What does Dilbert have to do with Hypnosis? Many people are familiar with the Dilbert cartoon, a cartoon satirizing the workplace environment since 1989. While many people know that Scott Adams is the artist who created Dilbert they may not know that he had studied hypnosis, until recently. Apparently in the late 1970’s he had taken a hypnosis training because his mom had described using hypnosis when she had given birth to his younger sister and he was curious about the process. Now 40 years later, Adams has begun to share more about his hypnosis experiences and ways that he uses language with intentionality. He has written a book called, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” (full disclosure I have not read this book) and he has also discussed the 2016 Presidential campaign and how Donald Trump uses hypnotic language patterns for influence (e.g., “People are saying things.”) I don’t know whether either presidential candidate consciously knows that they are using hypnosis, however their team may have been influenced by persuasive language techniques derived from hypnosis.
What does this have to do with the NLP Center of New York? Interestingly, this past month we have received four inquiries about our hypnosis training from individuals who had either read Adams’ book or heard him on a podcast titled, “Entrepreneurs are Everywhere.” I thought this was more than a coincidence. Scott Adams has influenced our business culture with one comic strip for 27 years. His comic strip doesn’t give specifics of last names, location, etc, and just like good hypnosis, it remains vague, so that the reader (client) can relate to the story from their own experience. One of the people who inquired about hypnosis is attending our Level 1 hypnosis training. And although he was not looking to become a hypnotist (he specializes in technology), he learned how to do self-hypnosis while at the same time learning to incorporate hypnotic language patterns. Another came in for individual sessions in which I worked with him on specific skills to help him communicate more effectively to his staff and to potential customers.
Thank you Scott Adams for spreading the word. Thank you for an entertaining comic strip. And most importantly, thank you for exploring hypnosis, distinguishing it from the “wizard myth” and creating interest in how people communicate with themselves and others.