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“You have two choices…”

When people ask me about choices and decision making, this is always the story I tell. They love it!

Read it, see what you think and make your own choice!

Jerry is the manager of a restaurant. He is always in a good mood. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply,

“If I were any better, I would be twins!”

Many of the waiters at his restaurant quit their jobs when he changed jobs, so they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant… Why?

Because Jerry was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there, telling them how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him:

“I don’t get it! No one can be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood.

I always choose to be in a good mood.

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life.

I always choose the positive side of life.”

“But it’s not always that easy”, I protested.

“Yes it is”, Jerry said.

“Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the

junk every situation is a choice.

You choose how you react to situations.

You choose how people will affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood.

It’s your choice how you live your life.”

Several years later, I heard that Jerry accidentally did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business.

He left the back door of his restaurant open, and then…

…In the morning, he was robbed by three armed men.

While Jerry was trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination.

The robbers panicked and shot him! Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to hospital. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullet still in his body.

I saw Jerry about 6 months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Want to see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door” Jerry replied.

“Then, after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live”

“Weren’t you scared?” I asked

Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency room and I saw the expression on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead man!’ I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked

“Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me – she asked if I was allergic to anything, the doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!!’ Over their laughter I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude.

I learned from him that every day you have the choice to either enjoy your life or to hate it.

The only thing that is truly yours – that no one can control or take from you – is your attitude, so if you can take care of that, everything else in life becomes much easier.

During my Hypnotherapy training course I decided to finally read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor E. Frankl and I found that it was probably the most important book I’ve ever read. Although not on the reading list – because hypnotherapy itself isn’t mentioned in it – I had seen it mentioned in the ‘further reading’ sections of many other great books I had read.

Viktor E. Frankl was an eminent psychiatrist who created a school of psychotherapy based on man’s search for meaning (Logotherapy). He proposed that, when everything else is lost, man still has the choice as to how he responds in any situation and that last of all freedoms is founded on his meaning in life.

If you are in a situation where you have lost absolutely everything - just as Frankl himself did at the hands of the Nazi’s in the concentration camps – you can still have meaning in your life. And if you have that meaning then you can find the strength to carry on.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
~ Viktor Frankl

So, when I combine this philosophy with the humanistic methodology utilised by Milton Erickson (via the use of metaphorically vague language patterns) you have my philosophical approach to hypnotherapy. I also use NLP techniques to aid in the reframing of negative experiences – NLP uses the Meta-Model questionning approach (heuristic, flexible and logical questionning) which challenges currently held beliefs which is the opposite of the Milton-Model (artfully vague and metaphorical questionning approach). This helps me to be more flexible in my responses to different clients needs.

When I first started to study hypnotherapy I was quite aprehensive towards the use of ‘this life’ regression. Coming from a more NLP biased background I believed that it wasn’t required for the therapist to come into contact with too much of the clients’ content regarding their issues. But I have since come to appreciate the power of dealing with past issues in the hypnotic state. How many of us carry emotional baggage that can be easily and effectively dealt with by going back and telling our younger selves that we’re OK and that we’re who we are because of experiencing those trying times.

“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
~ Zig Ziglar