Ch.2: Driving Principles Behind Second Brain Hypnosis
15 Principles That Support Building Your Second Brain
What needs to be present in the collision of coaching, hypnosis and Second Brain to create a powerful pull and momentum to live a more values-driven process-drive self-aware life where you can embody principles of growth?
This chapter explores principles and theoretical underpinnings that the practical application of the Part 2 of the book discusses. It also feeds into a deeper understanding of Chapter 3: Pragmatic Second Brain Principles of Coaching.
Background
These are draft polished chapters from my book with the working title: Second Brain Hypnosis: Building A Second Brain To Become A World Class Coach & More Effective Knowledge Worker
Read Chapter 1 here:
This is equally relevant anyone who wants to achieve their goals (self-coach), coach clients better, and knowledge workers in general, who values insight, workflow and effective personal knowledge management. This book is based on a simple set of distilled principles and a workflow that integrates the best of coaching, hypnosis and the Second Brain.
Second Brain Hypnosis speaks to the idea that the very act of growing, nurturing and evolving a Second Brain has many parallels with traditional 'hypnosis'. And modern forms of coaching that coach the unconscious mind.
The principles from hypnosis and coaching are amplified naturally and tend to spontaneously evolve within a Second Brain. This knowledge alone makes it inspiring to go through the small learning curve that is required to learn any system and technology. Fortunately there are brilliant people like Nick Milo who have introductory free courses on YouTube that can get you going if you choose to use my system of choice: Obsidian.
And if you choose another tool, or pen and paper, that also works too.
Recently, a leader in the personal knowledge management space quipped about putting all the note taking apps to the test in a Battle Royale. I responded that this would be fun, and also that it would help people find the one that best suits them. I've tried many others and settled on Obsidian because of its simplicity, elegance, and how it allows me to link and develop ideas.
It's gold!
Note: the choice of platform or app is independent of the principles here, workflow and implementation.
As we look at a powerful generative coaching model in later chapters, all that power is harnessed for coach and clients and knowledge workers who know how to their Second Brain to become more essential, strategic and efficient in how they get things done.
Like the wise Zen masters, it's not only the outcome that we are working to, but a more mindful way that allows us to enjoy the process day to day. And get better results by modifying aspects of behaviour as we go, by focusing on those aspects that are most effective and resourceful for us.
This is a very personal journey, and one that you want to take.
The Second Brain is the externalised scaffolding and structure in which thinking takes place. Not only logical thinking. But relational thinking, where you find links between ideas. And the kind of thinking that assists in a development of new perceptions and increased metacognition.
As this happens, we leverage workflows of the Second Brain to more consistently access the flow state. We can use consistent systems and processes that are arranged in reliable sequences almost like a paint by numbers.
There is much artistry we each bring. But several decisions are no longer necessary, which means mental bandwidth is no longer wasted. For example, all ideas go in to the Second Brain. Thinking takes place in the Second Brain. Ideas are evaluated, reflected upon and developed in the Second Brain. And gains, and new metacognition takes place in the Second Brain.
15 Second Brain Hypnosis Principles
Here are 15 core principles that are behind what Second Brain Hypnosis, and that we will refer to. These are what needs to be present to create the best context for learning, growth in awareness that transform you ability to enhance our processes as we move towards outcomes.
15 Principles
1. Clarity of intention
2. Bringing together ideas
3. What gets measured gets done
4. Principles of hypnosis
5. Sit with ideas long enough to encode them
6. Building upon previous gain
7. Attention
8. Reticular Activating System (RAS)
9. Storing information
10. Train of thought
11. Templates
12. Feedback
13. Metacognition
14. Frames
15. Coaching frames and models
Note that coaching frames and models are listed at #15. They are important but only have power in this system once #1-14 are in place. Most coaches, therapists and hypnotists I know are super-experienced, talented, with training coming out their eyeballs. And this a good thing. But their disorganisation and lack of workflow causes them not to make progress in areas outside their comfort zone - especially their key goals.
