Honest Hypnosis

Master Your Mind... for a Change

Dominant Thoughts

The Singing Hypnotist

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So as part of the 90 Day tRansformation Challenge, I’m “stepping into” a new “handle” “brand” or whatever you want to call it.

My friend Ned Depew saw me at the Honest Weight Food Co-op last week and made a point of telling me, “You know Mark, I’ve been thinking, you might consider calling yourself ‘The Singing Hypnotist’.”

And it was weird because I’ve been asking myself over and over again in my meditaitons and self hypnosis talk, “How can I authentically and holistically integrate my music, my message and my methods of personal transformation in a way that people instantly can relate to and understand? How can I combine what I do into one thing, that keeps me focused and on target without constraining and limiting me?”

So I sat down last night with my guitar and proceeded to sing a phrase that I heard somewhere or read somewhere.

“Sometimes you have to be nobody before you can be somebody” It’s kind of the perfect hypnotic phrase. it’s vague enough so that whoever is hearing it can translate it into whatever works for their unconscious mind… and ultimately the 90 day challenge as well as my one on one hypnosis and NLP work is all about becoming who we really want to be isn’t it?

So here’s what happened once I turned my cameras on. (I’m continuing to experiment with 2 cameras in order to improve the “watchability” of my musical videos. But I’ve also decided to start posting these as audio only podcasts to soundcloud.) Let me know what you think.

Here’s the audio only version:

Want to go deeper with me?

Click the link below to:

Or just leave a comment below 🙂

Get the full lyrics for this new song over at MarkShepardSongs.com : Song # 529 Be Somebody (world premiere)

Don’t miss your daily mind mastery message and transformation Tune! Subscribe!

Questions? Comments! Drop me a line! I want to hear from you!

The Monday “Trance”

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506-oh-my-beloved-origThe Hypnosis of Monday

Now that you made it through that exhausting, arduous weekend of fun and frivolity, what is “Monday” for? Let’s Transform Mondays ok?

I mean really? Do you ever get much done on a Monday? Ever try calling anyone on a Monday morning? Chances are it goes right to voicemail :o)

I call it the “Monday Trance”…

Monday has become a “transition” day for a lot of folks between the weekend and the week. Notice the root of “Transition” has the word “Trance” built right in :o)

A little over ten years ago I started meeting every Monday with my friend Michael Guerin. We were both struggling with our businesses at the time. Mostly because we were “solo entrepreneurs”. I was trying to build my NLP and Hypnosis practice, workshops and trainings and he was building his as a financial planner and merchant account advisor.

And while we both enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of being “one man shops,” in the long term, solitary businesses don’t last.

After all, business is all about people. People working together to serve other people with our ideas, products and services…

Interesting dilemma for a couple of introverts.

so we chose to change our Monday Trance… Instead of being boring old “Monday” that everybody dreads, we made Mondays into…

MASTERMIND MONDAYS…

And what we focused on is still what we focus on every week: Helping each other to Market, Manage, Motivate, Merchandise and Man-Up…

These days we usually talk on Saturday because by Monday we are already putting into action what we agreed with each other to do… But for me, Monday’s are just the best day of the week. It’s quiet. It’s usually the time I have to seriously consider and map out what my action steps for the week are.

And when I’ve been traveling and working on weekends, Monday is the day I catch my breath and recharge my batteries.

If Monday is a day you’ve been dreading lately… Let’s see if there is any way you can “reframe” it or shift it into something that automatically lights a fire in your heart to take your adventure to the next level.

If Monday messes with your mood… take a moment to ask what’s really going on?

  • Are you unhappy in your work?
  • Are you using work to escape something that happens on the weekends?
  • Are you on your path with heart?
  • How’s your body doing?
  • Is this going to be another week of not moving it?
  • or not feeding it the proper fuel for it to thrive and be strong?

