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I have an ambiguous relationship with the arcane arts of NLP and hypnosis and all that.

The ambiguety comes from the fact that I don't fully understand it all.

On one hand, it seems to be a load of bollocks. On the other, it undeniably works.

I was watching Derren Brown convince some guy he was in a zombie infested prison a couple of weeks ago. The performance ended with the protagonist walking off the compound with the girl he'd rescued. Brown had used his skills to bring out particular character traits in this guy. More tangibly, as they left the set, a phone, left on a nearby table, rang. The guy picked it up, and moments later, collapsed into a deep sleep, presumably triggered by a word or noise or whatever, implanted previously by Derren.

And of course, it was all captured on video. All? Perhaps he'd interviewed 10,000 people before finding someone malleable enough.

Similarly, Paul McKenna convinced Richard Hammond (He's not a real hanster) that he didn't have a clue how to drive a car, apparently by attaching cars to something  Richard Hammond found confusing. Hammond, intent on explaining the workings of the latest Alfa Romeo, became totally bewildered. Presumably McKenna didn't go through 10,000 Top Gear presenters before he found one malleable enough, so there must be something in it.

Having the ability to manipulate how people feel and think is a natural extension of my current role. Most people fail their test, not because they can't drive properly, but because they're shitting themselves.

So I'm seriously considering doing whatever it takes to become a qualified hypnotherapist.

a) It would really enhance my role as someone who gets people through the stress of a driving test. Driving instructor and hypnotherapist. They're a natural fit really, and to some extent, I'm already doing it.
b) If I get fed up of teaching people to drive, I can get them to pack up smoking instead. It's a living, and potentially a decent living.

Yet it doesn't st comfortably with my pragmatic mind. I don't fully believe in it. 30 months ago, I went to see a hypnotherapist to give up smoking. It went thus:

1 hour - her telling me about how it was dead easy to give up, and that the NRT industry was milking smokers for billions of pounds each year (aided abnd abbetted by the NHS and Government) by getting them to believe it was impossible without their help., her telling me that my desire to smoke wasn't bad or unnatural. And that before I could have a craving, I had to have a thought. Thought being, Cigarette.

She was spot on. Thinking about it now, I have no emotional or intellectual connection to smoking. Even after a few drinks. But these last two paragraphs being next to each other doesn't mean one followed the other.

See, the second bit went on for about half an hour. I lay back in a seriously comfortable leather chair, and donned headphones. Through the phones came a relaxing soup of nondescript piano music, while hypno-lady droned on about how I would wake up to be a non smoker. She's warned me that I might fall asleep, and that this wouldnt matter. In fact I found it impossible to switch off. Her intonations involved a terminal, nasal drawl that I kept wanting to burst into laughter at. A bar of light eminating from the venetian blinds impinged on my awareness. And so. I was aware. I suppose I'd expected to feel sort of stoned or something, but I didn't feel anything.

Finally, she charged me £150. I gave her the money and left, expecting to find I no longer had any desire to smoke. Minutes later, I found that I did. I gave up anyway, because I'd spent a shitload of money on giving up. And I stayed gived up until the money I'd saved by not smoking equalled the money I'd paid to stop.

Some time later, I just stopped. Pretty much, just like that.

So I'd assumed the hypno stuff began with the chair and the headphones, but in a sense, it began on an intellectual level. That's the bit that did it for me. So was that the "real" bit? while I was off my guard or something?

So the whole damn thing is pretty confusing. I bought an expensive book called "Tranceformations" but struggled to get into it. To become a qualified NLP practitioner may cost over £1,000. It could truly make me as a successful instructor. I wish I could switch off my cynicism towards it.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?