Aug
24
I’ve known this story for years (I can’t even remember where I first heard it), and yet I learned something new from it just last week. It’s my favourite teaching story of all.
Many years ago, there was a young Chinese boy who was fortunate enough to be given an apprenticeship to a famous jade master.
On his first morning, as he hurried to the old man’s house, the boy looked forward eagerly to his day. “Today,” he said to himself, “the master will begin to teach me about jade.”
But when he got there, the master handed him a pebble of jade to hold and began to talk about everything under the sun – except jade.
The boy was disappointed, but as he walked home he consoled himself. “The master was just getting to know me today,” he thought. “Surely tomorrow he will begin to teach me about jade.”
But the next day came, and it was just the same as the first. The old man gave the boy a pebble of jade to hold, and began to talk about all of the Ten Thousand Things – except jade.
Day after day this happened. The boy began to despair. “Did I fail some test?” he thought. “Does the master not want me as his apprentice? Will he ever begin to teach me about jade?”
He was a well-brought-up Chinese boy and had been taught not to question his elders, but one day, as he trudged to the master’s house, he had had enough. “Today,” he thought, “I will ask the master when he will begin to teach me about jade.”
But when he arrived at the house, before he could say anything, the master, as his custom was, put a pebble into the boy’s hand. And without thinking, the apprentice cried out, “Master, that’s not jade!”
 photo credit: avlxyz
So what did I learn last week? (You may be wondering.)
Well, when I told that story to myself, I always thought I was the master. You see, people come to me for help with very mundane, ordinary things. They eat too much, or they smoke, or bite their nails. They’re not confident, or they’re stressed and worried. And I help them with those things, but at the same time I give them simple tools and resources and techniques that, if they stick with them and use them as I suggest, will help to turn them into stronger, more integrated and happier people over the long-term. For example, I recently posted a video interview with one of my clients who came to me to give up smoking and ended up becoming kinder to herself, a better mother to her boys, and someone who could start to live out her creative dreams with confidence and enthusiasm.
I’m like the master who had begun to teach about jade without the apprentice even realising it.
Or so I thought.
Last week, I realised I’m the apprentice.
You see, I’ve been struggling to figure out how to present what I do so that people will want to buy it from me (so that, in turn, I can do it all the time). I was expecting that the marketing courses I’ve taken would tell me, like the jade master, all about how to do this. I was expecting knowledge at the level of words.
But through a half-hour talk with Catherine Caine, whose ability to ask just the right questions borders on the uncanny, I realised what I’d been feeling all along, what the pebbles were that I’d been given to hold. What I really want to do is help people – ordinary people, people with kids and mortgages and jobs who do the dishes and mow the lawn – to find depth and meaning and resourcefulness in their ordinary lives, to live skillfully, to make the world a noticeably better place for them and those around them to live in. That’s the work I love. That’s jade. It starts with addressing the obvious symptoms: smoking, overeating, various kinds of “bad habits” and self-harming behaviours. But the point is not to stop doing those things, but to become the kind of person who doesn’t need to do those things any more.
So what I’m going to start doing is talking about what I do in those terms. I’m not sure about the exact language yet, and what I’ll end up calling what I do, but I’m going to give up pretending that I’m here to offer the quick fix and then slipping the things that people are really missing, the meaning and the self-belief and the integration of all the parts of themselves, in through the side door.
That’s not jade!
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Jul
13
“Eating your own dog food” is the rather disgusting expression the technology industry uses to mean using your own product.
Lately, I’ve been working on what was originally a course on emotions. (It’s now split into a free course on Simple Stress Management Techniques and another, yet-to-be-announced product). Ever since I’ve been working on it, I’ve been dealing with emotional issues in my own life. I thought I’d tell you a little about how that’s been going.
The Case of the Manic Mini
photo credit: christian.senger
I was driving along the road, a little distracted, when a car coming in the other direction cheekily turned across in front of me to go into a side road. Now, I have a bad habit when people do that. I don’t slow down much, so that I can make the point “You really didn’t have room to do that maneuver, hold back a bit in future”. I don’t actually ram into them, of course, or do anything unsafe, but I don’t slow all the way down either.
Next thing I know, out of the same side road, turning across in front of me to go in the other direction, comes a Mini – which definitely shouldn’t have tried that move. I stamped on the brake and swerved and barely missed it.
It shook me up. I’ve been in a few car crashes over the years (most of them not my fault, by the way), and a near miss like that scares me. At one time it would have taken me a good hour or so to calm myself down.
I used a technique that’s in my Simple Stress Management Techniques course – the Welcoming Practice – and by the time I reached my destination a couple of minutes later I was fine.
The Case of the Depressing Day Job
I don’t yet do hypnotherapy full time, though I’m working hard on changing that. I have a day job to help pay the bills. It’s not been going well just lately, and I found for a while that when I was driving to work I’d start feeling down.
When the depressed feeling started, I’d immediately apply a technique of my own invention, which I call the Gut Bump. (It’s in the Simple Stress Management Techniques course.) It’s an immediate mood-lifting technique which involves turning the sinking feeling in your stomach upside-down with a bit of imagination.
It dealt with the sad feelings quite effectively. And I didn’t have to eat, drink or otherwise consume any substances to feel better.
I’ve been using a few other techniques to deal with the stress of the day job, too – the Welcoming Practice and anchoring, for example. They’re in the course too.
The Case of the Youthful Screw-Up
I’ve alluded a few times to a bad experience I had in my early 20s – 20 years ago as I write, in fact. It was largely down to me being clueless, though the fact that the other people around me were also clueless prolonged it and helped it to get worse than it otherwise would have. I won’t go into the grim details, but suffice to say that I became very stressed and very depressed and suffered significant emotional losses. Some things that were very important to me turned out to be impossible, and I took that very hard.