Some folks like to check in with themselves and their goals for the week on Sunday evening.
I prefer Monday Mornings…

Either way, you might want to consider giving a little bit of conscious, creative reflection to today. Imagine totally CRUSHING IT this week as you look ahead and imagine where you would like to be by Friday…

Of course that is ONLY if you CHOOSE to accept the assignment.

Maybe you just want to chill out with a cool song that supports the assignment without actually doing the assignment. That’s fine too. Totally up to you.

Here’s your song for the day:

Now have an amazingly wonderful rest of your Masterful Monday! Or your “restful” Monday. Or your kick ass Monday… Or whatever kind of Monday you decide to have…

– Mark

p.s. So if YOU would like to be less alone in your pursuit of your big dream, your path with heart and would like to explore what it’s like to be in a “MasterMind” that is all about serving you and helping get you to where you want to be in your life and work, please contact me and let me know that you’re interested. There is no obligation, I’m just checking to see if we have enough interest for me to make the next 90 day challenge something that benefits more than just myself and my team… so let me know ok? cool. Use this link: Contact Me! 

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 🙂

What is “Anxiety” Really?

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50923995_mlI got an email the other day from one of the Transformation Nation Members with a pretty good question.

It’s a good question because it nails the true issue that stops a lot of anxiety sufferers from actually finding relief.

And the key issue is whether anxiety is something we do or is something that happens to us.

I don’t know if you can handle me telling the truth here. Not everybody can.

Hopefully you are up to our transformation nation standard of being willing to take honest feedback and use it to “stalk” your own “stuff.”

Sometimes we need to get some tough love and honest coaching in order to cut through our own self deceit, clear it and move on to a more empowered, happier, more productive place where we can each bring MASSIVE value to the world through our own talents, and contributions instead of staying stuck in the old helpless, hopeless, victim place where most people live.

Here’s the question:

Hi mark! I miss the Transformation Tuesdays

I have a question for you that has been reoccurring for a while

It is known that ingesting certain chemicals can cause anxiety. Also the withdrawal of chemicals can cause severe anxiety. Stimulating certain parts of the brain electrically can cause anxiety as well as pressure on certain parts of the brain. Fatigue in general can cause anxiety, etc.

If this is the case, how is anxiety solely a product of imagining what you don’t want? And how is it not an illness? Who is to say that a person’s brain is not genetically prone to have pressure on the parts that causE anxiety or have more of certain chemicals in it which naturally cause more anxiety?

Thanks, very interested to hear your take on this! – E.

First of all, thank you for noticing I’ve stopped doing my “Transformation Tuesday Programs”.  I’m currently working with a high level business coach who gave ME some tough love and insisted I STOP doing anything that could possibly distract and delay me from passionately pursuing my Passionate Purpose EVEN if at some point in the past Transformation Tuesdays supported it.

Transformation Tuesdays were a fabulous training ground for me. I cleared a lot of my old “stuff” by committing to doing a program every week. The public commitment FORCED me to face some of my OWN self deceit and little bits of my own anxiety around performing my music. And I stepped up and took my own damn “medicine”.

However.

  1. I needed a break.
  2. I needed to find a way to reach a larger audience who is hungry for my message and music FIRST.
  3. I installed a bunch of really cool, powerful BIG goals into my Time Line (like Traveling the Country teaching my Modern Jedi Mind Mastery Methods to bullied Teens) and some of them are shaping up BIG time which means I HAVE to focus my energies on what could actually SUPPORT me as well as thousands of young, open minds.
  4. I WILL however keep up my daily discipline of writing a blog post or email newsletter almost every single day (or at least 6 out of 7 days. and since I started writing this yesterday and haven’t finished it until now this one counts for two days :o)

cool? cool.

Now to answer your question!

As you may know from my various courses and videos about How To CRUSH Anxiety, my definition of anxiety is this:

Anxiety is the thought process of focusing on what you DO NOT want to have happen in the future.

And BECAUSE your unconscious mind DOES NOT know the difference between what is real or imagined, your body will react to the imagined event AS IF IT IS REAL.

