Learning the hard way?

The road to success is paved with whatever the hell they decided to put there to trip you up and teach you a lesson. Learn the hard way. The point is, I’m slowly getting more adept at spotting the obstacles and gently meandering my way around them. I can’t quite make up mind as to whether my lack of headlong dash is down to external or internal barriers and given that I nearly know what I’m talking about, it’s almost certainly both.

You see, those of you who’ve been here before, (deliberately ambiguous, although neither syntactic, phonological nor punctuation in variety, just plain could mean something else depending on your viewpoint and right now I can’t recall the correct adjective, (or is it adverb), modifier), will understand, which is in itself a mind-read, that one of my underlying objectives in this not-so-rapidly approaching future is not to work too hard.

Herein lies one of the difficulties in my plan. Negative objectives are counter-productive and invariably fire off in the opposite direction to the one intended, unless of course you subscribe to reading between the lines and then of course it is firing off in the direction intended, just not the direction I was consciously thinking of at the time. Self-sabotage and all that.

If I don’t want to work too hard I have to hold in the back of my mind a concept, picture, cerebral noise or whatever the particular modality of choice happens to elicit in order to be able to know whether I am indeed working too hard or not. And of course if I hold this in my mind, two things happen. I subscribe to the don’t-cycle-into-that-tree targeting beloved of parents who then have to contend with the grazed knees of 5 year olds who conscientiously concentrated on that very tree so hard that the inevitable became, well, inevitable. Or I achieve my objective by doing everything except working hard. And in order to ensure that this done with style, the only way to be certain is not to work enough. Bugger.

Obviously this is not what I wanted so I now work towards enjoying how I earn a living, no matter how much or little time that happens to take up. After all, time is not really the issue. Lifestyle is the issue. Week by week, my time is becoming more and more my time. Hooray.

Unfortunately, the general public, (not you of course), doesn’t appear to have heard of me in sufficient numbers as yet. At least not to the point of any sort of self-sustainability. Despite multiple efforts with my google page, Google appears to ignore me on searches where other nearby, and not so nearby, pages pop up and wave at searches where I ought to be figuring. Never mind. It’s only Google and they can’t even spell their own name correctly according to Legend, (good film, not a bad remake).

The good part about being well-versed in hypnotics is that I have already seen myself in the future, working just enough in a style that actually isn’t work at all. It’s also not too far away, though to be fair I haven’t seen myself holding up a calendar and pointing to a date. Suffice it to say, when I peer towards that future me, I still have hair.

The positives are still positive. The MP3 downloads for Chronic Pain, Migraine and Post-Surgery Healing have had some good feedback in the efficacy department and more on-line support groups are becoming interested. I have ideas bubbling for some more.

The key positive change has turned out not be a change at all. I was expecting a fork in the road or at least a cross-roads but no. What has actually turned up has been a path which drives directly between the twin highways of my current multi-career. I hypnotherapise clients and also train and assess in Financial Services (capitalising as it were, on my previous background). I enjoy both. One fulfils the technical geekiness that I seem to find easy to translate into English and the other allows me to help clients move forward in whatever their journey of development happens to be, in whatever way happens to suit them.

Strangely, the middle path just opened up in front of me on 21st June, which I’ve only just realised was the Summer Solstice so I can’t be quite as far gone as some would have me believe. According to a least one person very close to me, I am now a member of the cult of Cognitive Hypnotherapy. Maybe I should talk about it less enthusiastically.

I was in Bracknell, a place not renowned for revelations or miracles although it was the only place I have watched 4 families of Canada geese, complete with about 20 goslings, wait patiently for the lights at the pedestrian crossing and then cross the road. Well it was peak rush hour, so I suppose they were just being safe. Anyhow, having reconnected with a variety of companies I provide freelance training for, one of them called on my mobile and, rather than wanting my services for technical training of the Financial variety, wanted to know if I could write some face to face training for delegates who found professional qualifications time-consuming, stressful and to put it bluntly, pointlessly boring. He knew I was a Cognitive Hypnotherapist you see and wanted to know if there was anything I now knew that could be transferred into the technical learning sphere.

Well of course there could be! Much of the knowledge I’ve gained during my time at Quest in Regent’s University could easily be transferred into this.  Not only that but Trevor, the driving force behind Cognitive Hypnotherapy had honed his hypnotherapy skills whilst working as a trainer himself. As well as starting to pull my own ideas together I got in touch with Quest to see what resources they might have which could assist. I spoke with Jan, marvel that she is, on the 24th June who promptly told me that Universe was speaking to me and I should sit up and take notice. Quest’s three yearly cycle of master practitioner training events just happened to be running the very course I needed, that very weekend – only 5 days away.

Needless to say after much, well not much really, debate, I cancelled my trip to see my mother-in-law (sorry Sheila) and began the journey to what may well be a key part of my future. Over the 3 day course, idea after concept after technique kept slotting themselves into the gaps and bridged the gulf between the two areas I had thought would always remain separated.

So whilst I remain committed to helping clients through pain and stress and other difficulties, I see a future opening up where the help I now have the knowledge, (the skills were already in place), to give is to coach and train people in how to learn in a style that suits them. Most of are destined to learn in whichever way we happened to pick up whilst at school. We simply do it harder and for longer as the degree of complexity and difficulty increases and the exams get tougher and time becomes less available. It’s one thing learning ineffectively whilst in an education establishment, it’s another altogether when you’re trying to expand your full-time-consuming career. It’s like discovering you’re sailing in the wrong direction and putting up more sails to go faster and whatever you do, keep going straight ahead into the storm.

So a key strand which is already falling into place is training groups in effective learning techniques and coaching individuals where they find there are barriers to learning that they can’t get past. It’s applicable in the realm I usually train within, that of professional qualifications but is equally, and perhaps more importantly, applicable to those who are still within the education system.

Most curricula lack content which ensures that each individual is given the opportunity to discover how they learn best. We all receive, process and recall information in our own ways. We all learn differently but are all taught the same. Surely it’s important to give everyone the opportunity to discover their own path. Imagine how much more exciting and fulfilling learning would be. Who needs stress?

Whatever will you learn next?.

Get over it…
© Tony Burkinshaw 2013

Related:

www.cognitivehypnotherapy.org

http://tonyburkinshaw.co.uk