30 Days of Hypnosis

Alright so it has been a bit over two weeks since the 30 days were over and I thought I would throw up an update on how things are going. Things are going pretty well. Before the challenge I was having massive problems sleeping. My insomnia was raging out of control and I was sleeping two or three hours a day if that. I think I might have been slipping into a psychosis which could easily have led to federal prison time had I not gotten some sleep. Now? I get at least 6 hours of sleep a day but generally I can manage more than that. There have been a few days where I have been up for 34 or so hours straight but that was by conscious choice as opposed to lack of ability.

I will admit that since the end of the challenge, I have slacked off a bit with reading the script. I HAVE read it but I have certainly slowed down to the tune of about once a week. I am not sure what the needed amount of self-hypnosis is to maintain results from the self-hypnosis but it seems to be effective at my current rate of practice, which is not much.

I think that the more you do the self-hypnosis the less you have to do it, if that makes any sense. It is as if once you manage to open the door to the subconscious it stays open and the doorman is perpetually flirting with some hot girl trying to get in which allows you to Sam Fisher your way in much more easily than before. I don’t know if self-hypnosis has a shelf life but if it does, mine has gotten longer over time.

I still use the sleep process most of the time I go to sleep. I am finding that I don’t have to actually start counting anymore but rather just run the beach scenario and THINK about counting and I am out. My ability to slip into sleep and stay that way has improved 100 fold and I can’t think of a time since the challenge ended that I have really struggled to get to sleep. The worst case scenario is usually I have to count to 40.

As skeptical as I was about the whole process to begin with I have to say that I really buy into it now. There has been a definite change in how I sleep and the only thing I have done differently is the self-hypnosis. I genuinely plan to start doing the scripts for some other things in the book at some point soon but I haven’t started yet. I might take a look at the procrastination one next, but, you know, I will do it later.

Well there is a 2-week gap between my last post and this one.

Did I happen to mention 1 of the things I’m using self-hypnosis for is procrastination? Odd… you look like you already knew.

The last 2-3 weeks have been heavy-heavy weeks. Long hours getting things done, late nights and early mornings. One improvement I absolutely had was not rewarding myself so heavily with food.

6 months ago, going through this grind would have netted me pizza ever night and some form of fast-food each day at lunch time at least. This time though I think I had pizza twice during that 3 week push at work and no fast food at all for lunch.

NOTE: OMFG I want pizza now that I’ve posted this pic…

Pretty significant improvement if you ask me. I don’t know if it’s related to the self hypnosis or not, but there was more calm sense of “I don’t need that” making it easier to avoid. It’s not like I didn’t still think about it, I did, and am definitely doing so now that I’m talking about it — but I still didn’t leave the house and go get it.

To mix into the work load of the last few weeks, we also have the Chicago Marathon this weekend that we’ve been training for, for a year. There are the pressures there of “I know you’re tire, and over worked, but you have to keep running”.

The fear is that you get so wiped out RIGHT before the race, especially for a fear-of-failure/procrastination-sensitive person like myself, and just completely go cold turkey a few weeks out. There is a lot of ligament, bone and muscle conditioning that happens in your legs when you are running this much that would start to ease off a bit, and them WHAM, you hop yourself into a 26-mile run and good night sweet joints.

NOTE: For the runners out there, we’ve had excellent success using the Vibram FiveFinger Classics a few times a week to strengthen the micro-muscles in our feet and get rid of join and ligament pain just about everywhere. TechCrunch also loved them.

I’ve been aware of this propensity so I’ve been pushing hard to avoid it. Last week I got a few runs in, this weekend I got 1 in and so far this week I’ve gotten 2 in. I’m actually really happy with myself right now about the marathon training — it’s incredibly time consuming if you aren’t already a runner (which I’m not).

So even though there was a big gap in my last update, I did do the self hypnosis 1 time during that gap and for the most part been sticking to some pretty solid habits that aren’t a piece-of-cake easy, but easier than they were a few months ago.

If you think about what self-hypnosis is doing, the forcible creation of new neural pathways formed around new (assumed to be positive) thoughts and ideals… it seems like one of those “Duh, of course it works” types of things — but there is such a stigma around it being hocus-pocus and magic, that everyone just dismisses it.

I also think a core component that not a lot of hypnotists tell people is that you have to WANT the change. If you don’t want the change, the neural pathways won’t form. Your subconscious, from what I understand, will stop that from happening because there is no conviction in the process.

