Imprecise formulation.One characteristic of the subconscious mind that can really be irritating is the way it takes everything literally. If you have messed around much with computers you are probably getting used to this because computers are also totally literal.

This tendency toward literalness can make it almost impossible sometimes to formulate a suggestion with language. In case you have never noticed this before, language is very sloppy. This is as it must be, I suppose, considering that words are never the things they represent, our natural confusion over what is sign and what is symbol, and so on. And of course we make everything worse by our over-reliance on clichés.

The literality of the subconscious mind is its own. By that I mean that referring to dictionaries will not help a lot because those meanings may not be the same ones held by the subconscious mind. The safest recourse is to use ideomotor questioning to determine your own subconscious meaning for any suggestion language that might be even the slightest bit shaky.

Be aware too of syntactic problems in the formulation of your suggestions. Don't "throw Mama from the train a kiss." And don't formulate suggestions like, "I want to lose weight in the worst way," because that may be the way you end up losing it.

Clichés. Clichés are actually another form of imprecise formulation and they can create a whole world of problems when it comes to suggestion formulation. You would think that this would not be the case, since it is what you consciously meanthat should be communicated to the subconscious. Unfortunately it does not work that way.

Subconsciously we tend to take things literally and what that literality is is determined by the subconscious itself. External standards like dictionaries and other sources of meaning are not determinants. This can work both ways for the subconscious. One way is the literal meaning of a word which may have the precedent meaning; that is, the first and enduring meaning for the subconscious. This usually tends to follow the usage patterns that were prevalent when we were at the most formative age for language acquisition. For instance, "cool" meant not warmwhen I was growing up. None of the farmers around Texhoma at that time would have said that Chet Atkins' music was cool, or that their new tractor was cool. Unless of course they meant it in a temperature sense. So it is highly unlikely that I would subconsciously interpret "cool" as anything but not-warm.

Conversely, "cool" is now common parlance and used widely, especially by teenagers and their parents who are trying to appear cool in the eyes of their kids. Or if you grew up with hippies or beatniks or in a family of musicians or in any other circumstance in which "cool", from your earliest awareness, meant "approval" or any other form of in-ness, then you may indeed have both meanings registered at the subconscious level. However, you would still be wise to avoid the term in suggestions because it is a cliché and as such is rather amorphous in its meaning. (Polymorphous, actually.) That is, it manages to be nondescript, colorless, bland, lacking in precision, and just generally difficult to define. This is true of almost all clichés, which is reason enough to avoid them.

It is primarily the literal nature of the subconscious mind that makes it important to avoid clichés when formulating suggestions. A good example-using our old friend, cool, from above, but in a different sense- of what can go wrong is the case of a woman executive who used self-hypnosis and suggestion to get over her fear of public speaking. She formulated the suggestion that, at her next board presentation, she would be "cool, calm and collected."

At the next presentation she was indeed calm and collected. (Fortunately for her, "collected" did not seem to have any excess semantic baggage. It easily could have.) She gave one of the best presentations of her career. But she was so "cool" during her presentation that she was literally shivering by the time she was finished. It is probable that her subconscious mind, which has control over the autonomic functions of the body, was damping down her circulation. That sort of thing can, when taken to the extreme, make you pass out. She was lucky to get out of it with nothing but a case of the shakes.

When formulating your verbal suggestions, search for wordings that are explicit and specific. Avoid generality as much as possible and spell out exactly what it is you want. In the case of "cool, calm and collected," our executive from the example above could have used more specific terms and phrases of a behavioral nature. To come up with this kind of formulation ask yourself, "Exactly what behaviors will I be exhibiting when I am doing what I want to do, or being what I want to be?" In this case the behaviors would include 1) steady, strong, unwavering voice; 2) standing still without bouncing from one foot to the other; 3) dryness of body (no perspiration), wetness of mouth (ordinary saliva production, that is -- it is almost impossible to speak if your mouth is too dry); 4) poetic movement of hands and arms, fluid movement of head and neck; 5) calmness of gaze, ability to shift gaze from one part of the audience without being jerky or unnatural in the movement of the eyes; 6) avoidance of "uhs" and other verbal fillers; 7) bladder and bowel control (this is a real and serious problem for many people who must speak publicly); 8) good memory, ability to remember the speech without having to read it; 9) good timing and tact (very subjective, like art: we know it when we see it, but we can't define it); and 10) rapport with the audience-feel good about them, feel their friendliness, get through to them.

