Handling Bankruptcy Sample [3:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (308)

This latest hypnosisdownloads.com session ‘Handling Bankruptcy’ is really designed to focus people’s minds on coming back from ‘financial ruin’ and starting over with the right mind set. Bankruptcy is a temporary state (it usually lasts for around one year), yet so many people I have worked with in therapy have felt that going bankrupt means the ‘end of everything’.

Of course, it can sometimes actually feel like a relief to declare bankruptcy and start afresh – it kind of depends on pre-existing attitudes to money and personal debt.

Early learning and money

If we were trained to view money as something you only spend if you have it, that saving is important, and that personal reputation and financial status are linked to social viability, then it can feel more shameful, embarrassing and humiliating to go bankrupt.

Psychology and bankruptcy

This hypnosis download session is meant for those who need encouragement, reassurance and hope during very tough financial times. Famous former bankrupts include Donald Trump and George Foreman – who has since made millions with a certain eponymous grill!

And to reiterate a cliché - if you don’t make any mistakes, you don’t make anything!

Anyway, the session is not too expensive, so hopefully the benefits will outweigh the cost. And of course there is always the money back guarantee…

Mark

 Overcome Envy Sample: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (392)

Sure, envy is a sin – but why? Well, imagine throwing a harpoon at a whale, only to find you’d harpooned yourself. Envy always damages the person directing it. It damages you by making you bitter, resentful, jealous and mean.

The idea for the new hypnosis download session on envy created especially for hypnosisdownloads.com came about through a conversation I had with another therapist friend. She told me that she thought envy was a more common feature in her caseload than it used to be ‘ten to fifteen years ago’. She put this down to the ‘desperate commercial splurge of media advertising and lifestyle magazines which brainwashes us all into fixed notions as to what we should have, what we should look like, what we should be’.

Envy separates us from our fellow human beings. Instead of ‘us’, it becomes ‘me’ and ‘you’, or even ‘me against you’. If we are to progress rather than stagnate or go backwards, we all need to manage, diminish and vanquish envy as best we can.

I hope this new session Overcoming envy will go some way to helping this happen.

Spread the word!

Mark

 Speed reading sample: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (709)

What do John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter have in common (OK, apart from both being US presidents!)?

Correct. They were both trained speed readers.

I have so much stuff to read sometimes it drives me nuts. Emails, psychology journals, student reports, client information, cutting edge psychology books (not to mention all the other kinds of books I love to read). Yet like most people I was never taught to speed read at school. I decided to do something about it myself. I have been using hypnosis for fourteen years, helping hundreds of people, teaching its clinical use to practitioners, and using it self-hypnotically. So it made perfect sense to see how I could use hypnosis to develop speed reading ability in myself.

Just how fast is speed reading?

The average person (yeah, I know, there is no such thing as the ‘average person’ - the average reader then… sheesh, give me a break already!) reads around 200 words a minute. Claims of 1,000 to 2,000 words a minute and way more are rife, but careful research conducted by Allyn and Bacon in 1987 and Harris and Sipay in 1990 indicate that recall and comprehension rates drop dramatically if reading speed goes much above 1000 words a minute.

I don’t rule out any possibility, but I have managed to get my own rates up to around 1,000 words a minute with about 80% comprehension. What’s more, revision of the material significantly improves comprehension. Not bad when you consider that the average 200-250 word reader only has about 65% average comprehension on the first reading.

Speed reading and hypnosis

When we perceive over all patterns (rather than using sequencing) we use the right hemisphere of the brain. To speed read, we need to see the words in groups and not ‘voice’ them in our minds. When you see someone silently mouthing the words they are reading, you can be sure they are not speed reading, because they are clearly vocalizing each word. If you ‘hear’ the words you are reading in your mind, you are ‘sub-vocalizing’. This is the province of the left side of your brain. When we ‘see’ the words without vocalizing or sub-vocalizing, we can instantly speed up. And because we are able to see peripherally we can scan many words at a time. This is sometimes called ‘photo reading’ and requires a wide awake trance like focus whilst you are actually speed reading.

Hypnosis is concerned with activating the right side of the brain while quieting down the mental and emotional ‘chatter.’

With this in mind, I have recently produced ‘Speed reading’, a new hypnotic download for hypnosisdownlaods.com. It should enable many ‘time pressured individuals’ to ramp up the rate at which they read in a major way.

