Transcription of Fear of Cancer Recurrence preview

The majority of people who have healed and recovered from cancer still have niggling worries about experiencing it again. The American Cancer Society estimates that at least 70% of people who used to have cancer will experience some degree of fear or anxiety about their future health. For some people, it can feel like you can’t trust your body like you once could, and it might be that you find it harder to plan for the future, because everything feels less certain. Sometimes any ache or pain can trigger an anxious worry about whether it’s a sign of something serious.

Even the terminology doctors use, like ‘in remission’, can seem to imply that this state of health you’re returning to now might somehow only be temporary. For some people, the phrase ‘in remission’ isn’t helpful, and words like ‘recovering’, ‘healing’ and ‘surviving cancer’ have more encouraging connotations for them. But however you choose to think of it, the fact remains that nobody can completely guarantee that you will be healthy for the rest of your life. Of course, nobody can guarantee that for any human being on this planet either, and none of us have the certainty of a healthy, happy future in front of us. But you’ve had a visceral experience of what serious illness is really like, and you’ve been given a sharper awareness of your own mortality than many other people, so it’s completely normal, after an experience like the one you’ve had, to sometimes feel anxious about your health.

Cancer often makes the future feel less certain, and it can cause people to change their outlook on life. This change in outlook can involve some difficult emotions. Sometimes there is a lot of grief or anger for what you’ve lost, a longing for the peace of mind you had in your life before the cancer, when you didn’t have to worry about your health, and perhaps an urge to deny it, to want it to have never happened. But this kind of life crisis can also wake you up and make you properly evaluate what’s really important in your life. Many cancer survivors talk about how they approached life differently after their recovery, making more time for family or for doing things they love, and saying no to engagements and activities that aren’t worth their energy. So recovering from cancer can trigger a healthy period of re-prioritising one’s life.

So what can you do about the worry of it recurring? Well, this session isn’t about trying to force your mind to think only positive thoughts. That doesn’t work, and research shows that trying to suppress worries and push them out of your mind only ends up making the intensity of the worries worse. Instead, this session is going to help you to calm down the emotion associated with those worries, so that they no longer have the power over you that they used to have.

The part of your mind that has been worrying is ultimately only trying to protect you from harm, and there are a variety of things you can do to look after your health and keep your immune system strong and vibrant, like eating well, exercising, getting a good night’s sleep, and limiting the amount of stress you’re exposed to. But ultimately there will always be some uncertainty in being alive on this planet, and there are very few things that are completely under your control. So rather than pretending that you can be completely
certain of the future, this session is going to help you to relax with uncertainty, to calm down that worrying part of you to a more appropriate level, so that you can take care of yourself appropriately, enjoy your life as it’s happening, and develop a balanced, optimistic attitude towards your future.

Transcription of Breaking Bad News preview

Perhaps you’re listening to this because your line of work involves you having to deliver bad news to people on a regular basis, or at least from time to time. Or it could be that you just want to become better at breaking bad news generally, because it’s something you’ve found particularly difficult to do in the past. Or there may be a particular piece of news that you need to let someone know about in the near future, and you want to psychologically prepare yourself to be able to deliver that news calmly and sensitively.

Whether it’s letting someone know about a bereavement, a medical complication, damage to their property, or some information about a relationship that’s going to hurt them, being the messenger who delivers that news is no easy task. Of course sometimes the news itself may be connected with you, or something you’ve done, but even when it isn’t anything to do with you, you know that the person you’re talking to is liable to get very emotional and upset because of what you’re about to say, and that the shock, hurt and anger can sometimes end up being turned in your direction.

There are certain practical tips that can help when breaking bad news. For a start, it’s important to make sure that you’re in a suitable place, preferably somewhere private, but you also need to give thought to what support the person will have after you leave them, and who they can call or meet up with to talk it through further, so that they’re not left on their own. It’s also helpful to follow a three-step process when you let them know the news:

Step one: let them know you have some bad news for them. Of course, how you phrase this will depend on the situation, but give them some sign that they need to prepare themselves. Don’t leave them waiting too long, though, and once they’ve understood that you’re about to let them know something unpleasant, then move on to the next step.

Step two: deliver the news clearly, simply, and in a way that’s easy to understand. Don’t try to play it down or offer platitudes like telling them it will all work out for the best. Just let them know what they need to know.

Step three: tell them how sorry you are to be telling them this, and that you’ll do everything you can to help them deal with the news.

The hypnotic part of this session is going to help you remain strong and calm as you do this, so that you can be there for the person, and be appropriately sensitive and understanding in the way you communicate, without getting caught up in their distress or taking it personally.

