I had some really good therapy yesterday evening – laughter therapy.
My son Tom arrived home from Uni last weekend and I introduced him to a sitcom I have been watching over the past few weeks starring Miranda Hart. I had really enjoyed this crazy escapism when first seen but in fact found myself laughing out loud and enjoying more as we sat and devoured episode after episode courtesy of iPlayer.
I think Miranda is a kind of female version of John Cleese and much of the comedy relies on side comments and pulled faces direct to camera in a true Frankie Howard style. Anyway add to that the silly comments Tom and I were making to each other as we watched and my sides were aching.
The point is that this all occurred at the end of a frantic tense sort of day Read the rest of this entry »
Well here is a rant today. If you chance to spy this page and you have some legal knowledge I would be really grateful to hear from you about the legality of the behaviour and action of McAfee.
One of the hundreds of websites I have built over the years is for my friend and business partner Adam Eason.
Here is the website – BUT BE WARNED – if you are using McAfee protection you will get a grim warning about going there – http://www.adam-eason.com Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adam Eason, Hostgator, is it legal, McAfee, siteadvisor, warning
My introduction to the power of hypnosis and self-hypnosis goes back about six years now when I first met Adam Eason at a BNI network meeting. As a former nurse I became fascinated by the physical changes that Adam was able to bring about in his clients just by using the power of their mind.
Power Of The Mind – What an amazing in-built resource we all have and yet in most people it is underused or ignored completely. Read the rest of this entry »
My introduction to the power of hypnosis and self-hypnosis goes back about six years now when I met Adam Eason a leading UK Clinical Hypnotherapist at a BNI network meeting. As a former nurse I became fascinated by the physical changes that Adam was able to bring about in his clients just by using the power of the mind. What an amazing in-built resource we have and yet in most people it is underused or ignored completely.
The interest was further fuelled when my company developed his website and I began to read some of his articles and testimonials. It struck me then that a combination of his hypnosis and NLP knowledge and my own internet marketing skills we could develop quite a web presence and authority site about hypnosis.
Wehey what a ride …
But now we have a website which is jam packed with self-hypnosis material catering for those with idle curiosity about hypnosis through to those who would like to train for a career as a Clinical Hypnotherapist.
Let me be your guide… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Life, self-hypnosis
OK – for me this is as good as it gets. The coverage of the Final Test match at the Oval has just begun on TV. With the series level this is the decider.
Wow – I love it and normally I would be found for five days almost inseparable from my TV, digital radio or in car radio – but alas that can’t be the case this time. Read the rest of this entry »
By proxy I feel I know Kevin Hogan. I have never met him or spoken to him – but my business partner Adam Eason speaks with great affection about him. Kevin, an American international motivational speaker was over here in London this last weekend. Today I received his regular Coffee Time Newsletter and here is an extract which describes his experience at the Sheraton Belgravia.
…. Ah, and the Sheraton…I’ve done biz w/ Starwood for a decade…and it was almost a relationship breaker. Read the rest of this entry »
When do you get your “ah-ha” moments, your flashes of inspiration, your genius moments?
If you are like me they come when:
- lolling in the bath
- relaxing on a beach or in the garden
- awaking from restful sleep
- enjoying a carefree walk
- in a trance during a self-hypnosis session
In other words when you are at your most relaxed and when seemingly your mind is not working hard up pops the answers to the questions that have been bugging you.
The title of this article is in fact slightly misleading as I should clarify Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Adam Eason, creativity, enhanced, inspiration, relaxation, rest, self-hypnosis, subconscious mind, think
I watched a great financial drama on BBC2 last night – “Freefall”.
Today my usual Google Alerts came in for my name ‘Keith Watson’ and lo an behold another Keith Watson had written a review of the programme which I think is absolutely spot on – and so – over to another Keith Watson: Metrolife Article
Tags: BBC2, finance, financial drama, freefall, Google alerts, Keith Watson, metrofile, money, programme, review
I wonder how many times my long suffering wife has heard me say “Why can’t they just read?” I am convinced that information overload is the biggest obstacle to communications.