In my case, there is a shit-ton of conviction in the process because I really want these things – I’ve made some exciting changes in my life recently.

Ok, haven’t had so much success as my last post… it’s been a stressful week and I’ve restored to my old-school habits of work-eat-work-eat-work-eat… and I had a phenomenal bout with the bathroom the other night, so whatever I was eating wasn’t the right choice

Besides typical work-related stress we have our 20-mile training run tomorrow morning at 4:30am that I’ve been dreading for 2 weeks now… well it’s finally here and every time I think about it I want a poop a little bit.

We’ll see how things go after the run is done and the feeling of success / visit to the hospital is over. At least then I can start fearing the actual Chicago Marathon and not just the practice runs

Here’s to next week…

So it is the last day of the experiment and I went out with a whimper. A whimper because I couldn’t sleep at all today. Well, that isn’t really true. I slept for four hours and then I was done. I got up a bit and played video games for a bit and tried again and it didn’t pan out. In all fairness, I didn’t read my script today so maybe that is what threw in the monkey wrench. Or it could have been that I went to bed hungry. Or that I was really hot for no really good reason. I am not sure.

What I am sure of is that, in general, self-hypnosis has really worked for me in terms of getting to sleep and even staying asleep. Consistently, as you’ve read in this blog, I have been able to go t o sleep when I wanted and was able to stay asleep for at least six hours a day.

I think at the end of the day the best endorsement I can give self-hypnosis is that I plan to continue using it even after the experiment. I am going to keep up the sleep script and maybe add in some things about eating right and sticking with exercise and maybe throw in some great sex. The sky is the limit.

I started this whole thing a major skeptic and I am leaving it a believer. I have still never really answered whether or not I think it is really the hypnosis or more just fulfilling prophecies based on the desire for chance but what I have settled on is that it doesn’t make a bit of difference. The results are the same either way and they are positive. I am not going to waste time being cynical about something that has helped me sleep regardless of whether it is a placebo or the real deal.

So after a month, I give the book and the program my seal of approval and have already recommended it to a couple of friends.  It was an interesting trip and I am a little sad to be at the end but as far as self-hypnosis goes for me this is just the beginning. Thanks for reading.

Ah, completion.  It feels good.

I can remember when I was just a wee anxious thing, quivering and quaking at the sight of my own shadow.  Now I have received my street degree in self-hypnosis, and I have a new, less stressful lease on life.

When I started this project, I was really not the least bit convinced that this would be any more compelling than the “Psychic Blue Dot” that appears periodically in the National Enquirer.  If you concentrate and rub the blue dot, you are supposed to win untold sums of money.  It doesn’t work.  I assumed this wouldn’t work, either.  I was wrong.

It is a subtle process.  At no time did I wake up with a powerful new sense of invinsibility, but I did start to wake up having slept well, and I began to notice the absence of stress where it had always been before.  I had become so used to the idea that stress would stay on me like a bad tattoo, that it never really occured to me that I could do anything more than just cover it up.  It was really nice to realize that I have options. 

As I mentioned, I have decided to try another script – probably the one that promises that I will “make more money” (although, I am fairly certain that this is not at all dissimilar to the premise of “The Secret.”)  As with anything, if you put the intention into the universe, you will see your goal to fruition.  The important thing to remember is that it also applies to negative stuff, as well.  Just like the saying, “If you think you CAN or you think you CAN’T, you’re right.”

I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of the book – Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair – and to focus on one area that you feel you could improve, and just try it.  It will require stepping outside of your comfort zone, but “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”  You will be surprised at how well it can work if you want it to.

In closing, thank you all for following me on my psychadelic self-hypnosis trip, and I wish you all buckets of success.  The big Clout detergent-sized buckets.  Gallons of it.  Now, off I go to start my new “lower stress, higher quality” life!

Besides, I am getting VERY SLEEPY…

I think, since this is day 29, it is safe to say that this stuff works.  I notice the improvement when I listen to my script, and – more significantly – I definitely notice a difference when I DON’T listen to the script.  I am convinced that there is benefit to be gained from this book, depending on the nature of one’s issue, if you can manage to get over the feeling of silliness you get from reading the script out loud like some Shakesperean soliloquy.

