SAME OL' SAME OL': SAME OL' SAME OL'

BARON AND SELF BUSKING

Suffice I used an idiom (title) adumbrating my blog for today.  I am at the age where I seem to need consistency at work and at play.  I am at that age where regimen rings reward.  I am at that age where I have just published the words and phrases to prove that I am delusional in my thinking about my customary and mechanical routine in my wakening and floundering world.

In my professional workplace I am a contractor.  I have a continuing meat and potatoes contract as a high school guidance counselor.  I have a dessert contract as a Psychology professor.  I have a client-demand academically-inclined hypnotherapy practice.  And I am a busker and a blogger.  (I used to refer to myself as a faux busker but came to realize there is no distinction between faux busker and real busker.  In this regard it is kind of like a pretend clown compared to a real clown, or kind of like using the words, moil and toil in different sentences – pun intended.  I know it seems rather weird to make such distinctions.)

All of these jobs for which I have just mentioned are very much same ol’ same ol’.  As a public high school guidance counselor and Psychology prof I am an empirical master.  As a private practitioner I am an eminent magician (but a tyro at marketing).  As a busker and blogger my performances are perfunctory.

Hmmm …

As far as my continuing contract as a high school counselor I’ve not a whole lot of control to where I’m assigned.  For example, this coming fall I am on the move.  I am opening up a new program entitled THE HIGH SCHOOL REGISTRATION CENTRE.  My new duties shall be to design and deliver INTAKES, ASSESSMENTS, and PLACEMENTS.  I am excited for a couple of reasons.  First, I get to create a new program; and second, my new office is right downtown.  I live downtown!

Also come fall I’ll be delivering a university course that I’ve never before taught, CHILD PSYCHOLOGY.  I’ve taught several Psychology courses over the last twenty years but CHILD PSYCHOLOGY will be a first for me.  CHILD PSYCHOLOGY does seem most appropriate -- pun (again) intended.

Regarding my private practice I now have a website, NEIL CHILD HYPNOTHERAPY, created by my geometrical genius friend, Kimberly.  I will soon be soliciting her to help me with my marketing.  Kim is an regular reader of my blog and so I know she’ll be privy to my wishes as soon as I hit the publish button for this particular entry.

My high school students, university students, hypnotherapy clients, and busking consumers are too, not surprisingly, same ol’ same ol’.  All come with different faces and different names but typically the same ol’ issues.  Most high school students have relationship issues sometimes with parents and teachers, but mostly with romance and peers (academic issues are counter pattern).   Most of my university students are female, between 25 and 30 years of age, having juggling problems with money (part-time and full-time jobs) and study and boyfriends (scholastic achievement is counter pattern).  Most of my hypnotherapy clients want to quit smoking or quit eating or start getting a good night’s sleep (past life regression is counter pattern).

Same ol’ same ol’.  Different faces, different names, same ol’ problems.

Hmmm ...

All these aforementioned professional endeavors are now, not necessarily by my design, changing, and this is a good thing.  My busking though, purportedly what this blog is about, has become, like I said, perfunctory.

Oh sure, I am successful at what I do for busking but … I have these past years been following a fixed program (by design).  I’ve become inflexible.  My busking routine is mechanical.  I have become a buskermonger.  I need to change it up.

Changing things up requires reflection and introspection.  Especially this summer I’ve thought and thought and thought about it.  I dusted off my didgeridoo, took it out a couple times but decided I cannot drone for ninety minutes straight.  I get too bored.  I even went busking with my banjitar, the sound of which is too intrusive on the street or at a market.  The best place for banjitar busking is in the middle of a parking lot, seriously!

Two days ago came an epiphany, my “aha” moment.  Rather than change my accoutrements of white shirt, blue jeans, and work boots, I decided to learn some percussion techniques on my guitar whilst strumming my guitar!  Percussion techniques are simple to learn, but difficult to master (practice, practice, practice).

After viewing several YouTube percussionist guitar performers I can conclude that maintaining a steady rhythm to be the most important task.  Being never a lead guitarist and always the rhythm guy, this can be easily accomplished.  Second on the important list is to keep it simple.  Simple percussion techniques such as the thumb-tap, nail-strum, and knuckle-slap are rather easy to practice. (I’ve just made up these mnemonic names for these particular techniques so that I can remember what to do when I’m practicing while busking.  Ha!  Yes, when busking -- I get paid to practice, and so can you!) Keep in mind that I long only to be a busker; I’m never striving to be in the limelight as a main stage percussion guitarist.

Now ‘tis time to write about my blogging formula. After 200 postings (this being #237) and a readership from 147 different countries (there are 195 countries on the planet), I have no plans to change. 

