Hypnosis is the way to improve your sales and how you see yourself. If your sales aren’t what you want them to be and you want to improve them and significantly increase your income, you’ve got to make some changes in not only how you function as a sales person – but how you see yourself as a sales person. Otherwise, your sales and income will continue pretty much as they have been in the past. You need to make permanent behavioral change. Hypnosis is one of the best kept secrets of high performing sales professionals and is also used extensively in sports.  If you’re reading this article, you’ve already tried the conventional methods. You’ve read the positive sales and self help books. You’ve went to countless workshops and sales meetings that were going to get you organized and really moving. You’ve bought and listened to the cds. Why were the long term effects of these efforts, minimal if not nonexistent?

The common denominator is that all of these approaches attempted to make permanent behavioral change in the conscious mind – not the subconscious mind. That can’t be done. Permanent behavioral can only occur in the subconscious mind. That’s where you’ll find your personality (how you relate with the world), your habits, moods, feelings, emotions, and memory banks. That’s also where we find the cognitive maps – kind of like our auto pilot. The only way for us to access our subconscious mind deliberately, is through hypnosis, as hypnosis is the bridge to the subconscious mind.

I’m a behavioral therapist in Atlanta Georgia that uses hypnotherapy. I’m board certified in both medical and clinical hypnosis. I’ve been working with sales people for over twenty five years – enabling them to make permanent behavioral changes that resulted in real, measurable increases in their sales and most importantly, their income.

How many of you when you were a little boy or a little girl dreamed of being in sales? Right. That’s what I thought. Many that are in sales feel as though it was something that they settled for, as nothing else was available at the time. Many half jokingly say, “I didn’t selected sales – it selected me.” What does that mean? A doctor wouldn’t say that. Nor would a dentist or an architect. That kind of response is at cross purposes to a salesperson believing that what they do is worthwhile.

Last year I was speaking to group of about 700 real estate sales people. I found it interesting that none of these “sales people” wanted to admit that they were in sales! They’d call refer to themselves as  associates, consultants, partners, advisers… anything, anything…  but a sales person. It didn’t seem to me like they had a good opinion of what they did for a living. My impression was they didn’t appear to be proud of it! Sales is not talking people into buying what they don’t want. Allow me to give you the Bob Crow definition of sales. Sales…is acquainting people with what is good!

Whether I’m traveling around the country putting on The 10% Edge or A Day Off The Race seminars, delivering keynote speeches, riding in an elevator or standing in line somewhere, I always ask someone that’s standing nearby this simple question. “Are you buying or selling today? Most at first look confused that a stranger would be speaking to them, but some will say, “I’m selling!’ – some will say “I’m buying.” And some say “neither”. I chide the people that say neither and tell them “we’re all either selling or buying everyday!” Many people don’t understand that when they’re on a job interview – they’re selling. When they’re in a meeting trying to convince others to see their point of view – they’re selling! Many that are in sales don’t understand how important their subconscious view of what they do is, and how it affects their performance. Let me share with you a story about the importance of sales in a business.

After WWII, many military pilots came home and started flying schools. They’d buy a Piper Cub, get some space at a small airport, string a banner between two telephone poles that advertised Learn to Fly and then they’d wait. They’d wait for someone to drive by that wanted to learn how to fly and take them up for a flying lesson and then they would land and wait… they’d wait for someone else to drive by that wanted to learn how to fly. If someone else would stop by, they’d repeat the process. They spent much more time waiting for customers to appear than they did giving flying lessons.

Two other men came home from WWII with a different approach. They pooled their army pay and bought five small planes and hired pilots as instructors. Their business grew, prospered and flourished. Soon they became dealers for selling planes, selling parts, radios, fixing the motors, selling gas and whatever else was related to flying. The business was worth several million dollars when the sold it. How did they do it? Since neither of them knew how to fly, that turned out to be what made them successful. They tended to the sales side of their business! They spent their time getting customers. They went to colleges, junior colleges and trade schools and sold the concept that “airlines were the coming thing, and those that knew how to fly would have a chance to get on with the airline, and make lots of money. Again, sales and getting customers is the most important part of any business.

