Mister E is a lawyer in New York and has everything everybody seems to want in life. When I met him he was well educated, was in good health, had a polite and agreeable attitude, yet here he was in my practice, so I was curious to hear what his goal was.
As he entered my office that first day, I saw a strong and well-built man who was using respectful and sophisticated words to express his thoughts. Mister E held himself very straight, the benefits of regularly going to the gym I thought. While he was explaining the reasons of being here, I understood that he wasn’t acting from an emotional place and his decision to come to consult with me was the product of long thinking and analyzing for what likely had been months.
After a couple of minutes of listening to him, I started to sense some shyness in Mister E; his body was expressing what his mouth was saying. However, I felt like his body tried in a subtle way to hide from me. I had a sense of what Mister E was here for before he could express it, but I also had a feeling his reasoning for coming was more specific than just to gain happiness and more confidence.
He made it clear that he wanted to smile more. His ultimate goal was to be happier and the more we spent time together it was abundantly clear to both of us that this pragmatic man was facing a situation that was more powerful than his will power. As a man of control, Mister E would have to get into a place of more control with his emotions, especially his positive emotions.
As we walked through what the process would be, I explained what hypnosis is and how he would learn to change his own perception of who he is. We designed a powerful plan and I knew he was going to be diligent and stick to it. Most importantly, I constructed the sessions around scientific facts rather than mysterious divine/spiritual orientations. This pragmatic approach would be more effective for Mister E.
On our first session, we dig into what stops Mister E from smiling even though he sees others benefitting from smiling and he wants to be happy as well. We uncovered that he was taught not to smile as a kid. For him, smiling was a strong sign of weakness and thus prohibited in his childhood. Upon this revelation, we started changing a few beliefs and we began to train the mind to connect the dots differently.
At the start of the second session, Mister E began telling me in the most steady and humble voice, of what seemed almost an immediate change since the last session. Upon leaving our session, literally at the corner of my office a biker came out of nowhere and started giving Mister E compliments. On his walk two blocks later, someone stopped in front of him and complimented him too. A lady at the gym even asked him questions and his advice about her posture while exercising.
Before, he had never had interactions with women at the gym. I recall on our first session, he even mentioned his self-doubts and even though he goes to the gym in a very consistent way, he felt that he wasn’t doing it right. He avoided eye contact with other people especially personal trainers, scared that the trainer would tell him that his moves were wrong, and now here he was happily interacting with strangers and feeling better about himself at the gym in a way he didn’t think he would.
A shift had occurred for Mister E. He wasn’t sure what to think about everything that had happened within that short amount of time. What we didn’t know was, that was just the beginning.
Upon starting our third session, he told me that he had so many other positive experiences such as the ones mentioned before and never had so many good things happened to him in his life before. This was a surprise for him and although he felt this was good, the change wasn’t yet permanent and completely part of his life all the way.
In talking with Mister E, we spoke of the law of attraction before. This of course was the idea that you receive the same energy you send around you. When a smile comes from within, it is very likely that other people will catch up on it even if unconsciously. He understood the concept and so we had been putting it in place through hypnosis and mental rehearsal.
For Mister E, he wanted to smile more and it had to be a genuine smile, one from within, as if he never really did before, this was his goal. All the time he was excited to enter the state of hypnosis and to experience something he had never experienced before.
During this third session in hypnosis, we went to a place where smiles were allowed and one of the most beautiful smiles was making its way on Mister E’s face while he was in trance. He was not only smiling the way he wanted to, his brain was making new associations. His nervous system shifted, his energy was transforming to something lighter, less analytic, less tense, and something brighter.
Still very polite, discreet and humble, Mister E explained after that he felt the smile coming from his whole body and it reflected naturally on the outside of his face. When he exited this third session, he was floating and I was completely touched by what I witnessed.
During the following week Mister E felt lighter. He was consciously and diligently noticing the vibrant feelings in his mind, which reflected in his body and his actions. On one specific day as he was walking on the street, a construction worker he never met before told him for no reason, “God bless you.” It was a few words nobody has ever told him before.
Another thing that never happened to him before was getting free food at restaurants out of the blue and out of kindness. People started to work the extra mile for him. Still others saw something in him that pushed them to do or say something nice to him, with no expectations in return. Just like that things were totally different for Mister E.
He was more and more excited to see what the world was doing to him, and I could see the smile in his face as he was going through the different manifestations throughout our time spent together.
As we kept working together, I felt the changes going through his body language. These emanated through his facial expressions and even the way he dressed was more relaxed and appealing in what I noticed.
Mister E started painting, and in the most humble way possible, he told me that what he painted was beautiful! And this is where the shift in his own perception, the big change started taking place the most. He wasn’t paying attention on how invisible he was, but he started looking at what he wanted to see.
He could see what he never paid attention to, and he finally loved what he saw. As a result of that, the energy he was sharing around him was very different, enhanced, and completely redefined. His body moved differently, people were getting it, responding, and giving this energy back to Mister E in the most fascinating ways.
One day, as he was crossing the street an elderly lady called him a sweetheart in the middle of the street for no reason. If you are not familiar with Manhattan, people don’t do that here. They don’t have time for that here. Well, at least not normally.
On another day which brought rain, Mister E noticed he forgot his umbrella when a man took him under his own to protect him from the pouring water. The man then asked Mister E where he is heading to accompany him, which he did. He went off his road to please him.
He was making huge progress on learning a new language, he was showing more confidence with toxic people he dealt with and got positive results from this new behavior, the list kept going.
I remember our last session together, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon under the heat of the summer of New York. This day was an important day for Mister E as he was pitching the book that he started to write after his last job. He wrote this book and felt pretty good about it. However, the pitch was supposed to reflect the quality of the content and on that day he was supposed to pitch it in front of more than 10 publishers.
Relaxed in my chair, he brought to life all the needed resources to provide the best pitch; we took our time to tease the audience, to get them to want to know more, to share enough of the story to hook them. We used his current energy to his advantage and the growing confidence he already felt many times. He carried this energy over to the event and upon finally pitching his book, close to 100% of the editors wanted to go forward with him.
On the surface Mister E’s life was the same. He had the same apartment, the same professional situation, he visited the same restaurants, and had the same friends, but on the inside he had drastically changed.
The way Mister E looked at himself now changed. This small change affected his entire world and while he came to me just to be happy and to learn how to smile completely, the way he moved throughout the world and the way that people responded to him shifted entirely.
Through making this change of seeing himself differently, Mister E could now smile with ease, completely and fully, enhancing his life and the life of others.
