By Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Here’s something new to try –using your brain for a change.
Hypnotist/mentalist Michael Anthony spoke to the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors recently at the Jacksonville Marriott and helped them learn to open their minds.
“Sometimes the smallest shift in our behavior makes all the difference in the world,” said Anthony. “By a change, I mean, changing the way you connect the dots from a thought to a result.”
Anthony performed some extraordinary tricks for the audience.
He chose a person from the audience and asked her to pick a number from 1-100. Then he studied the person as she held the number in her head. He then asked her to reveal her number and he handed her a piece of paper that said the number she was thinking of.
He also picked another person from the audience and had them call a friend on their cell phone. That friend was to think of one card from a deck of cards. He then held up a card that he had previously taken from the deck of cards that matched the card the person on the phone revealed they were thinking of.
Later, he had four participants from the audience come on stage and draw a picture. Then he watched each person’s behavior as he asked them if a certain picture was theirs. At the end of that demonstration, he correctly identified each person with the picture they had drawn.
“Why would a real estate organization bring in an entertainer?” asked Anthony. “Because a truth I have learned is that your mind will make you or break you. I truly believe that the quality of our lives is in direct proportion to what we are thinking.”
Anthony said there are two steps to improving the quality of your life.
“You need to eliminate any and all negative thinking from your life,” he said. “We replay the negative aspects of our lives over and over in our mind. When we play our worries, dislikes and failures over in our minds, eventually we start to carry them with us. The same principle works in reverse. When we focus on what is good and exciting magic happens. We don’t see it, but it happens. When we focus on what is good, other people can just sense it. They want to be entertained, hear what we have to say and buy what we have to sell.”
The second step is to implement the law of expectation. Anthony said when you expect something to happen then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“When you expect good things to happen, they will,” said Anthony.