Reprogram Your Mind: Craig Meriwether on Healing, Hypnosis, and Self-Mastery

Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show, an association with Believe Entertainment. Today we have a special guest on the show, clinical hypnotherapist and NLP specialist Craig Merriweather. How you doing today, man?

Hey CJ, I'm doing well.

How's yourself? I'm good, man. So Craig, man, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your background.

Well, probably just to get the elephant out of the room, I am a hypnotherapist. I use hypnosis to help people with various issues of emotional issues, maybe mindset issues, limiting beliefs, lack of confidence, and even physical issues of physical pain and things like this. It's not what you see in the movies. It's not what you see on TV shows, certainly not what you see in, you know, Las Vegas or in comedy clubs or things like that.

Yeah.

What's extraordinary about this work is just by kind of relaxing your mind and body even just a tiny little bit, you can access the power of your subconscious mind. And really what this is all about is the placebo effect. And you probably have heard of placebo effect when there's research being done for like new medication. Like let's say some pharmaceutical company is doing something about, you know, high blood pressure medication and they have to have the group that gets the sugar pill and they do that because they know mind will heal the body. They literally have to account for that in their research. And so they're doing high blood pressure medication. Half the group is going to get the sugar pill and the other group is going to get the real medication. Then they see, you know, let's say 30% of the people in the control group who are getting the sugar pill get better. They lower their blood pressure. They're doing that through their own mind. They're being tricked into it, but they're literally using mind to heal their body. The real, you know, medication— the people who are getting the real drugs to lower the blood pressure. Let's say 40% get better. Well, they now have to subtract 30% because maybe they healed themselves through mind too, and the medication had nothing to do with it. So really only 10% got better on the high blood pressure medication. That's good enough, and I'll put on the market for $50 a pill. But nobody really knows— yeah, but all these people healed themselves through mind. And the reason why nobody really waves the flag around that is because there's no huge money, and they're not going to make billions and billions of dollars showing people how to tap into their own healing power. And, and people do it all the time. They even did— and you can look this, look this up on, on Google— there's even a BBC documentary about this doctor. I believe it was in Houston, but somewhere in Texas. He was doing arthroscopic knee surgery. He's a knee surgeon guy. He wanted to do some research on which methodology was best on healing the knee. Like, there's this kind of flushing method, this kind of scraping method, and he wanted to publish his research in scientific and medical journals. Well, to do that, you have to have the control, you have to have the control group. So he literally did fake surgery on people where he put people under, put, you know, cut the knee, but never did any sort of surgery. They faked the surgery just in case they were somewhat awake, even though they're put out with the anesthesia. Did fake knee surgery on, you know, a third of the people And the results ended up being people who got fake surgery got as better as the people who got real surgery. These are older people who were using walkers and canes. Now these, you know, grandfathers are playing basketball with their grandchildren even though they had no surgery. They literally healed themselves. They even have— even in a situation like a broken leg, okay, you're not going to, you know, heal a broken leg overnight, but even Harvard has done research showing that using hypnotherapy in terms of healing broken bones, they'll heal 40% faster. So they did research showing, you know, all these people with the same, fairly same kind of break in their leg, and they all had casts on their legs. The people who got hypnotherapy healed in 5 weeks, got their cast off in 5 weeks. The people who just had the cast on, like, got their cast off in 8 weeks. Even you help the body heal, accelerate the healing. And so this, it's really all about, you your intention. What does he want? I can't make anybody do anything they don't want to do. It's not like I'm taking control. It's actually giving control back to people in order to heal you. Yes, you want to go to the doctor if there's something wrong with you, but there's also— if you're dealing with some anxiety, if you're dealing with depression, you're dealing with anger issues, if you're dealing with like some hurt and pain that happened even decades ago, that's all kind of stored in your subconscious mind. And so you're allowed to deal with that. I mean, technically, you're the one who put it in there. Granted, unconsciously, maybe even as a child and through a traumatic experience, but you're the one who put those instructions and installed them in your subconscious mind. So that means you can change them. And that's what's extraordinary about this. There's no funny business going on. Yeah, I know there's those comedy shows and those Las Vegas shows, but everybody who goes up on that stage and they dance like Michael Jackson and they sing like Elvis Presley and they quack like ducks and all that, They want to do that. They literally volunteer to go up on stage. They raise their hands up like, pick me, pick me, because they want to have fun. They're exhibitionists. They're extroverts. They want a funny video to put on Instagram or YouTube. They want to just want to have fun. They want to show off in front of their friends. I don't want to do that. Maybe you, CJ, don't want to do it. I'm sure maybe your listeners don't want to do that. But there are some people out there who think that's really fun. And so they go up there on the stage and they have a really good time because that's their intention. Is to entertain and have a fun time, and they do. So what if your intention is to heal? And this is a great modality to help you do that. You know, talk therapy is great, is good, but I've talked to people— because hypnotherapists are often at the bottom of the list, we're kind of the witch doctors, and, and we're really the last hope that people have in order to heal. They've done everything else, they've been to talk therapy for years and years, and they still hurt. They've gone to doctors and that pain in their hip or their low back that won't go away. They've done the MRIs and the X-rays and the pain won't go away. There's nothing wrong with them according to the doctors. And so it's like, well, I guess I'll try hypnotherapy. And the reason why this works so well is because you know what the problem is, maybe unconsciously, but you know what the problem is. And that's what we work with, the unconscious mind. And so there isn't any making you quack like a duck or anything. That's just nonsense. It's about you wanting to heal. And so if you want to come in, let's say somebody wants to come in and quit smoking, that's hypnotherapy is famous for helping people quit smoking.