“Neediness and insecurity can’t be cured by reassurance” courtesy of Meredith Farmer

“Please, clouds, don’t rain!” Not going to work, is it?

And neither will trying to reassure someone who just can’t be reassured. They will go on fretting, no matter how you plead.

Chronic insecurity in your relationship is a major problem. Why? Because relationships really, deeply matter. Your health, your wellbeing, your happiness affected by your relationships more than any other factor. And your most intimate relationships have the biggest effect of all.

It’s not just the insecure person who suffers

Feeling insecure in a relationship is horrible for the one who is feeling the insecurity. The burden – of fear and obsessive thoughts, of feeling powerless, of awful awareness that all this insecurity may actually itself be destroying what you treasure most – can feel pretty unbearable.

But it’s also tough for the person on the receiving end of all that insecurity. The truth is that being involved with a really insecure person can be @#!*% .

This article highlighted what a common problem insecurity is

I wrote an article a while back on overcoming insecurity in relationships and was inundated with feedback from all over the world. The scores of comments on the article itself were just the tip of the iceberg. My inbox overflowed with hundreds more private emails from people wracked by feelings of relationship insecurity.

That article, which explores the reasons for insecurity and offers practical tips to help overcome it, eventually became the springboard for the development of the new 10 steps to overcoming insecurity in relationships course. My article was mainly addressed to those who are themselves feeling insecure in a relationship; but I also got – and still get – hundreds of emails from people who have extremely insecure partners. A common recurring theme of these accounts is how isolating it can feel to find yourself in a relationship with someone who is deeply insecure. And this is one major reason why extreme insecurity can be so damaging.

Why reassuring your insecure partner is almost a lie

Because ‘reassurance’ is what insecure people want most, and anyone can say reassuring things, it’s all too easy for partners (and friends) to offer reassurances that everything is “really okay” in the relationship even when it isn’t.This is a kind of denial. And – ironically – the reasons it might not be okay are often the product of the insecurity itself.

Sometimes the only genuine problem in a relationship is the emotional insecurity of one partner and the effect that has on the relationship as a whole. But it’s easy to fall into a pattern of always pretending everything is fine, even when the insecurity becomes really damaging. Such pretense becomes isolating and can drive partners further apart. This is how insecurity can damage or even destroy the relationship.

Relationships thrive on intimacy, and intimacy stems from feeling you can safely be yourself with your partner. So what does it feel like to be in a relationship with a very insecure partner?

Worrying about relationship breakup creates it

Insecurity stemming from a fear of losing intimacy can actually bring on that loss of intimacy. Jake, a former client, described it like this:

“I actually feel totally disconnected from Sara now. She doubts my every word, doesn’t believe me when I say I’ve been working, and constantly misinterprets what I say. It’s driving me nuts! And the angrier I get, the more insecure she gets. I can’t win! I’ve tried being sympathetic, but now everything has to be on her terms, I have to ask myself all the time – is this going to upset her or not?”

Jake told me how he had started to feel very lonely in his relationship, like he had no one to talk to, because “Talking to Sara is like walking on egg shells – will I say the wrong thing? Will she take it the wrong way?”

He, like many who are close to someone so insecure, found himself getting more and more emotionally distant from Sara. He felt less able to speak to her about how he felt, and less able to relax around her. Loneliness isn’t about being alone so much as feeling alone with others – because you feel misunderstood by them – and that’s how Jake now felt with Sara. He’d begun to feel trapped, finding it hard to be around her but also hard not to be around her, because he knew how painful it was for her to be wondering where he was or whom he was with.

The painful truth is that insecurity can lead to the death of intimacy in a relationship – the fear of losing something can actually bring about that loss. Trying to force intimacy or love – demanding to know how someone feels, what they are thinking, who they’ve been talking to, what they are doing – can just drive them further from you.

So what should you do if you are in a relationship with a really insecure person?

How to tell if you have a truly insecure partner

It’s vital to figure out whether the person you are with isgenuinely excessively insecure. Some jealousy and insecurity is actually normal in most relationships from time to time – especially in the early stages. Insecure people are often insecure about their insecurity, because they instinctively know how damaging it can be. But if insecurity is a constant and central feature of the relationship then, yes, it is a problem and a potential cause of breakdown. Of course you can reassure your partner, reason with them, and be gentle and loving toward them, but it’s important not to make too many adaptations for them. This was the mistake Jake made. He had completely stopped spending any time with his friends without Sara. He rang her on the hour, every hour, when he had to work late. He told her he loved her so many times a day that it was more like a chore rather than a genuine expression of how he felt. And after a while the relationship no longer felt real to him.

