**Last Year’s Presentation**

…**wait until you hear about the 3 presentations that have been chosen by the NGH this year!** 🥳

“Raise your hand if you are ready to live the life you want to live.”

My heart soars as everyone, on cue, raises a hand.

“Now, raise them both if you are ready to help every single client do the same.”

Again, everyone’s unraised hand shoots up, joining the other floating above the head of its seated body.

So far so good. I take a deep breath and keep going.

It’s been about six months since I drove away from the bottom of my father’s driveway for the last time.

I am standing in front of a conference room of the world’s most well-respected hypnotists. In fact, Saddam Hussein’s sons’ hypnotist is sitting right there with both his hands stretched straight up to the ceiling. My trainer, Erika, is sitting there beaming next to the popularity twins. Those two who I never felt accepted by. Who I no longer even cared to be included amongst.

~~~

“I knew I should have put in a proposal this year.” One had informed me before the banquet dinner the night before. “What with it being the first year after the pandemic.” She said while scanning the room behind my shoulder for someone more important she could talk to. Her clear subtext, if I could do it, certainly they could too. If they wanted to.

And it’s true.

Anyone can do whatever they put forth the energetic intention towards doing.

They may not do it as well as they originally want. They may not do it as well as they still can, eventually. But doing something you long to do will always be better than never doing it.

~~~

I feel my future-self encouraging me, I keep going.

Taking a rose scented candle from the bag on the table “Are you healing like an onion or a rose?” I ask my audience.

My future-self’s feet feel balanced and rooted yet light. Her hands look confident and in control. The ring we’ve agreed to wear, in commitment to each other, flashes as promisingly as the future I see us creating together. I feel light as a feather and as excited as I can ever remember. It’s as if I am floating around the room. I take note of everything I possibly can.

~~~

It had been very early in February when the email had ended up in my spam file. Honestly, with all the commotion of trying to settle myself, again, after so much moving, I didn’t even remember putting in my proposals to speak at the NGH’s summer convention.

I was floored when the guild accepted my proposal to detail my theory that hypnosis is the bridge between neural plasticity and the quantum realm of all possibilities. I did, however, remember my father telling me never to speak about this theory of mine with others. “they’ll think yer crazy” he had managed between bites during one of the four football games we watched together while I stayed in his basement apartment.

~~~

Now, here I am. Here and now, I am speaking to about 30 people. I am encouraging them we can all look more forward, as a profession, than we have been. I remind them, we do not need to dig endlessly in the past; we can choose to connect our clients with their future-selves, to enjoy the now.

Just as we connect them with their pasts, we can connect them with their futures.

I even provide the story of “Pearl”, and hope that my ever-blooming piano-teacher-client doesn’t mind me using her as an example.

It is revolutionary and I feel almost disrespectful to the profession to be disrupting the flow of the current narrative. Yet, I was trained to correct misperceptions and limiting beliefs. It turns out I have chosen to do that in my profession as well as in my clients, and myself.

“We are simply personal trainers for the minds of the clients who want to create magic in their lives. We aren’t the magicians. We just provide the tools and tactics for those who want to change everything, quickly and easily.”

As I lead the roomful of hypnotists through my prepared hypnotic experience of meeting their future-selves on the bridge between habit and creation I realize how different it is to create a hypnotic environment in such a large room, with a lapel mic, and those few non-compliant eyes staring back.

I finish a bit less excited than I began, but still grateful and pleased. I feel the calm confidence I planned to experience afterwards wash over me. I did as well as I needed to, and I knew I would do better the next time.

I am happy to accept the smiling congratulations of the other hypnotists. I am grateful they enjoyed what they say they did.

I run to the restroom before the next seminar, my friend who has been my cherished companion this trip is speaking; I wouldn’t miss it!

As I am washing my hands, she actually walks up to the sinks beaming.

“Aww Jen.” Her Northern Midwestern accent bouncing off the tiled walls just a bit. “That was great.” She giggles. “I had to leave early to set the projector up for my talk. But wow.” She dries her hands now staring at me with a huge grin.

I turn the water off and dry my hands, too. “Thanks. I’m pleased.”

“I didn’t know what to expect.” Her smile continues to get bigger. “But there I was. My future me.” She looks over her glasses a bit. “I didn’t think it would work for me.” Her tone changes

“Oh.”

“I always figured my future me would be even more calm and studious, you know, more me than me.” She winks.

I looked at my ex-engineer turned hypnotist of a friend and smile, thinking I know what she means.

“But I was the happiest most cheerful woman, Jen. I was standing in front of the bench. I wasn’t sitting. I was standing there. Waiting for me. As soon as I saw myself. I ran out of the mist to greet me.” And her smile got even bigger somehow. “I was so proud of myself, Jen.”

She giggles more. “I didn’t know I felt that way.”

“Awww.”

“I gotta go...but wait ‘til I tell you about what the future me told me!”

Feeling a bit startled by the encounter I am really unprepared for what I walk out of the bathroom to.

“Jen.” The stately eldest of my personal training style is waiting for me in the hallway. “I want to tell you, I met myself on the bench. Thank you.” His typically watery eyes are welling with more than potential cataracts. “I needed that.” He squeezes my shoulder like I imagine a proud father would to a respected daughter. And my eyes begin to well as much as his.

“Thank you. I have to go. There is a presentation I don’t want to miss.” I put my head momentarily on his bony shoulder and wonder if he’s eating enough.

Sitting down in the audience of my dear friend’s presentation, less than 15 minutes after finishing the biggest opportunity of my career, I am grateful that I can be calm and present for those who have been there for me. I love that my self-hypnosis allows me to breathe through these moments, quietly and silently, grounding me in the moment I am in.

Happily.