#163 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (9th June 2019)

Hello and welcome to Let Me Bore You To Sleep. My name is Jason Newland and please listen to this juicy podcast when you can safely close your eyes. Now, I'm doing something very different to what I normally do when I make these recordings and I'm quite excited about it.

And when I tell you, I think you're also gonna be quite excited also. Because you know I've done quite a few of these, 160 or something. And I don't know, I wonder how many there is.

How many have I done? Let me have a little look. And you may think, well how can I see how many I've done? If he's sitting in his big black squeaky chair like he always does, how is he able to see how many sessions he's done? Because I don't remember. And I have done 162 episodes of this podcast.

So that's about 162 hours roughly. It's quite a lot. You think about it for eight.

40, 80, 160. And that's over a month of working full-time. If you did 40 hours a week, it's a whole month.

Or 24, I don't know, I can't work it out. But I think it's 24, 160, 320. So that's about six, six whole days non-stop.

24 hours a day for six days. Does that work out right? Something like that. And you know I really don't suggest you're listening for six whole days because yeah, seek help if you did that because that wouldn't be right.

You need to eat and do other things. You could potentially listen all night, have it on repeat or listen to the podcast and just let it play each episode if that was useful. But six whole days, that's too much.

I think six whole days of anything is kind of too much because eventually you're going to want to go to sleep. That's, you know, apart from this, I mean obviously if this helps you sleep. But I'm thinking of other, other things, you know, like playing table tennis or sunbathing, or I don't know, sitting in a jacuzzi.

Imagine six whole days of that. It'd just disappear, wouldn't you? I reckon, or a sauna. Wow.

Imagine six days in a sauna. You would have the clearest skin, but that's because that's all you'd be is skin. There'd be nothing left.

So I remember years ago, right, I'll come to the exciting bit in a minute, but years ago I was working in a Buddhist shop, a Buddhist charity shop. It was run by a Buddhist charity, but it wasn't a charity shop, it was a gift shop. Called Evolution.

And my friend, no, yeah, we did the Christmas, you know, it's busiest time of the year, generally in retail anyway, especially gift shops. Had, you know, times of the year when it's busy, like, I don't know, Mother's Day, and Valentine's Day, perhaps. Christmas, that was it really.

They were the main times. But Christmas was probably 80% of the profit for the year. I'm making that up, but it sounds good.

Anyway, like a lot of places that work over Christmas, we had our Christmas party in January. But it wasn't, because it was a Buddhist thing, it wasn't a party. So there was no going out, drinking or anything like that.

Not that, you know, there's any law against it, but the idea with, I'm laughing as I say it, because the idea of no intoxicants, which is the point, you know, you don't, no drink, no drugs, no cigarettes, no all that stuff. I kind of didn't tick any of those boxes, to be fair. But even coffee, you could say coffee's an intoxicant.

Being in love is definitely an intoxicant. It's the biggest intoxicant there is, isn't it? It's the, what better feeling in the world than being in love, falling in love. And I've never won the lottery.

I imagine that's got to be, you know, winning millions of pounds or dollars. That's got to be up there. Seeing your child, well not seeing your child being born, but the period afterwards, you know, when you first see your child.

Because I imagine seeing your child being born is kind of, it's a mixture, isn't it? It's probably the most disgusting thing you've ever seen, and it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. So it's kind of, it's got to be a weird and emotional thing, because it's terrible what I'm going to say, but I know it's, childbirth is, you know, it's a challenging experience for the lady given birth, perhaps, in many cases. Of course, I've never had a baby, so I don't know.

But, you know, I've been constipated, but I'm not saying it's the same thing. I'm just saying that I'm going to move on very quickly. So the thing is, when you're given birth, you don't have to, you don't get to see it, do you? But the person at the other end gets to see it, and it's, it's, you know, I remember once I saw it on a film, the beginning of a film, there was no warning.

I mean, it should have been rated 18 or something. And it started off with a baby being born. I wasn't prepared for that.

