The Netmums Podcast - S12 Ep1: Paul McKenna: Unlocking Your True Potential

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Join Wendy and Alison for an enlightening conversation with Paul McKenna, who challenges the notion of January blues and offers a new perspective on achieving success. His latest book, Success for Life, is packed with NLP techniques and self-help tools designed to propel you towards a brighter future. Listen now and redefine what January means to you!

You're listening to The Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollich, and me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show... When people's happiness levels are measured, in this country it's around a 6 and 10. Look at a lottery winner, for about a year they're much happier and then they're back where they started. So what's happened is we've confused pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a glass of champagne, a bubble bath, etc. Happiness is when you are living your values. It's the backdrop. It's always there.

And the problem is we get in the way and we stop ourselves from being happy. But before all of that... This episode of the Netmoms podcast is brought to you by Fairy Non-Bio, the number one laundry brand for sensitive skin. They've partnered with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity to support seriously ill children and their families. With every Fairy Non-Bio pack bought from Home Bargains, Fairy Non-Bio will donate 5p to GOSH Charity with a minimum donation of £100,000. I know where I'm going after this. Now, on with the show.

Welcome back to another episode. Now, I don't know about you, but it's that time of year when everyone starts talking about the January blues. And we've just had Blue Monday and the weather's pretty January-y. But my question for you, Alison, is all of this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or is, and like a load of old tosh, is January just January and it's all in our heads whether we're blue or not? I don't know. I think it's a tricky one because like, obviously compared to the sparkle and the glitz of Christmas and the fun and the Christmas parties and, you know, Christmas lunches on a Sunday where you drink too much, that kind of thing, Wendy. I think in comparison, it does feel a bit grey, but I do think that it has been turned into a much bigger deal than it

perhaps needs to be. And we all expect January to be dull and depressing but our guest today I think is probably somebody who can cast a little bit of light and positivity to this January day. Shall I introduce him? Well I was gonna say if there's anybody to talk to about January blues and whether they're a load of old tosh it might be this man so go tell us. wendy we've got a returning guest and he is just the person to talk to on a depressing january morning um we are joined by paul mckenna world leading hypnotist and nlp expert over more than three decades paul has helped millions of people to improve their lives and now he is back with a new book, Success for Life, The Secret to Achieving Your True Potential. Don't know about you, but I need a bit of that.

Paul, welcome to the podcast. Hello and thank you very much, Wendy. Thank you very much, Alison. It's lovely to be with you again. Now, last time we had you on the pod, Paul, you gave us, not only did we do a live relaxation session, which I caution you not to do this morning because I might fall asleep. But you gave us some great techniques for managing anxiety, which is something lots of parents suffer from. We weren't far out of the pandemic when we spoke to you last.

So do you think anxiety levels are dipping now? Are we returning to a calmer place again? No, I don't think so, sadly. You know, if you turn on the TV or you open a newspaper, you're under attack. You know, it's no longer the pandemic. It's the war, or the wars, I should say, the economy. It's, you know, it's something or other. And yes, you're right.

We're out of the biological pandemic, but we're still in a psychological one. So when I talk to friends of mine, colleagues who are therapists, and I say, you know, what's the number one problem you're dealing with? It's anxiety or it's something related to anxiety. It will be insomnia caused by anxiety, those sorts of things. So right now, people have too much anxiety going on, too much stress, worry, fear, but also a lot of people who normally do as, you know, go-getters, because over the last few years, they weren't able to make solid plans because the rules kept changing, the goalposts

kept moving, they lost that drive to be motivated, to be confident, to be fulfilling their potential. And so it's not just an anxiety issue. People who are not procrastinating because they're lazy, because they got out of the habit of doing things. So that's the other problem that I'm finding people are coming up against a lot. Do you think that procrastination is also, because find I call it shaky hand syndrome, but it's the it's that thing where you've got so much on your to do list that you sit there with your hand over your to do list going, which one, which one? So I procrastinate because I am too blinking busy and I can't focus on what's the most important thing. It's all important yes well okay and i think that's a i think you spot on with that wendy the the the thing that really does help uh this is a so simple this process is you make an a b and c list now uh you look at your list of

