Honest Hypnosis

Master Your Mind... for a Change

Curiosity

Life Outside The Box

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19728676_m-2Imagine a box.

You’ve lived your entire life in this box.

It is beautiful.

It is comfortable.

It is safe.

You’ve got all your favorite things right there…

And then one day…

[Here’s the video version or just keep reading. It all leads to the same place…]

One day you hear a sound…

It’s coming from a long locked, unused closet door that somehow no-one knew about… or that hatchway in the ceiling… that someone painted shut…

It sounds like Someone or some thing is knocking on the door… of your box.

Whoever is knocking keeps banging and banging until the plaster of that part of your beautiful home begins to crack and fall …

What a mess! You think. And you also might be feeling a little “trepidation” or uncertainty or downright fear.

“Who is out there!?!?”

“What is out there?!?!?!?”

You retreat to the farthest corner of your “box”… and watch in horror and fascination as…

Eventually the hatch swings downward  or the door swings inward and some friendly guy who you’ve never met before pops his head into your little world and says,

“Hey! There’s a great big world out here for you to explore! I’ve come to rescue you from your limited little world, your box… your cage. Your comfort zone. Come out and be free! Come out and Play!”

If you’re like most people. You would do just about anything to shut that guy up, close that door, and reseal it like it was never there…

“Cage! How DARE he call my lovely world a ‘CAGE!’ GO AWAY!”

And if you did that, no one would blame you….

However… after a time wandering back around through your “known world”, your “box”… your “home”… you will find yourself wondering,

“hmmmm What IS out there? What if I AM missing something really good?”

Eventually, you might want to open that door yourself… curiosity can be insatiable…

And I’m not suggesting you are curious… but if you were curious, what would that be like?

And when you do…. carefully,…. gingerly peek out…

at first you might not even be able to focus in the new light… or you may not be able to conceive of what is out there, or perceive it…

And the guy who originally knocked on your door? Pounded your hatchway open a bit… is he a god? a saint? a messiah?

Nope.

He’s just a guy who went through exactly the same thing, just a little sooner than you did.

So he has set about finding all the little cages and boxes that people have shut themselves up in and he is calling you OUT.

Calling you out into a vast adventure that we call “the awakened life”.

At the end of your first day out in the wide open spaces, you might want to slip back in to your familiar comfortable “place”… and that’s fine… it’s a good place… it’s a relief…

But eventually you will want more… The brilliant sun and sweet breezes and the fullness of life in the vastness of the universe is simply too breathtakingly beautiful to ignore.

You want it. Don’t you?

Well you can have it. Come on out and play. Join us!

Essentially what I’ve described is the bare bones formula of pretty much every adventure/fantasy story or “heroic journey” ever written, filmed, or told around a fire.

The main character is going along quite nicely in his or her life, Bilbo Baggins has very little need of Wizards and Drwarves, Elves, or dragons… But something interrupts that routine, that pattern, and he is called out of his limited comfort zone into something bigger. Along the way he learns some things about himself and the world and his place in it. His knowledge and confidence grows, he begins to respond to events as they arise. As best he or she can. And it turns out, our little scaredy cat character has grown into an actual hero.

In the Russian story of Baba Yaga, a young girl is forced out of her home and on an unwilling adventure… along the way she meets a mysterious stranger on the road… she is kind to him. He gives her advice, or a magic hunting horn, or the gift of a talking crow… Whatever it is, it has magic powers for her to call upon when she most needs it…

She continues on… eventually she makes other friends whom the witch has treated badly, A dog, a gate, a comb, a fish, a certain tree… whatever. It changes depending on the version of the story…

By the time she meets the witch, she has support, help arrives from many places, many sources…

Since our unconscious minds LOVE story and metaphor. Crave it, actually, these lessons are internalized into our deepest beings…

When we commit fully to our own heroic journeys, I believe the “universe” conspires to support us.

This is such a human universal that I believe we need to pay attention to it. As a professional storyteller, I used to watch hundreds of school kids settle down into what can only be described as a trance, as I told them stories…

We are a storytelling people. But what stories have we been telling ourselves lately?

In CS Lewis’ classic, “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” Access to the “other world” is through the back of an old wardrobe… Time is different there. The “rules” are different there.

But the characters we step into as we read or watch a story unfold are as real to your unconscious mind as anything else you might imagine… remember?