To achieve those outcomes they most desire, they need ‘something extra’.
I am on a mission to help create a peer-based culture where we all make our contribution through books, our own podcasts, products and services. We take our experience and we highlight those frames and aspects that we feel have made the most difference, and share those with others.
One of my motivations is to want to help them to find their footing in being able to express their work: through books, classes, services, products, and trainings. The biggest barrier I see in most people I coach and mentor is a system to grow in awareness whilst developing a workflow that supports the evolution of their ideas.
1. Clarity of intention
Clarity of intention refers to knowing what you want and, more importantly, your sense of purpose. This can best be summarised by Feynman's famous ideas to have 12 driving questions in your life.
What are the questions that, when you ask them, will give you an inspired focus?
These questions will help you to stay in track and act as a North Star.
Beyond that are the deeper questions that answer why you have a specific outcome:
Why this goal?
What will it do for you?
Why is is so important?
If you didn't have this goal, what wouldn't you have?
The Second Brain is the place where you get to explore these ideas, and nurture them. Remember, new ideas are precious and can be fleeting unless they are born into existence and cared for.
2. Bringing Together Ideas
All progress including marketing and career progress depends on a collision of ideas.
It might be the simplest of simple ideas: a new spin on an old idea. In Hypnosis, people keep producing new courses on direct hypnosis or Ericksonian Hypnosis when the practitioners died years ago! There is nothing new: only repackaging, different framing; new exercises. Excellent framing.
Great exercises to install patterns.
Beyond this, there is what really excites me: being able to combine concepts and mental models from other fields into what fascinates you. This is where the Second Brain makes all the difference.
When you can be the kind of person who routinely asks, "Could this idea go to coaching/hypnosis/Second Brain/INSERT YOUR FIELD OF INTEREST AT THIS TIME?" then magic happens.
Cross-fertilisation like this is the manure that helps gardens and fields grow. The arboreal output of such things can never be predicted. Hence it keeps it fascinating for you and your clients.
This, by the way, is lateral chunking or Provocative Operation. And it is essential for growth.
It also ensures that your creative output will be ongoing, so the people you most want to support and influence can benefit from everything you have.
3. What gets measured gets done
This is a key philosophy to effectiveness. In general, nothing gets completed unless:
There is motivation (purpose)
Clear reasons to do it (why?)
Deadline
Scheduled time to do it
Accountability
Monitoring
When it comes to your ideas, you want a way to have a visual on what's happening, where you are in the process, how you are progressing, and be able to see how that fits into the whole.
Second Brain offers this opportunity: You will have articulated your keys ideas and you will have them in one place. Hence you know where you are, where you are headed as you observe any progress in real time.
When you interact daily with your Second Brain through making notes, reading notes and distilling ideas and relationships, you have a process that lends itself to feeling like progress is being made. And being able to see that in a tangible way.
The key is to realise this evolving a Second Brain is not a chore or another thing to do. The whole process is designed to save you time by outsourcing the act of remembering to your Second Brain. It means your ability to pick up where you left up from yesterday - or 6 months' ago - is unparalleled.
4. Principles of hypnosis
A few key ideas that have long been known in the hypnosis community can open a gates for you. Hypnosis is no longer widely considered a special state; the best explanation we can give is that it is a set of rituals and processes that create a context where the placebo effect is triggered, which leads to the placebo response. This context of expectation is vital for.
When we think about hypnosis here are key ideas that are relevant here:
1. Law of attention
2. Focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all else
3. Dissociation
4. Visualisation
5. Unconscious Insight
6. Relaxing tension
7. Keeping the conscious mind occupied
These are really principles of communication and awareness that have been very helpful to me and many people through the ages. They have been given different names. And the brilliant thing is that they automatically happen when you develop a Second Brain, the way I am going to show you.
What do we mean by Second Brain?
