- Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Adam Up
We have made a few changes recently.
I used to give away a free ebook with anyone who signed up for this weekly ezine, but I looked through it last week and realised how much my work I have changed since I wrote the ebook over a decade ago, so I am no longer giving it away. Instead, when anyone signs up to receive this weekly hypnosis ezine, I offer them a bunch of hypnosis audio tracks: a relaxation audio, a
self-hypnosis audio, an introduction to self-hypnosis audio and one of the favourite tracks I have ever put together, a hypnosis audio entitled "The scientific benefits of loving kindness" - some of you regular readers will know that I offered that track for free after the Manchester bombing as I felt the world needed more loving kindness.
The audio is based upon a scientifically proven method of meditation which involves you directing and projecting love and kindness
toward yourself, other people and the rest of the world. What’s more, it is a process that can and does help alleviate stress.
In a PhD dissertation study carried out at the University of Arizona the author discovered that the loving-kindness meditation can help ease social anxiety stress.
A 2013 study also showed that veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder reduced symptoms by following a 12 week programme of loving-kindness meditation. Certainly I have found and those who I
have learned from have spoken of how much easier it is to let go of stress when you engage in loving-kindness practice regularly.
If you then go and search the vaults at Google Scholar or at PubMed and search for credible research on loving-kindness meditation, you’ll discover that research shows it can
- reduce pain,
- increase social connectedness,
- build positive emotions and
cultivates self-compassion among other things.
It helps to calm the mind and in turn helps us to be more solution focused and effective in life.
Therefore, it seems like such a lovely audio to give away for free. SO tell anyone that if they sign up for this ezine - which they can do by simply visiting the homepage of my website www.adam-eason.com - they'll also get those audios.
For any of you who missed out on the audio before or who now wishes you could download the track, here is the link to go and
download it yourself, no strings, no sign up, just go download it and enjoy the benefits:
Ok, back onto this week; the Hypnosis Weekly podcast has returned! I have had a sabbatical with it while the podcast and I
recharged our batteries, rejuvenated, and started with some fresh ideas and I can't wait to share with you all some of the episodes with some great guests in coming weeks.
To kick start the podcast being back and live, I have a very special edition for you. A couple of weeks ago, I hosted a live edition of the podcast with an all star panel of guests at the UK Hypnosis Convention. Anthony Jacquin, James Tripp, Melissa Tiers and Gary Turner joined me and the inimitable Tim Cummins recorded
it all and added some of his own brand of commentary along the way. The whole thing is now live and available to listen to via all the usual channels and over at the Hypnosis Weekly website, go have a listen and then we'll have a new episode again next week:
https://www.hypnosis-weekly.com/episode-86-special-edition-2017-uk-hypnosis-convention/
One of the things I have always wanted to do with my own hypnotherapy business, trainings and research
has been to stand up for a set of principles and values that I hold dear and believe to be important in order to develop and further the hypnotherapy field and bring it out from the fringes and shadows of the psychology field.
One hot topic that raises it's head from time to time is that of 'regression to
cause' - this incredibly popular approach used by massive numbers of hypnotherapists around the world is one that has a rather damning scientific critique.
This week, on a Facebook forum, I was challenged about something I had written with regards to regression and I was surprised that someone who is such
a known advocate of regression did not even know that there was a critique; and when presented with some majorly important evidence, instead of looking at it in terms of trying the develop and be better, chose to become even more entrenched in dogma. This is something that I see a lot in the hypnotherapy field.
I
was incensed and so decided to write about it.
How To Live Life On Your Own Terms |
Onto this week's main theme....
It seems to follow on neatly and nicely from last week's theme of "How to Live Life On Your Own Terms" (You can read that again here if you missed it last week) that this week I
write in detail about why you need to stop comparing yourself to others and how to do that.
Do you compare yourself to others? Well today, I’m writing about why you need to stop comparing yourself to others.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new” ~ Socrates.
At the very early stages of my career, I gave a talk to a local group about hypnosis and then at the end conducted
a group hypnosis session. One particular lady came up to me as I was leaving and told me how absolutely wonderful she thought the session was and that she was going to email me about potentially working with me in my role as hypnotherapist.
When she did email me two days later however, it was not what I
had expected. She said that she had spoken to her friends who had loved the group hypnosis session too, but that their experiences sounded much more amazing than hers, and so she believed that she was not a good hypnotic subject and perhaps hypnotherapy was not for her after all.
Have you ever done something that you’re so proud of and feel on top of the world about until you see that someone else has done something similar that, in your mind, is better, and all of sudden you feel
sad?
In Social Psychology (Festinger, 1954), comparing oneself with others we consider to be better off or superior is called upward social comparison. To then desire what they have because you believe that what you have is less valuable; it’s that “grass is greener” phenomenon. Simply put, it’s about our human tendency to believe that something on the other side of where we are, is better.
Wanting to see how you stack up against your peers, business competitors and future career
competition is natural. Everyone has some kind of curiosity, a desire to know if they’ve come close to their goals or if their hard work is equally paying off in contrast to others.
Some individuals may wonder how their co-worker’s performance measures up to their own or how their neighbour became so successful to
purchase that brand new luxury sports car, for example. Under these types of circumstances, dozens of underlying comparisons can be made, some of which might revolve around work ethic, career choices, financial decisions, random life experiences and even as far as childhood upbringing.