If the relationship becomes all about reassuring and not upsetting the insecure partner, you and your needs get sidelined to the point that the relationship can start to feel meaningless for you. Jake and Sara’s relationship only improved once Sara herself addressed her insecurity, and learned to trust and relax more with not “having to know” what Jake was thinking or doing all the time. Her self esteem improved and, in turn, he then felt more valued, and no longer trapped or forced to behave in prescribed ways. At last he was being listened to and respected again.

If your insecure partner has enough insight to know they need to change, then you really can encourage them to make those changes that could make such a difference for both of you. Ultimately, no one should have to be constantly “on call” to their partner, or emotionally isolated by them. Good relationships are reciprocal, not one-sided. They flourish when partners trust each other, accept each other, give each other space, forgive each other for failings – and enjoy each other. You and your partner both deserve that.

“Neediness and insecurity can’t be cured by reassurance” courtesy of Meredith Farmer

“Please, clouds, don’t rain!” Not going to work, is it?

And neither will trying to reassure someone who just can’t be reassured. They will go on fretting, no matter how you plead.

Chronic insecurity in your relationship is a major problem. Why? Because relationships really, deeply matter. Your health, your wellbeing, your happiness affected by your relationships more than any other factor. And your most intimate relationships have the biggest effect of all.

It’s not just the insecure person who suffers

Feeling insecure in a relationship is horrible for the one who is feeling the insecurity. The burden – of fear and obsessive thoughts, of feeling powerless, of awful awareness that all this insecurity may actually itself be destroying what you treasure most – can feel pretty unbearable.

But it’s also tough for the person on the receiving end of all that insecurity. The truth is that being involved with a really insecure person can be @#!*% .

This article highlighted what a common problem insecurity is

I wrote an article a while back on overcoming insecurity in relationships and was inundated with feedback from all over the world. The scores of comments on the article itself were just the tip of the iceberg. My inbox overflowed with hundreds more private emails from people wracked by feelings of relationship insecurity.

That article, which explores the reasons for insecurity and offers practical tips to help overcome it, eventually became the springboard for the development of the new 10 steps to overcoming insecurity in relationships course. My article was mainly addressed to those who are themselves feeling insecure in a relationship; but I also got – and still get – hundreds of emails from people who have extremely insecure partners. A common recurring theme of these accounts is how isolating it can feel to find yourself in a relationship with someone who is deeply insecure. And this is one major reason why extreme insecurity can be so damaging.

Why reassuring your insecure partner is almost a lie

Because ‘reassurance’ is what insecure people want most, and anyone can say reassuring things, it’s all too easy for partners (and friends) to offer reassurances that everything is “really okay” in the relationship even when it isn’t.This is a kind of denial. And – ironically – the reasons it might not be okay are often the product of the insecurity itself.

Sometimes the only genuine problem in a relationship is the emotional insecurity of one partner and the effect that has on the relationship as a whole. But it’s easy to fall into a pattern of always pretending everything is fine, even when the insecurity becomes really damaging. Such pretense becomes isolating and can drive partners further apart. This is how insecurity can damage or even destroy the relationship.

Relationships thrive on intimacy, and intimacy stems from feeling you can safely be yourself with your partner. So what does it feel like to be in a relationship with a very insecure partner?

Worrying about relationship breakup creates it

Insecurity stemming from a fear of losing intimacy can actually bring on that loss of intimacy. Jake, a former client, described it like this:

“I actually feel totally disconnected from Sara now. She doubts my every word, doesn’t believe me when I say I’ve been working, and constantly misinterprets what I say. It’s driving me nuts! And the angrier I get, the more insecure she gets. I can’t win! I’ve tried being sympathetic, but now everything has to be on her terms, I have to ask myself all the time – is this going to upset her or not?”

Jake told me how he had started to feel very lonely in his relationship, like he had no one to talk to, because “Talking to Sara is like walking on egg shells – will I say the wrong thing? Will she take it the wrong way?”

He, like many who are close to someone so insecure, found himself getting more and more emotionally distant from Sara. He felt less able to speak to her about how he felt, and less able to relax around her. Loneliness isn’t about being alone so much as feeling alone with others – because you feel misunderstood by them – and that’s how Jake now felt with Sara. He’d begun to feel trapped, finding it hard to be around her but also hard not to be around her, because he knew how painful it was for her to be wondering where he was or whom he was with.

The painful truth is that insecurity can lead to the death of intimacy in a relationship – the fear of losing something can actually bring about that loss. Trying to force intimacy or love – demanding to know how someone feels, what they are thinking, who they’ve been talking to, what they are doing – can just drive them further from you.

So what should you do if you are in a relationship with a really insecure person?

