There isn’t a day that goes by that someone doesn’t come into my office wanting some kind of change in their life – reinventing themselves to get a job, a better job, to have better personal relationships, to move past limiting thinking and fears, or to stopping smoking or to lose that excess weight permanently. The problem is that although they want a healthier, richer and fuller life – some of them want the change in their life, but they don’t want to, or are unwilling to make the changes! If you want to make behavioral change – that’s where hypnosis excels.

Albert Einstein’s often repeated quote “using the same solution on the same problem but expecting different results is the mark of insanity.” As a behavioral therapist, board certified in medical and clinical hypnosis, it probably isn’t the mark of insanity – but it is useless.

A man that seemed to be intelligent came to see me in order to stop smoking. To become a NON smoker, an individual will have three sessions within eight days. Very rarely will someone not become a “non smoker” after the very first session. The two additional sessions within the eight days are generally for reinforcement only. My success rate is so high, that I guess that I take it for granted. After five sessions he was still smoking. I asked “why do think that you still smoke?” He said “I love my cigarettes… they are my friends.” Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, he said “it would be impossible for me to get any form of cancer, emphysema, heart disease or to stroke from smoking cigarettes.” Needless to say, I couldn’t believe that he was serious. Despite appearing to be intelligent, it would appear that he had some serious holes and denial issues in his ability to reason. I can’t make him or anyone else, not want to smoke. He will continue smoking until he dies of something, or the quality of his life is reduced to just trying to breathe or beg for the attendants to up his morphine to fight off the pain. It’s sad. He was and is a nice man, but…

An attractive young woman thirty five years of age and about 30 pounds overweight came into my office and wanted hypnotherapy to “lose my fat once and for all”. That established that she wanted the change! Like most people she had gradually been putting on her excess pounds every year. She brought the book with her that had the diet and exercise program that she said, “I’ve been using for twelve years.” She informed me, that she was going to continue to use it. Further she stated “I don’t need your help with what to eat – only losing the weight!” Incredulously I inquired what she meant. She said that she wanted “to get thin using the program in her book.” That was the same program that had failed! She was determined to continue doing what hadn’t worked for 12 years! Interestingly, out of eight scheduled sessions she only came to three. She wanted the results of change without making changes. Perhaps she thought that I could sprinkle pixie dust on her so that she would lose her weight. I can’t make someone make the changes.

Men and women have come to see me with some extremely serious, but fixable issues in their marital lives. Most often, the problems are often of their own making, and behavioral change would remedy it! One man had a beautiful wife and two fine children. His conduct was solvable. He could have saved his marriage. But he wanted to continue in sexual behavior that was diametrically opposed to a loving and trusting relationship. I assured him that he could fix it through hypnosis if he wanted to. He said “I believe you… but what if I don’t want to quit?” I can’t make him want to quit. I have seen countless people that wanted the results of change… without making the changes that were required for a happy life.

Lindsay Lohan and many other performers and people in the public eye seem to want their life to become better – to change. However they don’t grasp that the behavior that has brought them to where they are today, if continued, will yield the same results as it has in the past. They will make no progress. Life will get no better!

If you want to make the necessary changes in your life to have a happier, a more fulfilling and a more rewarding life – hypnosis is the answer. The changes that you want to make can’t be made in your conscious mind… only the subconscious mind. The only way to access one’s subconscious is through hypnosis.  Hypnosis is the bridge to the subconscious mind. Give Bob Crow a call at 404.277.1827

Bob Crow is a behavioral therapist board certified in clinical and medical hypnotherapy. He practices in Atlanta Georgia working with those wishing to overcome stress, panic, phobias, procrastination and fears. With those that wish to perform better in sports, sales, public speaking, to stop smoking, to lose weight permanently, to quit sabotaging relationships and any other area of behavioral change that would make life more enjoyable.

“We just have to go on the cruise. We’ve been planning this cruise for years with Bill and Marie. It will just break their hearts if we don’t go with them.” Well, if in fact it does break their hearts; in all likelihood they will survive it. But are you just be avoiding again, the opportunity for you to lose the weight that you’ve been carrying for a long time? Could this be just another excuse on your part? Do you really even know why you are overweight? Whether you want to accept it or not – it’s for emotional reasons. Instead of thinking about breaking Maries heart, what the about the broken heart that you are experiencing by continuing to be overweight? How about in the private moments of your own life when you are upset, crying and broken hearted about being overweight? Does the concept of setting yourself up to fail at permanent weight loss or self sabotage come to mind?

