#365 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (1st April 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name's Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You To Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

And if you would like to send me a gift, you can do paypal.me forward slash jasonnuland and it's on my website, the link. If you would like to listen to this recording without adverts, you can do by going to my website, going to the menu, just clicking on the page, Let Me Bore You To Sleep, continuous play, no ads. You press the first recording and you can listen continuously with no ads.

So yeah, so I've got four of my top podcasts on there and you can do that with. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'd like to say a big shout out first of all to Rachel, my friend Rachel.

Hi Rachel. How you doing Rachel? I turned my light off in my kitchen. And the second, I think the film with Rachel, the reason is because she's having a hard time at the moment with, you know, this whole self-isolation.

And I know many, many, many other people are as well. But knowing that other people are also finding it difficult, isn't particularly soothing, you know, for yourself, is it? It's someone saying to you, you know, if you say, well, I'm really ill, I've got this illness or really, you know, lost my job. Yeah, thousands of people have lost their jobs today.

You know, you're working for a big company and you're among 6,000 people who have lost your job. Doesn't make you feel any bad, does it? You know, so lots of love going out to Rachel and of course everybody else. And another one, a big thank you is to all my supporters, all my listeners, because today, or yesterday rather, I've reached the 1 million mark for downloads.

So at this moment, I've had 1,899,000 podcast downloads in 14 months. So yeah, I just want to say thank you. And there's lots of people to say thank you to, so I won't even try to attempt it because you know, it's a huge task, massive, massive task to actually say thank you.

But what I thought I might do is do a little thank you, give you a little a little thank you to some of the people that have made a difference. And I won't remember everybody, but some of the people have actually, that stupid ferret is scratching at the front door. It's one o'clock in the morning, I don't need this.

Andre, here boy, you're not a bloody dog. Come on, Andre. There's a good boy, there's a good boy.

No, he's at the front door. Scratching. So he wants to go out.

Plus his back legs seem to be going. And I don't know if it's one or both the legs, but he keeps falling over. So I'm hoping that it's like a temporary thing, that maybe he's just pulled a muscle or something like that.

But I've, you know, I've examined him. Not internally, but externally examined him, sort of moved his legs around. And there's no winces or, you know, he's not, he's not in pain or anything.

So I just don't know. And he's not old, he's not even five yet. He won't be five until August.

So I don't know. But it's not stopping him wanting to go out for a walk. In fact, this doesn't seem to be stopping him from doing anything.

Apart from standing up. You just, I don't know what it is. It's just, oh God, he's winding me up.

I've actually put something in front of the front door purposely to stop him from doing this. But it doesn't seem to be doing the job. And I made a mistake just now by opening the front door, just to see if I'd had any mail or anything, packages.

And when I closed the door, he was there. I thought he was fast asleep, but he's in that zone of constantly getting running up whenever I move, thinking I would take him out. And there's no chance I'm going to walk around the streets at one o'clock in the morning with no street lights on.

And so he's trying to, I say he's trying to climb onto the black chair. He is climbing onto the black chair. Just done it.

But he just doesn't have the same strength in his, in his, in his arms are okay, but lower legs, his legs just, oh, you want to give me a cuddle then? Hey, there you go. There you go. Give me a cuddle.

Just keep away from the microphone. Good boy. Are you all right? What's going on with you? Huh? What's going on with you? You're being a silly Billy, aren't you? Are you being a silly Billy? Are you being a silly Billy? What's going on? What's going on? He's also not very calm at the moment.

He's very, well, active, I guess the opposite to calm. He wants to do something. So he climbs up on me.

He clearly wants my attention. But once I've got him on, you know, once I'm holding him, stroking him, giving him cuddles and that, he's looking at me like, is that it? Is that what I'm getting? Why aren't you putting your coat on? Why aren't you putting your shoes on? And why aren't we going outside? He's like, Andre, I can't, I don't want to go out at this time in the morning. Are you scared? Don't be rude.

You're scared of the dark. He sneezed in my face, which is, this is not a good time to be sneezing in people's faces, Andre. I sort of did it on purpose.

Do that to a police person and you'll go to prison. Yeah, you don't lock up ferrets. No.

Oh, do you want him? He's pushing me away now, he wants to get off. Okay, go away. He's probably going to go to sleep.

It's quite warm in here at the moment. The heating comes on and off at weird times because during the day it's quite nice, but at night it gets proper cold. But then sometimes it's a bit too hot.

I've got an itchy eyeball. And the birds in the cavities of the wall or in the loft are whistling. Yeah, well, I think there's like a whole aviary up there.

Seriously, there's a lot of birds up there. I don't know if they're birds or if they're pigeons. Birds or pigeons? Pigeons or birds? Well, yeah, the pigeons are loud.

Very inconsiderate pigeons are. Very demanding of your attention, aren't they? They're very much like cocks. Like on farms and stuff, but with a cock crawl.

You're kind of expecting it, I suppose. I wonder if they do it, if there's no fence to stand on, but pigeons. And then there's this big tree outside.

It doesn't look heavy, but I bet it is. Big tree. I don't know how tall it is, but it's probably twice the height of this building.

It might not be. I don't know. But it might be.

So it's quite high up. And there's a lot of birds in it. And I hear the birds.

And I love the sounds of birds. I do. And I've had some people complain in the past that I've done a recording.

They said, can you can you get rid of those birds, please? I think someone shared. So can you someone kill that bloody pigeon? I was like, well, yeah, I can understand the pigeon thing. Because it's like, it's just constant.

It really is. It's, yeah. Very, very, very annoying.

At times. And it doesn't bother me any other time apart from when I'm trying to make a recording. Because it's very loud.

It's very kind of piercing. And it seems to move through the through the walls, the sound of it, you know, even with the windows closed. And so I can perhaps look at ways of soundproofing the windows.

But they are double glazing, apparently. From the looks of it, they were the first ever double glazing windows produced in the world. I mean, they're that old.

So I don't know what to do. It's like yesterday, I did a deep sleep whisper. And it was early hours, probably six o'clock in the morning.

And I was sitting in my shed in my bedroom. And I've done so much work trying to get it soundproofed on the outside, still waiting for the soundproof and for the inside to come in the post. Well, not in the post, but delivered.