everything to do a's are things that if you do not do them there is a big consequence there's trouble things that are important but can wait or a b and everything else is a c and you know that is almost miraculous in transforming how you organize your time now of course there are always some people who go everything's an a well no not everything is an a or make them double A's if you like. But basically, A are things that have to be done. B are things that are important but can wait. Everything else is a C. And that for me, years ago when I learned this,

was transformative in how I managed to get things done and also felt motivated because as you rightly say, when you've got so much on your list, it's paralyzing. You know, you feel like a deer in the headlights of life. And so just by externally writing all the things down, prioritising, it's a game changer. Well, the A's are often things you don't really want to do as well. So if you put them in the A, you have to do them.

Yeah. And when you've done them, it feels so good. Also, why is it we so often put off things that we don't want to do, but when we actually do it, we think, well, that took two minutes. Why have I been putting that off? It's like we just need to get these things done, don't we? Yeah, I mean, people say the hardest part of exercise is actually going to the gym, isn't it?

It's that inertia. And funnily enough, Bear Grylls said to me that his strategy is because I said you know how do you motivate yourself to do these you know extraordinary endurance challenges that you do and he says well we know once I've started them or even if I don't but some the pain the shame of not doing them I think of all the negative and I just go oh I'm going to move away from that you know and the the pain of giving up is too much. So that keeps me going. Now, of course, you know, that's a particular motivation strategy.

One of the things I like to do is think about how good I'm going to feel when I've done it. So it's a sort of carrot sticker approach. But also the other thing is, you know, when you've done a few small things, you just have created momentum. You know, this is one of the things that I find this time of year, I get asked a lot about New Year's resolutions. And by the third week of January, I think it's something like 80% of people have failed at their New Year's resolutions. And it's simple.

It's because what they do is they pick one big goal, and it's's overwhelming and they don't think of the steps in order to achieve it. So what I say to people is, you know, say you want to lose weight. Rather than go, I'm going to lose weight and I'm going to join a diet club or whatever it is. And by the third week, you feel like you're missing out on all your favorite foods. You go to the gym. Everyone's thinner than you. There's some maniac there in lycra shouting field burn you know and you just think i hate this right and so you go i'm going to stop the pain now fall off the diet oh my god that feels better temporarily now the best way to do any goal i believe is you you pick a goal that's big enough to excite you right but it's not overwhelming and you imagine what it's going to be like when you've achieved it. So what will you see, hear, feel? Then you do what's called an ecology check, which is in the accomplishment of this goal, will it endanger me or other people or,

you know, basic consequences? Yeah. And then you think what could get in the way? What will stop me? How will I sabotage it? So again, you can head that off with a pass. Then once you've imagined achieving the goal, and it's all ecologically okay, you step back from it and you go, what would need to have happened a few weeks before I've achieved it? And a few weeks before that, a few weeks before that, a few weeks before that. So you literally have a timeline, if you like, of steps that you need to take. And something magical happens in the brain when you do that. First of all, it goes, oh, I see what it is you wish to achieve. But also I can see the steps to achieving it and the things that might get in the way.

And that dramatically increases your chances of achieving your goal. That's so interesting. That's like flipping the whole thing on its head, isn't it? So rather than it feeling like this unachievable goal, you've got a roadmap that tells you exactly how to get there that's brilliant um i find it really interesting what you were saying paul a minute ago about the effect that the pandemic has had on so many people not reaching their true potential um and obviously this is what your new book is about and I'm guessing that the majority of us aren't reaching our true potential. But apart from the pandemic and the effects that that's had on us, what are the other reasons that so many of us aren't potential are that, first of all, they don't think rich enough, big enough, grand enough. Right. They don't realize how amazing that they can be. And secondly, they either hold themselves back or they sabotage.