Your unconscious mind is your imagination.

That’s why when you go to see a movie, your heart rate increases as the main character runs head long to a cliff and then jumps…

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hunted down by a posse, choose to leap off a cliff into a raging river rather than be caught… boom! Fourth grade. I’m watching that movie with my next door neighbor Peter Miller. All I have to do is remember and I’m there… I’m in the movie seat but I’m also in the movie and my heart catches in my mouth as we jump over the edge into that crazy river…

Alice falls down a rabbit hole into a totally topsy turvy, crazy different realm.

Harry Potter discovers that he’s not like other kids… for real.

Wherever you go in your imagination, your unconscious mind believes it’s real.

Once you know that, you can start imagining better and better worlds… and then begin to live them authentically in your life, and that’s how we make them real.

I can’t climb down into your world… It doesn’t work that way…

But you CAN come on up and out into this one…

and there are others even bigger than this!

This is the adventure of your life.

I dare you.

I double dare you.

I double dawg dare you!

Explore it with me or without me.

Today I could be playing the part of the mysterious “stranger” on the road.

Whatever, my job is to let you know it’s here… and it is yours.

– Mark

p.s. One way to stick your toe in the water before you fully climb into your greatness, is to check out CRUSH anxiety NOW!  at its, soon to be forever gone, “beta test” price… you can always get a refund… it’s ridiculously cheap… It’s worth 10 times the price.

Give it a shot. Take a test drive. You’ve got nothing to lose except your fear.

Take the puppy home and keep it overnight… see how you like it in the morning…

Peek your head out today… that’s all I’m saying…

No big commitment. If you don’t like it you can go back to being the way you were… Not everybody is ready for freedom. There is no judgement. But I HAVE to knock. It’s my job. It’s my calling. It’s my destiny.

Come on out and play!

CRUSH anxiety NOW! 

 

photo credit – Copyright: nexusplexus / 123RF Stock Photo

Trouble Focusing?

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40808287_mHaving Trouble Focusing? Feeling Scattered? Have Many Interests and Talents?

Feel like a kid in the candy store of life? So many things you COULD do? So many possibilities? So many choices?

Do you have many talents and interests? So many that it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming and frustrating?

You might want to try “Chunking Up!” and Surfing it…

I got a great email today from Transformation Nation member Ari. This guy is doing some really good, profound, deep work and I LOVE hearing from him as well as all of you budding Jedi Mind Masters out there.

He was responding to yesterday’s Post, Dealing With Change. His question and reflection on change and the challenge of being a “creative” with multiple interests and passions is sheer “GOLD”. I have a feeling a lot of you can relate to it.

Being a being with multiple interests myself, this used to drive me crazy! I could focus intensely for a while on something but invariably the level of interest and attention would eventually kind of run out…

And something new would grab my attention. Then I’d go deep with that.

  • My first big thing was nature,
  • Which led me to a fascination (as a 4th grader) with everything Native American.
  • Then it was the Revolutionary War,
  • Then it was, learning to play the guitar well enough to write the songs I wanted to write,
  • And of course writing songs
  • Then it was my fascination with world religions
  • Then it was healing my body and my heart/soul,
  • Then it was storytelling and kid performing,
  • Then it was African drumming
  • Then learning the Irish Tin Whistle
  • Then it was hypnosis and NLP,
  • Then it was learning how to paint in a way that made me happy,
  • Then it was developing my anxiety relief programs, and pretty much helping people with all kinds of challenges with NLP and hypnosis, Weight Loss, Habit Control, Shyness,

Of course a lot of this has been going on at the same time in various ways. And when I set one thing down for a while and turned my attention and focus elsewhere, I noticed I would often return refreshed and even more creative. And all these areas of interest were often combining and re-combining in ways that when I kind of relaxed into it and “surfed” it, constantly surprise and delight me.

I also noticed that when I tried to “force” a focus because it would “make more money”. It pretty much always bit me in the butt.

So I’m a big advocate of following the natural “flow” of your interests and passions. And checking in frequently for “congruence”.

Chances are if you are here at HonestHypnosis.com you are probably a bit like my friend Ari and myself… I’d like to invite you to join the conversation…

Here’s his letter:

Mark,

I wanted to explore a little more with you regarding the way I handle change. You and I had talked once about my frustration with having so many different interests (creative, exercise, etc.) that I did not feel that I could be good at any one of them.

