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Chapter FOUR

Dehypnotize Yourself from False Beliefs

Dr. Alfred Adler, psychotherapist and founder of the school of individual psychology, had an experience when he was a young boy that illustrates just how powerful belief can be on behavior and ability. He got off to a bad start in arithmetic and his teacher became convinced that he was “dumb in mathematics.” The teacher then advised the parents of this fact and told them not to expect too much of him. They, too, were convinced. Adler passively accepted the evaluation they had placed on him. And his grades in arithmetic proved they had been correct. One day, however, he had a sudden flash of insight and thought he saw how to work a problem the teacher had put on the board, and which none of the other pupils could work. He announced as much to the teacher. She and the whole class laughed. Whereupon he became indignant, strode to the blackboard, and worked the problem much to their amazement. In doing so, he realized that he could understand arithmetic. He felt a new confidence in his ability, and went on to become a good math student.

Dr. Adler’s experience was very much like that of a patient of mine some years back, a businessman who wanted to excel in public speaking because he had a vital message to impart about his outstanding success in a difficult field. He had a good voice and an important topic, but he was unable to get up in front of strangers and put his message over. What held him back was his belief that he could not make a good talk, and that he would fail to impress his audience, simply because he did not have an imposing appearance; he did not “look like a successful executive.” This belief had burrowed so deeply into him that it threw up a roadblock every time he stood up before a group of people and began to talk. He mistakenly concluded that if he could have an operation to improve his appearance, he would then gain the confidence he needed. An operation might have done the trick and it might not . . . my experience with other patients had shown that physical change did not always guarantee personality change. The solution in this man’s case was found when he became convinced that his negative belief was preventing him from delivering the vital information he had. He succeeded in replacing the negative belief with a positive belief that he had a message of extreme importance that he alone could deliver, no matter what he looked like. In due time, he was one of the most sought after speakers in the business world. The only change was in his belief and in his self-image.

Now, the point I want to make is this: Adler had been hypnotized by a false belief about himself. Not figuratively, but literally and actually hypnotized. Remember that we said in the last chapter that the power of hypnosis is the power of belief. Let me repeat here Dr. Barber’s explanation of the “power” of hypnosis: “We found that hypnotic subjects are able to do surprising things only when convinced that the hypnotist’s words are true statements. . . . When the hypnotist has guided the subject to the point where he is convinced that the hypnotist’s words are true statements, the subject then behaves differently because he thinks and believes differently.” The important thing for you to remember is that it does not matter in the least how you got the idea or where it came from. You may never have met a professional hypnotist. You may have never been formally hypnotized. But if you have accepted an idea—from yourself, your teachers, your parents, friends, advertisements, from any other source—and further, if you are firmly convinced that idea is true, it has the same power over you as the hypnotist’s words have over the hypnotized subject.

Scientific research has shown that Dr. Adler’s experience was not “one in a million,” but typical of practically all students who make poor grades. In Chapter 1, we told of how Prescott Lecky had brought about almost miraculous improvement in the grades of schoolchildren by showing them how to change their self-image. After thousands of experiments and many years of research Lecky concluded that poor grades in school are, in almost every case, due in some degree to the students’ “self-conception” and “self-definition.” These students had been literally hypnotized by such ideas as “I am dumb,” “I have a weak personality,” “I am poor in arithmetic,” “I am a naturally poor speller,” “I am ugly,” “I do not have a mechanical type mind,” etc. With such self-definitions, the student had to make poor grades in order to be true to himself. Unconsciously, making poor grades became a “moral issue” with him. It would be as wrong, from his own viewpoint, for him to make good grades, as it would be to steal if he defines himself as an honest person.

The Case of the Hypnotized Salesman

In the book Secrets of Successful Selling, John D. Murphy tells how Elmer Wheeler used Lecky’s theory to increase the earnings of a certain salesman: Elmer Wheeler had been called in as a sales consultant to a certain firm. The sales manager called his attention to a very remarkable case. A certain salesman always managed to make almost exactly $5,000 per year, regardless of the territory they assigned him or the commission he was paid.

