Dr. David Spiegel

And if your relationship is right, the arrow will go where it should go.

And that's the thing with many professional athletes.

They're so focused on the outcome and what it'll mean that they're actually distracting themselves from what matters, which is how they're relating to their body and getting it to do what they want it to do.

Focus on the process and not the outcome.

If it weren't for self-hypnosis, I'd be frustrated all the time.

It is.

Yes, it's terribly frustrating because it's a joke or it's dangerous or it doesn't do anything, none of which is true.

But I'll tell you one thing.

I try to use the negatives about hypnosis to our advantage to tell people.

If you've seen the football coach dancing like a ballerina in front of an audience of 500 drunken people,

There is an important lesson in that, and that is he's willing to try out being different, and he's not worried about what they're going to say to him in the locker room on Monday morning.

That ability to put aside your usual expectations of who you are and what you are is actually can be very adaptive.

And the same is true with problems like stress and pain and smoking.

We help people stop smoking.

You can do things you didn't think you could do, and that is a real advantage.

And so...

Even if you've seen one of those stage shows, there's a lesson there.

If you want to do something, if you want to change, if you want to be different, try this.

It'll help you do it.

That's exactly right.