Hypnotist Jason O Callaghan on Hypnosis, Career Reinvention & Rewiring Your Mind

This week on Shake the Ground, Nathalie is joined by Jason O’Callaghan – psychologist, clinical hypnotherapist, hypnotist and founder of The D4 Clinic. 

After beginning his career in journalism, Jason made a huge professional pivot into psychology and hypnotherapy, going on to build one of Ireland’s leading hypnotherapy clinics and help thousands of people create real, lasting change. 

In this episode, Jason opens up about his fascinating career journey, the misconceptions around hypnosis, and how much of our confidence, fears and behaviour are shaped by the mind. Expect an eye-opening conversation about reinvention and why changing your thoughts can genuinely change your life.

Follow Jason here: 

https://www.instagram.com/hypnotist_jason_ocallaghan 

Follow Nathalie here: 

https://www.instagram.com/nathalielennon_ 

Subscribe to our YouTube here: 

https://www.youtube.com/@shakethegroundpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shake the Ground Pump Cast is brought to you by Amplify PumpCast Studio. They don't just produce pumpcasts, they build podcasts designed to last. See Amplified NAE. Welcome back to Shake the Ground, the podcast that's here to remind you that the life, job, relationship, and persona you want, it's all within reach. I'm your host, Nathalie Lennon, and every week we're diving into the stories of people who dared to do things differently and basically shook the ground within their own lives. I hope that this podcast helps you to find new ways to build confidence and self-belief, ensuring you never settle for less than what you dream of. So if you ever felt stuck, scared, or like you're playing small, get ready to shake the ground. Today's guest, I'm so excited for the conversation we are about to have. He is someone who has built a career exploring the power of the human mind from anxiety and confidence to habits, fear, behavior patterns, and even hypnosis. You may know him as one of Ireland's best-known hypnotists, but there's a lot more to him than stage shows and entertainment. Jason O'Callaghan is a trained psychologist, clinical hypnotherapist, and behavioral specialist who works with people on everything from panic attacks and phobias to confidence, sleep, emotional eating, and breaking destructive habits. At the same time, he spent years performing hypnosis shows around Ireland and internationally. So today we are diving into all of it. What hypnosis actually is, how can it truly help, whether we're unknowingly programming ourselves every day, why we stay stuck in unhealthy patterns, how fear and anxiety shape our lives, and whether changing your thoughts through hypnosis can genuinely change your reality. I have a feeling this is going to be a fascinating conversation. Welcome to Shake the Ground, Jason O'Callaghan. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Did I get everything right there?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I think so. I think I'm very impressed with your research.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Thanks so much. So listen, this is our first time to actually meet in person, which I'm very excited about. Everything you're about to tell me, it's going to be my first time hearing it too. I was telling you years ago, I do think I was at one of your performances in Carlo at maybe like a party night, and you chose my auntie as one of your um volunteers. Volunteers.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Don't say victims, volunteers.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

I'm not sure. But you got her to do things there's no way we could have paid her to do. So I'm so intrigued by your work. But before we get into that, can you maybe start by telling us about your path from where you started in entertainment and media, music, now into psychology with an honors degree and masters from Trinity? You're qualified in CBT and hypnosis, and you've met people like Bono Boysone, Pierce Brosnan, I think I saw on your website. There's so much to you. So can you give us a bit of background?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

So I I come from um I was born in Kerry and I was raised in Dublin back in the 80s and 70s. So most people don't realize I'm a Kerry man, which is unusual with my accent. So I was born in Kerry, moved to Dublin in the mid-70s, and um grew up in a very working-class area, a place called Walkinstown, which no one knows apart from the big roundabout there. That's the most famous thing. The roundabout and Gabriel Byrne. That's literally the two most famous things to come out of Walkingstown. Connor McGregor more recently uh is uh a local of ours, but anyway, uh, and and then I went to local school and then I went to uh Sing Street in the inner city. But the interesting thing is why I mentioned that is I'm not a natural academic. Yeah, and that's very important because these days being educated and going to college and so on, so on, so on, is you know, people make such a fuss of it. Yeah, and I genuinely think it's irrelevant. I genuinely think your school time. So a lot of people will say, you know, well, I'm you know, I'm working Aldi or I'm working as a bin man or I'm working as whatever, and because my schooling, I I always say to people, because they oh you you're very successful at this, this, and this, and I and I take it as a compliment, but I say, I only flourished the day I left school. Waste of time, all my years in school. Not saying they were a complete waste of time, but I did Irish for 15 years, complete waste of time. I failed maths and my leave-incert, which stopped me, you know what I mean. I failed Irish and my intercert and my leave-insert, it was the intercert back then, and leave insert. I am not a natural academic, and I have three children, and I have two wonderful daughters, and I have a wonderful son. But my wonderful son is not academic either, but he's the nicest, kindest, highest levels of emotional intelligence, and that's something that we don't learn in school. You learn academic stuff, um, but you don't learn Billy Connolly used to have, and I can say this on podcast, he used to say the only thing that you should learn in school is how to make money and how to get laid. That's really all they should teach in life. And apart from that, nothing else really matters. But it's it's it's something that it's completely missing from our education system. Um so it's like saying, you know, you uh as we talked about, you're an expert in fitness.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

But but I'm not sure if you know I did a degree in earth sciences, and I literally just powered through it for the sake of getting a piece of paper and saying, Oh, I went to college, I did a degree. And I've said to my parents, I feel like I wasted your money. I wasted four years because I never used it. Now, lots of character building, but the character building was everything probably surrounding the college experience and not the actual you know information within the course itself.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, but what I was what I was what the point is exactly what you've said is that you're an expert. Like I'm I'm I'm an old 50-something-year-old guy, I'm not an expert in fitness. But uh my point is that and I just give an example of of you as a as a as a someone who's an expert in fitness, or someone who's an expert in music, or someone who's an expert in sport.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Are they thick? Are they thick? You know, they don't have seven hundred points in a leading, sir.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Would you consider David Beckham a failure? He hasn't got seven hundred points. Would you consider a piano player a failure? Would you consider an Irish dancer a failure? Would you consider a painter, a sculptor? You know, there's a great image that I always refer to in my work, and it's the sort of thing that pops up on social media of a sort of professor sitting there at a desk in the jungle with all these animals, elephants and lions and tigers and snakes and monkeys, and he goes, Okay, you're all going to be judged on your ability to climb a tree. That's what the leave and cert is, that's what school is.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, I love that. That's a really interesting thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

That's really just a you know, as I said, uh um David McWilliams, the the the broadcaster and economist, has a great quote. Uh and he says, he went to Black Rock College, which would be um one of these really posh fancy schools, and he said, I left school in the 80s, whenever it was, with uh guys who were really stupid who thought they were smart. Yeah. And guys who were really smart who thought they were stupid because they were just judged on by this two weeks in the end of June.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

I could not agree with you more on all of that. And I suppose one thing that I found like I might I may whatever personality type it is you want to call it, I'd say perfectionist. Whatever I do, I put a lot of pressure on myself to do it to the best of my ability. My parents always told me stop stressing so much, it's only a piece of paper, you know, when it comes to the leaving certificate, and even when it comes came to my end of year college exams every year, but I was stressed so much because I think like that society made me think I would get nowhere in life without an education, and that I had to get the best results possible to get somewhere in life. And it was only when I left education I realized that was a complete lie. Do you know? Obviously, it works for some people, but it's not for everyone. It just depends on what you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Like I don't want a doctor without an education or a lawyer, yeah, yeah. But you know, you can be successful, like some of the most successful people are people who I would consider C students, very much like myself. I was you know, I would have been lucky to get a C, a D in a lot of subjects back in the other day, but I was not an A student. My wife's an A student. Um, but you know, the ability to be successful and make money in whatever you do, yeah, it it isn't judged on your leave. So now once we have to get away from that, and because what's happening now is, and uh as I said recently, I think I read an article with Dave McClings talking about this, and he said, everyone's got a degree now, so it's not special. No, now everyone's getting a master's. Yeah, now it's not so we're all the same.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

It's so expensive.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Yeah, but we all have the same qualifications, and his his sort of thing of the younger generation was you know, why why does my barista have a master's? Yeah, because that's all the jobs there, because there's so many people with degrees now and so many people with masters that there's not enough jobs for them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

But look, like I went, did the degree in Earth Sciences from Trinity. When you say Trinity College, and you know that yourself, people kind of go, Oh, Trinity, and I still couldn't get a job.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

I I did my master's, I did my undergrad in DBS, and then I did my master's in Trinity. Um, but I'd spent eight years in college in total. Like, because I left school, I was, as I said, I was crap. I was really bad in school. And the day I left, I was like, okay, let's do something. And I and I, because I didn't get mats, I wanted to become a hotel manager because that was my family business. My aunt had raised me in a hotel in France, so I spent my summers there and I'd worked in bars and restaurants, as much teenagers do. Um, and then what happened was I couldn't get mats, so they wouldn't let me into hotel management. So even though I was working for years, so I did it, what was back then called a cert course, which was back then you had to do an apprenticeship as a barman or a chef or a waiter or whatever, and I used a restaurant management course because I said, Oh, move into hotel management. But even after two years in Calbrew Street, I went to the meeting and I went to this guy and I said, Look, I've been working in hotels for years, I'm running hotels with my family. I have two years in college, I've trained as a waiter, I've trained as a chef, I've trained as a bartender, um, I've trained in all the stuff. Yeah, but you haven't got mastery leave insert.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

I'm like, What a kick to the ghost! It's just like makes no sense.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

This doesn't make any sense at all. Like, I had I actually passed economics in my leave insert, which is kind of a little bit higher on the scale of maths, but it was because maths isn't my thing. Um, and to this day I've never used Pythagoras' term.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

No, don't talk to me about it.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Like I still don't know what it is. I'll try what was it? I don't know. I still don't know what Sin, Cos, and Tanner. Yeah, yeah, but it never helped me, so I don't so again, but it's just something that they did, and it was just quite interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

So at that point when you couldn't get into the hotel manager uh role, was that when you took a pivot to go into the entertainment side of things?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