Because this salesman had done well in a rather small territory, he had been given a larger and much better one. But the next year his commission amounted to almost the same amount as that he had made in the smaller one—$5,000. The following year the company increased the commission paid to all salesmen, but this salesman still managed to make only $5,000. He was then assigned one of the company’s poorest territories—and again made the usual $5,000.

Wheeler had a talk with this salesman and found that the trouble was not in the territory but in the salesman’s own evaluation of himself. He thought of himself as a $5,000-per-year man and as long as he held that concept of himself, outside conditions didn’t seem to matter much.

When he was assigned a poor territory, he worked hard to make that $5,000. When he was assigned a good territory, he found all sorts of excuses to coast when the $5,000 was in sight. Once, when the goal had been reached, he got sick and was unable to work anymore that year, although doctors could find nothing wrong with him and he miraculously recovered by the first of the next year.

How a False Belief Aged a Man 20 Years

In a previous book, Adventures in Staying Young, I gave a detailed case history of how Mr. Russell (a pseudonym) aged 20 years almost overnight because of a false idea, and then regained his youth almost as quickly when he accepted the truth. Briefly, the story is this: I performed a cosmetic operation on Mr. Russell’s lower lip for a very modest fee, under the condition that he must tell his girlfriend that the operation had cost him his entire savings of a lifetime. His girlfriend had no objection to his spending money on her, and she insisted that she loved him, but explained she could never marry him because of his too large lower lip. However, when he told her this and proudly exhibited his new lower lip, her reaction was just as I had expected, but not as Mr. Russell had anticipated. She became hysterically angry, called him a fool for having spent all his money, and advised him in no uncertain terms that she had never loved him and never would, and that she had merely played him for a sucker as long as he had money to spend on her. However, she went further than I had counted on. In her anger and disgust she also announced that she was placing a voodoo curse upon him. Both Mr. Russell and his girlfriend had been born on an island in the West Indies where voodoo was practiced by the ignorant and superstitious. His family had been rather well-to-do. His background was one of culture and he was a college graduate.

Yet, when in the heat of anger, his girlfriend cursed him, he felt vaguely uncomfortable but did not think too much about it.

However, he remembered and wondered when, a short time later, he felt a strange small, hard bump on the inside of his lip. A so-called friend who knew of the voodoo curse insisted that he see a certain Dr. Smith, who promptly assured him that the bump inside his mouth was the feared “African Bug,” which would slowly eat away all his vitality and strength. Mr. Russell began to worry and look for signs of waning strength. He was not long in finding them. He lost his appetite and his ability to sleep.

I learned all this from Mr. Russell when he returned to my office several weeks after I had dismissed him. My nurse didn’t recognize him, and no wonder. The Mr. Russell who had first called on me had been a very impressive individual, slightly too large lip and all. He stood about 6 feet, 4 inches, a large man with the physique of an athlete and the bearing and manner that bespoke an inner dignity and gave him a magnetic personality. The very pores of his skin seemed to exude an animal-like vitality.

The Mr. Russell who now sat across the desk from me had aged at least 20 years. His hands shook with the tremor of age. His eyes and cheeks were sunken. He had lost perhaps 30 pounds. The changes in his appearance were all characteristic of the process that medical science, for want of a better name, calls “aging.” After a quick examination of his mouth I assured Mr. Russell I could get rid of the African Bug in less than 30 minutes, which I did. The bump that had caused all the trouble was merely a small bit of scar tissue from his operation. I removed it, held it in my hand, and showed it to him. The important thing is he saw the truth and believed it. He gave a sigh of relief, and it seemed as if there was an almost immediate change in his posture and expression.