I appear from time to time on radio and television shows. I once was a guest on a television program where the studio audience could ask me questions. One woman stood up and asked, “What about blank” – she then named a very famous afternoon TV hostess. She continued, “Why can’t she keep her weight off after she loses it?” The TV personality had a history of losing 70 pounds and regaining them. She’d then go on another diet – lose 65 or 70 pounds only to regain it. And repeat the process again and again. Some had estimated through the years that she had probably lost and regained close to 600 pounds until finally she just gave up. It was an excellent question because: we cannot perform in a manner that is inconsistent with how our subconscious mind sees ourselves. My answer to the questioner was – This woman’s subconscious mind saw her as a heavy person, and when she lost her weight – her subconscious mind corrected for the perceived error and allowed her to sabotage herself, thereby regaining weight.

Does that have anything to do with sales? Yes. Just as the TV Hostess would never  have believed that she’d been self sabotaging herself for years, neither does the sales person that’s not performing at the top of their game. He or she just goes on “beating themselves up”.  If your subconscious mind sees you as an average sales person – you will in fact perform as an average sales person, and no amount of visualizing success in your conscious mind, no amount of reading positive books or listening to motivational speeches can change that. Those efforts only work with the conscious mind, but that’s not where the problem lies.

Any permanent behavioral change that you wish to make, and that includes how you see yourself, can only be made in the subconscious mind. Hypnosis is the bridge to the subconscious mind. If you want to make some positive permanent behavioral changes in your life, give me a call.

Hypnosis for anxiety can help you if :

You ever have a vague feeling that somethings is about to go wrong?

The idea of expressing your opinions at work frightens you?

The thought of meeting people that you don’t know cause you to be anxious?

A voice mail from your supervisor saying “call me” scares you?

In my hypnotherapy practice in Atlanta Georgia, I hear all of the above complaints and fears and more!

When you are stressed anxious or depressed, you reduce your problem solving ability by at least 90%! You can’t even think straight! You weren’t born scared, and through hypnosis – you don’t need to live scared. You weren’t born anxious. You never had panic attacks when you were two. Neither did your mouth become dry at the thought of speaking – you just spoke!

In fact you were born with only two fears… loud noises and falling backwards. everything else, good or born was taught and learned. Sometimes the teacher was a parent, saying things like – “don’t you climb up that tree, you’re going to get hurt”. Sometimes it was a grandparent, an aunt, uncle, cousin, sibling, teacher, friend and the list goes on and on. Actually you were born with confidence  and had confidence until it was taken away from you with questions like – “Just who do you think you are?” or “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Those destroy a child’s confidence. It’s better just to say to the child… “don’t do that”. That would make it clear that the child shouldn’t be doing something. Clinical studies show that over 90% of those graduating from high school have an inferiority complex.

A person with confidence doesn’t have anxiety. Those that suffer from anxiety describe it as paralyzing… debilitating. It causes procrastination. Anxiety, along with making life unpleasant, can cause emotional problems, severe physical symptoms and can bring on various real ailments and attack the immune system. Some people can’t stop smoking due to their level of anxiety. In the extreme – some are so overcome with anxiety that they’ll experience conversion disorder – an emotional problem that manifests itself with physical symptoms like not being able to walk. Clinical studies have shown that chronic anxiety can shorten one’s life!

A 13 year old boy was brought in by his parents that had been diagnosed with conversion disorder. He could not walk. He’d had both full neurological and psychiatric studies. In his hypnotherapy sessions, we identified and then neutralized the emotional trauma that had caused his conversion disorder. Today, he not only walks, he runs. He ran in the 2012 Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, Georgia. Some are so crippled with anxiety they are afraid to leave their home… that’s caused agoraphobia.