How to tell if you have a truly insecure partner

It’s vital to figure out whether the person you are with isgenuinely excessively insecure. Some jealousy and insecurity is actually normal in most relationships from time to time – especially in the early stages. Insecure people are often insecure about their insecurity, because they instinctively know how damaging it can be. But if insecurity is a constant and central feature of the relationship then, yes, it is a problem and a potential cause of breakdown. Of course you can reassure your partner, reason with them, and be gentle and loving toward them, but it’s important not to make too many adaptations for them. This was the mistake Jake made. He had completely stopped spending any time with his friends without Sara. He rang her on the hour, every hour, when he had to work late. He told her he loved her so many times a day that it was more like a chore rather than a genuine expression of how he felt. And after a while the relationship no longer felt real to him.

If the relationship becomes all about reassuring and not upsetting the insecure partner, you and your needs get sidelined to the point that the relationship can start to feel meaningless for you. Jake and Sara’s relationship only improved once Sara herself addressed her insecurity, and learned to trust and relax more with not “having to know” what Jake was thinking or doing all the time. Her self esteem improved and, in turn, he then felt more valued, and no longer trapped or forced to behave in prescribed ways. At last he was being listened to and respected again.

If your insecure partner has enough insight to know they need to change, then you really can encourage them to make those changes that could make such a difference for both of you. Ultimately, no one should have to be constantly “on call” to their partner, or emotionally isolated by them. Good relationships are reciprocal, not one-sided. They flourish when partners trust each other, accept each other, give each other space, forgive each other for failings – and enjoy each other. You and your partner both deserve that.

“Are you 100% sure about that?” courtesy of sean dreilinger

“I feel so insecure! All the bloody time! I keep on at him – if he doesn’t text me back within 10 minutes I feel like I’m going mad. I know I’m crowding him. He tries to reassure me, tells me I’ve nothing to worry about, but my neediness and jealousy is driving him nuts and no wonder! He’s only human.” Sheila

“I love her so much, she’s matters more to me than anyone I’ve ever had in my life. I can’t even begin imagine going on without her. But I get madly jealous if she so much as looks at another guy’s profile on Facebook. When I see her texting someone, and smiling, I feel sick inside. Who is she ‘talking’ to now? Sometimes I don’t hear from her for hours, sometimes she ignores my texts altogether and then she says she was too busy with the kids!” Dave

As part of developing the overcome insecurity in relationships 10 step course I’ve been talking to many people who find emotional insecurity in relationships a major issue, both face to face and via email.

And what I’ve noticed is that instant messaging is part of the standard background of just about every story of relationship insecurity I’ve encountered. There are regular refrains:

“Why hasn’t she answered my email?”
“Why hasn’t he texted back by now?”
“What did he mean by that status update? Everybody can read it! Was he serious?”

In that same period, how we communicate has changed in unforeseen and quite dramatic ways. But have these changes put more pressure on relationships?

Why hasn’t he texted me? (It’s been fifteen minutes!)

In the ‘old days’ (we’re talking 15 to 20 years back) it was much harder to get hold of people. If someone was travelling, you might not hear from them at all unless they made a special effort to get to a public call phone that was a) working and b) not being used by someone else. If someone didn’t ‘get back’ to you, there were hundreds of good and perfectly valid reasons why. And we all knew that. Of course, we might still worry and fret, but heck – I remember a time when answer machines were the latest thing, and before they came on the scene you couldn’t even leave a message unless it was with a… person! And we all know that people don’t always pass on messages. So there were good and widely appreciated reasons why you might not hear from someone for a while. We all understood that you sometimes just had to wait for other people to get in touch. We all had no choice but to put up with the uncertainty.

But now…

How instant communication has driven up relationship anxiety

Don’t misunderstand me, modern communication technology is amazing and I absolutely love it. For one, it enables you to read this (lucky you! ). Loved ones can stay in touch from far-flung corners of the world. We can converse in real time with people from Singapore to Seattle to the Seychelles.

However, if you are somewhat prone to anxiety and emotional insecurity, this blessing may sometimes feel more of a curse. And even if you’re not the worrying sort, and generally tend to feel pretty secure in your relationships, you might still feel somewhat less secure because of the way these new modes of communication affect us.

Relationship insecurity merges into obsessive checking

Obsessive behavior has us repeatedly and often carrying out a certain set of actions. We obsessively check, or clean, or seek reassurance from a loved one – because we are trying to assuage our anxieties.

But it can also work the other way round.

If we repeatedly and often do something we can start to obsess about it. So you might have got into the habit of regularly checking your phone for messages from your loved ones. And because you have gotten into the habit of doing this so often, you start to feel anxious about it. Anxious obsession makes us check often, and checking often can in turn make us more anxious and obsessed.