No, that was much later. So what happened was when I was so at 17 I left school. Well, I finished my leaving side back then I was 17, did a year in catering school, and then I had to take a year off, so I did a sales and marketing course, and eight months through that, in the February, I was sitting beside a guy in college in Crumlin College. Um so I was working at night as a waiter and then during the day then this, and this guy said to me, I'm going for the interview today, and I said, Oh, where are you going? He said, Oh, Disney in Paris. Now, this is a Euro Disney back then, it's not Disneyland Paris. We're recruiting. I speak fluent French because I'd grown up in France, and I said, uh, I'll go with you for the crack. And so at the end for the crack was a day out. We went into the the old jury's in Ballsbridge. I did an interview, uh, because he was going in. I said, I'd go in as well. And uh they offered me a job in Paris. Oh my god. Because I I worked as a waiter, I speak English and French. They were looking for people who did uh so I went down to my mother um and I said, I'm going to live in Paris. It was 19, 18, turned 19. And my mother was like, You're not. My dad gave me, my dad said, Now you can go if you want, he gave me a few hundred quid. I don't think he ever she never forgived him for that. Um, and I went off to Paris and my aunt 19 worked as a waiter in Disney with 600 Irish people, and we had the crack, and it was just like the equivalent on Australia like it is now. We had the crack for that. I came back, um, and sadly, my mother, I started college, my second year in college, which was restaurant management, so I was learning to manage restaurants, and um my mother passed away uh very suddenly of cancer, and I was only 19 at the time. So I stayed in Dublin for two or three years. I worked in all the top hotels, the Gresham Hotel, the old Berkeley Court Hotel, did all that for a while, and then in '95, I got a job on the QE2 cruise ship. So I went off again. I traveled the whole world on a cruise ship. And then when I came back, I was living with a friend of mine, and what happened was I was working as a waiter again. This was the highlight of my life working as a waiter. I was 23. This is far as I was going. And the weirdest thing happened at 23, and this shows you the way my my philosophy about life is always to say yes. Okay. So say yes to meeting you, say yes to do this. Say yes, an amazing thing has happened. And I'm working as this waiter, and the landlord, I'm renting a flat somewhere in my pal, and the landlord is the principal of Bally Fermat College, it's the arts college in Dublin. Yeah, it's where they study animation, journalism, media, this type of stuff. And uh I of course hadn't been yeah, I don't even decide in school. And he says, Yeah, we do a journalism course. And at the same time, coincidentally, I go on a hot package holiday to Turkey with some mates. One of the guys, his girlfriend, uh, does journalism and she's uh lovely woman. She I think she's one of the head of Vodafone or something now. But she said, My job is to go to events. I never I've never met a journalist in my life at this stage. I go to parties, I go to premieres, I go to fashion shows, and I write about it. I said, like, that's a job. So when I came back, the landlord says, Yeah, I'm the principal at Bally Pharmacology just by chance. I send an application because I'm practically technically unemployed because I'm working and getting a few nixers as a waiter. And they ring me uh like a day before the call starts. I didn't even get a place, but they ring me a day before the course starts and they say, Um, someone's dropped out. If you come with 50 pounds tomorrow, you can have a place in this journalism course in Bally Ferma. Two-year diploma in journalism. But within that was 1996, September 96. Within three years, I was the most famous journalist in Ireland. Within three years. Within three years. I was I had my own column in the Irish Independent. I was part of the social diary team, which was a gossip columns team, the Sunday Independent. I was working on FM104 as Joe from the paparazzi with Column Hayes and all these people. Um, I was literally like so. I finished my exams in '98 and I was hired. Louis Walsh referred me to the mirror, the editor of the mirror, and I took over as a showbiz editor, temporarily of the mirror, um, on huge money. And I was like, I was still in college. I was like, because I all my friends, this is where it goes back to the academia stuff. I said, all my friends were waiters. My dad was a doorman, so his friends were doormen. So I knew chauffeurs, I knew waiters. I was able to get all the showbiz news around Dublin because all my mates were working in the bars, the restaurants, guys I knew working on the door of Brown Thomas. I didn't have the official sort of go to UCD and get your journalism degree and you know, I did all through official channels. I was successful because all my mates, I'm just talking to my mates, going, and he goes, Bono was in lesson. Oh yeah, write that down. And even with David Bobby, oh, write that down. Oh, yeah, who's in who's in Brown Thomas? Yes, you Robbie Williams was in shopping yesterday. Oh, write that. So I go into the Sunday Independent and I'm kind of trying to get basically work experience. And at the time, um Anna Harris, who's who's the the editor of Sunday Independent, she said the guy's underneath her. And this was like the Sunday Independent time, half the country read it. This is as I said to you earlier, before social media, it was like one and a half million people out of a three million population reading this in a Sunday. Was it that high? It was that high, you know what I mean? So it was all the Veronica Gear and God rest her work, Jonathan Film and Bohm, and all these really big name journalists, Eamon Dunfee, like all these famous. This was the time. And uh I was like, Oh, I heard Bono was here, and like, oh, write that down as a line, you know, send that over to me as a line. And then it was two lines, and then it was a paragraph, and then it was two paragraphs, then it was one story, two stories, three stories. And literally within a year, I was part of the biggest newspaper team, the biggest newspaper. Wow. Opened in 1999. Back then I worked for a woman called Terry Keene. Now you're far too young to remember, but any older listeners, she was the mistress of Charity High. Oh, wow, foreign minister. And this was a this was a public secret. Everyone said, and she she hinted about it in her columns, and we were part of the team supplying the information for her column, which is the back page of the Sunday Independent. But in 1999, she went on the Late Late Show and she announced this publicly. It was a it was the biggest scandal in the country in 99. It was the last Late Late Show that Gay Byrne did. So it was this huge scandal. Again, uh, anyone listening, ask your parents about it, they'll remember. And uh, I'm sitting at home with my dad, and literally my life changed because I was next in line to take over. So the editors rang me because I can't put Terry King because she'd left the newspaper and basically gone to the Sunday Times and did this big expose and and quit her job. They needed someone to fill in, and myself and another colleague, uh Gerhard Gale, we were at sort of top of the team supplying all the stories. So the editors just put us straight in. So at 26, I was or 27, I became the most famous gossip columnist in the country.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

My god.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

And that's where you mentioned earlier about my celebrity context, like you know, were they getting uh I would have been close friends with Pierce Brosnan. I was there when Westlife were named. Lestlife were originally called West Side. They were originally called IOU, and then they were West Side, and me and Louie Sure, they couldn't go with that after West Side story. No, but what happened was there was an American rap band called West Side. Okay, or w whatever they were called. And me and Shane Lynch from Boys On, I was with him and Brian McFadden, and I was the first person to ever write about Brian McFadden. Brian McFadden had ever been written, but I called him an Irish Leonardo DiCaprio, so we were always close friends because that was first known as Mammy Sale's name in the paper. And he and Louie Walsh with me out and we were having we're at some event. I think he was in the Thunder Road Cafe in Temple Bar, and Louie's like, I need to come up with a name for them. Yeah, I think I'm gonna call them Westlife because we can't use Westside, we just found out because they originally launched as Westfield.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Oh, so you were part of the creation of the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Well, I was now I was there at the time because Ronan and Keith, Shane Lynch used to be a friend of mine. We used a nightclub together. Okay. When he him and Mark Walden, who was originally a guy in Boys on, who didn't make the final cut, him and Shane used to go clubbing with us. Um, so I would have been friends with them. Yeah, um, and then Shane went into Boys on and I sort of lost uh contact with him. And but I you know I ended up in friends with him over the years.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

So you were at the centre of literally kind of the it scene when it comes to the city.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

At the Celtic Tiger. It would have been what's interesting is again, your generation don't remember the Celtic Tiger was nuts. The Celtic Tiger was every weekend, because I was a social correspondent, I would you know I would go to two fashion shows, three restaurants a night. I could go to six events a night. Okay. So I would walk in and say, Who's here? Oh no, oh Natalie Ganser right about her. Johnny Logan's here, Bonno's here. Oh, there's no one in this one. We'd walk back out and go to the next place. So it was it was it was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

So now I've such a greater understanding of, I suppose, you and your life and and the incredible work that you've done. How did where does the pivot come into becoming a hypnotist?

SPEAKER_01 17:29

In 2003, uh I left the Sunday Independent Group, became the show bus editor of the Herald, the Evening Herald of the Times. And then I think it's it's terribly complex business to be, and you're always involved in trouble. You're always because you're you're always diving into you're always on the edge because what happens is your news editors, everyone wants the big stories, right? But the PR people, they want to send out the stories. Remember, this is the time before social media, so you would have to I want the big stories to get the headlines. Yeah, but the PR people and the artists or the celebrities, they don't want their scandal about their breakup. They want oh, nicey, nicey, we're fabulous, we're gorgeous. Look at us. Yeah, but the other so you're walking this line your whole life, so you're literally getting punched. The editors want big stories, you know, the celebrities don't want big stories, and you're trying to do that. So in uh 2004, I left and I was um I started the Rap Pack in 2002. Uh, that was with MCD, and if you know MCD to be concert promoters, so MCD, uh Dennis Desmond, who's an amazing guy, he's the guy behind MCD. We had done this charity ball in 2002. So I want you to picture this now back in the day. So I had never sung in my life. I put this charity ball together in the four seasons of Dublin with a committee for cancer. Who was on the rap pack with me? The host was Jerry Ryan, two of the singers were Stephen Gately and Mikey Graham, the female singer uh from Boys On, obviously. Uh this female singer was Sinead O'Carl from Bewitched, the Eurovision winner Paul Harrington was on piano. Uh Jack L Aaron Kildare, Jack L was singing with me. Um it was and there was a five, so we did this thing because I'm a big Rat Pack fan, which is Frank Sinatra and all that stuff. Um, and we did this thing called Rat Pack Ball, and they were that was all of us as a thing. What a lion! Yeah, it was amazing, it was amazing, and it was um high to the Kelly Tiger. MCD Dennis was at the event, he said, take this show, Jason, put it in the Olympia. I'm like, I'm not a producer, I don't know what to do. He said, No, I'll stick it in the Olympia for eight and eight weeks, midnight of the Olympia was a thing back then. Eight weeks. Yeah, well, the weekends you would have done Friday and Saturday night for eight weeks. Um, and so I put this big band together and put it in the Olympia, and we get people like David McSavich, Des Bishop, as our opening axe and all these people at the time. And uh and then that that goes great. And then this girl comes to me, this is around 2023, a girl, a PR girl, and she says, I'm getting married. And she said, Would you bring your show to my wedding? And I'm like, Well, I'm far too famous and glamorous for that, but it's huge money. Weddings are huge money. Yeah. So I kind of thought, well, I don't have to do anything, I just turn up and I sing a few rap pack songs. And that on your own? No, my well, I had a band at the time. You know, I mean I had a big band, saxophones, trumpets, think of my cabooble before my cabooble. But none of the other kind of big names that were with you, it's just me and my own, because they just wanted the music, and I would have hired Luke Thomas. I don't know if you come across Luke Thomas as the he's the singer about the swing cats. Okay. Um he would he would have been an RB star at the time, and we needed uh a guy of colour to do the Sammy Davis Jr. role, and we had another guy anyway. But that then became a huge thing where I was I was doing a hundred weddings a year. Okay, back in 2004, 2006, 2007. And and what happened then was I got involved in a court case in 2000. I ended up in the show as editor of Daily Mail, and just a court case happened, and everything went our sways. Okay, and I couldn't work in newspapers for four years. And and it just nothing to do with me, completely. I was proven there was nothing I didn't do anything wrong, yeah, just politics, yeah. And uh the the the Daily Mail had to go to court and apologize and pay me a lump sum, yeah, because they got everything wrong, and they they said I was a great journalist. They there was just politics and mess-ups and all types of complicated stuff. And uh I couldn't work, I couldn't work for as a journalist for four years. Okay. Um, because the court case had to go through and they had to apologise, but by the time that happened, so I went back to college. I just said, I'm not gonna sit around for years. So I went from you know, literally getting 100 phone calls a day in 2006. Uh 2000 spent a year or two just doing the band and producing that and having a good time. And then in 2008, uh I said, Well, I've got to do something with my life, I can't just keep doing the band.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