They don't think they're worthy or that they believe that if they start to achieve more than they know, that's their comfort zone, essentially, you know, face risks and challenges, criticisms, all sorts of different things. And so it's better to just stay safe. Yeah. And so, you know, I've asked people over the years when I work, I work with, you know, large groups of people either online or in auditoriums. And I say, oh, yeah, is it 100 percent of their true potential? And over the years, only one person ever said yes, right? And this was about, I don't know how many years ago, I had a dinner party when I was living in Los Angeles. And Tyler Winklevoss said, Yep, I'm at 100% today, because he just created Facebook, right? So I think we can say he was at 100%. He said, at this moment, right? So the thing is, that we all have moments where we are achieving everything that we could possibly achieve in our life and the idea is is to have

more of them and have them more often and it isn't a binary thing it's not that you're either at your true potential you're not it's to what degree on the spectrum so you know some days people are like at 90 or 95 you know other know, other days they might be at 25 percent. But I've been fortunate to over the years. I can see Wendy's laughing at the 25 percent. I think that's generous today. I'm fortunate. So I work with people who've got problems and challenges and most of the books I

write are remedial there how to get confident how to sleep how to quit smoking how to lose weight right um and I've written a couple of what I'd call aspirational books over the years in fact my first really big hit was a book called change your life in seven days and um it was um an international bestseller I had no idea it was going to be so big and that really started um you know my journey into authoring self-improvement books and uh i decided it was time to do another one and um because i've had access to all of these kind of super achievers in the world of the of the arts business sports etc one of the things i do is i map and model how people think whether people are very troubled and so i can move them out of that

mindset or if they're super achievers and how how do they think that's different what's the thing that drives them how do they think big how do they achieve their goals how do they overcome obstacles and i basically came up with that there are seven main areas seven things that they do seven strategies and what I do when I invent something or codify something is I try on as many people as I can and if it works consistently I then make it into a book and that's what I've done with this do they know you're trying it on them when you're doing it or you like if you get invited for dinner with Paul, you're going to be a guinea pig. You just have to accept that that's the case. Sometimes I say, may I ask you some questions? Because I'm intrigued. And I'll just say,

you know, what I mentioned with Bear Grylls, how do you motivate yourself? Or it'll be some business achiever. How is it that you know that you overcome these problems? How do you motivate yourself? Or it'll be some business achiever. How is it that you overcome these problems? How do you come up with a product or service that's the game changer? Or it might be somebody in the arts. How do you create a hit song or something like that? And what's really interesting is even though they're in different professions, they essentially use the same sort of seven core strategies. And that is they come from a place of self-belief and confidence. They are clear. They've got real clarity about what it is they want.

And see, that again is something that is a really important characteristic because most people spend more time making a list for the supermarket than they do the next five years of their life. Once you've got clarity, then it's important to have connection, connection to other people, to your values, to life, etc. And then you get some determination in there, some motivation. When you've got all this self-belief and clarity, you've got to point it at something. And you also want to get creative. You also want to think in terms of possibility.

You want to think big and you want to think realistically. Then also I go into energy and health. You know, why is it that some people have just got more energy and are more healthy? Well, there are genetic reasons for that, but also any biohacker will tell you it's sleep, it's diet, it's exercise and it's mindset. And finally and finally happiness it's really interesting since the 1940s we're really not any happier today than we were then and we've got you know we're wealthier we've got more freedoms we've got more luxuries we've got all sorts of reasons resources reasons we should be happier but we're not i'd argue we're less happy aren't we there's lots of stuff out there saying we're less happy well yet there's there are more arguably there's more challenges there's

more psychological issues because there's more meds you know quarter of the country is taking some psychiatric medication right now and even though they've been around since the 80s you would you would think the problems would become less and they become more so yes on one metric you could say yes but when people's happiness levels are measured, it's, you know, in this country, it's around a six and 10. To look at a lottery winner for about a year, they're much happier and then they're back where they started. So what's happened is we've confused pleasure and happiness.

