Living Dangerously - Issue 33

And so we begin. "Close your eyes," Fisher says. "Visualize three screens. On the center screen, visualize the thing that terrifies you: Watch yourself giving a speech. What do you see?" I notice a sea of hostile faces, and I am about to drown in it. "On the right screen, see yourself overcoming the danger," Fisher says. I notice a friendly face. Then the screen is bathed in blue, cool and brilliant, as if I've jumped into the sea. But I'm not sinking; I'm swimming. In one corner of the screen, I see my reward: a treasure chest filled with doubloons that have been dredged up from the ocean floor. "Now, on the left screen," Fisher then says, "visualize only the positive feelings that you experience when talking." The screen goes blank. The fear slams back. I see nothing.

Fisher gently guides me. "Imagine the scenes again -- but this time, view them on only one screen. Imagine that there is one positive soul to whom you can speak, and who wants more than anything to hear you. Imagine yourself making a powerful connection to that person." I see the face of my great-grandmother. (Although I never knew her, I was named after her.) She is standing in the audience, a young girl with a long, blond braid and bright-blue eyes. I speak to her, and by doing so, I've brought her back to life. She wants to hear me speak. "Now multiply that face so that many other people are also listening intently to you," Fisher says. I see many of my ancestors, all begging me to bring them back to life. I'm their envoy to the 21st century: By speaking, I give them life.

At that moment, I'm vaguely aware of the tears that are streaming down my face, but I can't stop them. I'm far too intent on watching the movie in my mind.

I hear Fisher say, "I want you to count backward from three. When you get to one, slowly open your eyes and focus them." Three, two, one -- I'm back. I know that I never physically left Fisher's room. I just went someplace else mentally. I was in two places at the same time. And the "someplace else" was far more real than Fisher's office, which is filled with unfamiliar furniture.

"What do you think happened?" he asks.

Fisher isn't interested in Freudian analysis when he asks people that question. He'd rather you cut to the commercial message -- the 90-second trailer that you can visualize throughout the day to override your fear, to fulfill the role of leader, to become the person who can bring back the dead. For me, that message is rescue. I can imagine myself speaking not to entertain or to inform, but to save a life. If I can see my great-grandmother in the audience, then I can speak. The things that I enjoy the most have a sense of urgency about them. When I imagine my great-grandmother, my talks take on a sense of urgency. I am no longer there to perform; I am there to rescue. I have a service to offer, a vital and compelling reason to be there, a personal stake in the well-being of those around me. And in that situation, there's no room for performance fear.

Had I not experienced the darkened theater of my own mind, I would never have discovered how to overcome the obstacles to my inherent gifts of leadership.

"Trance is a receptive state of inner focus during which we put all logic aside," says Fisher, "and give our imagination free rein." And, says Fisher, you can use trance to change the way that you behave. "I've used trance -- both during and after surgery -- to get people's bodies to behave differently from how the human body normally behaves," he says. "Our bodies don't know the difference between a surgeon and a mugger. They feel the same. It doesn't matter how anesthetized a body is; it will always go into shock at the touch of a scalpel. Patients need much less anesthesia than normal when they're in a state of self-hypnosis."

It's the same thing with a business performance. The human body is very primitive. It tries to provide the energy that we need to do a job. But the jobs that are most important to us invariably involve some sort of risk, and that causes the body to respond as if it were in danger. "All good stage performers have stage fright," says Fisher. "They're afraid that they won't give a terrific performance. But they learn to turn that fear into excitement." In a body that hasn't learned the art of leadership as robustly as the intellect has, those same primitive reflexes limit a person's full range of abilities.

I haven't returned to the public stage yet. But my session with Fisher has had an almost metabolic effect on my reflexes, in the same way that a diet can have an ongoing effect on your energy level. For example, I'm much more relaxed about things now. I guess I figure that if I can bring my great-grandmother back to life from the distance of 100 years' time, then time itself can't be too urgent. I used to think that life was short. In my opinion, wasting even one day was a bad thing. I was sure that my last words would be "I wish that I'd spent more time at work." But ever since my session with Fisher, time has been slowing down. Fright no longer leads inevitably to flight: I no longer feel a need to run and escape. The screen on which I was supposed to see performance as a joyful experience -- the screen that appeared blank to me -- is now starting to be filled in with images.