In our dental hypnosis training we teach practitioners how to calm anxious patients. But even my favourite mug can point to some simple ways to manage stress, calm your patients and brand your practice. (It is a pretty special mug!)
It is a standard shape with these words round the sides: Tranquility, good luck, courage, fun, laughter, success, prosperity, delight, confidence, good health, joy, wisdom, happiness, peace, love & bliss.
Notice what happens when you read that list. If you are like most people, just the act of reading those words begins to trigger the feelings they describe. So the word ‘bliss’, begins to bring a feeling of bliss, for example.
It is simply part of how our brains work. To understand something, you have to connect to your representation of it. If I tell you I saw a seagull wearing sunglasses on the beach yesterday, you need to create a mental picture of what that would look like.
The same goes for concept words like these. To understand ‘courage,’ you have to access your associations with the word ‘courage,’ which starts bringing back the feeling.
It’s very simple and very powerful.
Words to Change Your Walk
Concept words can even change the speed people walk.
In one famous experiment volunteers were given word puzzles of which half contained neutral words and the other half contained words to do with old age like “gray”, “retired” or “wrinkled.”
The experimenters then secretly timed the volunteers as they walked down the corridor out of the experiment room.
The group who had done the puzzles with the words relating to being old took almost a second longer to walk down the ten meter corridor.
The BBC did a reconstruction of this also including puzzles with words relating to youthfulness like “fashion”, “ambitious” and “attractive,” which resulted in one volunteer almost skipping down the corridor as she left!
You can see a clip from the BBC programme here:
Three Ways to Apply It Now
Here are three things you can do straight off – for yourself, for your patients or for your team.
Create a DIY Mantra for Yourself
Choose three words that describe qualities that you would like to have at a particular time – when dealing with an anxious patient, for example, or resolving an argument with a colleague. They might be concept words like ‘confidence’ or ‘courage’ or they might be adjectives that describe how you would like to be like ‘balanced’ or ‘professional’. Pick three that are right for you.
And that’s your mantra. You might have different ones for different situations or an all purpose one. My favourite before coaching a group is “calm, open, connected.” Just saying those words reminds me what it is like to be like that.
There’s no particular reason for using three words rather than two or four, but three seems to have a nice rhythm to it.
Suggest It to Your Anxious Patients
They can choose three words to describe how they would like to feel like “calm, relaxed, detached,” for example and can repeat those to themselves. Top tip: Tell them to say the words in their heads in a tone that reflects the feeling not their ‘anxious voice’. So they will probably say them a bit slower and deeper as if they already were calm, relaxed and detached.
Brand Yourself and Your Practice
- What three concept words would you like your patients to use to describe your practice?
- How can you communicate that?
A practice near me has this in their window. (The picture captions read “friendly, kind, happy, experience, caring, tooth whitening.”) For advertising and branding this much more powerful than a wordy ‘mission statement.’ It could be as simple as having your key words on the wall, on your website or letterheads.
Competition
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