The average person checks their phone 150 times a day, or once every six and a half minutes for every waking hour (1). Now couple that obsessive behavior with obsessive thoughts about a relationship, feelings of acute emotional insecurity and fears of rejection or being ignored, and you have a potent recipe for severe relationship angst.

The fact that we are so contactable may make us more anxious – because there seem to be fewer valid reasons why someone hasn’t been in contact. Other than… they don’t love me any more!

And there we have another problem.

“That’s not what I meant!”

If we rely heavily on text and email and instant messaging rather than on actually speaking face to face with the object of our love, we are more likely to misunderstand and misinterpret the messages that are going to and fro.

We can assume someone is serious when they are kidding, or that they mean one thing when they really mean another. We might think we have picked up signs of anger or loss of interest when we “read between the lines” because we can’t hear the tone of voice or see the smile on the lips or the glint in the eye. Emotionally insecure people misread, over-read and imagine all kinds of negative stuff about their relationship anyway, but this can be confounded by text and email.

Oh great, new ways to feel jealous

And if you can communicate instantly and in lots of different ways with the person you care most about then so, potentially, can other people. Technology may have given us a whole new way of feeling insecure and jealous. People can feel cheated on because their partner has an online relationship with someone they have never even seen face to face.

Relationship insecurity has always been around, of course, with its uneasy bedfellows of suspicion, pessimism and doubt. But texts, email and the rest, wonderful as they are, might actually be raising levels of insecurity for some people.

And that’s why I’m so pleased that one of the most important things that the 10 steps to overcoming insecurity in relationships course does is help people relax with uncertainty and refrain from making negative interpretations without solid evidence. This will help them feel more confident in and optimistic about their relationships – and that’s whether they are relating face to face with their lover or via any of the fantastic forms of communication technology that are so central to our brave new world.

Notes

1. According to Nokia, who reported this at MindTrek 2010.

“Are you 100% sure about that?” courtesy of sean dreilinger

“I feel so insecure! All the bloody time! I keep on at him – if he doesn’t text me back within 10 minutes I feel like I’m going mad. I know I’m crowding him. He tries to reassure me, tells me I’ve nothing to worry about, but my neediness and jealousy is driving him nuts and no wonder! He’s only human.” Sheila

“I love her so much, she’s matters more to me than anyone I’ve ever had in my life. I can’t even begin imagine going on without her. But I get madly jealous if she so much as looks at another guy’s profile on Facebook. When I see her texting someone, and smiling, I feel sick inside. Who is she ‘talking’ to now? Sometimes I don’t hear from her for hours, sometimes she ignores my texts altogether and then she says she was too busy with the kids!” Dave

As part of developing the overcome insecurity in relationships 10 step course I’ve been talking to many people who find emotional insecurity in relationships a major issue, both face to face and via email.

And what I’ve noticed is that instant messaging is part of the standard background of just about every story of relationship insecurity I’ve encountered. There are regular refrains:

“Why hasn’t she answered my email?”
“Why hasn’t he texted back by now?”
“What did he mean by that status update? Everybody can read it! Was he serious?”

In that same period, how we communicate has changed in unforeseen and quite dramatic ways. But have these changes put more pressure on relationships?

Why hasn’t he texted me? (It’s been fifteen minutes!)

In the ‘old days’ (we’re talking 15 to 20 years back) it was much harder to get hold of people. If someone was travelling, you might not hear from them at all unless they made a special effort to get to a public call phone that was a) working and b) not being used by someone else. If someone didn’t ‘get back’ to you, there were hundreds of good and perfectly valid reasons why. And we all knew that. Of course, we might still worry and fret, but heck – I remember a time when answer machines were the latest thing, and before they came on the scene you couldn’t even leave a message unless it was with a… person! And we all know that people don’t always pass on messages. So there were good and widely appreciated reasons why you might not hear from someone for a while. We all understood that you sometimes just had to wait for other people to get in touch. We all had no choice but to put up with the uncertainty.

But now…

How instant communication has driven up relationship anxiety

Don’t misunderstand me, modern communication technology is amazing and I absolutely love it. For one, it enables you to read this (lucky you! ). Loved ones can stay in touch from far-flung corners of the world. We can converse in real time with people from Singapore to Seattle to the Seychelles.

However, if you are somewhat prone to anxiety and emotional insecurity, this blessing may sometimes feel more of a curse. And even if you’re not the worrying sort, and generally tend to feel pretty secure in your relationships, you might still feel somewhat less secure because of the way these new modes of communication affect us.

