Back in my school days, I remember taking my bronze, silver and gold swimming badges and getting a cool enamel badge each time. The enamel badges we got back then were very different and in my opinion much better than the cloth material ones kids get today.

I remember having to fetch a heavy rubber brick from the bottom of the swimming pool, swim a certain distance, make a float out of my pajamas and of course, tread water comfortably for a timed period. This is whereby you’d safely paddle to keep yourself afloat but were not going anywhere. This notion has since become an idiom. As you’ll know already, when someone is treading water, the idiom suggests that they are being active but are not making progress, though they are also not really falling behind.

I dispute that by treading water you are not falling behind when it comes to being a hypnotherapist and am today writing about the reason why I dispute that. Let me explain…..

This weekend just gone by, my daughter was 3 and we had a wonderful Birthday weekend celebrating. We went out to lunch with family and had cake and candles at home on her Birthday, then she had a big party with her friends the day after, she celebrated at pre-school too, and seriously, we need a bigger house to cope with all the pink sparkly, princess regalia she now owns! It has been a lovely time for us all.

At the party, I was chatting away to one of the other Dads there. As we attempted to decipher whether the screams coming from the soft play area were screams of fun and joy or screams of children being injured and mortally wounded, he mentioned to me how much he was looking forward to his children being older. He painted such a wonderful picture of how his life was going to be when they could discuss mature topics, do different kinds of activities and the children would require less hands-on attention all the time. Great that he had a positive image of how he wanted things to be, however, he told of how he struggled to enjoy the children at this stage and found them exhausting! So he was going to skip through these years in a bit of a haze as far as I could tell.

You know what, I am excited about those future days too, but they are not going to be without challenge. No age-range of children is going to be without any sort of challenge unique to that time in their lives. What about learning how to make the most of ‘now’ though? Learning to love the stage that your children are at is learning to enjoy being alive! Don’t go wishing your life away. Life is happening now right now, learn how to enjoy it and make each moment count, no?  Plus, the time and joy you have now is going to pay dividends later on as you’ll have better relationships with your children, stronger foundations and when you reflect on your life, it’ll be coloured and flavoured with enjoyment.

Every stage of life comes with it’s own set of challenges, but the remedy is not to wish that entire stage of life away. This man was basically treading water with his children until they grew up and fitted his vision for being a more enjoyable age.

I’ve been writing aplenty at my running blog and I share my runs and stats on Strava for people to see that I’m running 70-80 miles a week as I prepare for the Spring marathon season and my subsequent Summer ultra marathon challenges where I’ll be running a 69 mile race following Hadrian’s Wall across the North of England. Within that training, it becomes essential to have some time focused on the goals and being aware of the outcomes, but you don’t want to spend that time purely focused on the future events.

You want to enjoy the runs, enjoy the training, enjoy seeing the changes you are making and enjoy the moments you have right now.

My brother and I still talk about a race we ran together many years ago, a 10 miler in Alton, Hampshire. We both recall taking the time to engage with what we were doing. We were out on the roads on a beautiful Sunday morning, with many like-minded individuals, running through glorious countryside and were with each other. It was wonderful. Yet sometimes, all that can be forgotten as you check your pace, check your effort levels, aim for a certain time to complete the race in and make the run a component of something yet to happen.

Your training schedule as a runner can end up contributing to you hitting the pause button on your enjoyment of what you are doing. In order to derive satisfaction from it, you want to enjoy the journey, not just be focused on the destination. The action you take by training is action filled with potential for enjoyment, not just action whereby you are paddling underneath the surface until you arrive at your goal event.

Here’s where I’m going with this today.

I speak to a LOT of hypnotherapists about their work and their businesses. I encounter many hypnotherapists who struggle to make a good living from being a hypnotherapist. I offer consultations to hypnotherapists and we have a barnstorming session together and they see the sense in what I say. Yet one of the most common reasons I hear given for not taking up mentoring or personal coaching is as follows;

I want to see how it goes for a few weeks/months before I consider working with a mentor…” or

“I want to practice my skills for a bit longer before I develop new ones or take on any more study/training…”

They then tread water, they struggle to get to the place that they really want and start to doubt that it will ever be possible. Instead of treading water, they could have invested themselves in their own development and learned how to build an effective business. They would be doing the thing they love, the thing they set out to do, and they’d know how to sustain it.

The same is true of hypnotherapists and their own knowledge and skill development. They have learned about continued professional development, but just pay lip service to it. Once a hypnotherapist has completed a diploma level training, they think that is going to see them through forever and that they have now learned what they need to learn in order to be a successful hypnotherapist.

Learn more about professional development for hypnotherapists:
Hypnotherapy Training: I’m Frothing at the Mouth About Why Hypnotherapists Need More Advanced Training

Having invested time in a diploma course, expended effort and of course spent money in that initial training, our budding hypnotherapist now believes he or she is entitled to a career. You will do better if you are good at what you do, but there is more to it than just being a good hypnotherapist. Learning how to create a thriving hypnotherapy business is learning how to enjoy the business development aspects of it too.

