to do this. You've been there before. " And I was always avoiding those scenarios, avoiding those situations. So, I I'm glad you brought up that