Be Approachable Sample [3:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (293)

Many of my clients have interpersonal problems. They may complain that others don’t seem to take to them, or want to talk to them. Traits like perfectionism tend to produce emotions like anger and depression, which in turn put others off approaching the sufferer socially – or even professionally.

Then again, shyness and lack of self esteem and confidence can also make people appear rude, aloof or ‘stuck up’ – although of course they don’t mean to be any of those things.

Unapproachable types seem hard, unfriendly, cold, and severe. They may have many associates but are considered a real friend by very few. People don’t want to approach them because they look prickly, icy and unfeeling. They don’t make friends and influence people. They are off-putting. The tragedy is that ‘underneath’ they might just be great people with loads to offer. But they just don’t know how to convey this.

To be approachable

Then again, we all know people who are approachable and personally ‘magnetic’. Others are drawn to their company. They are easy to be with. This attraction has little to do with how they look physically, but everything to do with how they ‘come across’; how they use their eyes and smile; the vibes they give out.

There is some great research out on the benefits of smiling and how it can influence those around you positively. UMIST in Manchester discovered the impact of smiling – 72% of the respondents in their research believed that people who smile are more confident and successful.

Which means that, if you want to seem confident, even just smiling will improve your standing among others. In the same research, 86% of the respondents said they would be more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger who was smiling than with one who was not. On top of that, it was found that bosses were 12% more likely to promote an employee who smiled a lot. So being seen as an approachable type can influence your career progress as well as win you friends.

I wanted to use hypnosis effectively in a download session for hypnosisdownlaods.com to create unconscious blueprints for people to become more approachable to others. It’s something that’s so easy to change, but so difficult to ask for help with.

Human beings are meant to connect together to multiply progress towards goals. If people automatically steer clear of you when they needn’t, it’s a crying shame.

I’m glad to have been able to offer a practical way for people to become more of what they want to be.

Mark

 Half Marathon Training Sample [3:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (276)

As I stood on the starting line of the Isle of Mull half marathon last August, I did wonder whether I had really done enough training.

I flowed nicely over the first ten miles and felt good (if a little sweaty), but I found the last three miles much harder than I should have. Why? Because I hadn’t really been as diligent in my training as I could have been. There were days, I have to admit, when I put my social life – or even just watching TV! – before my allotted run. I did all right on the day, but I can’t say I really did myself proud.

Hypnosis and motivation

I am now back in training for another half marathon (Oban, in Scotland). I was chatting to a pal about what happened last time. He was a bit puzzled. “Look,” he says to me, “you do all this motivational stuff as creative director for hypnosisdownloads.com, don’t you? Well, have you used hypnosis for your own half marathon training motivation?”

Well…err… no. I hadn’t… (blush) But I have now.

I have been using self hypnosis to motivate me to get off my a!s* and run. I worked out a careful ‘mental training’ plan – just as careful as my physical training plan. During the hypnosis, I vividly see myself getting up in the morning to train and running well, becoming fitter and stronger as I go. I also connect to the feeling of disappointment that I feel if I didn’t run for some reason. In this way I combine positive motivation – becoming faster, fitter and feeling satisfied after the run – with negative motivation – wanting to avoid feelings of self-disgust (OK, that’s a bit strong, but you know what I mean!) for not running. It’s my own personal carrot and stick approach. So far it’s been pretty effective and I am now training better than ever. They better watch out in Oban.

The half marathon hypnosis download session

I’ve included the strategies I worked out for myself in the new half marathon training hypnosis download session. I’d really like to get feedback from other runners about it, because on my next half marathon I’m going to finish with a bang and not a whimper.

And now I’m off to relax because I’ve already done my run.

Mark

 Overcome Homesickness Sample [3:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (113)

We’ve had several requests for a hypnosis session on homesickness, and decided it was time to create a session to help alleviate this distressing experience.

Over the years as a hypnotherapist I’ve worked with many adults – professionals as well as private individuals – who’ve suffered painfully from homesickness.

Many of them told me that their first experience of it was in childhood – maybe when they left home for the first time, or perhaps had to be away from home for extended periods, such as at boarding school. They consistently described the feeling of homesickness as a sense of sadness, emptiness, loneliness, loss and lowered confidence.

Homesickness is nostalgia 

Homesickness makes people feel nostalgia for the simplest things in their home environment. Things like friends, family, pets, house and neighbourhood. One guy I worked with told me that every time he went away on a business trip he’d have sob if he so much as thought about his back yard. 

The roots of homesickness

The puzzle was why so many of these clients continued to experience homesickness as adults, when often their outward lives appeared successful, assured, and confident. It was as if the homesickness had become a kind of psychological habit. They often come to me because the homesickness and the feelings of helplessness it engenders don’t sit comfortably with the rest of their more confident personalities.