They wouldn't fit through the letterbox, I feel, somehow. Unless it was a magic letterbox, which would be strange, wouldn't it? And so I've been working on the outside, figuring it's not about me being soundproofed, so other people can't hear me. Because I'm talking quietly when I do recording, especially, especially when I'm doing the deep sleep whisper or the sleep hypnosis weekly ones, or relaxation session.

I'm not exactly loud when I make these recordings, am I? But I'm even quieter with those. So it's a case of just trying to block out the sounds from outside. And in my living room, I do have, I've got soundproofing behind me on this side of the room, loads of soundproofing on the other side of the room.

But it's a big, well, when I say it's a big room, it's bigger than a shed, that's what I mean. And so it's a fair-sized room. I'm not sure if it echoes in here.

It would, if I didn't have the soundproofing, I think, because I don't have much in the way of furniture. I've got four bookcases, a big black squeaky chair that's falling apart. It really is manky now.

And got my punch bag on the wall, television on the wall. I've got my table and chair, that's my desk, basically. Another little bookcase where, which is upside down, but I keep stuff on the top of it.

And I've got another fold away table right next to the other chair. This chair I'm sitting in now should be the chair that I'll be sitting in when the shed's finished. But I've kind of started to get used to sitting in it when I make these recordings, because there's no squeaking going on whenever I move.

It's comfortable for a short period of time, you know, like an hour. It's not comfortable to be watching television in, because there's no back. Then they would be probably pushing my boobies up, like just underneath the breasts.

That's kind of the, yeah, or the bottom of the shoulder blades, probably would be an easier way to say it, maybe. But it's kind of there, obviously depending on how big they were and how old it was, I suppose. And I don't know, but just I'm saying it's about sort of, it's not mid back, but just a little bit above, which means I can't rest my head back, which I like to do if I'm watching telly.

I like to just, not all the time, and I don't watch much television really, and not just sitting there watching, but sometimes I do. But there's always, always something that I can do on my website. There's always work to be done.

That website's never, ever ended, you know, it's always stuff to be done. I've got loads to do on there. And I'm trying not to spend too much time on it, instead of making recordings, if that makes sense.

So I don't want to work on the website instead of making recordings. It has to be additional to making recordings. So yeah, so there, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I figured a way, it's a little rhyme really, a little way to sort of cut down and reduce having to go out so much is, what is it? Actually, it's not a rhyme, but it's sleep more, eat less. So the more time, whenever I'm asleep, I'm not eating. And I don't eat a lot.

I don't, I'm not like constantly eating. I literally eat when I'm hungry. And I don't have a huge appetite, because very little of the food that I eat even tastes nice.

And there's a lot of it just like frozen stuff that I put in a microwave and, or it's sandwiches or toast or, you know, it's not, it wouldn't be, let's say if someone said to you, when you go to a restaurant, I'm going to take you out to a restaurant. Oh, lovely. What are we going to have? Oh, the menu.

And you showed them the menu, which is the stuff that I eat. You wouldn't want to go to the restaurant. You know, you just thought, oh, oh, frozen lasagna.

Oh God, sounds lovely. Cheese on toast. Mmm.

No, it's very, very bland. Yeah. I want to marry a chef.

No, I don't. I don't know if I'd want to be, I think the problems is what I've noticed in the past is sometimes if someone cooks a meal, they expect you to do the washing up. I don't like that pressure.

You know, I don't, if I'm a guest, I don't want to do the washing up. I do washing up every day of my own. I just don't want to, it's that idea is like, well, I'll do the cooking.

You do the washing up. I say, okay. But in that case, please don't use every single utensil out of your kitchen to make this meal because you don't need to.

You don't need to use every single bowl, every single plate, every single pan. You know, it's just a meal. Because I think it's easy to be a little bit, a little bit generous with how much equipment you use when you don't have to clean it after it's, I noticed that in kitchens.

So I used to be a kitchen porter and the chefs, the cooks, whatever, they didn't care. They just use it and they just chuck it in the sink. And the worst is the people that let everything set hard.

They put it in, they don't soak. You have to soak. Of course, there's some things that you don't wash, like some frying pans and or woks.

They don't, you know, maybe they put salt in them or something. They don't wash them. And sometimes, you know, if you know someone that's got a big wok or frying pan and you washed it, they get so angry.

They're like, wow, how would you cope with the war if you're getting angry at this? So I learned from a very early age, I'm talking, yeah, my first kitchen porter job was when I was about 13. It was in this restaurant. I guess most kitchen porter jobs are in restaurants, aren't they? It could be a hotel, but this wasn't a hotel.

Although I have been a kitchen porter in a hotel as well. Also, I've been a kitchen porter in a fire station. Yeah, no, no bus station.

That's in London. Huge bus station. This big, massive canteen.

I was, excuse me, I was a kitchen porter there. It was the other side of London, and they didn't want me to go back, which was weird. Well, not weird, but yeah.

What other kitchen porter jobs have I had? I was trying to think. So there's that one, and that one at the hotel, the restaurant, the hotel. I'm sure there was another one as well at some firm, company.

And I was a kitchen porter in there. Yeah, I think. But the important thing is you need to soak.

Everything needs to be soaked unless you're going to wash it straight away. If you're going to wash it straight away, it's fine. But if it's not, ideally it needs to be rinsed off at the very least.

Rinse it off. In most kitchen porter jobs, with plates, they put it into a washing machine. So you rinse it off first, you put it into the tray, the track, rack, whatever, and then wash it.

Or pull the thing down and, you know, standard thing. So I did, you know, that was good. But it's the saucepans that were just ridiculous.

You couldn't wash them. You could, but it was hard to just stick them on the side. Okay.

And then it moaned because they were left there soaking. It's like trying to remove cement from a toenail, you know, underneath a toenail. It's hard because it's set.

I mean, the same happens with like porridge, ready brick, and try anything else, other things like that. And muesli as well. You know, if you just leave a bowl which has had muesli in it, and don't soak it or put it into some water, it is like cement.

So I suppose really I wanted to thank some people that have made a difference, that have led me, not led me, I've led myself, but I've been, I don't know, useful or just important. It's just an important, valuable person. There's been a few people that have, like, kind of maybe been encouraging or pushed me a little bit to do what I do.

