Honest Hypnosis

Master Your Mind... for a Change

Dealing with Change

Getting Through Hard Times With Hypnosis

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It’s Day 20 of the 90 Day Transformation Challenge.

One of my favorite Transformation Nation members let me know recently that he took a MASSIVELY courageous and stressful action step recently and moved out of his family home. Like me, he’s a musician and he was struggling with anxiety. But over the  years we’ve stayed in touch he has managed to get through some pretty tough life situations. Right in the middle of his recent move (and we all know how stressful that is), a dental issue came up and it was really painful and ill timed and tough. Can you relate? I know I can.

And he GOT through it. It worked out ok.

And I’m so damn proud of him that I want to share that much of his story so you know that YOU TOO are not alone when you’re going through tough stuff.

A lot of us find it really, really hard just LIVING in this particular culture at this particular time in history. Don’t you?

Many of us here in the TranceFormation Nation  are introverts. Highly sensitive people who FEEL stuff deeply. Empaths. Healers. Artists. Musicians. Life long learners. True Scientists. Architects. Spiritual but not religious. We just KNOW that there HAS to be something MORE. Something more to this life than just paying the bills, watching the latest movies and getting laid. We read, we question. We Search for answers and alternative solutions. And sometimes the “answer” is, “the only way out is THROUGH (or should we say through doing something such as taking action).”

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you what I shared with him because I think it’s something we all need to remember (including myself).

This would be a good self hypnosis affirmation for whenever you might be going through hard times as well. Ready? Hear. It. Is.

You got THROUGH it. You’re gonna make it. This is the often shitty, painful truth about life. What does not kill us really does makes us stronger. It’s not a cliche. It’s the way we’re designed.

We’re designed to survive some pretty tough shit. YOU are designed to overcome adversity. That’s what it’s all about.

And we, as a culture, have had it pretty soft for a little while.

But underneath we are tough as nails… and it’s such a deep part of our psychology to be adaptable and able to overcome stress and challenges that if we don’t have it from the environment we have to create it from within…

You are doing well and I’m proud of you. You’re doing it. You’re working on your shit and living your life right through it.

Cowabungah!

If you are ready and would like to go deeper with me… here’s how

Click the link below to:

Or just leave a comment below 🙂

Dr. Donnie Epstein: Focus & Meaning

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hh-12-07-donnie-ss3Okay. Here we are.

We MADE IT TO MONDAY!!!

Cowabungah baby!

I LOVE Mondays don’t you?!

(you will by the end of this Thrilling, action packed, “Mind Mastery Daily” Episode)

I have a pretty big story to tell you, which I’m going to just look into the video camera and speak to you. It will flow easier that way… Then I have some thoughts after that with your Daily Mind Mastery “Transformation Take Away”

What you are about to watch is the demonstration of the long term effects of focusing on what you want…

Video:

(So hopefully you watched the whole video… If you haven’t, please go ahead and do that. I kept it as short as possible because I know you probably think you’re too busy to take the time to watch it. But it sets up everything I say below so please give it a shot.   :o)

Ok. So. Yeah, I’m starting to trust this…

this life thing. I’m putting the techniques into practice every single day and they seem to be cumulatively working.

Donnie Epstein said, there are only two things in life we can control.

  1. What we focus on.
  2. And the meaning we attach to what we focus on.

That’s it.

And that’s what I’ve been saying’ for years now perhaps in different words. And what the wizards and sorcerers and Mages and saints and Brujos, Shamans, Medicine Men, and witches (the good kind) have been saying forever.

It is a basic human truth that our culture seems to do it’s best to gloss over or ignore or outright condemn because it’s not good for business.

Most people are miserable and stressed out, so they try to soothe it with buying things that they THINK will make them happy.

But if they just owned their response-ability to make themselves happy at any given moment by focusing their mind on something that actually makes them happy, They wouldn’t need to spend money on something that they don’t need now.

That would really fvck up the economy if more than a fraction of the population actually did it.

That’s why it’s revolutionary.

