Is Rocky Balboa a Hypnotist?

This blog article will be kinda like taking a peak into my way of thinking when coaching someone.  When I coach people, one of my main goals is to detect the patterns a person uses in order to create their problem.  This includes patterns of physiology, speech, and behavior.  In order to detect pattern easily, I pay very close attention to the structure of what a person says and put a lot less importance on the content of what the person says.  In my way of thinking, pattern recognition is one of the core fundamental skills of coaching.

I will be breaking down a lot of the patterns present in the communication between Rocky and his son in the video below.  So, play the video and once you’re done, scroll down for a step by step unpacking of what is going on.

Cool vid…huh?

I will talk about the video in time intervals and talk about the patterns present in each time interval.  This will allow you to go back to the clip above and follow along.  If this sounds a bit confusing, keep reading it’ll all make perfect sense in a second.

Let’s get it on!

Son

0.32 seconds – 0.38 seconds

Son: “You know, living with you hasn’t been easy.” (This is a belief.  The son has created the following complex equivalence: living with you = not easy).

Son: “People see me and they think of you” (This is a mind read.  That is, the son claims to know what people think of him when others see him).

0.39 seconds – .41 seconds

Son: “Now with all this going on, it’s going to be worst then ever:” (This is a cause effect belief.  Something is going happen that is going to make something else happen).

.42 seconds – 1.10 minutes

Son: blah..blah…blah..bitching…whining…etc. (The main thing the is displaying here is that he is blaming external circumstances for his problems.  In nlp talk, he is being at effect rather than at cause.  This is a VERY common pattern, and it’s annoying as hell:).

1.11 minutes – 1.22 minutes

Son: “Don’t you care what people think? Doesn’t it bother you that people are making you out to be a joke and I’m going to be included in that? (The glaring pattern in this sentence is the external reference metaprogram.  That is, he is using other people’s judgements to determine how he  feels).

ENOUGH BITCHING! LET’S PUT SOME SENSE IN THIS BOY!

ENTER ROCKY

1.30 min

Rocky: “You aint gonna believe this, but you used to fit right here…” (Here Rocky starts to use temporal language and starts to bring his son to the past… aka regression).

1.49 min

Rocky: “But somewhere along the line you changed.  You stopped being you.” (Here Rocky starts to talk about a decision that his son made. That is, he puts him at cause rather then effect).

1.58 min

Rocky: “And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame…” (Here Rocky is meta-commenting on his son’s pattern and thus making the choice point conscious).

2.22 min

Rocky: “..but it aint about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward….if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth, but you got to be willing to take the hits…and not point fingers…cowards do that and that aint you…you’re better than that.” (Here Rocky really steps up with his hypnotic powers.  He uses a boxing metaphor to teach his son how to re-claim responsibility for his actions).

Cools stuff.  Who knew Rocky was a hypnotist.  I hope you enjoyed, and I know I missed a lot of the patterns that went on in this communication. Leave a comment and let me know which ones I missed.  Take care.

Martin

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