Pleasure is a glass of champagne, a bubble bath, et cetera. Happiness is when you are living your values. It's the backdrop it's always there and the problem is is we get in the way and we stop ourselves from being happy so what i've done is um is i've devised a system and as you read each chapter of the book it takes you about three hours to either read it or to listen to it and what happens is you build upon each chapter each sort of super state of mind and body. And by the end, you hit this euphoria because suddenly you can see this

compelling future. You've got all the determination to make it happen. You feel optimistic about life. You're noticing around you all the things that make you feel good that perhaps you took for granted. And so it's a real feel good, upbeat book that I'm very proud of, actually. And what it does, it comes with audio techniques and particularly a trance, a half hour hypnotic trance that allows me to help you program your subconscious mind so that you wake up each day full of enthusiasm and a real zest for life. I'm on board, I tell you, Paul. Also, in the book, you do say that the only way that this will not work

is if you don't finish the book. How, like what percentage do you think of people pick up that kind of book and give up a third of the way through? Well, I can't tell you with mine, but I can tell you with, I can tell you some stats. With a lot of self-help books, I think it's an extraordinarily high percentage get one third of the way through. What I know with my books and other, you know, audio video products is seven in 10 people say they have had a significant benefit from either the book or the, the audio, the trance or whatever. And you know, that, that for me is fantastic. If the,

if it works for most people, most of the time, you know, I know that I'm doing the right thing. But if I look at the reviews on Amazon, they're in the eight, it's eight, four and five star reviews. It's 85%. I think it is. it is so so i'm it will not work for everyone i don't know any pill or potion that works for everyone every time but um the things i make work for most people most of the time so nlp plays a big part in the book can you kind of just explain a little bit about it for any of our listeners who haven't heard of it before. Sure. So NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming. So neuro is brain neurology, linguistic language, way of communicating and programming.

Just like a computer has programs that it runs in order to do the things that it does. We do as humans, we call them habits. So as a kid, you learn how to tie your shoelaces to really think about it and then you store the program if you like in your in your unconscious or subconscious mind so about half of what we do each day is a is a program we don't think shall i brush my teeth today or not we just do it shall i tie my shoelaces i just do it shall i open the front door you just do it yeah and so some of the programs we have support us in the sort of things i just described and then some don't so a program that doesn't support us

is eating when we're not hungry but because we want to change how we feel or uh smoking or drinking too much again when we're not just you know celebrating but we just want to blot out our feelings so all of us every single person on this planet, at some time, will have programs that don't support them. And NLP is a fantastic psychological technology for helping people to make a really dramatic behavioral change, bam, like that. And so it's probably the most exciting behavioral psychological technology on the planet right now. It's been around for about 50 years, but it's only really become really popular in the last 20 years. But it is used in some form or other by most therapists in the world, by most governments. It's used as a communication technology as well. People like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it's no accident,

they're great communicators. They use NLP technology to help them communicate. And so it's also used to study people who are really good at something. So whether you're a champion skier, a salesperson, and anything, right? Teacher, whatever it is, accountant, you'll have a strategy, a set of things that you do inside your mind and with your body. And those can be studied and codified so that they can be taught to other people, so that other people can learn what it is that you do really well in a fraction of the time that it took you, or to some degree, a fraction of the time.

And how easy is it to pick up? Okay, so I'll tell you how easy it is. When I write a book, one of the things I get accused of is, aren't you just selling common sense here? I go, do you know how hard it is to take really quite complicated psychological ideas and make them common sense? You know, make them very simple and no simpler, as Einstein used to say. And so I would say that, you know, one of the reasons my books do well is, first of all, they're based in science.

