hypnoniki

Nov 07 2018

360 Degrees of Integrity

I started the year off with a new blog series touting new adventures. While the adventures of my soul this year were many, my blogging efforts remain few and far between. So here I am, recommitting to myself, and to you dear reader, to publishing more often. I’m shooting for once a month to start but I hope to build up to once a week by the end of 2020.

This year, I made some really big investments in myself. I started off the first quarter of the year attending the Landmark Forum followed by a weekly follow-up seminar that lasted a few months. A month or two later, I attended a Lifestyle Hacker event. By the second quarter, I attended Enlightened Warrior Training Camp for the first time and by the third quarter, I attended EWTC again as a volunteer staff member. And yesterday, I attended Mega Speaker LA to finish the year off with one final event in honor of a commitment I made to myself in 2016 to attend at least one seminar every quarter. I am proud to say that I have continued to honor that commitment two years later. Woo-hoo!

This year, I also started taking on new challenges. I became a teaching instructor on the topic of marketing. I created the entire curriculum from scratch in less than 30 days. I faced a fear I had of cameras, and realized I was more afraid of being seen than I was of the cameras. I also got to make friends with my sense of self-worth after losing a stable source of income at the start of summer. I may have lost some friends this year, but I also made some new ones and reconnected with old ones. It certainly has been an adventurous year, all right.

I learn so much, but I never make time to share some of the many gifts I have been given this year. So I’m changing that. I’m making time. And I’m letting go of guilt for making this time because I know this time is actually an investment to the people I serve. By filling my cup, I’m better equipped to fill their cups from my overflow.

Today, I wanted to share with you something I learned from listening to JT Foxx speak at the Mega Speaker LA event yesterday.

Your success is a direct proportion to the actions you take. If you want more success, take more action,” said JT Foxx in his keynote speech.

At the moment, I knew I had to start doing something different, but it had to be something I knew I could stick to more consistently than anything I had ever tried before. And that’s when JT Foxx introduced me to the concept behind his 365 spreadsheet. He said that most lack of success is actually a lack of confidence, and proceeded to share how he kept a spreadsheet documenting one small thing he did every day to improve his life of business by 1%. He reports this process helped him earn $5 million in five years.

That’s when the idea of 360 degrees of integrity popped into my mind. The concept is very similar, only the idea is to identify an area of my life where I’d like to see a complete turnaround and to do one small thing every day to move the needle forward by 1%. And by doing that one small thing every day, I will honor my commitment to myself and the world with integrity and grace.

For me, integrity means finishing what I start no matter how long it takes. This week, I completed Week One of a 10-Week Ultimate Leadership & Negotiation Course. I’ve been avoiding this since May so it was a huge feat to finally make time for myself to really reflect on my learnings from everything I have gone through this year, especially as I move to forward tackling several new opportunities I’m really excited about.

What are small things you can do every day to make your life better? Meditating? Exercising? Avoiding sugar? Read a book? Write a sentence? Every big dream starts with one small action.

If you want more success, take more action.

How can I help you stay accountable to yourself?

Jun 13 2018

Better Living Tomorrow Starts With Being Proactive Today

I have something to confess.

I’m a total fraud.

I’m a writer who doesn’t write.

Sigh.

There I said it.

I wasn’t planning on blogging tonight, but I had a conversation today that inspired me – a conversation I wish someone had with me when I was that age. I’m not really sure if I made a difference in her life, but she certainly made a difference in mine. And here I am writing about it.

Lo and behold, I am a writer, who now writes.

Writing is the expression of my soul. And ooooh, hooow I miss it. I feel like I’m making love to the very words I type as I type them, and it fills my heart with great joy and ecstasy.

But that’s not why I decided to push back everything I had originally planned for my evening. I actually felt inspired to write because of a brief conversation I had with a young woman that prompted me to examine my own life and how far I’ve come since graduating college.

Her pain and her struggle, I truly felt it because her struggles were my own. In some ways, they still are, just with a different context. Her dreams were my dreams. Her limitations were some of mine too.

As our conversation was ending, you know what she said to me? She said: “You’d make a great life coach. You should totally be a life coach. I could see you being a life coach.”

I smiled and told her that was the kind of the plan.

Our conversation lingered with me on my way home as it met with the background conversation already happening in my head concerning what I wanted to be known for as a coach and hypnotherapist, or as a college speaker, or maybe even as a corporate trainer.

Who is my audience? What problem do I help them solve? What solutions do I have to offer? How can I target three markets at the same time with no extra effort?

As you can imagine, there’s a lot going on in this pretty little head of mine, so it takes me some time to process and organize all of that information… but try I will, follow along…

An Inside Look At Reclaiming One’s Inner Power

It’s one thing to find one’s personal power. But it feels like a whole new game learning how to wield that power. It’s almost like I’m learning to walk for the first time. And then there’s the phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” that echoes in the background of my mind like a soft lullaby.