In other words, I felt unfocused.

You said that the process of exploring all of them was, in and of itself, a valid reason to be alive, a valid purpose for a life.

I think at the core of my resistance to what you said (there is a part of me that still wants a specialized focus) is trouble coping with change on my part.

If I interpret all of my various interests (guitar, singing, running, photography, yoga, church, farming, etc.) in a positive light, I simply give myself options of what I can do when I happen to have some free time on my hands.

But as it is, I interpret it negatively, as though I have a poor ability to focus, a low work ethic, etc., and that is why I can’t go very far in any one thing. I feel out of control somehow.

Ari

Here is my reply (which is to Ari and all of you as well as my own unconcious mind):

Hey Ari, (Oh man of many talents and interests…)

My profoundest advice is this: Chunk Up and Learn to SURF it.

In fact watch some surfers on youtube or wherever.

Always adjusting and often falling… each wave different from the last…

Each interest is a wave. Ride the one you’re on until it dissipates or you feel drawn to the next one…

Ultimately the waves flow out in circles and then bounce or reverberate back… so you can ride them again and again… in different directions…

It’s all one energy.

Creative.

Divine.

The ancient Toltecs believed that when we die we return our bubble of awareness to the “Source of all things”, “God”, “All that Is”, whatever you want to call it, ENHANCED by our experiences and the memories of a lifetime.

This is our purpose for having the life force given to us… to expand God… To be God’s eyes, ears, sense receptors “on the ground” “in the field” so to speak… and to learn, grow, seek to understand, expand, deepen, discover…

So stop judging yourself for multiple interests. Your creativitiy and interest in many things is what The Universe/God wants you to be doing… Start enjoying the adventure knowing you will someday present it as a gift to your Creator…

If finding a focus is a MUST, then try this:
Chunk up enough so that all of the things you love to do
are sweetly nestled under a single cohesive umbrella…

Chunking up is going from specific to general. For example:
Toyota Corolla ==> Passenger Car ==>Motor Vehicle ==>TRANSPORTATION.

For me, when I chunked up on what my music and my NLP / Hypnosis / Painting / Storytelling / Entrepreneurism all had in common…. I got  creativity, making a positive difference in the world and helping other people to learn, heal, expand, develop, grow…. and when I chunked up on THAT, I got “Transformation”

(of course hypnosis is quite literally “Trance Formation”. And Music causes us to transform our state as well and can cause a deep trance…)

So Today’s Mind Mastery Transformation Tip for ALL of you FABULOUS, creative, talented, passionate, curious, action taking “TRANSFORMING bubbles of awareness” out there who have many interests is “Chunk up!” and start surfing all of  your many interests without having to “force” any one of them be the “One thing”. Go into what they all have in common. What is it about these interests that nourish an literally Interests you? Are they areas where you can command some mastery? Are they areas of interest because you happen to be good at them? Or are you good at them because you are interested in them?

Your “One Thing” will be something that INCLUDES all the best of what you are and do and are interested and passionate about.

So tawk to me Ari and all you other folks out there. I find your thoughts Fascinating… I love being a part of your TRANSFORMATION!

Be gentle with yourselves and have fun while you play with this idea today…

Chunk UP and Surf the Waves of Interest…

Mark

p.s. Oh BTW… the Surf’s UP ALL the time! :o)

p.p.s. A big Transformation Nation welcome to Joshua!

p.p.p.s. To Contact me click here

p.p.p.ps. BTW candy is BAD for you. Life is GOOD for you. Just sayin’

photo credit: Copyright: pavsie / 123RF Stock Photo

Experimental Curiosity

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Experimental Curiosity is one of the “Keys To Cowabungah” that you want to pay attention to.

Are you willing to experiment in your own life?

Are you willing to read a book or watch a video or hear a podcast that has useful information for you, and then actually put the new ideas or suggestions into practice in your own life?

If so, Watch this video! If not… WATCH THIS VIDEO!  :o)

If you have questions or are interested in personal mastery coaching, use the handy form below to reach out and contact me! I WILL get back to you.

Cowabungah!

P.S. If you have any thoughts or questions or subjects you would like me to reflect upon in future videos, click the button below and contact me today.

Let’s talk…