Journal Pre-write
1. Decision to join the program: Absolutely no regrets still, I believe that simply through participation in the project and formal commitment to leaving the comfort zone, I’ve made many progressive decisions I would have dismissed otherwise.
Selection of a field of interest: I still think that polysleep was an excellent idea. Follow-up results were not so excellent, but would not have known if I had not tried. Hypnosis is more of a sketchy field, not only because I didn’t have such good results finding clinically guided work, but also because for self-hypnosis, measurable goals are rare.
Choice of mentor: I think I overestimated “acceleration ability” when choosing a mentor—when things started to slow down, I couldn’t rely on someone else really busy to push me forward.
2.
Biggest challenges: Coping with failure—writing about it, feeling it especially. Chronicling adventures, knowledge, and insights also bothersome.
Biggest successes/highest moments: Finding the project, taking the day 17 walk (calming stressed turbulence), finding resources
Biggest setbacks: Nearly every single zombie day past week 2, lack of ability to read, inertial resistance to starting hypnosis.
Problems encountered/solved: Journal writing – scanning/scheduling journaling time. Getting to it—lots of self-talk and in the end, knowledge that I’d have a lot of trouble on my hands in a couple of hours if I didn’t just go for it.
Most surprising: Didn’t really enjoy reading as much as I thought I would. After going through the first few pages of most volumes, it became far too painful to slog through any more.
3.
Good story moments:
Day 17 breakdown
Reconciling self with decision to leave polysleep.
Reading other logs—Head Full of Lightning is so good. “I mean, Pavlina made it look so damn easy.” Hahahaha.
Maybe library resource gathering day?
4.
Journal: Activity might actually be less of an indicator than inactivity in this case. Definitely have realized I should be picking up the journal more often for short entries, and that although it’s all good and fine to set up a halfway decent “kick-my-butt” system, really setting up a sustainable, full fledged “do this by now or face failure” system is really the only effective way to keep activity rolling.
Research Commentary:
Sources: 8+ (Carey, Salmaan, Patterns, Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnosis, Head Full of Lightning & other blogs, Scheele, Schissel(?), hopefully Maas)
How have I used the research:
Carey & Salmaan – General gauge as prepoly
Head Full of Lightning & Other Blogs – General gauge as prepoly and later, as comparison to current experiment, and post-mortem as evaluation of similar experiments/re-research for polysleep round 2.
Scheele – Memory improvement
Schissel – Attempted to get hands-on work, rebuffed, but did get answer to how to evaluate trance (depth of sleep)
Maas – If I can get an appointment, I’d like to evaluate my polysleep, and maybe get general improvement tips. Need to hammer out lo que realmente quiero from him.