Ocean cruises? Hello! I can think of dozens of really great vacations that are at least as much, if not more fun. Of course those vacations are not centered around food. Around five to seven meals a day? The brochures show thin people having a great time in their tiny bathing suits playing in the pool. But would you want to be seen anywhere near the pool in a swimming suit? Oh you can pretend you don’t care. You can pretend that as soon as you get home you are really going to get serious about losing weight. But by eating the amount of carbs you are eating on this cruise – you are just setting yourself up for more weight loss failure when you get back home. The more carbs one eats – the more one wants to eat!

Metaphorically speaking, if you want to be slim and trim – don’t stand next to the dessert cart of life. And should you maybe rethink your vacation options? If you are serious about losing weight and keeping it off, all you can eat buffets on land or sea are diametrically opposed and at cross purposes to your objectives… you are ambushing yourself! (Read the chapters in my book and blogs – Cutting back doesn’t work! and Celebratory eating… or are you deliberately trying to sabotage yourself?

Losing weight and keeping it off, and looking and feeling good and being healthy for the rest of your life, require behavioral change, i.e. you must reprogram the cognitive maps in your subconscious mind about how you think about food. Who do you know that’s dieted and kept any appreciable amount of weight off for two years with willpower and discipline alone? No one. That’s who!

Use of aversion therapy with hypnosis is an incredible tool for the chronic celebratory overeater that has self sabotaged themselves for years. Hypnotherapy will give the overeater an entirely new mindset that will enable them to overcome that moment of weakness.

Bob Crow is a behavioral therapist board certified in clinical and medical hypnotherapy. He practices in Atlanta Georgia working with those wishing to overcome stress, panic, phobias, procrastination and fears. With those that wish to perform better in sports, sales, public speaking, to stop smoking, to lose weight permanently, to quit sabotaging relationships and any other area of behavioral change that would make life more enjoyable.

Bob Crow 404.277.1827 www.bobcrowhypnosis.com bob@bobcrowhypnosis.com

This material is the sole property of Bob Crow and his heirs. Copyright 2010 Bob Crow. Copying, duplicating, reprinting or transmitting this material in any form or any manner without the express written permission of Bob Crow or his heirs is strictly forbidden and is in violation of US and international law copyright law.

It was a nice summer day. I had gone roller blading for the very first time in my life at Piedmont Park in Atlanta Georgia. I was not an intuitive skater – in fact I was not even a poor skater, I was somewhere beneath that.

I was descending a long hill when a toddler, probably only three years of age wandered onto the path ahead of me. From riding a mountain bike for some time with a speedometer on it, I would estimate that I was probably traveling at somewhere between 20 and 25 miles per hour. Not only did I not know how to stop, I didn’t even know how to slow down! I did know that if I hit that small child, the impact would probably kill her.

I wrenched my body to the left and hit a ten foot tall, vine covered dirt bank at full speed. It really hurt! I was dazed. I picked myself up and picked the dirt out of my face and eyes and coasted down to the water fountain to get a drink and wash myself off. The only way to describe how I felt was strange. Then my chest began hurting. My first thought was that I had cracked some ribs. The pain became very intense and I took my skates off and started walking back up the hill in my stocking feet to the entrance of the park. When the pain kept increasing I thought that maybe I had fractured my sternum. As I approached the entrance to the park the pain became unbearable and I collapsed. My heart had decelerated so fast against my sternum, that I had suffered a heart attack.

The next thing that I remembered was riding in the ambulance and seeing the overhead light in the ambulance appearing to be getting smaller and smaller. I heard the attendant speaking to the hospital. “Piedmont he’s 70 over 50 and dropping.” A little while later, “Piedmont he’s 50 over nothing.” A few moments passed, “Piedmont we’ve lost him.” After that, they applied the defibrillator paddles and that kept me alive until when we reached the hospital.

I was in the most intense pain of my life. I was scared. Really scared. I knew that I was probably going to die. A man with a very kind face appeared alongside the gurney as I was being wheeled into the emergency room. He took my hand between both of his and said in a voice that exuded confidence, “I’m Carl Jacobs. I’m the best cardiologist that there is. I have the whole “A” team working with me, and they never work weekends. You are going to be just fine.” Whether he knew that I would be okay or not wasn’t the point. He spoke those words with authority and confidence. That was twenty years ago this year. Dr. Carl Jacobs is an incredibly intelligent and talented cardiologist. I have absolutely no doubt that his knowledge and skills saved my life that weekend…. so did his confident voice. A voice that spoke with calm authority. I didn’t know whether I would live or die. But his voice convinced me that he knew, and so I relaxed, knowing that I would live.