But, you know, I was thinking about it. A lot of people say it's magical, which I'm sure it is. But then butterflies and frogs, that's more magical in a way, isn't it? Because you think that transformation from something, from one animal into another, the tadpole then becomes a frog.

The caterpillar lives its life as a caterpillar, going along its business, ruining as many crops as possible, you know, trying to annoy people with allotments, just go on, eat that cabbage, and eat that lettuce. I don't know the difference. Although lettuce is a bit more juicy.

Cabbage, you need to boil it really, but I'm a caterpillar, so I don't know, can't hold a saucepan. And then they just become, you know, get a cocoon, and then come out as this beautiful butterfly, completely different species, completely different animal. It's not an animal, but you know what I mean.

You know what I mean. And I just, I find that magical. I was having a conversation with my friend, and I said, well, what if, because we're thinking about, what if you could stop the process of transformation? Would it live forever? Would it, you know, what would happen if you could stop that? And my friend said, well, how could you stop a caterpillar cocooning and becoming a butterfly? And I thought, if you chase the caterpillar, just keep chasing it, it won't have time to stop, to become all cocooned, and therefore it won't be able to turn into a butterfly, because it'll be too busy looking behind itself running.

So I don't know if this thesis of mine, if I could, you know, this theory, this idea would be provable with research, and I'm not sure if I'd be able to get funding. But at the same time, I'm not really that bothered about it. But I do love the idea of the I'm quite fascinated with the transformation, and more so than the creative process of a species being born.

I also think that we're going to find out in the future, like with animals and dogs, you know, they can have lots of different, lots of different dogs can, let's say a female dog might sleep around, and, you know, be very carefree, and, you know, gets pregnant. And they can have like a mix of different dogs, all together. And, you know, again, I'm not sure if that's true, but I think it is, might be.

And I wonder if that's actually possible with humans, but we don't know yet. Again, that's why I was just juggling those ideas around yesterday. There wasn't much on television, if I'm honest.

Anyway, I, as I said, I've got a little bit of, it's not interesting news, really, it's just instead of sitting down on my big black chair, my big black squeaky chair, I'm standing up. And I thought, and I say it's not that exciting, seemed exciting when I was about to tell you, but once I actually, once it verbalizes, it's like, oh, you know, it wasn't really, I'm not sure if it's changed all that many lives by announcing it. I'm not sure I get many comments from people saying, you know what, I felt like I was walking through my life in a daze, in some kind of like zombie-like state.

And then I listened to you, and when you said that you were standing up, the fog cleared in my mind, and suddenly I could see all the possibilities that life holds for me. And it was transformational, very much like a caterpillar being cocooned, a caterpillar that hasn't been chased, so they had time to settle in its little silk pajamas or whatever it is. It's like a little magic act, isn't it, really? Like caterpillars turning into butterflies.

Because you know when you see a magic act, and you see like a lady, or it could be a man, but you know, the assistant, the magician's assistant would get into a cage, and they would pull the covers over, and turn the cage around, and it'd go wibbly-wobbly-woo, and whatever the magic words were. There'd be music, and then it'd go, and there'd be lights and everything. They'd pull the cover off, and it was a lion.

It's very similar to the butterfly, isn't it, really? The caterpillar, and the butterfly, the magician's assistant, and the lion. I think it would be more interesting if they pulled it over, pulled the thing, and there was a caterpillar there, instead of a lion, because that would be confusing, especially for people in the back row, because they wouldn't be able to see what it was. They'd just think, wow, that's great, she's disappeared.

But the people in the front row would be going, no, she hasn't just disappeared, she's transformed into... Wait a sec, let's get a little bit closer. Oh, it's a little caterpillar. See, that's what I think would be nice.

Even better, I think they should start off with a lion, and then turn it into a human, and then the animal rights should come along, and say, that's enough, this is outdated. We need to protect our animals. They can't be taken advantage of, and made to do tricks anymore.