But I notice a lot of self-help books go into psychobabble. And I think if, again, the people who read them are from all walks of life, accountants, mothers, teachers, students, you know, et cetera, people of different ages and demographic backgrounds, et cetera. So I want them to be incredibly user friendly and accessible. And when you read them, literally each page, see, I write it in a language that as you're reading each page, it draws you in and it starts to get you to think in terms of possibility and lift you up yeah and make you feel good and you start to um in your mind have ideas about how your life could be better and suddenly light bulb moments occur and so uh um i'd say that the way i do nlp makes it very easy to understand you know if you want there are very um intricate um descriptions of the sort of stuff i've been talking about um in academic volumes but that's no use to the man or the

woman in the street is it so so what i'm trying to do is best i can is make available these great technologies in easily it's not just understandable but usable ways right so if someone just read my book and went that's rather interesting what have you achieved right no you want to pick up a book and go do you know what i can do it i can actually do this thing so you know the other day this guy interviewed me and he said i i read one of your books about 20 years ago on confidence i said oh yes and he said i'm this was a radio interview and he said um i read the book about how you we talk to ourselves positive self-talk stuff and there was a girl at the radio station i really wanted to ask out but i was too shy to do so i said okay and i said what

happened he goes we've been married 15 years right and i that's it yes the you know the that i wrote this and somebody picked it up, they used it and they had a positive life change is the very reason I do this. That's brilliant. I love that. It's hard to imagine how stressful it is for families when their child is seriously ill. But Ferry Non-Bio has partnered with GOSH Charity

to provide some comfort. That's right, Wendy. One of the areas that GOSH Charity funds is free accommodation for families close to the hospital so they're able to stay close by while their child is receiving treatment without having to worry about the cost. This helps ease the stress during what can be an extremely difficult time. Between now and the 31st of March 2024, for every pack of Fairy non-biodetergent, Fairy fabric softener or Fairy in-wush scent boosters that you buy in home bargains, Fairy will make a 5p donation to GOSH charity. Which means that you can show your support as you shop. Now, back to our guest. It does seem that everyone, myself included, were after a quick fix for everything. And you've said that your book takes three hours to read or to listen to, which that seems pretty quick to me.

Can something be a quick fix but also have long-term results? Well, the answer is yes. Now, for some people, they won't take three hours over it. They'll take an entire week over it. There is no right or wrong way to do it. You do it at the speed that's right for you and process it because it's not just reading it's stopping and actually then doing a technique of visualization or set of questions that you answer that move your your thinking into a you know different place um and so you know you're absolutely right allison this

the culture we are in now is is quick fix it's push a button. It's have the thing drop shipped to you. It's take a pill. It's, you know, everyone wants things fast and efficient. And, you know, it's great in some ways, it was like a brick back in the 80s. And all you could do was make phone calls on it. Now, it's the size of a bar of chocolate. And you can have your music, your office, you can have world communications. You can access all information available in the world on that supercomputer. So in the same way, psychological technology has changed. For example, it used to take six months to cure a phobia. Most phobias now not even 60 minutes, because we have learned how it is that people make themselves phobic. And so they can unlearn it, right very quickly. And so I would also put the caveat in, these things don't always

work instantaneously for everyone. But the jump in the last 20 years in what i would call psych tech has been phenomenal you know particularly in the treatment of things like ptsd depression you know the sharp end and then you know for everyday problems that bother people things like matters of confidence anxiety losing weight quitting smoking cetera, those sort of things, and sleeping better, those things that affect many, many people on the planet. So your book is about unleashing the best version of us, but along with our audience, Alison and I are parents, and we're tired. You know, if I get to the end of the day and everyone's eating a vegetable

and nobody has you know missed a deadline and they they went to school in clean clothes and i've not had too much wine that's a win as far as i'm concerned sure should i be raising that bar a little bit you know i don't feel like i've got much more to give Paul how do I then suddenly also find time to be the best bloody version of me right okay that is a fantastic question Wendy and I'll tell you why because a lot of people think that being a better version involves working yourself to death working harder you know no no no it doesn't it's working smarter right so if you are mum you are the most important almost integral person in the family in terms of keeping the system together you know so the better shape you're in the better shape everyone else is in and the whole system and the mechanism the

interdependent system which a family is uh runs more smoothly so you know if you did nothing but just listen to the hypnotic trance if you took half an hour a day say when you're feeling a bit stressed out or you finish the day and you know you think to yourself i'm gonna relax and have a glass of wine and unwind or whatever it is you you put your headphones on and you drift off half an hour bam your subconscious mind is programmed so that you release those burdens and stresses. You feel optimized. You feel good. You feel in control, a relaxed alertness, problems and challenges. You suddenly can see how you can handle them.