You can—

we'll quit smoking if that's what you want to do. But smoking cessation is 100% guaranteed because there's people out there who don't want to quit smoking. Yeah, they're just, you know, negotiating with their wife, with their, with their husband, and say, oh no, I like smoking, so I'll just smoke in the garage, or I'll smoke outside, I won't smoke in the house anymore, or I'll, you know, only smoke when we walk, you know, go walk to the park or whatever. They don't want to quit smoking, so I can't make them quit smoking, just like I can't If they do want to quit smoking, I can't suggest to them, "Oh, and go rob a bank later this afternoon and we'll split the money." They're not going to do that. That's against their morals, their ethics. Just like I can't go to the world leaders and hypnotize all of them to create world peace and I can't hypnotize Elon Musk to write me a billion-dollar check. The reason I don't have a billion-dollar check from Elon Musk is because he doesn't want to give me one. So, I can't make him give him one by hypnotizing him with some sort of zombified trans state. It doesn't work that way. In the movies, it works very well that way, but in terms of wanting to heal, you know, just look at the research. And maybe some of your listeners probably know this already, but if you just go to Google, there's a subsection of Google where you can just look at research papers published in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals. It's called Google Scholar. So if you go to just regular Google, google.com, and type in Google Scholar, your first search result will be scholar.google.com, and all it searches— put in whatever you want, but all it searches is research papers in scientific journals, medical journals. And type in hypnotherapy and see the thousands of results that have been published over the last 50 years that show how this— so far, there's research that came out last— 2023, and it was published in Frontiers in Psychology. And it did a 20-year meta-analysis, meaning they didn't do their own research, they looked at other people's research. They looked at 20 years worth of research for therapeutic hypnosis and found it had a 99.2% success rate. That's extraordinary.

Yeah.

What other methodology can you point to that has a 99.2%? And that's not just one research, they look at 20 years worth of research. Again, you can find that on the internet. Frontiers in Psychology, meta— I don't know what you type in, 20-year meta-analysis of hypnotherapy and it'll come up. And, it's published on the National Institutes of Health website. And so, this isn't being hidden from anybody, it's out there and has been out there. It's just unfortunately because of TV, because of movies as a way to move the plot point forward, it kind of gets jumbled up into this thing where they take control of you. It's not, you give back control. I don't fix anybody. And hypnotherapy in and of itself really doesn't fix anybody. You fix yourself. And just like an athlete, you know, maybe they're not playing well, whether it's the Olympics or basketball, football, whatever it is, and they'll bring them off the field. They call it sports psychology. They don't call it hypnotherapy. But you bring them off the field and it's like, okay, just— I want you to close your eyes and relax and just imagine yourself playing at the top of your game. You know, they're doing hypnotherapy to get that player back into peak state. Back in the zone and then get out there and go earn their $40 million contract.

Yeah.