It's crazy how quickly I guess the showbiz world can kind of turn upside down.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yeah, well, it's just I was lucky I was in wedding, and then of course you had the crash in 08. Yes. So the wedding market went down because no one had any money. Uh so I just went back to college.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

I sort of And is that when you you went back to study psychotherapy? Psychology. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

I actually originally wanted to study Chinese and business because I was like, oh, I'll become a businessman, I'll get China's gonna be huge in the next few years. And I went to Shanghai with my girlfriend at the time and it was a kip. It was horrible, it was all polluted. I was like, I'm gonna say here. So I just went back and changed my CAO to psychology because I had an interest in positive psychology because reading sort of self help books and all that had helped me an awful lot over the years. Okay. Um and I pivoted to psychology, and that's where my second career sort of began. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

So what age are you then?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

when you're 33 33 I love hearing stories like this you know this is so old now I'm 53 33 I thought it was all the I thought it was all the 23 gone to journalism college going oh there's all 18 year olds here then it was like 33 it was like uh which was embarrassing in a way because you know remember I'm very I'm very well known back then I'm not well known anymore in that market but in the media yeah like I was very like that this whole me leaving the Daily Mail it was all over the front page of the papers back then like even when I broke up my girlfriend though eight there was a big page story in the star artists and herald it was like because it was of the time you know I mean you have to remember it's just a long time ago um so returning back to your studies was yeah a tough list yeah because I had to go back and be very humble. Yeah I had to start at the bottom of the ladder again I had to go back with 18 year olds and do my degree there was a handful of us do mature students there always is it's always interesting and anyone who's ever gone back to college you'll notice the mature students sit the front of the class. Yeah we're not there for the socialists.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah it's funny when I was in college we had a man there was only 12 people in my degree it was very really small there was one man who was the same age as my dad and he sat up the front he was asking all the questions we were like home over half the time sitting at the back when you go back as a mature student there's only 10 of us in my psychology class and we all became friends but it was it was we're there for we're not here for the social life we're here to get the degree this is business then so is that a four year degree three year degree in it's three years in DBS four years in Trinity but it was you could do it in three years full time. So when you graduated from that and what an incredible pivot to make and I think that in itself is inspirational because so many people can be afraid to like take a different path in their thirties or 40s or whatever. At any age and look at how successful you are now in that area but how I mean the move from psychotherapy psychology.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Sorry psychological counselling okay yeah the move from that into hypnosis do you study hypnosis in that degree in the master's because what happened was I do the three years in DBS I get my honours degree which is a PSI a credit degree which is Psychology Society of Ireland so the plan was go and get my to become a clinical psychologist which is working in hospitals and so on and become a doctor of clinical psychology. So during my three years the first year I do a counselling course at night so I'm a bit like you so I'm a bit of a perfectionist I'm not very good at lots of things like I'm not a sporty person I'm not a you know I'm not good at playing the piano I'm not what you do you want to do I only do one thing. Yeah that's my sort of rule life I like when I did the journalism I did one thing and I'm like a a sniper you know I yeah my goal is to do that. When I did the band I became the biggest band when I did the journalist being the big journalist but that's all I can do. I can only do one thing at a time because I'm not that smart.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

I think as humans that's how we're supposed to do it for doing it.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

When I was a kid I used to read a lot of Sherlock Holmes and when you read the Sherlock Holmes books it says that Sherlock Holmes um when you're a kid this goes into your head his mind was like an attic he only kept in it what he needed and that's the way I look I wanted to become a really good entertainment journalist. That's all I did. I didn't venture anything else then when I did the music I wanted to have the biggest band in the country and we'd done the Vicker Streets and we did all that stuff but that's all I did. And then I decided to get into the mental health side of things I said well that's all I'm gonna do. So when I was doing the psychology course at night because I was trying to get all these again an advantage to get into clinical psychology which is very competitive I did the first year psychology during the day counselling at night did it in the national Minute University this counselling certificate. Second year I did CBT which is cultural behavioral therapy did another course on that. Third year then I did mindfulness course and then I also said well hypnotherapy would be cool it's another certificate I'll just do that and it would be ever been exposed to hypnotherapy no more than anyone watching adding more strings to your bow kind of yeah it was just let's just try and get as much because I was doing the the ironic thing is is I was as I said to you earlier I was getting phone calls one day from celebrities and then trying to get work experience as a psychologist I was working on the Samaritan's phone lines.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Oh wow so like that's how humble you have to go you got to go from dating supermodels and and getting right down to the capability to be that humble I think it's incredible that you that you have that.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

You gotta do what you have to do. You have to go if you're on the wrong ladder you've got to get back down to the bottom of the ladder and start again that's literally what had to so I'm doing work experience in telehospital and doing work experience at St. Martin's and doing work experience with ARC which is a cancer support charity. I'm trying to do more just how much work experience can I get to support my application to get into clinical psychology. And I do the hypnotherapy course and uh it's a six weekends to get a certificate whatever it is and I look at the statistics and I go hold on a second counseling psychotherapy has like 600 sessions you have to do and you only get 20% success rate. Or CBT would have 24 sessions we only get a 70% success rate. Sorry to interrupt you define success rate for me helping people okay so it's literally kind of like the healing or the the the solving the solving the problem okay getting over the issue getting over the anxiety getting over whatever the issue is very keen to hear what the 600 sessions of counselling for I think it's around 25 35% 24 sessions of CBT for I think 70%.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Six sessions of hypnotherapy for 93% so it's as close to 100% after six hypnotherapy sessions as it would be you know you'd have to you wouldn't get any so that's just you know research is done there's a meta-analysis of all these studies for people with anxiety and smoking and phobias and whatever it is and it says you need if you get six sessions of hypnotherapy for your issue it's got a 93% success rate.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

So straight away my brain is going why are we not all doing hypnotherapy that's your question that is a question that many people there's an amazing professor in Stanford University David Siegel psychiatrist specialized in hypnosis and he answered that question because he was on Josh Rogan he's been on all these podcasts he answers that question Josh Rogan says why isn't everyone doing hypnotherapy well the simple answer is especially think of the American marginists how can me as a hypnotherapist or a community of hypnotherapists compete with Pfizer with the medical profession with the doctors I love this yeah I've had a new it's all about the money that's all it is numerous conversations slightly different field but with kind of relatives of mine one who is hugely into kind of organic um and natural healing methods right and there's a few things that I've struggled with and he's been like try this try this take that uh parasite cleanses all this stuff never spoke about it on Instagram helped me so much but I was like you know to him I was like why are people not all doing this? Why what when I google this why can't I find information about it? And he was like that's all censored no one's gonna make money out of it.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Well it's it's well that's the thing I don't know about been censored but I definitely know it's about the money. See my philosophy is there's no money in broccoli.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yeah it's so true.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

As I said you're in the fitness space you're in the wellness space. But sorry that's what there's there's no money in you you if you're I I consider you an expert in wellness and fitness right but what my point is that if if I come to you and I'm an unemployed 30 year old 40 year old and I'm overweight and I and I'm there's no money in broccoli. And why I say that is go to Aldi the fruit and veg are the cheapest thing. No it can't it's too expensive to get healthy. Yeah go for a walk it's free no it's too expensive to get healthy. Do you see what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

I see what you mean but my question is I do feel like a lot of people go to therapy and counselling um so they're paying for that service when they could be paying for hypnotherapy and therapy and counselling isn't necessarily a medical route so why do you think there's a thing called the niece guidelines and niece guidelines came out years ago when I was in college and they recommend mindfulness and CBT.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

So that means that doctors see the problem with hypnotherapy is like if I watch a movie this is what I say to every client that comes at my door whether it's a guard whether it's a judge whether it's a millionaire whether it's a clean lady and I say visualize a movie about your job. Now let's just say you're a nurse and I say okay watch Grey's Anatomy and they go well it's not really like my job I said exactly hypnotherapy and hypnosis is not like you see in the movies. Okay. It's a movie because in a movie you can say anything there's a new the top movie on on Netflix now is uh hypnotic with Ben Affleck absolutely nothing to do with hypnosis. If I could do that stuff I wouldn't be sitting here with you. You know what I mean get out another horror movie that came out a few years ago hypnosis that doesn't work either it's if you can picture you know Brad Pitt playing me in a movie it's not going to be like what I do because it's a movie. Yeah Captain Underpants my kids watch it with a hypno ring it's not real hypnosis is very real but in the movies they can say anything. Woody Harrelson plays a hypnotist in in whatever that one is that that Now you see me movie you know that was those ones where and he he plays a hypnotist he's just walking on the people sleep sleep sleep tell me a secret no it doesn't work that but they can say anything in the movies and that's why people don't understand it.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yes um but I also think you're right in that no matter what people seem to be struggling with with their mental health and my own struggles that I've had I mean endless articles professionals therapists counsel counselors that all tell you practice mindfulness you know practice journaling keep going to therapy keep going to counseling eventually you work through all these things and I've never in my life heard someone say um have you tried hypnotherapy I've never ever heard it conversations but this is why I want to floor to understand it because what you said there about mindfulness if you take mindfulness and you take a body scan which is the mind the introduction now that's from the 70s and 80s that's from a guy called John Caputzian who developed mindfulness.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Now go back to the 50s there's a thing that you would learn if you train as a hypnotherapist tomorrow you would do a script it's scripted you have to learn scripts and how to rehearse it one called Dave Elman induction word for word the exact same as a mindfulness word for word turn off the muscles of your nose turn off so in other words mindfulness is a complete rip off of hypnosis but they just call it a mindfulness it just doesn't give suggestion it just gets you to relax live in the moment whereas hypnosis will give you the relaxation and put you in a light trance to allow your subconscious mind to absorb everything and give you suggestions okay to change that's the difference so we're saying people don't do hypnotherapy enough because they don't understand it. Because they're afraid of it because they think it's like you see in a stage show.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

