30 Days of Hypnosis

We got up early this morning to take my friend from Little Rock to the Desert Museum. Our goal was to get there before it was too hot but we went to breakfast first and then Miss Tiggywinkle’s Toy Store and failed altogether to miss the heat. We were there for a few hours looking at mountain lions, rattlesnakes, ocelots and even an otter who was terrorizing and eventually eating a lizard.

I love the Desert Museum but after a few hours in the blazing heat you want nothing more than to get the hell out of there and get some ice cream. Which is what we did. We went to By the Ounce frozen yogurt and I had a cup of taro frozen yogurt with Fruity Pebbles, Fruit Loops, Reese’s Pieces , sprinkles, mini-white chocolate chips and some caramel sauce.  We attempted to go to  Yikes! Toy Story in effort to get a bath tub stopper with a boat attached to it but we were foiled by it being Sunday and we were diverted to Bohemia art gallery.

My friend went back to her hotel, my girlfriend went to her parents’ house and I showered and watched the True Blood series finale. I reconvened with my friend so she could show me some Krav Maga she has been taking. We then met up with another friend and went to Ra Sushi followed by drinks at Hotel Congress. It was a full day.

Currently it is 1:25 in the morning and my girlfriend and I are struggling to stay awake as we both need to sleep during the day tomorrow so we aren’t facing this kind of torment tomorrow night at work. But it is really hard. It is funny to think about when I started this blog I was having a huge problem sleeping but now I am trying to stay awake. It would be so nice to go to sleep right now but I really can’t or tomorrow is going to suck. If only there was a script to stay awake…

I woke up about 3pm yesterday and immediately started getting ready for the evening. I took a shower and literally had to drag my girlfriend out of bed by her ankles so she could take a shower and get ready. We collected my friend from out of town and took her to Pho Thu, a local Vietnamese restaurant which features a dish my girlfriend affectionately refers to as ‘Candy Meat’ because the meat tastes like candy. It is awesome.

After that we headed to the movie theater to meet another friend and saw 9. We then hopped to Extract. Both were  good but Extract was super awesome. After the movies, my girlfriend and I came home and I decided I needed to take a walk. So at 12:2o am I went for a roughly two mile walk.

I say all this to set up that when I got back from the walk I went to bed around 2am. I did my process and went right to sleep. My alarm went off at 9am and I felt pretty good. Seven hours of sleep is not bad and I actually felt refreshed. It was nice to sleep all the way through. I was sort of bummed when I had to sleep at night instead of the day time but I needed to do things during the day.  This means that now I am going to have to stay awake all night long to sleep tomorrow. It will be a long day today and tonight.

I’m running out of clever titles for these posts, so I am just grabbing things that are current and relevant, and currently and relevantly, Kanye is an asshole.

The last two days have been keeping with the status quo.  Stress is under control – ish, so more frequently I have nothing new to report.  Even though my 30 days of this experiment are drawing to a close, I am going to up the ante personally be trying a different script.  After reading Riyad speak so enthusiastically about the script for achieving success, I am inclined to give that a shot.  Now, I feel I need to define “success” in order for any new undertaking to be…well…successful.  By success, I mean I want to create lots of positive, cruelty-free cashflow.  I have bountiful success in most areas of my life, but I can always find a way to utilize more money, and so I would like to try that one on for size.

If I could generate more money for myself and my family, I could easily eliminate a few of my stress triggers, simply because money = choices, and it also equals not having to settle for a situation that may not be the most conducive to personal comfort.  I want personal comfort.  I HEART personal comfort.

In an odd way, this book of scripts kind of reminds me of when you pick one room in your house to clean and keep immaculate, but, in order to achieve that, you actually end up taking all of the clutter and stacking it up in the other rooms.  Now you have a fantastic living room, but you can’t even really walk through your kitchen without a struggle.  I have been working on decluttering the “stress” part of it, but there seems to be a lack of focus from the productivity part of my cluttered house. 

It’s time to invoke the powers of the emotional Dyson Ball.

Incase you guys haven’t been following the site regularly or aren’t familiar with what’s going on here, this is the gist:

• This site is focused on establishing in self-hypnosis really works
• Challenges have been issued to a few folks to try self-hypnosis for 30 days
• For now, we are using Forbes Blair’s book Instant Self-Hypnosis
• Katie and Patrick have been blogging for close to a month and are reporting mostly good levels of success
• So now I am committing myself to my own 30 day regimen

I’ve been reading Katie and Patrick blog about this process for the last month and see them go from “Is this crap real?” to “Hey, it works!” and I’m convinced there is something here.