A Second Brain is a digital repository of your personal inter-connected ideas, insights, reflections and thoughts that helps you mirror, develop and embody progressive awareness and insight. By its very nature, it is generative, and it helps develop insight. It has feedback built in, and doing your thinking here naturally lends itself to the collision of ideas, creating a multiverse of ongoing growth. People have used a form of this throughout the ages. For example the Commonplace Book. It can incorporate or be built on physical books and papers.
A well-organised Second Brain keeps your conscious mind (working memory) clear. By reducing cognitive load, you are more relaxed and you can stay open to ideas and insights that naturally filtering through from your Inner Genie (unconscious mind) without having to force it.
5. Sit with ideas long enough to encode them
Ongoing and consistent improvements happen when we take the time to integrate them. In the old days of only using Primary Brains, we were at the mercy of our amygdala and the limitations of memory. Unless we sit with an idea for 20 to 30 seconds (see Dr. Rick Hanson’s work in Buddha’s Brain]) then effectively we lose what we encode.
When we get used to the principle of freenoting, it's a weird thing. It's like an Inner Genie is doing the work for us, and we're channelling it. This happens when we are operating in a distraction-free way, where we are relatively unfiltered and have a focus on the idea in front of us long enough.
The beauty of this is that, unfiltered, ideas and expressions come through like a torrent. Like waterfalls at Brecon that I camp near with my son and friends, the power of nature comes through you. You get more ideas through the principle of articulation.
And you keep amassing gradual gains.
6. Building upon previous gains
This speaks to the architecture of a Second Brain.
Before we go on, it's worth reflecting on how this is different from making notes or not map.
This may be best expressed in how things used to look for me:
Bookcases full of journals
Whiteboards
Pieces of paper
Sticky notes
Weekly to-do lists in various formats
There are 7 problems with traditional note-making methods that many people experience:
1. Everything is disconnected
2. There is no way to polish ideas
3. They are not interconnected
4. There is no way to assess the best ones
5. There is undue repetition
6. Inefficient to create new insights
7. Locating information becomes the bottleneck
Now I know there are physical journaling systems with sophisticated indexing that calligraphers and artists can us. I think these can be beautiful and still have a place.
But if you want to write a book, develop ideas, build a list online, create a fanbase or do anything related to this. Achieve you goals in a reliable way, or support your clients, customers or students to evolve and grow, then you need some kind of workflow that enables this.
Think about it: unless you have a way to scan everything in writing online or use copies of your hand writing, at some point if you want to build a business, you are going to want to write: Daily emails, weekly newsletter, a book, blogs, articles.
And that is going to be digital. So, I am experimenting with different ways of doing this, and my Substack has lively ideas for this including workflows, latest tech.
But, most importantly, keeping it all simple.
When you have a Second Brain, all your ideas are there, including your most recent train of thought. And if you use something like Obsidian, which I am using to write this, then you have a blank slate. (Or in my case a blank blackboard)
Writing becomes a lot easier. It's much easier to focus on the ideas and words as they come.
7. Attention
This is the universal currency of learning, growth and awareness. In fact, without it, we can achieve very little. Training attention is therefore a basic requirement in any system or workflow. It is fascinating to look at wisdom traditions spanning centuries that all essentially say the same thing: practice where you are placing your attention.
Develop this skill. Without it, no learning happens.
This is vital for us. Hypnotists have long known this. They use suggestion experiments like a hand clasp, finger vice or arm levitation to hone the ability of a naive subject to develop this skill of attention using their imagination. These ‘trance training’ sessions are powerful visual cues designed to trigger a placebo effect. And, if all goes well, the benefits of a placebo response.
Now it's important to realise that training attention has become harder these past decades. The well-document challenges with technology, constantly checking notifications on smart phones and general dumbing down of TV and films means that attention spans are getting shorter.
