This covers day 18 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here.

Coming off of a weekend, two days of dealing with my own stuff much more intensely than during the week, I sometimes have a clearer picture of what I want or need to address in my work with Greg.

There are a whole slew of things that are converging right now; one I can discuss freely is my issue with taking things personally. Which I do. A lot.

Greg put me under on Monday and had a little confab with Monkey Brain, who always has great hacks for dealing with thorny issues. In this case, she came up with two terrific ass-savers; when confronted with a proposition that something has my name written all over it...

1. ...if I am not, in fact, certain that it is mine to bear, I am to take my time by answering, "Hmmm...let me see..."

2. ...if I am SURE right away that there is no need to take this thing personally, I am to say, "Noooo, nooo, that is NOT mine."

And the beauty part is, all of this happens silently, in the space of time it would take to open one's mouth to actually say something.

The unconscious mind, she is a genius...

xxx c

Image by LishaFisha via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.