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Adam on Why He Became a Therapist and the Origin of The Hypnotist Podcast · The Hypnotist

0:05
Welcome to The Hypnotist, the show that gives you inside
0:09
access to cutting edge hypnosis with real clients facing
0:12
genuine. Issues.
0:13
Brought to you by The Hypnotherapist, demanded by
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celebrities CE OS and even royalty Adam Cox, these
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recordings took place live from Evans Clinic in London's world
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famous Harley Street. So get yourself comfortable and
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enjoy today's episode of The Hypnotist.
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Hi, it's Adam here. And every now and then I have a
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guest hypnotist, as you know, speaking about their background
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and how they got into hypnotherapy.
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But I was recently on a podcast called Hypnosis and Beyond where
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I was the guest on their podcast and they asked me lots of
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questions about my thoughts on hypnosis, how I work, how I
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became a hypnotherapist, and some of my opinions on therapy.
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And I watched it and I thought my audience might benefit from
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hearing my take on these things. So if you're interested in me
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being the guest rather than being the host, then check out
1:22
this feature on someone else's podcast, Hypnosis and Beyond.
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And if you'd like this podcast, I'm going to put a link so that
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you can follow and see more episodes of their podcast.
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So if that's of interest, check that out and let me know in the
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comments if you like to hear more of me being a guest on
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other podcasts and I'm happy to share more of those.
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For now though, relax and enjoy me being featured on a podcast.
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Take care. Hey, Jen.
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Hey, Dana. Hey everybody, welcome to
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hypnosis. And beyond today we have Adam
2:12
Cox. He is the host of the world's
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most popular podcast, The Hypnotist.
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He also regularly works with celebrities, CE, OS and even
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royalty. Hi, Adam.
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Great to be here. Thank.
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You for joining us today. We so appreciate it.
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We've been so excited to get to speak with you.
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You are a pretty well known figure to a lot of people in our
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world, but what about all the people who don't know who you
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are? Can you share a little bit about
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who you are and what you do? Yeah, so you could probably tell
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from my accent, I'm, I'm British, so live very close to
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to London and I'm most well known for being a host of a
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podcast called The Hypnotist. And the Hypnotist is kind of
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different from a lot of hypnosis podcast because generally I'm
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not interviewing guests. What I tend to do is I share
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real hypnosis based on real client issues, but protect the
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confidentiality of the client. And what that does is it gives
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the audience the ability to experience what I consider real
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hypnosis. Whereas a lot of what's on
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YouTube and, and recordings are kind of scripted voice over
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stuff. And for me, I consider real
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hypnosis something you do with the person in front of you, with
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a client. And that that I think is what
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makes it different. So I guess the easiest way to
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yeah to to describe me is a British hypnotist that has a
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podcast called The Hypnotist I. Like it?
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And do you find that you get clients that have the same sort
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of issue all in a row? Like do you get crops of a
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certain issue or do you specialize in something?
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How does How does that work? When I started, I specialized in
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weight loss and phobias mainly and that and that was the two
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things because my belief system when I started about 12 years
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ago is that the medical industry was very much focused on
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changing body parts. So, you know, kind of if you
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think of bariatric surgery, so gust gastric sleeves and bands
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and those kind of things, or medication.
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And obviously with those MPIC, you know, it's quite popular
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now. But my belief is that if you can
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help someone to lose weight, you better off dealing with the the
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cause. Like what's the original reason
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why they have certain habits and those kind of things?
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And because I had very, very extreme phobias growing up, I
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thought, yeah, I'm going to help people with phobia.
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So when I started, it was that what happened in COVID though,
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is that I had a very, very nice therapy room in a very
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prestigious part of, of London. And when COVID came, I knew that
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clients weren't going to be seeing me face to face.
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So I thought, right, let me let me slows down this kind of lease
5:32
agreement on on that therapy room.
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And I thought I really wanted to keep having an outlet for
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hypnotherapy even during the pandemic.
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And I thought of the idea of a podcast.
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So what actually happened? Originally I was sharing lots of
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phobia and weight loss podcast episodes and that was getting me
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clients with phobias and weight loss.
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But every now and then I would work with a client that had
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something quite unique and quite different.
