The past week has literally flown by. My friend in Holland had a translation job for me, and after I finished the first three translations, she added another two. It turned into a full-time job for this week, which is brilliant of course, because it will give me some time to breathe after this and maybe even some time 'off' to do other things, like writing some posts here.

The last few weeks I've thought a lot about what to write. There's so much going on in my head at the moment, and there are a huge number of ideas, but when I actually sit down to write, it's all scrambled. So today I thought to just write down whatever comes to mind. That way I might be able to get some stuff a bit clearer in my head and go from there.

Hypnosis...

Back in Holland, I was working as a translator and editor for about 11 years and a few more before that, living in Asia and the US. I always loved the job, because it gave me a lot of freedom, personal and financial. Then the financial crisis hit almost everywhere in 2008 and onwards, and the people I used to do work for before, used this as an excuse to not only pay less but also attract the 'wrong kind' of translators and editors. Suddenly there were people who would work for 1 cent or less per word, which boils down to $2,- an hour, before taxes, or less if you weren't very fast. I refused to work for this kind of pay, so I decided to only work for those who appreciated my work. These people ruined the business for a lot of people, but I always figured that the companies who hired these people would find out eventually that they were getting what they were paying for, and sure enough: they did. Meanwhile, I had some extra time on my hands, so I decided to start a course for something I had been wanting to do for a long, long time: hypnotherapy.
After I finished that, I went on to specialize in a few things, but it's a subject that never stops teaching. Every day you can learn something new. It's not an exact science and very often, a hypnotherapist's intuition is as important as his skills. I've seen this a few times.

Recently, I've had three people ask me to help them with some issues. Usually, I would need at least 3-5 sessions to really make a difference. However, somehow with these three, one session did the job! I'm not sure why, maybe it's the client's mind, or maybe it's my own confidence. I have no idea, but I am delighted, whatever the case is. This made me think that I might get back into it more, finally take the step to get accredited here in Ireland (which is quite the chore...) and do a bit more work than just my friends.
Then my next thought was: but, we want to travel...True. And that's still in the books, but needs a lot of planning.
I've learned through the years that while one plan yet has to be carried out, it shouldn't prevent me from doing something else too. If I let those plans take over all of my life, then, in the end, nothing (else) gets done and that's just a waste of valuable time.

Somehow, while I was thinking of these things, 'stuff' all around me made me aware again of hypnosis happening on a daily basis. Which brought me to this: I've always been a truth seeker, and with me: what you see is what you get. I have no hidden agendas (other than that I plan to become filthy rich together with the rest of you, sue me!) and I like to keep things as real as possible in this short life we have. Here in Ireland, a small (silent) revolution has started with first our own yellow jackets coming into action and, more recently, the nurses and midwives on strike. However, if you talk to the people here in person, they still give you that look...The majority is just still not quite aware of how things work in the real world, they live in fantasy land and they still believe most of what the media tells them.
So I decided to write about how hypnosis and NLP works. And how to spot it in your daily life, and most of all: how it's used to manipulate people into believing the things they believe. It will probably be a series because there are a lot of things to discuss and it may prove not to be as easy either. What do you think?
We'll see...

Thank you for reading!