Several weeks later, I received a nice letter from Mr. Russell, together with a photograph of him with his new bride. He had gone back to his home and married his childhood sweetheart. The man in the picture was the first Mr. Russell. Mr. Russell had grown young again overnight. A false belief had aged him 20 years. The truth had not only set him free of fear and restored his confidence—but had actually reversed the “aging process.” If you could have seen Mr. Russell as I did, both “before” and “after,” you would never again entertain any doubts about the power of belief, or that an idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis.

Is Everyone Hypnotized?

It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent, either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others, or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect on our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist. Have you ever seen a demonstration of honest-to-goodness hypnosis? If not, let me describe to you just a few of the more simple phenomena that result from the hypnotist’s suggestion.

The hypnotist tells a football player that his hand is stuck to the table and that he cannot lift it. It is not a question of the football player “not trying.” He simply cannot. He strains and struggles until the muscles of his arm and shoulder stand out like cords. But his hand remains fully rooted to the table.

He tells a championship weight lifter that he cannot lift a pencil from the desk. And although normally he can hoist a 400-pound weight overhead, he now actually cannot lift the pencil.

Strangely enough, in the above instances, hypnosis does not weaken the athletes. They are potentially as strong as ever. But without realizing it consciously they are working against themselves. On the one hand they “try” to lift their hand, or the pencil, by voluntary effort, and actually contract the proper lifting muscles. But on the other hand, the idea “you cannot do it” causes contrary muscles to contract quite apart from their will. The negative idea causes them to defeat themselves—they cannot express, or bring into play, their actual available strength.

The gripping strength of a third athlete has been tested on a dynometer and has been found to be 100 pounds. All his effort and straining cannot budge the needle beyond the 100-pound mark. Now he is hypnotized and told, “You are very, very strong. Stronger than you have ever been in your life. Much, much stronger. You are surprised at how strong you are. Again the gripping strength of his hand is tested. This time he easily pulls the needle to the 125-pound mark.

Again, strangely enough, hypnosis has not added anything to his actual strength. What the hypnotic suggestion did do was to overcome a negative idea that had previously prevented him from expressing his full strength. In other words, the athlete in his normal waking state had imposed a limitation on his strength by the negative belief that he could only grip 100 pounds. The hypnotist merely removed this mental block, and allowed him to express his true strength. The hypnosis literally “dehypnotized” him temporarily from his own self-limiting beliefs about himself.

As Dr. Barber said, it is awfully easy to assume that the hypnotist himself must have some magical power when you see rather miraculous things happen during a hypnotic session. The stutterer talks fluently. The timid, shy, retiring Caspar Milquetoast becomes outgoing, poised, and makes a stirring speech. Another individual who is not especially good in adding figures with a pencil and paper multiplies two three-digit figures in his head. Apparently all this happens merely because the hypnotist tells them that they can and instructs them to go ahead and do it. To onlookers, the hypnotist’s “word” has a magical power. Such, however, is not the case. The power, the basic ability, to do these things was inherent in the subjects all the time—even before they met the hypnotist. The subjects, however, were unable to use this power because they themselves did not know it was there. They had bottled it up, and choked it off, because of their own negative beliefs. Without realizing it, they had hypnotized themselves into believing they could not do these things. And it would be truer to say that the hypnotist had “dehypnotized” them than to say he had hypnotized them.

Within you, whoever you may be, regardless of how big a failure you may think yourself to be, is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs. Just as quickly as you can dehypnotize yourself from the ideas of “I can’t,” “I’m not worthy,” “I don’t deserve it,” and other self-limiting ideas.

You Can Cure Your Inferiority Complex

At least 95 percent of people have their lives blighted by feelings of inferiority to some extent, and to millions this same feeling of inferiority is a serious handicap to success and happiness.

In one sense of the word every person on the face of the earth is inferior to some other persons or person. I know that I cannot lift as much weight as Paul Anderson, throw a 16-pound shot as far as Parry O’Brien, or dance as well as Arthur Murray. I know this, but it does not induce feelings of inferiority within me and blight my life—simply because I do not compare myself unfavorably with them and feel that I am no good merely because I cannot do certain things as skillfully or as well as they. I also know that in certain areas, every person I meet, from the newsboy on the corner, to the president of the bank, is superior to me in certain respects. But neither can any of these people repair a scarred face, or do any number of other things as well as I. And I am sure they do not feel inferior because of it.