Big Pharma and Big Medicine want you to think Anxiety is a “Mental Disease” so they can sell you pills and get the health insurance companies to pay for them every month…and since they own the media, they have done a pretty good job of hypnotizing the masses to believe their definition of anxiety…

And its so much easier to believe that its outside of you… But there is no “anxiety germ” or “anxiety virus” or “anxiety gene” other than the one we all have which enables us to imagine a future we don’t want and then DO something to prevent it.  I INSIST that it is a step by step PROCESS that we all do in some form or another at some time or another…

So for example, I could imagine being strapped into the seat of a roller coaster and slowly, steadily being pulled up to the top of the track and then suddenly “falling” down the other side at a stomach clenching, GRAVITY obeying drop off that is  MASSIVELY SCARY (for me), not to mention the terrifying speed, g-force pulling curves etc….

If I do this vividly enough, my body will literally REACT as if it is REALLY HAPPENING.

But it’s not.

So, for another example, when someone has social anxiety, they are doing the same thing, imagining something embarrassing or uncomfortable enough around other people to trigger all the same fight, flight or freeze bio-chemistry that we recognize as “anxiety”.

Now where it gets interesting is that usually anxiety provoking situations are caused by a one time learning event at some point in our past. One example I use is Billy shoving a frog in Mary’s face in kindergarten and Mary “freaking out”. So now whenever Mary even hears the word “frog” or even sees a cute little cartoon frog on a greeting card or whatever, it brings up all the same memories and experiences in her neurology,( a.k.a. her imagination a.k.a. her unconscious mind).

The frog event is a “trauma”, a “one time learning event” that is so emotionally charged and intense that it STICKS. Because of it’s intensity and our hardwired desire to AVOID pain which is way stronger than MOVING TOWARDS PLEASURE, her unconscious mind is forever on the lookout for this situation… and anything that looks like the original situation will definitely get a lot of attention and focus and most likely TRIGGER the same reaction.

The anticipation of it happening again in the future is “anxiety”. Does that make sense?

Now I suppose all of this might “happen” somewhere specific in a person’s brain. I’m not a neuro scientist. I’m just a practitioner of NLP, Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy who has conquered anxiety in my own life as well as helping thousands and thousands of people to do the same in their lives.  So I don’t know where this actually happens in your brain or your left pinky or your gut.

The research I’ve encountered over the years as well as in my NLP training indicates that The body is a holograph. emotions don’t just happen in the brain. Emotions happen EVERYWHERE in the body as well as the body’s energy field.

The gut is also a key place where feel good and feel bad chemistry happens. Serotonin is created mostly in the gut. Wipe out all of your healthy bacteria in your digestive system and all of a sudden you might feel depressed or anxious.

A lot of research has been done lately with autistic kids who have totally recovered once their digestion was healed with pro-biotics and fermented vegetables. That’s another reason why I’m a total pro-biotic and fermented veggies guy. It totally has been proven to support cognitive functioning and balanced emotions.

so let’s say some one takes a drug that causes the body to experience what you “interpret” as anxiety.

Is it really anxiety? Meaning does the drug cause you to imagine worst case scenarios vividly enough to trigger fight or flight? Or is the drug triggering the same neuro connections, synapses etc that FEEL like anxiety.

Do you see the challenge here? Anxiety is A NAME, a label we have attached to a feeling, an emotion, a behavior, a habit, a response to a stimulus…

It’s a neurological pattern that you have practiced thousands upon thousands of times until you have no clue how you do it. But you ARE the one who is doing it.

So the answer to your question is, Who knows?

But the underlying presupposition,  your true concern is this: you want to somehow explain your inability to clear your anxiety even though you have tried so many techniques including mine, yet you STILL feel anxiety!

So you want someone to reassure you that it’s not your fault. Your internal dialogue or monologue may be going something like this:

“Maybe it’s a PHYSICAL thing and maybe I am not really in charge of my body, mind or anything else in my life. Maybe some day there WILL be a cure! In the meantime, I just have to stay here in  my parents house and not deal with all the shit from my childhood that is totally messing me and my entire life up.”