Oh, 80. Yeah, yeah. And so, I know I've been going on and on for about 10 minutes, but it's like it's this pretty extraordinary methodology. It helped me and this is why I get into it. It's one of those things where it helped me so much. I was so fascinated by it. I was dealing with my own anxiety and depression growing up when I was a teenager. That's the 1980s. And so, there's not a whole lot not a whole lot to help you back in the 1980s, you know. Of course, no internet to help you research. Yeah, those SSRI drugs, those Prozac and things like that, that didn't come out until the late 1990s. So you're just kind of— that's the way it is, you know. You're either going to talk therapy or finding whatever book might be at the bookstore or the library or something. But you know, you're a teenager, you're not going to do that kind of stuff.

No, no, no.

So you just kind of, just kind of settled into it, you know. Just thought that that was supposed to be the— that's the way it's going to be. But Got to a point in my life, especially with the birth of my son, it's like, okay, I gotta do something about this, you know? And hypnotherapy really helped me.

So, Craig, let me ask you, man. So, you say in your childhood you went through anxiety and depression. So, is this what inspired you to go into this profession?

Yeah, it really helped me. So, it really started, the depression, the anxiety really started in my teenage years. So, this is 1980s. I graduated high school 1985. And so that's coming up to 40 years, good Lord. And so right into my 20s, again, it's just like, it just— you just get used to it, you know? It's sort of like, well, I guess this is how it is, and maybe everybody else feels like this too. Sort of like, how do you describe, uh, describe color to a blind person? Like, how would you describe green to a blind person who'd never seen green before? So how do you describe like, oh no, you can have joy and you can have happiness and you have peace and you have freedom and you have ease and I don't know. I don't know what that means. I have no idea what you're talking about. And, and so I just, you just settle into it like this is the way it's going to be. And it was really the birth of my son, uh, in the year 2001 that it was like, okay, I gotta get my life together. My mother struggled with depression, uh, I struggle in depression and anxiety. Good chance my son's going to as well, whether it's nature or nurture, whether it's what's getting mirrored in the home, what's being taught in the home is how to react to life or it's some sort of genetic thing that got triggered. Either way, it's good chance he's going to deal with it too. So, I wanted to have some tools. I was like, "Well, I got to figure this out if nothing else than for my son." And, one of the things that really helped me as I— by then, the internet's out, 2001, 2002. The internet's out there so you can really do a lot of research on how to deal with a lot of these things, find a lot of good tools. Techniques and strategies. But I think, uh, it was hypnotherapy that really helped me the most, really clearing out a lot of that hurt and pain that I've been dealing with. And I kind of went in that direction of personal growth and self-development and all that kind of stuff. And eventually it's like, man, I really love this hypnotherapy, and I ended up training, becoming a hypnotherapist myself. You mentioned hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming. These are just all techniques to help kind of reset not only your nervous system but change how you process information coming to you in life. And, it's really what is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again. I mean, we know this. What you practice, you get better at. And, whether it's learning a musical instrument or you're learning guitar or play the drums or the bass or the trumpet or saxophone or you're learning dance, you're learning martial arts, you're learning to walk as a kid, you're learning to ride a bicycle, whatever it is, What you practice, you get better at. So what if you're practicing anxiety and depression? What if you're practicing fear? What if you're practicing just feeling overwhelmed and worried all the time? You literally wire that into your brain just like you wire, you know, your golf swing or wire learning a foreign language or, you know, learning martial arts. You don't get a black belt on your first day of martial arts class. You know, you got to practice taekwondo, you got to practice judo, whatever it is. You got to practice and then wire it into your system. And then, through training, through learning, you get that black belt. But oftentimes, the stuff we're dealing with is all on an unconscious level. And we may feel the hurt and the pain and the anxiety, but we may not even know why. Maybe it was too long ago. You don't remember anymore, but your subconscious mind does. And, In and of itself, your subconscious mind is for you. It's just trying to protect you and keep you safe. It's for survival. It wants you alive, which doesn't necessarily mean happy and successful, just alive and safe and protected. And what it's using is just the information it's gained over the years, even probably since you were, you know, the first day you were born. Here's all the hurt and pain. We don't want to experience that again, so let's form some armor around that. Practice it for maybe years, if not decades. And then we know those people in our lives are the angry people, you know, to drop a hat, they just fly into a rage for whatever reason. They're protecting themselves, they're armoring themselves with anger and rage. Maybe they know, maybe they're not even too far gone, they don't remember anymore, at least in their conscious mind, but it's in there. That's why they're reacting like that. They practiced, and their body and mind are trying to keep them safe from something. It's not very resourceful, it's not doing a very good job at it, you know, but it's just, that's the instructions. It's computer coding really. And just if you're CJ to write computer code, let's say you're writing an accounting program for your business and you put in there 2 2 5, well then that's what you're going to get out. It doesn't matter that it's wrong or not very resourceful or helpful for your monthly accounting. And it doesn't matter how much you type on your keyboard or slam your keyboard with your fist out of frustration or your or talk to your friends, you know, talk to your spouse, talk to your— talk to a coach, talk to a therapist and say how unfair it is that 2 2 5. It doesn't make any sense. It's not until you go into the computer code, like find that line, oh, there it is, 2 2, that's weird, why is that there? You switch it, you amend it, you edit it, you delete it, and you put in 2 2 4, press save, now your equations equal out. It's almost exactly the same thing with hypnotherapy. You have some trauma. And I don't make it— want to make it sound like it's super duper easy peasy, but sometimes it is. You know, you know what the problem is. Not consciously, quite possibly not consciously, but you're feeling maybe that anxiety or that hurt or that pain, and you're feeling it because your subconscious mind knows why. And if your subconscious mind knows why, then you can do something about it.

