Sleight of Happiness Patterns

8^th Dec 2008

Sleight of Happiness Patterns

As we discussed last week, those of you who stayed awake long enough, there is now an option which will allow you to choose between short and long. So this is short, because the long version is only accessible when you click the link below. So, although this short version consists of one very long sentence and a couple of shorter ones, the overall effect is one of shortness, when compared to what you can click through to now if you want two or more long sentences in a similar vein..

So, many people, especially in these stormy times, harbour the kind of belief which says they cannot be happy until their boat comes in. Obviously I speak metaphorically because a boat could mean a life partner, or a one night stand, or a substantial amount of money or some other windfall. It could even mean a boat laden with treasure, or in my case, fish (let's not become embroiled in the fish/treasure, treasure/fish debate for the time being).

Of course, and this is the sentence that may change all other thoughts in all other senses or indeed this one, what is more important than the belief that partners and/or money cause happiness, is the idea that the specific way in which you set about finding happiness and whatever you mean precisely by the notion of happiness, in the particular context which you had in mind, there have been and indeed are many people who are both single and happy, poor and happy, in unhappy relationships and also those who are both rich and unhappy, so the consequence of waiting upon the fulfilment of the desired contingency upon which you formally believed your happiness to rest may simply be that you cannot seriously expect to be happy if you have already decided to wait upon factors outside of your direct control because, notwithstanding the way in which you are making sense of this right now, there is another model of reality which says that happiness is an attitude rather than a consequence, so much so that in order to fulfil your admirable and entirely desirable intention it becomes necessary not to dwell upon what precedes happiness, but upon what succeeds, like the story of the princess who was sad because none of her many suitors matched her expectations until she finally realised that with expectations like hers' hell was liable to freeze over before she got her leg over because it isn't about whether or not you or I are pulling the other leg, or simply staring a goldmine in the face, so much as the fact that there are an infinite number of sources of joy, because when you scale up from the small handful of contingencies upon which you have hitherto been narrowly focusing upon, you begin to access a whole range of other possibilities because after all you wouldn't want to make yourself unhappy simply by waiting for something that is as likely to make you unhappy as waiting for something else to make you happy would be, if you knew you could be happy right now, would you, because that would be like saying that all human happiness throughout all human history, now and on into infinity, is simply a function of lucre and lust, wouldn't it, which would be silly, would it not?

THIS WEEK'S EXERCISE

Make a list of ten actions and/or thoughts you can commit to (not including partners or money) that could conceivably engender a state of happiness in you right now.
Now pick your top 3.
Do the first one now and then decide when you are going to do the other two, sometime between now and bedtime.

MORE....... (the longer HBT Newsletter)

If you are reading this, please accept my congratulations on clicking through to the long HBT newsletter. Clearly you are the kind of person who deserves more than one long sentence and who is prepared to run such sentences consecutively in order to achieve the most positive outcomes possible.

Just so that you know what is going on, I am practising sleight of mouth patterns. These consist of 16 distinct language patterns which can be utilised in all kinds of contexts. For example, sleight of mouth patterns may be useful in coaching, sales, therapy, training and management, as well as with children, adults and other conscious entities.

For the benefit of the other people who attended the same Sleight of Mouth workshop as I did with Doug O'Brien I am claiming to have used all 16 patterns in the first long sentence in the short version of the HBT Newsletter. I will award prizes to the first person to correctly label all of these patterns and/or the person who points out any mistakes I may have made.

For the rest of you, you can relax and just soak up the overall impact of the following passages in the knowledge that you can learn these patterns easily and comfortably yourself simply by sending me an email or calling me on the telephone. You could even come round for a cup of tea as long as you do not all come at once. In the next passage the key elements of each pattern are highlighted for those who like to know what is really going on.