Right, I’m off to tackle ‘War and Peace’ (the world record for which is 15 minutes, by the way, according to 25,000 words a minute ‘fastest speed reader in the world’ Howard Stephen Berg. Mmmmm.)

Mark

 Being Bullied Sample: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (193)

Being bullied is no joke. Victims of bullying are more likely to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder such as flash backs and nightmares, become depressed or withdrawn, consider suicide, experience nervous exhaustion, be unable to focus and work properly, come to depend on alcohol or other drugs and of course have time off work with stress. What seems like ‘harmless fun’ to some can have devastating effects on the unfortunate target.

I have often provided therapy for bully victims in my private practice and I also regularly run a workshop on stopping bullying in the workplace. I’ve met both those who have been bullied and those who have been accused of doing the bullying.

Bullying at work is rife. Millions of people report being bullied every year. Most are targeted by a line manger or someone else in ‘authority’. Although of course anyone who bullies clearly can’t really handle any authority vested in them.

What to do if you are bullied

If someone has been bullying you, then you should get help. This means going to your human resources officer or manager above the person bullying you, using a trade union rep or getting legal advice. You should ask to see your organization’s bullying policy. You should keep notes on exactly what happens, including any emails, notes, texts etc. sent to you by the bully. You need to collect evidence. These are practical steps you can take to change things. But it’s also important to cope with the emotional effects of bullying. The new session Cope with being bullied for hypnosisdownloads.com focuses firmly on the emotional fallout of bullying.

How do we define bullying?

Bullying is any targeted and deliberate behaviour intended to cause suffering to another person. You could be on the receiving end of a control freak who just happens to use controlling behaviour on everyone they meet. They may be so focused on projects and work that the human needs of people around them are irrelevant or completely disregarded. Although it can feel like being bullied to be on the receiving end of the work-focused perfectionist, they don’t intend to cause harm.

The real bully actually wants to inflict suffering. They can do this, for example, by intimidation, blowing hot and cold (so you never know where you are with them and so feel insecure), or by excluding you from certain meetings or events or circulation lists (so that you are kept ‘out of the loop’). They may make impossible work demands, lie to make you look dishonest or inefficient, shout and curse at you in front of others and generally make your life hell.

Who do bullies target?

I’ve made a point of clarifying this in the new hypnotic download Cope with being bullied. Anybody can be targeted, but sensitive, quiet and conscientious people are more likely to find themselves the unwilling objects of the bully’s attention. Why? Because conscientious people are more likely to blame themselves if something is not right. And if they are sensitive and quiet, they are also more likely to keep the fact that they are being bullied secret from others.

Cope with being bullied was created with a view to taking out the emotional impact of being targeted by a bully. Once we no longer respond with fear to bullying, the behaviour has nothing to ‘stick to’. Bullying kind of slides off you when you become indifferent to it.

I really hope this hypnotic download is going to help a lot of people.

Mark

 Stop Talking In Your Sleep Sample [1:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (57)

Years ago, a girlfriend of mine used to talk… and talk… and talk… She was queen of the talkers. It didn’t stop even when she was asleep! Maybe she was trying to tell me something (?) or maybe she just couldn’t stop talking. Anyway, her talking in her sleep was confounded by me sleeping in her talk when she was awake and the relationship soon floundered.

Sleep talking and hypnosis

Since those happy times I have successfully treated many sleep talkers with hypnosis – much to the relief of their partners and the vociferously afflicted themselves. After all, your voice needs to rest when you sleep as much as any other part of you. I’ve often thought of my chattering ex and wished I had been an adept in the use of hypnosis when we were together… who knows… Naaa… it wouldn’t have worked anyway!

Talking in your sleep and stress

Sleep talking can occur in slow-wave sleep – just the part of sleep you are supposed to get the most rest from. It can also happen while you are dreaming in REM sleep. It is most likely to occur when we are more stressed than usual. The content can be complete gobbledygook or articulate but without context. My long ago girlfriend would talk weirdly about tangerine golf clubs and speckled soapy bar flies! It was like listening to The Beatles coming up with new song titles for one of their later albums. Of course, sometimes it would take me a while to twig she was actually asleep during these extended monologues.

I have created a hypnotic session for hypnosisdownloads.com aimed at quietening the part of the mind that produces the talking. The hypnosis is also there to calm the mind generally for better sleep and to lessen day to day stress – a causal factor in sleep talking.

So many people have restless sleep, thrashing around and not being still and quiet. This session should get people sleeping more soundly and… more quietly.

Sleep well.

Mark