Oh, so Craig, you've created quite a few programs Let's start with Depression 180 since we talk about depression and things of that nature. Can you tell us a little bit more about this bestselling program?

Yeah, yeah, so this is a program, so like I mentioned before, I was struggling with depression, anxiety myself. I really wanted to get a handle on it and deal with the depression and anxiety 'cause my son was coming, he's gonna be born in 9 months. And while even after 9 months I was still kind of struggling and figuring it out, I was figuring out exercises, techniques, strategies to deal with it. And one day I woke up, you know, there's some trial and error and it was on and off because there's life and there's work and there's a new baby and all that. But I woke up one day and I was like, oh, I don't feel depressed anymore. I don't feel that anxiety anymore. And what I realized is I had this toolbox filled with amazing tools. To deal with anxiety, deal with depression. And I put it all into a book. I actually joined this writing contest. It was kind of accidental. It was just, here's this writing contest and you could get a publishing contract. And while I didn't get the publishing contract, I got pretty close to it. And that just kind of led to just one thing after another. So I was in this writing contest through Hay House as one of their subsidiaries, Hierophant. And while I didn't get to, you know, the publishing contract, I didn't make it to number one. I Apparently, I made it to number 2, the second slot. It was like months-long contest of submitting a chapter and all this kind of stuff. And, that led to the Depression 180 program. That led to an invitation to be in that book, "Pearls of Wisdom." So, that's a compilation book filled with 30 different chapters from lots of different people from all walks of life including Jack Canfield and Marci Shimoff. Maybe some of your listeners might know who they are. And so the Depression 180 program is just all these different tools and techniques because depression isn't one thing. It's more of a, it's not an illness in itself of itself. It's a symptom of something. And that's what's so insidious about depression is, I mean, it could be side effects of a medication. It could be side effects of Prozac. One of the side effects of Prozac is depression, strangely enough. Now, not everybody, of course, is going to experience depression when they take Prozac, but that is one of the side effects. So, it could be side effects of a medication or several medications mixing together creating the depression. It could be a thyroid issue, could be a high blood pressure issue, it could be a brain injury. If somebody's been in an accident, they've shown research that depression can show up 2 years after a traumatic brain injury. So, whether it's car accident or falling off a roof when you're shoveling snow or God, my God, you know, football or something. Why would you ever equate, you know, depression 2 years after some sort of accident that caused a concussion or something like that? So it's pretty insidious, let alone the grief or the trauma somebody may be experiencing. So there's all these different aspects to feeling depression. So certainly when you're feeling depressed or anxious, going to the doctor is a good idea to get a full kind of physical work, you know, workup with the blood work and all that stuff. But there's a lot of techniques. I mean, I'll give you one right here, exercise. And, it may seem ridiculous and silly just like, "Well, exercise it." It literally research shows exercise works as well as medication to cure depression. And, I'm not just saying Monday morning blues or your team lost over the weekend. It's like this is chronic depression. Exercise will cure a lot of people's depression. And so, there's just Little techniques like that. There's bigger ones too, a lot of different mindset issues. But, what's fascinating about this, I mean, that's the kind of struggle with depression, it's like you don't want to get out of bed so it's hard to exercise. But, we were talking about the placebo effect earlier. And, what was interesting is there's Dr. Irving Kirsch. He was researching Prozac and all those SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications, in the early 2000s, and some of that research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, which is a government agency. Now, there is no law that says that you have to publish your research. No law says that. But if the government gave you money for it, you have to send it to the government. And so Dr. Irving Kirsch did a Freedom of Information Act in the early 2000s to get all this unpublished research from the pharmaceutical companies about these anti-depression drugs. And in one of these research trials, again, you have to have the people on the medication, you have to have the people taking the sugar pill. One of the research studies showed that 90% of the control group, the people getting the placebo, got better. They healed themselves. Again, not just Monday morning blues, this is chronic depression. They healed themselves of chronic depression. 90%. It's extra— of course they're not going to publish that. Yeah, but that's how powerful you are, you know. Not just me, not just you, CJ. Everybody, everybody listening, everybody in the world is that powerful. You can do this. And again, so not only just accelerating healing, like with the broken legs, or dealing with physical pain, but it's also, you know, dealing with emotional issues. And so the Depression 180 program came out about 2010, 2011. And, it's a book and there's some on the website, there's a wonderful interview series of— I interviewed 40 different people until published the book when it came out to do it. And, it's a wonderful program. And then, that led to being in that offering a chapter to "30 Pearls of Wisdom," that compilation book, which then led to doing the Mind Mastery Blueprint. There's all these programs that kind of leapfrogged each other. That was all before I even became a hypnotherapist. I was in my personal development, self-growth phase of like just wanting to get this information out there. I struggled depression. I know there's got to be other people. So here's what I've learned about depression. Here's how I helped myself. Here's the research behind it. And so that's what that book was all about. And the, the Mind Mastery Blueprint is sort of like a follow-up to it if you don't necessarily deal with depression., but you want to just feel better and you want to operate at peak potential. Here's some similar exercises, different stuff. But then, I kind of all put that— oh, that led to the podcast. It's all leapfrogging each other. And, I did a podcast, Tipping Point Radio, for till about 2015 or so. And, that's when I decided to become a hypnotherapist. And so, I just kind of had to— all that stuff had to be put on, you know, the back burner, you know, with life and work and now going to school to become a hypnotherapist and all that. It kind of put a period behind all that stuff. It's all out there, but it, uh, I just had to start focusing on becoming a hypnotherapist right around then.