I'm in. This is great. You did that. Everything gets better. And not just, not just for just for you you feel better so you you know your interactions with the world are better then everyone else feels better around you it's a self-reinforcing loop and then you know if you just took a few minutes a day to to read this but again you you would you don't have to just use the audio techniques it comes with 11 audio techniques the trance is half an hour all the other techniques are about five minutes each and you could just use those and not even read the book and your life would get better and so again i wrote this um with um people in mind who already are working hard i've got a busy life

they're being pulled in lots of different directions how do they find like because you know it seems like three hours it's a bit of an ask well you know if you because a lot of people leave it until it's too late and they burn out or they get sick or something like that or they go and see a therapist or a coach and um uh when i first started as a hypnotherapist back in the 1980s i thought to myself i could probably see a few thousand people in my lifetime and that'd be great right but because i'd been a radio broadcaster i went you know i could make it what we used in those days were cassettes and i could sell those and get to maybe some tens of thousands well as it happens you know i had no idea it was going to get to tens of millions and so when i

designed something like this piece of intellectual software essentially what it is it's and i go and test it i test it on people and so i find out where it will work and won't work where it works better so i'm building a hologram essentially and i put it into my ideas into the pages of a book take your mind on a journey but i also being a hypnotist create a trance which has got messages for the left and right brain so you listen with your headphones and my voice washes over you like waves on a seashore and it gently relaxes you and takes you into this beautiful place which programs your unconscious mind to be more resourceful to feel better in yourself to have more confidence self-belief

see a better future just know what you're going to be able to do in difficult situations, handling difficult people, and just wake up each morning feeling fantastic. And even though at times there will be, you know, good days, bad days, somehow you've got greater resilience. You know, you're able to adapt, you're able to bounce back much better. That's the idea. That's the idea behind not just this book but really around a lot of my products it's about it's about giving you more freedom um you know that's been my submission for the last 30 something years is if somebody you know they they look at a bar of chocolate and they can't take it or leave it the chocolate's in charge and not them if they can't walk out and give a presentation because they're too scared then they don't have the

freedom to speak properly if they you know the no diet or you know pill potion has worked in helping them lose weight you know i want to be able to give them the freedom to be able to change their relationship with food so uh if you bring it back to the core of what it is that i'm bringing to the world it's freedom i think that is amazing and i think that the thing one of the things that you mentioned is self-belief and i think that that is another thing that as parents so many of us i know me personally i suffer really badly from you know we we call it imposter syndrome don't we you know and then you've got mum guilt layered on top of that um so many mums will take time off work you know

from maternity leave and then they feel like they've got no confidence when they want to go back to work it just feels like boosting self-belief as parents is something that so many of us need a little bit of and I think that this from what it sounds like this would be a massive help well thank you yes it will um uh I think it begins with self-belief the thing is when people ask me about self-belief confidence right it's something that um we all innately have but sometimes we forget it or we learn not to to think confidently I mean when you're going around the supermarket you don don't think, oh, shall I get the cornflakes? You just get them.

You're just doing it without thinking about it. So, you know, you're doing it confidently. When you're talking with friends, you're not worried about being judged. You can be authentic and be yourself. But, you know, change the situation. Put yourself in front of a group of strangers and you've got to speak. Suddenly, oh, better be careful what I say, etc. And so the actual, the root of the word confidence, the etymology means faith with. And when you have faith in yourself, you know, you know that you

might get things wrong, right? But you are prepared to give it your best. That for me is confidence. That's faith with, you know, there isn't any perfect parent in the world. There isn't, you know, any perfect animal owner, you know, we all do. I'm not a parent, but I have a dog. And I try my best to be the best, most loving, caring dog owner I can. But, you know, every now and again, I'm going to do something that my dog disapproves of, you know, or I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be remiss about something. But I think, you know, when you wake up in the morning, as I believe most people do, which is try and do their best. That's all you can ever do. And try and improve upon that each day. You know, there is no perfect person. And in fact, it's the people who, you know, who really don't