What if everybody refused to eat meat that was full of antibiotics and growth hormones? Well 80% of the income pharmaceutical companies generate from ALL antibiotics is from factory farming sales… That would be bad for their business model… So they will do everything they can to preserve their income stream no matter what the cost to you or the environment.

What if everybody turned off the mainstream media and stopped the constant bombardment of holiday advertising, not to mention stopped listening to the “bad” news spinners at CNN, Fox News and even NPR?

What if you didn’t have to buy Christmas presents for all of your relatives? And what if they didn’t have to buy any for you?

What if you all agreed to just enjoy each other’s company for the holidays?

Or if you don’t enjoy each other’s company, be able to say with love. “Hey, I love  you AND this year, I’m going to give myself a trip to Cancun for the holidays…  (Just saying’).

So do whatever you want to do but let’s stop doing things that we kind of resent doing. Let’s only do things that we truthfully, congruently want to do.

Otherwise we’ve given away our power, failed to own our “stuff” and placed an unpleasant burden on the other people in our lives.

I used to do things that I didn’t really want to do all the time. I didn’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. and So guess what? I was a fake and a phony. And I was filled with frustration and resentment. Yuck.

Do you want someone to hang out with you who doesn’t really want to?

NO! It’s a drag! :o)

and by the same token, If you don’t want to hang out with me, I would prefer that you go do what YOU want to do. Make yourself happy! When you are happy, you’re a lot more fun to be around. Does that make sense?

Your take away today is to pay attention to where you’re focus is going. Are you focusing on what’s right in your life? or what’s wrong? When we focus on what’s right, it expands. When we focus on what isn’t right, THAT expands.

Are you focusing on what you don’t want? Or are you holding a steady vision of what you DO want for your life? For the people you love? For the planet?

Choose your focus carefully.

This takes conscious attention. And guess what? practicing focusing on what you appreciate and love and are grateful for and desire more of, gives energy to that.

I heard someone a long time ago say, “Feed the Faith. Starve the Doubt”.

Pop that into a Why question and you’ve got something that can actually change your bio-chemistry! “Why do I feed the faith and starve the doubt?”

or even better, how about, “Why do I feed the faith?”

Forget about the doubt. FAH-GET ABOWT IT!

The next thing you have complete power over is to interpret whatever happens as being a perfect unfoldment of events. A perfect gift. “Pronoia” (the opposite of Paranoia), this funny feeling that somehow, some way, the Universe is conspiring to support you.

So interpret everything, every event, every emotion, every physical challenge, every “problem” as something that is for your good. EVERYTHING.

Even tho it may not at first appear to be to your benefit, it IS. And it will definitely be to your benefit if you actually are willing to BELIEVE that it is to your ultimate benefit.

We have the power to choose our focus and to choose the meaning we attach to everything in our lives.

That’s it. The secret to happiness.
1. Focus on what makes you happy. Focus on the fact that you already ARE happy.
2. Interpret that to me that you actually ARE happy. Right Now.

Ok? Got it? Any questions?

Boom! I’ll see you on the inside!

– Mark

p.s. there WILL be a test, there is ALWAYS a test. How else will you know that you’ve “leveled up”?
p.p.s. Here’s a link to Dr. Donnie Epstein’s website.

p.p.p.s. I am gearing up for my best year ever in 2016. I’m working on couple of big ideas for courses and webinars and I’d love to hear what you would like help with in the next year. Got any specific challenges that you’d like help with? Head over to my contact page and drop me a line or two about what personal transformation targets you would like to FOCUS on and turn into fabulous reality.  Contact Mark Shepard

Habit Change

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37057223_mHey Fabulous One, Welcome to whenever you are reading this!

We are continuing to shake up routines today.

So, watch the video first, then read my brilliant thoughts below it…

When people think about hypnosis they usually think about it as a way of changing habits.

And it is. Faster. Easier. Better.

But the majority of people kind of believe in it like its some kind of magic voodoo thing where the hypnotist “makes” them change. The reality is far more interesting. The person who says they want to make the change, will only make the change if they want to make the change.

Smoking is a habit. When people want to quit, they are actually not quitting cigarettes so much as they are retraining their unconscious mind to let go of the habit of smoking.