A CEO of a large corporation presented with a fear of public speaking. He was a polished, intelligent gentleman that didn’t get where he was in life without being confident. Yet… he had a fear of public speaking. In a Class II Theta hypnosis state he recalled being humiliated by the teacher when he messed up a presentation in the fourth grade. The teacher and the entire class laughed at him and made fun of him. Now he’d forgotten this incident of so many years ago in his conscious mind, but his subconscious mind remembered it and he was terrified of messing up in front of an audience again. Through hypnotherapy, he was able to move past that incident, and today he’s a sought after public speaker. Hypnosis will enable us to identify and then move past the problem.

One of Atlanta’s very top eye surgeons referred one of his patients to me, a 55 year old man that was deathly afraid of needles. The eye surgery couldn’t be done without anesthesia and the patient wouldn’t let them put a needle in him. The gentleman had no idea why he was afraid of shots and needles. In a Class II theta state, some refer to this as regression, the source of his fear surfaced. His father had been a doctor. His mother who was the disciplinarian didn’t believe in spanking. So from the time he was a very small boy, she’d threaten him with getting a shot as punishment. She’d describe how excruciatingly painful the shot would be, and if he wasn’t a good boy, he’d get a shot. Unbelievable!

As we mentioned, anxiety exacerbates and can causes real physical problems such as Crohn’s Disease and Irritable bowel Syndrome or IBS. How can hypnosis mitigate those symptoms? The autonomic nervous system which resides in our subconscious mind, controls eye blinking, breathing, pulse, blood pressure and the entire gastrointestinal track. Through hypnosis, we’re able to access the autonomic nervous system, to allow the digestive system to become calm and the spasms to relax. Crohn’s Disease and IBS respond extremely well to hypnotherapy.

Whether an individual suffers from general anxiety, from specific situational anxieties, vague and uneasy feelings of anxiousness, or an incident or incidents from childhood – hypnosis is the only therapy that will enable an individual to move past these types of anxiety permanently.

You learned fears and doubts… and through hypnosis… you can unlearn them! Just visualizing in the conscious mind that the problem will go away with positive thinking cannot bring about the needed behavioral change. However, guided visualization with hypnosis will access the subconscious mind where the fear is located, then the behavioral change will occur.

I invite you to call me for a complimentary consultation to come in and visit about your anxieties. If you have a friend or a loved one that suffers from anxieties, you have no idea what they are trying to deal with. You might even think that they should just get over it… but it’s not that easy for them. Encourage them to read this article.

Hypnosis helps a salesperson to excel, to the best they can be.  There aren’t too many people that from the first grade on, want to grow up and be a salesperson. In fact many people get into sales by default – meaning at some point in their life, it was the only option available to them..  In my practice I use hypnosis to help salespeople become more effective, high functioning people and by doing so they become better at sales.

The day of the slick “used car” type of salesperson has been long gone. Now people are more counter suggestive than they were a long time ago. But if you are willing to get to the top of your game in sales today, you can have an incredible life and lifestyle. It can truly be a rewarding experience. In a word – be the best.

Let’s take a moment and let me give you the Bob Crow definition of what sales really is. Are you ready? Please allow this to sink in.

Sales…is acquainting people with what is good. With that as how you see yourself and what you do – you should definitely hold your head high and be the very best at it. That means being so good in all phases of your work, not just selling aspect, but all of it. Getting up and doing the things that make things happen.  Remember this truth. Are you ready? If you do what you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it… someday… you can do what you want to do when you want to do it.

See yourself as an authority. Speak with authority. Act with authority. See yourself as not only great at your personal sales and at the top of your game; but see yourself as being in demand as a speaker as well, instead of parroting the slick slogans, catchy comebacks and clever closes some hotshot speaker says work allow your true confidence to come through.

How does one make these changes? Well not with the conscious mind that’s for sure. How many seminars or workshops or conferences have you left excited about, only to fall right back into your old rut? Right. You can’t make behavioral changes in the conscious mind; these changes must take place in the cognitive maps of the subconscious mind. If you want to really excel at sales – give me a call. If you want to get to the top of your game and stay there, call me at 404.277.1827 for a consultation.

I see people that want to use hypnosis for weight loss at my practice in Atlanta Georgia.