And most of the people that I've known have been very negative towards what I do as far as like real life. And only in the sense of how much you're charging, how much do you make. You know, if you charge a pound for every recording that you people download or listen to.

Yeah, I can work out the maths on that one. Yeah, I'll be a millionaire. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I didn't, and I'm not. So there you go. And there's a little, that is a little bit frustrating, especially when I meet someone that I like, and they just say the same thing.

Why don't you charge for it? Why don't you make any money? And I just like that person a little bit less. And it's a shame. Because it'd be nice to meet someone that just got it, you know, just got what I'm doing.

You realise it's not about that. It's about helping people. The last 14 years of my life has been about that.

Not about anything else. And yeah. But on a kind of a flip side, I know there's some people that say that what makes the money is because they care.

Especially people that know me in real life, like now, watched me do this for a long time. And they see that I've got no money. And I'm perhaps at times really struggling financially.

And they're sort of saying, well, why don't you try and make some money? Why don't you try and, you know, monetise the website and sell recordings or something? And they're basically thinking of my wellbeing. So I kind of should be a bit more grateful for that. And I am.

I am a little bit. It's just, I don't know, when you set your heart on something, it's hard to sort of back down, really. I've semi-backed down with the adverts.

I've adverts, I've played with the adverts for over a year. Having them, not having them, having them, well, two years actually. And so basically people have got the option, they can listen with ads or without ads.

So that seems to be a fair compromise from my point. And then more recently, this is recent, it's only like two, the adverts have been back on for two days. So it's not exactly that long ago that I did it, but I think during March I had four days of adverts, maybe five.

Yeah, something like that. Maybe six, but so it was very, only a few days, a few at the beginning of the month and three at the end, something like that. So, it's now a new month, it's the 1st of April 2020.

I do wonder, are the newspapers going to do any kind of April Fool's tricks? You know, the weird stories, like spaghetti growing on trees, like they've done in the past. I don't think they dare. Honestly, which is a shame because probably this is a time when we need a bit more humour, but there's not a lot of it about, not on television anyway.

And it's probably harder for people to be humorous about something where we're all involved in it. You know, it's like, oh, I want to laugh at other people. I don't want to laugh at myself.

However, I like laughing at myself. I think it's funny, it's funnier. I do, I have more, I'm not into make fun of how other people look, but I will make fun of how I look.

It's just, I don't know, it's more enjoyable, I think. Maybe it's just me. Oh my goodness, I bully myself.

Yeah, well, I do sometimes. Internally, I don't mean internally. I mean, thinking wise.

Yeah. And I'm a regular Ann Summers shop. So I was thinking what people have made a difference to me.

I'm not going to say their surnames. I'm just going to say their first name. And I might not even say their real name.

So you won't know, you might not know. So going back, who would have had the biggest influence on me wanting to help people and, or to be kind? And I'd probably say my grandmother, my nan. Yeah.

One of my big influences are because she was really kind, always went out of her way to help people. And she'd do it in person. I don't like doing it in person.

I don't like making people cups of tea. And that might be partly because I've done it for a job. You know, I've made coffee for thousands and thousands of people and tea for thousands of people and been a little servant, you know, in various jobs I've had.

And because I don't drink tea or coffee other than one coffee, I have one cup of coffee in the morning. Well, at do with my breakfast, whenever that is, one cup of coffee, that's it. It's all I have once a day.

Never drink tea or coffee the rest of the time. Just don't. So if someone visits, obviously not at the moment, but you know, in the future or in the past, when someone's visited, they have to ask for a cup of coffee.

Because I don't even think about offering it. Because for me, the only reason to make, to offer someone else a cup of coffee is if I'm having one myself. That's when I kind of think, oh, I suppose I'm going to drink this.

I better just offer. But I don't really want to. But you know, then I say, oh, do you want a coffee? But the idea of going into the kitchen and making someone else a cup of tea, when I'm not having one myself, seems a bit ludicrous.

You probably imagine thinking so, and you wonder why you've got no friends. Well, that's another reason behind the thing is, I've never had a place where people visit me, ever. I've now got this flat I've had for nearly five years, well, five years this month now.

So there's a separate living room. The only time I've ever had a separate living room from the bedroom was when I was 17. And I lived in a flat for a year.

I was 16, in fact, 16. And it was a flat above the chip shop. So I had that flat, separate living room, separate bedroom.

A 40 pound a week kitchen. I had to share the bathroom with the customers of the chip shop, because there was a restaurant down there. And by law, they had to provide somewhere for the customers to poo.

So they used to do it in my toilet that I was paying for. They should have reduced my rent, shouldn't they? Look at that. Yeah.

So I, oh, there's also, they used to store, there's a storage cupboard in there. They also had an office. So they all had access.

Like a kind of, I suppose like a staff room or whatever, I don't know. So they had access to my flat all the time, pretty much. The only time I could lock the door and bolt it was at night when the shop was closed.

But then I'd want to be able to get in in the morning. So if I had a day off, I had to come down and let them in. So yeah, it wasn't ideal.

It says, even then I didn't have my own space, not really. So this is the first time really I've had my own space. And I had a few visitors over the years, a few, not many.

But the important people don't want to come here because of Andre. And sort of like a parent, dad won't come here because of Andre. The brother and his wife won't come here because she's scared of him.

I've got another friend that's scared of him. I can understand being a little bit weary the first time because you've got this little furry thing that's constantly moving. Not constantly moving, but he's very active.

He's very excited. But you'd think that they'd have a bit of trust in me, knowing that I'm a calm person. Therefore, any animal that I have and that I've raised from being a baby is going to be a calm animal.

I'm not going to have an angry, yappy dog. I would have a calm, peaceful dog because I'm a calm, peaceful person, generally. If you've got a dog, if you're shouty, then a good chance that dog's going to be shouty as well.

So I've kept him. I really can engage him in a fight because he loves having a punch up. He loves biting me.

We do it on the bed usually. And it might sound weird, but I'll kneel down next to the bed and I'll push him away and he runs back. And I'll let you wrestle with my hand and I'll bite one hand and I'll pinch him with the other hand and he bites that.

