Change is here and ready. The real question is, are you?
This incident occurred nearly 10 years back, but the memory is as strong as it happening yesterday. The lesson learnt is of course evergreen.
It was a Friday evening. I had just performed my mind-reading show for a multi-national company at a five-star hotel in Bangalore. The audience had been great and it was a show I was happy to have delivered right. I was preparing to leave the venue and head back home. One of the members of the event management team, Balu (name changed) offered to walk me to the car and see me off. He was anyway planning to catch a long-awaited smoke, after what had clearly been a long and tiring day.
As we emerged from the elevator and walked towards the front door, Balu suddenly confided in me that he knew smoking was not good for him. He went on to add that he had been meaning to give it up for a long time now, and had tried various options to quit smoking. The cab to take me home had arrived and I was about to get into the car. And it was at this exact moment that it happened!
You should understand that my being a psychic entertainer and corporate speaker dealing with topics of persuasion, influence, and people behaviour has a certain effect on the people around me: they begin confiding their woes and pains, mostly unsolicited. This is further accentuated when they have witness my mind-reading acts: they want to tell me their thoughts, troubles, and problems, hoping for a magical or hypnotic solution to their ails.
It had happened. This was the moment when Balu asked me, "Can you help me, Nakul? Can you help me quit smoking?"
I have been in this exact situation many times, and each experience has taught me new things and new perspectives. I was trained in methods of Hypnosis and NLP in my early teens, and had since then honed my skills not only via various techniques of persuasion, but also insights into the human psyche via my work on and off the stage.
“Can you hypnotise me and make me quit smoking, Nakul?” he asked me. “Can you do that?”
"Yes, I could do that. But if you want to really quit smoking, and you already know that it is bad for you, you have already covered most of the journey," I pontificated. "It is very easy for you to quit smoking, Balu. You don’t need hypnotism. Don't smoke your next cigarette. Stop with the lat one. Walk back, take the elevator down, and go back into the hall. Give it up right here, right now."
That logic did not appear to find any connect with Balu. "No, Nakul. Now I have come here to smoke. My mind is made. So I have to smoke now," said he, displaying his strong-minded character. “You can help me quit smoking another day by hypnotising me,” he added kindly.
Not one to give up easily when help has been sought, I changed the topic slightly, to ask him, "How many cigarettes do you have in that box?" "One," said Balu, showing me the lone cigarette in an otherwise empty case.
Off I took the little white stick from his hands and pushed it into my left fist in one elegant motion. Poof! A moment later I opened my fist to show it empty. With a finesse that should have done any prestidigitator proud, I had managed to vanish his cigarette!
This particular magic trick did not impress Balu, who immediately asked to see my other hand. Not letting my disappointment show (and making a mental note to increase practice and work on my sleight of hand skills), I gingerly brought the cigarette out of my suit pocket. Before Balu could pluck it from my hand, I proceeded to slowly and ceremoniously tear it into little pieces — with no intention of performing a magical restoration. Putting the small, now unsmokable, pieces of what had been a costly cigarette back into its box, I handed the box back to him saying, "There! Now you can head back, for you have no cigarette left to smoke."
Our man was clearly made of stronger mind and will, one of those that do not easily back down despite the odds. "I will go and buy a new one, for I have to smoke," he said.
"Sure! You can walk out of this compound, deal with the traffic to cross the road, buy a cigarette, and come all the way back… or you could choose to just turn around and head back to the hall right now and enjoy your dinner," I elucidated, deploying all the powers of persuasion and influence I had honed over the years. As my cab began its long journey to get me back home, I looked over my shoulder to see the determined man start to negotiate the heavy traffic and cross the street to get a new smoke.
Clearly, change was ready, but Balu was not. Despite having a clearly stated, well-defined wish: to give up smoking, his wish was not yet a want; and definitely not yet a need. Even before my cab turned the corner, my mind started to fill up with all those philosophical lessons on the Today versus the Tomorrow. The significance of the Now, and This Moment was never more evident. For everything else is just a different way of saying: Never.
PS: As you have already guessed, Balu never really got back in touch for that hypnotism session.
(Image courtesy: DALL-E)