And again I ask you as I have asked so many times before with you and others:

  • What do you gain from staying the same?
  • What do you gain from being a victim of this thing you call “anxiety”?
  • What to you get out of “nothing works for Me?”
  • And when will you finally see that YOU are the one thinking your thoughts whether your thoughts arise because of some chemical in your body and make you think shitty thoughts… or your shitty thoughts trigger the chemicals in your body that make you feel bad.

What does it matter? You are still the one who is making yourself feel shitty. You don’t want to hear that “it’s a choice”. Because it doesn’t feel like a choice. It’s something you do unconsciously.

The ultimate belief here is that somehow you have no power to stop this.

And that’s why I often insist that a client attempt to make the problem WORSE first. Before we make it better.

Because if YOU can make it WORSE. Then WHO is making it in the first place?

Now. If you broke your leg. I would say some outside force acted upon the bone and snapped it.

But if you have anxiety, where is the “outside force”? Where is this coming from? Ghosts? Demons? Evil Spirits? some CHEMICAL? A DISEASE? Your GENES?

Did you inherit this from your parents who are also anxious? Did they inherit it from THEIR parents?

Is it in the genes? or Is it behavior that was modeled at a very young age by a very smart kid who knew instinctively that one way to stay alive was to act like mommy and daddy? Or was it a response to actual life threatening abusive conditions that as a kid you had no control over? When you were a child you might have been an actual victim of a horrible situation. But now that you are an adult you can change ANYTHING you truly want to change.

But here is the deal and I’m sorry to be the truth teller here:

NO ONE is going to fix this for you. My courses are the best in the world. But you still have to apply the tools. And if you think you have applied them but aren’t getting an improvement, then you aren’t actually applying them.

Seriously. When was the last time you wrote out “Why does this work out better than I can possibly imagine?” a hundred times? A thousand times? While you were doing the 7 other Anxiety CRUSHERS? When did you spend a day totally and completely obsessively and compulsively running the tools and techniques through your neurology? did you keep a log and check your progress every single day as you compulsively and obsessively practiced the anxiety crushing tools?

The tough love truth is that YOU have to commit beyond what you have committed so far up to this point. You have to commit beyond what you think is commitment. You have to burn the boats and know that this is the moment to fully and completely go FULL OUT TOWARDS what you want.

In other words take repeated, sustained ACTION.

There will never be a drug that stops this. Drugs only mask the real emotions and keep you from doing the deep work you know you need to do but don’t want to do yet.

If you are in a bad home situation. Move out.

If you are a massive introvert and need solitary time. Give it to yourself. But learn how to increase your social intelligence and enjoyment of people when you go out and about in your life.

You want more friends? Start by being a great friend and learn the dynamics of social intelligence. And practice, practice practice with no expectations. Join a bunch of meetup groups and actually go to them.

If you want to lose weight stop eating crap, eat only whole, real foods, fast 1 -2 times per week from dinner to dinner (no big deal). get your ass to a gym and start doing slow burn resistance training and High Intensity Interval training. Get rid of your desk chair and stand while you work at you computer, do stuff you like that requires moving your body. take the stairs instead of the elevator. Stop watching TV.  YOU  are living in that body. TAKE CARE OF IT. No One Can Do It For You.

So anxiety is not some special category from any other human “problem”.

Your problem isn’t really anxiety. Your “problem” is that you’ve been allowing other people or your “disease” of anxiety to write your story for you. Your story is stuck in the opening scene and hasn’t progressed to the hero leaving home and striking out on his or her own on the big adventure of your life. Your story hasn’t progressed beyond the call to adventure. You are being called out into the world as a man as a woman as the hero of your own story.