care whether they're doing a good job or not, because all they care about is their own sociopathic selfishness. You know, most people who have got imposter syndrome are checking, well, am I really good enough? You know, they've actually got a conscience, you know, people who question themselves. They're not bad people. They're good people. They're giving themselves an unnecessarily hard time. So you've benefited from your own techniques, obviously, but one of the things you've spoken about publicly is how you realized your wife was the one for you and how you tell us a little bit about that and how you your techniques helped in that situation well um for many years wendy i was great at uh being a sort of relationship saboteur i'd get into a relationship and basically the same pattern played out again and again

and i was sort of commitment phobic so I would find a way to mess it up and uh it suddenly because I'm friends with lots of other therapists and coaches we all talk to each other and discuss stuff and and um it sort of became apparent to me that the common denominator was me but you know I keep going why am I keep dating these kind of you know nutty intolerant women and blah blah oh actually it's me and so i decided to do a bit of work on myself and one of my friends who's he is a coach um and he said you know i i noticed you you date some lovely you know women some very beautiful women some great women i said yeah yeah he says but you don't necessarily like them and i said well what's that got to do with it he went no no no stupid stupid stupid thinking right and I said okay tell me I

mean you know it's obvious what I'm saying now it wasn't to me at the time he said what I suggest you do is think who do I really like to be with and who am I attracted to and so being a hypnotist I went away and I put myself into a trance that's just the way I do it right and I said to my my unconscious you know figure that one out who who am I attracted to and who do I like to spend time with and it and it drew and it did an excel spreadsheet right and it went and uh Kate who uh started as my assistant and then you know ended up running all the companies and um I went oh my word that's awkward because yeah just a bit really I felt really uncomfortable anyway I didn't know what to say and we were sitting a few days later in my kitchen and after hours and we just thought we had a bottle of wine and I said

tell me something about you that I don't know and she said I love you and I said oh my god I feel the same way and no at first it was really fantastic and also really uncomfortable and uh so it was a bit rocky at first because we had to you know adjust the boundaries of our lives and you know uh and i think any relationship requires a constant ongoing um you know maintenance because it's not it's not a thing it's an it's it's a process the way you relate to somebody and it's always changing because you're always changing because that's what life is is about so that's kind of how we got together and the thing where the thing i think is if if I can do it, anyone can do it. Because I was certainly, you know, a great case of, I want to be single forever.

You know, that sort of story you tell yourself, you know, I'm free. Yeah, but I'm a bit lonely. But I'm going to override the loneliness. And my life was about pleasure and not happiness. So it was on to the next thing to make me feel good the next thing rather than noticing that was already here there's an ethical question here though paul does mrs paul ever worry that if you do something if she's doing something that's really pissing you off you can just hypnotize her and stop her doing it right does she ever worry like she's going to wake up in the morning?

And there's, you know, everyone jokes about the, my friends were joking last night that you were going to hypnotize me. And then every time they said glass of wine for the next month, I was going to start clucking like a chicken. And I was like, no, he's not going to hypnotize me and make me cluck like a chicken. Please don't. But like, A, I'm sure you wouldn't do that because

ethically that would be very bad paul but she must worry that like you know if she's got a habit that you really dislike you can just stop her doing it in her sleep so she's known me for more than 30 years 35 years i think it is she knows all my tricks all my naughty voodoo all of it right in fact one of my friends said well the good thing is she knows you the bad thing is she knows all my tricks all my naughty voodoo all of it right uh in fact one of my friends said well the good thing is she knows you bad thing is she knows you and nothing nothing i do will without my wife's consent will work upon her so if i'm trying to couch something you know manipulatively or cleverly she'll go stop it and you know i think so uh you know it's it's a case of i know i'm going to get caught so i don't even try it and uh but uh that doesn't mean that you know