And I chuck him to the other side of the bed and he runs back and he climbs underneath the duvet and tries to sneak up on me. And then so they shoot out and bite my hand. And sometimes I do end up with a lot of scratches and a few bit of blood sometimes, but I let him do it.

He doesn't do it off of his own volition. I allow him to do it because he gets to the point where he can't control himself anymore. He's almost feverish, kind of real just out of control.

And he enjoys doing that. Sometimes he's up for it, but sometimes I'll actually try to engage him in it and he won't. I'll push him.

I'll push him off his legs or I'll sort of grab him and be a little bit rough, just a little bit. And he just looks at me like, you know, that's out of order. What kind of parent are you? No, Andre, I'm just trying to play.

No, that's wrong. Why can't you just be gentle like other fathers? I can't win with him. At this home tuition, you know how hard it is to get him up in the morning anyway, to take him to school.

Now to say, oh, you've got to stay, you've got to be in front of the computer for an hour and a half every day and you've got to do all this stuff. He's not into it at all. Does not like being told what to do.

Yet when he's at school, apparently he's good as gold. Absolute perfect. And sometimes I'm walking him in the park and he sees one of his teachers.

Hello, Mrs Johnston. Hello, Andre. This is perfect.

And then he goes back to sort of swearing again. Oh, how come you, Andre, why can't you be so good at school but you're so naughty when you're at home? And he just sort of looks at me and says, because I can. What are you going to do about it? Everything doesn't have to be a confrontation, you know.

You want to fight about it, do you? You want to have a fight? No. Sierra, I don't know why I'm talking about him. So the people that have had an effect on my 14 years, 14 years, man.

Can you believe it? 14 years. And it's actually 21 years last month. No, this month, actually.

No, it was this month. I did NLP courses. My actual first strictly hypnosis course was 20 years ago, this month.

But I've already read loads of books, already done other courses and stuff. And it's like, wow, it's crazy. It's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy.

This is going to sound a bit weird. So I'm trying to think of other people that have had an impact on me. Now, I used to read the New Testament Bible.

I know I'm laughing when I say that, but I used to, like proper, really into it when I was about 12. And I wanted to be like Jesus, not in a kind of religious way, but just the helping people way. That helping people for no reason, for nothing in return.

I liked that idea. And I didn't know it was called altruism or whatever, but back then, I liked that. And so that might have had a little bit of an impact, I suppose, maybe, you know, in future life.

But I'm not... He's saying he's like Jesus. No, I'm not at all. No, I'm not.

And I'm trying to think. Milton Erickson had an impact on me. He's a hypnotist and very famous in the hypnosis world.

Very, very famous. Milton H. Erickson. And I studied him, read his books, read books about him, and then listened to audios, lectures he did.

So I kind of tried to absorb something about him as a person. And as far as listening to recordings, I used to listen to a lot of recordings when I was younger, for many years, actually, all kinds of books that were recordings, you know, Seven Deadly Habits, Seven Habits of Success, whatever. The Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, The Alchemist, Ken Livingstone's Seagull, as well as books on NLP and Tony Robinson, Tony Robbins' books on tape.

So I listened to lots of that kind of stuff, as well as lots of sales stuff as well, like Zig Ziglar and other people. There is... I'm also Buddhist. And I used to listen to Buddhist tapes, meditations, things like that, learning how to meditate back in the 90s.

But there was one particular recording that I used to listen to over and over again when I was trying to reduce my stress, also trying to stop smoking. Well, I did stop smoking listening to this. And it wasn't a stop smoking recording, but it was just really deep relaxing.

And it was a Redfield, something Redfield, I think her name was, Sally, Sally Redfield, why is it coming to my head? Maybe it is, I have to look. I'd love to have that recording because I loved it. And it was just a guided relaxation session.

But the music was beautiful, as well as her voice. And it was just really lovely. And I used to listen to it every single morning for months and months and months in 2000, no, 1999 slash 2000.

It used to last about 20 minutes, I think. But I really was able to relax, really kind of helped. So I suppose in a way, that would have had an influence on me in later life making recordings.

But I didn't really make many recordings that were as guided as that in a sense of visual. I'd like to maybe try to start doing more of that. Plus, I never had my own music.

So I don't know how to create my own music for my own recordings, which I'd like to kind of do as well at some point. It might happen. Well, I think it will happen.

I just need to, you know, maybe not now, maybe in a year, two years, three years, I'll perhaps get some kind of keyboard, MIDI keyboard that connects to the computer and maybe find a way of making some sounds that fit the mood that I'm sort of portraying, you know, the energy. Yeah, so that should be interesting. And I can learn and I have in the past learned basic chords on the keyboard.

I can't remember them, but I used to know them. And so, you know, I'm sure I could kind of get back to some of that a little bit. So yeah, I might, yeah.

But so I think that tape had an impact on me. Or the time it definitely did. But maybe it's sowed the seed for the future.

Because I didn't know I was ever going to make a recording ever. I didn't know. I mean, in them days, to do something like that would cost an absolute fortune.

You have to go into a professional recording studio. Plus the production costs, you know, I think it was a tape, but we also had CDs back then as well. So to put together a CD with a cover, it wasn't cheap.

It's a lot cheaper now, but back then it was expensive. I didn't know the first thing. And there was no information online because the internet was in its infancy.

So I didn't even think about it. I mean, the very first time I ever actually made a recording was in, I think, probably 2000, 2001 time, maybe 99. Yeah, it might be 99.

But I was doing some music, some recordings with my cousin. I didn't do the music, but I did the singing. So we were writing some songs.

But at the end, at one point I did this, because he had all the equipment, microphones and computer and all that stuff. And even then, it's better quality then than what it is now, like 20 odd years later. But he had, you know, his dad was in a band, a professional musician, and he was a whiz, absolute whiz on all that stuff.

And my cousin, and he produced, it was more like dance music, house music, garage and stuff like that, just garden shed music. That'd be what I'd do, garden shed in your bedroom music. And I did this little recording where I just taught, you know, well, just the same kind of thing as what I do with the relaxation sessions.

You can just lay there noticing the sounds of my voice. At the same time, the feelings of the bed underneath your body supporting you, noticing your lower back, almost starting to feel like it's stretching gently and that kind of stuff. And but then I said something really rude and just, you know, I was kind of just messing around.