Take this as an example: I am heavily involved with the marketing of Adam Eason’s products online. He is a hypnotherapist who produces Self-Hypnosis MP3s. As part of our efforts to get to a wider audience we have promotional offers and even giveaways from time to time. Over this weekend we had some purchases made by people who have been on our mailing list for years paying FULL PRICE despite our WEEKLY newsletter out last Thursday offering up to 65% off. The offer is also made on the home page of the shop.
A term that Internet Marketers use all the time is that the money is in the list. Well yes it is if Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: communiction overload, e-mails, Internet Marketing, offers, promotions
I am writing this blog post to give me time clarify my thoughts as to how to respond to my latest on-line dilemmas. Computers were designed to make our life easier and as for the Internet well the ultimate communication tool surely. Well yes that would probably be true if a whole new layer of complexity hadn’t entered our lives. Why do I lurch endlessly from one on-line frustration to another.
I am positive you will identify with the two problems I am currently grappling with and have stories of your own to relate.
Let me start with my immediate concern…. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ClickBank, contacting companies, dilemmas, Lloyds Bank, phone communication
I was talking to a friend yesterday who is going through a lot of stress and she basically was telling me how unhappy she felt. I noticed that she kept referring to when this happens I will be… If that happens I will be…
In other words happiness would happen at some time in the future given certain conditions.
As I was talking to her I recalled that I had a book on the subject that had helped me enormously when I was going through a similar period myself. I found the book this morning hidden away at the back of a – rather dusty I have to admit – bookshelf. The book “Happiness Now! – Timeless wisdom for feeling good FAST” by Robert Holden.
I will have to get the book to her today but as I flicked through I recalled much of the wisdom contained therein.
Here I will quote directly from the book to give a flavour. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: confidence, double meaning, future, happiness, happy, Life, noble suffering, now, positive attitudes, pursuit happiness, Robert Holden, stop waiting, stress, timeless wisdom, wait problem, you only live once
My wife Barbara is a Health Visitor and some time ago attended a series of NHS training sessions given by a guy called Chris Croft. As a result I often see laying around the house printouts from the his newsletter which I always find fascinating reading.
Now – I don’t know Chris (if you don’t count seeing him playing in a group once) but I feel as though I do.
This is one of the extraordinary things about the web – you can get a fairly good and accurate picture of a person through their output. Do you know I would go so far as to say I like this Crofty chap (or at least I know I would get on with him fine if I met him). His positive attitude comes through in everything he writes and he has great empathy with people etc etc.
There is a real dichotomy here – we love positive people such as Chris and are drawn to them naturally – and yet we consume so much negative fodder from our doom laden media and seem hell bent on watching more and more of the awful side of life on our box.
If there is any body of people that deserve a bad press more than MPs it is the journalists themselves. (I wonder how squeaky clean the lives of these reporters are?)
I am no great fan of Gordon Brown but I watched with some amusement as two journalists were interviewed on the BBC on Monday morning – one from the ‘Telegraph’ and the other from ‘The Mirror’. They were almost beside themselves with rage that the Press had not managed to bring Brown down and that the media frenzy to destroy the man had been thwarted. Brown had basically silenced his back bench critics for the time being and the media were desperately scurrying around to find continuing dissenters to give them a prominent platform – just so that the bad press for Brown could be maintained.
Robert Peston – business reporter at the BBC – is a media man who has to almost grit his teeth if there is any good news to report. He will always negate any good news about the economy with a BUT ….
Don’t these people want the economy to pick up? If you are in a privileged position and can talk daily at people and tell them things are bad bad bad – and then in the next breath report that people have no confidence and therefore are not buying – why should they be surprised by the cause and effect response – which they themselves are fuelling.
