Stop Fidgeting Sample [2:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (304)

When I was around eighteen I went for a summer job. As I recall, the money was pretty good. I was to be an admin assistant to an accountancy clerk. My job interview lasted around one and half hours. During that time a markedly charisma-free man furnished me with such in depth admin detail about the job that my mind began not so much to wander as sprint in any other direction. I think I realized I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting that particular job when he suddenly said: ‘DO you mind not tapping your fingers; it’s beginning to get to me!’ In my boredom, I hadn’t even noticed that I was fidgeting, but it had clearly got to him. And not surprisingly. I hadn’t been too keen to get that job, but if I had wanted to be employed there I would have blown my chances partly through fidgeting so much.

So what’s wrong with fidgeting?

Restless tapping, hair flicking, blinking, pencil twiddling, and such like fidgets all give out the signal that we are bored, restless, nervous – or even lying. Too much caffeine, too little exercise, habit, lack of self confidence and nervousness can all cause fidgeting. It’s distracting for others and makes you look as if you have little personal authority or confidence and can’t focus. So it can really get in the way!

In the new hypnosis session for hypnosisdownloads.com Stop fidgeting I have produced a session which, I hope, will help people to stop twitching and moving and shuffling when doing so will give the sort of impression they would rather avoid.

Mark

Full hypnosis download Be more attractive to women

OK, OK… you might be thinking what does he know about being more attractive to women? And women might be asking who is he to say what we are all attracted to? But hear me out. It’s not that I am a universal expert on what women find attractive in a man, but there is a fair bit of research out there (fortunately for me) showing what kinds of things women are attracted to in men.

How is it that some men attract women more than others?

Reams of research show that a woman is attracted to different types of male faces at different parts of her menstrual cycle. During ovulation, her fertile period, women are more likely to find the classically masculine look more appealing. You know – the square jawed, broad shouldered, more rugged, high testosterone look. (1) But when she is not ovulating, a woman is more likely to be attracted to a more ‘feminine’ looking man. A man with larger eyes, fuller lips, more rounded jawbone, and so on. Why is this?

Change your DNA to attract more women

Well, during ovulation, a woman will instinctively be more drawn to a man who gives evidence of strong and healthy DNA to pass onto her offspring. Men with higher levels of testosterone are more likely to have a short term fling with a woman when she is ovulating

But women are more attracted to men who look less typically super masculine when they are not ovulating (according to the research), because these men display in their features more nurturing, caring and connecting traits that promise good long-term mate material for bringing up offspring. But hold on one cotton picking minute! This doesn’t seem to be quite fair! If you’re super masculine, you attract women who are ovulating, but if you’re wussy and cuddly, you get all the risk that your woman is more turned on by other men! Well, it’s not quite that simple.

The super attractive combination

Take a couple of universally recognised attractively-faced male sex symbols, say Brad Pitt and George Clooney. We can see that their faces blend and therefore reflect both dominant masculine features (strong jaw lines) and softer, more ‘feminine’ looking nurturing aspects – lips and eyes. So, to be most attractive to women, you will appeal to her when she’s not ovulating and when she is. (Please don’t ask me to tell you how to discern when a woman is ovulating – although there is some research to indicate that young women may dress more provocatively during ovulation (2)) But hold on, this still isn’t fair! What if I don’t look like George Clooney, or Brad Pitt, but more like… well, the pits…?

Attraction more than skin deep

Fortunately, although looking directly into her eyes and smiling can get you some of the way (3), women are not so superficial that they just go by a man’s looks. If a man can display masculine, assertive and strong behavioral characteristics, blended with more typically ‘feminine’ characteristics –in the way he acts, talks, thinks and relates – then he will be attractive even if he looks pretty unexciting. Confidence, courage, assertiveness, inventiveness, self-discipline coupled with caring, loving and interest in others, showing consideration without being a push over, may well be the most attractive combination.

Of course, there are many different reasons why women find particular individual men attractive, but what I have suggested here are universals. Women often report liking a man with a deep voice (indicative of dominance and high testosterone), but warm and friendly sounding (indicative of nurturing and caring). A deep but cold voice is less attractive to women, and a warm but high pitched male voice again doesn’t hit the combination. Women often say they are attracted to men who can dance (God darn it!). Again this may be because dancing shows assertiveness (sometimes drunkenness?) and ability to relate to to others.