My blogging formula, comprised of mostly facts written by fictioneer, moi:

• Create a snappy title.

• Write in 600 to 1000 words about what that snappy title connotes.

• Post an interesting picture top left on the blog entry.

• Mention some people I’ve met during the week under my segment, CHAUCERIAN PARADE.  (For example, pictured above is my familiar drummer buskmate, BARON.  This picture was taken by another guitar buskmate, ANN-MARIE.)

• Post another interesting picture or two near the closing.

• Re-write.  Re-write. Re-write.

• Post a new blog entry the next week.  Same time same station.

SAME OL’ SAME OL.’
Thus my lifestyle essay, implicit in nature, comes to a close.

SAME OL' SAME OL.' 
SAFE ... VAPID ... COLORLESS ... HUMDRUM ... HO-HUM ...

HMMM ... 

SLACK ... STALE ... MORIBUND ... DEAD.
 
TRANSFIGURATION (GO FIGURE) ... STIRRING ... EXHILARATING ... ROUSING ... ADVENTUROUS.

RUE THE PAST TO REJUVENATE YOUR FUTURE: GET HAPPY -- GET HYPNOTHERAPY (OR GO HIKING)

AMANDA AND SELF AT THE REGINA FARMERS MARKET

All of us know fat people who get skinny and get fat again.  All of us know drunkards who get on the wagon and fall off the wagon.  All of us know druggies who get clean and then get dirty again.  It does seem that no matter how guilty we feel when it comes to eating too much, drinking too much, drugging too much, most of us do not feel guilty enough to actually quit that too much (of whatever) until it becomes an addiction.  An addiction is the condition of being addicted to a particular thing or activity, especially when that thing or activity has decidedly become detrimental to one’s personal or social life.

Yes addictions are disheartening, and the psychological and physiological descriptions are certainly abstruse; however, any addiction can be cured with client desire and deliberation.

Time to drop the anchor.  If you are an addict and desire change you must:

• RECOGNIZE THE PATTERNS IN YOUR SELF-DESTRUCTION.  Acknowledging a problem is the beginning of the battle.  Don’t blame your problem on circumstance or bad luck. Reflection and introspection are necessarily huge when it comes to curing oneself.

• RECOGNIZE YOU STILL HAVE ASSETS AND ACT ACCORDINGLY.  You must always have the power to keep your dignity and self-worth.  You must always be capable of change.  To get better (forever) you will have to suffer somewhat.    

• DON’T GO IT ALONE.  Get thee to a therapist.  You’ll feel much more accountable with a therapist than with a friend.  You get what you pay for.  By the time you’ve reached the addiction stage of your problem/s, it could be that your friends have already ditched you.  You may need to pay to get happy.

Of course I’m inclined to suggest HYPNOTHERAPY as your first therapeutic option.  I quite like REALITY THERAPY (CHOICE THERAPY), SOLUTION-FOCUSED THERAPY, and COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY but … I’ve decided that HYPNOTHERAPY is the way to go to get thee better.  I love HYPNOTHERAPY mainly because of the IMAGING, IMAGERY, and GUIDED IMAGERY aspects.

IMAGING is the representation or reproduction of a form.  Switch the word form for action and voila … we are into HYPNOTHERAPY.

IMAGERY is a visual description.  Thick description, a qualitative term which includes visual description, is synonymous with HYPNOTHERAPY.

GUIDED IMAGERY is that gentle but powerful technique that focuses and directs the imagination.  HYPNOTHERAPY mobilizes a client’s unconscious process to assist with the client’s conscious goals.  HYPNOTHERAPY seduces the mind through appealing sensory images while narrating a naturally trance state of mind for the client.

I shall further explain: 

In my HYPNOTHERAPY private practice, people only pay to see me when they have decided they have had it with their problem/s (mostly “problems” plural).  People pay me to help them improve their present condition, which they currently consider to be personally and socially problematic.

Most of my bread-and-butter clients seeking HYPNOTHERAPY want to lose weight, quit smoking, or gain a good night sleep.  I do have other clients who have other self-declared dysfunctions, lacking in a sufficient love life, or committing untoward sexual tendencies being just a couple of examples, but such clients are certainly not the majority.  Saying thus, whatever their decided problems, all of my clients want to change their behaviors.

To predict a person’s future you need only to know a person’s past.  Past behavior patterns are always adumbrate to dire predictions toward addiction. There is a bright-line regarding addiction:  If you sense that your habit is becoming a social problem and concern, you have an addiction.  My clients have enacted the exact same patterns over and over again until that behavior has become a severe problem in their lives, an addiction so to speak.  To break an addiction one needs to change behavior.  This would be called Addictions 101 in the pop-psychology academy of addictions training.  In order to beat an addiction, one needs to get unstuck from past patterns.