Relationship insecurity merges into obsessive checking

Obsessive behavior has us repeatedly and often carrying out a certain set of actions. We obsessively check, or clean, or seek reassurance from a loved one – because we are trying to assuage our anxieties.

But it can also work the other way round.

If we repeatedly and often do something we can start to obsess about it. So you might have got into the habit of regularly checking your phone for messages from your loved ones. And because you have gotten into the habit of doing this so often, you start to feel anxious about it. Anxious obsession makes us check often, and checking often can in turn make us more anxious and obsessed.

The average person checks their phone 150 times a day, or once every six and a half minutes for every waking hour (1). Now couple that obsessive behavior with obsessive thoughts about a relationship, feelings of acute emotional insecurity and fears of rejection or being ignored, and you have a potent recipe for severe relationship angst.

The fact that we are so contactable may make us more anxious – because there seem to be fewer valid reasons why someone hasn’t been in contact. Other than… they don’t love me any more!

And there we have another problem.

“That’s not what I meant!”

If we rely heavily on text and email and instant messaging rather than on actually speaking face to face with the object of our love, we are more likely to misunderstand and misinterpret the messages that are going to and fro.

We can assume someone is serious when they are kidding, or that they mean one thing when they really mean another. We might think we have picked up signs of anger or loss of interest when we “read between the lines” because we can’t hear the tone of voice or see the smile on the lips or the glint in the eye. Emotionally insecure people misread, over-read and imagine all kinds of negative stuff about their relationship anyway, but this can be confounded by text and email.

Oh great, new ways to feel jealous

And if you can communicate instantly and in lots of different ways with the person you care most about then so, potentially, can other people. Technology may have given us a whole new way of feeling insecure and jealous. People can feel cheated on because their partner has an online relationship with someone they have never even seen face to face.

Relationship insecurity has always been around, of course, with its uneasy bedfellows of suspicion, pessimism and doubt. But texts, email and the rest, wonderful as they are, might actually be raising levels of insecurity for some people.

And that’s why I’m so pleased that one of the most important things that the 10 steps to overcoming insecurity in relationships course does is help people relax with uncertainty and refrain from making negative interpretations without solid evidence. This will help them feel more confident in and optimistic about their relationships – and that’s whether they are relating face to face with their lover or via any of the fantastic forms of communication technology that are so central to our brave new world.

Notes

1. According to Nokia, who reported this at MindTrek 2010.

Transcription of Eyes of a Child preview

Maybe you’re listening to this download because you feel like you’re not appreciating your life as much as you could be. Perhaps you feel you’ve lost some of that boundless enthusiasm and energy you had as a child, or that life has become quite repetitious and routine, as though each day feels the same, and whatever happens, you feel like you’ve seen it all before.

There is a tendency in all of us to become more rigid as we grow older, and by rigid, I mean in our bodies and in our minds. Just think about the flexibility of a young child – playing, running, jumping, bouncing on the bed, and flopping down in a fit of giggles. The way a child might pull silly faces, pretend to be different animals, crawl through the bushes in a garden, or in the tunnels of an adventure playground. The way they play with their voices, and make high sounds and low sounds, and even sing songs totally unselfconsciously. Now compare that to a typical adult working in an office every day. Think about how much more restrained that adult learns to be, compared to a child, how much stiffer their movements often are, how little variety there is in their voice, how routine and predictable their habits and conversation topics have become. It’s almost as if, as we grow older, many of us begin to live our lives on autopilot, and forget to fully engage with what’s going on.

Just the other day I walked into a grocery store, and exchanged a few pleasantries with the checkout assistant as I paid for my goods. I was in a bit of a hurry myself, and he looked like he was just going through the motions, saying once again things he said over and over each day. Of course we were both perfectly friendly and polite, but neither of us was fully present, fully engaged, in that interaction. And I was reminded of how much more intense and vivid things used to feel when I was a child, when a trip to the shops was a real, significant event that seemed to last forever, and how going to the supermarket would seem like a huge adventure, filled with aromas, background music, fluorescent lights, brightly coloured treats and tasty delights. And I see this in my own children too. I remember taking them to their first ever firework display, and seeing their eyes open wide in amazed and delighted awe at each and every burst of coloured light. Their innocent enthrallment that night made me see the fireworks with fresh eyes too.

This session is going to help you to re-connect with that child-like awe and openness within you, so that you can really start to shake off the stiffness and rigidity of being too serious and too adult about how you see life. Having a more childlike appreciation of the world is a rare and beautiful capacity, a capacity many of our greatest artists, musicians and scientists are said to have had. As Einstein once said, “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” And that innocence, playfulness, and ability to see the world afresh, opens you up to greater creativity, as you find yourself thinking in freer, more flexible ways, and it lets you become more present and alive to each moment.

