Christmas is two days past now, and in just under a week a bright new year will visit itself upon us. 2012. The much vaunted, much promoted, much feared 2012 is coming, and ladies and gentlemen, whether we’re ready or not, we’ll find ourselves having to deal with it… just as we have every year leading up to this one.

Now, I don’t know if this new year will truly mark the end of anything, nor the beginning of anything else. But since I am a hardcore optimist at heart, I find myself expecting some kind of 2013 to be revealed a year from now, once 2012 has unspooled itself onto the cutting room floor of history.

So life goes on – or it may do. Because if it doesn’t, then what the hell, none of this mattered anyway, did it?

More About 2011

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting for some time. In fact, I’ve been on a bit of a sabbatical since May of this year. After a solid ten years of writing about self-help and motivation, I just got bored with it and took some time off for myself.

This year has been something of an experiment for me. In my last post, back on May 21st (Discipline – The Unpopular Side of Self Help), I showed you a tiny little form I had started to use for keeping track of my “confidence work.” It’s a simple little table with one cell for each day of the year. And at the time of that posting I’d already spent better than four months with it – a third of a year.

Now this year is ending, and I’d like to share with you what I’ve been doing during my time off.

I may not have been writing but I was still trying stuff on myself, which is where it actually counts. In my last report, I was still using brainwave entrainment recordings that combined both alpha-wave (or deeper) sounds with positive suggestions for personality change.

I mainly used three different recording sets. One was the Quantum Confidence set (the so-called Morry Method).

The second was the EmBRACES Belief Entrainment System by Alan Tutt.

And the third was an isochronic recording at five beats per second with a bit of pink noise overlaid. I made this one myself and supplied my own suggestions live during each session. You can download a copy of this recording here if you’d like to give it a try.

Each of these approaches has strong points. In both Morry Zelcovitch’s Quantum Confidence recordings and the EmBRACES recordings from Alan Tutt, there are two separate tracks, with differing suggestions for the left and right ears, plus a third “center track” with still more suggestions.

Listening to these is quite confusing at first. The conscious mind just can’t adequately handle all that relentless input, which leaves the subconscious mind free to listen and absorb without the usual meddling and monitoring of the conscious mind. That’s the theory, anyway, and in my experience it seems to have a good deal of validity.

A word about Alan’s EmBRACES set. It’s massive, and there’s a good reason for that. Alan did extensive testing with something like 150 test subjects, and he found that the more variety there was in the recordings, the more effective the suggestions seemed to be. The only downside to this is that you won’t know what to try first. Honestly – it doesn’t matter. Just dive in. You’ll figure it out as you go.

So, being a compulsive over-deliverer, he set out to give his users all the variety and choice they could ever ask for… and more. I’m talking 360 MP3 recordings in 10 modules – nearly 160 HOURS of material.

You know how, after you’ve used a set of recordings for a while, boredom can begin to set in? Well, that’s much, much less likely to happen here. According to my calculations, boredom won’t be a factor until you’ve been using the set for about 987 years – or longer. You can find out more about Alan’s EmBRACES here.

Now… back to my self-help efforts.

How Persistent Was I?

Instead of telling, let me just show you.

As you can see from the varying colored dots, I experimented with a few different things during the year. Took a few weeks off here and there (more a result of laziness than design.) On the other hand, I spent a 4-week period beginning in mid-September doing four sessions a day. That was a bit much, so after a month I rested a bit then dropped back to the usual two-a-day.

Results

Some objectives, like confidence or leadership, are pretty hard to quantify, especially if you’re self-rating the results. There’ll be days when you’re sure you’ve become a superstar. Other days you’ll wonder if you’re ever going to make any progress.

It’s normal to have ups and downs.

So in the interests of minimizing subjectivity, here are some specific, measurable things that have happened during the past year.

1. I got a call – out of the blue – asking if I’d like to become the M.C. for the Expat Club meetings. The man who had been doing an outstanding job for three years had decided to move on to other activities, and would I be interested? The Expat Club has around 500-600 members overall, but not all are in-country at any one time. Attendance at the meetings varies from around 70 in the low season to upwards of 150 in the high season. I accepted the job and have been having a ball running the monthly meetings.

2. Several writers living here in Thailand have asked me to format their books and get them Amazon-ready. Some were for paperback publishing, and others were for Kindle ebooks. I found that this was not only easy for me, it was actually fun. This led me to start a new service business website MisterEbook.com, where I accept ebook formatting for authors who would rather be writing instead of getting all tied up in the techie stuff. This site is still new, so I don’t have consistent performance data to share yet.

3. In July I had an operation – an angioplasty – to clear some blockage in a coronary artery. Now, was this a negative thing? Or was it a positive step to correct something that I had previously allowed to become negative? Not sure, but I thought I should lay it out and let you decide for yourself. At any rate, I’m still alive and kicking, much to my delight.

4. Because of back injuries when I was young, back pain, cramps and rigid muscles had been a problem for years. This year, I took measures to change that. Twice a week I do go for Thai massage, which if done properly, can free up tight, locked muscles. So morning backache and occasional bouts of my back “going out” have disappeared. Next month I turn sixty-nine, and my back feels better than it has for thirty years. (Now I’m starting to sound like an old geezer, aren’t I?)

5. This one is more subjective and a bit difficult to put into words. However, for what it’s worth, here it is: During the past year I’ve begun noticing that people treat me with more deference and respect than before. This amazes me because, in groups I have usually felt like the wallpaper. Other people sparkled, not me. And when meeting new people, I was just one of the faces. Now when I meet folks, or sit in on a new group, I’m treated like a visiting dignitary. On the one hand, this is flattering, but on the other hand, it’s a bit unsettling. I’ve always tried to avoid being an ego-driven kind of guy, so while it’s pleasant, it puts me on my guard to not let myself get swept away by approval.

Anyway, these are some of the results I’ve noticed after working on my confidence fairly consistently for one year.

Try This at Home, Boys and Girls

I fully intend to continue these efforts in the new year, and if you’d also like to track your own efforts, here’s a chart ready for you to use.

To download your copy, right click on the image, or right click here and save as “2012 Meditation Record” on your computer.

Once you’ve downloaded it, trim it down and tape it somewhere that you’ll see it every day, or keep it on a clipboard, ready to use at any time.

The only thing to avoid is – don’t lay it down on a flat surface. If you do that, it’ll soon be covered up and forgotten. Once a tracking instrument like this goes onto a horizontal surface, it’s useless. Just put it where nothing else can get piled on top of it, and it’ll keep reminding you of your intentions.

Then, next year, I hope you’ll report back and let me know what you’ve been working on and the results you’ve seen.

Cheers from the end of 2011,
Charles

P.S. If you’ve been using the 2011 form that I posted back in May, tell me what results you’ve been getting. No results? Then tell me that too.

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