all hypnotists are persuasive by nature because that's you know that's our job is to very often move someone from being upset to feeling better or stop doing one thing and do another yeah uh by by by reframing it by using suggestion by using other techniques and things like that so innately naturally it's it's in my communication you know uh repertoire to to be persuasive and uh you know i've noticed with some of my friends was friend of mine he's a hypnotist and i noticed it with his girlfriend i remember him once going uh would you like to go to the cinema or would you like to have an argument and and i thought how many people you know because there are more choices in the world than that but you and i will get the cinema and so um by the way you don't have to be a hypnotist to do this some people are just

like this you know great sales people can just you know they can sell to you their ideas um somebody the other day said you know what do you think your biggest weakness is and i said i'm gullible you know i want to believe the best in people and you know when people say hey this is gonna be i get carried away with it you know and and so um when it comes to it's a very fair question about the ethics uh nothing works on my wife she's way too clever and she knows all my tricks and if anything um i'm quite happy with her being the boss because i know where i i stand you know and uh and my mother and father had a similar sort of relationship. You know, my mother's, she's a very clever lady, good sense of humor, very upbeat.

But my dad knew the right thing to do was say yes, dear, and go along with it because she was, she's super smart. My wife's smarter than me. So if she says something's a particular way it probably is no nlp required finally paul what would you say to anyone listening who is a skeptic so they're sitting here listening and thinking yeah right as if any of this will make a difference what would you say well um do you know what uh you could go and try um a number at the beginning of the pandemic i put all my trances up on my youtube channel for people to try for free nearly all of them actually not all but most of them and in different languages right and um and you could go and try one of my trances for free right and see if you like it and uh as millions of people have done.

And with this new book and the audio downloads, again, if you say you liked The Trance, one of the trances you heard on my YouTube channel, I think you would very much like what this book has. The other thing I would do is go to what we call the social proof, which is something like 15 million people now have bought one of my books somewhere around the world and 70 percent whenever whenever we ask you know people we say are you satisfied uh seven it's around seven in ten say i've had a benefit a significant benefit i think is the actual wording and so uh it's very likely to work for you to what degree i cannot

guarantee and i cannot guarantee. And I cannot guarantee will absolutely work. But if you're in a place at the beginning of the year where you think, I just know I can achieve more. I want more self-belief. I want to be clearer about what it is I want. I want to have determination. I want to be happy. I want to be healthy, then within a few hours, I believe you can get yourself into that mindset and you can maintain it by listening to the trance every day for a week. What a way to

start the new year. If you go and see a therapist, it might cost you around 100 quid. You might need to go several times, etc. So it's a relatively small investment, what is potentially a huge, an absolutely massive return. When I look at the reviews on Amazon, you know, you'll see people will say, I read one the other day. He said, I've been in therapy for years and I read this. What I thought was going to be a stupid book. And I've had more value from that. And I have years of sitting, telling somebody about my problems every week. And so this is part of the new kind of era of psychological technology being available, not just as a book, but in digital form as audio.

And in some cases, video, but it's audio in this case. And also, it took me a long time. When somebody asked me the other day, how long does it take to write one of these books? I went physically, it takes a year. But in order to be able to get to the stage where you can you have this much in insight and technology takes decades. So this has been more than 30 years in the writing. And I'm pretty pleased with it even though i'm a harsh critic of my own work so there we go so those are the reasons uh that i would give it a try because what have you got to lose you know and and by the way i think it's okay to be skeptical when i first got hypnotized you know back in the 80s i didn't believe any of it you know i was stressed out the guy said um i was

supposed to be interviewing him he said i need to I need to do it to you, young man. I went, oh, knock yourself out. And all my burdens lifted and I could think clearly. And I went, wow, have you got any books on this? And that's how it all started for me. Oh, thank you, Paul, for coming and chatting to us. It's been lovely to have you on the podcast. And we hopefully will have you back sometime soon.

Absolutely. Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, Alison. As ever, it is a great pleasure to talk to you. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you, Paul. God bless.

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