Too many hypnotherapists are merely treading water, focusing off out into the distant future, hoping and grasping that things will change. Yet taking decisive action this very day, here in the now is what will make your career.

Invest your time and resource in developing yourself and your career and realise the dream you had when you first set out. Treading water may feel safe and though we may not be moving forward, we may think we are also not falling behind. As I said at the beginning of this article, I dispute that. When you are not actively taking the right kind of action to build an effective hypnotherapy business, you start to lose enthusiasm, you start to feel weighed down by it, you start to find your business a chore rather than having the excitement you enjoyed when first studying it. You are falling behind.

There are many out there who are thriving in this field and who are rediscovering each day the same level of joy they had when they first chose to work in this field.

The longer you thrive, the easier it becomes to thrive. The longer you tread water, the more your business tires. Instead of treading water, you run the risk of drowning. You can’t just let yourself float, you’ll lose control and become prone to the whim of the current or the tide. You want to swim strong in the direction of your dreams, or express yourself beautifully like a synchronised swimmer, importantly though….

Stop treading water.


We can help you to stop treading water by the way…. In these ways….

1. One-to-One Hypnotherapist Mentoring With Adam Eason.

2. The Anglo European College’s Online Advanced Hypnotherapy Diploma. (You are required to have an existing diploma level hypnotherapy qualification in order to take this course)

Recent update/addendum to this article:
Above, I mention the value of a wide and varied education in this field, if you are interested in studying the field of hypnotherapy online, or if you are already a qualified hypnotherapist, then we have a number of online training courses, accredited for CPD and that are incredibly comprehensive.

1. Advanced Hypnotherapy Diploma – this online course adheres to the GHSC requirements for advanced level diploma and we are one of just 7 schools or colleges worldwide who are approved to offer this training with the GHSC. If you have a hypnotherapy diploma already, this course is going to take things to the next level for you in a big way. Have a read about it following the above link.

2. Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist Certification – this online course is an incredibly evidence based approach. CBH is exponentially more than just an amalgam of CBT plus hypnosis. Hypnosis has been shown to advance the efficacy of CBT, but CBH actually predates CBT. Many of the roots of CBH can be traced to James Braid’s therapeutic work. Come and have a read about the course using the link.

3. Hypnotic Coaching Certification – this online course is going to refresh and invigorate any hypnotherapists business greatly. Hypnotic coaching is incredibly effective and can add another revenue stream to the hypnotherapists income. Learning hypnotic coaching helps you to expand your business and ethically increase the time you spend with rewarding, achieving, positive clients.

Hypnotic coaching tends to be more upbeat, more active and quite a contrast to the typical therapeutic environment – it can serve as quite a tonic and subsequently helps the hypnotherapist to be even more effective when working with therapy clients. With hypnotic coaching, your clients are people who are healthy, well and simply want to be better, achieve more, take their life to the next level. This course gives you the tools and structure to add to your existing hypnotherapy skills and open up a whole new exciting world of possibility.

Hypnotic coaching is totally portable and can be conducted from anywhere in the world that you have access to a phone or the internet, technology ensures that our potential client base is everyone and anyone who is connected – and we are currently more connected to the world than at any previous point in history. It makes absolute sense for us to capitalise upon that – and reach out and help more people achieve their dreams.

4. Hypnotherapist Business Development Academy – this online course is for any and every hypnotherapist who is looking to develop their business.

In the last two decades, times have changed. The perception of the field of hypnotherapy has changed, there are more hypnotherapists out there than ever before, there is more information available about hypnotherapy than ever before. Things continue to change, rapidly. Just as we all engage in continued professional development to keep our skills relevant, fresh and up-to-date, so we need to understand how to develop our business effectively and how to keep attracting clients.

Today, I encounter many, many hypnotherapists at lectures, conferences, CPD trainings and other events. So, so many of them struggle. So, so many of them ask me the best ways to get clients, but it is virtually impossible to offer up a soundbite in a tea break that will transform them from desperate, isolated, eager hypnotherapist into successful, commanding professional with a healthy waiting list of referred clients.

You want to see more clients. You want to excel as a busy hypnotherapist. You want kudos. You want to serve the world and help as many people as possible to be well and benefit from what you know hypnotherapy can do. You want these things and probably more besides; so what is the solution?    Join this hypnotherapist business development academy. Read more about it by following the link.

We have shiny new, coherent and comprehensive prospectus forms for each of these courses which give you fees and explanations regarding them that you can download and be reading in two minutes time. Go do that.

=====
Are you looking for a meaningful and rewarding career? Want to train as a hypnotherapist?
Are you a newly qualified hypnotherapist looking to advance your skills or a seasoned professional looking for stimulating and advanced CPD? Visit the website of the Anglo European College of Therapeutic Hypnosis to peruse the wide range of courses, seminars and workshops we offer online and in the classroom, all led and taught by Adam Eason.

Save

Save

Save