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And then whenever I published an episode like that, I would then
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get more people discovering me because they had that issue.
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So, you know, it's now it's very, very wide.
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But when I started it was very much weight loss and and
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phobias. Do you do you notice a a thread
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underneath most issues? Like do you think that that most
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things boil down to to anything? Or do you find that everything
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is just really unique and and it's there aren't commonalities?
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I I I would say both. I mean every client is unique.
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Where I would say there is commonalities is that the brain
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is pretty good at trying to solve problems, trying to solve
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problems, but sometimes the coping strategy that it comes up
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with paradoxically gives them the very thing that they're
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looking to avoid. So if you think of a phobic, for
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example, a phobic quite often has an unpleasant experience and
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the brain does not like that at all.
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And it says, right, to help you avoid this unpleasant thing
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happening again, you're going to pay way more attention to this
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thing that you want to avoid. And now they end up thinking
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more and noticing more the very thing that causes the anxiety.
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So I would say sometimes it's a well-intentioned coping strategy
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that actually makes things worse.
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Sometimes it's just one disempowering belief.
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I would say at least a third of all my weight loss clients
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somewhere have the belief that they're just not good enough.
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And, and they're in this kind of cycle where the part of them
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that believes that they're not good enough doesn't believe that
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they should be happy, confident and slim, but eating food makes
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them feel better. So they're in this kind of
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cycle. So part of what I consider my
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job to be is to play detective and say, right, you know, where
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did all this come from? You know, when was it not like
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this? Because I, I believe that if you
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can deal with the, the cause rather than the effect, you're
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more likely to make long term change.
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And that's the opposite of the Pharmaceutical industry that in
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many cases couldn't care less about the cause and they just
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come up with a medication to treat the symptoms.
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And I think as as hypnotherapists, much better to
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deal with what's causing this rather than just giving them
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suggestions to make them feel better in the moment.
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Do you use different techniques to get at that cause or do you,
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you know, what sort of is, how do you explore that with people
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in general? I know it's different of course,
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but do you have some techniques that you are your go?
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TOS asking questions is, is, is my main technique and, and one
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of my favourite questions is depending on what the issue is,
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is, is I say, if I were you for the day, how would I do what
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you're doing? And, and, and that's, that's a
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strategy elicitation question. It's it's out of the NLP
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playbook, but you can look at what people do as kind of an
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internal pattern or strategy. And and I think most people
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think they have to know why, but actually how is much more
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important because if you know how they do it, then it becomes
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easier to figure out what to change.
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And then you're just adjusting a pre-existing neural pathway
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rather than trying to create a brand new neural pathway.
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So the analogy I use for a lot of people with let's say,
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emotions that are triggered by something and that might be
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something that causes anxiety or it might be something that
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causes a compulsive behaviour is almost like a line of dominoes.
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And my job is to find out what's the first one or two dominoes
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that fall that create this sequence and then figure out
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where to interrupt the pattern and then reroute it to a more
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resourceful way. So questions, I think is the
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best way. And listening quite often the
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client tells you what's happening.
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So you might have a client that is, is very stressed and they
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literally say, you know, and I just tell myself like, you're a
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piece of shit, like you can't do anything right.
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They're telling you they're in a dialogue, you know, and, and I
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think sometimes it's just paying attention.
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And when you pay attention, it becomes obvious what to do.
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And then even paying attention, if they've got in a dialogue, is
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it stated in a first or third person?
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If the inner dialogue is saying you, you know, you've got a
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disassociated part. And if it's I, you know, it's
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associated. And that's the same way
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visually, if they relive A traumatic memory from a first
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person perspective, they're associated into that memory.
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And if they see themselves looking like someone else,
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they're disassociated. And I think association and
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disassociation is one of the key things that you can take eye
10:55
levels of an intense undesirable emotion and, and just dial it
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down very, very quick just by changing the perspective or, or
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giving a part a different role to play.
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Fascinating. And so then do you find that an
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issue somebody comes to you for initially is the issue or is
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there usually something else behind it then?
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I mean, there's, there's a great phrase in hypnotherapy.