But it's kind of something in my head, sort of thought, you know what, I'd quite like the idea of doing something like this. But it was almost an impossibility due to the cost of putting something together, CDs and all that stuff. So I didn't even really give it a second thought.

And then in, I think it was 2001, I started making recordings for myself to help with my stress and to help with me being a better salesperson and, you know, being more focused and positive and stuff. So I did that, I think, every now and then during for a few years, not constantly, but I did the occasional recording. And I'm sure I made a recording for someone as well on a tape or maybe on a CD.

And then in 2003, I started making recordings trying to help me with stress because I was going through quite a difficult time. And I was laying down and I'd record it and then I'd listen back to it. And it was kind of weird.

But by that time, I had done hypnosis with people, occasionally. In 2004, I launched the free hypnosis service in my town for pain relief. But I had a couple of people wanting to see me for other things.

So I did relaxation stuff. So I did that for a good practice, but only people I knew. And I'm not even sure how I ended up doing it.

What was the... Yeah, I'm not even sure. What made me think like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make a recording and stick it on MySpace. I'm gonna make a video and put it on MySpace.

There was an idea I had. I didn't know that other people did it. There was a couple, not many.

When YouTube came out, there was less than a handful, I'd say, of hypnotists on YouTube. And I was one of them. I didn't know people did it on YouTube either, because I wasn't searching for other people doing it.

I was just doing it. It was like my own idea, even though other people had already had the same idea. And one of the original people was Adini.

Adini, E-D-I-N-N-I, I think, or E-D-I-N-N-I. His YouTube channel was 2004. No, not 2004.

Maybe 2004. Wow. Maybe 2006, 2007.

No, YouTube wasn't around in 2004, was it? Oh, maybe, I don't know. I'm sure it was 2007. So kind of the same time, roughly.

But I'd already been doing it on MySpace, and also I had podcasts and stuff. But I'd like to sort of... I can't quite remember what the thing was in my mind for, you know, I'm going to do this. I do remember that I just ended a relationship with someone, or it just kind of naturally kind of came to an end.

And instead of feeling sorry for myself, which would be my natural response, I decided to focus and put that energy into creating something, to building something. And I just had to be in a good position, because I had money. I didn't have a lot of money, but I had a job.

So I had regular income. What I thought was a stable job. I was living in a place that I quite liked living in.

It was in the Buddhist community. At that time, it was quite nice. And I thought, yeah, I'm going to give this a go.

I'm going to... Yeah, so that's kind of what I did. I've talked about in the past, I won't go into big, long details. But yeah, I just... But there's people that affected what I did and kind of... One person particularly pushed me, because I wasn't hugely impressed with at the time, but it did make a big difference.

So the first person I mentioned is my friend Noel. And the reason he helped me, he's helped me lots of times actually, over the years. The reason... The first thing he did to help me... Well, I'll tell you a little bit about him.

I won't tell you a lot about him, because it's personal. But I'll tell you a bit about him. I've known him since 1991, which is nearly 30 years.

And he ran a comedy club. He was the owner of a comedy club, big comedy club in London. And he was also a comedian as well.

He also went to acting school with Gordon Williams in America. So he's a very interesting character. And if you met him, you wouldn't forget him, because of what he says.

And very funny. And he goes off on one. He's very verbal.

He's a verbal person. So it's a bit like me. But I'm probably more verbal when there's no one else around.

I don't know. But I don't like distractions, like other human beings being in the room, or someone else wanting to talk. That distracts me.

But he's helped me. First of all, I've known him a long time. He was always nice to me, when I used to go into the club.

If I took girlfriends in there, he'd always go in and make out that I was important, or something like that. And I remember once, when I was a security guard, I don't know if I went in there while I was wearing my uniform, I don't know. So I must have finished work and just gone straight to the club.

And he took my uniform off me, put my hat on and started marching up and down the comedy club. So I think he took my jacket, my jumper and my hat, because the jumper had the, not parallels, what are the things that I have on the shoulders? I should know. I used to be in the sea cadets, but I forget what they're called.

Because in the sea cadets, you'd actually have stripes and stuff to show what level you was at, in authority or whatever. So that was funny. And I think he might have even had a skateboard or a scooter as well.

But I think the first, the big thing was in 1997. The end of, it was probably September time. I'd had a hell of a year.

A really, really awful year. It just been one of those years, personally, that was just, it's just been a really difficult time on various, various different levels. And he saw, I mean, I hadn't gone into the club probably the whole of that year, actually.

I hadn't gone out, I hadn't had any human contact really much, but everything kind of fell apart in my life. Without being dramatic, but it was difficult. And anyway, I went in there and he came up to me and I was just, I don't even think I was drinking alcohol.

I probably just had a drink of Coke or something. And he was, I think he bought me a drink and he came up and said, Hey, how are you getting on? You don't look very well. You don't look very, very good.

And I said, Oh, I told him what had been happening. And he said, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And I don't know if he said it then or he walked away and then came back.

But he said, do you fancy being a DJ? I said, what? He said, do you fancy being a DJ? I said, no, I did hear you, but what do you mean? And he basically said, I could, if I fancied it at the weekends, I could be a DJ at the comedy club. And after the comedy finished, I could just go there and pay my travel and give me as many drinks and stuff like that. I'd get fed.

It'd just be just for a laugh really, just to sort of get me out, give me a social life because I didn't have a social life at all. And it basically saved my life. I don't know how much of my life he saved because if it was a literal save of life, but it definitely changed my life.

Like definitely 100% changed my life. I went in a different direction to where I was going. Admittedly, I moved away from the comedy, which is ironic considering I was in a comedy club.

I moved away from performing comedy, but I moved towards hypnosis. I moved towards working in sales and being, I suppose, successful and I'm being good at the job, which is something that I'd wanted since I was 18. So it took 18 to 31, quite a few years, isn't it? Between doing the sales canvassing for Double Lazing, being really confident and it wasn't until I was 31.

Well, actually I didn't, I had some confidence then. I had some confidence in 95 when I was at Butlins. I probably had a bit of confidence when I was a security guard in 96.

