Michael recently posted a question in the comments of my last post and in the process of answering his question it seemed more fitting to make a new post out of it as this will get read more.

Michael wrote:

[…] where it goes “its like how you thought(whatever you wanted to change,fire old anchor). By saying what you wanted to change , could you give an example on what we are changing? like are we changing what we want them to get to us. And also would like to know what the old anchor was. […]

And heres my response:

I’m not sure I 100% understand what your asking, so I’ll try and give an example and hopefully it will answer your question

Lets say, for example that we have a friend who wants to see a movie and we want to go to the beach instead. (nice uncontroversial example)

Your friend arrives at your place, you want to persuade him/her to go to the beach instead, so as your friend comes towards your front door, you look puzzled for a moment and ask your friend (lets call ‘him’ john) “hey john, wait.. is your shoelace undone?” and john looks down puzzled and as his gaze meets his shoes you say “oh NEVER MIND john, it just looked like they were from this angle, you know, you see things one way and then the next time its DIFFERENT NOW.. come inside”

As john comes closer you reach out your hand to shake his and say something along the lines of “its good to see you again”, and before your hands connect you pull your hand back (the classic bandler handshake pattern interrupt) and gently touch his outstretched arm with your other hand.. look john in the eyes and say FEEL LIKE going to the beach, don’t you john?

Now just bring your original hand back and shake his as though nothing happened (no need to go overboard, you’ve dropped the suggestions you needed to while his mind was blank during the ‘interrupt’), maybe pat him on the back and lead him inside. Maybe say something along the line of ‘come inside and sit down for a moment’ and as you lead him inside, you could even give him an icecream as you say “you probably feel like after that walk in the hot sun, don’t you? (don’t give him time to respond)..well do you, I don’t know, I just thought you might FEEL LIKE ONE”, it helps to time it right and hand him the icecream at the same time, you’ve already ‘LEAD’ him the whole time, he should be a little entranced if you did this right so he’ll unconsciously accept the icecream and is quite unlikely not to accept your gift, even if he originally didn’t feel like one.

You might ask him something like “hey, you used to live in that old red brick house didnt you” (or whatever was true, this is just to get him to recall any experience that WAS true).. as you see his eyes move to access that part of his memory you put your hand on something, say the refrigerator and say ‘mmmm’ (this is the anchor, do it at the same time as a combined visual and auditory anchor is more powerful).

Casually finish of the topic, whatever small talk is needed, you have your anchor, now just make things appear natural.

You might now ask him how ‘Stacy’ is going (in this imaginary example, he has a crush on a girl called Stacy).. he may say a few things.. say something like “you want her don’t you?”.. now pour yourself a glass of water, do it so as soon as he even ‘thinks’ of Stacy you’ve twisted the tap and the water lands in your cup, this is the anchor, do it with precision.

Now interrupt him, he’s seen you pour a glass, say “you want one?” and (he better say yes.. :P), he says yes you move to pour him a glass, and casually ask “hey you want to go to the beach today?” and IMMEDIATELY begin pouring his glass (this is the anchor)..

(if he says no to the water you will have to get creative and invent a way to use this anchor, probably look at your glass disgusted and throw it out, pretend to wash it, and then ask him if he wants to go to the beach, as you ‘fire’ the anchor by ‘repouring’ your glass)

If he STILL wants to go to the movies instead of the beach (and this is probably if your screw up the timings, or he’s VERY determined.. or a mismatcher in which case the classic “I bet you couldnt statement”.. eg “I bet you wouldn’t want to go to the beach anyway John, the weathers not that great and you’ve never really been a fan of getting sunburnt” ), you also have the used to be true anchor (his old house, and you touching the refrigerator). In this case, your probably best of giving some long winded story about how you read this thing about how the mind works.. blah blah.. I’ve gotta get some sleep now, but you get the gist (if there’s interest, I’ll write up example of how language can be used to induce ‘basic’ amnesia etc)

Note:
The language I use uses lots of manipulation of past / present tense, use this to ‘move’ peoples perceptions.. eg, “You really wanted to see that play, didn’t you?” vs “You want to see this play now, don’t you?”

Tag questions are also used.. think about it, you’ve made a statement, the person is thinking about it, now ask a question that will usually get a positive response (don’t you / didn’t you / wouldn’t it etc) to cement in a positive response to your original statement, doesn’t it?

There’s also a lot in the timings, NLP / hypnosis is useless if you can’t do it like a natural with elegance and poise, something that I’m still working very much on personally; it takes time to perfect these things.

So good luck, and hope you all feel like going to the beach, you could probably use a nice tan anyway, couldn’t you? hehe.. couldn’t resist, maybe its just my own projections, sitting here in front of my computer during a ice cold Australian winter dreaming of how much a miss seeing the expanse of the ocean, feeling the warm sun on my back as sea gulls squark and children play.. damn, it sure would feel good.. maybe I’ve just successfully persuaded myself its time for a holiday.

So, how does a pattern interrupt work and whats the psychology behind it? Better than me explaining it I’ll use a few videos found through youtube including a few by the british ‘mentalist’ Derren Brown.

Heres ‘The Russian Scam’, it demonstrates how easily a pattern interrupt can be applied in casual conversation, and it also demonstrates one of the most powerful hypnotic interrupts, namely to start a handshake and break it leading the subject into confusion and heightened suggestability.

Watch the video:

The logic behind this is quite simple, you want to ‘interrupt’ someones pattern, something that is preprogrammed into a person that doesn’t contain any other options but the pattern..

Watch this video by another author explain how the Russian Scam is performed:

For example in a handshake have you ever seen someone stop before their hands connect? The brain does not expect this, instant confusion and trance state waiting to be lead into something else.

