Is Everyone Hypnotized?

It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent, either by ideas he has uncriti­cally accepted from others, or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist. Have you ever seen a demonstration of honest-to-goodness hypnosis? If not, let me describe to you just a few of the more simple phenom­ena which result from the hypnotist's suggestion.
The hypnotist tells a football player that his hand is stuck to the table and that he cannot lift it. It is not a question of the football player "not trying." He simply cannot. He strains and struggles until the muscles of his arm and shoulder stand out like cords. But his hand re­mains fully rooted to the table.
He tells a championship weight-lifter that he cannot lift a pencil from the desk. And although normally he can hoist a 400 pound weight overhead, he now actually cannot lift the pencil.