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The issue is never the issue. And, and, and I think there's a
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lot of truth to that. Quite often the issue that the
11:30
client presents with is their coping strategy.
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Someone might be overweight, they might be drinking too much,
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they might be taking recreational drugs.
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So they think they just want to quit that thing.
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But then you figure out actually they're doing it to connect with
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themselves. They're doing it to make
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themselves feel better. So I would, I would agree with
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the statement, not that the issue is never the issue, but
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the issue is, is normally never the cause of the issue that
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they're dealing with. And you know, from my
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perspective, why not, why not treat the, the cause of the
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problem? Because then it's going to, it's
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going to be a long term solution.
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Whereas if someone's feeling depressed, you can do a
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hypnotherapy session that makes them feel good in the moment.
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You just get them associating into resourceful states.
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But you need to know how they're getting depressed consistently.
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And that might be, you know, in a dialogue telling themselves
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they're useless. You know, what's the point in
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trying? And it's like, well, you want to
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deal with that rather than give them a temporary experience,
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takes them feel better for the session, you know, much better
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to make the change so that whatever's causing that, that
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low mood or that depressed state doesn't keep coming back again
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and again. So how do you how do you forward
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pace or how do you check future pace to to know that you have
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gotten to that point and not just made them feel good?
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Yeah, almost every. So I must have published about
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1800 and something episodes of of the hypnotist and almost
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every single client session ends with future pacing and and I and
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I start the future pacing disassociated to say right now,
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when you think about your future, you know, I want you to
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see yourself. You know, what do you do when
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you've got a craving? What do you do when you're in a
13:24
social situation? Like I want, I want them to see
13:27
themselves like them, someone else first because they don't
13:30
have the evidence that they can access that yet.
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But we want to kind of sow the seed that it's possible and then
13:35
step into that and feel what it would feel like to actually be
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that. So for example, if someone's
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afraid of public speaking, for example, and they just see
13:44
themselves on a stage confidently performing, that's a
13:47
great stepping stone, but it's not quite enough because when
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they're actually doing the speech, they're not going to be
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seeing themselves like there's someone else.
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They're actually going to be looking at the audience in front
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of them. In which case you need to
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associate into the resource state.
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So that's one way that you do it.
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And and the second way is you test with the client.
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You might send them homework, you might say, right between now
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and the next session, let's just test this out to make sure it's
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actually working the way that you want.
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So I had a client that wanted to reduce the amount of alcohol
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they were consuming. And we did a great session and
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she came back and she's like, well, it kind of worked, but it
14:25
didn't because a friend popped around with a bottle of wine and
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then this happened and then this happened.
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So then for me, that's a feedback loop.
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And that next session was using this metaphor of snakes and
14:35
ladders. But now she knew exactly where
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the snakes were, so she could then pre empt those things.
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And I said, right now when a friend pops over with a bottle
14:44
of wine, like what, what do you say?
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And it's, and it's kind of like, OK, not for me.
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No thanks. I'm I'm having this.
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Do you want some? So she could rehearse that.
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And then it was a case of like, Can you imagine that actually
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happening? Like imagine the friend knocking
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at the door. Who's it likely to be?
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What do they have? And, and, and mentally
15:02
rehearsing that because once they've done it in their head,
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you know, in science, they have this idea of in vivo and in
15:09
vitro, they do the test in the test tube before they do it in
15:12
reality. So it's good to do that with
15:15
clients. It's like the future pacing can
15:18
only give them an essence of what it's going to be.
15:21
Reality is where the rubber meets the road.
15:23
So I don't look at it as the hypnosis is only effective if
15:27
everything happens perfectly. It's real life is the way that
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you turn thoughts and, and priming into real neural
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pathways. And then once they've done that
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experientially, of course, they're more likely to do it
15:41
again. So I I I treat real life as the
15:44
real test of of any change. Do you give clients audios to
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listen to as a standard operating practice, or is that
15:57
only for some clients? Or is that part of your, you
16:01
know, your protocols? It's part of what I do and, and
16:07
that's originally where the podcast came from because you
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know, as you could probably tell, like I'm, I'm an audio
16:12
geek. I, I love all this kind of
16:14
stuff. And I had this, I don't know if
16:17
I've, I've got it around here at the moment, but I have this like
16:19
portable microphones. When I was seeing clients face
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to face, even then I would have a studio quality microphone.
