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The post hypnotic suggestion protocol is a great way to influence a person hypnotically to give you an action at any given point and time that is initiated by a specific trigger or set of triggers.
This is a great accomplishment as well as a vast amount of power and it would be nice to say that it works every time without fail. However, there are times when other factors get in the way of the suggestions you are making. There are instances when you will need to do more as you are experiencing more resistance than usual.
One of these interferences is the problem of motivation. This means that a person is not doing something you are suggestion for a lack of motivation. Maybe the payoff isn’t big enough; maybe the punishment isn’t severe enough. The actions you are suggesting to a person have all sorts of obstacles that can get in the way of the action actually being carried out.
There are some ways to medicate the problem of motivation in a person. If you recall the access state principal in which you must be in a certain mood or state to access certain behaviors. If you work to change the mood of the person you will change their state in doing this you will likely get a better response in the actions you are soliciting from your listener.
An example of this would be if you want a person to be excited about a thing and they are actually depressed when you tell them, you may not achieve the excitement you were looking for. This is because the state of the person is simply wrong.
To be depressed because you just suffered a loss and to go to instant excitement that a friend passed the bar exam is a big leap for anyone. The state of a person will have a vast amount of determination on whether or not you can motivate a person into action. Once you have the right mood in a person it will be much easier to get the response you want from them.
It is also important to understand that there are two different types of motivation, pleasure and pain. Some people are motivated because the reward is big enough to accomplish the task at hand. On the other hand there are people who could care less about the rewards and would be more motivated by avoiding a type of pain.
Now pleasure and pain can be anything from the rewards of health, money, material objects or self satisfaction. The same goes for pain it can be debt, physical pain, emotional trauma or a blow to the self esteem. It all depends on the person it is pertaining to. Most people in the world will fall in the middle of this spectrum some pleasure will be enough and some pain will be enough to motivate them.
This is where the COMILA Formula that you have heard from time to time comes in. The COMILA Formula is a set of concepts that will lead you to using motivation to get an action from a person. Let’s define each part of COMILA so you may get a grasp on what it entails.
The ‘C’ in COMILA is for captivating attention. This should be something you are both familiar with and good at by now. It is a corner stone of Conversational Hypnosis and is the easiest way to influence another person. You must have the ability to captivate the listener’s attention to get the behaviors and responses you are seeking.
The next letter is the ‘O’ and it is to outflank resistance. Again this is a very popular topic that you have been learning about from the beginning of your hypnosis studies. All the excuses that a person will give as to why they may not be motivated to do a thing all stem from their resistance.
You must be able to bypass the critical factor in order to reduce and eliminate the resistance if you want to see your suggestions in action. You have learned many, many different ways to do this with confusion, stories, assumptions and so on to bypass the critical factor in a person. You must use them.
‘M’ in COMILA is for mood changes. As we just talked about previously in this article you must have the right mood to have the right attitude in a person. You have learned several ways to change the mood of a person, one you just read and that is the concept of pleasure and pain. If you reward or give consequence to a person they will usually be motivated to change their mood.
Another skill you have learned in the area of mood changing is to use emotional triggers. Once you know what motivates the person you are working with to change things you can alter their mood using either the pleasure or pain and create the mood you are in need of to set a suggestion. There are essentially two things you need to know in changing a person’s mood.
The first is whether they are motivated by pleasure or pain and the second is what state they need to be in to initiate the behavior you are asking for. Once you have discovered the answers to these two questions you will be able to create the best environment to extract the behavior you are seeking.
Next step is the ‘I’ and it is to intensify the mood. After you have found the state you need, the idea of intensifying that state as much as possible is best. The more intense the state the better your chances of cooperation and non resistance. There is the chance that you will have to work at this a bit in order to get the right intensity, loop through a few times and really create the intense state that will best suit your purpose.
The fifth step in COMILA is the ‘L’ and it is short for linking the mood. If you do not link the mood do a trigger you will only have the desired response while you are motivating the person yourself. You are looking to set triggers to motivate your subject when you are not around therefore you must link the mood to a trigger which is linked to a behavior.
When you link the mood to a trigger then the action can take place when you are in the bathroom or in Italy, it doesn’t matter because the trigger is not motivating the person.
Finally the ‘A’ in COMILA is for action. This is it the climax you have been waiting for. A very important step as if you don’t do this you will have worked real hard for nothing. The action is the releasing of the behavior, you must have your trigger set so the action will fire and take place while you are in Italy, or the bathroom, or a bathroom in Italy.
The action step in COMILA is the most important and often the one that most hypnotists mess up. Choosing the right action is vital. This is what will begin the sequence of behaviors you are setting within the unconscious, getting it right is important. Throughout this process you have used your states and suggestions to set up the chain of action that will fire once the right trigger is set.
The best way to choose the right trigger is to take a look at the little things. This is where most hypnotists go wrong; they go for the big firecracker right off the bat. The secret here is to aim at asking for the smallest step in the chain of events that will lead a person in the direction you want. Think of instructing a two year old.
You don’t just tell them to feed the dog, who knows what will happen if you say that! You start by telling them to get the dogs bowl; you may even have to point it out to them. After they see the bowl they will generally put together the rest of the sequence of what you are asking. But starting with the smallest request saved you a lot of time and frustration.
All people, two year olds and up will have an easier time taking in the beginning, middle and end of a sequence rather than having to sort the whole thing out alone. Once this is done because you have previously set up the embedded suggestions, state and post hypnotic suggestion the rest of the events will likely follow smoothly and naturally.
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