I have observed that, at least to some degree, the explosion in ADHD is partially caused by the context: where there are so much dopamine-triggering short term distractions that we become conditioned to this. Yes, there may be genetic factors. Same with obesity. But it is the training of the attention that is fundamental.
This is where Second Brain offers us great hope. By having a visual externalised brain, we are dissociated. It's like a holodeck where we can work out things, test them, ask questions about them, with no judgment. And only curiosity.
In this sense, it helps train attention because it commands our attention. And it requires very little effort in that sense. The physical aspects of typing, the sounds of typing (or music in the background) as well as the clear external visual of this digital connected scaffolding all serve to maintain enough attention to help a person stay on track.
As they do, what happens is more ideas come through. The law of attention kicks in, the law of articulation, and because you embody the idea of freenoting, you can grow.
Many noted authors like Robert Greene and Ryan Holliday use the index card adapted forms of strategies that are akin to Zettelcasten. Like them, I tend to be iconoclastic in a purist sense. But totally aligned with principles: if you don't capture your ideas and train of thinking then you have nothing to share with the world. Worse, you have no way to start to see the richness of your inner world - AND to grow it into the most magical garden.
When you do, it becomes a multiverse of colours, tastes, smells, ideas and opportunities.
This is what it means to be a human. To be alive. If you can't think. If you can't share ideas, if you can't evolve. Then you are a beast of burden. You are a hunk of meat, and you are prey to the vicissitudes and whims of power-hungry overlords: if you don't evolve your mind, other people will step in and do it for you.
Once you start working this way, the most important thing happens, which is you embody your Second Brain and you continue to grow. Your ideas are safe and evolving. All your best ideas. Your best trains of thought. Your models and workflows for sorting through shit.
Now this is deeply personal. But what are the chances that some of these ideas you are sharing are relevant and important of others?
Especially when they are hard-won lessons you have spent years getting. Or knowledge that you would have wanted to have at your fingertips 20 years ago that would have saved you years of struggle and toil.
That's what is means to be human. To be alive.
8. Reticular Activating System (RAS)
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is the part of you that scans and notices specific opportunities.
The classic story goes like this. A friend buys a yellow VW Beetle (or any other car). Now you start to see yellow beetles everywhere. It’s like there’s a club in your town, and the members keep popping into view.
This is because you are primed to see them thanks to your RAS.
Now the question becomes, “How do you train this aspect of cognition, and what do you want it to notice?”
Because your inner mind and your working memory are focusing on things.
Typically, from working with hundreds of people I can tell you what they are focusing on:
“I am worried and thinking about x. How am I going to do that? I feel overwhelmed and have tons to do. I don't know where to start.”
Now their focus is internally on their thoughts and feelings. Washing machine mind. Swirling around and around. Maybe switching to a spin cycle. But that's it.
When you take the clothes out of the washing machine or the dryer and close it. Leave the washing machine. Hang the clothes up in the sun. And now everything is still.
The RAS can only notice ideas when you primed for them, and clearly there is some relevance to them. There must be some neurochemical trance that says “Hey this is important. Let's notice it”.
For many people, this means they are focused on:
Anxiety and stress
Frustrations
Stress in relation to their to-to lists and activities
All of which means there is little bandwidth left for new ideas, insights and making progress with goals.. Now to be clear, it is good to have specific outcomes. But only when we embody ongoing processes that are related to them feeling a sense of ease, progress and competence. That's what the specific coaching tools can give you, when they are embodied within the idea of the Second Brain.
By using a Second Brain we clear the windscreen so we can see clearly what the RAS is highlighting for us.
9. Storing information
A Second Brain does us a huge service. One estimate quoted in the Knowledge Illusion of our brain is that we have 1 GB total storage. This is probably tough to prove definitively but it's fair to say it's limited.
For neurodiverse folk, it's a real issue. They can't function when their mind is focused on what to do, where stuff is. It triggers anxiety, frustration and sequence of negative spiral of self-esteem.
This is exactly where we end up.
