Paul McKenna: Hypnotherapist and self-help guru on manifesting success

Over nearing four decades, he has trained tens of thousands of hypnotherapists and has worked with stars including The Who’s Roger Daltrey, actor and comedian James Corden, and music mogul Simon Cowell. "All of this is my revenge, all my success,” McKenna says. “As soon as people say you’ll never be able to do it, I was like right. It brings out this determination in you. That’s the sort of person I am.”

Since the 1980s, McKenna says he has practised manifesting, visualising his success and then focusing his energy on achieving his goals. ‘Manifest’ was the Cambridge Dictionary word of the year in 2024, widely used in the sense of ‘imagining achieving something you want, in the belief that doing so will make it more likely to happen’.

At the time Cambridge University social psychologist Professor Sander van der Linden warned that manifesting wealth, love, and power could lead to “unrealistic expectations and disappointment” but said there was value in positive thinking, self-affirmation and goal-setting. “Believing in yourself, bringing a positive attitude, setting realistic goals, and putting in the effort pays off because people are enacting change in the real world,” he said. “However, it is crucial to understand the difference between the power of positive thinking and moving reality with your mind.”

For McKenna, manifesting is about imagining something and then bringing it into reality. He’s currently on tour with a coaching event called Power Manifesting, which includes a date in Leeds later this month. It follows the release of his latest book Power Manifesting – The New Science Of Getting What You Want at the start of the year.

The event will see McKenna encourage his audience to visualise a future in which they have everything they want, noting what they can see, hear and feel. Then, he wants people to imagine, in reverse, what steps have happened to get to that point, as well as what could get in the way and how to head off such challenges. “Then your brain has a series of steps on its timeline of how to achieve what you want,” he says. “Your brain has a very clear direction. It can organise all of your energy, your thinking, your wisdom, everything to make that come true.”

Many people, McKenna says, spend more time making a shopping list for the supermarket than they do visualising the next few years of their life. “A lot of people are not clear about what they want and we know from research, that if you’re really clear about your goals, you’re massively more likely to achieve them…The idea is that you suddenly get a clear vision of a compelling future, you get optimistic about the future and you get motivated.”

London-based McKenna started his career as a radio broadcaster and became interested in hypnotism as a result of a guest who appeared on his show. He went to interview the hypnotist at a time when his own world felt particularly stressful. "I’d broken up with my girlfriend, had a row with my boss and people in the place where I was living were keeping me up at night.

"This guy said to me, rather than you interview me, let me hypnotise you. I sat back and I relaxed and I went into this beautiful state of peaceful bliss where all my problems felt insignificant. I felt the burdens lift, I felt clear minded and I thought wow this is really powerful. That was my first experience of it. I’d done yoga and meditation but hypnosis is on a different level."

McKenna began experimenting with small hypnosis shows in pubs and clubs, before trying to get his hypnotic London theatre show off the ground in the 1980s. As he tried to manifest financial freedom, he also imagined walking out to perform to a full house, hearing the applause and feeling success.

“I took a picture of myself outside the theatre with a ‘house full’ sign,” he recalls. “The first week there was about half an audience there and it was uncomfortable, especially when you’ve borrowed a year’s wages to hire a West End theatre. The next week was about three quarters full and the week after was full.

“Since then I would imagine being on television and I would see myself doing it. I would imagine how I would get onto television, and sure enough it would come true. I’d imagine being a best-selling author, I’d imagine having big success in America, I’d imagine working with people like elite sport stars, rock stars and movie stars, travelling around the world. The life I’ve had over the last 40 years has been pretty spectacular.”

“I sit down, I imagine achieving and succeeding in something,” he adds. “Sometimes it works better than I imagined, sometimes it doesn’t. But generally my life goes in the direction that I’d like it to.”

McKenna still plans to do occasional auditorium events but this tour will be the last of its kind for him. Instead, he’ll be channelling more energy into online events, which he believes will hold greater impact around the world. “I’ve had a terrific life touring,” he says. “I’ve been all over the world. But we’re in a digital age and it’s now time to move it online.”

- Paul McKenna is at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall on March 17.