I think you get a little bit of confidence from doing a job like that, I think, because it wasn't all sitting at desks. At least one occasion when I was in the accident and emergency ward in the hospital, I was in a bookie's office, you know, a gambling place, where it wasn't an easy ride, you know, it wasn't just sitting there on my own. I worked on a big, massive building site as a security for the opera, Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

I had a lot of contact with a lot of people, a lot of builders and stuff that were just, you know, also people outside keeping them out and letting lorries in. So that was, yeah, I think that gave me, I gained some confidence from doing that and I think I got a bit of confidence once I started doing the sales as well in 2001 and I stopped. My sales career kind of came to an end in 2014, 2013, something like that.

No, 2014. Yeah, so I say came to an end, I mean, nothing's ever ended, is it, until it's ended. So I might, who knows what's going to happen there.

But Noel, one day I was in the office and he taught me lots of different things. I got to learn lots of new things, including using the internet, using computers. I'd never used a computer before.

I had a computer, in fact, but I never used, but I learned in the office how to use it because Innes taught me how to do stuff, taught me how to, she was the office, well, she was the manager pretty much of the whole place, but she was spent most of the time in the office during the day and the club was open at night. So she taught me how to use a fax machine, how to type out a letter, how to do tax returns, how to use a photocopier, things that you need to be taught, you know, it might be easy, but it still needs to learn, still needs learning. And at that time I had never done any of that stuff.

It was alien to me because most of my jobs previous had been labouring kind of work, physical, loading lorries or putting stickers on bits of frozen meat and cleaning, you know, all kinds of stuff. So during that little period of a few whatever time, I learned a lot of different new skills that would be useful in future jobs. And it wasn't about earning money for me because I didn't care about earning anything, but, you know, I could go in there, I could go in and have a dinner, go in there with a girl, a lady friend and, you know, and I'd be treated like, you know, not like a king, but, you know, I'd be treated really well.

I knew all the waiters and waitresses, they'd always show, you know, lots of respect to me and my girlfriend or whoever, or if I had friends and, you know, I mean, it was just really beautiful, beautiful thing. Best, I don't like the sentence best years of my life, but they were on one level, best years of my life. And from a confidence perspective, my confidence boomed, especially with other, with humans.

You know, I learned how to, I spent a lot of time with a doorman, so I learned how to turn people away from the door, learned how to be confident enough to say no to people. Don't seem to be able to do it anymore, but I did then. And even though I wasn't a doorman as such, I was, they'd leave me, so I've got to go to the toilet, I've got to do something, and I'd stand there for 10 to 15 minutes, not all the time, but occasionally, and they'd say, no, you're not coming in.

And I could do that to a group of 20 people and not be, not feel intimidated, where I wouldn't have been able to do it beforehand, because the doorman actually taught me how to do it. It taught me the mindset, what to say and what to do after you've said it. So it's kind of, yeah, it's interesting.

I did learn a lot. And without, as I said, even though it wasn't a job, it was, it was more like a, a vacation, kind of like a working vacation. I was there.

It wasn't an employer, it wasn't a job, but I was doing stuff that was useful. But I was also getting food, I could drink, although I didn't used to drink that much, but I could have, if I wanted to, had more to drink, but I wasn't really a, wasn't really a drinker at that time, not until 2000 when I stopped smoking. That's when I became a drinker.

And one day in the office, my friend, Noel, he gave me this leaflet. He said, look at this. I said, what is it? And he said, oh, it's NLP.

He said, have you ever heard of NLP or something? He said to me, I said, no, what's that? He said, well, it's because he knew that I was into my self-development. I started listening to tapes and all kinds of things to try and get me back, to get me motivated, to try and build some confidence within myself, to then build on something else, to sort of move forward. So, and he said, have you heard of NLP? So I said, oh, I don't know.

What is it? And I looked at it and it just, this thing, but it was not until the following year. So I think it was probably in, no, I can't remember, I can't remember the order of it anyway, but I said, no, I'll have a look into that. So I basically, I signed up to a course in 98 at City University and it was one evening a week and they did it term time and it was the introduction to NLP.

And then I went and did the training in 99 as a NLP practitioner and then master practitioner and then it had hypnosis involved in it. And that's when I really, to be fair, I already knew about hypnosis because I'd been studying it since 98, so January. So I've been studying hypnosis since then, but not NLP.

NLP was kind of a new kind of thing that I also studied in 98, but later on. The point is he led me, he kind of guided me or was there. I wouldn't have known about that stuff.

I wouldn't have got into hypnosis if it hadn't been for him and for me being in that situation. And he helped me to cover the cost of the training. So, you know, he was just brilliant.

And then if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have got my first sales job or my second sales job. So I got references from there. So it's kind of like voluntary work in a sense, but out of it I got brilliant references, especially from my friend in the office because she taught me how to use the computers, how to use phone systems, how to talk to people on the phone and those skills I hadn't ever used before.

I never knew existed, you know, I'd never had to. I'd like to think that I've always been pretty good on the phone. And yeah, I mean, even as far as Innes, I had to move and my nan broke her hip.

So I decided to move to away, closer to where she lived. And I was visiting the hospital and I actually ended up going for a job interview in an insurance company and they offered me the job to start the following Monday. It was like quick.

And I stayed in bed and breakfast and I said to my friend in the office, I don't know where I'm going to, I've got nowhere to live. I can't find anywhere. And she said, have you tried the YMCA? So I did.

I found the YMCA up in that town and said, yeah, we've got a place you can stay. It's a room. It's not a hostel, it's a room, you know, it's a different sort of section to YMCA.

And I went there, moved in. And so I was at the, probably the bed and breakfast for about a week. And then I got moved into this place.

And so that was like all went together. And then when I qualified as a counsellor, Noel actually helped me to set up my business as a self-employed counsellor. Now the business didn't go very well at the end because of the cuts and everything.

So most of my work was with charities. So I was getting paid, but unfortunately the charities could no longer afford to pay. So everything kind of got cut down from, I think at one point I was doing 26 hours a week to about three hours a week.

So it was, you know, very kind of quite poor and I just, you know, it wasn't doable. But if I hadn't been for that, I'd probably still be doing it actually. Maybe.

So that's, he's been an important person in my life and still is. I've kept contact with him. He's now retired.

He's living in another country. But I still contact him, still speak to him every few weeks or every month or so, just to sort of keep up with how he is. And so thank you, Noel, if you're listening.