Making status observations is
a part of human nature but dwelling on obsolete reasoning evokes insecurity, status anxiety, and a general overall dissatisfaction with oneself.
- “Comparison is the thief of joy” ~Theodore Roosevelt.
According to a Stanford
University study entitled “Hedonic Consequences of social comparison” by Lyubomirsky and Ross (2013) comparison is the fastest way to take all the fun out of life. It’s none of your business what other people are doing. All that matters is that you’re enjoying yourself and pleased with what you’re creating. It’s precisely your uniqueness that makes you awesome.
The reasons behind this human tendency are quite fascinating. According to social comparison theory, this drive is part of our
basic desire to understand ourselves and our place in the social world. Dwelling too much on these judgments has a detrimental cost, so instead focus on how we can overcome this tendency to compare and/or constantly desire something on the other side of where we are; especially when it’s self-limiting, or interferes with us being our best selves.
Our journey towards overcoming begins with a brief lesson on dichotomous thinking. Dichotomous thinking presumes that a given situation has only two choices, e.g., good or bad; right or wrong; desirable or undesirable, and tends to occur in an automatic fashion outside of our awareness. Dichotomous thinking limits our ability to recognise the range of choices available to us in a given situation.
The problem with comparing yourself
to others is that not everybody has exactly the same life. Sure, you feel better by assuming that someone is more accomplished than you because they had it easier or their achievements evolved under special circumstances, but in reality, they may have worked longer and harder to get to where they are.
There are
simply too many variables that contribute to who and how we are, it makes comparison a ridiculous thing to do. Social comparisons are flawed due to the biased reasoning that every individual in your reference group is completely identical to oneself and subject to the same environment.
You are your own person and you should have your own measure of success. Every single individual has a unique skillset and personality, among many other factors, and attempting to just copy another person’s
achievements is foolish. The real key to success is finding your own path and providing merit based upon how you define your accomplishments, not how others would. Of course, we can learn from others, attempt to emulate them and even model successful strategies, techniques and approaches of those who have been successful, but comparing ourselves in a way that we find deflating or defeating is problematic.
Be happy with where you are and how you got there. Reward yourself for all the
milestones you’ve reached and all the achievements you’ve worked so hard for. And most importantly, continue to tirelessly chase your goals, but do it without the fear of failure and without comparing your progress to that of others.
Ask yourself how can you become a new and improved version of yourself? If you have to compete, compete with your own potential. Trying your best and not succeeding is not the failure. The real failure is in not even trying or trying but not giving it your
best shot.
Being our best selves begins with spending time focusing our attention on aspects of our own situation, rather than on comparing it to others. Thinking beyond a dichotomous paradigm provides opportunities to explore ways of transforming our situations into what we’d like them to be. Simply put, this approach enables us to invest the time, energy, and resources we would have spent comparing and trying to ‘measure up,’ into embracing ourselves and creating change in our own
environment.
Read the rest of this article here, and I'll explain how to best put an end to comparing yourself with others in any way:
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Are you a hypnotherapist looking for stimulating and career enhancing
continued professional development and advanced studies?
Self-Hypnosis Online Store |
This week, my social media output has been filled with memes about hypnosis, photos from my life, loads of articles from our vaults
(including some really controversial ones from the past few years!!) and some other bits and pieces. You can follow and keep up to date here
Additionally, if you are a student, graduate or
friend of my college, then come & join our Facebook group for hypnotherapists, it has some other wonderful discussion on there too:
Working One-To-One With Adam |
For those of you interested in finding out a bit more about working with me one-to-one, here are the pages to go and do that:
Finally, I spoke with a hypnotherapist last week who I am just about to start mentoring. He knew plenty about me and my work, but he did not know that I had so many online accredited CPD
courses available for qualified hypnotherapists to study at home.
If you are a hypnotherapist, then wherever you are in the world, you can study with me this very day, visit these pages for more information.
3. Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist Online Course, for qualified hypnotherapists wanting specialist CPD home study:
5. Access all our hypnotherapy diploma courses, advanced seminars, lectures & more with our online monthly membership:
And for those hypnotherapists among you who fancy coming and going me in my actual real-life classroom for my highly accredited advanced hypnotherapy diploma, read this:
Our 2018
Advanced Diploma Just Got More Advanced – Big Offer to Qualified Hypnotherapists.
The weekly podcast broadcast would not be possible without Tom Watson, who sponsors Adam Up and puts it all together each week.
If you need a website then do please pay him a visit here:
tmwmedia.co.uk This week I got introduced to some sarcastic and nihilistic jokes and one-liners, I thought
I'd share a couple with you here....
1. I hate it when I go to hug someone really sexy and my face smashes right into the mirror.
2. I can totally keep secrets. It’s the people I tell them to who can’t.
3. Don’t you hate people who use big words just to make themselves look perspicacious?
4. I would kill for a Nobel Peace
Prize.
Enjoyed those, and the ones I clearly could not put out in public!
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Any Questions Or Help Needed -
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Us:- Do feel free to contact us if you need help or more information about our courses, seminars, products. It is in fact great to get to know you all.
We can take payments for products or services over the
Phone or Skype if preferred.
Please use Support Centre rather than e-mails which are notoriously
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Support Centre
Do leave a message if we are not available and we will call you back. Adam: 01202 526977 or 0044 1202 526977 (outside
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AE College Of Self-Hypnosis
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