[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #64 WHAT DID YOU DO?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall   

2020 Neurons #64

November 30, 2020

 

WHAT DID YOU DO

WHEN THE WORLD WAS ON LOCK DOWN?

 

2020 will go down in history as one of the strangest years on a great many
accounts.  I began 2020 in January with David Murphy and Omar Salom at the
NLP Leadership Summit and as we talked— we all  anticipated a busy and
exciting year.  In February I was in Egypt on the first and, as it turned
out, only training that I did in the year.  When we returned at the end of
February, the lock-down began.  For months Geraldine and I were essentially
in house-arrest and couldn’t go anywhere.  That’s also when people began
calling or emailing and cancelling one training after the other, one
conference after another.  Recently someone wrote and asked, “What did you
do when the world was on lock down?”

 

At first, I didn’t mind being unemployed.  I was working on Hypnotic
Thinking and wanted to complete that and get it to the printer.  I did that
in March.  While working on that and on a new Training Manual for it, I came
upon the idea of writing hypnotic inductions.  I wrote several inductions in
the book, and then thought, I could write inductions for all of the APG
patterns, and more.  So I began working on that book.  Now it was April and
nothing was happening in terms of opening up.  I was still exercising in the
garage with an inadequate assortment of weights since the gym was still
closed.  And we were doing “coffee” on the dining table, since Starbucks,
and every other coffee shop, was closed.  So I did and that produced the
book, Hypnotic Conversations.

 

Now what?  June was here ... at least we could get out a little bit.  We had
to wear masks to the gym and inhale lots of carbon-dioxide (how healthy was
that?!).  So somewhere along the way as I was re-reading nearly everything
that Milton Erickson ever wrote, the idea struck me to write a humorous
hypnotic conversation— to induce people into a state of laughter and fun.  I
certainly needed that.  As a got a taste of that, I thought, “I could do
with more of this.”

 

So with that, I began reading in the field of humor and comedy.  I also
watched a whole range of comedians on Youtube and began to model the
structure of humor.  We watched nearly all of the masters of comedy which
passed many, many hours.  That lasted through June and July during which I
created Filipino jokes custom-made just for Geraldine.  She kept asking,
“What’s so funny about that? and so from that, lo and behold, came the book
Humorous Thinking to answer her question.

 

What I discovered about humor is that it is much more a form of thinking
than it is a state of emotion.  That’s because it is driven by incongruity,
ambiguity, exaggerated representations, etc. So it deals with the very same
mechanisms that framing and reframing deal with— as well as creativity and
innovation.  Given all of those inter-connections, I put together a training
manual that I titled, Unleashing Your Humor Potentials.

In August one of the hypnotic inductions that I put in Hypnotic
Conversations was about resilience.  As I worked on that, and as several
trainers were training the Resilience manual, I thought, “What the heck, I
have nothing else to do, might as well write a book on resilience.”  I had
previously entertained that thought when I wrote Thinking as a Modeler in
2018.  When that indigestion passed, I moved on.  Now while I had written
chapters about resilience, referred to it often, I never wrote the book.  So
reviewing what I already had written and thinking through a better way to
present it, I first created a new Training Manual, then I wrote the book,
Resilience: Being the Phoenix.

 

Still in house-arrest in mid-September and having no trainings on the
horizon, being a bit indecisive, I finally decided that I would write on
deciding.  That followed up naturally from Executive Thinking since
thinking–deciding are so intimately linked together.  That lead to reviewing
books on decision-making and reading many new ones on the subject.  It was
also picked up where Executive Thinking ended.  I didn’t even have a chapter
on decision-making in that book.  So Executive Decisions arose as a
companion book to focus on the major problem that nearly all humans have—
making intelligent decisions.

 

Unlike the traveling and training schedule, the daily schedule throughout
2020 has been to start the day with three hours of reading and then three
hours of writing.  To keep healthy, we do an hour of exercise, except when
we go hike in the mountains.  When hiking we would go from 1½ to 2, and on
occasion 4 hours.  So in answer to the question, what did I do while things
were in locked down, I wrote five books— mostly just to keep busy and
productive.  Just to employ myself during my unemployment.

 

It is now the end of November and I have finished Executive Decisions, so
guess it is time for another book.  Let me see, what’s the next problem that
I have that I’ll research?   Say, what did you do during the lock down?  How
did you employ yourself?

 

 


The list of 2020 books 

              Hypnotic Thinking: For Unleashing Potentials   (Part I)

              Hypnotic Conversations For Unleashing Potentials (Part II)

              Humorous Thinking: The Essence of Creativity, Reframing and
Well-Being

              Resilience: Being the Phoenix

              Executive Decisions: Smart Deciding

              And the three serial books written week by week Neurons,
Framers, and Morpheus.

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

 

To unsubscribe to Neurons, send request to meta at acsol.net 

Humor is a meta-perspective about incongruity, exaggeration, playfulness,
and even absurdity.

For a touch of humor --- see the new book --- HUMOROUS THINKING  (2020)

 

 



 

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