Hypnosis May Be the Hack to Help You Create

I’ve always been a sucker for gimmicks. In high school, while browsing a used book store, I found a book on astral projection. Of course my friends and I tried it, wanting so badly to believe our souls could leave through our third eye and peek through windows.

I’ve tried every gimmicky diet, most of the gimmicky get-rich schemes, and quite a few gimmicky personal digital assistants that promised to finally organize my life. None of them fully delivered on their promises.

I’ve been obsessed with “hacks.” Life hacks, programming hacks, and productivity hacks. I’ve read thousands of “hack this” and “hack that” articles. What else is a hack but a gimmick to make you read an article.

Then I came upon hypnosis. Thanks to its use as a stage show, it might be the most gimmicky hack of them all, but I really liked it.

It was on a CD and geared toward students trying to boost their performance in college. My son—a chip off the old gimmick block—talked me into buying it; if it helped him at school, it’d be worth every penny, right? One of the sessions was about improving your creativity.

I’d been meditating for a couple of years at this point and realized quickly that it was basically a guided meditation. The hypnotist does his best to put the listener into a trance, tells the subject that they will use their creative subconscious to solve problems and create things, then brings them out.

I believe it worked. It’s not like he told me I was a chicken and suddenly I laid eggs every morning. Instead, his encouragement bolstered my spirits. Soon, I encouraged myself.

I listened to it daily for several weeks, then cut back to weekly while continuing my daily meditation.

If you’re skeptical, think of it this way: You’re in a quiet place in a comfortable position. A calm voice tells you that you have many talents and abilities. When problems arise, you can solve them. Sharing your talents with the world will help make it a better place. The voice tells you that when you face challenges, you’ll have the ability to summon your talents.

That’s it. That was the hypnotic spell. Go be creative.

You listen to it over and over and it helps you feel confident. Even if you can’t solve every problem, you start to enjoy working on them. You find more things you can do. You learn about things.

We are conditioned from an early age to do what people tell us. Our parents want us to behave in public. Teachers want us to sit down, shut up, and learn the lessons. Our bosses want us at our desk doing our job.

We hear direct and indirect orders like that all of our life and we listen to them. So why can’t we give ourselves orders?

And why can’t we give ourselves orders to do something that we want to do?

When an artists needs to do their art, they don’t have a boss breathing down their neck telling them to hurry up, or a micromanager correcting every move.

Sure you can take drawing lessons, and get an MFA in creative writing; but when it comes time to create something original, you’re on your own.

Writers and artists—and dancers and songwriters—have to rely on their own inner voice to bring them to the studio, approach the easel or the writing desk, and do their art.

If hypnosis gives you courage to tell yourself to be an artist, you should use hypnosis.

Fun fact: I still do it in a slightly altered version of a short, guided meditation. It works for me, and I really need the eggs.