Honest Hypnosis

Master Your Mind... for a Change

Rants

Hypnosis and the Purpose Problem

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32768190_sWhat if not solving the “problem” that you thought you were solving (as fast and easily as you wanted to) was actually the key solution to solving a much bigger problem?

In my experience small, “inside the box” thinking leads to small results. Ultimately I’m looking for people like YOU who are open to something greater, more powerful, more transforming, more enriching than slapping a band-aid on a boo boo…

I’m seeking people like you who are willing to invest their time, talent and treasure in transforming their lives for the better…

Folks like you who are willing to begin thinking “outside of the box”, my “Transformation Tribe”…

Here’s what I’m talking about:

I got a text from one of my Weight Loss Hypnosis Program Grads, Paula last night.

“I want to THANK YOU SO MUCH — I really feel like I’m coming into my own, and it’s incredible! You have touched me and inspired me and led me to fill myself with SPIRIT — I feel so alive! And my health is better than I think it’s ever been. Thank you, so much, Mark!”

When she signed up for my “It’s Not Just About The Food!” program, she was

  1. In an unhappy 20 year marriage
  2. Employed way below her intelligence and skill level
  3. Dealing with severe life-long allergies
  4. Attempting to soothe her frustrations by eating and shopping.

A year later,

  1. She and her husband are now friends and in the process of an amicable divorce
  2. She is now fully engaged in work as a corporate trainer
  3. She still has multiple food allergies but her health has noticeably improved
    (She’s already agreed to be a volunteer to demo my Allergy Release program coming soon)
  4. She has made progress with her food and exercise choices
  5. She has more than one guy interested in her romantically

Is she now a professional weight lifter? Bikini Model? Olympic Tri-Athlete? No.

Has she made massive and significant progress owning her journey of personal transformation and recognizing that SHE is the hypnotist in her life?

YES!

Has she lost weight? Yes.

As much as she wanted to? As fast as she wanted? No…

But she understands that it is a process that she is in charge of. And She is making progress.

Working with me through my courses is an investment that has exponential LIFE LONG returns.

The main point I want to make today is that a lot of times we start working on some obvious challenge like “Losing Weight” or “Stopping Smoking” or “Seeking Relief From Anxiety” of some kind…

We clearly understand that it is a “problem” that we HAVE to find a solution for…

So we get to work and the first thing we try doesn’t work.  So we cast a wider net. The next thing we try doesn’t work either… So we keep looking… Eventually, after trying “everything else” someone says, “Have you tried hypnosis?” So we think, “Ah! that sounds good! I just sit in a chair and some guy hypnotizes me to change! Sure! I’ll give that a shot!”

And so you do… But the “presenting problem” persists.

This is a key transformational concept so PAY ATTENTION here:

THE PRESENTING PROBLEM MAY PERSIST

UNTIL YOU ACTUALLY ADDRESS THE UNDERLYING CAUSE.

In fact, this was so true for me, as I attempted to heal myself of a multitude of crap that was keeping me from getting my music out into the world, that I called it my

PURPOSE PROBLEM.

It forced me to keep working on my shit, step by step, day after day. It reminds me of the old spiritual that was sung a lot during America’s Civil Rights Movement: “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize!”

The problem that causes you to get into motion and stay in motion because it is driving you crazy with frustration and miserableness is actually a gift.  If you just quickly fixed the presenting or purpose problem without having to do any deeper work, what have you really accomplished or learned? Not much.

And ultimately I’m convinced that we are not here to have perfect little lives. I believe we are here to learn and grow and explore the nature of transformation.

Does that make sense? One of the reasons I had a REVOLUTION in my own thinking was because I saw a pattern play out over and over again in my private practice.

  1. Someone would come to me to solve a problem with hypnosis that they had been unable to solve in any of the other attempts they made. It doesn’t matter what the “presenting problem” was, smoking, weight loss, anxiety etc. THAT’S what they came to FIX. In their minds they just needed some “Silver Bullet” or “Magic Pill” and ZAP! problem gone without them having to do anything other than show up for their appointment…
  2. They’d pay for a few hypnosis sessions and get a little bit of improvement but then snap back or slide to their old patterns...  Rather than pay attention to what I was attempting to teach them about their own minds, or sign up for enough sessions to actually get some work done, they would just blame me or hypnosis for their failure to change: “Hypnosis didn’t work!”

Really? In my experience hypnosis ALWAYS works. But the hypnosis of a client to stay the same is sometimes more powerful than the hypnosis to change. In my experience the “presenting problem” is usually the symptom of something deeper that needs to be addressed. It’s the PURPOSE problem.