Confidence is so important in life and our whole economy is controlled by it. So what a shame that the media is so good at destroying that most important of ingredients to an economic recovery.
We are all bombarded with e-mails these days and opening rates of messages are disappointingly low. Internet Marketers discuss topics ad nauseum such as how to title an e-mail to achieve higher opening rates.
I carried out a minor bit of research last week. I had to send a message to Adam Eason’s list which is now 15,000 strong.
The content of the message doesn’t matter – but I was able to title the e-mail either “Good News” or “Bad News”. So I decided to send half of the list the positive title and the other half the negative one. I tracked the result and – you’ve guessed it there were four times as many opened the e-mail “Bad News” as opposed to the alternative title. How sad is that?
I mentioned Chris Croft and his newsletters above. I leave you with the content of the Newsletter from him that prompted this blog post. I have not asked his permission but I am confident he will forgive me given that I have said such glowing things about him.
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ASssertiveness tip from CC – Kangaroo
I used to work with a guy who was very lively, verging on random in his thoughts, and people used to say that he “had a kangaroo loose in the top paddock”. I love that expression!
But we all have a small kangaroo, or maybe just a sulky badger, or timid mouse, loose in our top paddock, because we don’t have control over our thought processes. We don’t want to think impatient thoughts, but we do. We don’t want to be nervous about the presentation, but we are. We’d like to me more tidy, better at planning, less of a procrastinator, better under pressure, etc, but somehow we don’t do the things that we easily could.
So we have a voice in our head that we can’t really control (luckily in most cases it doesn’t tell us to murder people, it just tells us to put things off till tomorrow or to have another doughnut) and we have habit patterns that we can’t get out of – called life scripts.
In fact to be a bit more precise, according to Transactional Analysis, we have a talking voice – our conscious – and a silent controller of our behaviour – our subconscious. The subconscious is a store of everything that has happened, and everything that the talking conscious has said. So if you say you’re impatient, and then behave in an impatient way, the subconscious KNOWS that you are impatient, and makes you behave like that next time.
Therefore your thoughts about yourself become true over time, and they begin to control your behaviour, and become “life scripts” which tell you how to live your life. Some can be positive, and that’s great, but negative ones also self-reinforce: “I’m always late” “I can’t help putting things off, it’s just how I am” “I always get horribly nervous before giving a talk” “I crumble under pressure” “I get impatient” – these are all self fulfilling beliefs that people have about themselves.
Suggestions on how to gradually win the mental battle to improve yourself:
1. Do something each day that flatly contradicts a negative self-impression of yourself. Prove your subconscious wrong!
For instance, if you suspect that you never quite finish a job, choose a twenty minute task and finish it properly.
2. Also, try to catch your negative self-talk every time it crops up, and replace it by positive thoughts, ideally specific things that you ARE good at, and attributes that are positive about yourself. Only feed good messages into your subconscious.
3. Since I have been experimenting with meditation I have found, surprisingly, that it has given me more control over the thoughts in my head – for example, in situations where I would have been ragingly impatient before, I am now able to say “I’m going to be patient now” and the inner voice, which used to say “This is infuriating, come on, aargh!, how long is this going to take???” now behaves itself and goes quiet. I’ve no idea why, but I can report that it is true. Full write up on the pros and cons of meditation so far in on my forum/blog at http://www.chriscrofttraining.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=361
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Keep up the good work Chris and maybe catch up with you some day for a beer.
Tags: assertiveness tip, bad news, bad press, badger, BBC, behavious controller, business reporter, Chris Croft, confidence, conscious mind, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, dichotomy, doom laden media, economic recovery, economy, empathy, good news, Gordon Brown, inner voice, internet marketers, journalists, kangaroo, life scripts, media frenzy, media man, mental battle, negative journalism, negative media, negative self-impression, positive attitude, positive people, presentation, pressure, procrastinator, Robert Peston, self fulfilling beliefs, talking voice, thought processes, timid mouse, transactional analysis