I’m at a point in my life where I am acknowledging and saying goodbye to the amateur child in me, so that the professional grown up in me has room to breathe. But I very much liked the old me; she kept me alive past the age of 30 when I thought for sure I’d never last that long.

Then 30 came and went and I realized: shit, I should probably do something with my life now. If I’m going to be around for a while, I might as well make my time here worth it. And from that day forward, I chose a different way of being. It’s been quite a long road even getting to this point because I was never really consistent.

You see, when I was in my 20s, I was always in survival mode, and in a constant state of fight or flight… mostly flight. If there was one thing I ever did consistently, it was fleeing to safety every chance I got. By the time I hit 30, I was so exhausted and burnt out from running away from all my problems, that I finally decided to give up and admit defeat. That was when I suddenly realized my darkest truth: It was time for me to grow up.

I started thinking about who I used to be, who I’ve become and who I’m still becoming.The fundamental difference between who I am now and who I want to be tomorrow lies in one of two basic choices we all have available to us each and every day.

We can choose REACTIVITY or we can choose PROACTIVITY.

You can be reactive and let life happen to you or you can be proactive and make life happen for you. Your choice.

When life happens beyond your control, it’s human nature to react to the situation. But if you’re always putting out fires, so to speak, then you’ll never find the time to prevent the fire from happening in the first place.

What really changed the game of life for me was realizing that I have more control over my circumstances than I ever gave myself credit for. I just wasn’t paying attention to what all my deepest fears, doubts and insecurities were trying to tell me.

When I finally started to listen to my inner critic like a trusted friend rather than my worst enemy, I heard all the concerns it brought up anticipating situations where I might find myself in a reactive mode.

Old me would have found a way to ignore those concerns and end up in exactly the kind of situation my lizard brain was trying to warn me about. But new me is finally starting to learn and trust my own inner wisdom and choosing to be proactive versus reactive.

This idea of being proactive vs reactive has me thinking about softball now, another love of mine. I liken this discussion to that of playing offense versus defense. If you know you’ve got a weak defense, then your best chances of winning the game of life just might be with a strong offense.

What are you thinking? What kind of player in life are you? Are you an offensive player or a defensive player? Take this quiz to find out what level you’re playing at.

Feb 10 2018

The Natural Progression of Dating

I’m not sure the title of this blog post is exactly on point, but now that I have your attention… 🙂

There are multiple schools of thought when it comes to how to approach dating, but there are three of them that really stand out in my mind:

Duty Dating
Circular Dating
Laser Dating

What is Duty Dating?

I know what you’re thinking. Duty dating? That’s a thing?? Yes, it’s a thing. It’s a term coined by communication and relationship expert Dr. Pat Allen to describe a style of dating, if you will. Regular dating is the way most people date – based on mutual attraction. Duty dating, at least as I understand it, is the type of dating you do when you are dating to practicing your dating skills, and is not based on chemistry. Basically, you’re dating someone you normally wouldn’t date, much less be attracted to, and you’re giving them at least three dates to grow on you before you decide to keep on keeping on until you find your boo.

What is Circular Dating?

Circular dating is a term I believe is coined by relationship expert Rori Raye. This term refers to the process of dating multiple people at the same time in order to maintain power in relationships and boost self-esteem as a natural byproduct. The whole idea behind the concept is taking your focus away from finding the “One” and instead focus on YOU. But I think it’s really about not laying all your eggs in one basket, and not getting your hopes up prematurely until you’ve at least had the DTR talk. It make sense. If the person you really like isn’t making an effort to date you, but someone else is putting in the time and the effort, then who are you going to take more seriously for a relationship? The person who shows up when it counts or the person who doesn’t show up at all? It goes back to the whole idea of “focus on you” and he who gives attention gets attention!

What is Laser Dating?

Laser dating is a term I first heard about by a relationship expert named Lauren Frances, aka The Flirt Fairy. Laser dating is the exact opposite of duty dating and involves only dating people who fit the criteria of what you’re looking for in a relationship. It’s about knowing what you want and not deterring from it for any reason. At least as I understand. There’s not a whole lot out there on the interwebs that talks about this style of dating. I actually read about it briefly in an email newsletter and the term stuck with me ever since.

Natural Progression of Dating

So how do these three methods of dating add up in the grand scheme of love? Well, each of these dating methods sort of represent the natural progression of dating. If you’re newly single for the first time in years, or have zero experience with dating, then “duty dating” is the perfect way to get your feet wet and practice interacting with the opposite sex so that by the time you meet someone you actually like, you won’t fuck it up completely. From there, you start picking out your favorites and you naturally progress to circular dating until one person steps up to DTR – that’s define the relationship, in Millennial-speak, in case you were wondering. And by the time that relationship starts falling apart before it really began, you’ve become so jaded that laser dating becomes your only option – only, you’re going on waaay fewer dates and you’re a little out of practice and so you resolve to start the whole damn cycle of dating all over again.

I should have named this blog “The Cycle of Dating” now that I think about it. Ah, well, too late. What if I told you there was a better way to approach dating? Stay tuned, and you’ll find out!