I think much of the success comes from the fact that the script, whether you read it or listen to it, forces you to center yourself and focus on the issue at hand.  That is half the battle.  If your conscious mind recognizes that you have an issue, that probably means that your subconscious knew about it already, but handled it by causing a particular response to the stimuli – in my case, stress triggers – and not necessarily the response that is preferred.  Instead of kicking in the system of calming me down, my subconscious scans the input briefly, interprets it quickly, and responds not with a reaction that is the result of thoughtful introspection, but rather the physiological knee-jerk of adrenaline and fear.  These scripts serve to retrain that response process, and, in the immortal words of Garth Brooks, “it’s like trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss.”  It will take lots of sloppy kisses, but eventually the fire will be put out.  I am tired, and this analogy makes perfect sense to me, but if you are reading this and it looks like this:  dncid slslgh lslein, cogddnnels GAR fluber, Tns Daodndn Fdnlso, then it probably means it really DOES only make sense to me at this point.

I am going to continue to listen to this script, because I need all the help I can get!

I don’t know if I spelled that right, but since my last post I’ve had little successes all over the place, and you know what they say about a bunch of little successes… it’ll give you diarrhea.

In my case no diarrhea, but the whole “dieting” thing is still going strong… I’ve had noticeably stronger will-power to not indulge every time I walk through the kitchen or get done with a meeting at work. I put “dieting” in quotes back there because all I’m learning to do is not over-eat by 10-80% at every single meal… most of the day I feel hungry and honestly about half the time it feels intentional like I’m choosing not to eat, it’s not a passive thing — BUT, the success portion is taking the shape of my being able to keep myself on the wagon.

I caved last night and ate some ice cream and cheese puffs, but instead of eating the entire Ben and Jerry’s, I only had about 1/4 of it… that’s pretty good for me.

I worked from 5am until I went blind from mental fatigue at 5pm, ran 10 miles and then came home. I was completely ready to go into indulgence mode and rape the fridge, but I was surprised… I got myself a glass of water and we watched a movie… and I was satisfied.

I’m hungry, and I would be more than happy to eat 12 Krispy Kreme donuts or half a pizza, but I have this sort of calm control… I want all that stuff, and it still sounds fantastic, but I am not dwelling on it, every minute of the day like I normally would be. Especially after a hard work day or a huge run — you know how the thoughts go: “I DESERVE that 2000 calorie meal, I worked hard” — talk about the worst mental habit to have ever.

That’s like teaching yourself to buy something really expensive every time you save a dime… it’s damning, especially in the long run.

So I did the script tonight, since it’s Wednesday, and I noticed that if I turn on the “Beach” setting on the Brookstone Tranquil Moments Sound Therapy Machine we have while I read, I get into that hypnotized/monotone state a bit faster. I don’t necessarily think it has to do with helping me visualize the beach scene at the beginning of the “Induction” script — I have always visualized that fine — it happens right after when stepping into the modern building, that’s my favorite part. I’ll notice my voice down-shift into a more controlled/monotone setting and I feel just a hair different. I think the sound therapy machine helps occupy the wandering part of my mind just enough so it doesn’t trail off thinking about garbage and distract me, so I can focus on the reading.

The one take away thus far that I’m noticing is not so much random/unpredictable success, like winning the lottery, it’s more along the lines of a calm dedication or persistence to my behavior that is allowing me to stay on-task longer and accomplish more during the day, thus giving me more successes… so that’s a pretty neat side effect.

Day 2 definitely looking good so far.

Update #1: I meant to mention, I almost didn’t write this post until tomorrow morning because I’m really tired… but after reading the script it just made sense that I write it right now. I fully expected to cop-out on myself, but I didn’t… so that’s something.

So I was riding pretty high the past couple of days with my nine hours but today I took a bit of a step back. I slept for seven hours. Not as nice but it is better than normal anyway. Also, it wasn’t a failure in the scripts or the process but rather that I decided I would see if the first suggestion made by tech support would fix my issue with Champions Online and it did not. So I stayed up an extra hour or so for bitter disappointment. Such is life.

My sleep was good again though and I woke up feeling refreshed. As I write this, I am a little sleepy but I don’t think I am going to be falling asleep at my desk or anything.

My dreams were not as weird or disturbing, just very vivid. My first was me deciding to go look at an open house in an apartment building which was old and sort of run down in a really cool sort of way and finding out it was haunted. The whole of the dream was me trying to get over my fear of interpersonal interaction and actually asking them if we can investigate it for the book. When they started hedging I talked up our books and groups like they were the best things ever. Which, of course, they are.