So Craig, you've mentioned this book a few times, Pearls of Wisdom. What can we expect to learn from it?

Yeah, what's interesting about this book is really fun because it's not just one author, it's 30 of us. It was all— it was put out by Hay House. And they do this every now and then. They gather a bunch of their authors or a bunch of us was from that writing contest. I think about 10 of us out of the 30 were from the writing contest that I talked about. And because we got into the top 10, they said, hey, you want to write a chapter about it? But it's, it's just inspirational advice on how to move through life and be your best person. And, you know, a lot of it's just some of my advice, you know, it's been a while since I've read it. It came out in 2012 or so. But my advice comes down to, you know, what you practice, you get better at. What you do over and over is what's going to be wired into your system, into your— literally into your brain. You know, that's why they tell, as you get older, they say always learn something. Learn to play chess, learn to salsa dance, learn a foreign language, learn something. You want to keep that brain active because once you, you know, you retire and then you just kind of muddle about the house, you're not learning anything new. You're at work, you're out in the world, you're with friends, you're learning something, you're doing something. But as we get older, it's like you kind of stop doing that. So that's why they're always telling you, do crossword puzzles, do— learn a new game, like a complicated game like chess or something like that, because you want to keep your brain rewiring itself and learning new things. So you're allowed to do that. Again, if you're feeling anxious, if you're feeling worried, feeling afraid, if you're feeling angry, You're literally wiring that into your brain and it's just strengthening and empowering them every time you feel it. That's not to say you shouldn't feel anxious or afraid anytime. That's what keeps us walking from down a dark alley at midnight even though it's a shortcut home. Don't walk down the dark alley, walk the lighted streets, walk where the people are, keep yourself safe. Here, I live in Arizona, we're talking about that. I mean, not up in Flagstaff but down in Phoenix area, Tucson, You're out in nature, you're down, you see a rattlesnake on the trail. Rattlesnake's not your friend. Don't go up to the rattlesnake and pet the rattlesnake. You hear that rattle, you want that fear to move you away from it. So there, there is a, a need for fear and anxiety, but when it becomes your all-encompassing way of living and this is what you're feeling a majority of the time, that's no good. You know, that's not, that's not what it's there for. Your stress response should not be turned on a majority of the time. You know, it's necessary when something's, you know, happening that requires you to protect yourself. But when the issue that caused the trauma was maybe 20 years ago when you were a kid, or 40 years ago when you were a kid, you don't need to be afraid anymore, you know. And you need to find a way to heal that. And that's what, you know, hypnotherapy is great at, great at doing. Even if you don't know what the problem is, You know what the problem is in your subconscious mind. That's why you keep triggering that anxiety or that fear or that anger. So somewhere within your— that unconscious part of your mind, you know what the problem is because it's trying to protect you from it. But we only have this little bit of conscious mind that we need to focus on work and life and kids and elderly parents and all this stuff going on in life. So oftentimes we can't hold on to those boxes of memories, you know, whether they're happy or traumatic or frightening or whatever they may be. So we store them in the sub— we store them in the basement, you know. Yeah, they're still there, you just may not see them, you know, like you put your old furniture down in the basement or something. You still have it, you just may not see it.

