When you are considering hypnotherapy training or any hypnosis training, when you look at hypnotists and hypnotherapists who excel and create good hypnotherapy businesses and make lots of progressive change possible in the world, something that is common-place with those people is… a level of noticeable congruence.
When I had completed my own initial hypnotherapy training, when I was first setting up my business, I attended a large breakfast networking meeting with lots of varying types of businesses and people and one of the speakers was talking about and explaining how online networking had helped him go from redundancy to having his own lucrative business that he really enjoyed running in a relatively short period of time…
He was not a very good speaker at all. The way he talked about himself and his company was rather poor and unprofessional. However, there was something about him that made me want to give him business and that made me like him: He was congruent. He had a deep sense of congruence about him. Something I think is incredibly important in the hypnosis and personal development fields and should form part of any good quality hypnotherapy training.
What do I mean by congruent? I mean that congruence is how you are when what you do matches what you say, and both in turn match what believe…. They are all in alignment.
Congruence is like having a deeper level of honesty about who and how you are as an individual… Congruence is attractive and it is appealing…. Most importantly, it creates trust. The chap at the breakfast meeting was a man who I knew almost nothing about, who (technically) spoke and delivered his message quite badly, yet I liked him and would have spent money with him and his company.
Congruence is not only something that is about how others perceive you. It is also important in how you perceive yourself. If you want to make a powerful change in your life and you really want a particular thing but keep on doing something else, then incongruence will exist in your own perception of yourself too. This can cause loss of balance and will shine through in your communication… And how we communicate verbally and non-verbally as hypnotists and hypnotherapists is crucial, right? That is why I say that this notion should form part of every hypnotherapy training.
For anyone looking to enhance and devlop their level of congruence, I always suggest that you work out what your values are. The next step to congruence is simply to honour those values. You know what values are, don’t you? Values are what is important to you.
As someone completing a hypnotherapy training, a prime example of one of your values may be helping others. Being in business may mean you have a value of having security, enjoying freedom. Many people that are doing hypnotherapy training may well have the value of continuous learning. I could go on and on.
Maybe you have not spent years flicking through self-help books or been on courses for self-improvement, so maybe values are new to you… One way you can find out what you value is to identify something you really want, then ask yourself this question:
“What will that give me that I wouldn’t otherwise have?”
When you have subsequently answered that question to yourself, ask it again.
Ask yourself; What do I want? An example response might be : To reduce my weight.
Then you ask: What will that give me that I wouldn’t otherwise have?” The answer might be: A body I can feel comfortable showing off.
Then ask again: What will that give me that I wouldn’t otherwise have? The answer may well be: Freedom.
To get the most from asking yourself that question, you need to take the question as far as you can until you get the simplest answer and the question can be asked no more. When you go as far as you can, you end up with a core value: what it is that’s really important to you. In this example it was freedom. Knowing this can begin to install congruence within you that others can feel when they are around you.
Secondly here, pay attention to your body. That also needs balance and congruence.
Your body and your neurology have been developed over thousands of years to provide you with very accurate and real feedback about congruence and balance. It is like we have a HUGE antenna stuck out of the top of our head that tells the entire world what it is we are actually thinking… Even the tiniest of cues get picked up on by the unconscious minds of others… ANyone within a ourse of hypnotherapy training knows that, right?
If you are at a dinner party and you are smiling and chatting nicely and being charming but all the time you are thinking “I cannot stand these people” that uncomfortable feeling in your body and thought in your mind is an incongruent signal – a lack of balance - a sign that you are “out of tune.” When you have a deep sense of peace and joy, genuine balance, really truly enjoying the company of those people, then that is a sign that you are aligned and are subsequently going in the right direction. The rammifications for a hypnosis session are such that if you do not believe that the person you are with is going to be hypnotised, then they are unlikely to… If you do not believe in yourself to help them create the change they want… What does that suggest???
You level of congrunce will affect your hypnosis skills as well as your therapeutic results! It affects how people perceive your hypnotherapy training! If your beliefs, non-verbal signals, values and language are not aligned, then incongruence will be communicated within your communication, wherever it may be. This is being communicated unconsciously, hypnotically if you like.
I could tell that the chap at the breakfast meeting was loving his work… When you do what you love, enjoying your life and then letting go of as much of the other stuff as possible, you get to spend more and more time experiencing a sense of joy, fulfilment and happiness. As well as being great fun, this is also highly attractive – people really like to be around someone who is doing what they love! That includes you being around yourself. You will love yourself a lot more when you are enjoying what you are doing and potential customers and clients.
One of the things my mentor loves doing is running the various hypnotherapy training courses that he runs regularly. Things like his hypnotherapy training diploma for example is one of the most powerful approaches that I have encountered for helping people to live congruently, with balance and creating the lives that bring them joy and happiness. When he is running hypnotherapy training courses or seminars; to experience other people making powerfully progressive changes to heighten their own experience of themselves for themselves, ensures that he experiences that sense of deep congruence and balance that comes from being fully himself.
You may have encountered people whose behaviours do match their values. This person is congruent, and that congruence sends an unconscious message to people and to yourself, your own mind, that says “you can trust this person to do what they say they will.” So I recommend anyoe in te hypnosis field continue to check with themselves as to whether their goals are clear to them and whether their actions fit in with those values.
I think when you do so, it creates a much more receptive, hypnotic environment. Now that is quality hypnotherapy training!
Author:
Adam Eason is a best selling author, speaker and trainer. Please visit his website for further information on his hypnotherapy training diploma and to receive your free, instantly downloadable hypnosis session and free ebook 'The Happy Brain Manual' filled with tips, strategies and techniques you can apply to your life today! Enjoy. http://www.adam-eason.com/seminars/hypnotherapy-diploma/