That's enough of that. And then they take the human and put them in a zoo, with a bunch of lions. Maybe that'd be wrong.

I did bang the wrong gong. Oh, so the plan for this is that I'm going to walk around my flat. I'm in the middle of tidying.

And if you saw it, you probably think I was in the middle of just putting stuff on the floor. But that's part of the tidying process, isn't it? Making a mess. It's... There's no point in having a bath until you're dirty, is there? So sometimes when it's bath time, my monthly bath, and sometimes I kind of think, you know what? I need to roll around in some mud first.

You know, it's just this, we're all the same. I'm sure everyone does it. So it's about getting the best out of the bath.

I don't feel that a bath has been successful until I have to call a plumber, because of all the muck and dirt has blocked up all of the tubes, all of the system in the whole building. That's when I know that's been a worthwhile bath. Of course, the council aren't too happy, but hey, it doesn't cost me anything.

You could say, what about dignity? But I let that go about 20 years ago. Dignity? Pride? What's pride? I got no pride. I'm not bothered with pride.

I ain't got time for that. Ain't got time. So I was going to give you a tour of my flat, but instead, what I'm going to do is tell you about my books.

So I've sorted my books into categories, excuse me, which I used to do. I said, excuse me, because I just let out a big burp, a big smelly gassy burp, but it's okay. It's, I think I can smell it.

Still don't smell as bad as the carpet. Thanks, Andre. Thanks for using the carpet as your personal anal wiper.

So I've got my little bookcase. Well, it's taller than me, so it's probably, I'm about six foot six, so it's got to be about seven foot tall. Or if I was five foot eight, it'd probably be about five, 10 high.

But of course, because I'm so tall, in fact, I'm so tall that there's no measurements that can actually measure me. You know, when you go into a doctor's or a hospital, you get an examination and they take your weight and your blood pressure and they go to do your height. I'm too tall, but it doesn't go.

It doesn't go high enough. It's basically what they write is just wow next to the height. Just wow, because I'm just so tall.

So I've got this bookcase. It's a black bookcase. I've had it for a while and it's got, I can't have shelves at the bottom because Andre knocks everything off the shelves.

I mean everything. And he'll keep doing it, keep doing it and keep doing it. He never gets bored.

His favourite thing is basically anything that annoys me. That's his favourite hobby. So I've got one, two, three, four shelves where I could have six.

And on the top of the bookcase, look at it now, it's just behind my desk on my table. So I sit with my back to it. Not now though, because I'm standing with my front to it.

But I don't normally stand with my front to it because it's a bit boring really just to stand there like this. I don't know what else I would do. I mean I could, I'm looking at it, but you know, the television's behind me.

The chair's behind me as well to the left. Television's behind me to the right. And the laptop screen is facing the other way, so I can't even see that.

Of course I suppose I could turn the laptop around, but that would involve putting in effort. And I'm like, the least effort is my preference in all situations. And I'm surprised I haven't been run over.

Seriously, I don't, the idea of having to keep turning my head to sort of check for traffic, I do it, but I just, sometimes I can't be bothered, I turn my whole body. I do, I just turn my whole body around. You know like you do when you've got, when your neck is maybe a little bit, you know, maybe, I'm not, I've, I'm treading into, I've trodden onto something.

I've trod on plastic, and it's stuck to my foot, well not my foot, but to my slippers or my Crocs that I wear on my feetie. Anyway, I forget what I was talking about because the plastic on my feet has distracted me from whatever little golden nuggets I was producing. So, on that bookcase in front of me, the black bookcase, I have, I bought it in Argos.

See, Argos is all right. I had them delivered. You know, when I had them delivered, I bought five bookcases because they were on special offer.

You know, they had an offer if you buy, well, did I get six? So, if you get, if you bought more than a certain amount, there was like 25% discount. So, I took advantage of their discount that they offered me. Now, the delivery man, he was not happy, which I was quite surprised because I assumed he was getting paid.