Feelings of inferiority originate not so much from facts or experiences, but our conclusions regarding facts, and our evaluation of experiences. For example, the fact is that I am an inferior weight lifter and an inferior dancer. This does not, however, make me an “inferior person.” Paul Anderson’s and Arthur Murray’s inability to perform surgery makes them “inferior surgeons,” but not “inferior persons.” It all depends on “what” and “whose” norms we measure ourselves by.

It is not knowledge of actual inferiority in skill or knowledge that gives us an inferiority complex and interferes with our living. It is the feeling of inferiority that does this.

And this feeling of inferiority comes about for just one reason: We judge ourselves, and measure ourselves, not against our own “norm” or “par” but against some other individual’s “norm.” When we do this, we always, without exception, come out second best. But because we think and believe and assume that we should measure up to some other person’s “norm,” we feel miserable, and second-rate, and conclude that there is something wrong with us. The next logical conclusion in this cockeyed reasoning process is to conclude that we are not “worthy”; that we do not deserve success and happiness, and that it would be out of place for us to fully express our own abilities and talents, whatever they might be, without apology, or without feeling guilty about it.

All this comes about because we have allowed ourselves to be hypnotized by the entirely erroneous idea that “I should be like so-and-so” or “I should be like everybody else.” The fallacy of the second idea can be readily seen through, if analyzed, for in truth there are no fixed standards common to “everybody else.” “Everybody else” is composed of individuals, no two of whom are alike.

The person with an inferiority complex invariably compounds the error by striving for superiority. His feelings spring from the false premise that he is inferior. From this false premise, a whole structure of “logical thought” and feeling is built. If he feels bad because he is inferior, the cure is to make himself as good as everybody else, and the way to feel really good is to make himself superior. This striving for superiority gets him into more trouble, causes more frustration, and sometimes brings about a neurosis where none existed before. He becomes more miserable than ever, and “the harder he tries,” the more miserable he becomes.

Inferiority and superiority are reverse sides of the same coin. The cure lies in realizing that the coin itself is spurious.

The truth about you is this:

You are not “inferior.”

You are not “superior.”

You are simply “You.”

“You” as a personality are not in competition with any other personality simply because there is not another person on the face of the earth like you, or in your particular class. You are an individual. You are unique. You are not “like” any other person and can never become “like” any other person. You are not “supposed” to be like any other person and no other person is “supposed” to be like you.

God did not create a standard person and in some way label that person by saying “this is it.” He made every human being individual and unique just as He made every snowflake individual and unique.

God created short people and tall people, large people and small people, skinny people and fat people, black, yellow, red, and white people. He has never indicated any preference for any one size, shape, or color. Abraham Lincoln once said, “God must have loved the common people for he made so many of them.” He was wrong. There is no “common man”—no standardized, common pattern. He would have been nearer the truth had he said, “God must have loved uncommon people for he made so many of them.” An “inferiority complex,” and its accompanying deterioration in performance, can be made to order in the psychological laboratory. All you need to do is to set up a norm or average, then convince your subject he does not measure up. According to a report in Science Digest, a psychologist wanted to find out how feelings of inferiority affected ability to solve problems. He gave his students a set of routine tests. But then he solemnly announced that the average person could complete the test in about one-fifth the time it would really take. When in the course of the test a bell would ring, indicating that the “average man’s” time was up, some of the brightest subjects became very jittery and incompetent indeed, thinking themselves to be morons.

Stop measuring yourself against “their” standards. You are not “them” and can never measure up. Neither can “they” measure up to yours—nor should they. Once you see this simple, rather self-evident truth, accept it, and believe it, your inferior feelings will vanish.