Compensatory eating is a rationalization, that by skipping a meal, a person creates a calorie deficit, that they can tap into that, will allow them to later eat more of, or the wrong foods. This is an imagined calorie deficit! Rationalizations are lies we tell ourselves that look stupid to us later.

A person that skips breakfast figures that they can eat a bigger lunch and that it will even out. It won’t.

Compensatory eating starts out with a conscious decision to eat less or skip a meal! It puts a chain of events into place.

This is going to be a perfect day weight loss and exercise wise. In an effort to lower your calorie consumption, you skip breakfast this Saturday morning. Big mistake. You’ve set yourself up to fail. You go for a long walk and come back 75 minutes later with your blood sugar so low you can hardly remember your name and so hungry that you want to eat everything in the house. With your blood sugar low and being so hungry, you make another bad decision and you eat a couple of the kids Pop Tarts. While waiting for the shower to get warm, you grab a couple of oatmeal cookies. You shower, but the guilt hits within moments. You ate two foods that are simple carbohydrates, so you will continue to want to eat.

You go to the bank and stop at Wendy’s – grab a cheeseburger, a medium fries and of course a “diet” coke. Well even though your therapist advised you that with your weight, height and target weight, you should only be consuming 1000 calories a day in the weight loss phase, the Pop Tarts and cookies put you at the 1200 calorie mark and the fast food meal added another 1180, so now you are at 2380 and it’s not yet noon! Not to worry, you decide to fast for the rest of the day.  These self defeating behaviors will change through the power of hypnosis for weight loss.

But you ate simple carbohydrates and they do two things – they make you gain weight and worse they make you want to continue eating. It’s Saturday night and although you had decided to fast for the rest of the day, the simple carbohydrates that you ate earlier have kept you eating chips and snacking for the rest of the afternoon.

You feel guilty for pigging out all day, so to make yourself feel better, you start out with a glass of chardonnay at dinner. Wine is a simple carbohydrate, but in addition to putting on weight (one average glass equals about a pound and a half a month in weight gain or eighteen pounds a year), but being a simple carb it will make you continue to crave more simple carbs plus… it lowers your inhibitions and blows the rest of the day – diet wise. At dinner you had the rib dinner at 3960 calories and at least 300 calories more in alcohol. But you did skip dessert. Ever wonder why you don’t lose weight?  Hypnosis for weight loss will make you more conscious of your behavior which makes it easier to change.

Monday morning and you skip breakfast and lunch in an effort to make up for a weekend of bad eating. By the time someone brings Mexican to the break room, your blood sugar is again so low that you eat to feel better. Of course you ate more simple carbohydrates to feel better and we know what that does. And the beat goes on. Day after day after day after week after month after year. If you feel that you are in a cycle of not being able to lose weight permanently, give me a call. We can fix it!  Hypnosis for weight loss gives you the ability to use your subconscious mind to change the negative behaviors much more easily.

Around the middle of the 1800’s, Dr. John Elliotson and Dr. James Esdaile were using hypnosis as anesthesia for major surgical procedures like bowel resections, supra pubic prostrate operations, breast removals, amputations, appendectomies, tumor removals and the list goes on. Hypnosis was not used in conjunction with any other form of anesthesia in those cases – just hypnosis. It was also safer than ether.  The blood pressure cup wasn’t invented until 1881 and wasn’t widely used until a more modern one replaced the wooden tube stethoscope in 1901, so it was very easy to kill a patient with too much ether.  The early pioneers of hypnosis and hypnotherapy were medical doctors – not entertainers. Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr. Milton Erickson considered to be the fathers of hypnotherapy in the United States were both physicians. On April 23, 1955 the British Medical Association approved hypnosis for childbirth and surgery, and advised all physicians to receive fundamental training in hypnosis.