In the case of Paula above, she did enough work on herself through my course, It’s Not Just About The Food! to realize that her eating patterns were not the actual problem. They were the symptom of being frustrated and miserable. When she rolled up her sleeves and went to work on resolving her marriage and career challenges, when she began to engage fully in her life, the other issues began to shift.

Is she done with her transformation journey yet? NO!

Has she made MASSIVE progress in multiple areas of her life? YES! 

This whole thing is what has led me to shifting my entire hypnosis practice to be focused on the people who get this powerful fact:

The most powerful hypnotist in the World is the one between your ears.

But if you don’t know how to BE YOUR OWN HYPNOTIST, if you don’t know how to pull your own strings… then you are like a Ferrari being driven by a 5 year old.

Not a pretty picture.

But you can LEARN how to DRIVE the Ferrari of your OWN MIND. 

So today.

I challenge you to wake up to your own IMMENSE POWER.
Wake up to the power you have between your ears.

Stick around. Learn. Pay attention. What if you could learn how to run your own mind for a change…

… To MASTER your MIND for a CHANGE.

So CONGRATULATIONS Paula!

Rock on Woman! Go for it! Keep at it! PERSIST on your PATH with heart.

I’d love to hear from the rest of you! Use the handy contact form to let me know how you’re doing!

If you are open minded and willing to take action that will serve you for the long term, check out these courses:

Questions? Comments?

Please feel free to share your thoughts below. And if you would like to contact me directly simply click the button…

Contact Mark Shepard, ChT, NLPT

Photo credit – Copyright: paktaotik2 / 123RF Stock Photo

Monday Morning Mass Hypnosis

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38886377_sWhy Do People Dread Mondays?

Isn’t that just about the dumbest question someone has ever asked? LOL

EVERYBODY knows that people hate Mondays because that’s the day they have to go back to work and sell their time (and life) for the almighty dollar.

What people really hate is that they were just starting to have fun and relax and chill out a little bit by Sunday and now they have to put their dreams and the things they want to do aside for another week…

The pattern I saw over and over in the clients I worked with here in Albany NY, was just that grim hopelessness that working in a state bureaucracy brings.

Albany is the capital of New York State. It’s a pretty big, populated state and there are a LOT of state workers. Shuffling their papers. holding on until they can retire and finally start living. Of course for most of them, by the time they finally retire they are so overweight, so stressed, so bored, so sick and tired, so “used up” by the system, that their retirement is just as bad…

Along the way they may have used alcohol and food and other substances to sooth the pain of it all…

They literally TRAINED themselves to settle for something they call “life”, which is actually pretty far from it.

So the reason Monday’s suck for most people is that ultimately Mondays symbolize cubicle slavery and the quiet desperation of doing what you are “supposed” to do along with all the other slaves.

If that’s YOU, it’s not your fault. You were hypnotized by the mass culture to be “good,” to “do the right thing”. You most likely have a family to support. You have skills and abilities, you have training and college debt to pay off… so off to work you went…

Bit by bit they ground you down… New ideas? Forget about it. Just do your job. A better, faster way to accomplish something? Shhh keep that to yourself, if the big bosses hear about that we’ll all be out of a job… Keep your head down. Don’t ask too many questions… and on and on it goes… Soul killing shit.

Of course if you’ve been reading your “Mind Mastery Daily” you know that all cubicle slaves are literally in a state of mass Hypnosis…

But what if?

What if YOU took charge of YOUR own Mind.

You can still LOOK like all the other good little workers (for the moment).

But on the inside? Where it Counts?

You can be a WARRIOR fanning the flame of FREEDOM!

What if your “day job” was the key to you breaking out of the jail of your mental constraints? Merely part of your freedom plan? What if you realized that this thing called life is too precious to just waste it on doing work you loathe, then coming home miserable and “self soothing” your misery by eating crap, drinking crap, watching crap TV or playing endless video games that simulate real life adventures? Doing the same old same old?

You don’t have to walk in to your boss’s office today and quit. But you CAN take your first step towards freedom today.

What if you realized that your time before and after work was totally and completely your OWN.

How can you motivate yourself to start USING your personal time to create a master plan for your life and then step by step put it into action?

The answer to my obviously self serving question is this:

You learn how to communicate with your unconscious Mind so that you begin to live your life as a “warrior”.

BTW This article may be more for my guys out there who are tired of being emasculated by the “system” into well behaved little bitches… (but women are just as oppressed by this and besides I also think there is nothing hotter than a woman warrior going for her greatest vision of herself!)

BUT… WHAT…. IS…. the bottom line on this Monday morning?

WE ARE ALL GOING TO FVCKING DIE!

AND THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS!

ARE YOU LIVING THE LIFE YOU WANT?

Or did you settle somewhere along the way?

Are you going to go passively and obediently into that long good night?