Jan 20 2018

New Year, New Adventures

Welcome to my new personal blog series, “Beauty of Payne,” which has become the mantra of my thirties after retiring the old mantra of my twenties, “Dating is a Payne.” In that blog, I was raw, uncensored and real. There were people that loved it. Others who hated it. And some were even ashamed for me. At first, I didn’t care what other people thought; I was happy just being me and having the freedom to express myself unabashedly. But then one day, I stopped writing, and I started censoring myself because I had grown to believe that my passion hobby was hurting my chances of love. Hogglewash! I’d argue that my new blog will work like an amazing water filtration system, filtering out all the duds. I can’t really say for sure, but one thing I am certain of is that I’m done being afraid to write for myself. I have so much to share and it’s selfish of me to keep it all to myself when I know that someone, somewhere out there in the blogosphere could benefit from the wisdom I have to share from my experiences as well as the experiences of others.

When I first started my “Dating is a Payne” blog, I had just got out of a serious relationship and was really frustrated by how backwards dating had become. I would blog about my dating adventures and some of the shameful and not-so-shameful experiences of my non-existent love live, but overactive sex life. Being single and staying single was the mantra of my twenties, but now that I’m in my thirties, I am so freaking grateful I deleted the contents of that blog and even more grateful that all 300+ articles I wrote as the LA Single’s Examiner are no longer circulating the web because I’m finally ready for love, and most of the stuff I wrote in my 20s no longer reflects who I’ve become in my 30s.

Rather than complain about dating the way I used to in my original blog series, this time, for my new blog series, I’m going to be writing about my entrepreneurial escapades, #dreambuilding projects and pretty much anything that excites me enough to want to blog about it and share. Stay tuned! In the meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to preparing for a social media talk I’m doing for the American Hypnosis Association and working on a consulting project! Wish me luck!

Nov 26 2017

How to Overcome Impostor Syndrome

I have a friend who recently quit a well-paying job to start a new business in an industry for which she has little to no experience. When she forwarded me an email from someone in the industry preparing to do something very similar to what she was planning, I got the sense that she was experiencing a case of impostor syndrome. So I shared with her some friendly advice I was taught in hypnotherapy school that made a lot of sense to me when it was put into perspective.

This is the advice I shared with friend; she loved it so much she suggested I share it with others who may be feeling like a fraud in their career or business.

There’s no competition. She’s not you. And there’s no one else quite like you for YOU are the only you. Yes, it may seem like you are in direct competition with others who have the same offerings as you, but here’s the truth: the only person you’re competing with is yourself. Everyone else has their own unique background, motive, perspective, or specialty, so they naturally have their own audience, just like you do from your unique experiences that only you have experienced as you—experiences no one can take away from you.

If two of you offered the same exact thing, I’d pick you because you’re most like me. You’re more relatable. You’re closer to me in age so you’d be more likely to get me than someone significantly older. And you get what impostor syndrome feels like because all the aspiring entrepreneurs you want to work with are no doubt feeling the same exact way, asking themselves: “Who am I to think I can do this when I’ve never done it before?” Overcome this disempowered way of thinking and it will become a fundamental component of the very thing you are creating for others so that you can help them overcome their own limitations.

In my experience of you, you seem to keep revisiting images of past failures that have spilled over into your new business dreams in the form of stress and overwhelm. Consider journaling about the valuable lessons you learned about why that old business didn’t work out for you. Take those learnings and apply that to this new business venture so that you don’t repeat those mistakes. Similarly, journal about what made you successful in the corporate world and apply those principles to your new entrepreneurial endeavors. Using these insights, make it so that failure is no longer an option.

Lastly, ask yourself this: What would have to happen for you not to feel like an impostor or fraud? Don’t have enough experience? Create an action plan that allows you to get the experience you need in one way or another. Don’t believe yourself? Develop of a daily practice that will strengthen your beliefs, such as keeping the agreements you make with yourself and others.

When I first got into coaching, I had zero client experience and felt like an impostor promoting myself as a coach when I had never coached anyone a day in my life. So I strategically offered my coaching program to five people free of charge; by the time I was done, I had over 60 hours of client experience and had successfully taken each individual through my entire program.

When I was in hypnotherapy school, I completed well over 100+ hours of pro-bono hypnotherapy sessions and was among the top in my graduating class to earn a clinical achievement award—the highest honor one can receive from Hypnosis Motivation Institute for exceptional performance during clinical internship and outstanding academic achievement. With nearly 200 collective hours under my belt, I no longer felt inauthentic about calling myself a coach or hypnotherapist. And by now, I’m sure I’m closer to 300 hours of experience (not including my continuing education in this field).

What kind of action plan can you implement to prove to yourself that you are NOT an impostor or fraud? How can you reframe your experiences in such a way that only YOU can reach your target audience? What is one thing you can do to build credibility within yourself so that others will find you credible as well? As you discover those answers for yourself, remember this: You have no competition. There is only one you, and you are the best in the world at being you 🙂

If you like what I wrote or have anything to add, please share in the comments below!