Today,  many dentists use hypnosis for root canals and other painful procedures. Top burn centers have started using hypnosis for pain management as morphine slows the blood flow to the skin grafts, and the patient heals faster. Hypnosis is being used for colonoscopies and cystoscopic examinations to eliminate the pain and the discomfort that these procedures can produce. I routinely work with those suffering from IBS, Crohn’s Disease and other painful issues. Best of all, hypnosis is used to manage long term chronic pain. I work with people with chronic back pain or pain from other injuries, TMJ is another condition that involves a great deal of pain.  Hypnosis is the only drug free way to take away the pain.  Childbirth hypnosis or hypnobirthing is another use of hypnosis to stop pain and discomfort.

When it has been proven for over two hundred years to mitigate pain, don’t you think that it might be worth investigating for pain issues in your life?

Conventional diets can’t and don’t work for permanent weight loss. They never have and they never will. Why not? Because conventional diets attempt to deal with the emotional and physical food cravings with the willpower and discipline of the conscious mind. But those cravings aren’t located there, they are located in the cognitive maps of the subconscious mind. To deal with these issues, one must work with the subconscious mind, and hypnosis is the only way to access the subconscious mind deliberately. Hypnosis is the bridge to the subconscious mind.

Overeating and thus excess weight gain is a symptom of something else going on in the persons life. Unless the emotional cues are dealt with and put behind the person, and also the types of foods that cause one to want to overeat are eliminated during the weight loss phase, the conventional diet is doomed to failure.  In fact most individuals that want to lose weight, have been on so many conventional diets… they can’t remember them all!

Individuals do not overeat because their body is calling for more nourishment. They over eat because they are sad, worried, stressed or any number of other emotional reasons. They eat hoping to feel better… to be comforted… we even called the foods – comfort foods! But the “comfort” that this type of eating brings, doesn’t last very long – generally it’s only a matter of moments until the guilt sets in and the person feels even worse. Then they eat some more – and then the guilt… well you see the pattern and get the picture.

I see those that want to lose weight on a daily basis. We attack the overeating on at least two fronts. One – the emotional cause or causes. Two – eliminate the foods the give cues to overeat. The desire to overeat from the physical cues that stimulate over eating, will generally disappear in four days. That leaves us the time to discover the emotional cues and enable the person to move past them.

My three part weight loss program will include addressing celebratory eating, overeating while under the influence and absent minded eating. Again – this is not just another diet in the incredibly long list of conventional diets or “secrets” to dieting, our objective is permanent weight loss.

Many many people that are in the hospitals have done it to themselves by overeating. It happens, but you don’t see too many “skinny” people with colon cancer, gall bladder problems, sleep apnea, Type II Diabetes, heart disease and the list goes on and on. It happens, but quite often people do in fact bring on poor health.

Most people initially want to lose weight for cosmetic reasons only. But wouldn’t it be cool to be trim, fit and healthy as well?

Hypnosis is an effective tool for getting rid of  nausea and fatigue of chemotherapy. Those that must under go chemotherapy are counseled by those that are administering it that “they should expect to feel tired and experience nausea”. And then they do. They were given a powerful negative suggestion by the administrator. The person that indicated that they going to feel bad, made this suggestion with good intentions. They didn’t want the person that was to undergo chemo to feel that the side effects were unusual, so they tell them to expect them! That is a suggestion. They will now expect those side effects!

Hypnosis deals with suggestions to the subconscious mind, and those suggestions have proved to be beneficial for medical purposes for well over two hundred years! Hypnotic suggestions allow people to quit smoking, quit drinking, to experience painless dentistry and to make permanent behavioral changes in their lives . Hypnotic suggestions are used to enable individuals to undergo colonoscopies  and cystoscopic examinations without either pain or discomfort! Isn’t this incredible? Doesn’t it make sense that if hypnosis will allow one to undergo medical procedures that normally are conducted with anesthesia without discomfort, these same types of suggestion while in hypnosis, will allow a person relief from the nausea and fatigue of chemo?  In fact the stomach and how it feels  is directly connected to the subconscious mind

I routinely see those that are seeking relief from the symptoms of IBS or Crohn’s disease. Are we saying that we have found a cure for them? Of course not. But isn’t it pretty cool that they can live their lives without the pain, the dysentery, the discomfort and the fear of an attack?

