Two topics that have attracted a lot of interest ever since I brought Keys To Power online more than a year ago are hypnotism and covert persuasion techniques. The Keys To Power system itself uses hypnosis for personal conditioning, but doesn't really get into using hypnosis to influence others. With Keys To Power, we generally influence outcome of various situations (including behavior of others) by directing Power to create experiences we want. However, this doesn't stop us from looking into other systems that may make our lives easier, and being able to persuade other people to our way of thinking definitely makes life easier.

I've been reading a lot lately about some of deeper, more obscure aspects of hypnosis. This has been mostly to increase effectiveness of Keys To Power techniques and hypnotic recordings I've been creating for our members here. However, course of this study has put me square in middle of covert hypnosis topic, and I must say, it's extremely fascinating.

I've learned that my definition for hypnosis has been profoundly altered. Hypnosis is not always about putting someone into a trance state, but simply a process of communicating with inner mind. This communication can be performed while listener is in a completely normal, waking state of consciousness.

In fact, one of most celebrated leaders in hypnotic field (Milton Erickson - a name I recognized from earlier studies) used to practice psychological counseling using a radically different form of hypnosis in which subject never knew they were being hypnotized. Erickson, and his radically different form of hypnosis, became one of sources for what is now known as NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

NLP is used by many different types of people. Psychologists, personal coaches (such as Anthony Robbins), business people, sales people, parents, and artist all use NLP to help them attain higher levels of personal excellence and to influence others to do same. The simplest description of what NLP is would be "a system of modeling excellence and setting triggers for recreating that excellence on command". As you can imagine, this requires a very complex and involved collection of techniques and processes.

Covert hypnosis (or more socially acceptable term, conversational hypnosis) is about using identifiable language patterns to create a desired response in listener's inner mind. Once you know these techniques, it is relatively easy to talk to someone about practically anything and have it be a hypnotic process. For example, you can talk to a casual acquaintance about your job at factory and end up with that person practically begging you to take them out on a date! On conscious level, you said nothing that would suggest that they should go out with you, but by way you phrased things and how you said what you said, their inner mind not only received implied suggestions, but responded by compelling them to act on those suggestions!

Imagine how much smoother your life will be with these techniques. No more confrontations. No more arguments. The people in your life doing what you want them to do, and not because you are commanding their obedience, but because they feel an inner desire to do these things.

Everywhere I turn lately, I find information to help deal with difficult people. My biggest reaction to all of it is this, why just deal with them when you can completely overcome them? Why just learn to tolerate being around those you can't stand, when you have option to either change them or get them out of your life completely!

Let me describe a situation that kind of sparked this whole thing. My girlfriend is a musician who does a lot of work for our church. One thing she did was to bring in another musician to add to experience of congregation, a guitar player who came in to play a few songs along with keyboard and singers. Everything went well, until afterwards when he stormed out of church without saying anything to anyone. Well, Linda met up with him later that day to pay him for his participation, and to find out what went wrong. At that point, he started "reading her riot act" asking how could a church possibly be right if it didn't preach this or that.

Linda tried to explain to this misguided guitar player that our church teaches things a little different from what he was used to, and that she had tried to explain that to him before bringing him into church (he was from a very conservative, fire-and-brimstone kind of church). Our church is one that teaches acceptance of others, living peacefully, and living principles taught by great teacher, Christ.

The difficult guitar player had a problem that minister didn't even mention name of great teacher, although lesson was clearly one that follows teachings. For over an hour, Linda tried to tell this person that she accepted fact that he believed things should have been different, and that she felt no need to convince him of anything. He, on other hand, felt very compelled to point out "the error of her ways". In short, he was being very difficult.

If I had been there, I would have been able to take care of situation, but it reminded me that there are specific techniques to use in order to get someone else to come around to your way of thinking. And when this is impossible, you can always get other person to not be so difficult. That is what I would like to share with you today.

There are two basic strategies for overcoming a difficult person. One is passive and other is active. The passive strategy is one that has been taught by great motivational leaders throughout history. Christ phrased it this way, "If your enemy strikes you on cheek, offer him other cheek as well." This does not mean that you actually ask to be beaten, but that you do not resist attack. Gandhi also taught path of no resistance.

With many personalities, if you don't fight back, then they realize that they cannot "get a rise" out of you and move on to someone they can intimidate. This works best when difficult person is being difficult as a means of 'proving' that they are strong and powerful. And this is usually case when you have someone who feels very insecure about his or her own identity. In Linda's case above, this was tactic she tried to use, but it failed because difficult person was not acting from a standpoint of insecurity.

In Linda's case, she was trying to overcome a person who had a strong need to be right. With this kind of personality, resistance or not, they will continue to fight for what they believe is right course of action. Religious wars have been all too common, and many political wars have been based on same theme. In our lives, we usually don't pursue conflict long enough for it to escalate into an all-out war. When you find yourself in this kind of situation, you need to take an active approach to overcoming difficult person.