OK, now I’ve heard it all. I do a lot of web surfing to find articles and ideas for professional and personal self-improvement that I can pass along to you. Sometimes I’ll run across an idea that strikes me as pretty cool. But other times I come across something like the one I saw today, called How to be Outstanding in any Situation.

I should have been tipped off that it was written by a Hollywood “hypnotherapist,” but I was trying to keep an open mind. So, anyway, to sum up, the guy is promoting a Pavlovian approach to achieving personal power in your life. (You remember Pavlov, of course, the Russian scientist known for his classical conditioning experiments with DOGS.)

Here’s the human conditioning technique Jones suggests:

Step 1. Think of three times in your life when you felt very powerful and in control and write them down (one sentence describing each).

Step 2. Stand alone in a room and think of the first situation. Recall it in full color with sound and anything else that could make it real to you.

Step 3. At the moment when you feel fully back in that moment, slap your left shoulder with your right hand and say, “Power!”

Step 4. Repeat steps 1-3 for each of the three memories.

First of all, let’s say you complete this part of the experiment without requiring the services of an orthopedic surgeon. Jones then says in any future situations when you need to call upon some inner reserve of strength, you should slap your shoulder again and say “Power!” Are you kidding me? Maybe in Hollywood, home of Paris Hilton and, apparently, hynotherapists, but you pull that kind of stuff anywhere in the rest of the country and somebody’s going to take out a restraining order against you. I have a feeling that somewhere from beyond the grave, Ivan Pavlov is going, “Say what?”