16:25
I would hold it, I would do it to them and then record it in
16:28
really good audio quality and then I would send them it
16:31
afterwards. But what it meant is that I had
16:35
200, you know, kind of hypnosis recordings.
16:38
And originally I thought, oh, OK, I can launch this podcast
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already having 200 hypnosis recordings.
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That is just my voice. The problem with when I started,
16:48
I had so many weight loss clients.
16:50
A lot of the recordings were very, very similar.
16:53
And then what I needed to do is to kind of write, OK, have some
16:56
variety there. And then, you know, I got
16:59
creative and made movie inspired hypnosis sessions.
17:03
But for me, you know, my belief system is that if you're seeing
17:06
clients face to face, you need a therapy room.
17:09
If you're seeing clients online as as most of my clients are,
17:13
you need a recording studio. So one of the benefits of having
17:16
a recording studio is that I can do the session, they hear good
17:20
audio quality from me and they can they can see me well, but I
17:24
can capture that audio in studio quality and then send that to
17:27
them. So that that does two things.
17:29
One, it's added value for the client, but it also means
17:32
they've got not a generic recording because I know some
17:35
hypnotherapist, they say, OK, right, we've done the session
17:38
and then I'm going to e-mail you some pre recorded sessions, you
17:42
know, from before, but that's not for the client.
17:45
The client needs what is calibrated and and and kind of
17:48
customized to them. So every time I work with a
17:51
client and do a hypnotherapy session, they get the studio
17:55
quality recording of that session.
17:58
That's that's really powerful. So in terms of your podcast,
18:04
then, do you see yourself continuing in this, you know,
18:11
doing hypnosis sessions on there or do you, do you see that
18:17
changing over time or I mean, I know it's working.
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So I, I I'm, but I'm just curious where you see that going
18:23
in the? Future I'm I'm having way too
18:25
much fun at the moment to to change it So and, and I've got
18:29
this this cycle that you, you know this from having a podcast
18:34
like one of the most difficult things is to is to build an
18:36
audience. Once you've got an audience,
18:39
it's easier to grow an audience, but actually building it
18:41
initially can be quite challenging.
18:43
And, and I'm in a a fortunate situation that because of what
18:47
I've done, I have I think over 51,000 followers on Spotify.
18:55
I think there's about 20,000 on Apple.
18:57
So it means that every every month I've got about 400,000
19:01
downloads and that gives me a good base.
19:03
So I just share my hypnosis sessions, protecting the
19:07
confidentiality of the client. That generates me more clients,
19:11
which then generates more sessions.
19:13
So it's this wonderful, you know, kind of flywheel where the
19:16
busier I get, the busier I get. And you know, from a financial
19:21
perspective that doesn't make sense because it's difficult to
19:24
scale your time if you're only working with clients one-on-one.
19:28
Except for me, it's I enjoy it too much so I don't look at it
19:33
as right. Is this the best way to scale my
19:35
brand? It's kind of like, no, I love
19:37
working with clients 1 to 1. So if I just get busier working
19:41
with clients 1:00 to 1:00, that's fine.
19:43
But because I have a recording studio, I'm also creating
19:46
digital courses because not everyone can afford to work with
19:48
me. So you want to have something
19:50
where if clients can work with you, they can, but if they
19:53
can't, there's they get a digital clone version of me
19:56
doing the sessions for them, which it makes me more
19:59
accessible. But I'm a hypnotherapist and
20:02
hypnotherapist do hypnotherapy with real clients.
20:05
And I think one of the one of the paradoxes that you have in
20:09
the hypnotherapy world and you know, we were at Hypno Thoughts.
20:13
Sometimes a talented hypnotherapist then starts doing
20:18
conferences, starts doing talks, they become a trainer, and then
20:22
they end up doing less work with clients and then effectively.
20:27
You know, you lose that sensory acuity, you lose that
20:31
calibration, and then effectively you're saying stuff
20:35
which becomes less and less experiential because you've
20:38
become a teacher rather than a therapist.