The brain has a limited capacity for storing information: the primary brain that is. It can only hold around 1GB of information.
Sounds amazing but this was calculated in the (70s). In fact the classic work, the magic number +-7 now seems to have been over-ambitious. Current estimates look at the brain's capacity of working memory at 4 items. Early researchers may have been chunking together 7 items of information as 4 so that is seemed like 7 pieces of information were available.
Either way, as a general rule, there are very real constraints on memory.
We can't hold ideas, reflect on them, discover connections, remember trains of thought all inside the primary biological brain. It can't do that simultaneously without using up bandwidth of working memory. When that happens, there is less awareness, energy and focus for processes that could help us move in the direction we wish.
For neurodiverse folk (for example with any form or aspects of ADHD), holding a train of thought in working memory is an even bigger challenge. This is where having a Second Brain is a real lifeline.
Our brains are not designed for have metacognition, capacity for present moment awareness and, insight, reflection and critical thinking - whilst holding it all in memory: A Second Brain does this for us.
Yet our capacity to make links between the finite number of neurons is virtually infinite. And that's the beauty of the Second Brain. We have virtually for our practical purposes, infinite cloud storage capacity available for the Second Brain.
We simply don't need to suffer from the limitations of working memory. The anxiety and imposter syndrome so-called that many coaches, knowledge workers and therapists have is ore a function of poor workflow and inefficiencies of relying on the wrong tool at the wrong time.
We are built to use tools, and interact with the environment. The old nature-nurture debate missed the point that we need other people, community and tools to evolve our brains. And a Second Brain gives us the opportunity to do that.
Especially with the fragmentation of the nuclear family, the idea of being happy and focusing on who we love and what we want for our lives has never been richer. That's where we get to reap multiple benefits from a well-organised external mind that’s continually growing in value.
So the Second Brain is where we outsource everything:
Our worries
Anxieties
Questions
Goals
Strategies
Likes/Dislikes
Insights
Workflow
And by doing so, we have a clearer fresher working memory. We have confidence that our train of thought is available, like an "archipelago of ideas" (Tiago Forte). There where we need it. We can literally get back to our best thoughts and ideas when we need, and inter-link them.
The benefits of this for coaching cannot be overstated.
10. Train of thought
One of the frustrations that people have is losing where they are at, misplacing ideas, or being able to get back to where they were.
Have you ever had a wonderful train of thought, amazing idea and then promptly forgotten about it? Often until someone else implemented it?
For the private knowledge worker who wants to evolve, who recognises the primary and importance and sanctity of the individual, and their capacity for thought it opens up a whole world.
Because thinking is essentially mediated by moods, which are a function of complex triggers in the environment, responses and chemical cocktails; we need reliable ways to recreate similar conditions to get back there.
Traditionally, in NLP and hypnosis, and behavioural conditioning, this can be done by some form of cue, trigger or "anchor".
However there are limits on this:
What will cue us to use the anchor?
What happens when our current mood is so different that it overpowers the states?
How can we get back to the complex admixture of clarity, insight and wisdom that comes upon us we know not where from?
How can pick this up and develop it?
How can we nurture it?
Answer: Build a Second Brain.
And this has additional importance for coaching, where we are thinking of a form of assisted mindfulness to support us to develop the processes, ways of being and identity that supports certain classes of outcomes.
11. Templates
In traditional hypnosis, people use scripts. More enlightened practitioners use principles, and may on occasion use scripts. But behind these will be templates or ways of doing things.
In Obsidian and many note-taking app, you can create templates to coach you. And these will be available in the final book! These templates can help you to develop the optimum ways of being.
You no longer need to worry about being able to develop the right kind of thinking or action. Templates can be set up as an overall workflow. In fact they must. They must run end to end and have the typical stages people need to go through and have built in mechanisms to address points of failure. And to leverage failure as an opportunity for growth, insight and progress.
