Lesson 20: Hypnotic words you can add to your copy to keep Sam reading
All about so-called power words (not to be confused with magic words)
Few people have more than a common “knowledge” about hypnosis. And that knowledge basically revolves around stage hypnosis and clucking like chickens.
That’s a pity, because hypnosis is a very powerful psychological tool — and copywriting, as you know, is all about psychology.
But most of what people think about hypnosis is actually false — and most of the ways the “gurus” try to use hypnosis is completely counterproductive. So let’s start this lesson with some things you need to know:
Hypnosis is not mumbo-jumbo. Actually, it is a psychological tool used by many doctors, dentists, psychiatrists and therapists to achieve everything from anesthesia without anesthetics, to stomach stapling without staples. It has been studied for a little over a century, and while it can certainly be associated with mumbo-jumbo, hypnosis itself is simply stimulating a particular physiological state in the brain. This can be done for good or ill, and it can be done dangerously or safely — but ultimately, hypnosis is a tool for regulating your body and mind. Nothing more, nothing less.
When you’re hypnotized, you’re not asleep. Physiologically, this is way off. You are relaxed, but you’re not asleep. Your lizard brain becomes more active than your conscious (critical) mind during hypnosis. This is a major reason hypnosis can be very sketchy. But the brain is still engaged. While the process of putting someone into hypnosis can certainly make them fall asleep, if they do, the hypnosis failed.
Hypnosis happens to everyone, all the time. This is the key thing to understand, because it greatly attenuates a lot of the angst that people legitimately have around hypnosis. I said just before that hypnosis is a tool to regulate your body and mind. It might be more accurate to say that hypnosis is the deliberate interaction with one of the key mechanisms for self-regulation. We all go into varying states of hypnosis many times each day. When driving, when watching TV, when reading — you may even be in a state of mild hypnosis right now. It is not a state that must be induced by someone doing something corny to you, like swinging a pocket-watch; it is a natural brain state. While it can obviously be induced “manually,” it is also something that happens automatically quite a lot.
Hypnotized people are not like zombies or robots. Actually, you can’t make someone under hypnosis do anything they don’t already want to do. Sure, their subconscious mind is “exposed” in a state of hypnosis, so they’re more willing to have their emotions — and ultimately their decisions — directed. That’s something that we can work with — assuming we’re in this for the right reasons: i.e., helping people. But if Sam really doesn’t want something, you ain’t gonna sell it to him no matter what. Not even if you fully hypnotized him so he would cluck like a chicken.
Hypnotized people are actually less likely to buy. Wait what? Yes. This is the big one — so let’s talk about this.
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