Overeating is a habit. When people want to lose weight they often attempt to change their habitual way of eating and moving (or not moving as the case may be). Weight loss is more challenging than smoking cessation because there are usually multiple changes that need to be made in multiple areas of your life.

Anxiety is a habit. It is habitual, vivid repetitions, of what you do not want, played out on your internal movie screen. Your body reacts biochemically to the habitual focus on doomsday scenarios and the body needs less and less reminding to create the habitual fight, or flight hormones a pumpin’.

So when I say it’s a good practice to consciously PRACTICE changing things up in very small ways. It’s just one of many ways I’m attempting to give your power back to you so you can stop doing the stuff that stops you and start doing the stuff that will lead you to the health, wealth and love that you say  you want.

So your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to do something differently in the next 24 hours. And then repeat. See what else begins to change as you demonstrate to your unconscious mind that change is actually fun. At the very least it’s more interesting than doing the same old thing and expecting a different result. LOL.

Peace out,

– Mark

p.s. Want to go deeper? Here are a few of my Related courses you might want to check out:

Stop Smoking Dammit!

CRUSH Anxiety NOW!

CRUSH anxiety FOREVER!

photo credit – Copyright: enterline / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Progress

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Fullfilling an assignment from one of my mentors, I checked in with myself and looked back over the last 10 years to see if I could “get” the amount of progress I’ve made…

Here’s the Daily Mind Mastery video version:

As you may know if you’ve been following my stuff for a while, I learned all this “Modern Jedi” mind mastery stuff BECAUSE I WAS SO FREAKING MISERABLE about not being able to “get out of my own way” enough to get my music out into the world in any significant or sustainable way.

So I sat and reflected a while and then jumped up and went to Youtube.com to do a little search.

I typed in “Together We Can Change The World Song” and started sifting through all the different videos and versions of my song.

Here’s what turned up:

TWCCTW-ss2-10-19-15

 

I only had a few minutes but I added up all the views and it came to something like 750,000 views!

so I guess I HAVE made progress LOL…

Fired up by THAT.

I did another search, for my original “How To Stop Anxiety Without Harmful Drugs or Endless Therapy” series.

And when I counted up all the views for that, it came to over 300,000!

Together that’s over a million sets of Eyes and Ears… COWABUNGAH BABY!

The point is to check in with yourself from time to time to make sure you are paying attention to the right things. I could have looked back and focused on the time I was homeless or all the “failures” I experienced. But even those things were just part of the process of the personal growth and transformation adventure I’ve been on.

DS your assignment for today, (should you choose to accept it) is to take a little time to reflect on how far you’ve come from where you used to be. Focus ONLY on the progress, the positive.

I’d love to hear your story. I’d love YOU to hear your story! The stories we tell ourselves is an entirely different topic for another day, but please remember, we always have a choice on how to interpret the events of our lives. Consciously go for the good.

And I’m outa here!
– Mark

p.s. if you want to watch how bad I was on camera back in 2008 check out my original stop anxiety series…

OMG! I have sooooooooooooo come a long way… yowsah!

How To Stop Anxiety Video from 2008

Fare Thee Well

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42739597_mLetting Go With Love

Today’s Mind Mastery Daily is a song about letting go of loved ones. As we’ve been talking about change all week, this song fits perfectly into the conversation. The ability to let go and allow people we love to move on with their lives according to their calling, their needs, their inner direction, is part of the awakening process.

And of course, we all eventually move on and let go of these “vehicles” called bodies.

On this beautiful Fall day with a definite crisp, cold “bite” in the air, we are letting go of summer for sure here in the Northeast and moving towards winter.

Here’s the song, #504, “Fare Thee Well” inspired by and dedicated to my dear friends Kay & Jim Fuller as they move out of the “old” and into the “new”. Bon Voyage! Adieu! Aloha. Fare thee well…

Your take away Mind Mastery Tip for today is to practice letting go of people, places and things. Notice how “en-lightening” it feels! :o)

– Mark

p.s. full lyrics at MarkShepardSongs.com

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