Hypnotizing People With The Word "Not"

by Peter Saks on May 7, 2009

In this section we will uncover hypnotic power of the word "not". Most of the people have no clue how this very short three letter word impacts our minds. To give you a small sample, I would like you to read the sentence below with your eyes closed and try to pay as much attention as you can to what is happening in your mind.

Do not think about pink elephant on rollerblades.

If you have done this exercise correctly, you should have seen in your mind's eye pink elephant on rollerblades. It's exactly the opposite of what you were supposed to do. Why does it happen? Before we will answer this question we have to cover some theoretical foundations.

As you probably realize human mind consists of two parts, conscious and unconscious. We will be much more interested in the second part.

Unconscious mind is responsible for abilities, you have mastered so well, you can complete them without any thinking. Like riding a bicycle. At first you had to stay extremely aware to keep balance and not fell of it. But, as the time passed and you practiced more, it got easier and easier and you didn't have to pay any attention to riding it at all.

That's exactly what our unconscious mind is doing, liberates conscious mind from strain of dull tasks.

But it is also responsible for interpreting the meaning of the words. It allows you to build logical sentences, without having to think about which tense or part of speech to use. Its only flaw is that it has a difficulty understanding negations.

For unconscious mind it is nearly impossible to negate a word before experiencing it. So when I've said "Don't think about pink elephant.", for your unconscious mind this sentence was more like "Think about pink elephant and then negate it."

The interesting part is that you not only can make people picture, hear or smell what ever you like, but also make them feel emotions you want them to feel. I will show you this on short example:

"Honey, don't worry, but we have to talk."

Nearly all of us have been in such a situation. And majority of the time it isn't something that calms our nerves. By saying "don't worry", person speaking rather than make you feel comfortable and calm is making you feel anxious and worried.

A lot of people I introduce to this secret says something like: "From now on, I won't use "not" in my conversations ever again...". But, I expect you won't make this mistake, by finding this site you have proven to be more intelligent than the avarage chump. Therefore I want you to take advantage of this knowledge, only this, very simple tweak in the way you communicate will bring exponential results in your persuasion efforts.

I hope this short text has helped you to understand how powerful the word "not" is. It is very common for people to overlook this word, because it is very short and doesn't attract too much attention, but it is an advantage, it allows you to stay under the radar.