20:41
And, and for me, you know, I teach and I do courses, but I'm
20:46
a, I'm a hypnotist, I'm a hypnotherapist.
20:47
Like that's what I do. So, you know, I would never, you
20:51
know, the day I retire from hypnotherapy is I physically
20:54
can't do it anymore. Like outside of that, you know,
20:57
I'll keep doing it because it's it, you know, I was, I was
21:01
having a conversation with someone and they said being a
21:03
hypnotherapist is like, like a cheat code for life because you
21:07
get paid to do something incredibly fulfilling, that's
21:10
creative, it's intellectually stimulating, you actually make a
21:13
difference in people's lives. And there's no downside.
21:17
And there's lots of professions that can't say that they get the
21:20
money, but they don't really like what they do.
21:21
They're kind of ashamed of it. And hypnotherapy is, is a
21:24
wonderful thing that I can't really see a downside.
21:28
So it's kind of like, you know, I'm, I'm happy to be, to be as
21:32
busy as I can be because I know it's, it's doing good.
21:36
And it also has that ripple effect with me that beyond the
21:38
clients that I'm working with, one of the, one of the most
21:41
wonderful things about the podcast is that I'll see in the
21:44
comments and I'll see messages from people that I'll never
21:47
meet, You know, they'll, they'll never meet me.
21:50
They'll never talk to me. But they say in the message, you
21:53
know, lost 30 lbs of weight, you know, stop smoking weed, you
21:57
know, drinking weigh less. And it's just, that's just a
22:01
ripple effect of me working with the original client.
22:04
But but people out there are hearing this stuff and it's
22:06
actually helping them too. And that's, you know, what a
22:09
wonderful time to live, to be able to, to have the ability to
22:12
do something like that. It would be really interesting
22:15
to hear how you got into hypnosis.
22:17
What made you what you know? Yeah.
22:21
What brought you to this field? What, what brought me I was, I
22:24
was fascinated by psychology quite young.
22:27
So I was a very shy, introverted child.
22:33
And only later in my 20s, I kind of pieced it together.
22:37
But that belief that I talked about with a lot of my weight
22:39
loss clients, not feeling that they're good enough, I had that
22:41
belief, a deep conviction, not just a belief, but a strong
22:46
conviction that I just wasn't good enough without defining
22:50
what enough was. But I believed it anyway.
22:53
And you know, but I was also quite resourceful.
22:57
So if you genuinely believe that you're not good enough and you
23:00
don't want to stay that way, then it creates this motivation
23:03
to get better. And you know, I had a love of
23:06
learning. So as a child I would read books
23:09
on lots of things that I thought would make me better and that
23:13
might be exercise. I remember reading books on
23:16
mnemonics. I was I learned to speed read
23:19
when I was about 12 years old. And by speed reading young you
23:22
can learn more stuff quickly. And I thought, OK, well I want
23:25
to accumulate knowledge reading books on investment quite young.
23:28
So I had this kind of desire to do that stuff.
23:31
And the first book I read on hypnosis was a book by Ormond
23:35
McGill on stage hypnosis when I was about 12 or 13.
23:38
And now I am doing like little arm catalepsy tests and the
23:42
locking fingers and the magnetic fingers.
23:44
And, you know, I didn't realize why they were working.
23:47
It doesn't explain the book, but of course there's, there's
23:49
certain kind of physical thing, but it is the, the confidence
23:52
and the congruency of the language.
23:54
So all of these things were being planted quite young.
23:59
The irony for me is that where it really changed was when I was
24:03
18 years old, I left, I left home to study psychology as a,
24:08
as a degree. And during that time I, I had
24:12
very, very severe social anxiety.
24:15
So I had these kind of horrible rashes over my, my, my face and
24:18
my chest. And that led me to avoid people.
24:23
And then effectively I became a recluse.
24:25
And I knew at the time, because I knew a bit, you know, about
24:29
psychology, that if I would have gone to my doctor and said,
24:33
like, I'm feeling this way, they're either going to diagnose
24:36
me with generalized anxiety disorder or depression and
24:40
basically put me on meds. And I knew I didn't want that.
24:43
So instead, you know, being a recluse, I was avoiding people.