Transcription of Long Term Thinking preview

If you’re listening to this, and you’re a human being, you have a bias in your brain towards short-term thinking, towards focusing on the immediate effects of your choices and actions rather than any potential long term consequences. This is not some character flaw in you. It’s part of what it is to be human, for all of us. It’s the pattern behind all kinds of problems in life, from overeating, gambling, smoking, impulse purchases, being prone to outbursts of anger and saying things you don’t mean, or even making poor choices when it comes to serious life decisions. As I’m speaking now, the news headlines are still about the collapse in the housing market that came about because people were encouraged to take on mortgages they couldn’t afford, which wasn’t short-term thinking just on their part, but also on the part of the banks. You might say that the majority of human problems are caused, or exacerbated, by our tendency towards short term thinking.

The more we learn about the brain, the more uncover about the exact processes that operate when someone is deciding between going for a short term reward versus a long term reward. For example, a study headed by psychologist Samuel McClure and neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen at Princeton University found that when people are considering the relative merits of either immediately receiving an Amazon.com gift voucher, or waiting up to four weeks to receive a higher value voucher, different areas of their brains become activated depending on what choice they make. People who chose to wait for the higher value rewards had a higher activation of the frontal lobes, the part of the brain most associated with abstract thought. In contrast, in those who went for the immediate reward, there was a higher activation of parts of the brain associated with emotion. In other words, short term thinking is emotional thinking, long term thinking involves more abstract, conceptual thought about a future that doesn’t exist yet.

So how can you learn to deliberately activate the areas of your brain associated with long-term thinking? Well, intriguingly, a second study carried out in Hamburg, Germany, found that there is actually a simple, reliable way to start thinking for the long-term. Participants in this study were again offered a selection of financial rewards, with the same choice of an immediate smaller sum, or a higher-value sum being offered at some distance in the future. But this time, half the participants were given an extra task to perform before making their decision, and that was to think about several things that they would be doing over the next year, holidays and vacations they had planned, courses they needed to attend, visits from friends and relatives that had been arranged, and so on. In other words, the researchers got this group of participants to focus on specific, expected future events, even though these events had no connection with the small sum of money the participants were deciding about.

As you might have guessed, reflecting on several specific future events triggered more long-term thinking in that group of participants, and they became much more likely to choose the higher-value, longer-term reward. In essence, the experimenters helped the participants to trick their own brains into making the future more real, more concrete, so that it became self-evident and obvious to them that the best choice was to go for the higher-value reward and just wait a few weeks for it.

This session is going to use this research, along with a variety of other psychological principles that I’ve used with my clients over the years, to help you to really embed in your mind this connection with the long-term future. As you listen repeatedly, you’ll notice that you start to instinctively make wiser, more life-enriching decisions in your daily life, and create a future for yourself where you have greater wealth, greater health, and greater happiness, because you took the time to properly think ahead, rather than falling into that old short-term impulsiveness trap.

The journey is more than the destination

Once upon a time a student was told by his wise old teacher that he was too serious. The wise old teacher knew what his disciple needed to do – he must seek out “the happiest man in the world”. So off the young man went, travelling from village to village, looking for whoever was reputed to be happiest. But every time he met the local happiest resident, that happy individual would inevitably say “Yes indeed, I’m very happy, but there is someone much happier than I! Go to such and such a place and you will find them there…” The young man had all kinds of adventures, and met all kinds of people, but even after years of searching he couldn’t be quite certain that he had yet found the happiest man in the world.

One day he was pursuing his quest, having been told that the happiest man lived right in the middle of a dense, deep forest. He followed the sound of laughter and eventually came across the happy fellow sitting cross-legged and bright-eyed in a clearing. “I know why you’re here,” said the man. “You’re looking for the happiest man. I am he!” And he laughed. And laughed again. And then he laughed some more, and then some more after that, chortling and giggling, until the younger man couldn’t help but join in, chuckling and guffawing until the tears ran down his cheeks, and he had to make a tremendous effort to get out the words “What’s so funny?”