If you or someone you know is undergoing chemo or about to, give me a call for a complimentary consultation.

Weekly, individuals come to see me in my hypnotherapy practice in Atlanta Georgia with the thought that they might be drinking just a little too much. Of course they will protest that they couldn’t be an alcoholic, but maybe they ought to cut back a bit. It’s not rare to find those that are drinking two bottles of wine per night! At first they insist that their marriage, job, family relationships and their life are perfect. But if that is the case, why are they drinking wine, beer or liquor instead of tea, water or coffee?

They are drinking to change the way they feel! They don’t seem to want to admit that they are unhappy. They don’t seem to grasp that if they need alcohol to feel better – drinking is not the problem… it is a symptom of the real problem or problems. Would that person want a doctor operating on them that had drank two bottles of wine the night before? Would they want a dentist to do a root canal or perform cosmetic surgery on them who had drank a fifth of vodka every five days? Would they want to be in an airliner that was being flown by a pilot that only drank a couple of martinis before take off? Of course not. They realize that other people have diminished abilities when they drink – but somehow they don’t think that they might not be as good of a marriage partner, a parent or a son or daughter, an employee or a supervisor if they are staying at home and consuming alcohol in front of the TV or on their deck until they fall asleep.

If one is drinking to feel better… one is drinking too much! Period! It’s kind of like smoking cigarettes – the person that smokes feels that only others will develop cancer. Folks come in routinely drinking ten or more bottles of beer a night and think that’s normal and alright for their body and mind – it isn’t. They are damaging their body as it wasn’t designed to run on alcohol.

There is a fog from drinking. That fog gives one altered personalities and diminished capabilities that doesn’t disappear overnight even if that person is not hung over and feels sober. Alcohol has a half life that stays with one and builds if that person is drinking on a daily or every other day basis. An individual that drinks in excess – will have a brain that is 17% smaller than if they didn’t.

The liver is the body’s filter. It’s used to filter fats, medicines (even like Motrin) and just about everything else. One really needs a liver to live –  and there is no such thing as dialysis for a liver. Your liver should be pliable and have good tone in order to function properly. Excess drinking will destroy it, and if those on the transplant committee feel that the candidate is an alcoholic – even if the candidate doesn’t share that opinion… they can’t get onto the waiting list for a new liver.

There are safer and much better ways to feel good. If you could or might be drinking to excess and slowly killing yourself or functioning beneath your potential, call me for a complimentary consultation and lets find out whats broke and fix it. Lets not waste your consultation time by defending why you drink – lets fix whatever the real problem is.

It’s your birthday!

It’s Friday!

I’m on vacation!

It’s a picnic!

It’s Thanksgiving!

It’s Christmas!

Okay, just one small piece.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t be rude, it was a baby shower.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t be rude, it was a wedding.

What was I supposed to do? It was my old boss’s retirement party.

What was I supposed to do? It was my high school class reunion.

How often do I get to have a girl’s night out?

How often do I go on a cruise?

Don’t I have to reward myself for being good once in a while?!?!?

If you don’t move beyond the above kind of thinking, you will never lose the weight that you desire to lose – instead you will destine yourself, to a life of one diet after another until you finally give up.

No matter what the supposed justification or rationalization, the above examples of what I call, celebratory eating, are really just EXCUSES to overeat! You say you want to be thin trim and healthy. In fact you’ve been saying that for years. But if you continue to behave contrary to your weight loss goals by using the above as reasons to snack and overeat – your weight and size will remain the same. If you want to change the way that you deal with overeating – you must do it in your subconscious mind. That way, you absentmindedly eat the right foods – instead of absentmindedly eating the wrong foods. That’s why hypnosis is the perfect solution for permanent weight loss.  The subconscious mind creates automatic behaviors.  Anytime you are in a highly emotional state and eat something, the two become linked in your mind.  Absent minded overeating has worked to your detriment; let’s enlist your powerful subconscious mind and enable you to unconsciously eat right!