When I originally picked up the Instant Self-Hypnosis book, I immediately honed in on the scripts pertaining to eating right and exercise, I know, how cliched… I make myself sick sometimes. In a move that hardly surprised me, after 4 or 5 half-assed days of reading the scripts (and actually having some success with them) I dropped the regiment. Naturally, I justified the broken promise to myself (mentally) by explaining how my schedule was unpredictable and I couldn’t make the time to sit down and focus on the script once a day. Naturally, this was all a load of crap, the script takes like 4mins to read. I was just protecting my delicate ego

ASIDE: A “script” is a self-hypnosis script to help you improve some aspect of your life. The Self-Hypnosis book referenced above comes with 30+ scripts in it for common things like better sex, self-confidence, better sleep, loosing weight, better memory and so on.

It was only around Day 20 or so of reading Patrick and Katie’s success with self-hypnosis that I sat down and decided to really think about what my problem was; and no matter how much I thought a rock-hard-six-pack was going to help me, I sincerely doubted that was actually my problem.

It took a good day of thought and analysis that I realized my problem is primarily with follow-through with promises I make to myself. Luckily I am a pleaser-personality, so my desire to make everyone around me happy enforces my commitments to others, but to myself… I break promises all the time.

Flipping through Instant Self-Hypnosis, I noticed an entirely different set of scripts looking more interesting to me this time through. No longer was I focused on the “Make more money” or “Have more intense workouts” scripts, but I was starting to hone in on the scripts that pertained to “Success” and “Procrastination”.

I think that underneath my half-assed-follow-through with self-improvement promises to myself is ultimately a fear of failure… a crippling fear of failure. A discomfort so deep that it’s just easier if I never try, because at least I can convince myself (through years of self-talk) that I COULD have done something… if I had tried.

That’s a lot less painful then actually TRYING something and failing horribly at it and needing to realize you just plain suck at something.

Anyway I decided on the following three scripts to juggling around (since they are all related) over the next 30 days, reading them 3-4x a week:

• Success
• Total Self-Confidence
• No More Procrastination

The “Success” one is by far my favorite… it’s a very intense/affirmative “I WILL succeed, I WILL be awesome” type of script that amps me up. Total Self-Confidence is a bit softer but I think it’s more of a longer term “shaping” script that will help in the long run. Lastly, “No More Procrastination” is really straight forward, but really works to provide the “proof” that will be required for the other two scripts to be successful I think.

In a way I think I’ve found the perfect trifecta of scripts to combine.

I hope to come out of this next 30 day period with a very subtle, but noticeable veil of confidence and success pulled over my eyes that I begin to see my life with every day instead of juggling “good days” and “bad days” like I do now.

Wish me luck, I’ll keep you guys posted!

In all fairness, I generally NEVER fall off the bleachers, but sitting at the top of the bleachers makes me want to crawl out of my skin with fear.  Rather than being terrified that members of my family will fall down, my worry was contained to hoping that I didn’t drop my phone.  I didn’t.

Today is an anniversary that brings with it a tangible and measurable level of anxiety.  2001 in its entirety had more episodes of misery than I care to recall, the most memorable of course being the events of September 11, 2001.  Even today, it’s hard to think about it without being both deeply saddened and terribly afraid of something equal to that event, or worse than, could happen again. 

Now, since I have been participating in this self-hypnosis experiment, I have learned how to manage the stress at least enough to take the edge off, I know that I cannot dwell on the past.  That statement applies to this situation, but also to any event that has left a negative impression and eventually turned into a panic trigger.  I need to let those go.  Easier said than done, of course.  I will keep on keepin’ on, and bit by bit the stress ball will erode in the same way that I am hoping to erode my gallstones.  Sheer will and determination.

Please take a moment today to remember the nearly 3000 people that died on September 11, 2001.  We must never forget the event, lest history repeat itself.  While you’re at it, remember the patriotic camaraderie that surfaced in the days and weeks following September 11, and do something nice for someone, just because.

God Bless America!!!

Yesterday I woke up early by design and my lack of sleep was the result of an alarm as opposed to any failure to sleep on my part. Today, I sit at my desk at work only two hours into my shift just yawning like the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. I got roughly four hours of sleep today plus an added hour and a half worth of nap. When you couple that with only five hours the day before you get a tired person.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I stayed up all night doing dishes and playing Batman. I went to pick up my girlfriend from work and knew I had to get up a bit early to pick up a friend from Little Rock from the airport at 5:15. I sent her a message on Facebook about what time I would be there and she sent me a text back saying that she was getting in at 2:50. Apparently I can look at a trip itinerary several times over the course of two weeks and still be reading her arrival time back in Little Rock as the arrival time in Tucson. I blame lack of sleep.