Sometimes I have occasion to treat children that have not been trained to behave well, and often show no manners or respect whatsoever. Rodney and his parents were in my office and Rodney was all over the place and his parents were powerless to make him behave. “Rodney – sit still.”  “Rodney what did I just tell you?” “Rodney if you behave we’ll go to Dairy Queen.”“Rodney, when you get home you are going to have a time out.” If parents cannot control their child at the age of four – how do they expect to be able to do it at fourteen? Anyway, Rodney finally got down off his mother’s lap and began to pick up something off of my desk. I said in a firm voice to Rodney, a voice that was confident and that I expected Rodney to obey -“Rodney stop. Don’t touch that. Get back up on your mother’s knee.” He did. The amazed parents ask why he would listen to me and not them? I said “my voice conveyed confidence and authority and he knew that I expected him to obey me.” I said to them – “children know when someone is serious by the tone and strength in their voice. If you are not firm and if your voice is not full of confidence, don’t even expect him to obey you.”

A confident, self assured voice of authority works wonders whether you are advancing your point at the office, a civic group, church and especially if you are delivering a speech. If you are on a conference call or a meeting and you use a negative modifier – then you have just lost the ability to influence anyone. Something like this sabotages you. “This might sound like a dumb idea but… “If you think that you have an idea that is dumb… why would anyone else think that it is a good one?

If you feel that you could use more confidence to raise your children, to excel at public speaking, in grow in your career, call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827 for a complimentary consultation.

Bob Crow is a behavioral therapist board certified in clinical and medical hypnotherapy. He practices in Atlanta Georgia working with those wishing to overcome stress, panic, phobias, procrastination and fears. With those that wish to perform better in sports, sales, public speaking, to stop smoking, to lose weight permanently, to quit sabotaging relationships and any other area of behavioral change that would make life more enjoyable.

Bob Crow 404.277.1827 www.bobcrowhypnosis.com bob@bobcrowhypnosis.com

This material is the sole property of Bob Crow and his heirs. Copyright 2010 Bob Crow. Copying, duplicating, reprinting or transmitting this material in any form or any manner without the express written permission of Bob Crow or his heirs is strictly forbidden and is in violation of US and international law copyright law.

“Pop” psychologists have been using the term the comfort zone for years. Their premise is that many people don’t move ahead in life with their dreams, because they are afraid to leave what they are use to, what they are familiar with, what has been called… the comfort zone.  But is the zone that they are trying to avoid leaving, really that comfortable? Is it even comfortable at all? In my behavioral therapy practice in Atlanta Ga, where I utilize hypnotherapy, I find that people are quite miserable in this so called comfort zone. They resist the behavioral changes that could literally transform their lives because they’re afraid of the unknown. One of the strongest drives that man has is to keep things familiar. Why not rename the comfort zone? Why not call it what it truly is – the familiar zone?

Why are some folks afraid of meeting new people? It’s because new people are unfamiliar to them. Why do some continue in an abusive relationship? Why do some stay in an unhappy personal situation? Why do some hang on to a dead end job? Because they fear change. Many would rather deal with the familiar, even though it is unpleasant, rather than with the unfamiliar.

Why don’t individuals leave their old familiar zone? Fear! It is because of fear. Fear of the unknown. They are allowing fear to hold them back; this lets them keep things familiar – and in their mind, they must keep things familiar!

Many people didn’t realize it, but when they tried in the past to make changes in their lives, they attempted to do so with the willpower and discipline of their conscious mind. But… their efforts were doomed to fail from the start because one cannot make lasting behavioral change in the conscious or thinking mind – only in the subconscious mind. When things didn’t work out the way that they had planned, they became discouraged. They then reverted to their old familiar behavior! Familiar… but not comfortable.

Through hypnosis, one is able to access the alpha and theta states of the subconscious mind; therefore one is able to bring about true behavioral change. And without behavioral change… things will stay pretty much the same as they have been in the past.