If Frodo Baggins had stayed in the Shire… If Harry Potter had stayed under the stairs and never gone to Hogwarts… If Odysseus had never left home in Ithaca… his 4,000 year old rep as a serious badass wouldn’t exist… do you see this? This is a Universal call. And you’ve been avoiding it because change is scary. Even POSITIVE change.

And you are terrified. Of what? Dying?

That’s the ultimate game ender. But until you tear it up and wear out your welcome here on this amazing planet in the middle of a small solar system in a small galaxy in an infinite universe… it’s time to start living instead of staying stuck in your little cubicle or little life or little relationships or preconceived, generalized notions of “reality”.

I hold all of you in such deep respect. Please understand. I know you’ve been in excruciating pain. I don’t want to be that guy that just shouts at the team to do 10 more pushups…

You don’t want to hear me say, “Grab life by the metaphorical balls and get the fvck out into your life.”  You want me to somehow let you off the hook for the fact that you are creating this experience. You want compassion from me.

But right now? Right now it’s time for tough love.

There is also kind of dis-belief that we create these experiences that seem so painful for us. I often hear, “why would I do this to myself?”

You know?

If I’m really in charge of my emotions and experience of anxiety or being overweight because I eat when I’m anxious then I’m doing it to myself. This is not “blaming the victim.”

There are no victims here.

Playing the victim is still a self delusion. I’ve had clients ask, “Why would I cause myself so much pain? This HAS to be from somewhere outside of me. The HAS to be a medical thing… I CAN’T be doing this to myself! Why would I be so cruel to myself?”

And those are exactly the questions that only YOU can answer…

  • Why would you do such a horrible stultifying thing to yourself as install and practice INTENSE anxiety so severe you can’t leave the house? What? Is your unconscious mind Crazy?

Nope. It’s not crazy. It’s doing it for a reason but you are not “getting” the message yet. And maybe you never will…

Until the day that you CAN NOT STAND IT ANY MORE AND YOU TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR CHANGE AND START FOCUSING RELENTLESSLY ON A FUTURE THAT IS WORTH LIVING AND WORTH BREAKING OUT OF YOUR CAGE FOR…

Until that day you will just be another victim thinker sitting in their own mess.

But on that day… The day that is coming…

When you realize like Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club, that

“this is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time”

You will begin your hero’s journey.

You’re probably not ready yet. But that’s ok.

You’re getting there. You’re close.

When you are totally ready the movement will appear.

The shift. The transformation… is coming.

And who am I to say, “You’re ready. You’ll only be ready when you are ready to be ready…”

if you get my Ericksonian Hypnotic “drift” deep in to a transformational experience the next time you forget to do the problem… and release all expectations or goals other than this present precise precious moment that is here and gone, here and gone, here and gone, the beating of your heart… Who do you want to be? The writer, director, star and biggest fan of the movie of your life? Or just someone doing what he is told by an old script that was written by someone else or by your 3 year old self who didn’t quite get how the world works..

In the old days young men and women went through initiation trials that were often intense and even life threatening. We have lost that in our culture so you might want to consider that THIS is your initiation.

Find your edges and lean in to them even if  you fall down…

Brush your self off and get up again. You have work to do…

Love yourself until your love is true. True for you….

It may be really, really, hard but you can do it.

The only way out is through.

Peace.

The really important thing is just to be fully aware that you can realize the change you’re looking for…

And here’s how

Click the link below to:

– Mark

p.s. listen to this song. Over and Over and Over again. There will be a test.

Better Than Expected

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317 Better Than Expected origWhy DOES It Work Out Better Than Expected…

I had a lovely weekend exploring the Finger Lakes Region of New York State. From the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge north of Lake Cayuga down to Ithaca and then west to the Finger Lakes National Forest then to Watkins Glen at the southern end of Lake Seneca, my delightful traveling companion and I did a lot of driving and walking and exploring.

Unfortunately in Watkins Glen I didn’t quite manage to negotiate a certain higher than expected curb… and it threatened to “curb my enthusiasm” for a few minutes as I surveyed the “crunch” on the right side of the formerly “cool, sporty ground effects” trim on my car… :o(

So I immediately began chanting my favorite “mind-hack”.

“Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?”

“Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?”

“Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?”

“Why does it work out better than I can possibly imagine?”

This is a conscious shift that I sometimes have to FORCE myself to make. It’s a sad fact of modern life that a little fender bender, bumper crunch can be expensive, not to mention INCONVENIENT…

I felt myself starting to get bummed out by the idea of my insurance company jacking up my rates, as well as time wasted being put on hold and having to make an appointment and give up the use of my car to get the darn thing fixed… blech!

So I said it again. Louder and with a few very satisfying expletives (which I’ll delete here just in case you might be shocked by them LOL)…

“Why does it work out !@#*%^ better  than I can possibly imagine?”

But literally POURING the alternative thought into my neurology of “Why does this work out better than I can possibly imagine?” I began to move me back into my usual joyful state…

I like to imagine that somehow “this is good!”… Perhaps the delay this caused saved our lives somehow… Perhaps this was exactly the reminder I needed to stay in this powerful state of mind. Or maybe I will never know consciously how “this is good.”

Whatever. I’m in charge of my state.

A RESOURCEFUL, positive state is ALWAYS better than being all pissed off and whiny…

And maybe it was all so that I would share this thought and song with you this morning… Maybe YOU need to hear it…

Either way this humorous song bubbled up in my mind as a perfect song to play for you this morning.

Song #317, “Better Than Expected” demonstrates NLP reframing techniques in a way that uses music and humor to install a powerful transformative idea deep into your subconscious mind.

And that idea is this:

The events that seem “bad” or “negative” only seem that way because of our interpretation.

Reframe or re-interpret them as positive and the physiological reaction can be one of positive, transformational empowerment. You may have a few moments of frustration or despair. But with practice you can instantly reframe any situation as a blessing.

Powerful, real life change from listening to a song? Yup. And what’s even cooler?
You can download it for nuthin’ (unless of course you want to pay in which case it definitely works out better than expected for me! ;o)

Now it’s up to you to test it in your own life… Seriously. Give it a shot…

[BTW I played this song for a guy once out of context and he said, “well I don’t really like country music.”

For the record. Just in case it isn’t OBVIOUS. This is a PARODY of a country music song. The cliche music style is part of the humorousness… Do I have to explain EVERYTHING? Sheesh…LOL]

BTW #2: all the instruments (including real TUBA)are played by “Country Joe” Mennonna who is feverishly working on several new arrangements that I will hopefully share with you soon.

Your assignment today, should you choose to accept it, is to Have a fabulous Monday! A Monday that is BETTER than you could have EVER expected! Unless of course you read this post on some other day in which case have whatever day you are having in a way that is better than you can possibly imagine. Ok?

The really important thing is just to be fully aware that you can realize the change you’re looking for…

And here’s how

Click the link below to:

Or just leave a comment below 🙂

Glad we had this little chat.

I.

Will See You.

ON THE INSIDE!

Cowabungah!

– Mark

p.s. just in case you don’t remember, Tomorrow is the local and live streamed kick off of my new weekly Transformation Tuesday program combining Music, Movement, Meditation, Message and Meet Up. I hope you’ll join us!

Focus Focus Focus

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32264971_mlFocus.

Focus.

Focus.

Focus.

Focus.

I’m pretty sure that if I were to attend elementary school today, I would be labeled as having ADD.

You know the term right? Attention Deficit Disorder.
(personally I don’t see it as a “disorder”. In fact I would re-define it as “Alternative Direction Distinction”)

They would probably want to dose me up with some Riddle-in.
But what they would really need to do is get the Riddle-Out.

I’ve noticed over the years and in my own intensive research observing myself as well as the people who are different from the “norm” (People who are peak performers and outside of the box thinkers) that the truth is we don’t fit in to the convenient cubicles and cubby  holes that our educational system or our dominant culture wants to stick us…

We are different.