The happiest man became serious for a moment – though there was still a steady gleam of joyous contentment in his eyes – and said, “It’s hilarious! Have you not yet noticed that I am none other than the man who sent you on this quest all those years ago?” And he burst out laughing again. The other man was astonished. “Then why did you not tell me at once that it was you whom I sought?” “Because,” replied the happiest and wisest man, “you needed to have certain experiences, to learn certain things. And that was only possible in the context of really looking hard for something. The finding was, in reality, in the seeking!” (1)

It’s great to be ‘solution focussed’, great to be so absorbed in the goal you seek that every single thing you do is directed towards bringing it about. But consider this: what if you ‘fail’ to achieve the result you were looking for, but the ‘journey’ takes you to a much better ‘destination’ than the one you had in mind? Sometimes people feel their time has been completely wasted if they don’t get what they were initially after. In my view, time is only wasted if we haven’t learned from our experiences. Some people don’t really let themselves enjoy the process of working towards their goals because “only the goal matters”, but successful people often tell me that their happiest times were when they were starting out. Being goal-driven is great – if you couple it with the capacity to enjoy and learn from the journey itself. The new Enjoy the journey download is all about overcoming narrow assumptions about what can truly benefit us or make us happy.

Take the contest from the context

The usefulness of a tool depends on what you use it for. That nail needs banging in? Your hammer is your best bet. The light bulb needs changing? Move away from the hammer! In its place, competitiveness is a tool that can change the world and infinitely improve all kinds of things. But – I just know you were waiting for a but! – some people are competitive even in their personal lives, always ‘playing games’ and trying to get the upper hand. For some people every social situation is a full-blown contest. Who can be the funniest? The most attractive? The coolest? Or even the rudest? Undisciplined and indiscriminate competitiveness stops you from just relaxing and enjoying the situations life brings you, and makes you insensitive to the needs of others to feel competent. The new Stop being over competitive download uses a beautiful metaphor to illustrate how wonderful life can be when you can sensitively cooperate and collaborate as well as compete. Feeling that you have to treat all of life as a competition is highly stressful, as if you are under the thumb of one of those inner bullies like perfectionism. Some men (and some women too) see every sexual encounter as an opportunity to “prove themselves” – but some things in life really do work better when we just go with the flow and let go of judgements as to how we are doing. This latest hypnosis session is designed to help people become less competitive when they don’t need it, so that, when they do need it, their competitiveness can be an all the more effective tool.

Be who you really are by thinking for yourself

Hypnosis is often seen as a sort of programming. But we at hypnosisdownlaods.com are actually more interested in using it as a tool to liberate people from programming, so that they can be more in charge of themselves, better able to withstand the programming effects of anxious, depressive, angry or addictive states, and more able to really think for themselves.

To be able to think for ourselves we need to be able to discern in what ways we actually don’t think for ourselves. You see, we can easily deceive ourselves that we are thinking for ourselves when we are not.

Group psychology sways us very powerfully, and so do subliminal environmental influences. Things that can stop us thinking for ourselves include:

• blind obedience to authority
• group think/conformity
• the need to feel and appear consistent – it takes courage to publicly change your mind
• strong emotion that distorts thinking and clear perception – lust, for example, can make us completely blind to someone’s real nature
• tradition – believing that because it’s always been done this way it must be done this way
• faulty ‘pattern matching’ – such as taking a dislike to someone merely because of a passing resemblance to someone else you didn’t like in the past
• the habit of not examining assumptions, your own or other people’s.

We all used to think the world was flat. We all used to think the sun moved round the earth. We all used to assume hygiene had nothing to do with health.

It’s so much easier to just follow the herd, to assume that because a lot of other people think something, it must be right. Thinking for ourselves takes courage, calm and clarity. Whenever we overcome a personal difficulty such as low self esteem we think more for ourselves. In fact, overcoming low self esteem specifically means learning to think about yourself for yourself, rather than through someone else’s eyes, or through the distorting tyrannical lens of perfectionism or conditioned pessimism.

So the new Think for yourself download is designed to help people overcome the conditioning of life at least to some extent for better mental health.

Note

(1) I adapted this tale from a story found in World Tales (subtitled “The Extraordinary Coincidence of Stories Told in All Times, in All Places”) by Idries Shah (published in 1979). Shah contends that stories have many meanings. The notion that the journey is sometimes as or more important than the destination is one of the many possible meanings of this particular tale.

If you’re a therapist, you’ll know how important effective reframing is when doing therapy. If you’re not – quick explanation:

Reframing involves changing the meaning that a person attaches to something. It’s generally followed by something like “Oh yeah, I never thought about it like that” The glass half empty / half full is probably the most well known reframe. That’s why we stuck it on the front of the Reframing Techniques CD – creative no?

Now we all know that reframing techniques include humor, which is a good job, because otherwise the people in this clip would have no excuse for the obvious enjoyment they were getting from recording the CD…

Oh, and if you weren’t already persuaded by the prospect of shedloads of handy new reframing techniques to use with your clients, there’s more outtakes on the CD too. So if nothing else, you’ll have a laugh.