So explain this is a very open-ended question but explain hypnotherapy to us and how that could help someone.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Okay so if you can imagine when you're going asleep at night and you close your eyes and you start thinking about your day and you just start to you you don't remember going to sleep. None of us do we don't remember going to sleep we're just lying there and then we sleep and then we wake up what happened in between so if you can imagine your your you and I and everybody is an animal we're we're defensive all the time we're aware of our surroundings like any animal when you're asleep you're not you you have no defenses. So if you could the simple way to visualize and anyone who's done any type of psychology will always remember that Freud described the mind as an iceberg. So you can visualize an iceberg floating in the water you can see the top of the iceberg that's your personality that's who I'm talking to right now. That's the part the world sees 90% of your personality and your mind is unconscious. It's under the water we can't see it but it's there it's everything that's happened to you over the past 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years of your life it's all unconscious. It's your inner thoughts it's your inner voice it's every trauma it's every issue that's happened it's every memory it's all in there it's locked away in there if you can imagine the water itself the the water line that that's hypnosis. You're not awake you're not asleep you're relaxed enough that that the best description is that when you're relaxed so much that that trapdoor between conscious and unconscious opens just a little bit that we can put suggestions into your hard drive. And here's a simple example Natalie I want to do this with you I want you to think simply do you remember primary school do you remember who you sat beside in primary school now if if you're listening you'll see that Natalie is looking up you automatically look up right yes right now think about was there a person you can remember who's your friend in primary school? Once I remember somebody there or your teacher maybe or something like that. You can remember a teacher when was the last time you thought about that person oh my god I can't control my eyes from going to the left when I need to reason your eyes are going to the left everyone does that we all look away. Okay we all look away and we look at it even when you asked me as you were asking me that question I was like don't break eye contact no but it's not that straight away my eyes went you have no choice none of us you can watch George Clearly in an interview and you can say George what was your favorite movie you ever made and he'll go ah everyone does they all sit back and they look up we're accessing our unconscious mind opening that trapdoor you're literally googling in your own head who did I sit beside in school you just said you haven't thought about that person for years. No. But yet they're in there I could say the same for you about who's the first boy you kissed? What was your favorite pet? Think about your favorite summer holiday like you can walk out of here and walk down the town and bump into somebody you haven't seen Jesus I haven't seen you in years and they go oh do you remember such and such and such and then all these memories come back. Like that's your unconscious everything's in there. We just don't need it on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

And I think a lot of people are scared of the power of hypnosis and probably from the movies and seeing that everything goes on the movies.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

But even I having been to years ago one of your kind of hypnosis performances it kind of like excited and terrified me because I was like how powerful is this man okay so it's like he was born with these that's what people say they also go when did you realize you had the gift I'm like it's like he can do no some people think it's it's got to do with you know psychics no no it's a learned skill like any skill it's like learning to be a fitness trainer so learning to be a doctor is the same thing. You learned how to do it. So to understand hypnosis understand that everything in life is a statistic which basically means that within if you put me in a room of a hundred people doesn't matter who the 100 people are they can be doctors they can be students they can be it doesn't matter 10% of them don't take part in the hypnosis.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

I think they don't want to listen for me.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

They don't get involved they'll sit there with their arms folded 90% of the room will go oh I wonder can I be hypnotized? I'd love to stop vaping or stop smoking or I'd love to you know overcome a fear or I'd just love to see what it's like help me with my anxiety. So a stage hypnotist is different to a clinical hypnotist they're two different things stage hypnosis focuses on 10% of the population such as your aunt so if you can go back to that show or any event that I do you'll see that I'll always come out and I'll say okay I want everyone you all want to know can you be hypnotized. So we will do a test it's called a suggestibility test. It basically will be locking their hands together go to a Keith Berry show a Darren Brown show a David Blaine show a Paul McGinnis show any hypnotist in the world do the exact same go do one in thermal enough you'll see the same thing. We do a thing called a suggestibility test which tells the audience who is suggestible and it's just the way their brain works. It's not anything and those people if I say your hands are glued together the more you focus on them the tighter they'll get they will 10% only 10% of that room roughly will not be able to pull their hands apart and that's just the way their brain works.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

So say at that show she was one of them is that a complicated process for you to do like could you test that on me now and see if I do it.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Yeah yeah we can do it very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

What do I do?

SPEAKER_01 37:08

So you basically first the easiest the easiest one to do for you is to basically put your hands out in front of you. Yeah squeeze your hands as tight as you can okay bring your hands in front of your eyes in front of my eyes and put your fingers an inch apart like that. Now if you can imagine your subconscious that those tips of your fingers are magnetized. And if you look at the tips of your fingers and you visualize them getting magnetized they'll start to pull together. The more you focus on it the more they get pulled together you see they'll start to twitch and they'll start to get pulled closer and closer and closer and closer and the more you focus the more they get pulled closer together you see like electric current will just start to pull them together and together and together and together and together and together until eventually they just touch. I'm trying to fight this yeah but you can't because your subconscious mind is already 90% of your mind compared to your conscious and the other thing you do is then while doing that I'm looking at it going don't go closer and closer to you. Because you're trying to resist but you can't the other thing you can do is and again I'll I'll describe this uh on audio because you won't be able to see it the other thing you do is if you close your eyes just close your eyes for a second. Okay, I'm scared now don't be scared close your eyes. The simple test the test of your hypnotizable is to close your eyes and to look up with your eyes closed to visualize imagine like a window or a hole in the top of your head or a light on the crown of your head if you look up with your eyes closed you'll realize that your eyes are now stuck. If you keep looking up you will be unable to open your eyes now if you can see on the camera her eyes are flickering your eyes are stuck they will not open under any eyes? Yeah they're just stuck like oh my god I can't open my eyes yeah now you're highly suggestible because I know that because your eyes are already flickering now I'll just click my fingers when I do your eyes will pop open just like that see they pop open oh my god so that's the most common suggestibility that so you would be but probably because it's genetic your aunt was hypnotizable so your brain probably works the same way as your aunt oh my god you see right instantly now after that I'm like that's magic like there's something more to this world no it's just but it's actually it is just an it is just a tool my god that's a tool it's like a tool like if you give me a hammer I'll knock down a wall it's it's a tool it is a tool that but see you're a creative person. You probably daydream an awful lot you probably drive on the motorway and forget the exits you probably come home here how do I get here you know I mean you probably if you're watching social media you probably doom scroll you know you're you're you become and for some we do you know when we started that and you said we'll see if you're that 10%.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yeah is it actually 10%?

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Yeah 10 to 15% of the people are are highly suggestible. That's the so they're the ones you see in a stage show 90% of people can be hypnotized in a clinical setting you know because that's more like meditation as I said mindfulness. It's a very calming thing you know that lasts 20 30 minutes. Yeah that will put you in a very light sleep and that allows us to access this but it's it's basically geez I think you'll have a new client coming to you but if you if you imagine like most of our days are humdrum. You know what I mean you'll get up you'll do the same with your team you'll go to the gym you'll go meet your friends you'll go to work or whatever people do you'll drive through here you'll pick up to the crash whatever people do. But imagine you the best the best example I always say to people is if you drive it's penalty points. And why do I say that? I say you'll always remember where you were if you got cut by the speed gun or the speed camera. You know that's a pain in the arse to have three points in my license and I have to pay a fine that's you'll always remember but you now remember the other roads. You never remember any other journey. You only remember the journey where you got the penalty points. Yeah you'll remember a boyfriend or girlfriend who was unfaithful to you. You'll remember a friend who owed you money you'll remember bad service in a restaurant. You don't remember all the good service certain things are important so your mind goes oh this is I don't want to get more penalty points I'll remember this point because this is anything that's sort of traumatic a little bit or stressful you remember that if you went if we went down to the village and we went to a restaurant and the service was terrible you remember that and you just go I'm not going here again we're never going there again we're waiting ages for lunch the food was terrible they charge us too much um like I they there's an example of this actually in real life for me I was in a restaurant in Monkstown one day in Dublin and I went in and they I wanted avocado toast and a portion of sausages that's what I wanted. I was in the mood for that they brought out bread the bread had smeared avocado and it wasn't even toasted and I said it to the staff I went this is kind of like he's like okay and I walked off and I was like okay and I went to pay and I I said God that was really terrible toast wasn't even toasted. He goes were the sausages nice and I said the sausages were grand and he charged me full amount and I left and around a month later I'm driving by and the restaurant's closed down. Oh wow because obviously everybody's gone there and the food is terrible the services are useless yeah and I'm not going back there. Yeah everybody's doing that and then the restaurant closes down yeah so so what like on social media how you always remember the negative comment instead of the positive social media is is is is a blessing and a curse at the same time so I I you know my favorite thing to do on social media is block people. It's just my favorite thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

I know it's becoming my oh I just love it.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Anytime I put a video up and any other oh fake block. Yeah so anyone who sees my social media my hypnotist Jason Collins of my D4 clinic stuff whatever it is on TikTok I'm not seeing your comments if you do anything negative. Because the minute anyone is a hint of sarcasm a hint of rudeness they're just blocked.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

But I also recommend people go and look at Jason social media because I mean it's a lot of footage from your events which is crazy to look at it.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

Because I can't like you'll see in our for the D4 clinic which is my clinic in Dublin we are the highest reviewed mental health clinic in the country. We have over 152 five star reviews from clients but the majority of my clients can't give me reviews because you know you're an alcoholic or a cocaine addict or yeah you're not gonna say hey I'm gonna put a post up about that so it's other stuff that people can review you know let's say it's someone struggling with you know I'm gonna go off my own traumas and pass now let's say it is someone who struggled with an eating disorder um can they go to you and get help for that no okay let me explain why my wife is a pediatric dietitian okay in Crumbling hospital for 20 she just recently retired to become a dog groomer but she still works privately but she was an expert in pediatric dietetics okay she's like literally really clever and she would specialize in allergies for babies that would be like feeding issues for babies that would be her thing um so if you rang me and said I have anorexia I have bulimia I would say contact um body wise yeah someone like that that's what I would do um you would need a team it's like someone says I'm a can you help with addiction I said okay are you drinking too many glasses of wine on a Saturday night I can help you with that if you're doing a line of coke and you shouldn't be in it and you want to get out of that or you're vaping or you're swapping I can help you with that. If you say I'm a heroin addict or I'm a chronic alcoholic I would say you would need a team you would need a John of God's a Rutland centre. The same as you know don't get me wrong if you ring and say I'm eating too much chocolate I'd say yeah I can help you. The only food disorder I work with is a thing called selective eating disorder which would be primarily in younger people who would live on chicken nuggets and chips. Yeah yeah and if they tr they want to they get old and they go, I want to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, I want to eat a healthier diet but every time they try and eat they gag. It's like they want to eat a banana but they actually start physically choking. We can cure that very that's very effective for that. Wow. Yeah that's really effective.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

And then let's say it's something like just someone struggling with their confidence.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Yeah, that's what we do.