Believe me, these 10 points, or literal specifications, cover just about everything that can go wrong in the delivery of a speech. They are immensely more specific than simply saying you will be "cool, calm and collected." They are a veritable schematic for the subconscious on how to deliver a speech.

By the way, please notice that I keep saying deliverthe speech. The speech itself, its subject and its relevance to the occasion and the audience, and its development are different matters. The best delivery in the world of a bad or inappropriate speech will still yield failure. Fortunately you can use suggestions to enhance your sense of what is appropriate, your choices of topics and wordings, and your motivation to research and put together a really good speech. But this takes several more suggestion topics or guidelines, just like the 10 points above.

All of this should also serve to point out that you cannot just whip into a state of hypnosis, lay a couple of quick suggestions on yourself, and be fixed. It won't work that way. Like I keep saying, this is not that kind of planet. If it were you could use the old Emile Coué formulation: "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better." Simply add "at everything" to the end of that formulation and you would be fixed for life. But like I said, it's not that kind of planet.

Too much, too fast. As you can see from looking at the list of 10 public-speaking-related items above, you can work up a fairly large body of material to go into your suggestions. If you are to adequately cover the range necessary to improve or change yourself along any single dimension, you must develop a comprehensive set of suggestions. And when you start dissecting the relevant behavior to make your suggestions, you find that it takes a lot of words to parse any behavior.

This is a TRUE/FALSE measure to test the reliability of your common sense. Sort of. Read each statement and indicate whether you believe it to be true or false. Do this on paper or in your word processor. After you have recorded your responses to all 20 items, scroll down to the answers.

1. Women tend to take more liberal political positions than do men.
2. Opinions and beliefs change more quickly than behaviors.
3. "Opposites attract" is correct; "likes" are less attracted to one another.
4. Conflicts over ideologies are easier to resolve than conflicts over power.
5. The opinions of children and youths seldom correspond to those of their parents.
6. Individuals tend to make riskier decisions than do groups.
7. Given a choice between wealth and fame, most Americans choose wealth.
8. Moral values tend to break down during a disaster.
9. Social change is easier on everyone concerned if it is made swiftly.
10. A child who is encouraged to do so will learn to walk sooner than one who is not.
11. The more people there are in a group, the more emotion and tension there will be in the group.
12. Learning is more permanent if correct responses are rewarded every time.
13. Later in life, students who had to work their way through college are more successful than those who did not.
14. When military units are racially segregated -- as they were in most Allied military units during WWII -- white privates are more eager than blacks to become noncommissioned officers.
15. The less affection and attention a child receives, the more quickly he or she will mature.
16. In WWII, American combat infantrymen in Europe were more eager to return to the U.S. when the fighting was still going on than after the German surrender.
17. To learn a skill, an uninterrupted hour of practice is better than six ten-minute sessions.
18. In large families, the youngest child is the one most likely to be a problem child.
19. A person who is very afraid is more suggestible than one who is just moderately afraid.
20. Soldiers from rural areas are better adjusted and have higher morale than those from urban areas.

Now scroll down to the answers. But remember, once you have seen the answers, you can never legitimately take the test if you have not already done so!

Here are the answers to the Common Sense Measure:

1. False
2. False
3. False
4. False
5. False
6. False
7. False
8. False
9. False
10. False
11. False
12. False
13. False
14. False
15. False
16. False
17. False
18. False
19. False
20. False

That's right - all False