In the new Be more attractive to women hypnotic download for hypnosisdownloads.com I encourage men to develop both sides of themselves – super confidence and strength with women, and also caring and (dare I say it) tender on occasion.

Mark

Notes

(1) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18077810/

(2) Women dress to impress when they are at their most fertile, U.S. researchers said in a study they say shows that signs of human ovulation may not be as mysterious as some scientists believe.

A study of young college women showed they frequently wore more fashionable or flashier clothing and jewellery when they were ovulating, as assessed by a panel of men and women looking at their photographs.

“They tend to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably,” said Martie Haselton, a communication studies and psychology expert at the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study.

Writing in the journal Hormones and Behavior, Haselton and colleagues said their findings disproved the conventional wisdom that women are unique among animals in concealing, even from themselves, when they are most fertile.

(3) Dr Clare Conway and colleagues at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland conducted experiments with hundreds of volunteers assessing how ‘attractive’ they found faces which were looking directly at them compared with faces whose gaze was turned away – even by a tiny amount. Significant numbers of both men and women found faces looking straight at them to be more attractive and more likeable.

 Happy Memory Jogger Sample [1:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (326)

It’s long been known that mulling over unhappy past events and dwelling on the minutiae of negative aspects of the past (above and beyond learning from mistakes) is bad for us. It makes us feel miserable and can actually make us unhealthier as we re-access the same or similar feelings as we had in the original time. (1)

When you recall something, your body responds physically almost as if that event were happening all over again. So, if you recall being angry, more likely than not your blood pressure will go up and you’ll feel angry again, in the here and now. If you recall times you felt anxious – you’ll feel anxious again and you may even sweat as your pulse starts to race. And conversely, if you strongly recall happy times, then your body will again reap the rewards of positive emotion you felt in that time.

So it makes sense to recall happy memories often and regularly. Strangely, all too many of us just keep replaying stuff that went wrong, but hardly ever mentally re-visit the really great past times. When you strongly recall a happy memory, your immune system will work better, you’ll feel more optimistic and even your self-esteem will improve and you’ll feel more positive towards your future and other people in your life. (2)

Happy memories and hypnosis

Hypnosis can be used to vivify memories and enhance positive feelings formed from the original experience. Hypnotic recollection can be much more powerful than everyday reminiscence. And, although hypnosis should not be used to try to ‘discover what happened’, it is a great way of re-connecting to past resourceful feelings for use in the present and future. I produced the Happy Memory Jogger download for hypnosisdownloads.com to encourage the healthy act of positive recollection and to begin to link positive past feelings to future positive events.

Happy memories!

Mark

Notes

(1) A large body of research (including studies carried out by Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky of University of California at Riverside, shows that ruminating about past unpleasant events merely serves to re-traumatise and embed the negative emotion. Writing about past negative events is a more effective way to come to terms with an unpleasant past circumstance or events.

(2) Thinking of good memories for just 20 minutes a day can make people more cheerful than they were the week before, and happier than if they think of their current lives, report researchers from Loyola University. Psychologist Fred Bryant found that mood was strongly enhanced in study participants who were encouraged to recall happy, pleasant and triumphant events. Conjuring up past good times is much more powerful than simply thinking about day to day life, and could even help students struggling with current exams perform better when they reminisced about past triumphs, Byrant found.

 Public Speaking Confidence Sample [2:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (454)

Every so often, fear of public speaking comes out as the ‘number one fear’ on different public polls. Fear of death comes somewhat lower down! This may be hard to believe but fear of public speaking is a huge problem for many.

I have worked with hundreds of people all afraid to present and all seeking public speaking confidence. I now feel at my most relaxed and ‘in flow’ when speaking in public, but can well recall the horrible anxiety and fearful breathlessness that accompanied my initial forays into the field of public speaking. Our public speaking confidence session on hypnosisdownloads.com has helped hundreds of people over the years feel relaxed and in control when public speaking. I feel really good about that.

