A Declaration

I. The world is lonely, stressed, and hungry for purpose

Walk through any city on Earth right now and you can feel it. People are silently searching for more in their lives.

II. The most powerful gift you can give someone is the ability to change their life. That gift has a name: hypnosis.

So goes the old line, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Hypnosis isn’t some temporary fix to whatever ailment one has, rather it permanently changes how one can view and tackle life.

It is a state of focused attention and heightened responsiveness to suggestion: closer to being absorbed in a film than to being asleep, and nothing like losing control. It is also measurable: hypnotizability is a stable, testable human trait, distributed through the population like any other. Roughly two-thirds of adults are at least moderately hypnotizable, and 10–15% are highly so.6 Stanford’s David Spiegel calls it as stable a trait in adult life as IQ.7

I should have done it years ago. It’s amazing. I didn’t even want cigarettes anymore.Matt DamonOn quitting smoking after 16 years, via hypnosis. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.8

I highly recommend it.Jessica AlbaFounder of The Honest Company, on using HypnoBirthing (self-hypnosis) for the births of her daughters. Marie Claire, TODAY.8

I think I used it enough then that it’s inherent in what I do now.Tiger WoodsTrained from age 13 with psychologist Dr. Jay Brunza, who used hypnosis and taught him self-hypnosis to enter “the zone.”9

I’m an exponent of hypnosis. I was raised off of hypnosis since I was 13, 14, until the end of my career. I always had hypnosis before I fought.Mike TysonOn his mental preparation under trainer Cus D’Amato. Good Trouble podcast, 2024.10

“Hypnosis is the most direct demonstration that a human being is never fixed in circumstance but an ever changing individual whose story can be rewritten at any time. It boosts moods from gloomy to upbeat, encourages the timid to be courageous, and captivates the audience to rethink what’s possible.”

– The American Hypnotist

III. The American Dream is that same gift at a civilizational scale, and it deserves to be spread far and wide

Strip the American Dream down and it is a hypnotic induction, scaled to a nation: you can change your circumstances. It is the most valuable idea America ever produced, and the real engine of its soft power. Beneath all of it runs a sentiment, a feeling that has lasted the test of time and is far more contagious. The belief that you are never a finished individual, that you always have room to change and grow in this life.

The American Dream is an operating system, and it runs in the blood of immigrants who came to America from every corner of the world.

Immigration itself is ancient; no nation invented the act of moving. But the U.S. packaged and perfected the idea that you can come from anywhere and become American, until it became the assumed belief of the modern world. Multi-ethnic societies are rare in history. And yet the United States is the most beautiful experiment in diversity that the world has ever produced. “E pluribus unum: Out of many, one,” goes the motto.

It is this operating system, the idea that you can come from any circumstance and live your dream life in America, that is now faltering: at home and abroad.

At home

The Dream’s original definition was economic: each generation out-earning the last. By that measure it has gone from near-certainty to a coin-flip: from roughly 90% of children born in 1940 out-earning their parents to about 50% of those born in 1980.11 Most dramatic, and in contrast to much of the country’s 250-year history, is the ascendant view that this nation of immigrants is harmed by them. For the first time in at least half a century, America may see near-zero or even negative net migration in 2025 and 2026.14

Abroad

If the American Dream stops being spread, the world stops being drawn to hope. America remains the single most-named destination for the world’s would-be migrants, but only 15% now name it as their first choice, down from 24% in 2007–09.15 In a Nira Data survey of 46,667 people across 85 countries, respondents ranked America the world’s fifth-most-disliked country, viewed more negatively than Russia or China.16

Language and Accessibility

Conversations around the idea that you can change your life are largely gatekept in an English-speaking ecosystem, which only 18% of humanity can participate in.13

Part of expanding the American Dream is through 1. Translating it into other languages and 2. Teaching English. Both are made much more efficient through hypnosis. What use is the American Dream if it only benefits those who have moved to the U.S.?