Enlightenment March 2009

Observations of Life. Well, it has been a couple of months since I put pen to paper here. December was personally busy with family activities and the holidays. And as much as I enjoy the writing that I do, I have to, at times, put it aside for other things.

January came and went with a minor illness that left me less motivated and inspired to write. It lingered longer than I expected and I just didn’t get any writing done. Then my desktop computer crashed. Not that I didn’t have other computers to write on, but again, I could not motivate myself to write until I fixed it.

Fixing the computer took a little time. I finally figured out that my hard drive died. I ordered another and then took a night installing Windows. There were some minor problems in doing this, but I worked them out and got the computer up and running. This was followed by installing all of the programs I used on the computer. This was then followed by downloading updates for all of the programs and operating system. This took some time also. But eventually it was done and it’s as good as new.

It’s always nice when things work right. I seem to appreciate them more when this happens. I, we, forget how much we depend on other things and people to help us day to day. If your car didn’t start or the public transportation didn’t run, how would you get to work? Most of us would probably agree that our mobility is important to us and want it available when we want it. But there are seemingly little things that are bigger than you imagine. What if there was not trash collection? What if where you work, there was no one to take out the trash or no one picked it up at the curbside? What if the person who brought the toilet paper to the stores no longer did? What if you ran out of soap? We worry about gas shortage but rarely think of these things.

But there is an underlying principle here and that is the way our initial perception is of someone’s or something’s importance. More specifically, the importance of what people do. Most would agree we need firemen and women, the police, teachers, doctors, nurses, and the military, as well as say they are very important. But we also need those who serve in less dramatic or sensational roles in our daily lives. Those who pick up the trash, clean the restrooms, serve us our lunches, the cashier at the convenience store, the person who delivers the newspaper to your home or local news stand, and the boy or girl whom you pay to mow your grass all have jobs that seem less important, but have an underlying importance. Because if they were not done, what would happen?

Can you imagine going out to dinner and there was not a restroom, let alone a clean one? Or if you could not stop and buy a newspaper in the morning and have that cup of coffee on your way to work, but only because you had to walk to work since there was no one to service your disabled car? At these times you might begin to see the importance of these jobs and those people who did them.

Compensation for our labors has been an age-old issue for many. Some people think that they should be paid more for what they know. Others think they should get more for being on the job for a number of years. Still others think that no matter what they do, not mattering how well or poor their performance, they should get what the person next to them gets. Some people complain they are not paid enough, yet will not think twice about leaving a small tip for their waiter or waitress who deserve much more for their labors. They bellyache of their perceived inequities done to them, yet never see how as a payer of services, they violate their own preachings.

And as much as many will deny it, we are all employees and at the same time employers. In the past I have written how everyone works for someone else, even the self-employed. But you do hire and fire people everyday. For every service or product you buy, you are hiring and firing the people in those businesses. From buying a car to paying a kid a few dollars to wash your car, people are hired and fired, from transaction to transaction. So when people complain about employers in general, they must share some of that blame for themselves. But now I’ll take a slightly different direction.

I saw a cartoon in the newspaper a long time ago which illustrates this premise very well. In the first panel we see two secretaries asking how is it that trashmen are paid so much more than them. The next panel has the secretaries saying to each other how educated they were and important their work is. The third panel has an observer hearing this and then asks them why don’t they then become trashmen (trashwomen). Then in the last panel one secretary says, "You couldn’t pay me enough". It comes full circle and they unknowingly answer their own question.

One of the best examples for understanding what you are paid for your labor is this simple formula. I got this from one of the recordings by Earl Nightingale. It is: What you do, how well you do it and how easily you can be replaced will determine what others will pay you. If you only can do one thing and no one needs that one thing, no one will hire you. If you do something that many need and there are not many who do it, you have more demand (supply and demand). If you do something better than everyone else and people want the best of what you do, you have more value. If you do something that is common and you can be easily replaced, you can have lower employment value to people.

The fact of life is that what you do is a commodity. And for the most part, you are the designer of that commodity. At least at some point in your life, you had choices to remain as you were or better yourself and become a more valued commodity. What did you invest in yourself personally and professionally to make yourself a more valued person to those around you, to those you want to be around and to those you want to reward you for what you do vocationally?