Dr. Norton L. Williams, a psychiatrist, addressing a medical convention, said that modern man’s anxiety and insecurity stemmed from a lack of self-realization, and that inner security can only be found “in finding in oneself an individuality, uniqueness, and distinctiveness that is akin to the idea of being created in the image of God.” He also said that self-realization is gained by “a simple belief in one’s own uniqueness as a human being, a sense of deep and wide awareness of all people and all things, and a feeling of constructive influencing of others through one’s own personality.” How to Use Relaxation to Dehypnotize Yourself

Physical relaxation plays a key role in the dehypnotization process. Our currently held beliefs, whether good or bad, true or false, were formed without effort, with no sense of strain, and without the exercise of “willpower.” Our habits, whether good or bad, were formed in the same way. It follows that we must employ the same process in forming new beliefs, or new habits—that is, in a relaxed condition.

It has been amply demonstrated that attempting to use effort or willpower to change beliefs or to cure bad habits has an adverse, rather than a beneficial, effect. Émile Coué, the little French pharmacist who astonished the world around 1920 with the results he obtained with “the power of suggestion,” insisted that effort was the one big reason most people failed to utilize their inner powers. “Your suggestions (ideal goals) must be made without effort if they are to be effective,” he said. Another famous Coué saying was his Law of Reversed Effort: “When the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination invariably wins the day.” Dr. Knight Dunlap, a psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association, made a lifelong study of habits and learning processes and perhaps performed more experiments along this line than any other psychologist. His methods succeeded in curing such habits as nail-biting, thumb-sucking, facial tics, and more serious habits where other methods had failed. The very heart of his system was his finding that effort was the one big deterrent to either breaking a bad habit or learning a new one. Making an effort to refrain from the habit actually reinforced the habit, he found. His experiments proved that the best way to break a habit is to form a clear mental image of the desired end result, and to practice without effort toward reaching that goal. Dunlap found that either “positive practice” (refraining from the habit) or “negative practice” (performing the habit consciously and voluntarily) would have beneficial effect provided the desired end result was kept constantly in mind.

“If a response habit is to be learned, or if a response pattern is to be made habitual,” Dr. Dunlap wrote in Personal Adjustment, “it is essential that the learner shall have an idea of the response that is to be achieved or shall have an idea of the change in the environment that the response will produce. . . . The important factor in learning, in short, is the thought of an objective to be attained, either as a specific behavior pattern or as the result of the behavior, together with a desire for the attainment of the object.” In many cases, the mere relaxation of effort, or too much conscious straining, is in itself enough to eradicate the negative behavior pattern. Dr. James S. Greene, founder of the National Hospital for Speech Disorders in New York City, had a motto: “When they can relax, they can talk.” Dr. Matthew N. Chappell pointed out, in his book How to Control Worry, that often the effort or “willpower” used to fight against or resist worry is the very thing that perpetuates worry and keeps it going.

Physical relaxation, when practiced daily, brings about an accompanying mental relaxation and a relaxed attitude that enables us to better consciously control our automatic mechanism. Physical relaxation also, in itself, has a powerful influence in dehypnotizing us from negative attitudes and reaction patterns.

PRACTICE EXERCISE

How to Use Mental Pictures to Relax

(To be practiced for at least 30 minutes daily.)

Seat yourself comfortably in an easy chair or lie down on your back. Consciously “let go” the various muscle groups as much as possible without making too much of an effort of it. Just consciously pay attention to the various parts of your body and let go a little. You will find that you can always voluntarily relax to a certain degree. You can stop frowning and let your forehead relax. You can ease up a little on the tension in your jaws. You can let your hands, your arms, your shoulders, and legs, become a little more relaxed than they are. Spend about five minutes on this and then stop paying any attention to your muscles. This is as far as you are going to try to go by conscious control. From here on out you will relax more and more by using your Creative Mechanism to automatically bring about a relaxed condition. In short, you are going to use “goal pictures,” held in imagination, and let your automatic mechanism realize those goals for you.