SPEAKER_00 43:56

Like when I and I still struggle with acne flares up from time to time Today was a bad day and it it'll be in my head coming in here. But so someone could go into you and just you could hypnotize them to not feel that, I suppose, self-destructive process of that.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

That's what we do, yeah. So it would be reducing anxiety, would be the number one thing I do. That it used to be weight loss and smoking, now it's anxiety.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

You're saying there's typically a 93% success rate after six sessions, yeah. After six sessions of hypnotherapy.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

And also the hypnotherapy that I do, I record it. So we'd record it on your phone, so you'd redo it at home. So you're not just doing a session, one session, like you do with a counsellor.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

And when you say redo it, you're sending people into that state of hypnosis. Like, do you know the way I I still cannot believe I was just here trying to open my eyes and I physically could not open my eyes. Do you send them into like a state like that?

SPEAKER_01 44:47

It would be more of a it would be more like meditation. I that's the way I describe it. Hypnotherapy is more like a meditative state. Yeah. It would be more putting you into a very relaxed state, your body was sort of, whoa, this is really sleepy. And then when you're in that light sleep, you're not asleep. It's very important, and you're not awake. You're in that world in between. The scientific thing is called a theta state. It's basically the daydream state before you wake up in the morning, before you go to sleep at night. When you're kind of just dozing, you know?

SPEAKER_00 45:12

I just see, like I know you call it the world in between or the scientific name there that I digress.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

The theta state is just the this the brainwave that you're at, because you're not wide awake.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

To me, that's like the magic state. That's to me, that's like there's more to this world than the state. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Well, it's it's do you think that or is it a good thing? No, it's it's it's it's a scientific thing, it's not a spiritual thing. The scientific thing is that we can also use hypnotherapy, and I'd recogni there's a really good program on Netflix, and everyone has Netflix now. Uh, it's called Hear My Voice or Mavoie. It's a Belgian documentary on Netflix, you watch it, and it's about two surgeons who perform all surgeries using just hypnosis, no anesthetics. Surgeries, surgeries, yeah. We can use hypnosis. So if you're if you're having a baby, you can listen to hypnotherapy, it's hugely popular. Hypnobirthing, it's called hugely popular.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Well, I've heard of hypnobirthing. I had a friend of mine who I think wanted to go that route because of complications, then she couldn't. But so is that basically helping you to do it more natural?

SPEAKER_01 46:07

It's basically for people who can't take an anesthetic.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

If you can't take an anesthetic, um, or you choose because there's a lot of side effects if you get knocked out. But they've done a lot of documentaries on this over the years, and people can watch them on YouTube. There's a big one on the channel four years ago where they performed live hernia operation where they cut someone open. And there used to be a famous Dr. Funkel there actually in um years ago. Um his name escapes me, but he was based in the Bagger Street hospital and he performed up to 6,000 surgeries in Dublin with uh hypnosis instead of anesthetic.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

But that is insane. Like I just do not well, I guess I do now, thanks to you. I was gonna say I don't understand why more people are not hearing about this and talking about this, but that's because of the industry.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

You know, go outside here, go to France, it's huge, go to Belgium, it's huge, go to Australia, it's huge. Again, Ireland is, you know, uh not dissing it, but we're like, look at our health system, we're years behind anywhere else. The first thing people will do with anxiety is they go to the GP. The average GP, some are brilliant, guys like Harry Barry are amazing doctors, and then there's other doctors who aren't. Yeah. And the problem, like any profession, the problem is that the average GP will see you for seven minutes. What are you gonna do in seven minutes? So that you're not gonna.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

And I always feel high dumb by when I leave the doctor.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

So what happens is they've got seven minutes to see you. Yeah. The problem is you want something to fix your anxiety. And think about a medical doctor. Why that's first people's protocol, maybe it's drilled into us from mute, I don't know. Think of the name. They are a medical doctor. The only thing they are an expert in is medicine.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

It's I always joke in the clinic, I say it's last like you know, go into a plumber and ask him to do your electrics. He's not a plumber. I mean, so that's all they that's all there's some are very good, and some will say no, I'm not gonna give it to you. Yeah, has this place? Like, if you find you banging your head against the wall, we want to give you drugs, great. But the problem with a lot of the time is that the first protocol, when it should be the last protocol, and may I uh exaggerate on that a little bit by saying, look at the medical profession, they are brilliant at some things. Emergency medicine, brilliant at. You know what I mean? There's some things they are absolutely perfect at, and I recommend them all day, every day. Mental health is not one of them. Look at the medical profession over the years at mental health. Look at the way they treated gay people, look at the way they treated people in asylums, look at the way, you know what I mean? It just goes on, electric convulsive therapy. The list goes on and on and on. Medical profession, mental health is not their specialty. That's why psychiatrists or psychologists are the people you go to. But people's first protocol is always the GPU.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

And then would the term be for you a hypnotherapist?

SPEAKER_01 48:27

I'm a hypnotherapist. I I would consider myself a psychologist who specializes in clinical hypnotherapy.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Okay. And I know you said there say uh 10 to 15% of the population highly, it's mad now, I'm like I'm looking to the left or whatever what you told me. Uh highly susceptible.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

When you are in clinic, yeah, uh, you said 90% of people that I would say in the clinic would be, but the other 10% wouldn't come and see me.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Right, okay. So I was going to ask you in clinic, have you ever had a situation where you just cannot get someone into the city?

SPEAKER_01 48:59

So if someone doesn't want to be hypnotized, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

But it's funny because I wouldn't say I wanted to be hypnotized. I was intrigued by it, but it but I.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

But remember, the difference is now what we did with you is stage hypnosis.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

It wasn't that's just the fine.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

No, trust me, if you wanted to do hypnotherapy, you would be a very good candidate because you're in that top 10, 15%.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Well, I'm sold, like I'll be both.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

But that's just the way your brain works. Yeah. Remember, 90% of people coming to see the hypnotherapist out of the population are coming in to be hypnotized. They want help with smoking, they want help with getting off cocaine, they want help with overcoming emotions.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

They're not skeptical, they weren't.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

They're coming in. 50% of what I do in the clinic is the psychology part, is the talking therapy. You know, let's talk about this, uh, building rapport building, and then explain, look, we'll just we'll put you under Elytrance, they know where they are. Um, my clinic would be very much, I would call it immersive hypnotherapy. So in the room that I work in, because I have a clinic on the side of my house, I would have speaker systems. So when they get you to visualize a beach, you're lying back, we lie people back on a couch on a recliner, we'd have a blanket over you, so you're loving and cozy, you'd have an eye mask to block out the light in the room, and then we have speakers. So when I get you to close your eyes and visualize a beautiful beach, we would play the sounds of the waves coming in and out. We would have a heater, a blow heater on one side, uh a dicing heater that can be hot or cold air. So when I'm getting you to visualize the beach, I would turn that on, you would feel a warm breeze. You would hear so the only sense you're using is your hearing, which means that the only thing you can use is your imagination. So I'm getting your line back, I'm getting you to visualize the waves coming in and the beautiful blue sky, and I'm playing sounds of birds singing, and you're feeling the breeze and your face. It's like a dream state. You're just kind of whoa. You gotta kind of sway in here. That's what I'm saying. I often say to a lot of ladies, I get in, because I get a lot of uh mums in, you know, kid people, kids, and I always say we call this mammy time. You know, because they're like, whoa, this is like we know they just kind of drift off into a little, little, little daydream state. But then we give so the so the anxiety goes down. But what happens is the defenses go down. Because the defenses go down, the trapdoor between the conscious and unconscious opens. So Rodrigo's saying, You're not gonna be anxious anymore like a counselor would. I'm saying you're gonna relax and you're gonna control this and you're gonna turn it down. Like I always say to people, imagine your anxiety is like a dial, and in that state you can just turn it down.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

In that state, when you turn it down, when you come out of that state, does it go back up?

SPEAKER_01 51:15

No, because well it does on some things, but what we've done is we've given you a tool. So, unlike when you leave a counselling session or whatever, you have to walk out into the world and you have to go back next week, do this again. But because hypnotherapy can be recorded, you can go home, you put it on again.

SPEAKER_00 51:29

Okay, you do it again. So I say this to you again, I guess I'm nearly being selfish in in putting a personal thing to you, but also I think this will help a lot of people, and I don't mind saying it. Let's say I have gone to counselling recently to deal with my sensitivity. I am such a sensitive person, and it's a blessing, but also I feel like it is a curse. I hate it by times, I love it by others.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

And is it sensitive to other people's opinions?

SPEAKER_00 51:54

Yes, and just everything, but more so people's opinions, people's comments. It mightn't even be that bad. I'll take it up the wrong way, I'll take it home, I'll stay awake at night thinking about how something might have upset me that wouldn't have upset someone else because they'd move on and forget about it. And I've kind of just been told that is just who I am, and I will probably never be able to change how sensitive I'm so so I from walking away from these sessions and going, right, I have to live with with being.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

The worst thing I've let me tell you, the worst thing I've heard from counselors, right, of clients who have gone to counseling. And again, don't get me wrong, I'm not this one.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

I love the talking.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

Some of them some of them are brilliant, so again, it's like any like some hypnotherapists are great, some are terrible. I'm not saying that everyone's brilliant, but what I would the worst thing I've heard from people going to counselling long term is they've come back and they've gone, okay, this is lovely. She's she or he is a lovely person, and then we have a nice chat, but I'm still in the same place. Like this hasn't a problem. And the counselor has said this to them, and this is where ethically I have an issue. They'd say, Well, you don't want to leave because you don't want to undo all the good work.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Oh, now that's a bit and I was like, Oh.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

So the person themselves would say, This is lovely, but it's not hasn't resolved my fear of flying or my problem or whatever the hell it is. The councillor has said that.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Now that's shocking. I get that, like, you know, look, it's been a huge help to me, and there's tools being put in the toolbox, but I find it hard to open that toolbox. Whereas I feel like the tool you give to people, obviously they can, you know, bring it home, replay it, they have no problem opening that toolbox then.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Well, I would that's what I would say. I would say that we give people the tool to turn down that dial. But the way that all hypnosis is is rote learning. So if you think about anything you've ever learned, because people say, I can't be hypnotized. Okay, have you ever driven on the motorway and forgot the exit? Have you got, you know, have you just yeah, have you watched Netflix and fallen asleep? It's you're hypnotized 70% of your day. Yeah. You don't call it hypnosis, you call it daydreaming. These days they're calling it manifestation. That's a new buzzword. That's hypnosis as well. Yeah, that's actually my happy hypnosis. My can is selling it every day now. He's a hypnotist, the world's most famous hypnotist. He's selling, oh now it's manifestation.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

So you're telling me manifestation is really just hypnosis that we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

I'm telling you that mindfulness is hypnosis. I'm telling you that manifestation is hypnosis, visualization is hypnosis.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

That we can do to ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

But why do so many people struggle with manifesting?