Hey, so Craig, I only got one more question, man. You basically answered everything. First, where can we find the book? And where can we find you on social media?

Yeah, the best place, I'm old school, so I just kind of do Facebook. You know, I do Instagram. I'm not on it all that much. I find that to be kind of a pain because I'm older guy. So, but I mainly do Facebook. And if you just look up Craig Merriweather and/or Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy, I know that's a mouthful, but if you were just to go to Google and search Flagstaff hypnosis because I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, just go Google search Flagstaff hypnosis, you'll see Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy and that's me. And, you can email me from there. The book is Depression 180, which is depression180.com. There's also mastermindblueprint.com. And, I don't know, you can find the 30 Pearls of Wisdom on Amazon. There's also, since we're doing this, I have this program about test anxiety. A lot of people struggling with test anxiety. And again, you don't have to be a high school student, Of course, university students, or you're doing the MCATs trying to get into medical school, or the LSATs trying to get into law school, or taking the bar exam once you've graduated from law school, or you're an electrician, or a plumber, or a firefighter, or a real estate agent, you all have to take tests. So whether you're a 13-year-old taking the algebra final, or whenever you do algebra, that's probably early for algebra, you're taking the math final when you're in junior high school, or you're a 65-year-old bored and you want to start a second career, so you're going to become a real estate agent, you need to take a test. Maybe you haven't taken a test in 40 years, you know. And so it's all about if you're feeling anxious or nervous around taking tests or a job interview, if you're a musician or actor, auditions or public speaking. But it's called Ace Any Test, and you find me there too. Just email me through there.

So Craig, yeah, let me ask you, man, because you brought this up a few times, okay? And so I guess my question is How does hypnotherapy help people heal from early childhood trauma?

Okay, we all have gone through stuff in life that has hurt, that has caused emotional pain and humiliation, embarrassment. The subconscious mind doesn't want to experience that again. It's trying to protect you, so it holds on to those files like in a big filing cabinet. And if anything we experience in our day-to-day living triggers one of those files, we'll, we'll get the warning signals of anxiety or fear. But you're the one who put those files in there. I guess not to say— not to blame you, not to say it was your fault, not say it was fair, not say it should have happened. But you're the one who instructed your subconscious mind on how to protect you. Maybe as a child, yes, certainly. More than likely unconsciously, you even know you were doing it. Certainly through a traumatic experience. But you're the one who did it. And that actually becomes very empowering. I want to make this clear, that becomes very empowering because if you're the one who installed those instructions, that means you're the one who can do something about it, right? It's your power. And this is where I said at the very beginning, it's giving you back control. You don't have to look outside yourself to heal that. It's always good to talk to somebody, whether it's a friend or a family member that you're close to, or a counselor or a coach or something. Always good to have a second pair of eyes on any situation, whether it's business or you're an athlete or you're a musician or whatever the thing is, it's always great to have a second pair of eyes, have a coach. Pavarotti, considered one of the greatest opera singers of all time, had a vocal coach that he saw every year. And so, it doesn't matter how masterful you are, always have a coach. But, in terms of this kind of stuff, it's your control and you can do something about it. And, what's fascinating about this work is sometimes it's just as easy to ask, have somebody even over Zoom, Most of my work nowadays, as a lot of hypnotherapists or talk therapists or even doctors' appointments, is it's over Zoom now, which is nice because then you don't have to travel across town and you can work with people around the country. But sometimes it's just as easy to ask, why do you feel all that hurt? And where do you feel the hurt? I feel all this hurt and pain right in my chest, right in my heart, or my head, or my gut, or something. Okay, why? Why is it there? And you can leave— and I'm being oversimplifying it just for the sake of time, but sometimes it's just as easy to ask, why do you hurt and what do you need to do about it? You know, and you'll tell. You say, okay, I need to do this. I need to tell that child that it's okay. They're going to be all right. All right. Well, then imagine that child's out in front of you and tell the child everything that child needs to hear to make this better.