So, he was moaning, he said, well, you bought so many. It's like, what? He said, what? And I just thought, you know what? It's one of those situations where it's just not any point getting into a conversation with him. It's like, oh, because, well, not until he got all the stuff delivered.

I want to make sure he got everything up the stairs first before I was going to be rude to him or rude back, but then I didn't bother. I just said, thank you. Love you.

I just gave him a little kiss and he went away. He seemed happy enough then. None of that happened.

But yeah, he was a bit like, why did you order so much? I'm like, well, because that's how retail works. You buy stuff. I mean, unless there's some kind of rationing on bookcases that I'm not aware of.

But I didn't say that to him. So, I've got these bookcases and I've got, how many I've got now? I've got one, two, three, four. So, I've got four.

I'm going to go into the bedroom now. Yeah, I've got four bookcases. I had six and I gave two away because I couldn't be bothered with them.

Because I already put four up and that was just, that was enough. I just didn't, I just, I shouldn't have really given them away. I've got to stop giving my stuff away, but I just couldn't, the effort it took to kind of put them together, four was enough.

Plus, I don't have enough books to fill them at the moment, although I'm working on that. And I hopefully will end up getting my book collection up. So, to this bookcase, the one in front of me that I am looking at right this second, see the curtains on the right hand side of me, so the windows there, I always find that's the best place to put the curtains.

And it's actually light outside now, because it's four minutes past five in the morning. I'm not even tired, which is weird. So, who I am now, well that changed quickly.

And I whistled as well when I said that, sorry. I can't say quick without whistling sometimes, but now every time I say quick, I won't whistle. Quick, quick, quick, it won't whistle.

It's when I, it's like I catch myself. You know, it's like when I, when I go to say it, I say it correctly, my mouth is ready. But when I say it really quickly, it's like my mouth, there's a part of my tongue that's just not ready to do it.

I think my tongue just gets lazy, like the rest of me, and just nods off, perhaps it's reading a book or, I don't know, on Facebook or whatever. And then suddenly I say the word quick really quickly, and like it whistles. Honestly, I hear dogs barking when I say quick, quickly, quickly, because of the high whistle thing.

So, on this bookcase, I have a picture, it's in a little frame, of me and my nan. And I'd say it's from about 2000 and 11, 2010. Mind you, it might have been a lot longer than that because I don't have a beard.

And I've had a beard pretty much the absolute years and years and years and years. But the only pictures, and that's a picture that my dad put into the frame, and it's a frame that I bought my nan from the gift shop that I used to work in. And that would have been in the 2000s, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, something like that.

So I'm not sure how long ago that picture was taken. But I'm wearing a red jumper that I had until a couple of years ago. And it was full of holes.

I don't mean just the standard holes, you know, so I could put my hands through and get my neck into it, my head through, but just other holes, like I think under the arms, the elbows, around the nipples. It's weird, I don't know how, I don't know. But it just wore out.

There's probably more to do with the washing machine than anything else, because my jumper was having a relationship with a washing machine. I only found out probably six months into it, I didn't realize, but they were meeting up and going out and, you know, that's why I just wear and tear. I was like, where's my jumper gone? Where's it gone? Didn't know.

I asked the socks. Socks says, don't ask us. We know nothing.

Okay. You know, when you kind of know that there's more going on than you realize. So I went to my underpants, I said, look, spoke to the socks.

You share the same draw. What's going on? You must hear things. And my underpants, they said, look, I'll be, do you want to be, can I be honest with you? I said, yeah.

He said, look, even if we knew what the socks had been, you know, talking about in the draw that we share, I don't think we'd tell you. I said, why not? And they said, there was only one pair of underpants that was talking, but the idea that all of them would be talking is ridiculous. And they said, he said, or she, it's hard to tell.

I don't know. How do you, sex a pair of underpants? How do you figure out which, you know, why would you want to anyway? The pants, the underpants said to me, well, look what we do. You know, we don't really, we don't really class you as a friend.