I’ve been aware at various times over the years that some of that hurt had remained with me, and though I’d told myself repeatedly that it was time to get past it, I never completely did.
Until this year. A couple of months back I accidentally came across a way that I could get back in touch with someone peripherally involved in the original mess. At the time, I didn’t feel I could do that, which reminded me that there was still a part of me holding on to the old pain.
One night, I was thinking about the situation and decided to use a trauma-releasing technique which the famous stage hypnotist Andrew Newton recently invented. I learned it from him earlier this year, so it was fresh in my mind. (It’ll be in the advanced version of the course.)
It took two repetitions, maybe 10 minutes or a little more. And after 20 years, the trauma was finally dealt with.
I contacted my old friend.
This Stuff Works
I could say more about how I’ve been dealing with stress, calming myself down, and generally navigating choppy emotional waters lately, but I think three stories are enough to make the point. This stuff works. I don’t just teach it, I use it myself on a near-daily basis.
Now it’s your turn.
Technorati Tags: stress, stress management, personal development, anxiety, depression, emotions, hypnotherapy
Jun
22
Last week I surveyed selected members of my mailing list about what they wanted to see in the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit, because I want to make it really useful. (It’s already been useful for me – and I’ll talk about that some more soon – but I want it to be useful for you.)
What I actually asked them was:
- What would you change about your emotional life if you could?
- What is your ideal outcome if you had a solution for question 1? Put another way: What benefit would you see in your life from being able to make that change?
The results are in (thanks to all who responded), and I’d like to share them with you now. I’ve edited them slightly for spelling and grammar, but otherwise what I quote below are the respondents’ own words.
The responses fell into two clear groups – what I call the “confidence” group and the “stress” group. Let’s look at them separately.
Confidence
Confidence was about, as one person put it, “fear of failure, looking foolish”, or as another said, “reacting to what I perceive to be people’s judgement on me” (his or her emphasis). Another said, “I wish I could always believe in myself, and be strong and true to myself, and not doubt my beliefs, and not succumb to other people’s beliefs and expectations of me.” That’s well put (and a good goal).
The reasons for wanting confidence went like this:
- I could then embark on a new consulting career, present my product, talk confidently and convincingly to an audience.
- I could relax a lot more in other people’s company and stop worrying about going out.
- [I would] feel safe and secure in the knowledge that I am worthy.
The good news: I was already planning to include one of my best hypnotherapy tracks, Confident Person, as a bonus for the first 100 people to sign up for the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit. I’d been wondering, though, whether it should just be part of the kit. Now I know: It should be, and it shall be, included for everyone.
I’ll think of something else to give as a bonus to the early adopters.
Stress
Stress is obviously a big part of why our emotions get stirred up in the first place, and it’s a fixture of most modern lives. Stress management is a huge part of what I help people with, too. So it’s no surprise to read responses like this:
- I would like to be less stressed, I would like to be able to go to bed at night, wake in the morning NOT having thoughts of work as the last and first things in my head.
- Sometimes when stress and tiredness takes over motivation and good decisions go out the window. Goals suffer, likewise health & relationships.
- I’d be able to let go of things and not have them eat away at me.
People are also pretty clear on the benefits of dealing with stress:
- Much more “ho hum” about work, making it more of ‘working at work time’ – not having it part of my life 24/7
- Less stress, more energy, better balance, structure & organisation, improved health and relationships and goal attainment.
- More present in where I am, better able to relax and to sleep
The good news: Stress management, especially by letting go, has been at the heart of the Toolkit from the start. There’s plenty of material on relaxation, as well. One thing I will consider adding is a specific sleep track, since a couple of people mentioned sleep – I already have one, so I can just include it in the list of bonuses.
I’ve been going back and forth on whether to include a module on stress specifically (what it is and how it works), or whether to make that a separate free course that’s introductory to the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit. I still haven’t decided, so if you have a strong opinion, let me know in the comments.
What Else?
There was one other response, slightly cryptic: “eating instead of acting”. I take this to mean that this is something the respondent is doing and wants to stop, but I’m going to follow that one up to make sure.
It raises the question: Should I say some things specifically about the means that people often use to manage their emotions – eating, smoking, drinking etc.? I do cover these in my book, Changing Health Behaviours, so I don’t want to just repeat the information there, but I do want to go over them at least briefly. Again, your opinions in the comments, thanks.
And finally, what else am I already planning to include (and should I leave some of it out or make it into separate products? Again, I welcome your opinions in the comments.) In summary, I’m planning:
- Techniques to deal with past emotional hurts and continuing emotional pain
- Quick techniques to break the immediate emotional “circuits” that carry you round and round the same emotional territory
- Deep techniques to change your underlying emotional patterns and build a positive emotional life
- Specific techniques for anger, sadness and fear (including phobias)
I’ve had one comment that the amount of material in the Toolkit is “overwhelming”, and I’m also conscious of the price point – I don’t want to make a Rolls-Royce for a Mazda audience. How would you feel about a series or a set of related products, since I’ll be encouraging you to pick and choose what you need anyway?
Your Mission
Here are my follow-up questions. Answers to any or all of these in the comments, please:
- If you didn’t answer my survey (or even if you did and have thought of something else), what are your answers to the questions? (Those questions again: What would you change about your emotional life if you could, and what would be your main benefit from doing so?)
- Would you like a stress module in the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit, or do you see that as a separate thing? (No extra charge in either case, it will either be a bonus or a freebie.)
- What about material on the common stress management techniques of eating, drinking and smoking? How much do you want me to say?
- Anything that I’ve put in that you want me to leave out, or make into a separate product?
The best comment this week will win something. Exactly what will depend on the comment, since I want it to be something you’d like, but it will be something I’ve made.
Have at it!
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