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss is being reviewed this month. The lead character in the movie ‘The Sixth Sense’ was a boy who was plagued with visions of dead people only he could see and hear. Author Lynne Truss claims to suffer from the ability to spot ‘dead’ grammar; poor punctuation and misspellings everywhere she goes, that apparently, no one else notices. In a world where an increasing amount of correspondence is sent in snippets via email or text with little or no punctuation, capitalization and an overabundance of emoticons, Truss is overwhelmed. But rather than run around as a grammar vigilante with correction fluid and red pen in hand, Truss wrote a book about herself, a punctuation stickler, in the hope of uniting sticklers and inspiring the masses to take up the cause of proper punctuation.

Truss admits punctuation savvy isn’t glamorous and is oft an under-appreciated skill, especially by those guilty of misplacing commas, adding apostrophes and otherwise mutilating the English language. But Truss works hard to win the common man over to the cause of the properly used comma, apostrophe, and period. If the dry British humor and witty asides employed by Truss were used by more textbooks and teachers, grammar would probably surpass recess as the favorite part of the school day. Readers can laugh out loud at mistakes made for years in their own writing without the slightest twinge of guilt. She relates horrifying examples of poor punctuation and misspellings clearly visible in store windows, newspapers and even major motion picture advertisements, as well as bits of history to show the development of punctuation and help predict its future. Will we still need the semi-colon by the end of the 21st century? You’ll have to read and find out.

Punctuation has dogged writers, printers and editors since before Gutenberg, and even in an era of spell checker and complex word-processing programs, learning proper punctuation never goes out of style. Some people are born sticklers, the rest of us must try to be. Thank goodness for ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ for taking our hand and showing us the way.

Quotes we liked. This month’s quote is "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." by George Orwell from his book, Animal Farm. From the first time I read this, it made an impression on me. Even though I have a degree in political science, it is not the intellectual/philosophical aspect of the quote, but the reality of it that motivates me to think in many ways. Somehow the ease in which it flows makes it sound appealing yet its premise is almost demonic in its true meaning. It shows how a concept based on a truth can be twisted into a dangerous thing.

Throughout the history of mankind, there have always been those who demanded privileges either due to birth, education, religion, political standing or other erroneous reasons. And at any time these people obtained power to enforce such privileges, it has lead to inequities, oppression and injustice. The founding fathers of this country did what they could to try to prevent this, but time after time there are those who try to set themselves over and above the rest of us in the processes of government, the laws and their enforcement. Even recently we have seen in the news the wrongs done by those who have been elected to act in our behalf in this representative republic. We must never let it find root here, for when we permit one man (or woman) to claim superiority over another entitled as such, we have failed in the grand experiment called liberty.

What to expect. Hypnosis is a fascinating and wonderful tool for many problems that people have. But like any tool, it cannot fix everything. I do marvel at the many ways it is used from medically prescribed treatments for chronic pain and migraine relief to simple fears. Every year we attend seminars and workshops to learn better ways to serve our clients and incorporate these innovative new skills. Sometimes they will seem a little strange in the beginning yet provide amazing results. We try to match the client’s needs, his or her personality and even faith with the type of hypnosis we use to get the best and fastest result.

But hypnosis does require something else that must come from the client, desire. There must be an honest desire for the change, and the stronger the better. This desire must be so strong that the client will follow all of the positive suggestions and guidance of the hypnotist. This does not mean that the client will be under anyone’s spell or control but rather the formation of a cooperative state between the client and hypnotist. With that, changes can be made.

Most of the times there are several things a hypnotist does with the client before they begin the first session. There is a pre-hypnosis talk that revolves around one basic thing, education to remove all fear about hypnosis. Once that is done and the client is comfortable with what is going to happen, he/she will usually then be guided into hypnosis, knowing he/she will always be safe throughout the entire session.

We, like most other hypnotists are happy to answer any and all questions about hypnosis. We encourage people to read more about it on our website. If you have any questions, call us and it will be our pleasure to enlighten you.

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Enlightenment

The Official Newsletter of the Willard Hypnosis Center

November 2009 Roger & Patricia Willard©2008 Vol. 4, No. 1