What do you mean? I said, well, look, look what our job is. Look where we live most of the time. Well, that's why we like it in the draw.

Because it's better than what happens when you take us out of the draw. Oh, that's nice. What a lovely image.

Here's me thinking that we had a close relationship, but no, no, no. It's all this unsaid stuff. In the end, my genes told me everything about the jumper.

Because they, they used to date and genes was jealous. So that's what happened. You ever start to tell a story and you kind of wish you hadn't started and you're thinking, oh, you kind of want it to end, you want to finish the story, but you kind of just want to stop halfway through and talk about something else.

Yeah. So this bookcase is a picture of me and my nan. And for some reason, my dad, you know, when I moved into this flat, my dad got a picture frame and he filled it with pictures, like, just pictures, a couple of them with me in them and our family stuff.

It's in a storage room somewhere. But yeah, I had it on the wall when he was there. And every picture of me is me without a beard, like clean shaven.

Yet, I've had a beard now, pretty much solidly, it's not always a big beard, sometimes it's a small beard, but pretty much solidly since 2002, 2003. So, you know, that's 16 years at least. And before that, I had a beard-ish most of the time from the age of 18 onwards.

I had a few little periods when I didn't. So even when I was working at the weekends or and I needed to shave, I'd shave on a Saturday night. And then I wouldn't shave again until the following Saturday night.

So I'd have a beard by the end of the week, because it grows pretty quick. Wouldn't be a big, big, massive beard. You know, I wasn't able to braid it or put little flowers in it or anything.

It wasn't that kind of beard, I didn't look like a hell's angel. But it was still a beard, you know. But my dad, he doesn't have it.

For some reason, I think he's anti-beards. He's prejudiced against beards. I mean, I didn't think he'd ever run out of things to be prejudiced against.

Clearly, he must have done if he's gone to beards. So that picture of me and my Nan does not represent me. In fact, I wouldn't put it past him if that picture's been photoshopped.

He's gone online and just found, you know, someone without a beard and just stuck that on the bottom of my face. That would explain why it's a different... Wait a minute. Let's have a better look at it.

That's not even my chin. I can't believe it. That's not my chin.

It's not even the same colour. It's a different... Wow. It's a nicer chin than mine.

But still, you know, if you've got a picture of yourself, it's nice to have your own chin, isn't it? Plus, in that picture, it looks like I've got more than one chin. I almost look overweight. And I'm proper skinny.

I'm so skinny. Six foot six and really, really slim. Blonde hair.

Like an Adonis, really. I mean, that's the thing. I mean, you can tell by my voice that I'm like a dream.

A good thing about voices is you can be... That person can be anything you want them to be. So, I spent years working on phones. Not, you know, like answering telephone calls and speaking on the phone.

And guarantee, I bet you, guaranteed that I wouldn't be able to guess what any of the people looked like from their voice. It's just really, really difficult. It's... So, my book collection, here's the bookcase.

What I've done is I have the first shelf and the second shelf for hypnosis books. And a little bit of the third shelf. And then the other part of the third shelf are NLP books.

That's Neuro Linguistic Programming. And then if I turn left, so I pretend I'm crossing the road, so I turn my whole body to the left. And they're my therapy books, like counseling, psychotherapy, those kind of stuff, on that bookcase.

Now, I used to have a book collection that was groovy, really good. Not just did I have a lot of hypnosis books, but I had a lot of therapy books. Counseling, psychotherapy, all types of loads and loads and loads, plus loads of books on psychology, philosophy.

So I had probably 600 plus books on therapy-related stuff. Now I've got a lot less, to be fair. Let me see how I count them.

So these are just therapy-related, like hypnosis, NLP, psychotherapy, counseling. So these are all... I'll count them. So I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61.

So I had 61 hypnosis books. So again, it's a fraction. Well, everything's a fraction, isn't it? That's a fraction of what I used to have.

But what fraction? It might be a really big fraction or, you know, just because someone says a fraction, like, wow, you mean you had loads more. It doesn't mean you had loads more if it's a fraction. Anyway, 61.