Yeah.

It can be that simple. A lot of this work is just plain pretend. And imagining. Just imagine that child is out in front of you and tell the child everything the child needs to hear to heal completely and permanently right now. Okay, it's computer code, but sometimes we're just using more of the daydreamy imaginative state of mind and body, you know, just like back in high school math class or whatever, you know, you just start staring out the window. That's all this is, that's all this is. Or you're, you're meeting at work or something, the person's going on like I am going going on and on and on, and you're just like, uh, you start thinking about the weekend, are you gonna hang out with your friends? That's what it is, it's playing pretend, it's getting to that daydreamy state.

Yeah, just had a couple of those meetings last week, like, yeah, and then they call on you, well, what do you think about that, CJ?

Uh, yeah, uh, I don't even know what you're talking about.

And so, uh, so Craig, man, I really appreciate you coming on the show today, man, tell us about hypnotherapy. So is there anything that you would like to share with us or anything that you would like to give us before we leave, man?

Sure. Yeah, I want to tell— I've said this a couple of times, but I want to really hit this hard because I think this is one of the most important things I love to tell people. What you practice, you get better at. And so you can use that to your success or you use it to your detriment. If you're practicing anger, if you're practicing fear, if you're practicing anxiety, yeah, you're going to get really good. You're going to get a black belt. And anxiety and depression and anger? What if you want joy? If you want confidence? If you want happiness? You want peace? You can have it, but again, it's going to take some practice. The Dalai Lama still meditates every day. Guy's 90 years old. He still meditates every day because he knows what is strongest within his mind. Read his books. He talks about the anger and the sorrow and the frustration and despair of what's going on in Tibet. Chinese government's still bulldozing down his monasteries to build roads and other buildings and probably mostly just to give him the middle finger and, you know, just arresting his monks, torturing his monks. Of course he's going to be angry. Of course he's going to feel despair around that. He's a human being, but he doesn't want that to be who he is. So every day he practices loving kindness and compassion meditation. That's his work. That's what he does. But at 90 years old, if anybody was to have it down by now, you think it'd be the Dalai Lama. And yet he's still practicing. Look, ask any 10th degree black belt in taekwondo if they practice. Of course they do. They're still practicing every day. Any dancer, any musician, any master of anything, they're still practicing. So you can have whatever it is you want. If you want more confidence, you want more joy, you want more— whatever it is. But there's a certain relentlessness to this work that Pavarotti, the greatest opera singer of all time, or one of them, went to a vocal coach every year. He was practicing. He was keeping it to, you know, So if the masters are doing it, every gold medal Olympic athlete has a coach, if not several coaches, and is still practicing and rehearsing every day, even though the next Olympics is a couple years away. Or the summer, you know, yeah, their Olympics is going to be 4 years away. You know, they're still practicing every day. So what do you need to do?

Yeah, yeah. You know, that's something that I tell my son all the time. He plays sports, he plays basketball. And he run track. And I tell him, I say, you know, you got Steph Curry, the greatest shooter of all time, but he still practice every day. You got to perfect your craft. And so I totally agree with what you said. Yeah, the more that you practice something, the better that you'll get at it, man. So, so everybody, y'all heard it from the hypnotherapist himself. Hey, practice and you'll get better at it, man. Practice and you'll get better at it. Hey Craig, man, I really appreciate you coming on the show, man, giving us this.

Oh, thank you, sir. I had a fun time. I was really been looking forward to this. Thank you, CJ. I really appreciate you inviting me onto your show.

I appreciate it too. Oh, and one more thing that you said that I got to tell the people, and like he said, for some of us Martins fans, hypnotherapy is not like what you see on TV, and it's not nothing like in Vegas. This thing is real and it's all in the mind. If you didn't take nothing else from that, Take it from your boy, CJ Moneyway. Hey, you have been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. We outta here. Peace.

Thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Don't forget to share this episode with your friends, leave a comment, and drop a review. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Friday for more inspiring journeys.

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