In your hypnosis sessions we will link positive feelings to healthier activities.  If you only celebrate or feel good when eating, how can you ever get rid of excess weight?  There are many other activities that can give positive feedback.  Exercise, socializing with friends, reading a good book, playing with your pet etc.  are all activities that are healthier than simply eating.  Nothing tastes better then life!!

We will also use aversion therapy using hypnosis to give you the ability to just say no to the celebratory eating that has sabotaged you for years. Hypnotherapy will give the celebratory over eater an entirely new mindset that will enable them to overcome those moments of weakness.

You’ve tried diets, discipline and willpower for years. If you feel that this is your time and your window of opportunity to finally lose the weight you’ve been wanting to lose for years, and to get off of the constant diet roller coaster, call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827 for a complimentary consultation.

Many athletes, entertainers and others, who must execute their skill flawlessly, argue that they have a positive image of what they’re trying to accomplish. And… they probably do! But when it’s time for them to act in public, they often fall short of their best. Having positive thoughts and a good mental picture of a great game or performance can’t be underestimated, but a proper mental image alone won’t guarantee success. What causes talented people to make mistakes that they often wouldn’t make when they’re alone? The phenomenon is known as choking, is under performing and it can ruin their day.

Choking occurs when worry, pressure, anxiousness or over thinking overcome the person. This phenomenon is also referred to as losing it, blowing up or falling apart. It happens to performers playing taps or singing the National Anthem at public events. Extended periods of underperformance are called slumps. Golfers, tennis players, hitters, pitchers, basketball players, salesmen and others can experience these slumps.

What causes this underperformance? Just as a computer has random access memory, so do humans! The working or extremely short term memory portion of our memory is called the phonological loop. Once one knows how to swing a tennis racket or a golf club for example, these actions should be performed with our mind’s auto pilot using the basal ganglia and motor cortex of the brain – not its short term working memory – or phonological loop. This working memory can only hold 7 to 9 things. When we start trying to control the motor skills of the golf swing for example, we’re bringing the different components of the swing out of the basal ganglia and motor cortex, up into the working memory. This condition is then exacerbated by trying even harder to control the motors skills. In fact the harder one tries, the worse the performance. This over loads the phonological loop or short term memory.

In the band room the trumpet player plays taps without mistakes. But at a public ceremony, he wants to make sure he doesn’t mess up, so instead of playing on his mind’s auto pilot, he over thinks. This over thinking is causing a severe drain on his working memory! A soloist singing the national anthem, an actor delivering his or her lines, have all practiced over and over and over again and performed flawlessly, yet when it really counts, the pressure of the event can cause them to choke and perform far beneath their talent and abilities. When I work with golfers for example, I instruct them to go to the tee, look where they want to put the ball, notice I didn’t say hit, and without a practice swing, just put it there. This frees up their phonological loop to concentrate on where they want the ball to go, instead of trying to remember all of the components of the golf swing. Nike once had a slogan – just do it! Actually that is the best way!

The fear of losing it, blowing it, of others seeing us mess up will cause many to attempt to over control. These thoughts, worries, doubts and fears reside in the subconscious mind – in the cognitive maps of the alpha and theta states. Therefore, it’s an exercise in futility to attempt to over control with our conscious mind, by only positive thinking or imagining. The subconscious must be included! Therapists that utilize talk therapy only, can’t enable their patients or clients to fix their problem, as they are continually revisiting the incident or incidents, thereby reinforcing the fear/problem.  Remember the “don’t think of an elephant for ten seconds?” It was impossible – wasn’t it? Talk therapy deals only in the beta or the fully conscious and engaged mind. We can’t make permanent changes there. Only in the subconscious can we make permanent behavioral change.

In hypnotherapy, we use conversation to indentify the areas of doubt and fear and then we use the therapy of hypnosis to move past these fears and doubts by accessing the subconscious mind. And, the only way the subconscious mind can be accessed deliberately, is with hypnosis. Hypnosis is the bridge to the subconscious mind.

Whether it might be in sports, entertainment, business, public speaking or something completely different, if you feel that “choking” could be holding you back, please call Bob Crow for a complimentary consultation.