Overcoming homesickness

The thinking behind this new hypnosis session on homesickness is two fold. Firstly, I aim to use hypnosis to get the person relaxed and focused on feeling calm about leaving home. Then I direct people towards the hypnotic experience of re-visiting ‘home’ anytime they want wherever they happen to be in the world. I then use hypnotic rehearsal to allow them to experience being away from home in the future feeling calm, relaxed and confident.

I myself recall the awful pangs of homesickness as a child, and I think this session is going to help a lot of people.

Well, that’s it from me. I’m off ‘home’ now.

Mark

 The Hypnosis Habit Sample [2:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (210)

The other day we had a request from an enthusiastic user of our hypnosis downloads to create a session designed specifically to encourage the habit of using hypnosis really regularly. The idea was that this would be a kind of ‘foundation’ session - ensuring that users make the most of their hypnotic potential by experiencing hypnosis regularly and often and not just as a one-off.

Well, how could we say no to that? We’ve got a lot of marvellous sessions on our site, from overcoming procrastination to curing warts. We always feel pretty chuffed when we receive good feedback, and we’d like nothing better than for all our users to take regular time out for a good dose of hypnosis.

Hypnosis - the ancient art of self-improvement

Of course, hypnosis has been used since the dawn of… hmmm… think I’ll try and avoid a cliché here… since the dawn of… human development. Only nowadays we can use modern communication tools to transmit this ancient system of self-empowerment universally. I’ve seen hypnosis used to lower blood pressure, diminish and even take away pain, get terrified social phobics completely relaxed while speaking to audiences, cure phobias instantly and improve learning, focus and concentration. Hypnosis is great to do often and well and I can’t say that often enough. Hypnosis is great to do often and well and I can’t say that often enough.

So my ideas around creating and producing the ‘Hypnosis Habit’ session were - firstly - to give you (the listener) a great hypnotic experience (because the more hypnotic experiences you have the better you become at going into hypnosis) and - secondly - to offer hypnotic suggestions to re-experience the sessions you choose often to further enhance and embed the improvements you make.

Regular relaxation is vital for mental and physical health so - hypnotic benefits aside - regular deep relaxation is a good idea. I relax deeply for at least 20 minutes every day. If I have a specific issue I’m working on (for example, marathon running) I’ll spend more time focusing on enhancing performance through hypnotic rehearsal.

OK, enough already, I’m off to enter the parallel universe which is my unconscious mind. Then I think I’ll go for a run.

Mark

 Master Smalltalk Sample [1:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (143)

When I was getting this session together, I only had to recall my own uncomfortable social experiences as a young adult. I just couldn’t ‘do’ small talk. I would murmur, mumble, and bluster away, and if I did talk, it was likely to be inappropriate ‘shock value’ conversation about something ghastly on the news as I fished round for something – anything – to say. Because I was no good at small talk, I decided small talk was trivial anyway. We often decide that stuff we can’t do ourselves isn’t really of any value – quite a neat trick for bolstering self-esteem! Although, of course, once we have become good at something, it suddenly has a whole new value. Objective lot, aren’t we?

It’s a funny thing about small talk. In fact, because so much of human communication is unconscious, we actually communicate a great deal through the so-called ‘small talk’ – sometimes even more than when we are supposedly talking about big or ‘deep’ stuff.

Actually, learning about hypnotic communication (which was what eventually led to the setting up of hypnosisdownloads.com) showed me that we all communicate metaphorically and ‘in parallel’ to a far greater extent than we realise. It seems that we all talk about what we really want to be discussing in our small talk at times – it’s just that we don’t know we are doing it. This means that really mastering small talk enables us to ‘seed’ ideas which can be developed later when the conversation turns to ostensibly more serious matters – you’ve already prepared the ground, so to speak.

Chat about the weather or ‘Will you please keep it down!’

For example, suppose I want to bring up the subject of how good it would be if the person I’m chatting with (I’m naming no names here…) would keep things quiet at night when I’m trying to sleep. I might be chatting lightly about the weather, say, and casually comment on how the weather seems to have ‘quietened down’ and how it was so annoying when the rain and wind were lashing and I was trying to get some… sleep…ing cats were even woken up at the vets….and so on…

This rather ridiculous seeming example could then ‘echo’ later when I finally get around to talking about the importance of them please shutting it at night – the small talk subconsciously echoes in their mind, which has been prepared… by the (seemingly) unrelated chit chat about the weather.

Fancy a sniff?

Small talk is also a form of ‘social grooming’. I talk about this in the hypnosis download. We humans don’t tend to sniff one another’s rear ends on first meeting. Instead we have neutral chit chat to pave the way to perhaps more obviously important stuff later on. Idle banter – chatting, ‘shooting the breeze’ – allows us to put others and ourselves at ease and means that ‘bigger’ conversations are appropriately timed and not rushed into before people are ready for it.

I got over my own problems, thank goodness. Hypnosis from others and self-hypnosis got me confident and relaxed with pretty well all social situations and nowadays I am always alert to the power – and potential profundity – of small talk.

Right, I’m off for a multi-level chat with the fishmonger…

Over and out

Mark