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Because we can't really self-hypnotize. No, not so much that. It's because the problem with manifestation is it's it's it's a very social media buzzword. Yeah. The reason they're saying you can manifest yourself to be a millionaire. Well, no, you can't. Yeah. You've got to do hard work.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

Just like your vision board, like I did a vision board for the first time in my life on New Year's.

SPEAKER_01 54:28

But vision board is just like when I started journalism, I wanted to become the most famous and the most successful gossip columnist in the country. And I found a guy who was doing it, and I copied everything he did until they overtook him. I do the same with the band business when I was in the end business. I'm in the same in this. And people often say to me, Oh, you've done so many careers. No, I haven't. I was a journalist, I was a waiter who became a journalist. I used the journalism to do my music uh to fund my college experience to become a psychologist. I've spent my whole life talking to people, whether I'm talking to people as a waiter, talking to people as a journalist, talking to people from the stage, or talking to people in the clinic. That's all I do. I'm not trying to be, I don't do different jobs. Yeah. It's just different, it's like stepping up a ladder.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

You know, which do you enjoy more now, the clinical side of things or being on stage?

SPEAKER_01 55:10

Well, both of them. They're 50-50. You know, I love if it wasn't for the shows and the events and the weddings and the corporate things and the universities that I do, I'd be stuck in BlackRock all day, every day. Yeah. I'd never leave my house because that's where I work, that's where I live. So it gives me a little bit of a variation. It's good fun and it's enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

Exactly. It brings fun to it, whereas in clinic it can probably be quite serious about it.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Oh, it's always scarce, you know what I mean? You're dealing with people who are very upset and so on.

SPEAKER_00 55:32

Um, questions. I have a few questions. I love how I've not even looked at all the questions I had each day. They're the best type of uh conversations. Is there a certain type of person that is easiest to hypnotize? Is there I know you said like, do I daydream?

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Do I is there certain those people in the top 10%, but in the clinic in the stage, I want you on a stage show.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Because I want the most suggestions. Never going to a near stage. Because that the I want those 10%, because that makes my life easier.

SPEAKER_00 55:57

I wonder how I didn't end up going up.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

Oh, okay. But it's that's but that's the skill of a hypnotist. The skill of a stage hypnotist, wherever you go in the world, is to find that 10 or 15% of people and then get as many of them on stage as you can. Because you might have the most amazing subject in the world and they won't come up. Whereas you have other people who are kind of taking the Mickey a bit and they want to get up, and you know they're not serious and they're not going to be hypnotised.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

What is one of the craziest things that's happened during one of your live shows?

SPEAKER_01 56:22

Oh, oh, I know there's probably plenty, but it's there's low there's there's there's there's a there was a guy in Kerry who Jason just looked to the left there now, too. Because there's so many. That's what I've said. I got it. But see, you have to distract away from what you're talking about. Um there was a number of them, numbered them. There was a guy who a lot of them had to do with Conor McGregor because when I started like 10-12 years ago doing it, he was sort of really famous at the time. So we would have done a lot of um uh Conor McGregor skits, whereas you would believe that you're Conor McGregor and or your friend is Conor McGregor. One guy, uh who's remembering his name is Nathan, he was an amazing subject. He ran around the wedding uh in Galway uh looking under the tables and in the toilets for Conor McGregor. Another guy, um, Garrett's name was in Kerry, he jumped on the table thinking he was Conor McGregor, doing all the you know, doing the muscles and the pose and the whole lot. Uh that was crazy. There's another guy who we met at two weddings, coincidentally, once in Navin at a wedding, and he got hypnotised to think I was Ronaldo. And that video went viral. But there was a the most famous clip we did was there's a girl up in Dundalk IT who she was a good volunteer in the show and it was great. At the end of the show, I always do this thing. People would see my on my social media, it's really popular. Uh, it's a howling thing. You've probably seen this thing. Whereas at the end of the show, I'll get people to take a drink and they howl because and people say, Why do you do that? Well, I can't record the show when I'm doing the show. So, what I do is I give a suggestion that when you go back to the audience, every time you take a drink, you'll howl like a wolf.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

I saw these videos you can imagine, like for people listening, at a wedding, which most of us have all been to. Yeah, you go back to your table, someone takes a drink, and they actually how it's like.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

So, but there was a girl in in IT in Dundalk, uh, I can't remember where she was, but she we just recorded a six-second clip of her. But the funny thing, I don't know if I can curse, but the the funny thing is she took a drink of water and all like she's surrounded with students in this lecture hall, and she took a drink and howled and went, What the fuck? And it was just such a funny, it was only a 10-second clip, but like millions of views or five, six million views online because the confusion was so real in her because they don't realize people don't remember, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

A lot of times they just go because you think you have control over your actions.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

And you do, but you you hypnosis will not make you do stuff you don't want to do either. Remember, those people are volunteers, that's important. It will not make you, yeah. I couldn't say you'll go and kill somebody. Now, the interesting thing is, again, if people are interested in hypnosis, Darren Brown and another late colleague of mine, a guy called Tom Silver, he did one um where they reckon, and this is where it kind of gets interesting. You're talking about they reckon Robert Kennedy, JFK's brother, he was assassinated in 67. He was assassinated by a guy called Zirhan Zirhan, who's still in prison, okay, who has no memory of doing it. And this was still around the time in the 60s, early 70s, that the CIA were mixing and meddling in mind control. So there is a very, and Darren Brown has done a documentary on it where he he trained, he basically got a the way you would do it, if you came to me as a producer of a TV show and said, Okay, we want to do some hypnosis, we would get a hundred volunteers in and we would narrow it down to the most suggestible of the suggestible of the suggestible, you know? And we'd get 10, but then we'd even really wrote it down. He got three who are highly, highly like nearly 100 out of 100 suggestible. And the last test he did with Darren Brown was he put the three of them in ice baths. Two of them woke up, one of them lay there like he was in a bubble bath. His heart rate didn't increase, he actually lay in this bath full of ice like he was lying in a in a real bath. And his body and his brain didn't spike, nothing happened. He just lay there like he was lying in a luxurious bath. Right? And they did a uh a thing with him then. What they did was, and it was all controlled, is they put him in a theatre, and the the suggestion Darren Brown had given him was you'll get your order from the girl in a polka dot dress. So he's sitting in this theatre, and it was all set up with Stephen Fry in the audience, and it was all again, everything was set up, and this guy was invited and he sat there, and this girl whispered to him from behind, the target is Stephen Fry. And he, in his own, reached under the chair, picked up a gun, and thought it was obviously fake, and shot Stephen Fry, and then sat back down as if nothing had happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

So, you know, there is this very uh that's a very kind of upsetting act for a show. Yeah, well, it was all set up, it was all it was all it's terrifying to know that to know and he had no memory of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

So that's what they reckoned that you know, because there was a lot back in the 60s, there's a thing called Project Ultra, which a lot of people will talk about, you know, in the sort of conspiracy world. It's where there was a movie, the Manchurian candidate, it was originally with Frank Sinatra, I think Denzel Washington did a remake a few years ago. Um, there is a theory that you know there is hypnosis can be used for that, and that's where the fear comes from. Yeah, but it's it's so so like it's never been used in that sense. And that way, you know, yeah, but you know, you could use medicine for the same thing. Yeah, you could say that about anything, you know. You could say, you know, there's people out there, but it in in general, but remember, even that guy that I talked about, he volunteered to be on that TV show. Yeah, so you cannot, you never need to worry about being hypnotized without your permission. Like I can't hypnotize you right here by just saying, okay, no, no, no, you hypnotizer and then you're gonna go out and you know crash your car. No, it that doesn't work. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis, and if you even with the most suggestible subjects, even if you tried to make them do something unethical, they would just snap out of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

Yeah, you would just wake up.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

Okay, I'd like to think I would do the same. You would most people wouldn't. Still shook at the fact that my eyes were so shut there. Um moving a little bit more into the subconscious mind, which is what you do a lot of work on, I guess, or through. How much of our lives are actually driven by the subconscious mind?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Everything, I'd say.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

Would you say that?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

Yeah, everything, because everything is is is everything so let's let's talk about it. Well, yeah, but 90% of your mind is unconscious, but it's un but 10% is conscious, that's just your personality. But everything you do every day of your life and have done every day of your life gets filed away in your subconscious, hence why I was able to ask you about your school friends, and you're able to pop them back into your brain. It's all there, we just don't need it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:09

And you know though people say your thoughts become your reality, and this is like uh it's a quote you'll see everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

It it is, but it it it you know, as you say, that's where it gets confusing because people think manifestation. If I think about being a millionaire, I'll be a millionaire. No, but if you if you think about having a vision board and saying, Well, I'm really gonna focus on getting a house. I really want to have my own home, so I'm gonna plan this as an visual board and I'm gonna plan a strategy and get it, and that's fine. Yeah, um, like interesting, and you'll see this on my social media. Uh like Mel Gibson, that Matt Damon, they've all used hypnotherapy to stop smoking. Roddy McElroy won the masters and did a video. We have it on our social media talking about how he's dabbled in hypnosis to get him to visualize it. It it is a tool to get him to visualize. To be coming a winner, or to to take control of the golf course or whatever it is. It is a tool. It's like you said to me, I'm dealing with anxiety. Okay. And imagine anxiety was a wall, and you're banging your head against the wall, you're punching the wall, trying to get rid of your anxiety. Hypnosis is giving you a hammer.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:10

It's a tool to help you. It is not the solution to everything, it is not an alternative therapy, it is a complementary therapy. And that's a very important difference. You, you know, for example, I work with I've worked with a lot of cancer patients over the years. That's why I did my master's and my thesis in cancer patients. And it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

I read that you had a stress reduction program or something. Yeah, for cancer patients.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