Many people ask me why they should feel so terrified of speaking in public and I think the reasons aren’t hard to find.

Fear of public speaking is natural – we’re tribal!

In times gone by, when we lived in simple tribal communities, being faced with large numbers of people and having to ‘confront’ them may have been a high risk strategy (unless we happened to be an omnipotent king or queen). If the rest of the tribe didn’t like what you said they might a) spear, stone or boo you to death or b) eject you from the tribe – which, because there has always been safety in numbers, would almost certainly have meant personal extinction!

Nowadays, if the group you are speaking to don’t like what you say, they are not likely to attack you with spears, or eject you to a life of abject loneliness away from the tribe, but the feelings of fear still rise in us as if these threats still persist in the same form.

Of course, your personal public speaking history will shape whether you now respond to public speaking as a fearful threat or a rewarding challenge. If you had a hard time speaking in class at school, or have had horribly anxious public speaking experiences that you are constantly reminded of when even the very thought of speaking publicly comes up, then the reason for current public speaking fear isn’t hard to find. This is why the public speaking confidence session deals directly with calming down memories of past public speaking experiences when unhooking the fear association from the act of public speaking.

Overcoming fear of public speaking by taking command

When people become anxious public speaking they sometimes talk in terms of ‘dying up there’. Of course they don’t actually die. But it’s interesting that at one time fear of rejection by the rest of the tribe would have meant precisely this. When you are presenting to a group of people you need to ‘be the leader’, at least for the duration of the presentation. Leaders are confident and certain. Social confidence transmits to your audience and inspires confidence in you. This in turn makes you feel more confident when public speaking.

Fear of public speaking may be on the increase as we all become more hooked into electronic communication and have less opportunity to actually practise talking face to face. Yet at the same time more and more of us are being called upon to speak publicly as trainers at work as new information and developments demand that the whole workforce be kept up to date. Knowing you can be confident speaking in front of 10, 20 or a 1000 people adds to your general sense of confidence and self-esteem, which is one of the reasons public speaking confidence is such a popular download session.

Mark

 Learn Fast Sample [4:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (153)

I love seeing learning in action. When people just ‘pick something up’ – just like that! Of course, not everything needs to be learned quickly, but there’s no question that when we all learn faster then we can engage with, direct and live life more fully. Being able to learn more quickly means we also have more chance of success in all kinds of fields.

Learning on the right side of the brain

We have (for all practical purposes) two basic modes of knowledge for everyday life:

Factual knowledge is, of course, the accumulation of facts in the mind and the ability to recall these facts after having learnt them thoroughly (potential quiz contestants take note!).

Procedural knowledge is ability or skill which is activated by having information about something functionally combined with experience with that something. Procedural knowledge is quite likely to include factual knowledge of the same area, but the reverse is not always true. For example, you can have a factual storehouse of all the parts of the body in your mind, but not have the procedural knowledge to do surgery. You could know all the ingredients in a meal, but not how to cook them together in such a way as to produce a delicious dinner for your friends, and so forth.

We learn in different ways –reading, observing other people, and experimentation, for example. Elkhonon Goldberg describes how new information is processed by the right brain and then ‘made familiar’ by the left side (1). Speeding up the rate at which this right brain absorption/left brain cementing occurs can speed up learning.

Speed learning by osmosis

The most popular ‘learning concept’ of the middle ages was ‘apprenticeship’. An apprentice would actually live with the master builder (for example) and observe them closely all day long, while carrying out any task they were required to do. In this way, knowledge was almost ‘caught’ as an attitude as well as a set of practical skills. This may seem a strange notion to the modern mind – but there is a strong tradition of this kind of learning and it still has much to offer us. Watching people who are very good at something very closely – not as hero worship, but as a way of connecting to their capacity – can bring great dividends.

This hypnosis session (specially created for hypnosisdownloads.com) is designed to relax and open up the mind of the would-be learner, to encourage a good ‘learning attitude’ for better fast learning in all areas.

Mark

Notes

(1) See The Wisdom Paradox – How your mind can grow stronger as your brain grows older, Elkhonon Goldberg, PhD.