Watch the video below to say how Richard Bandler, cofounder of NLP masterfully demonstrates this:

And here to see derren brown use a pattern interrupt together with embeded commands to change someone memory, powerful stuff

Apart from handshakes you can do it with anything that the person doesnt expect, for example Milton Erikson once asked a person to come up on stage and as the person came up on the stage Milton started tieing his shoelasses.. and just at the right moment he told him to just sit down on the couch and right as the person was in the act of sitting down Milton told him to ’sit down all the way unconsciously now and go into trance’..

I’ve heard of people asking someone “hey, is your shoelase undone?” and using that brief opening to fire off a couple of suggestions and give them a command.. if they even remember what you asked then just go ahead and say something along the lines of “oh NEVER MIND, it just looked like it from this angle.. you know.. when you see something, it looks like something from one way but then things change (change where your pointing your hands, anchor this ), and suddenly it appears different..hmm.. its like how you thought (whatever you wanted to change, fire old anchor) and now you can see this (what you want them to believe, fire new anchor) can’t you”

The same could also be done when someone is about to put a tooth brush in their mouth, done elegantly if you were in the same place you could probably tap them on the shoulder, gently hold their arm and tell them to ‘CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SLEEP NOW“, enough to perform a rapid hypnotic induction on someone ;).. just remember congruence is what makes this work, if you don’t project confidence your subjects will feel awkward.

Lastly, heres an example that could be used for seduction, its one that I’ve been thinking about using and I just haven’t gotten around to testing.. Say your meeting a girl (or guy for that matter) and you’ve got decent rapport, for example your either just meeting them or one of you is leaving.. where a handshake might have been appropiate heres what you could do..

Reach out your hand, before your hands connect pull your hand back and gently hold on to their hand with your other hand, look into their eyes and say “I bet YOU LIKE ME think its a bit awkward shaking hands like this, come here and give me a hug”, open up both hands, inviting them to come forward and hug you, do this with warmth and empathy and its highly unlikely they won’t come forward.

So now you’ve just gotten more physical contact and an opportunity to tell them to ‘LIKE YOU’ when they were in a highly suggestible state.. not too shabby huh? you could easily lead it further by whatever pattern you want to use, maybe something like “You know (Name), I can tell you like me (smile).., and its one of the things I like about you; you’ve got good standards.. infact you seem pretty cool, if nothing else I reckon you’d make a good friend..” if they respond positively, you could AT LEAST number close them like follows.. pull out your mobile, hand it to them, but before their hand touches it pull it back and touch their hand with your other han like the classic hypnotic handshake pattern interrupt just with a phone… smile and maybe say something like “but before you give me your number, I’m not going to call you if your not the type of person that I can depend on, if your one of those flakey women its not worth my time and its not worth your time to exchange numbers.. so I’m telling you to put your number in my phone because I want to see you again.. ” now smile and put your phone in her open hand and smile again. Have fun, she/he is probably going to want to hang around a bit after this though

Well? Think about it; What is it you are not thinking about right now?… Isn’t this just the best damn pattern interrupt?

Go back and read the previous statement again… because… The more you read it the more you will realize that the more you think about whatever it is you are not the more it is you won’t be able to not go in a loop.

Now does reading this confuse you? Good, because imagine doing this with the proper spacing of words, good tonality and a couple of embedded commands like ‘your unconscious’ thrown in for good measure. That’s right, this is a powerful pattern interrupt.

Give it a shot, use the above question “what is it you are not thinking about” and anchor the response, you might be surprised just how powerful this little bit of anchoring is when you use it again.

For example, I had a friend who was very emotionally distressed because things didn’t work out between him and a girl and after using some DHE techniques (if theres interest I’ll write more, absolutely fantastic stuff by Richard Bandler here!)  he was ‘almost’ comfortable with the memory of her so I asked the ‘what are you not thinking about question’ and anchored it by putting pressure on one of his knuckles and asked him what her name was (note the passed tense) and fired the anchor, I then proceeded to ask him how bad he felt (note the negative presumption) while firing the anchor again.

End result, including DHE the total time was ~2 minutes and he reports tthat there is no feeling towards her or asociated with her anymore. So play around with this, its powerful, and don’t even think about telling someone to “SLEEP NOW” with enough authority as they do the trans derivational search because that would just be way too easy a rapid induction.. Infact anchoring it and firering the anchor just before a nice little embedded “LIKE ME” command wouldn’t be fair either so DON’T DO IT.

Or at least, if you do, make sure you let me know how it works so I can continue to post about more effective things you shouldn’t be not doing.

I challenge everyone, myself included, to get caught using embedded commands and rapport techniques.

Seriously, we all start of thinking ‘what if I get caught’ mirroring the other person when we’re first learning NLP and I can tell you now, it just doesnt happen when you just allow yourself to synchronize your movements with the other person. They simply don’t notice anything at all, yet you will feel a stronger connection, or if your not yet attuned to feeling rapport you will notice them being friendlier to you within a few minutes because (depends on the person) they will tend to begin asking you questions and showing more interest in you.

And its the same with embedded commands, you think people will catch you? Go ahead, TRY and get caught.. Like I have, it just doesnt work.. And its the same with embedded commands because I now mark of ‘your unconscious’, ‘your mine-d’ and ‘like me’ rather overtly with a decent pause and people dont even react, it goes straight in and I notice them just following along.

So, if anyone gets caught, email me! Seriously, if it were to happen I will write a post about it, and if you want, I will help you out personally via email if you want so that it doesnt happen ever again.