So now I'm going to go for the NLP books. So I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. So 61, 71, 89.

Is that right? 61 is me being all big and clever about fractions, but I can't add up stuff. 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. So 79 so far.

See, just a tiny amount. And now I'm just going to try and step over all this rubbish so I can count these books. So 79.

So these are the ferret books I've got. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. So I've got 43.

Therapy, counselling, psychotherapy, you know, that kind of stuff. And that's it. That's not all the books I've got, but that's all the therapy books I've got.

Now I forget. So it's 79, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122. There's 122 books, which is poor compared to what I used to have.

But some would say, 122 books is 129 more than me, which wouldn't make sense. But I just used to have lots of books. It used to be my hobby, you know.

And, you know, I'd like to have... I just want my books back. I want the books that I used to have back. And when I moved here four yards ago, I had... I had probably maybe 20 books.

So, you know, I did kind of build them up again. But there's a lot more. And so I've got a wish list, an Amazon wish list.

And I thought it'd be groovy. I've stuck the links on my Facebook page and on Twitter. But I suppose I should try and stick it on my website.

But it's basically a list of wish lists. It's just books, just books that I say I need. Obviously, I don't need them, but I kind of do in the sense of to put stuff into my head and to, you know, to learn new things and to be reminded of stuff that I already know.

And, yeah, I think that makes sense. And, you know, from a hypnosis point of view, I even like reading beginner's books on hypnosis. And you'll see that there's beginner's books on my list, my Amazon wish list.

And you might think, why? Why would you want a beginner's book? Well, I'm glad you asked. The reason is because, partly because I want every single hypnosis book ever. And I want to own them on my bookcase because this is my life.

But also, every book, I would say, not every book, but a majority of books I've read on a subject, is something to be gained from it. It might just be one paragraph, one line could be worth the book. And also, I like to go in from different angles and read the same stuff, but written in a different way.

And I find that I absorb it, or I understand it a little bit deeper, if it's explained from like five or ten different people, from different, you know, perspectives. For example, when I took up reflexology, and I was studying it, I bought loads of books on reflexology. And some of the books are really good with the mapping, the mapping of the feet, the bottoms of the feet, and, you know, the different parts to press on.

And then other books would be perhaps a bit more specific in the history of reflexology, and how far back it goes to ancient times and Egyptian times. And then another book might be written by somebody from an acupuncture kind of background, so they go more into the meridian side of things, the, you know, the connections between the different parts of the body, and, you know, the map of the feet, you know, the different parts of the feet. And then you might get someone that is, I don't know, like a medical person, like a nurse, or someone medically trained, who can then go more in depth into the medical benefits, and, you know, that could be useful.

Because that's kind of the point of doing it, is to help people with medical issues, or, you know, not just emotional or physical. And then you might get someone that's actually a reflexologist, who's been a reflexologist for a long time. And they might not bother with any of that stuff, might like cover it a little bit.

You know, here's the points to rub into, and, you know, look out for crystals and crumble those crystals under the skin. And, you know, that's part which stimulate this part of the body and, you know, all that stuff. But they might spend 90% of the book talking about case studies, case histories, patients that they've had, successes that they've had, maybe failures, you know, things that they've learned from.

And then you might get another person that writes from like a legal perspective, somebody that's really more concerned about health and safety, and and making sure that both the therapist and the patient or client is safe and covered legally, you know, by insurance, making sure that all that kind of stuff is taken care of. So, you know, that's what I like. I like to have all those different perspectives.

And I find that it's rare to get all those perspectives from one person in depth, because I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I've not read every book on reflexology. I did read a lot though.

And just like I read a lot of books on Asperger's in the early 2000s. And again, it's a similar kind of thing, you get different. It's just a subject I was interested in at the time.

And with hypnosis, you get, you've got some people that don't believe in hypnosis, yet they teach it. But they believe in belief. They believe in, if the person believes that it's going to help, the more that they believe it's going to help, the more likely it's going to help.