So let us deal with another widely held belief such as the one which says that a loss of confidence in the banking sector will inevitably lead to a long drawn out economic recession because I agree that a misplaced kind of confidence is necessary to make such a loss making assumption which itself leads inexorably to the conclusion that misplaced confidence could lead to a misplaced lack of confidence which may be the way you sense the whole issue began to begin with, although in the real world where most people live we actually get to choose just how confident we can be, because it's not so much that people lack confidence as that they place too much confidence on those who, like Pingu, not so much realised that they had gotten cold feet, but that they ought to have done so because in spite of this, it is actually possible for a penguin to have his or her feet buried deep in snow and ice and still to feel warmth, just as it is possible to recognise a poor investment decision and still build confidence in the future, so that no matter which specific investments you are concerned about and no matter in what precise regard you have been focusing your concerns until now, what is more important is that you maintain a future oriented focus because after all, that is clearly the intention of all those financial professionals and bankers who are currently acting as though past excessive optimism is the inevitable harbinger of present and future oriented pessimism, which is like saying that a temporary and modest dilution of perceived value is the beginning of the final apocalypse now which of course, in the wider scheme of things is ridiculous when you consider that all the value that was here yesterday is here today and then some, so just because some of these people cannot see past the index finger up, he/she who knows that confidence, like happiness, is a choice and not an effect, his/her nose for trouble and/or a bargain is neither here nor there when you consider all the opportunities that were here yesterday have simply been superseded, modified, enhanced and/or significantly improved today and will again be so tomorrow and for the rest of time, will they not?

I think that's eighteen including the initial agreement frame. Of course if you are getting some idea about how this could work (and it doesn't have to be as extreme as these first two examples because three or four patterns in one sentence is probably all most people can cope with before caving in to your indomitable will) then call me or write to me. Those of you who were on Doug's workshop, if you have the inclination, please label all eighteen of the above, or tell me what I have got wrong because there is no such thing as failure but only feedback and practice does make permanent, if not actually perfect.

Now the real question is, can you eat three shredded wheat?

I mean would you believe it?!? Some people do. Some people actually believe that they feel bad because of some chemical imbalance in their brain and that this somehow means they are doomed to a life of misery and woe and I am not saying they are wrong because I totally respect and appreciate just how challenging depression can be when that's the way in which they make sense of it which is a shame when you consider that you could consider a non-pathological model of the same set of symptoms, reframing these simply as unpleasant sensory experiences which emanate from a diminished world view and a former tendency to attribute exaggerated meanings to phenomena which start out merely as everyday setbacks and mistakes like the man who announced that he had had a nervous breakdown and that he had fallen apart when in fact he had simply cried because someone had ignored him once more than he was willing to be ignored at work and when you realise that it is possible to be sad, or frustrated, or irritated and also to retain a sense of general well-being and optimism you can dispense with what it was specifically which triggered this precise pattern of what you may have previously labelled as a depressive episode because what is far more important now than the label is how you specifically know that you are sane or not sane and how you would know if it were not true either way, because the real issue is not whether you are sane or insane but what you are going to do next to improve your situation, unless you want to end up like Frank Spencer, or Frasier Crane, turning minor mishaps into major catastrophes because this was clearly never your intention to begin with even though even then you were almost certainly, if somewhat vaguely aware that if you could depress your natural joie de vivre then you can also de-press your unnatural capacity to depress yourself in favour of something which allows for a broader and somewhat more healthily ambiguous interpretation of events, will you not?

That will do.

It's all a game, inside I'm just the same, my fried egg makes me sick first thing in the morning. Quadraphenia, The Who.
For more information about Doug O'Brien and Sleight of Mouth Patterns go to www.ericksonian.com and www.ericksonian.info or call me for a discussion.
For details of The Attitude Positioning Technique Programme go to www.hbtuk.com and follow the links, or call me on 01202 265594 or 07974 228396
The Society For Things Which Do Not Exist does not exist (yet) because I got distracted by sleight of mouth patterns.

A NOTE ABOUT COPYRIGHT:

Basically, I work on 'abundance mentality'. The more I share, the more comes back to me. There a couple of rules I would like you to observe. You can use the content of these newsletters in any context as long as you display the following statement in the quotes below:

"This material was created and is owned by Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) Ltd. It may be used in any context for any life enhancing purpose provided this message is clearly displayed. Where the use of this material generates a financial profit for the person or legal entity using it, these persons or legal entities will be responsible for informing Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) Limited and will be required to share a reasonable portion of this profit with Harvey Taylor and HBT (UK) limited in proportion to the profit generated by the use of the said materials. Please also visit their website at www.hbtuk.com "