Awkward and Proud: Luke Chao Of The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis On How Embracing Your True Self Can Be Your Social Superpower
An interview with Dr. Bharat Sangani
Meet every one of your needs, including your love and esteem needs. Abraham Maslow wisely put self-actualization at the top of his Hierarchy of Needs, because you have to fulfill all your other human needs before self-actualization is even possible. That means you have to breathe deeply enough, sleep well enough, protect yourself from harmful people and influences, have a peer group that you consider to be your friends, do things that make you feel esteemed and respected, and so on. Once your basic needs have been met, it will finally be possible (and comfortable) to be fully yourself.
In a world that often pressures us to fit in, embracing quirks and authenticity can become a unique advantage. Leaning into what makes you different, even if it feels awkward, can foster genuine connections and unlock personal empowerment. In this series, we would like to explore how embracing one’s true self can transform social interactions and become a powerful tool for building meaningful relationships. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Luke Chao.
Luke Chao founded The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis in Toronto, Canada in 2006. Since then, he has hypnotized thousands of people, trained dozens of new practitioners, launched a podcast called How to Be an Adult and acquired a hypnosis app called hypnu™.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I’ve taken an unconventional life path. By the age of 17, I’d lived in five different cities, and had to adjust and make new friends every time (this was in the days before Facebook), so I felt like I could only depend on myself and books for stability. By my early 20s, I had graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in English literature, which famously has no clear career path after graduation.
Because my readings early in life often tended toward psychology and philosophy, I had developed an interest in hypnosis, and decided to get certified in the practice immediately after graduation. At the age of 23, after returning from a 10-day silent meditation retreat with clarity about what I wanted to do with my adult life, I rented office space above a hip-hop store (which later became a sandwich shop) and started offering hypnosis to the public. That was over 18 years ago. I am grateful to all of my clients over the years for engaging with me, since they are wholly responsible for my career and the insights I’ve gained along the way.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person that you are grateful for, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Cats count as people in my world, so I’m going to honour my late cat Robot, who was there for me through thick and thin, from the early days of my practice to the end of the pandemic. No matter how rough my day was, he would treat me all the same, think the world of me and help me to fall asleep at night. He believed in me when nobody else did. I am endlessly grateful for his support and for helping to make my business into the success that it is today.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Unconventionality is absolutely a strength. However weird you think hypnotherapy is, I’m unusual even among hypnotists — for instance, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, I’ve attracted a lot of lawyers as clients and I’ve had to learn their jargon. But when mental health care is as broken as it is, it’s going to be an unconventional practice and not a conventional one that’s likely to be making breakthroughs. The willingness to break rank isn’t just a leadership quality that advances society forward — it gives you an advantage in business. You have to be clear about what makes you different, or else it isn’t obvious why your customers should choose you.
A second trait is that I stick with principles that I had arrived at a long time ago, like a universalist style of humanism, and refuse to follow trends or get distracted by my own emotional responses. This allows me to be even-keeled and decisive, especially in tough times, although it can be both a pro and a con. People trust me to give them the unvarnished truth and to apply an even hand in my decision-making, but on the flip side, it means I can only lead people who share truth and even-handedness as values. I’ve certainly lost my fair share of clients and employees because I’ve taken a principled stance that they disagreed with, but that’s far preferable to sacrificing values in order to cater to individual whims.
Finally, I make the effort to appreciate everything that contains intrinsic value — such as happiness, peace of mind and beauty — both in myself and others, personally and in the workplace. When we only account for what can be exchanged commercially, as we often do in our capitalist society, our view narrows to account for only a tiny sliver of life. It’s a more complete view of ourselves and the world to account for the non-commercial and non-monetizable, too.
Ok, fantastic. Let’s now turn to the crux of our interview. Can you recall a moment when embracing your awkwardness led to a meaningful personal or professional breakthrough? What shifted for you in that experience?
I was born an introvert in an extrovert’s world. This makes it so that I’m emotionally drained by every interaction that I have with another person, especially if I have to put in extra effort to fit in or act “normal.” To manage my energy levels throughout the day, working in a people-centric field, it has become a necessity to minimize contact with people who are not my clients. For example, early in my career I hired an administrative assistant to speak with prospective clients who weren’t sure about working with me, and it was a win–win for everybody.
More recently, I took this “social battery” management further by declining to meet with new clients and writing out treatment plans for them instead, which is unheard-of in the hypnotherapy world. The conventional approach is to offer a 20- or 30-minute free consultation through a phone call or meeting, which I found to be exhausting in a field where each successful case completes in three to five visits. At first, I was afraid that I might lose clients if they couldn’t speak with me, but on the plus side, I can write detailed documents all day long without draining my social battery. Serendipitously, I’ve discovered that clients respond very well to plans that are written rather than verbalized. Instead of perceiving my written thoughts as a downgrade from a face-to-face meeting, they’ve viewed it as an upgrade. If it weren’t for my awkward introversion, I never would have stumbled upon this reality that has served my clients and my business very well over the years.
Many people feel pressure to ‘fit in’ socially. What advice do you have for someone struggling to be their authentic self in a world that often rewards conformity?
Let’s remember the madness of crowds: Fitting in is a great way to guarantee that you will be undistinguished in your field, lose a lot of money in your next investment (by buying securities at an inflated price), and even be photographed wearing a momentarily trendy fashion item that embarrasses you 30 years later.
Everybody who has changed the world for the better has been unconventional. It’s true that the world rewards conformity on some level, but it rewards the unorthodox to a higher degree. Back in the 1990s, Apple ran their well-known “Think Different” ad that speaks to this by celebrating figures such as Einstein and Gandhi.