Or are you going to fight and claw your way into an incredible adventure called your “life”?

Every great adventure starts with a powerful thought.

Every great invention starts with a powerful thought

Every great relationship starts with a powerful thought

Every great athletic accomplishment starts with a powerful thought…

Are you ready? Here it is:

“What if I could?”

“What if I could ________________?”

Today I dare you… No I double dare you… NO I DOUBLE DAWG DARE YOU… to ask yourself that question.

No worries about finding the answer today. It IS only Monday after all.

But throughout the day ask yourself,

WHAT IF I COULD? What if I could? What if I could?

Allow your imagination to play with it while you’re shuffling your papers today… just repeat that question. You might want to jot down whatever cool ideas spring up. But mostly I just want you to repeat the question.

As I’ve said before and will say again: Questions are the key to communicating with your Unconscious Mind. Ask powerful questions and you will get powerful answers and action and ultimately RESULTS that please you.

What if YOU CAN?

BTW If you would like to learn more about how to run your own mind so that you can be, do and have more and more of what you want and less and less of what you don’t want, you might want to check out my newly updated, “Meet Your Unconscious Mind”.

I’m releasing it soon… you can kill to birds with one stone by signing up for your “Mind Mastery Daily” The un-censored, HONEST thoughts of a RENEGADE hypnotist!  By taking that small revolutionary action, you’ll also get first notice of how you can get access to “Meet Your Unconscious Mind”  and other kick ass Personal Power and Transformation Tools.

Questions? Comments?

Please feel free to share your thoughts below. And if you would like to contact me directly simply click the button…

Contact Mark Shepard, ChT, NLPT

Photo credit – Copyright: konradbak / 123RF Stock Photo

Transformation Decisions

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30830028_sThe personal transformation process is basically the same whether you want to quit smoking, lose weight, stop being anxious or shy, get on an airplane fearlessly, or start speaking up in those situations where you always bite your lip and stuff your authentic emotions…

We realize we are doing something that is no longer serving us. We “wish” we could change. We “bitch” about the problem to anyone who will listen and then we just keep doing the same damn thing that we consciously don’t want to do any more… Until.

Until…. We can’t freaking stand it anymore and suddenly

DECIDE to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Unlike the Butterfly struggling to emerge from it’s chrysalis guided by INSTINCT.

We humans have to LEARN how to transform ourselves and adapt.

Like the butterfly struggling to emerge from it’s old form into it’s new form, this is a very vulnerable and dangerous point because once you DECIDE to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT you are ready to take action…

…but WHAT ACTION WILL ACTUALLY GET YOU THE DESIRED RESULT?

You can go to talk therapy and talk and talk about changing.

You can get pills that are supposed to “solve your problem” but actually lead to more problems and more toxic drugs

You can go on a “diet” and start to work out in the same ineffectual way that didn’t work the last time (and you’ll probably give up the way you did last time as well)

You can ask your friends for advice. But no matter how well meaning they are they most likely don’t know shit about how to actually make changes that get you the actual results YOU actually want.

So many people get to what I call the “SWEET SPOT of MASSIVE FRUSTRATION & DISSATISFACTION” which is truly the fuel for transformation, but they don’t know how to light the fire intelligently and safely and then keep the fire burning until they get to their new level of personal mastery.

So how do you skip the dead ends and get on the right path to achieving what you truly want?

You find a mentor. A Coach. A Transformation and Change Specialist

You find someone who you can get to know safely and inexpensively and you try his stuff out. If it works, you check out some of his or her other stuff… if you honestly apply his or her suggestions and ideas and don’t get results, you move on until you find that person.

For me that process has worked really well with a few key online “masters” as well as certain authors. Robert Greene for example. His book “Mastery” is a must read for anyone who wants to pursue their MASSIVE, THROBBING, VISION for their lives… you read one of his books and you just HAVE to check out his other books.

The problem with MOST self help books is that they tell you what you “SHOULD” do. But they don’t teach you “HOW” to do those things.

For example, a typical self help book on “Success” will point out what successful people think and do. But not how to get yourself to actually install the new habit of thinking and taking action like that.

i.e. “Successful people take failure as feedback. They don’t give up just because something didn’t work out the first time the way they wanted it to. They keep applying their interest and energy learning from everything, particularly from things that bomb.”

Ok. Great. But how do You make THAT new attitude Your DEFAULT, knee-jerk reaction? Faster. Easier. Better?
And once You make that change, how do YOU KEEP the change?

The answer of course is HYPNOSIS.

Not because it’s some magical thing that “presto chango” does the work for you but because

HYPNOSIS is literally the process of communicating your conscious desires and decisions to your unconscious mind in a way that gets the actual results you want.

Does that make sense?

