John Morgan Newsletter – S P A C E S

ATTITUDE

Since I fly a lot, there are a number of airline magazines that I page through and every now and then I find a gem. Such was the case last week when I traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to present a corporate program. The magazine I was reading stated that “Attitude” is also an aeronautical term which basically means, “The angle of approach.” This got me to wondering.

How much easier would it be to change your angle of approach rather than to change your “attitude?” When someone says, “Change your attitude,” it can sound very parental and dictatorial and it is generally met with much resistance. I’m suggesting that saying something like, “I request that you change your angle of approach” is a lot easier on the ears and the heart.  It may seem like word play and it’s more.

For example, at every seminar I conduct, I run into a certain percentage of people who have more rules than the average bear. They don’t even have to speak them to broadcast to everyone that they have a litany of rules. It is obvious to anyone willing to pay attention. Most of the rules that we carry around with us were given to us by someone else, so they are really someone else’s rules. An unexamined rule that lives in your mind may cost you more than you will ever know.

The message you send to someone else when you broadcast your rules – verbally or otherwise – is that you are on the “right” side of the rule. The corollary is that the person not following your rule is on the “wrong” side of the rule. So you make people wrong when you broadcast your rules. This has two consequences:

1. It has people avoid you more often than not.
2. It keeps you stuck with your attitude.

I believe it was Aristotle who said that “Perception is 100%” and some other famous person decided that there are 360 degrees in a circle. So, that means that if I’m standing on the same arc of the circle as you, my perception is going to be darn similar. Yet, if I change my angle of approach, just a few degrees, I begin to see thing from a whole new perspective.

As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, I’m not telling you to change your rules – just examine them or refer to them as preferences. Just by opening them up for inquiry, you will notice that many of your rules got into your mind without your permission – somebody gave them to you. You may also notice that soon after this inquiry that some of your sillier rules just melt and fade away. The benefits are twofold;

1. You become more approachable.
2. You begin to notice that you can select your angle of approach vs. being stuck with the one you were given.

COMING SOON

I haven’t been this excited in a long time. Within the next two weeks, I will be alerting you about the release of my latest CD – HYPNOSIS FOR GOLF MASTERY. This allows me to put together, in one recording, two of my passions – HYPNOSIS & GOLF. This CD will not teach you any of the mechanics of the game of golf – you already have enough of that information. This CD will teach you the 3 Magic Words of Golf – CONFIDENCE, COMMITMENT & CONCENTRATION and how to automate these three necessary components into one swing thought.

Any professional golfer or teaching pro will tell you that Golf is a “Mental Game.” This CD will allow you to rapidly learn and automate the three mental components that golfers need the most – CONFIDENCE, COMMITMENT & CONCENTRATION.

Your scores will drop and your disposition on the course will elevate. Please check my website over the next two weeks to see if HYPNOSIS FOR GOLF MASTERY is ready for shipping. http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

I will send an email alert to let you know as well. If you don’t play golf, someone you know does and they will thank you forever for getting them a copy of this CD. Have them look for ads in their favorite golf publications in the very near future for HYPNOSIS FOR GOLF MASTERY.

If you have been struggling for way too long with the game of golf, I request you purchase a copy of HYPNOSIS FOR GOLF MASTERY as soon as it becomes available.

HIERARCHY OF DIFFICULTY

Here is something that came to me out of the blue when I recorded my SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT CD. I call it the “Hierarchy of Difficulty.”

Any long-term difficulty (problem) you are having is a surface issue that cannot be solved with a surface approach. Right below the surface of a problem is the pattern (mental routine) that is keeping the problem in place. Right below the pattern is the purpose for the pattern being formed in the first place. So, the “Hierarchy of Difficulty” looks like this:

PROBLEM
PATTERN
PURPOSE

Now let’s look at some of the solving strategies that are offered for each. When someone has a problem, they tell someone about it. They tell their story. Most people tell the story over and over and over again to anyone who’s willing to listen. This is the worst possible solution to problem solving. If story telling were the answer, there would be no more problems because there is not a lack of story telling. Story telling is like dog poop – it’s everywhere!