Probably not. Got better things to do, I'm sure. Got better things.

That's not good. It's like saying that no one else has got better things to do. But I can't imagine anyone that actually knows me would want to listen to me.

That's what I'm saying is, if you've known me for 30 years, the last thing you're going to want to do is probably listen to me talking. I mean, that just would be cruel, self-cruelty, self-harm probably. So the next person in connection with this stuff would be my friend Teresa.

Now she did it by forcing me into a situation which I didn't want to do. Because I started this free pain relief service locally, 2004. Nobody was interested.

The public. Had the occasional phone call, but practically nothing. And then I gave it a big boost at the beginning of 2006.

And I also started making videos and recordings and stuff like that, and putting them online. Well, my friend, who I've known since 2002, pretty much, I went to massage college with her. We learned holistic therapy.

I didn't finish the course, which she did. But I did learn the massage part and the reflexology part. I still didn't get any qualifications because I didn't finish it.

Anyway, we kept in contact. I think she was so fed up hearing me talking about what I was going to do, yet I never did it, that she pushed me into it. So she phoned me up one day and said, uh, yeah, I've got a friend.

I said, well, that's good for you. She said, no, no, that's not the reason I'm calling. I said, uh, she said, I've got a friend who needs you to help her with hypnosis.

And she's taken her driving instructor test for the third time. And if she fails it, she won't be allowed to take it again, something like that. And I said, when's the test? And she said, in two days time.

This might not be totally true. The time span might be a bit different, but it's about that. I think I saw on the Monday and the test was on the Wednesday, something like that.

Well, I wanted to say no, because I didn't feel confident. I genuinely didn't feel confident to do it, but I had put out all these flyers out and adverts and website offering free pain relief. So I kind of launched myself as being a hypnotist, hypnotherapist, or whatever you want to call it.

And she was so, I don't want to use the word pushy, but pushy is the right word. But I said, yes, I really didn't want to do it. I didn't feel confident at all.

But she pushed me into it. So, okay. See, doing a video, I was okay with doing audio recording, but face to face with someone I've never met before.

Well, I did it. She turned up with her friend. They sat in my living room.

And this was in the Buddhist community. I asked the rest of the people if I could just be left alone for an hour and a half in there, because I didn't have anywhere to go. Well, they both sat there.

So my friend, Teresa, sat there and so did her friend. So I aimed at her friend. Teresa sort of sat there with her eyes closed as well.

And we were there for, I don't know, an hour, hour and a half, something like that. And then she went away. And I got a text from her saying I passed.

So on the Wednesday, whatever. So she passed a driving test. There's a driving instructor test to be a driving instructor.

Then she went on and started her own school. And it's been very successful, which is brilliant. Now, I felt good from that.

That gave me some confidence that I'd not really experienced before. I had the confidence to do online, but to do it in person, I was with people I didn't know, didn't really, you know. And then what did she do? I think she oh yeah, she phones him up again.

Teresa, I've got someone else. I said, what? I've got someone else that needs your help. I'm thinking, God, why did I have to have a friend like this? I just want to be left alone.

I'm working full time. I like the idea of telling people I was a proof that I could do what I said I could do. And I didn't know if I could do what I said I could do.

And I'm thinking, God, how many driving instructors do you know? And she said, no, it's not that. It's my boss's wife. She's going in to have her breasts removed.

And in four days time, and she's absolutely terrified and everything. Can you go around their house and do some hypnosis with her to calm her down and prepare her? I mean, yeah, okay. Not too much pressure then.

I never met her boss, but I kind of got on with her boss after that. And she was working in a card shop at the time. So I got to I'm not sure how I got around the house.

Maybe I got a taxi or something. And I saw her, his wife, and I sat in there for maybe two hours. And it all seemed to go fairly well.

And I've actually still got a letter that she wrote me, telling me that not only did she go in there and to the hospital, and she was not anxious, but she actually had a good laugh with the nurses and the other patients. And her recovery was a lot quicker. She wasn't really in much pain or anything.

I was like, wow, okay. So I'm sort of telling people, these people I've been talking about doing this for years, suddenly kind of calling my bluff. Another friend, who she still is, she's a Buddhist order member.

And she said to me, I've got a friend who would like to see you, would need your help. I said, okay. I said, what's going on? So again, I'm thinking, well, it can't be any more full on than the last one I just did.

I was wrong. She said, yeah, I've got a friend, she needs a double lung transplant, and she has to go in. She's on oxygen and she has to go into the hospital for tests on Tuesday.

This was on a Saturday. But I went around and saw her. And if she doesn't go into the hospital and have the tests, then she'll be taken off the donor list.

Because every time they try and get her in there, she can't go inside the hospital. Because she's had a long, lifelong phobia of hospitals. And she can never actually step inside the hospital.

But if she doesn't go inside this time, they're going to take off the donor list altogether and give up on her. And she told me the same when I actually met her. Like, okay, wow, no pressure then.

So I think I spent about three and a half hours with her. And at the start, nothing I did was helpful. It was, honestly, it was, yeah, it was difficult.

But eventually, because I don't give up, you see, eventually, I broke through. And maybe I watered down with boredom, possibly. And I spoke to her again.

Or she sent me a text. I spoke to her the day after the treatment. And she said, yeah, I went into the hospital.

I've got a letter from her as well. Stepped inside. It was easy.

I had a really good time. And I put another donor list. And everything's fine.

Thank you. She sent me a thank you letter. And I spoke to her probably a week or so after that.

And I said, if you like, I was doing this for free, by the way, I wasn't charged with any of this. And I said, if you like, we can meet up to prepare you for the transplant operation. So she said, cool, we'll do that.

But then it was too late because the operation came really quickly. We didn't have enough time to actually do any preparation. But she went through the operation absolutely fine.

She didn't feel anxious. She was surprised. She couldn't figure out why she was able to be so relaxed and calm through such an event.

So that was, from a hypnosis perspective, that was really successful. And then I was on, what was it? There is, I'm trying to think what other ones I saw. I can't remember.

But my friend, Teresa's boss, whose wife I'd seen, he started coming around to mine on Friday afternoons or Friday evenings, probably two weeks or something. And I'd do relaxation session with him, hypnosis relaxation. He zonked out completely.