So after breakfast I went to bed. The sleep process helped here as I was able to go to sleep right away. The alarm foiled me four hours later and I begrudging got out of bed, straightened the house a bit, took a shower and then left. I was really stressing because I left at 2pm and only had 20 minutes to get there. It wasn’t until I was almost to the airport that I realized that the text said 2:50. My parents’ business is not far from the airport and I needed to pick something up from there anyway so I stopped by for a bit and then headed out to the airport. It all turned out okay since I managed to pick up the foot lotion that was waiting for me but I still felt like a jackass since I could have slept longer.

I picked up my friend, got her sorted out with rental car, showed her to her hotel, went to lunch and then showed her around a bit before heading home for a nap before work. Despite how tired I was, when I climbed into bed I found that I was having a hard time getting to sleep. So I used the process and I was out almost immediately. Sadly, I managed to set my alarm for 7:03 as opposed to 7:30 so I woke up 27 minutes before I would have wanted to but there is only so much you can do at this point.

I think the moral of all this is that sleep is important and when you don’t get enough of it, you behave like a complete moron. So hopefully I can sleep enough tomorrow that I don’t end up a bumbling fool two days in a row.

Today was one of those days when you have a lot planned and then none of it happens. I wasn’t really upset by that, it just meant that I woke up earlier than I would have liked for said plans and they didn’t go through. So I did my script, I did my process and it worked as well as it could with me having to get up.

So instead, I watched TV and played Batman while doing rounds on the dishes which had grown high enough in the sink that god was probably going to strike it down for hubris in the next couple of days.  As it turns out, I should have tried to sleep during the night a bit but I didn’t. I did, however, finally sort out the last three extreme predator mode challenges on Batman and I feel legitimately like I have accomplished something. Seriously, they are difficult.

So anyway, yesterday seemed sort of a wasted day after it was all said and done but I think there is a real place for those from time to time. I get tired of the constant sense of having to be doing something. It is nice every once in awhile to be left with a block of squanderable time through no fault of your own. It isn’t necessarily as restful as sleep but it is much more fun.

Okay, that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the assignment, but it bears mentioning because it is a happy and important day.  I love that hubby’o'mine.

I had an interesting set of experiences last night, and I have further evidence that the cumulative effects of the self-hypnosis process is working to chip away at my big, fat, constant stress ball that I carry in my solar plexus.  As I mentioned yesterday, I ran out of my happy maintenance medication that I take daily for the anxiety.  It’s not enough to keep me constantly sedated, certainly, but it’s just a low bedtime dose to keep my mind quiet long enough so that I can fall asleep.  last night, even without the aid of my medication, I fell asleep and stayed asleep without any middle-of-the-night panic-stricken sudden awakenings. 

Now, the impressive part of this is that I was able to stay asleep without the medication.  Clearly, the hypnosis process has had an impact on that level of my subconscious, and my brain now knows how to accomodate my body’s wish to sleep without the burden of constant worry.  Past that point…a whole ‘nother story. 

Last night’s dream was both bizarre and stress-filled.  I spent the entire night dreaming that I was in a train yard, and every time I tried to leave, I would start to cross the tracks and all of a sudden the crossing arms would come down and the bell would start clanging, and – like a bat out of hell – a speeding train would come within inches of flattening me and my family.  Such is the quality of my non-medicated dreams.  BUT, I did sleep through the night, so I never had to worry about the inconvenience of waking from THAT nightmare…I suppose sometimes even the good stuff backfires a little bit.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, although there were a couple of  minor stressors that occurred that caused me to have an instant 0 – 60 rush of adrenaline when I couldn’t get my son to answer his phone.  There was no period of time to ponder that he may not have heard his phone, it went straight from the third ring to, “Oh, Jesus, where is he????”  That is from the lack of maintenance medication.  I talked myself out of those moments fairly quickly by simply thinking to myself, “Okay, THAT is because you didn’t take your pill.”

It is definitely chipping away slowly at the monolith of anxiety guano that fills the interstitial caverns of my soul.

Okay, so rockstars don’t sleep that much what with the coke and all night groupie fests, but that isn’t the point. It also isn’t the point that I slept for six hours and then went back to bed for another two. The point is that I COULD go back to for that second two. And boy did they make a difference.