MENTAL PICTURE 1

In your mind’s eye see yourself lying stretched out on the bed. Form a picture of your legs as they would look if made of concrete. See yourself lying there with two very heavy concrete legs. See these very heavy concrete legs sinking far down into the mattress from their sheer weight. Now picture your arms and hands as made of concrete. They also are very heavy and are sinking down into the bed and exerting tremendous pressure against the bed. In your mind’s eye see a friend come into the room and attempt to lift your heavy concrete legs. He takes hold of your feet and attempts to lift them. But they are too heavy for him. He cannot do it. Repeat with arms, neck, etc.

MENTAL PICTURE 2

Your body is a big marionette doll. Your hands are tied loosely to your wrists by strings. Your forearm is connected loosely by a string to your upper arm. Your upper arm is connected very loosely by a string to your shoulder. Your feet, calves, thighs are also connected together with a single string. Your neck consists of one very limp string. The strings that control your jaw and hold your lips together have slackened and stretched to such an extent that your chin has dropped down loosely against your chest. All the various strings that connect the various parts of your body are loose and limp and your body is just sprawled loosely across the bed.

MENTAL PICTURE 3

Your body consists of a series of inflated rubber balloons. Two valves open in your feet, and the air begins to escape from your legs. Your legs begin to collapse and continue until they consist only of deflated rubber tubes, lying flat against the bed. Next a valve is opened in your chest, and as the air begins to escape your entire trunk begins to collapse limply against the bed. Continue with arms, head, and neck.

MENTAL PICTURE 4

Many people will find this the most relaxing of all. Just go back in memory to some relaxing and pleasant scene from your past. There is always some time in everyone’s life when he felt relaxed, at ease, and at peace with the world. Pick out your own relaxing picture from your past and call up detailed memory images. Yours may be a peaceful scene at a mountain lake where you went fishing. If so, pay particular attention to the little incidental things in the environment. Remember the quiet ripples on the water. What sounds were present? Did you hear the quiet rustling of the leaves? Maybe you remember sitting perfectly relaxed, and somewhat drowsy, before an open fireplace long ago. Did the logs crackle and spark? What other sights and sounds were present? Maybe you choose to remember relaxing in the sun on a beach. How did the sand feel against your body? Could you feel the warm, relaxing sun, touching your body, almost as a physical thing? Was there a breeze blowing? Were there gulls on the beach? The more of these incidental details you can remember and picture to yourself, the more successful you will be.

Daily practice will bring these mental pictures, or memories, clearer and clearer. The effect of learning will also be cumulative. Practice will strengthen the tie-in between mental image and physical sensation. You will become more and more proficient in relaxation, and this in itself will be “remembered” in future practice sessions.

When lying down to practice, many practitioners fall asleep. If you fall asleep, you don’t get the same level of benefits. Due to my martial arts training in Tai Chi and Qi Gong, I prefer to do all exercises while seated or standing. In a standing or seated position, by using your imagination and relaxing, you can still make your legs and arms and entire body feel heavy. You can also let the air out of valves and inflate or deflate your various body parts like balloons.

Does this rule out the lying down practice? Not at all. Once you’re grounded in these techniques, you can practice in virtually any position. However, if you are feeling weak or unwell, then to practice while lying down is probably ideal.

You can experience positive results quickly—in as little as ten minutes, especially when you let go and truly allow yourself to relax. Once you’re in the daily habit, 30 minutes will be easy, if you so desire.

Many people start with a morning practice. After a month or so they may naturally gravitate toward a twice-daily routine.

Many people feel the best times to practice are upon rising and before going to bed, a time when your brain and nervous system are most agreeable to new suggestions. Yet, if you can only find time during your lunch hour or a scheduled break during the day, doing it then is far better than not doing the practice because you are too tired upon awakening or exhausted just before bed.

Daily practice is the key to getting results. Avoid judging yourself in this process. Regardless of where you start, you will improve with practice.