I mean, I think he'd still be coming to see me now if I was living closer. He loved it. And I was doing that in 2007 with him.

And yeah, so that push from Teresa then led to a couple of other people pushing me as well. And it turned me from being someone that talked about doing it to someone that was doing it in reality, in person, with people face to face. And that led me to volunteer at an alcohol charity, doing relaxation sessions with groups, which then led me to being headhunted by the drug rehab center, asking me if I'd go and do the same thing for them, which I did, which led me to be nominated for a volunteer of the year.

Didn't get it, but it was still nice to be nominated with this whole drug alcohol organization locally. But I didn't get it, but it was the first thing I've ever been nominated for ever, I think, at that time. And that led me, being around those, the counselors, because both the charities had the counselors, that led me to look into becoming a counselor.

So asking for advice, what courses they'd recommend and stuff. And then I started doing a counseling course, a degree, with the sole intention of working at both of those charities as a counselor. That was my goal, really.

It was above doing... I was going to still do the online stuff, still do the... I probably wouldn't do the free hypnosis in person, because I'd be working doing hypnosis, so I wouldn't really have the energy to be doing it outside of work. I might have still done it, but I'd still... I wanted to try and mix, still do the hypnosis groups with the charities, hopefully perhaps get paid for it as well, if I was going to be working as a counselor. But I don't know.

But that's my plan. That was my plan. It didn't go to plan.

A lot of plans don't go to plan, but that's okay. Wish not, but it's what it is. So I sort of went a different way.

So I kind of feel thankful to both of those charities and the counselors that I got to meet there, because they had an influence on me, because they were all nice. And I thought, you know, it's always been a part of me that wanted to be nice. Not really pulled it off yet, but maybe one day.

I thought, yeah. So I'm trying to think, what other people? What other people? What other people? That's two other people. My friend Lisa, who's at university with me, I would not have got my degree without her.

She supported me more than was necessary, really. She went over and beyond, or whatever you want to call it. And I'm pretty sure I would not, I wouldn't have stuck with the course.

I would have left. So I wanted to leave. I didn't want to stay with it.

But she kind of, I don't know, kept me going. So a big thank you to Lisa. Don't see her anymore.

Lost contact with her. But, you know, without her, I wouldn't have got my degree. And it wasn't really from an academic perspective.

It was more a supportive perspective, you know. What other things? What other people? I suppose there's lots of people over the years. Because one little thing can change, can't it? One thing you do, person you meet, can change your whole life, your whole direction in life.

For, in a positive way. Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

What other things? I'm trying to think. Other people. Sure, there must be someone.

But I'm thinking from a hypnosis perspective. But to be, I mean, it's the clients, or the patients, or the, you know, whatever you want to call them. The people that I met, that I did hypnosis with, that actually I learned from.

So there was a man that had one leg due to amputation and had been in a motorbike accident. And he came to me because his leg, although it's not there anymore, it felt, they call it phantom limb pain, which is not a very respectful term to the person that's experiencing it. But it's, he felt like his leg was still twisted from the, you know, like it was the accident, which had been years before.

At the end of the session, he felt relaxed and out of pain for the first time in years, probably seven years, he said. And I thought, well, brilliant, obviously. I thought, wow.

I said, we'll come back next week. And I was doing it for free. All I was asking people to do is to pay for the cost of the room, which was 10 pound an hour, which was a little bit extortionate, I think, but that's what they wanted.

It was at this health center place. And he came back the next week. And he said, no, it's fine.

I don't need to come back anymore. It's absolutely fine. The pain doesn't come back.

It's gone. It's relaxed. I'm fine.

And I said, okay, well, I'll give you a ring next week, next Friday. So you can still come if you want to, but I'm just going to give you a ring to see how you're getting on, see if you need to come and see me. And I think he rang me and said, no, it's fine.

Then he sent me a letter a few weeks later saying about how I'd helped him. And it's like, wow. And I had similar experiences with quite a few people who had chronic pain issues.

And basically, it might sound cocky or even like I'm lying, but I pretty much had 100% success rate in person based on what they said to me. I mean, there's always a chance they might have been trying to save my feelings and sort of saying, yeah, it feels much better now when perhaps it didn't. But I like to think I'm not someone that I'm someone that you could be honest with in that situation, I hope.

So really, if you think about it, both Noel and Teresa, who sort of sent me in the direction of doing the hypnosis, led me to be a counsellor, which led me to also save lives along the way when I was counselling. That's part of the job of being a counsellor, you see people in extreme situations, and you're basically saving lives at times. So of course, you can't give the credit to other people.

We do what we do, don't we? You know, it might have led me to go to university, but I'm the one that's still had to sort of go through the wonderfulness of the three years of full-time education. Wonderfulness, beautiful it was. So yeah, I do feel grateful for those people, and I'm sure there's plenty of other people as well along the way.

And part of the reason I'm thinking about this is because of the reach in the over 1 million downloads and plays on my most recent podcasts since November 21st, 2018. It's the last 14 months. 15 months? Is that December, January, February, March? 16? I don't know, I might have put the wrong amount of months.

I think it's 15 or 16 months. Regardless of that, it's still, you know, I've never reached a million in anything, ever. I mean, there's a couple of podcasts that are nearly 200,000 downloads.

So it's like, wow, you know, it won't be that long before they're a million on their own, just on each of those individual podcasts. Possibly by the end of the year. I was like, wow, man, wow.

So it's only March, well it's April 1st, so I'm probably looking at reaching the second million before the end of this year on the overall stats. Possibly, maybe, potentially higher than that. 3 million perhaps.

However, I'm just pleased. I'm pleased with myself, I am. I don't mind saying it.

I'm pleased with myself for reaching over a million. It's a million 1,000 or something, just under a million, probably by now it'd be over a million 1,300 or something. If I looked at the stats now, it would have gone up.

So I'm feeling pleased with myself and I can only put a big sign on the wall to remind me of the stats and the date. Yeah, why not? Why not indeed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's it really, I think, for today's recording.

I seem to be getting longer and yeah, that's it. So I'm going to go. I will be back again tomorrow.

So in the meantime, remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy. Lots of love. Bye.