And golly gee wiz
VIVA LA Damn DIFFER-ANCE!

One of the major tasks on this adventure is to discover how your own unique quality of focus can support you.

Personally, I am interested in a lot of different subjects. My big stroke of genius for my own sanity was to realize that literally EVERYTHING I’m passionately interested in fits nicely (for the moment) under the sweet umbrella of TRANSFORMATION.

I am constantly challenging myself to explore and expand my knowledge, skills and abilities in several seemingly unrelated fields at once.

Music. I don’t just play one instrument. I sing, I play guitar, piano, African and Irish drums, the French horn, the flute, the didgeridoo etc. Pretty much anything that can make a sound? I will play around with it. And while I’m no prodigy or master of any one of those instruments, I AM a master of writing songs using them.

Words. I love to read. I love to write. My voracious reading has quite literally provided my unconscious mind with a massive arsenal of ideas and competence with turning concepts into communications.

As a Songwriter, I combine words and music. I take 2 things and transform them into one thing.

I can literally sit down to a blank page or a camera not knowing what I’m going to say and just open up the “channel” and the words flow out. THAT didn’t happen overnight.  But it definitely happens because of the kind of focus I enjoy.

Healing. Over the years I have been absolutely fascinated with the ability of human beings to transform lack of health and vitality into abundance health and vitality. Again. Transformation.

Pursuing that area of interest I’ve apprenticed myself to an energy healer, an herbalist, as well as the top hypnosis and NLP teachers in the world. I also added a precision change model called Time Line Therapy(tm) to the mix as well as EFT (emotional freedom technique or “tapping).

Again, someone else might focus on just one of those modalities and do just fine. I, however, had to explore all of them… because I HAD to master them enough to heal myself. I had to heal myself enough to stop stopping myself from fulfilling my life’s purpose… Every time I worked with a client and didn’t get the result we wanted, I went back to the drawing board and expanded my knowledge and skills and tool set so that I could constantly get better.

Gardening. I used to help other people with their gardens. One day I just had the realization that I loved to grow stuff. I loved growing my own food. I loved planting seeds and watching them grow. In some ways its the same as the great joy I’ve had watching some of my NLP clients and students grow into their greatness by applying the ideas I taught them.

I used to feel deeply frustrated by the fact that I just could not seem to give 100% of myself to any one of the areas of my life I was fascinated with. Because that concept of “focus” meant I had to give up something that I loved.

But when I “chunked” up to TRANSFORMATION,
Boom! Pow! Cowabungah! It all came together.

And while this coming together has taken awhile, a lot of it happened right here in front of your eyes on the Daily Mind Mastery newsletter.

Now.
I told you all that, to tell you this:

There is an immutable law of the Universe that is totally and completely trustworthy:

We get what we focus on.

Your neurology is hardwired to be able to focus on only one thing at a time.

If you focus on how bad everything is. Guess what. You get more “bad”.
If you focus on how good everything is. Guess what. You get more “good”.

But the very nature of “focus” is flexible.

Here’s what I mean:

You can focus your camera on something close like a person’s face or a single flower… or you can even get a specialized camera that can take microscopic photos. That’s one kind of focus. In NLP we call it, “Chunking Down.”

if you’ve been paying close attention to the typos in my newsletters and blog posts, you may be good at chunking down,  the details focus.

or You can focus your camera on a big picture item like a sunset or a distant mountain range.

Either one is still focus.

In Robert Greene’s fabulous book, “Mastery” he contrasts the strategies of two different Masters.