24:47
But the university I was in had a 24 hour library.
24:51
So I would kind of basically become a vampire.
24:53
I would like sleep in the day and then at night time go to the
24:57
library and just consume everything that I could on
25:01
different therapeutic modalities and those things.
25:05
And, you know, it kind of went from to use almost like a bit of
25:10
a cliche as an extreme, but I was suicidal at that point,
25:14
generally considered like ending my life to thinking, right, I've
25:18
got nothing to lose now by testing this stuff out.
25:21
And it was hypnosis and the early NLP approaches that really
25:26
I found was effective for me. And, and I went from being, you
25:31
know, very, you know, shy and introverted and anxious and all
25:37
these kind of skin conditions to actually getting to a point of
25:40
being very confident and very a strong level of belief in my own
25:46
abilities. And when you're 20 years old,
25:50
you know, and you and you start actually getting confident and
25:53
you've never had that before, you're not interested in being a
25:55
therapist. I was interested in making
25:57
money, you know, and, and dating like that.
26:00
That was, that was the, the thing that I was interested in.
26:03
So I had a couple of jobs, but then I set up my own business at
26:07
23 years old. The money I made for my
26:09
business, I, I invested. So technically I was a self-made
26:14
millionaire at the age of 27 and in my mid 30s came across this
26:19
concept called icky guy because I didn't really feel fulfilled
26:24
with my PR agency that I'd built and, and the investments that I
26:27
had. And I asked myself the question,
26:29
you know, what is it that I think about and I'm interested
26:32
in, even though it's nothing about money and nothing about
26:35
anything else. And it was, it was still
26:37
psychology, it was hypnosis. It was these things.
26:40
So literally the next day I signed up for a hypnotherapy
26:42
course. And what really changed for me
26:45
is that when I was learning hypnotherapy and becoming a
26:48
hypnotherapist, it was almost like there was unlocking a
26:52
secret level in my life that I didn't know existed.
26:54
And then suddenly everything got better.
26:57
You know, I felt happier, I felt more confident, more aligned.
27:01
And every, every hypnotherapist knows that whenever they work
27:04
with a client, they're not just helping the client, they're
27:07
extracting the insights from the client to themselves.
27:10
So it's kind of like you, you see the patterns and someone
27:13
might be addicted to something else, but it might be a
27:15
different addiction to me. So since I've become a
27:18
hypnotherapist, I think I'm healthier, I think I'm happier.
27:22
I quit drinking alcohol about 7 years ago.
27:25
My life has got better, but it all came from being this kind of
27:29
very anxious nerd of a of a child essentially.
27:36
Wow, thanks for sharing that with us.
27:38
A lot of people believe that, you know, when we come across as
27:41
a hypnotist, you know, maybe don't bring your story, but do
27:47
you Share your story with your clients?
27:51
If it's relevant like. As a means of kind of, yeah.
27:54
Yeah, if, if it's relevant, so when I'm working with an anxiety
27:57
client and I and I tell them when I was a recluse that my
28:00
heart would be up to like, you know, 140 beats per minute just
28:04
by opening the door, they connect with that, you know,
28:07
they, they know it's lived experience rather than just, you
28:10
know, kind of words. So yeah, absolutely.
28:12
And you know, I, I had AI, had a fear of public speaking.
28:16
Obviously, if you're afraid of people, public speaking is quite
28:19
a daunting, you know, kind of thing.
28:22
So, you know, I share what my experiences were, but also what
28:27
I did to overcome it. Not just saying, oh, I did
28:30
hypnotherapy myself, which doesn't say anything because
28:33
most people want to hear the story of the convincer strategy.
28:35
Like, what did you do to prove to yourself that fear is gone?
28:40
So when I had a fear of heights, yeah, I did the work on myself.
28:43
But then I did a skydive because I thought you can't do a skydive
28:46
and and still be afraid of heights, particularly if you do
28:48
it more than once. And I had this for a public
28:50
speaking and I did this speech at the age of about 2324 to 500
28:55
people in the in the Savoy Hotel.
28:58
So I think that becomes evidence of the change.
29:02
It's not that you can just say that you've changed.