Some people believe that the more money you charge a customer, a client, a patient, in hypnosis, the more likely that they will benefit, because they have invested, the more they invest, the more likely of success. Some people believe in the energy side of it. You know, some people believe in the spiritual side of it, that it's more of a spiritual thing.

It's a connection, like an energy, spiritual connection, that we're all connected, which, you know, energy wise, we are connected. Everything's connected. But different perspectives.

So I've got books and I've read books. I've read more books than I've got over the years. And one of my favorite books was by this man who's Irish.

When I mention that someone's Irish, or someone's a man or a woman, it's not, I'm just, I'm kind of reminding myself of who they are, so that I can kind of get the information into my verbally, to like, spurt it out. He was a doctor who retired. So I think he was a surgeon in Ireland.

And he wrote a book. I think he wrote one book. But his book was about hypnosis and his clients.

So he did talk about how he did what he did. But it was more of a case study book. And I wish I still had it because it's a brilliant book.

And I've not been able to find it online. And he basically was in his, I think he was in his 90s. So he retired from being a surgeon.

I'm guessing you can retire quite young in that kind of industry, probably 50s, maybe 55 or something like that. With a pretty good pension as well, I'm guessing. So I imagine he didn't have to work.

But he got, he was interested in hypnosis. And then when he left, he stopped being a surgeon. He retired.

And he decided to do hypnosis, because he loved it. And he would spend 10 to 12 hours a day, or to see 10 to 12 clients a day, clients, patients, whatever you want to call them. Every day, like six days a week.

I know that's not every day, but I'm saying this. He worked continuously. And he wrote this book, talking about the successes and not just the successes, but he talked about, you know, his experience over like a 30 year period of being a hypnotist or hypnotherapist full time as a second career.

It was a great book. Doctor something, I guess, honestly, I need to try and find that book. I'd love to read it again.

And the reason he said he did it is because he loved it. And he felt he was in a hypnosis trance all day long. He said it helped his health.

It helped his mental health, his well being, physical well being. And he was happy. He was kind of happy, you know, all day long, because he was, he was tranced, tranced out.

And he was helping people. And he felt great. And he was still doing it in his 90s.

So maybe there's hope for me, maybe, maybe when I retire, I'll be able to, I don't know if I ever want to see people. I like doing stuff online. Because you reach a bigger audience, not audience.

That's not the right word. More people help more people, which is what I do, what I'm trying to do. And I could be talking to one person, of course, I wouldn't be doing this with one person, because you're not, people aren't going to pay me to sit there and just talk about my book collection.

And that would just, you know, therapy, that's a therapy that doesn't exist. That type of thing. Apart from here, online, I mean, there's other people that do boring stuff as well.

For sleep, I'm not the only one. But the benefit of being online is, let's say if I do a hypnosis session for sleep, or anything else, I could be sitting with one person in the room. Or I can record it at home, put it online.

And have, maybe for that recording, if you know, have maybe 600 people listen to it. Maybe 1000 people, who knows, it depends. I mean, over time, 10s of 1000s over time, you know, but in a short period of time, 100s, within, you know, within a few hours, maybe 100 people might have listened to that recording, when only one person would have listened to it, ever.

That, you know, in the history of that, that hour of me talking, only one pair of ears would have heard that. Instead of, you know, over the next 10 years, 1000s and 1000s of people would have heard this recording, this one that I'm doing right now. A few 100 people would have heard it by the end of tomorrow.

If I put it out for 24 hours, a few 100 people. But you know, in a year's time, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years time, 10s of 1000s of people might have heard just this recording. But if I'd have done that with just one person, just one person would have heard it.

And that kind of doesn't seem fair. It's like a missed opportunity. So that's why I do online, because I can, because the opportunity's there, the facility's there.

If the internet didn't exist, I'd be sitting here doing this. I'd have clients, I'd have people just in a room with me. But I'd still want more than one person.