I woke up around 230 pm feeling like the floor of a taxi cab. I wandered out to sit on the couch and watched Teen Wolf for a bit. My girlfriend stumbled out about Three looking just as tired and we sat on the couch watching Teen Wolf being tired. When, around four  she said she was going back to bed I decided I would try that too and went in with very little hope for success. I laid down, used the sleep process and woke up two hours later. And I felt awesome.

I went in, watched Obama’s speech on the DVR and took a shower. I felt completely rested and not at all cranky, sour or whiny. This is really something. I’ve been moping about lately like my puppy just died for no really good reason and I am starting to wonder if it hasn’t owed at least a little bit to my lack of sleep. As it stands, I am sitting at work at one in the morning and I feel really good. For the first time in a long time I feel really good and really clear. I don’t want to oversell it here but it is like a fog has lifted. So that is nice.

I think that the self-hypnosis and the sleep process have really started to work for me. Even after this experiment is over I can see myself continuing to use it, especially if I can have today’s result every day.

Especially when you have to turn off your computer and unplug it from the wall…not terribly producting, really.

Let’s jump straight into day 22.  I really had nothing specific to report, except that just as I was finished listening to my script, hubby threw the door open (he had been fetching some sinus medicine) and yelled, “GOONIEGOOGOO!”  My inner calm had been made slightly irregular, if not damaged entirely, and I just asked, “Why?”  He really had no good answer, but then quickly climbed into bed, gave me a kiss, and went to sleep.  Turns out it didn’t interfere with my sleep, it was just weird.  I guess that at least demonstrates that, even with disruptions, the scripts do their job.

Last night (day 23) - since the weather was inclement and I was tired – I decided to let myself be a little lazy and not listen to the script.  I don’t know why I haven’t figured out that it makes a considerable difference in the quality of my sleep (and, by extension, the quality of my stress level),  and the short term gain of curling up and dozing off immediately is by far outweighed by the more time-consuming script usage.  I paid for it the next morning when I woke up SO pissed off at hubby for inviting my (and his) bitter enemy over to our home (granted, it was a dream, but it left me SEETHING with rage which stayed with me for much of the day) and I also had a ridiculous charlie-horse in the left side of my lower back…both of those things could have been avoided if I had just listened to the G-DAMN SCRIPT!

Tonight should be interesting, though.  I forgot to pick up my Ativan from Walgreen’s, and that’s the pill that keeps me from climbing onto a ledge.  If you don’t hear my name announced during a breaking news segment tomorrow morning, then you will know that the script was a succesful substitute for prescription anti-anxiety medication!  Hooray!

Sorry I couldn’t think of a snappy title tonight. Really all there is to talk about this time around is I have finally found some consistency. I feel faded and more hypnotized when I do the sleep script, I go right to sleep when I count down and I sleep at least six hours consistently. This trend has been going for a week now and I feel fairly confident it will continue through these final days of the experiment.

It was a nice feeling to wake up today and feel refreshed and rested as opposed to frustrated and tired. I am finally getting to that point now where things seem to be fitting together. I can’t render a verdict yet as there are still eight days after this to go but it is looking good at this point. Hooray for sleep!

Six hours. That is the order of the week evidently. I got home from work and true to form went to sleep straight away. I am honestly not sure if I got into the countdown at all before I was sailing through dreamland. I had no nightmares or uncomfortable dreams about anything. Around 12:3o I woke up in time to stop cat Marsha from peeing in a container of DVDs. I am not sure what her deal is with plastic tubs but she seems to have taken peeing into them as a hobby.

I was out of bed and a across the room with a swiftness one wouldn’t expect from a sleeping man but I had to keep The Last Unicorn safe from Marsha’s  bladder juice. She was quite unhappy to get the ouster when she was already in a squatting position but Amalthea deserves better. Also, it must be noted, Marsha is the prettiest cat on the earth. I know that everyone thinks that their cats are the prettiest but this is a fact. Given her behavior at times, she is very lucky to be so pretty.

I stumbled into the bathroom myself and found that the toilet was clogged. A quick plunge took care of the clog and some towels on the floor took care of the overflow. In times past I might have been brought down by this but today I took it in stride.

I start the later shift tomorrow. I hope this aides the hypnosis  in allowing me to get a decent amount of sleep. I am also going to exercise tomorrow before bed. Now when I say that, I do mean using the Wii Fit and a battery of push-ups. Baby steps to get rid of fat.  Hopefully these two things will augment the self-hypnosis. I dream of a 10 hour sleep schedule. Or at least I would if I got enough sleep for that. OH!