29:04
It's like it's doing the thing. And that was really helpful in
29:08
the years leading up to COVID because I would do these monthly
29:12
spider phobia workshops and at the end we would get these
29:16
lifelong arachnophobes holding a tarantula.
29:19
Now, it's not useful to hold a tarantula, particularly for for
29:23
people in England, there's not many tarantulas.
29:25
You know, we're not, we're not in the Brazilian rainforest.
29:28
But where it's really useful is to give them evidence of the
29:31
change. And then they've got a reference
29:34
that if they held a tarantula now when they see that spider in
29:36
their kitchen sink or in their bathtub, they feel resourceful
29:41
to cope because they can think back to that very vivid memory
29:45
of them holding a tarantula and then give themselves the inner
29:48
narrative that if I did that, I can definitely handle that
29:51
situation. And that makes them feel
29:53
resourceful in a moment that they wouldn't be resourceful.
29:56
So I think, I think sharing personal anecdotes is a, is a
29:59
really useful thing to do for, for clients because, you know,
30:07
one of the things I was always not dismissive of, but, but had
30:12
a credibility issue with is incongruency.
30:15
And one of my early hypnotherapy teachers did a master class on
30:20
weight loss and was massively overweight.
30:24
And, and I'm thinking, right, there's, there's incongruency
30:26
here. And another one of the teachers,
30:28
you know, they, they clearly had like a nervous twitch.
30:32
And I'm thinking it doesn't quite sit right for me because,
30:37
you know, there's a great Gandhi quote, which is be the change
30:40
that you want to see in the world.
30:42
And I think as hypnotherapists, we have got not an obligation,
30:46
you know, but I think it's a good example to set that we've
30:51
experienced all of this stuff and we've got through it.
30:55
And if we can do it, then they can do it.
30:57
You know, we're not, we're not superhuman.
31:00
And I think some hypnotherapists, and I would
31:04
also say life coaches as well, operate behind this facade of
31:08
somehow they're perfect and they've got all the answers.
31:11
And I think it's so disingenuous.
31:13
Like I call bullshit on that, you know, and I, and I speak all
31:16
the hypnotherapists, like hypnotherapists have loads of
31:18
problems too. Like no one's perfect.
31:20
But I think when you talk about how you've got from where you've
31:24
been to where you're going through and, and can articulate
31:26
why and how you've done that, that can actually give a lot of
31:30
confidence to to to clients. Agreed.
31:33
I mean, I the last, I mean, tell your story.
31:36
I would have never thought of you as somebody who would lack
31:40
confidence. You know, you have like such an
31:42
incredibly popular podcast and you know, you're so good at what
31:47
you do. By the way, I do use your
31:50
recordings. I've told Dana that and I'm
31:53
really enjoying them. So thank you.
31:55
Amazing, that's lovely to hear. Well, and with that, we that
32:02
brings us to our next segment, which is our silly subconscious
32:07
question. And our question for you today,
32:11
Mr. Adam Cox, is if you had an animal sidekick, what would it
32:18
be and why? So I've never thought about it
32:25
as a, as a sidekick, I, I was considered my, my spirit animal
32:29
to be either a rhino or a wolf just because I think, you know,
32:36
they're not, they don't brash animals.
32:40
You know, it's not like a parrot or a Peacock, like trying to
32:43
seek attention. But but there is this kind of
32:45
element of they're capable and they're, they're real and
32:50
they're, they're playing by their own rules, if that makes
32:53
sense. So as a sidekick though, I'd
32:57
want something that complements my skill set.
33:00
So I'm thinking a very well trained tiger.
33:05
I think that would be, that'd be a useful that as long as it was
33:08
entirely loyal to me and it was a genuine sidekick, I'd say that
33:11
would be a that's a powerful resource to have.
33:16
Nice. Well, that brings us to our next
33:20
question. Beyond what we've talked about
33:22
today, is there something you'd like to share with the audience
33:26
about you? Yeah, I think, I think the thing
33:34
I, the thing I would share is that it's good to challenge
33:39
yourself. Like I, I, I heard this metaphor
33:43
of the comfort zone that actually when you feel that
33:48
discomfort or awkwardness or kind of thing, like that's a
33:52
clue that you're at the edge of your comfort zone.
