Recently, Cathay Pacific (I think!) opened a new route to Moscow and advertised “Fly to Moscow 3 times a week”. Do you REALLY want to fly to Moscow 3 times a week? Well, obviously not. When you read this sentence, your mind has to do some adjusting to get the real meaning: “Cathay Pacific has planes flying to Moscow 3 times a week”.
Now just check the internal effect that those 2 sentences have on you:
“Fly to Moscow 3 times a week”
“Cathay Pacific has planes flying to Moscow 3 times a week”.
Most readers will agree that the first one (as a command) bears more urgency, more weight, and feels more personal.
There is a law of language that is well known to anyone trained in marketing or advertising: the less clear the language, the more work the reader’s mind has to do in order to get the real meaning. What happens is, the reader has to do what we call a ‘transderivational search’, i.e. a search deep inside which produces trance. And anyone interested in language mastery probably ought to know about Milton Erickson.
Milton Erickson was one of the most important and gifted hypnotherapists of the 20th century. He could get people to change their thinking patterns just by talking to them. Had he been a salesmen, he would have easily sold ice to Eskimos, no question! He single-handedly transformed the whole business of hypnotherapy from an authoritarian type (“close your eyes and sleep” type of thing) to what is now known as permissive or ericksonian hypnosis whereby the hypnotherapist induces trance conversationally.
When Bandler and Grinder developped NLP, they observed Milton to discover how he did it. Then they modelled him, and the “Milton Model” was born.
What is it? It’s a set of hypnotic patterns which produce trance. I know you are thinking, well that’s all very good but I’m not a hypnotherapist so does this apply to me? Yes! Erickson was a medical doctor and a hypnotherapist, but don’t be mistaken, these patterns are used in every areas of life, including business!
Why use those patterns?
The patterns create language that’s purposefully and artfully vague. When you use a highly chunked up, i.e. abstract language, it produces what we call a trans-derivational search in the listener’s brain, i.e. the person has to go deep inside to find out what’s the meaning of the word they hear, which produces a light trance, i.e. a state of relaxation during which the conscious mind goes to sleep and messages are passed directly to the unconscious mind.
If those patterns are used ALL the time, it’s because they are the best way to answer questions without saying anything. And don’t think that those are not only used in Hypnosis! You just need to browse Youtube to see what happens when politicians who have been trained in Milton Model patterns (such as Obama, Clinton or Blair) make a speech or are asked a sticky question.
So I know you probably are going to ask how to induce trance without using language specifically. That’s what the Milton model is all about.
Some of those patterns are:
– Mind read: when you claim to know what goes on in someone’s head; of course, you don’t REALLY know what they are thinking, but they have to go internal to check, and this produces a light trance. Example: ‘I know you’re wondering’.
– Cause & Effect: implies something cause another, tip off: ‘because’, ‘as you.. then you’, ‘if.. then’
– Complex equivalence: when 2 things are equated, tip off: ‘that means’, or the verb ‘is’
– Universal quantifiers: set of word without referential index and a universal generalisation; example: ‘all, always, never’ etc…
– Extended quotes: when you want to say something to someone while by-passing resistance, introduce it with an extended quote. It goes something like that: “I recently read about this hypnotherapist who took a course in Ericksonian hypnosis and who was quoted in “Hypnosis Daily” saying that his trainer had met one of Erickson’s senior students back in 1972 who told him that Milton Erickson said: “it is impossible to resist being led into a trance by someone who is already in a trance”.
Try those and see what result you get in your communication! I know that you are wondering right now about the efficiency of the Milton patterns, and it’s a good thing to wonder. And remember that if you try them by yourself then you’ll know they work, and this means you can become really excellent, everywhere and all the time, at using Milton patterns, even in business. In fact, there was an interesting interview in the Financial Times recently, of a young up and coming speech writer in the Obama administration who was talking about his mentor who used to say: “my teacher who taught me everything I know about language told me once: “it’s never about what you know, it’s never about what you don’t know, it’s always and will always be about all that you THINK you know or don’t know. Because ultimately, one can, you know, think they know.” I’m not sure what he meant but it is the quote I have learned most from for a long time.
Happy Milton modelling!
Want to learn more on this? We learn all Milton Model patterns, and how to use them in all areas of life (business, therapy, coaching or education) during the NLP Practitioner & Coaching Certification Training. Check out the schedule of events to know when is the next training.