Hypnosis is the bridge to the subconscious mind.  If you want to change your life – you’ve got to be willing to make changes and move out of your familiar zone. You cannot move ahead and stay where you are at the same time! The choice is yours. If you have decided that your comfort zone really hasn’t been very comfortable  and has been holding you back from a richer and fuller life, call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827 for a complimentary consultation.

Bob Crow is a behavioral therapist board certified in clinical and medical hypnotherapy. He practices in Atlanta Georgia working with those wishing to overcome stress, panic, phobias, procrastination and fears. With those that wish to perform better in sports, sales, public speaking, to stop smoking, to lose weight permanently, to quit sabotaging relationships and any other area of behavioral change that would make life more enjoyable.

Bob Crow 404.277.1827 www.bobcrowhypnosis.com bob@bobcrowhypnosis.com

This material is the sole property of Bob Crow and his heirs. Copyright 2010 Bob Crow. Copying, duplicating, reprinting or transmitting this material in any form or any manner without the express written permission of Bob Crow or his heirs is strictly forbidden and is in violation of US and international law copyright law.

Many of the weight loss referrals that I receive in my hypnotherapy practice in Atlanta Georgia, come from surgeons that have performed gastric band bypass surgery on patients that have then regained their lost weight after the surgery. The majority of the patients that have undergone this potentially dangerous procedure that requires general anesthesia, have regained most if not all of their weight within two years of their surgery! With all of the risk involved with the tremendously costly gastric bypass surgery, how is this possible? It’s because this invasive surgical procedure does not address the reason that the patient was/is over weight in the first place. Without dealing with this problem, the patient will continue the eating patterns that caused them to be overweight, and in all likelihood regain their weight.  Some have likened the drastic surgical gastric bypass surgery procedure, as like putting a band aid on a broken leg instead of repairing the fracture!

Diets utilizing will power and discipline don’t work for permanent weight loss and never can! In fact, the will power and discipline generally give out in 72 hours or less, and the individual has failed at, and then quits yet one more diet. The what’s the use feeling then sets in.

That the virtual gastric bypass procedure is infinitely safer is not open to debate, but the overwhelming reason to do the virtual gastric surgery procedure through hypnosis instead of the surgical bypass surgery, is not that it’s a less expensive and safer, which it certainly is, but because the virtual gastric bypass procedure  deals with the issues that have brought about the overweight condition in the first place, thereby delivering a permanent solution. The virtual gastric bypass procedure  addresses the root cause of the patient’s weight problem. It is also thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars less costly and the patient does not have to experience the painful recovery that one does from the surgical procedure.

No one overeats because their body is calling for more nourishment. Individuals overeat because of emotional reasons. They’re sad. They’re lonely. They’re worried. They’re angry. They’re stressed. The list goes on and on. One overeats to feel better and to overcome whatever hurt that they are experiencing.

In a word, surgical bypass surgery is a mechanical and temporary solution to an emotional problem, whereas virtual gastric bypass surgery is the cure to the emotional reasons that one over eats. The cues to overeating are found in the cognitive maps of the subconscious mind. No amount of mechanical  (surgical), or talk therapy utilizing the conscious mind in the beta brainwave state, will remedy the causes of overeating. Overeating must be dealt with in the subconscious mind – and hypnosis for over three hundred years has been acknowledged as being the only bridge to the subconscious mind.  The bottom line is this, virtual gastric band bypass surgery utilizing hypnosis therapy works!

The individual electing virtual bypass surgery will not have to experience the stress of being in a surgical suite, the anesthesia that produces  the constipation, the cutting, the sutures, the staples and of course the convalescence period. The actual speed for the loss of weight to the virtual bypass procedure through hypnotherapy and the surgical procedure  is similar. One does not leave the hospital with a huge weight loss with the surgical procedure, it takes time for the body to use up its fat stores with either method.  For a complimentary consultation to see if virtual bypass surgery is something that you might consider – call Bob Crow at 404.277.1827.

Bob Crow is a behavioral therapist board certified in clinical and medical hypnotherapy. He practices in Atlanta Georgia working with those wishing to overcome stress, panic, phobias, procrastination and fears. With those that wish to perform better in sports, sales, public speaking, to stop smoking, to lose weight permanently, to quit sabotaging relationships and any other area of behavioral change that would make life more enjoyable.

Bob Crow 404.277.1827 www.bobcrowhypnosis.com bob@bobcrowhypnosis.com