And um but what was interesting was my point is it has nothing to do with well, cancer can be fed by stress. We know that the more stressed you are, it's like your heart, you know what I mean? The more stress in your heart, the worse your heart's gonna be. The more stressful cancer, the more chance it will spread. So what's interesting is hypnotherapy helps with that. It is not an alternative therapy, it means we're gonna do hypnotherapy, we're not gonna do chemo. Not at all. It is a complementary, it complements. If you're going to the doctor, if you're on medication, maybe for anxiety, it'll help you. If you're going to counseling, it will help you. If you're going to the gym, it'll help you. You, you know, so people helped a lady lose around four or five stone, and we're on TV three talking about it, and some of the people are saying, Oh, she said she did slimming world. I said, Yeah, she did slimming world as well as hypnotherapy. Yeah, it's like just because you do hypnotherapy doesn't mean you, you know, it gets you to lose five stone. It gets you to change your behaviors, which help you to lose five stone.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:20

That's kind of the world we live in, where people just want to pay for one thing and let that do the job, and it's never going to be a few.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:33

It's just a tool, it's a tool like anything else. And you know, even if people don't want to pay and see personal hypnotherapists like myself in in my clinic, there's a lot of stuff you can do on YouTube for free. You know what I mean? So it's again, it's like I talked about being healthy earlier on. Going for a walk is healthy.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:48

I just find it so incredible. Like being healthy, I suppose, is one thing, but to me, this is just so mesmer mesmerizing to understand how powerful the mind is.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:58

Let me tell you something. You've just used a hypnotic word and you don't realise it. Do you know where the word mesmerized comes from?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:02

Where's it going from?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03

A guy called Anton Mesmer, who's a hypnotist.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

No way.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

But I do find it just see what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

It's around you. Yeah. It's around you all the time. You're using these words.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:12

And how you can manipulate the mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

I think it's you as an individual can manipulate your own mind to be better. Yeah, to that's what it is. It it comes from like positive thinking. If you look at successful people, yeah, and they just happen to know them because there's success, there's a lot of people we don't know who are successful, but you're Richard Branson's. He's hugely positive people.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

You can have to train your own mind, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:34

Even look at people like Michael O'Leary, who's hugely successful. Now it wouldn't say he's no empathetic guy, but he's very clever.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

And he doesn't care what people think.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:43

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:43

Most people who are psychotic, by the way, I'm saying Michael's not psychotic, but um narcissistic personalities. Donald Trump is the best example.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:51

A lot of CEOs will have narcissistic personalities.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

It's funny you say this because that was basically what I had said in my last session with the counsellor. I was like, I'm just So deeply like annoyed and frustrated at the fact that the people who do seem to be the most successful in this world and get to where they want to go seem to be those who literally lack empathy, don't care about stepping all over other people. But that's why they are who they are.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

That's why you and I can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

I was like amazing that they don't care about other people's opinions, but they also don't care about how they make other people feel. And I just hate that the world is that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

But it's not, but see, that's why CEO uh statistically, a lot of CEOs, and this is something I learned in psychology school, are have narcissistic personality disorder. And they're they're not psychopaths, they're not about killing people.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:34

Of course, yeah. Like you just have to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:36

What you find is that if you look at criminal psychology or psychiatry, what you see is that people who are serial killers are people who've got a narcissistic personality disorder and were raised in a very bad background.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

Donald Trump wasn't raised in a bad background, but he's got narcissistic personality disorder. He has no empathy.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:51

And psychopaths who kill people have no empathy. But CEOs, let's say you're the CEO of uh, you know, a hotel chain, you're a CEO of a fitness chain, you're CEO of an airline, and you have to fire a thousand people at Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:03

You and I be gone, oh my god, I've got to fire these people. What about their families? What about their war majors, their mortgages? But the CEO, he doesn't think like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

That's that's and you're never gonna get to be that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

Look at Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

What he did with Twitter, look at Donald Trump, look at these people. It is a personality type. But it is a personality type that that's why they do that job. Yeah, is because you and I couldn't do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

I know, it's just the part of the world that frustrates me, Jason. Right. We are quickly moving on time, and I have a few other things that you can kind of answer quickly as we as we come towards the end. Every time I have someone on, I ask them to give us a ground shaking confession. And this can be something a little bit more personal if you have one. So that is confessing to us something that you've done in your life, big or small, that has literally shook the ground. I feel like for you it's literally going back to college at ambivalent. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:48

The list is long. The list is long. I don't know what I've what I've you know. I think I think saying yes to stuff has changed things. I think I think the one thing I would say is that that that that my personality has as much as it can be, is not caring what other people think. I don't really have time for other people's opinions because anytime when I went into journalism, I was told I have an uncle who had said to me, Oh, you don't want to do that. See, I was an academic in school, remember? So I was set up for failure. They were like, You shouldn't do that. You're not really the clever guy in the class, you're not the academic guy. And yet I became successful as a journalist. Then they said, you know, and my aunt saying to me, Oh, music industry, you're gonna do this music thing. Oh, it's the worst industry to be in, you'll never do that. Da da da. And again, the same thing. And and it's proving people wrong, but it's it's like I as I said, the thing that that I realized is that I'm not thick because I didn't get a good leave in certain yeah, I have a master's degree now from Trinity, as you say. Great, wonderful. It was took me a lot of study to get it. Yes, yeah. I'm not a naturally academic person. My wife is, you know what I mean. As I said, it's just some people are naturally academic and some people aren't. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I'm the the gr the ground shaking thing for me is is no matter what happens, I'm I'm I'm I just keep moving. You know, I would say to people, and this is an interesting Irish people are useless at helping each other sometimes. It's great if you know somebody, but uh you reach out to people on, I'm sure you reach out to people on your social media, uh, you reach out to people on on uh LinkedIn, I would say out of 99 people, of 99 ideas that I have, 99 times that I try and do those ideas, and 99 times that I might fail.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:25

Oh, I wasn't expecting the last video to be 99.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:27

I'll fail. Everything I do, I fail. 99.9% of the stuff I do, I fail.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:31

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:32

So if I I could reach out, for example, for I I am doing 100 plus shows this year. I will do no corporate shows this year.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:40

Because every time I reach out the corporate world, no one comes back to me.

unknown 1:09:43

That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:44

Now, despite the fact I have 300 five-star reviews for my show. And it will be the you know, it's the most wanted show on the social side of things, maybe weddings or events and colleges or pubs, all those type of things.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

Um Do you think that's down to the lack of understanding around?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:57

No, it's it's because they're all book and keep area. But it's just because it's I'm just saying to you, it that's what I'm trying to say, is yeah, when it comes to you know, people give up too quickly. It's you only need one thing to work.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:08

Yeah. And you have to keep on going and knocking on doors that won't open eventually.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

It's like you know, the old or my generation would have saying you're throwing shit at the wall. Yeah, it's thinking. Um but you know, I would never have thought I made a lot of money as a wedding singer. But I did. I would have never thought I was very as a gossip comment, but I was, or as a hypnotist that I was, but because the amount of people who do hypnotherapy courses or do journalism courses or do psychology courses, 99% of the students never do anything with it. Yeah, as you said.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:35

Yeah, um I think there's a definite level of skill needed to do things with it, and I feel like we're not.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

Yeah, but you you you because that's my generation, we just did stuff. Yeah, we just don't have a choice. We you know, you you don't have the luxury. I think that's something that I would find groundbreaking is the sentence that I say to people every day, and it's really something that's helped me is that I don't have the luxury of a negative thought. It's a luxury. Like, for example, we talked earlier on about you you being being into your fitness. Yeah. I would love to be like you, but I'm overweight. I I can't lose weight. Uh because I because I'm not dedicated enough to I'm dedicated to hypnosis, but I would love the one thing that bothers me is my weight. And I wish I could be two, three stone lighter, and but I don't have the willpower to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:16

And could you not get someone to perform hypnotherapy? I don't think you're overweight, by the way. No, no, but I couldn't have to be a good idea. Could you not get someone to perform hypnotherapy on you to help you with that?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:23

But my point is no, it's it's not no, I wouldn't, I'm not hypnotized. You're just not a good subject. Great hypnotists. You're not hypnotists. Great hyp great hypnotists are terrible subjects, just one of these things.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:31

Wow!

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

But I could go to the gym. I can go to the gym, I know I go to the gym. I I walk, I cycle. I'd say cardiology-wise, I'm fairly healthy. I don't think I don't smoke diet and exercise. Yeah, I'm not I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't eat takeaways every day when I'm in my 50s. You know what I mean? The the weight I have on now is not weight I put on last week. Yeah, it's been a pound every so often for years and years, and I got young kids, and you just it gets at the life takes over, it gets at the end of the list. But it's not that, it's just I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy exercise. I'll cycle, I'll walk, I can do that, but going to the gym all day. But that's what I call that's my psychological escape patch. Yeah, I could lose two or three stone, I probably should for my health. Um, but you know what? It's just not my priority. It's it's not something I enjoy that wanna do what you enjoy. Running, I hate running. Uh I've always I hate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

People always say that, like I'll just never love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:18

I just don't enjoy it. I've tried it, I've tried and tried and tried. Eventually if they go, this isn't for me. Yeah, you know, but I I can cycle. I like walking, I like I got to a swim pool, I like sawning.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:26

That's what I would always say it's about. It's not necessarily down to the aesthetics, it's finding a movement form you enjoy. And I will hand on heart say the gym is not that for everyone. Yeah, running won't be that for everyone. Once you find a movement form you enjoy and helps, you know, relieve your stress and everything, fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:40

But for for me, it's just about it's about vanity. It's about like look, most people after they go past 30 or 40 will put on a few pounds. Most of us once you have kids, you kind of just it's not even that like but it's what I mean is even for even for me as a mental health expert, as someone who's so positive, you know, that's the stone of my shoe. Yeah, and I use that as a cycle, as a skill. You know, well, I'm I have the time, I should be in the gym doing two hours a day, I should be eating my quinma, my cucumber. You know what I mean? But like I I don't as I said, I don't eat junk food. I don't you don't eat take. I don't drink fizzy drinks anymore. I drink water is as strong as I get. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't I've run out of stuff to give up. You know what I mean? I'm not sitting there having two packets of biscuits a day, but I probably have a bit of a sweet tooth every now and again. But I'm just saying that's my psychological escape hatch.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:24

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:24

Is I could have the six pack. I have a friend, a great guy called Alan Foreign runs a band, and he's now on this to get 85, gonna be 85 kilos by the summer, and he's I'm journaling the whole thing, and he looks amazing, and he's a couple of years younger than me, but he's like, he's got the biceps down. I'm going, oh man, I have another friend who's done running the marathons, he's separate marathons now. And I'm like, it's just not me. I just I wish I could. And so no one is perfect, including myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:45