  1. Indian born V.S. Ramachandran, found that he was always happiest when he went deeper and deeper and deeper into a single field of study. As  kid, he started with sea shells and dove so deep into sea shells that he became a leading expert on sea shells. in other words everywhere he looked he would see shells! ;o) (can’t resist a good pun). Eventually he took this way of learning and being in the world to a field of science that was literally untouched, the study of phantom pain experienced by amputees in their no longer existing limbs.That’s the “chunked down” focus. And it works fabulously if that is your inclination.
  2. Then there is the big picture focus of a Leonardo DaVinci or a Buckminster Fuller. They looked everywhere for their learning and began to bring different elements together in unique ways. Some of their ideas were ahead of their time. Leonardo studied the flight of birds as much and with as much passion as he experimented with new kinds of paints and pigments. Buckminster Fuller invented an electric car way before its time as well as the geodesic dome which is still a significant architectural form.Those guys demonstrate the “chunked up” form of focus.

The thing is I used to beat myself up for not being the chunked down kind of person. That’s like a labrador retriever beating itself up because it can’t stop retrieving tennis balls. We need to accept and maximize our native strengths and inclinations. Beating ourselves up for ANYTHING is a waste of energy and a wrong use of “Focus”.

Probably there are those of you out there reading this who may have been beating yourself up for not being the way your aren’t.

Did that make sense?

Let me say it another way. They way you focus the best is the best way for you to focus.

The bottom line is you ARE always focused on SOMETHING. Is it supporting you or stopping you from who you really came here to be?

The more you can practice focusing your mind on who you really want to be, and what you really want to do and who you really want to be with, the more you will get THAT.

I’m sure there are tons of scientific studies I could quote about that but I would prefer if you did a little study of your own….

TODAY. Your assignment. Should you choose to accept it.
Is to

  1. Notice how you focus best.
  2. Consciously focus in that way on what you most desire. Without pressure. without desperation. just hold easily and lovingly in your mind what you most want to be true for your life, your work, your relationships, your health, your vision for a life well lived.
  3. Write down any ideas or insights or confirmations that you get.

Got it?

Good.

Glad we had this little tawk.

The really important thing is just to be fully aware that you can realize the change you’re looking for…

And here’s how

Click the link below to:

Or just leave a comment below 🙂

Onward!

p.s. Here’s a little Transformation Tune that illustrates and supports my message. Damn I’m good! :o)

p.p.s. I hope you’ll join us at our next TRANSFORMATION TUESDAY live event.

Trauma & Anxiety Are LINKED

by

Today’s Mind Mastery Daily is about the connection between Trauma (one time learning events in the past) and Anxiety (imagining what you do not want to have happen in the future)

Trauma and anxiety are deeply linked neurological processes. But they are CLEAR-ABLE!

Hypnosis for PTSD must include conscious tools for clearing old beliefs, childhood vows, and limiting decisions we made about the world as children…

It’s time to stop running old beliefs that “program” you to be fearful, weak, frustrated, and small. And time to start installing bigger, better, more useful beliefs… like, “Why am I more powerful than I can possibly imagine?” [sound FX of Lion roaring!]

It’s all in the video! (Make sure you also listen to today’s Transformation Tune which is below the video)

 

Transformation Tune for Today: Song # 161 Beautiful Person (version #2)

This is the 2nd version I recorded of “Beautiful Person”.

The first one is from Visions & Voices CD and was arranged by Gene Moore. This version is a very simple “chant” that includes some significant shifts in language inspired by the field of Neuro Linguistics. Most notable is the shift into the past tense.

So, “I can not love you if I hate myself” became, “I could not love you when I hated myself”.

The past tense pre-supposes that I no longer hate myself… see how it works? Even the subtlest of language patterns can free us from our old patterns and stories or keep us stuck.

This is another one of those songs to listen to repeatedly for its potential to get “stuck” in your head… and do some good in there… :o)

BTW I actually did have a dream where there was a lion coming up out of the bathtub drain! It scared me awake from a deep slumber. As I lay there in the dark it occurred to me that the lion represented my own true power. And that it was time to stop running away from it.

May you too find your power and experience how incredibly beautiful you are. Right now. Right here.

The really important thing is just to be fully aware that you can realize the change you’re looking for…

And here’s how

Click the link below to:

Or just leave a comment below 🙂