The second dream had me taking on the role of Wolverine having to subdue mutant insurgents from assassinating a businessman with possible ties to organized crime as I was undercover with him. Some other super hero was with me and I don’t remember who but the rest of the insurgents were actually other X-men who had been brainwashed. I am not sure when Chris Claremont started writing my dreams but it was pretty awesome.

Tomorrow night is one of my nights off and I will be able to sleep as late as I want before karaoke so hopefully I will get a lot of rest for the last day of the experiment. I am sure you are all waiting with baited breath.

This is twice in a row that I have managed to do nine hours of sleep. If you’ve been reading this blog with any regularity, you will know that this is a really big deal.  Here with only a stone’s throw away from day 30 I am finding myself on the precipice of what may be a consistent and healthy amount of sleep.

Nothing special really happened either. I took my friend to the airport after work and picked up my girlfriend from work, did my script, ate something and then went to bed around 8:30. My girlfriend left to go check in on her dad after his surgery and came back around noon. I woke up briefly to ask how he was doing and then, miracle of miracles, I went back to sleep. I didn’t wake up again until 5:30.  And I felt really great and really refreshed. I showered, ate some soup and hit up Gamestop for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which I was excited to do but again, much like with Batman, my excitement for going and getting the game did not hamper my sleep the way it might have in the past.

When I did the sleep process, I didn’t even make it to the countdown. I visualized the beach and the sun and thought about the countdown and that was it. When I went back to sleep after Summer came home I got to 98 on the countdown. BAM!

One aspect of this whole thing that has emerged that I didn’t anticipate and frankly don’t like much is the weirdness of the dreams. I can’t say they are nightmares exactly, they are just mildly disturbing and strange. My dreams today had me as a wealthy magnate of some kind in a Vincent Price sort of mansion with servants and such. I apparently had two pet snakes and for some reason, said snakes ran wild in the house and liked to sleep in bed with me. The disturbing bit came in when I discovered these snakes, who looked like bull snakes or some other non-venomous garden snakes, had little rattles on the end of there tails which made them pit vipers and thus poisonous. I tried to remove them from under the covers of the bed in which I was sleeping but they kept slithering right back in as, apparently, they ‘loved’ me and liked to snuggle. And you know, there is only so much arguing you want to do with venomous snakes. I suspect that this had to do with my cat Daisy getting under the covers all the time and that when I woke up Thunder was curled up at my side but still, it was disturbing.

Disturbing as the dream was I do have to mention a couple of things about it. The first is that, as I have mentioned, I used to have re-occurring nightmares about snakes. I had these things for years and I was terrified of them, just completely terrified. Not only would they wake me up but I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of going back to sleep afterward. Now, I seem to be having snake dreams but they don’t bother me that much. For the snakes to be in bed with me, a scenario that has played out many times in dreams, is just that much more remarkable because that would have normally mean that I was going to be up for the next day or so. This time I just kept on sleeping and only mildly vexed in my dream that I had somehow managed to collect a couple of venomous pets. I kept thinking in the dream ‘well the must have had their venom glands removed or something because otherwise what the hell would I be doing with them in bed with me?’ Ah dreams.

Second, I was actually dreaming about sleeping. I think if we are dealing with breaking into the sub-conscious and slipping passed the bouncer then dreams about sleep itself is significant given that dreams are essentially a downloading and processing of information by our sub-conscious. I am not sure what dreaming about sleep says exactly, I just find it noteworthy.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to keep this trend up. I am liking nine hours of sleep for sure. Hopefully we can start going steady.

I went to see a showing of the Mario Van Peebles classic, Rappin’, and got home rather late last night.  I was tired and decided to just go to sleep. 

I don’t really understand why I choose to postpone something that I already know makes me feel better.  Significantly.  Even as I was going to bed last night, I felt so wound up because I knew I would have to get up and walk my son to the bus stop – something that I have already described as a stressor. 

One of the takeaways of this exercise in the long term needs to be “it doesn’t work if you don’t do it.”  It needs to be treated like any other maintenance program.  If you have high blood pressure, you can’t just take a few high blood pressure pills and call your blood pressure “controlled.”  The same applies here.  You have to keep reinforcing the information into your subconscious in order for it to be disbursed into the synaptical pathways.