33:55
And that actually, rather than that being like an electric
33:57
fence that you have to kind of run away from, it can actually
34:00
be something that if you experience the discomfort, do
34:03
the thing anyway, then your comfort zone expands.
34:07
And, and interestingly, it doesn't expand only in that
34:10
direction. It kind of expands
34:12
proportionally in all directions.
34:14
So one of the things that I did when I, when I became, you know,
34:19
let's say, more well known in the UK.
34:21
So I was featured in a few magazines and TV shows and they
34:24
use this phrase phobia guru. And I had full on impostor
34:27
syndrome of, of like thinking very, you know, felt very
34:30
uncomfortable with that because I had this fear of doing stand
34:35
up comedy. And I thought, who am I to be,
34:39
you know, this, this guru of, of helping people with phobias when
34:43
I have this. So I thought, I've got to change
34:46
that. So I signed up for this comedy
34:47
school and then on opening night, how you do this showcase
34:52
and there was 100 people there in this, in this comedy club in
34:56
East London, Bethnal Green. If anyone knows London's like
35:00
like a dodgy East End of London, there's 100 people there.
35:05
And I've got my 5 minutes of material and I'd love to say I
35:09
had no anxiety whatsoever. I had full on anxiety, but it
35:13
wasn't going to deter me because I knew I was beyond my comfort
35:17
zone. And I did that 5 minutes and I
35:20
got some good feedback. I even got a client at the end
35:23
of it because one of my jokes was about erectile dysfunction
35:26
and a guy stopped me in the bar afterwards and he's like, do you
35:28
really help people with this area?
35:30
So I ended up getting a client after doing 5 minutes worth of,
35:33
of stand up comedy and then I, and I kept on doing it.
35:37
I did it because I wanted to have no anxiety whatsoever.
35:41
And I kept on doing it and some nights went well, some nights
35:44
didn't go so well. But I, I finally got to a point
35:46
where I could just get up and, and, and kind of do my 5
35:51
minutes, 10 minutes. And it was, it was fine.
35:53
And I was never the best in the, in the open mics and I was never
35:56
the worst. I was all in the in the middle.
35:59
But it dawned on me that this isn't my passion.
36:02
I was only doing it to kind of banish the anxiety.
36:05
And then at that point, what am I doing this for?
36:09
So I'd say hopefully that that's, that's a useful thing to
36:12
know about me. But I would say the key lesson I
36:14
got from that is that you've got to, you've got to lean into what
36:17
you're passionate about. And the key catalyst for me to
36:21
kind of stop doing stand up comedy was to realize that I'd
36:24
met my goal of doing it to begin with.
36:27
And then I just met someone that had no desire to be a stand up
36:30
comedian and was just effortlessly funny.
36:32
And they're like, that's their genius.
36:35
And I'm pretty good at weaving hypnotic stories together.
36:38
You know what? I should just do the thing that
36:40
I'm really passionate about. And I would, I would say anyone
36:42
listening, like there'll be something that just people are
36:46
amazed at how good you do that thing.
36:48
Like that's the thing you should be doing more like do that.
36:50
It's. An amazing message, thank you.
36:54
I love it. Well, we so appreciate you
36:57
taking the time to come and speak with us today, and we hope
37:02
you'll come back again. And with that, Jen, what do we
37:07
always say? Peace.
37:09
Out. Peace out.
37:12
Peace out. Thank you so much for joining me
37:22
on today's episode of The Hypnotist, and if you've enjoyed
37:27
today's episode, I would encourage you, if you haven't
37:30
already, to hit the subscribe button or follow button to make
37:35
sure that you're automatically notified of any future episodes
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algorithm know that you like this show, and that will put it
37:48
in front of even more people that might not know that this
37:51
show exists. So that would be helpful for me.
37:55
And if you like the stuff that I do, take a moment just to have a
37:58
look in the show notes or the description because there's lots
38:02
of free things that I have to offer, including free hypnosis
38:05
downloads without the intro or the outro like I'm doing now.
38:09
So thank you again for joining me on today's episode, and I'll
38:13
see you again soon for the next one.