Now let’s look at a problem solving strategy that targets the purpose – Psychology and Psychiatry. This is formally telling your story. One theory is that if you get to the “root” of your problem, you will solve it. Sorry to say that approach has a dismal rate of failure. First off, you don’t have to be taken to the garbage dump to remember what garbage smells like, and secondly, every time you examine the “root,” if you can even get there, you revivify the experience and it becomes real for you all over again with all the yuck that goes along with it. Remember this: You don’t have to know where you’ve been in order to get to where you want to go.

Please don’t take this as an attack on Psychology and Psychiatry. Just notice one of the limitations they present if they look for the root of your problem. I think three productive things happen when you seek out a professional people helper – Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Social Worker, Religious Counselor, etc.

1. You find out that you are not alone. Many others have the same difficulty.
2. You are with someone who is not emotionally attached to your problem so they can respond without that prejudice.
3. They have experience with your problem.

Now let’s look at the problem solving strategy that has the best chance for success – going for the pattern. When you address a problem at the patterned level, you are at the control center and not watching it on TV. Going after the purpose is like locking the barn door after the pony has run away. The pattern is where the energy lives. This energy keeps the pattern alive and therefore keeps your problem alive. When you continually tell your story, you just feed more energy to the pattern – the mental routine. It’s like over-feeding a gorilla and expecting it to lose weight. It just makes your problem harder to solve.

So, how do we go after the pattern so that the energy that keeps it in place, melts and fades away? There are numerous ways and here is one of those ways that works. The following is an exercise I learned from Dr. Dave Dobson www.otcc.com and I am eternally grateful.

Get out a writing pad and a pencil or pen. Write down everything you want to accomplish in relationship to your problem. Don’t think about it; just write it down. Write down everything you can think of.

Next, look over your writing and look for “Fluff” words – words that aren’t precise. If you wrote down, “I would like to have a ‘better’ job,” what does the word “better” mean to you?” If you said, “one that pays ‘a lot’ of money,” you have just used another fluff word. What do specifically mean when you say “a lot” of money? Look for the fluffy words and amplify what you mean by them.

Next, reduce your writing to a statement of 25 words or less. Once you have reduced your writing to a statement of 25 words or less, look it over and something magical will happen. One word or phrase will jump out at you, or repeat itself inside your head, or you’ll get a special feeling in your body about a particular word or phrase. Write that word or phrase down. Put it on a 3x5 card or on a slip of paper. Put that word in your purse or wallet. Paste it on your refrigerator, on your rearview or bathroom mirror. And by all means have it on your nightstand by your bed so you can see it as the last thing you see before you close your eyes for sleep and the first thing you see in the morning when awakening.

That word or phrase is shorthand for all that you want to accomplish in relation to solving your problem. It’s a symbol and your mind responds to symbols. By using this method, you turn that task over to the part of your mind that does the problem solving to begin with. Did you ever forget someone’s name and then “try” and remember it? It rarely works. Then you also had the experience that you went on to do something else, besides trying to remember the name, and - “Poof” - that name magically appeared. This is how your mind works on solving problems. When you begin to get some space between your thoughts – the answer that has always been there now has the room and opportunity to pop in.  Hypnosis is an elegant way of getting space between your thoughts and this is a powerful exercise in self-hypnosis.

You’ve given your mind something to focus on and you imbue your mind with that goal every time you bring your word or phrase to mind – by looking at it or repeating it to yourself from time to time – especially at bedtime.

The energy that keeps your pattern and problem in place will begin to melt and fade away and so will the pattern and the problem. This will happen even quicker if you permanently retire the story you have been telling yourself and others.

Please drop me an email and let me know how well you do with this powerful Self-Hypnosis exercise. john-morgan@cox.net