Plan B

If starting to learn hypnosis taught me one thing it was the depressing realisation that over the last few years since I left university and moved to live near my work my social life had narrowed to the point where it more or less entirely consisted of my girlfriend, my family, and the odd conversation on MSN.

Now I'm pleased to say that I've made the effort to get out more and socialise during the week. This is time I'd usually spend home alone because my girlfriend isn't around, and generally I feel much happier for having done this. Yet another good thing hypnosis has done for me!

Socialising does of course offer opportunities to practice hypnosis on friends, and I've already described a couple of successes I've had doing this in earlier blog posts. So far everyone's been very interested and there's always been someone willing to give it a try. The thing is that I am very aware of the obsessive nature of my personality and this awareness can translate into paranoia that I'm bringing up this one topic far too often.

Even if I can accept the guilt of seeing every social meet up as a potential hypnosis opportunity that still doesn't satisfy my appetite. Currently the number of people I have successfully hypnotised is still smaller than the number of weeks I've been learning, and that bothers me.

Reading how to do hypnosis in books is all well and good, but I feel I've reached a point of saturation where I can't possibly learn much more off the page without first having consolidated what I've already learned. What this means of course is practice, practice, practice! I want to get out there and hypnotise as many people as I can just so I can work on my technique, build my confidence, and experiment with new ideas.

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of going out and finding people to practice on, and by people I mean complete strangers. Plan B, where Plan A is sticking to friends and family.

Along these lines one evening last month I decided that I'd have a wander into town with the aim of seeing what the atmosphere in the pubs was like in the early evening, and maybe hypnotise a few uni students if I could coerce myself into doing it. The good news is that there are plenty of nice quiet pubs and there were plenty of groups of students I could have approached. Bad news is I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I find this frustrating looking back because I couldn't have imagined conditions that would have been more perfect.

A few days later I decided I'd like to give it another try, that I could overcome that confidence barrier, and so into town I went again.

"Hi guys. Sorry to interrupt but you look like open minded people and I'm doing a study into how different people respond to hypnosis. Could I borrow you for a few minutes?"

That was my perfect opening line. Well, I thought so. Sad to say I never used it. I trudged around for an hour or so trying to find a suitable pub that actually had some groups of students in it. Then, when I did, I just froze up. I felt stupid because this was something I really really want to do, and yet having bravely marched up to the cusp I just couldn't find it in me to go that extra few feet and get on with it

This is where things stand at the moment. I have gone out twice with the intention to try hypnotising people and I have bottled out at the last minute on both occasions.

One thing that I do feel unsure about is doing this as a lone wolf, on my own. It did occur to me that if I went out there with a co-conspirator in the form of a fellow hypnotist... well, it might not be easier, but it'd be harder for me to turn tail and go home.

Every time I get frustrated by the realisation that it will be significant number of days before I can give my hypnosis skills another outing Plan B seems to pop into my head. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before I find myself heading into town once again, although to what result who can say?