I am definitely going to listen to it tonight.  It just doesn’t make sense to skip this part of my routine.  That is the same as me choosing to have anxiety.  I don’t like the feeling of anxiety gnawing on my solar plexus with dull teeth. 

Just keep on keepin’ on.

Okay so about 45 minutes after last night’s entry I went down like the white guy in a boxing match. Seriously, it was as if someone shot me in the neck with a blow gun. I was out. When I woke up NINE hours later I was filled with shame. That feeling gave way to a sense that I felt pretty good and that, in this case, being weaksauce worked out pretty well.

Even with how tired I was, I ran through the sleep process anyway because often times being tired and sleepy has very little to do with whether or not I can go to sleep. I was out before I got to 95. In this case, I stayed out too.

The dreams were pretty crazy though. Something about having to save four of my friends from indoctrination into a cult which was in turn trying to mess up my life only to have them remove the transmission from my car while I wasn’t looking. It was weird.  I don’t know if I blame the self-hypnosis though because I DID watch the True Blood season finale right before bed and the leader of the cult was Steve Newlin, leader of the Fellowship of the Sun. So I think that was it more than anything else.

I spent today with my friend from out of town and my girlfriend. We went to El Charro for a late lunch where in a creepy waiter took it upon himself to flirt mercilessly with my girlfriend. I am not sure in what universe asking if someone is going to share their order with you is a viable option to coax digits but it was not appreciated. Of course, I am not the sort of dude to make some kind of scene about this sort of thing. I have an attractive girlfriend. It happens. I am not going to pound my chest like a gorilla and do some kind of preening behavior on her to shower ‘ownership.’ I am insecure but not THAT insecure.

After that we went to Yikes toy store where I purchased a bath tub stopper with a floating newspaper boat attached. After that we had a second round of frozen yogurt from By the Ounce as my friend was quite taken with it and then made our way to the mall for the sorts of nick knacks you are supposed to bring people back from vacations.

After all that, I am sitting at work staring at my computer screen listening to music channels on Pandora and hoping that I can make it through my shift. Thankfully it is short since I have to take my friend to the airport at 6:30 but it is going to be a struggle. My failure last night is coming to collect on its bill and I am not very happy about it. Oh well, it could be worse and my job could be difficult and tiring.

In my last post I explained that I picked 3 self-hypnosis scripts that I was going to focus on this month and juggle between reading them. Since one of the things I am trying to address is breaking promises to myself (typically related to self-improvement) I decided to make this more accessible by committing to reading the scripts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So far I’ve read 2 scripts each time I sat down (I cheated Saturday and started reading then, and then again today).

I will say that the Success script is my favorite… it’s very empowering and intense. The Self-Confidence one I feel lame reading, because it’s not masculine to not be self-confident, but I figure it’s good for me so I do it. As for the Procrastination script, it’s very straight forward and I think a perfect balance between the other two.

My pattern thus far has been to read Success then one of the other ones before reading the Wake-up and coming out of self-hypnosis. The entire process takes about 8 mins I think.

Something worth noting is that while reading the Induction, that gets you into the self-hypnotic state, right after the part that talks about the ocean and the beach and you get inside the building to take the elevator down (it’s an illusion for conquering your subconscious) I notice the tone of my voice shift noticeably. It gets really serene and calm.

NOTE: This is not the first time I’m reading these scripts though, I’ve been dabbling for a month on and off. The first time I cracked the book I felt/saw no noticeable difference in myself while reading, now that I’ve done it about 10 times, I am starting to be able to recognize the shift into “suggestive state”.

Goal for the Week

One goal that I have for myself this week is to significantly decrease my portion sizes.

I’m coming off a week of the flu and lost about 5lbs for no eating — which is incredibly timely because I’m doing the Chicago Marathon next month and need to be as light as humanly possible.

I’m trying to ride the momentum from the flu forward through the week and just keep my intake down so I can keep a lower weight and hopefully loose a bit more before heading out for Chicago.

I’m a textbook “reward myself with tasty food” person. I work my ass off and then turn to a pizza, burger or other source of many more calories than I need as a reward as the day winds down. I’ve caught myself no less than 3x every day falling into that pattern, but surprisingly have been able to break that habit and turn towards a glass of water or something else with a bit more ease than I expected.

I’m feeling good about this so far, I know I feel very positive and confident when I finish with the scripts… I have to imagine after a month of this, neurons will be rebinding in interesting ways.