How do you think embracing your quirks and imperfections can enhance connections with others, especially in professional or high-pressure settings?
Whenever I think that somebody is “normal”, it usually turns out that I just didn’t know them well enough. In other words, the façade of normality clues me into the fact that they’re probably hiding their weirdness. But if somebody shows up and they don’t care to compare themselves to some platonic ideal of normality, I don’t believe they are hiding as much, and I find them to be more trustworthy and relatable. I don’t think that I’m alone in feeling this way.
In particular, high-stakes settings are the ones where original, out-of-the-box thinking is most important. If you could simply follow the standard operating procedure, it wouldn’t be a high-stakes setting.
What role does vulnerability play in transforming awkwardness into a superpower? Can you share a time when showing vulnerability opened doors or strengthened relationships?
Besides reducing your cognitive load, which is a pretty good reason by itself, being unguarded will make it clear that another person likes you rather than a contrived replica of you. If you always show a persona and never let your guard down around somebody, you can never be sure that they actually like you.
I learned this lesson early in my adult life. Back then, I cared more about being “normal” than being authentic — I didn’t think that anybody would like my weird quirks. But once I stopped caring about maintaining a semblance of normality, I discovered that people liked and trusted me more. Having been on both sides, I can heartily recommend authenticity over pretense. As I mentioned previously, I don’t think I’m alone in this.
What are “5 Ways To Embrace Your True Self”?
- Meet every one of your needs, including your love and esteem needs. Abraham Maslow wisely put self-actualization at the top of his Hierarchy of Needs, because you have to fulfill all your other human needs before self-actualization is even possible. That means you have to breathe deeply enough, sleep well enough, protect yourself from harmful people and influences, have a peer group that you consider to be your friends, do things that make you feel esteemed and respected, and so on. Once your basic needs have been met, it will finally be possible (and comfortable) to be fully yourself.
- Recognize the shared humanity that you have in common with others. When you account for your full humanity, and another person’s full humanity (independently of their race, gender, occupation, wealth, and so on), you are looking at the centre of the Venn diagram where you can feel a sense of equality with anybody else on the planet, including your heroes. Embracing your true self is a lot easier when you’ve embraced your shared humanity first, before embracing your individual qualities.
- Abandon rules for children (in dysfunctional households). After you turn roughly 18, it’s widely accepted that you’re an adult. For the rest of your life, rules for adults will apply to you. Rules for children, like that authority figures always know best, can safely be abandoned. One of the welcome challenges of adulthood is that you can make your own rules, and you don’t just exist in a world that was created by others — others exist in a world that you’re helping to create, too.
- Elevate truthful communication above merely agreeable communication. This point is a continuation of the prior one, but it’s worth making specifically, because it’s an outdated rule that adults commonly follow. Whoever taught you that you’re good if you say “yes” and bad if you say “no” was not trying to further your moral development, but to control you. When you’re an adult among adults, you would be right to treat yourself as a peer. To use a historic example, we celebrate Rosa Parks today because she said “no” to an untenable request — not because she acquiesced.
- Being 100% you means being 0% anybody else (or anybody else’s idea of you). Remember that you’d be bad at being anybody else, anyway. A tiger who was raised by wolves might think he should move and hunt like a canine, but he would only come to his full power by embracing his true nature as a tiger. You can only come to your full power by being 100% you, which means you have to reject being anybody else, and especially how others might want you to be.
Do you believe that celebrating awkwardness can inspire innovation and creativity? How has staying true to yourself influenced your approach to problem-solving or leadership?
Yes, absolutely. Awkwardness and non-conformity go hand-in-hand with innovation and creativity, and unconventionality goes hand-in-hand with problem-solving and leadership. Just look to Silicon Valley and university engineering departments, for endless examples.
It can be very awkward to tell your friends and colleagues where you think they’re wrong or their ideas are bad. But when we prioritize authentic speech above agreeable speech, everybody can get on the same page of truth, good ideas and sound values. When we prioritize agreeable speech above authentic speech, that’s when innovation and creativity are sacrificed at the altar of groupthink and conformity.
How can our readers further follow your work?
I invite your readers to listen to my podcast (How to Be an Adult), follow me on YouTube (@morpheushypnosis), experience hypnosis with me on the Hypnu app (App Store or Play Store), or contact my practice (The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis) for private, group and corporate engagements.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Thank you, Dr. Sangani. The same to you!
About The Interviewer: Dr. Bharat Sangani is a cardiologist and entrepreneur with over 35 years of experience, practicing in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Dallas, Texas. Board-certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology, he specializes in diagnosing, treating, and preventing cardiovascular diseases, including heart disease and hypertension. In 1999, Dr. Sangani founded Encore Enterprises, a national real estate investment firm. Under his leadership, the company has executed transactions exceeding $2 billion, with a portfolio spanning residential, retail, hotel, and office developments. Known for his emphasis on integrity and fairness, Dr. Sangani has built Encore into a major player in the commercial real estate sector. Blending his medical and business expertise, Dr. Sangani created the Life is a Business mentorship program. The initiative offers guidance on achieving balance in health, wealth, and relationships, helping participants align personal and professional goals. Now based in Dallas, Texas, Dr. Sangani continues to practice cardiology while leading Encore Enterprises and mentoring others. His career reflects a unique blend of medical expertise, entrepreneurial spirit, and dedication to helping others thrive.
Awkward and Proud: Luke Chao Of The Morpheus Clinic for Hypnosis On How Embracing Your True Self… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.