If there's one thing I absolutely love about life it has to be the way in which new sources of fun and interest can appear from nowhere and completely by surprise.
Many of the things I have decided to pursue in my life have been long standing ambitions, such as flying a glider solo or sailing on a tall ship, but there are always other ideas and opportunities that present themselves when one is least expecting, and in my opinion these are to be embraced. People have asked me where my latest interest interest originated and I'm afraid to say that I really don't know.
If someone had told me a year ago that I would decide to learn how to be a hypnotist I don't think I could think of anything else would have seemed less likely.
I guess this whole story starts about two months ago, back in September, when I had a free weekend. Usually my weekends get booked up a long time in advance, so it was nice to be able to kick back a bit, laze about, and make a token effort at making my flat look like it had merely been bombed as opposed to its usual Hurricane Katrina aftermath appearance, although possibly with a little less flooding, but more debris.
My procrastination over tidying up was going so well I decided to celebrate this by spending yet more time browsing the web at random. I have yet to fathom how procrastination was even possible in the pre-internet era. Carrier pigeons perhaps? Anyway, sailing the sea of the world wide web without a compass is always an interesting if hazardous experience, and thanks to websites such as YouTube and Wikipedia, where content is often linked to only possibly related content, it is easy to follow the winds of idle curiosity for hours and end up miles from where you started.
I probably started with a completely unrelated subject such as a YouTube video on how to true a bicycle wheel using only your teeth and M&Ms and following the trail of links I soon found myself coming across links related to hypnosis. Completely freaked out by what I saw, in particular a video of Richard Nongard performing what he referred to as "gentle" rapid inductions, gentle being apparently knocking someone out cold with hypnosis in about 5 seconds, I resolved to learn more about it purely out of a kind of morbid curiosity.
To get a better idea of what was going on I decided to try some of the YouTube videos that claim to hypnotise you, including a couple of Richard's own, and didn't feel anything at all. Frustrated by the innumerable comments on those videos that said "wow! that was amazing!" I set about learning even more; if about 80% of a video's commenter's were experiencing something and I wasn't I wanted to know why not dammit!
Within a very short period of time, spent reading from various websites about hypnosis, I began to realise that this was something that I might be able to learn. I came across several short (and free!) e-books that laid down the basic principles and from that moment it's fair to say that I was hooked. I also came across a couple of online communities and message boards where I was able to share my learning experience with other learning hypnotists. It was through these boards that I was first recommended Anthony Jacquin's book Reality is plastic, which I immediately bought and I would agree that this is indeed the perfect starting point for anybody wanting to learn hypnosis.
My knowledge and interest in hypnosis is now firmly here to stay. Finding it has been like finding a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle that links various other groups of pieces of my life and how I see the world together. It joins aspects of how I communicate, how I think, what I believe, and even how my sense of humour works (badly some would argue). I also feel it has done wonders for my confidence in front of others, even in just a couple of months. I guess I will talk more about these at some point in the future.
I may not have solved the jigsaw puzzle of life and I may never, but now at least I have a corner piece and a bit of an edge. I feel good about this!
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