It took me thirty years to try it but in less than six months, self hypnosis helped me overcome my nerves and my procrastination and...

By JA Francis

Explore. Dream. Discover. "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

What’s holding you back?

Have you ever wanted to do something but it just seemed impossible to overcome procrastination and days passed, then months passed and finally years passed and you still haven't done that thing that you wanted to do.

I wanted to drive a car. It wasn’t essential at first, there was public transport and I couldn’t afford a car. I was female so my boyfriends would drive me places, preferring to drive anyway. Then I had a child and money was short and I still couldn’t afford a car. Yet other people managed to buy one. Other people drove here and there and took their kids to playgroups and to see their friends, but I waited for them to visit me or hopped on a bus with a child and a stroller.

I did try. I got my L plates. At that time you only had your Ls for three months and then you applied for a license or repeated the Road Rules test and got your L's again. I believe I did this at least 3 times before letting it slide, although at the time I was riding a small 250 motorcycle. You didn't have to ask anyone to take you out on a bike. I loved the freedom of riding but cars still scared me and besides, who could afford one? You can't take a baby on a bike though, so I sold it.

Several years went by and I tried again, getting as far as the L plate and one or two lessons and then letting it slide.It was too hard to find the money for driving instructors and I still found it hard to ask for help from family or friends. My husband taught me the basics but I wasn't proactive about continuing it. I was scared, scared I would crash a car that wasn’t mine, scared I might injure someone by crashing, scared of being laughed at and scared of looking like a fool.L didn't stand for learner anymore, L stood for loser. I was embarassed but I couldn't make myself continue.

As the years went on I became more and more frightened of driving. I had been involved in three car accidents now, one of which happened while I was driving, my very first lesson when I failed to know which way to turn the wheel and slowly drove the car into a ditch on the side of the road. The other two happened when another driver made a mistake. No one was seriously hurt, but both times the car was written off and the investigating police said we were lucky. In one the car actually slowly rolled 360 degrees over sideways once and came to rest against a tree. The worst injury being when a loose tumbling bottle of coke inflicting a bruise on the driver. Lucky! Close to a miracle I thought..

Five years ago, I bought a car. It was an opportunity not to be missed, a good price,money in the bank to pay for it and from my sister so I knew it to have been well maintained. I thought that if I had a car, then of course I would learn to drive, why would you be mad enough to own a car with all it’s costs and not use it. It sat in the garage for two years and I failed to overcome either the fear or the procrastination. Then two things happened. The first one was that I was finally forced to face the cost of keeping a car rotting in the garage and I vowed that if I didn’t learn in the next three months, I would sell it.

I worked in a management position where I often trained youngsters from 15 through to 20. I watched them get their Ls and gradually pass their driving test while I struggled to get them to learn many relatively easy concepts with my business. So the second thing was when I  suddenly got tired of watching them one by one get their license as if it was a breeze. I got angry at myself, my thoughts started to change and I just said to myself – “If they can do it, so can I.” See even an old dog can learn tricks from young examples!

Here’s where the law of attraction comes in. When I changed my thoughts from “I can’t” to “I will”, I sent a different message out. A customer called into my shop and we got chatting about procrastination and phobias and I told my story to him. This generous soft spoken gentleman talked for a long time with me about using self hypnosis and said he knew it would help me.He told me how he had come to use it and what it had done for him. He had a self hypnosis CD and he said he would give it to me. The next day he returned and left it at the counter for me and I never saw him again.                                

Next Page: Listening to the self hypnosis cd

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