A Second Brain promises these strategies and can be used for self-coaching. Coaches who do this become more congruent. And then share this with others who they coach, mentor and train. When you do, you develop a feedback ritual that stabilises attention, and engages the creative faculty of the unconscious mind.
12. Feedback
Hypnosis works by feeding back expectation to the person who is being hypnotised. A savvy hypnotist sets up the context by asking people to take part in suggestion experiments. These progressively move a person to an "ah ha" moment they acknowledge "Something must be happening".
The point where a placebo effect is triggered is vital because it create the placebo response, which is where actions, thoughts and even a sense of identity can change positively.
Feedback is our way to grow in awareness. It is a core way to move forward. It's been hijacked in the corporate agenda to mean "criticism and complaint and unsolicited suggestions to do better". However, we need a mechanism where we can feedback consciously and unconsciously what the heck is happening. A Second Brain does this in real time.
You see it.
You have fixation of attention.
As you type, as you write and describe, you start to have different insights. And make new and novel connections. As you do, everything gets enhanced. As you change on the outside, your inner physical Primary Brain updates.
13. Metacognition
The whole idea of moving through this is that we can evolve. We don't want to be slaves to our Second Brain, so much as use it to liberate ourselves.
It's often gets missed that the confluence of hypnosis and mindfulness meditation is awareness. In fact there is functionally so little difference that it's moot to argue about it. The key is this: The only way to change, and the reason a person often comes to coaching or hypnosis is to change a perception.
They want to feel more confident. They want to feel more empowered. They want to feel more appreciated.
The only way that this can happen is by a shift in perception. To do that we need:
Attention
A shift in Perception
The ancient Greeks knew this, and used the Socratic Method. This form of enquiry has made its way into many modern approaches including CBT, DBT and Byron Katie's Work.
But the question is this: how does one get a person to focus on a question?
Or, as Jed McKenna argues, how do you get a person to ask a better question such that the answer is irrelevant or gets solved even in the asking of the question?
Such deep powerful and profound thinking can only be done in the Second Brain.
14. Frames
Framing is the most potent form of hypnosis that is used both to control people, and also, unconsciously, keeps us stuck. Stuck in our own limited perceptions.
Our thinking is cluttered with frames we have picked up from others, and from slopping thinking and generalisations. The authors of The Knowledge Illusion do a great job in summarising how we over-estimate what we know. And it's a bit of kick in the guts when you first read it.
Yes, once you accept that, you can see that there is a hidden opportunity in this:
When you become aware of frames and frame control, your life can change.
The secret is to become aware long enough to integrate and reflect on change is to do it in writing. To do this, it helps to have a regular space and place to do it. Now when you can link the insights to great cognitions, your values, plans to transform your results, and your goals, then you become much more empowered.
It is essential to break these internal cognitive frames (limiting beliefs, moods and expectations). But to do so requires a long-term approach where you can see patterns, collate them, observe them.
All with a spirit of curiosity and fascination.
Becoming engaged.
Hypnosis - at its best - is a process of becoming engaged with a sense of greater focus and absorption of attention to the point of fascination, wonder and awe. At this point, a person becomes aware of more opportunities or be willing to explore existing ones because their inner terrain is better.
To do this requires the power of breaking frames, and a Second Brain helps you do this.
15. Coaching frames and models
The rest of this book will look at how we can integrate the best of coaching - including how to work with the unconscious - with the best of Second Brain. And the best of Second Brain - using tailor-made templates that assist with workflow, train of through, stabilising attention, monitoring progress, building metacognition based on research, and so much more - with coaching.
All of this create Second Brain Hypnosis. Where you can maintain your attention and focus on what matters most, and evolve. You will find this process automatically updates your Primary Brain. And you will get a host of benefits that you are typically ascribed to processes like visualisation.
Thank you for taking the time to read this! Please comment below. Let me know what you liked! Your questions. Feedback. This will all help me create a better final book for you.
Peace,
Rich