To reiterate my opening paragraph:  All of us know fat people who get skinny and get fat again.  All of us know drunkards who get on the wagon and fall off the wagon.  All of us know druggies who get clean and get dirty again. People tend to repeat their behaviors; tend to step forward then backward, forward then backward, forward then backward until their backward steps exceed their forward steps and become an addiction.  Only when they step into addiction do people seek therapy.  In reputable therapy, counselors help people to change their behaviors.

HYPNOTHERAPISTS tend to employ imaging.  HYPNOTHERAPISTS stimulate imaginative thinking, and they do this by way of narrative story-telling.  Story-telling is fundamental to our understanding of the world.  We, being human, have created myths to comprehend our universe.  We, being human, have created fables to encourage ethical tendencies.  We, being human, have personal anecdotes to express our powers of independence as distinguished from the rest of the general population.

Every client has a story to tell (see William Glasser and REALITY THERAPY).  And together with a HYPNOTHERAPIST, that story can be altered to promote a personally positive future behavior.  Working collaboratively, the client and therapist can create a new plot (script) for a positive life twist (outcome).  In a trance-like state, the therapist as story-teller and the client as story-listener, the client through the therapist’s guided imagery, will re-create a behavior to see things, to hear things, to do things in a totally different way.  Whether it’s losing weight or quitting smoking or gaining sleep, the HYPNOTHERAPIST will help the client to stop sabotaging success by no longer doing the same ol’ same ol’.

For example, a fat client of mine had determined his condition was the result of eating too many sweets, and those sweets were eaten only a coffee times, but coffee times were five or six times a day! Together we re-created his past behavior and collaborated on a new script adding a new twist for the ending.  Instead of eating sweet cakes and other desserts as had been the pattern, the client listened, while in a trance-like state induced by me, to partake of his coffee accompanied with no food, except once per day (perchance) at noontime.

For example, a coughing client of mine had determined her condition as the result of smoking too many cigarettes, and those cigarettes were smoked always in her backyard patio or while she drove her new half-ton truck.  Together, we collaborated on her new script, re-creating her past behavior by imagining the sipping from a bottle of water (or some other drink), rather than the puffing of a cigarette.

For example, another client had determined his daytime lethargy as a result of not enough sleep, and according to the client, was just tossing and turning most the night worrying and thinking about his this-and-that work-time activities.  We collaborated, composed a new script for his nighttime behavior.  We determined the client study the odds and furniture of his bedroom in great detail before his last look at the alarm clock, before settling off into deep sleep.

The examples I’ve presented are from real life clients and their self-assigned problems.

We (my clients and self) re-wrote their patterned scripts in accordance with their preferred behaviors. And in typical HYPNOTHERAPY fashion, I assigned each of these clients to a ninety minute session.  The first ten minutes I always offer an explanation of what HYPNOTHERAPY really is.  The second half hour the clients tell their stories and disclose their habits.  Following, it takes only ten or so minutes to write a script that re-writes the client’s actual behavior.  The expertise of the HYPNOTHERAPIST is especially evident during the client’s induction and, too, in the delivery of the all-senses descriptive narrative, that will hopefully change the clients' past behaviors concerning their particular activities when partaking of their problems.

None of us can be happy when a particular habit is ruining our life. 

GET HAPPY – GET HYPNOTHERAPY.  

OR ... GO HIKING!   

(Though hiking will cost considerable more monies, I highly recommend that you consider hiking as a positive addiction to overcome any negative addictions that are haunting you and wrecking your life.  And I'm not suggesting good health can be measured in monetary fashion!)

I wrote my thesis on POSITIVE ADDICTION.  POSITIVE ADDICTION can be defined as replacing a socially perceived negative habit (eating too much, drinking too much, drugging too much) with a socially perceived positive habit (for example: playing the violin, bird watching, HIKING).   As a graduate student I quite liked REALITY THERAPY and William Glasser, and was especially hooked on his book, POSITIVE ADDICTION (pun intended).

Ah HIKING!  I spend many an estival day hiking through a weald on some rocky mountain.

Some pictures from last week:

ATHABASCA FALLS ON ICE-FIELDS PARKWAY BETWEEN JASPER AND LAKE LOUISE

ANCIENT FOREST WEST OF JASPER, ALBERTA

And of course I must mention my other positive addiction, BUSKING!  

My CHAUCERIAN PARADE for this week whilst busking:

COLBY WILLIAMS SIPPING FROM THE NHL CHALICE AT WASHINGTON CAPITALS HOCKEY CAMP

 

TIFFANY AND AMANDA AT THE FARMERS MARKET