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“I haven’t felt this good for a long time and it’s a great feeling. I just wanted to say thank you so much and I really appreciate all your help.” – Kent

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What caused me to think about this was the course I’ve been working on for a long time now, “Stop Smoking Dammit!”

Most smokers know they “should” quit. Most smokers say they want to quit. But the majority of smokers don’t quit.

Their doctor says, “You should quit.” But they don’t quit because knowing they “should” quit and knowing how to actually master their mind and body enough to consistently create a new identity for themselves as “non-smokers” or “fresh air breathers” is not taught.

Unlike YOU, The majority of smokers don’t want to learn anything new. They would rather slowly smoke themselves into an early grave than actually face the discomfort of changing their filthy disgusting habit.

BTW that’s not a judgment on my part, that’s what most of my smoking cessation clients THEMSELVES have said when they finally come in to work with me for smoking cessation hypnosis. It’s only because their level of self disgust with the smell, the cost, the ravages of tobacco smoke on their bodies and relationships becomes UNBEARABLE that they start seeking help.

Speaking of seeking help, you might want to check out my brand new Kick Ass Kick the Habit program: “STOP Smoking DAMMIT!”

A lot of them will spring for a single hypnosis session but if that “fails” them, they are usually unwilling to roll up their sleeves and get to work on learning how to actually communicate with their unconscious minds. They would rather blame the hypnotist. And on they go with their habit of self destruction until the get to the next level of pain and self hate… Eventually when a person wants to change badly enough that they get congruent and emotionally charged enough to DEMAND a change of themselves the change happens relatively quickly.

And that’s what separates the successes from the wishful thinkers in every arena of human challenge and change.

The willingness to make a decision that carries them through the challenges and the dead ends to find the solution to the “problem” they want to solve.

The same pattern shows up in weight loss clients and anxiety clients.

The ones who “get” that I’m a coach and can save them valuable time, money, resources, by teaching them how to take charge of their change by learning a few simple things about how they are actually “wired”, get amazingly fast, long lasting results that they can then easily maintain for the long term all without any risk because my programs are totally covered by my iron clad money back guarantee.

And what’s even more satisfying to me, is that they are then able to see how the same exact processes and principles that they learned in my Stop Smoking Dammit! Course work on anything else they want to change or improve…

But what separates the successes from the not yet successful ones?

The DECISION to GET SERIOUS AND GET QUALIFIED COACHING.

The right coach can help you get where you want to go faster, easier and better. You still have to do the work but the work you do gets you where you want to go with less wheel spinning, fewer dead ends and more consistent positive results.

This can be a tricky challenge in and of itself because there are a lot of self proclaimed “experts” out there who are good at marketing and not so good at actually providing value. And then there are the amazing teachers who are few and far between who are great at teaching but not so good at marketing.

And then there are the serious teachers who have dedicated their lives to learning everything they can about their areas of expertise as well as everything they can about how to deliver their expertise in ways that are so easy to comprehend and implement that progress is made rapidly and each new skill set builds the foundation for the next “Level-UP” in the “game of life.”

It is because of these kinds of teachers that I am still alive today. It is because of my own teachers who challenged and pushed me and taught me new ways of thinking and implementing, and adapting myself to my own life challenges that I have dedicated my own life to passing along the tools and techniques, the knowledge and wisdom that I draw on every single day to make my life magical.

Ultimately the only hypnosis that actually exists is SELF-HYPNOSIS.

You are the most powerful hypnotist on the planet.

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“Hey Mark thanks for everything. You helped me clear out so much $H!t that was holding me back from experiencing success… and that was the beginning of EVERYTHING so thank you, thank you, thank you!”
– Michael Guerin

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But until you learn how to communicate effectively with your UNCONSCIOUS MIND, you are like a 5 year old attempting to drive a Ferrari. The Power is there. The vehicle is of the finest design and craftsmanship, but you don’t know how to get it into first gear much less get it to do your bidding.

I dare you to step in to your own personal power today. Start with the questions you ask yourself. Asking better questions is step one in accessing the unlimited power of your unconscious mind. It could be as simple as:

“Why do I DECIDE it’s TIME to get my shit together?” is way more powerful than victim questions like “Why can’t I ever succeed?”

or even better yet:

“Why do I DECIDE it’s TIME to get my shit together and get the kind of coaching that gets me what I want in life faster, easier better?”

Play with that question today. Write it out by hand at least 10-20 times. Take notice of what shows up.

If you have a specific question you’d like some help with. Drop me a line.

Contact Mark Shepard, “America’s Honest Hypnotist”

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“When I woke up this morning I was thinking about my panic attacks. I could not remember that last time I had one! I used the techniques in your CRUSH Anxiety Program… Thank you so much for all your help.” – Robin

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