So I like how you phrase it as being your psychological It's a skate hatch.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:49

I could easily I could lose the weight if I wanted it, but the discomfort isn't worth the it's just the trade-offs. I I try and I try it. I get that. My wife's I said my wife's a dietitian. I know. I have no excuse. I help other people lose weight, but as she used to say, do as I say, not as I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

You do what you can. I do the best.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:10

You know what? I'm a 53-year-old guy. You know what I mean? I I'm not I don't need to be out pulling chicks in mosquitoes and looking cool on the beach. You know, I'm I do the best I do, and you know, eventually I'll get around to losing more and more weight, and that you know, look, that's just the way it is. And you just but none of us are perfect. And that's I suppose that's the thing to say is that you know what I'm not perfect. I'm not sitting here lecturing saying I'm great and you all need to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:34

But I think it's refreshing to hear someone who, in my eyes, has so much um power over the mind. Can I phrase it that way? Uh, or learning about how to control the mind. It's refreshing to hear you also say you have that patch that you can't or don't necessarily want to double down on, and that's okay too.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:51

It's just I can't we can't change. So some things we we do our best. Yeah, we do our best, and like believe it or not, I would say a good portion of my clients are doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselors. Yeah, these are the people telling us what to do. The doctors come in to stop smoking, they're the ones telling us to stop smoking. So no doubt, I saw a great dietitian online. She was kind of saying, I have my breakfast, yes, I'm having a croissant. I'm a diet I'm a dietitian, I'm not a you know, but you like it. I would be the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:21

People often say, God, I bet you wouldn't eat that. I'm like, you have no idea how many little sweet treats I have in today's, you know. I'll try and have my vegetables as well, but then give me the biscuit afterwards. Like it's a talk of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:30

So so that would they they would expect that of you. Yeah. Oh, I saw that girl Natalie, she was having a takeaway. Oh my god, that's all critical. Look at her giving out to us and then but like so. It's it's I would say, yeah, I would I would say to people in in in respect to you being a social media person on social media that the majority of stuff on social media that I come across as completely fake. As in I work with a lot of influencers, I can tell you being in the social media world, and they come in and they kind of and I kind of look at their social media picture, and you look exactly the same, which is great, it's a credit view because some people come in and the clinic and they go, Oh, what do you do? I'm a I'm an influencer, I have 300, 400, 500, I'm a celebrity, wherever it is. And I go, Whoa, you don't look anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

I know that the influencer world can be a let-down sometimes. But even when in the personality differences between the personality analytic in real life, come here. I'm so aware that we are just at the end. Before we do, I want to do a quick fire with you, Jason. So if you can, these are kind of like quick answers, but we'll see. Biggest myth about hypnosis that it's mind control. Oh god, I love that. Like I even though we've spoken about it, I still see it as being mind control, but it's not. Okay, one thing people do that damages their mental health daily.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:35

Uh stress, anxiety. Worrying about the future. You can't control it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:39

Can heartbreak physically affect the body?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

Do you work with people through that a lot?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:44

I've worked with people through that, yeah. That's anxiety as well. That's stress, that's anxiety. That's the same thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:50

Um something people should stop overthinking.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:54

Oh, uh being afraid of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:56

One thing you'd hypnotize the world is stop doing. I love it. One sentence, you've kind of given us this already, I think, but it'll be a lovely way to finish it up, Jason. One sentence people should tell themselves more often.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:09

I'm not an imposter. Oh, imposter syndrome is the biggest people, you know matter who they are, don't think they're good enough. Or think that someone else is doing it better. I I get that a lot. I I finish I no, I I I find that I I I'm very successful. You know, I'm very lucky. I'm very successful financially, health-wise, everything was. And then I wonder why why is everything going to work? I should be going to work. I should be working nine to five. Why am I commuting? I you know, all these people are going to work in the office from nine to five for their salary to get their two and a half grand a month or whatever people get. Yeah. I should be doing that. Maybe am I am I wrong?

unknown 1:17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:41

Am I cheating the system?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

I need these emotions so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:44

And and I just kind of go, Well, you know, I'm sitting at home and I'm going, I don't have to work today. I I work when I have clients, I don't have clients, I work when I have gigs, I don't have gigs. If I don't, I don't. And I walk my dogs with my wife and I go, Wow, why am I doing something wrong? Am I the one? Should I be like, am I am I missing out on something? And I she's like, No, like I can do a weekend of gigs and make what people make in a month. You know what I mean? I'm not boasting, I'm just saying, yeah, I don't have to go. But I I that's your that's my my thing in my head is the amount of times I've said to my friends, I need to get a taxi plate. They go, why should my taxi plate? I said, because when I feel like crap, I could work, I could just get my taxi and drive. And boy, it's like you're not becoming a taxi driver. Oh my no, no, but maybe I could get a chauffeur plate.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:24

I think you're also a high achieving like your hair. I feel like I'm doing nothing. Yeah, you like to be busy.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:29

Yeah, I'd probably have some type of ADHD or something. I don't even know. Back in our day, you were just tick in school. We're just you just tick. But now it's like, oh, maybe I say HD. But I think I I feel guilty when I'm not doing stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:39

Yeah, I relate to that as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:40

I have to, and and uh there's a Steve, there's a Steve Jobs quote which has really helped me. And it's um when the fishermen aren't fishing, they're fixing the nets. And what that means is that when you're not doing what you do, when you're not like you're a fitness trainer, but you're not training people, or you're a psychologist, but you're not seeing clients, or you're not say shipments, you're not doing there's other stuff you can do. You know, you can do your social media, you can do your business, you can do your accounts, you can do your whatever it is, you can you know organize. There's other stuff you can do when you're not doing the main thing that you do, and that's where that quote comes from. I think that helps me. It helps me to go, okay, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:13

It's you don't have to be I think what I like to tell myself is fit fixing the net can sometimes just be self-care. It doesn't need to be productive. I think that's something I've struggled with. I'm feeling like it always has to be productive.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:23

I'm much better now. I I give out to my wife over this because I love her so much and she's so great. And and but she's like self-care is at the end of her list. It's always the kids or the dogs or me or you know, her family or her dad. And I'm like, you, but you're you're crap form.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:36

Mothers tend to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:37

It's the one thing I see all the time in the clinic, especially with weight gain. I see that so much in the clinic, and it's usually women in their 50s, they've sort of had their kids, they've stopped exercising because they the kids are kids the kids. The husband kept working maybe because the childcare situation so on, maybe they did they stayed at home. They lost their circle of girls because they're with the kids and they weren't working with the girls anymore, and they weren't, and and they suddenly they're 50 and the kids are now teenagers. Like my young my youngest is nine, but my oldest is nearly 14. So, like, they're doing their own thing. They've got their they don't need you, they've lost everything. They've lost their thing, and they're like, Oh shit, I've put on five stone.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

My husband's still working. He's this is a constant conversation I had. I was doing weight loss for a long time in the clinic, and I would say to people, you know, they would go, My husband's still in work, he's still got that circle, he's still playing golf. Yeah, he didn't, his life didn't really change when we had kids, but I stopped doing this and this and this.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

And probably a conversation for a whole other day, um, is losing your freedom, your personality, your your being when you have to. I know it's a fear of my own.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:34

Yeah, it's it's the worst thing you can do. Yeah, I I try and I'm lucky myself. My wife's very good in this issue.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:39

She has her group friends and you have such an understanding of it because you work with people that have gone kind of through all of that again.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:44

The last person she listened to is me, but she like I would say that's her her the criticism I have of her when I say and I say it to her, and you know, because I because I want her to be happy, is that you know, and her and so many women don't self-care enough. Yeah, and I say, look, you know, we're all fine, I'm fine, the kids are older, they're fine, they're not toddlers.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:02

No, do you?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:03

Yeah, when they're toddlers, it is sort of a team effort because it's very stressful and they're you know their babies. But as they get older, you know, it's not about them. They're they just come in and watch TV and just do their own thing. Yeah, but you need to take care of yourself because if you know if mommy's happy, everyone's happy.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:16

I love that. It's really I think that's a really nice note to wrap things up on, Jason. This has been such an incredible conversation. I've learned so much about, I suppose, well, you as a person, your work, you've inspired me to I suppose work hard on whatever it is I'm doing, but not be afraid to to, like you said, pivot and go a different route. You've inspired me to probably work on my own mindset and thought process more. Uh, but also definitely I would be convinced uh to go and try hypnotherapy and go into the clinic and see if it can help you because we all have our struggles.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:50

There's no one who doesn't. I as I said, the one thing I I would leave you on is that whether I'm working with millionaires, sports stars, barristers or cleaner ladies. Everybody out there has problems. You know, and trust me, if you saw some of the problems I see, you'd take your own back very quickly. You know, when you see people who've lost children or dealing with cancer or financial worries, you know, burdens of things that you know, you go, Whoa, you know what? I really don't have anything to worry about. Yeah, my worry is about losing a stone or two. But that's it. You know, if I could do that, then I'd be perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:27

If people want to find you online, where's the best place for that?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:30

The D4 Clinic uh is my website um and the hypnotist Jason O'Callaghan on the socials. Yeah. Uh I'm easy enough to find uh on them, so just hypnotist Jason O'Callaghan.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:39

We'll have LinkedIn show notes and videos and everything that go up as well. I can't thank you enough for your time here today.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:45

It was a pleasure to come down.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:46

Before we finish up, I just want to take a moment to thank our partners again here at Amplify Podcast Studio. You know, having the right team behind you makes all the difference. And Amplify don't just produce podcasts, they build podcasts designed to last. If creating something meaningful in this space is on your mind, definitely check them out at Amplify.ie. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Jason O'Callaghan, thank you again so much for your time today. Traveling down to us here in Carlo to have this conversation. It really does mean so much. I am sure it's going to inspire a lot of people uh to kind of take charge of their life and their path, but also to maybe take up um or to maybe book in with you, book into the D4 clinic if they're struggling with something and hypnotherapy could be the answer. I definitely have a lot more faith in it after speaking to you, after literally being would you say I was hypnotized?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:35

You could be hypnotized within a couple of seconds, probably if I wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:38

So what you did to me today where I couldn't open my eyes and I couldn't stop my fingers from going together. Was it a month stated?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:43

Probably within three or four seconds, like it's probably not you anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:47

Okay, we will leave that until next season, guys. If you enjoyed this one, don't forget to like, subscribe, or leave us a comment wherever you are listening because it does make a huge difference to help us keep going. And it only takes you a little split second. So until next time, guys, keep trusting yourself, keep pushing past the sphere, and keep shaking.