Because, I don't know, I just, I just want to help more than one person at a time. That's why I used to do the group recording, group sessions, you know, 13, 14 years ago. 13 years ago, I used to do group, group sessions, and like in, you know, in a room with people.

It just seems more beneficial than just one person. Although, you know, I've done counseling and therapy one-on-one with hundreds of people as well, I suppose, over the years that I did it. So, yeah, I like both.

I just, I love offering a free service and helping thousands of people for free. I think there's something amazing about that. Being able to do that, I mean, being, having the opportunity for someone like me, with no education, well, I'm educated now, but leaving school with no education, not getting a degree until I was 40 in counseling, but sort of self-taught myself along the way, really, in a sense of education by reading, sort of during my life.

And then starting to learn hypnosis, doing courses and reading, you know, watching videos and doing more courses, you know, reading more books. And then the internet came along. And it's like, wow, everything, at that time, not everything was on the internet.

When I first started going into hypnosis, the internet didn't have what it does now. It took like an hour for a picture to come up. You know, that was, there was times when it was very frustrating.

But now, you know, once YouTube appeared, with all the videos, and it just made things more accessible. And, you know, there's so many documentaries on there about hypnosis that I'm going to be watching, that, you know, I'm going to just about getting around to doing it. But I love all that stuff.

I think it's, the internet's great to reach and help people. And luckily, and I don't know why, I know why from my own perspective, because I'm an auditory person. I like to listen to things, in a sense, more than reading.

And more than watching television in some ways, I like to listen. Because I'm quite attentive when I listen. I hear what people are saying.

That's why I struggle with closing my eyes. When I'm in groups, that's a group of people in a room, because I'm listening to every single person. And it's, let's face it, it's difficult to hear what everyone's saying and understand what the context is.

So that's why I prefer like one-on-one, or better still, just me talking on my own. It's the best scenario. Because as Rodney Dangerfield said in his stand-up concert, he said the good thing about talking to yourself is if there's something you don't want to talk about, you don't bring it up.

And that's a good way to leave it. I love Rodney Dangerfield. I know quite a bit about him because I studied comedy, like the history of comedy, especially in America, back in the 40s and 50s, and in the 60s, and how it kind of grew.

And I had this amazing book and it had, it just listed and told stories about the old comics, you know, like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, just all of them. But you know, the list is just too huge. But Richard Pryor and all the ones that, when I read the book, they were already famous.

Some of them already kind of had been famous and had moved on. It's a great book. It was like an encyclopedia of American stand-up comedy, the history of it.

It might have been called The Last Laugh, or The Last Stand, or something like that. I bought it in 1991. And I don't know what happened to it.

I don't remember what happened to it. I might lend it to another comedian and didn't get it back. But I might not have done.

I did lend it to someone. It's amazing. I've got to remember this.

I lent the book to a comedian called Harvey O'Leary. And he was an Irish comedian. Deadpan, very funny, very, very funny.

And one of his jokes, and he's not on the circuit. So I'll tell you one of his jokes. And he said, I bought The Joy of Sex, the book, The Joy of Sex.

And I was going to follow the instructions. But I gave up in the end because it just took too long to grow the beard. That was a bit in here.

See, it was funnier when he said it. But it's like a deadpan voice. Yeah.

Anyway, it's very funny. I could tell you stories about comedy. But I won't at this time because it's time for me to say goodbye.

I've gone over time, but I try and make it 60 minutes, but this is 74 minutes. And it's okay. I think I'll be forgiven for being boring for longer than 60 minutes.

So next time I might read out the titles of the books. Thank you for listening. And I will see you next time.

And please, if you like what I do, share. Tell other people about it. Hopefully you're asleep by now.

But if you're listening for company, you're listening just a bit of light relief, then yeah, maybe let other people know. I don't have to be your dirty secret. You can share me.

I'm still here. I'm shareable. I'm just a voice on the end of a computer or in your phone.

I'll still be yours. So take care and I'll speak to you next time. Bye.