The Hypnosis of The Second Brain

Building A Pragmatic Second Brain To Become A World-Class Coach

I’ll admit it. I've been wanting to write a book for a while.

And, recently, a friend and peer asked, "So where are you at?"

Whilst we were in the context of a hypnosis and coaching practice group, I said, "Honestly, where I am at is developing a Second Brain because it does everything I have trying to do with hypnosis, NLP and personal development for 23 years. And it achieves everything I have been trying to do with strategy, learning, focus, memory and study skills for the past 4 decades. "

As we were in a session discussing symbolism, metaphor and personal evolution, the question that spontaneously popped into my mind was, "Could 'Second Brain' be interested in going to 'coaching and hypnosis'?"

At that point, my mind metaphorically exploded with a collision of ideas. And, since then, I've experienced a kind of internal Big Bang that's helping me enjoy knowledge, insight, inspiration, intuition - in a pragmatic use-it-to-get-shit-done way.

For almost 2 decades, I have been adopting principles of hypnosis into coaching. I wrote about it our Amazon best-seller The Journey Inside: Coaching the Core.

In a blinding moment of clarity, now I realised, a Second Brain stabilises attention, absorption of attention, and bypasses the critical faculty. It allows for the connection of ideas. And for a deep deep connection to your unconscious. In fact it is a deep form of hypnosis, that can be used for personal growth, insight, and as an adjunct to a coaching and bedrock of any coaching program.

Consider that the basis of effective Ericksonian hypnotherapy is dissociation. When you externalise your ideas, you see them anew - from a distance. You start to reflect on them. You notice new patterns. You take yourself out of the maelstrom of washing machine mind.

The churning and shrugging of working memory. The burden of cognitive load.

And you naturally evolve. As you see your Second Brain, your physical embodied Primary Brain automatically updates.

It’s like magic!

I’ve never been more excited. Maybe as a kid waiting for Christmas, looking under the Christmas tree. Maybe!

All of which seems to be creating a feedback loop of ever-great internal freedom and expansiveness. Outside the capacity and bounds of my working memory; my conscious mind is just observing it going, “Holy Crap.”

I've been playing with the idea for a while of integrating Second Brain as a coaching tool par excellence because it allows for monitoring, insight, metacognition, linking ideas, producing books, videos and other outputs for coaches, hypnotists and knowledge workers.

Over a series of 10 (or so) posts here on Substack, I intend to produce the foundations of how to integrate the best of coaching, self-coaching and Second Brain. All being well, and with your patience and support, I will publish a book with a refined and more polished version as the end.

How’s that for leveraging accountability?

Here's goes...

The whole point of this project is to bridge the gap between where people are and what they want to be. At the same time, part of that is increased self awareness (metacognition) that results from appreciation of the process as the most important thing. And any end results as a byproduct of that. And, paradoxically, recognising too, that as coaches people want results.

The reason we want this to become an embodied process is because it if we don’t, then you get the goal and lose the lesson and habit. Like losing weight for an event. What you want is way of being that maintains optimum health.

As coaches and knowledge workers, we can leverage the principles of hypnosis using the Second Brain to train ourselves to engage and be in the way we want. Install ways of being and habits that are part of us. We will never get stuck in catastrophisation because we have.

Second Brain is separate from us - where we do the thinking.

Coaches tend to get stuck themselves on achieving goals like

• marketing

• mindset

• systems

- And the old chestnut, "more clients" (How many? How many more? How many more is enough? What kind of clients? What’s beyond that goal that’s not a feeling of lack?…)

Worse, much of the self-help and coaching industry focuses on ideals. For example, principles of 'stoicism' as vague ideas.

How can you implement and take your clients on a journey when you can't even do that yourself?

So coaches need help.

But what kind of help?

And what do we mean by ‘coaches’?

I am going to expand the definition of ‘coach’' to include any kind of knowledge workers who need to guide themselves and others in their efforts towards an outcome.

So you may be:

• A formal coach who runs a full time business

• An employee of a corporation, university or business who want so facilitate colleagues to get better results

• A therapist or hypnotist who needs to guides people toward their outcomes, and tap into their own inner resourcefulness

• A product creator who publishes digital products online

• An author who needs to crank out fiction or non fiction. Be disciplined and self-coach to do that

• A coach or hypnotists who wants to produce products

• A knowledge worker who wants to engage more effectively whilst nurturing a growing fanbase, and looking after their fans, building a peer-based community while capturing all their best ideas

This is where the need for a Second Brain is paramount.

How may times have you had a great idea? A great train of thought? Felt inspired?

Yet, later on, you try to remember or get back to that same state and feeling.

And somehow you can't remember it fully or expand on it.

Or it becomes disconnected.

Or life takes over.

Here's a statistic that floored me.

According to research Tiago Forte mentions in Building A Second Brain, knowledge workers spend on average 26% of their working day looking for information. They find it only 56% of the percent of the time

That is insane.

It means that, spread across a week, over 1 full day out of 5 is looking for information. And not finding it almost as much as actually finding it.

Factor in the studies around interruptions and it’s a wonder anything gets done.

For example. One study at the University of California at Irvine found that, on average, it takes 23 minutes for workers to get back into flow after an interruption.

Interruptions include a phone call, a colleague popping in for a ‘chat’, or an email. If it takes over 20 minutes to get back on track, and then you are looking up information and often not finding it, and forgetting your train of thought, how can you ever get things done?

Especially since you are likely to forget through natural amnesia if you try to hold things in your primary brain (the noodle inside your noggin).

The classic story is Coleridge who dreamed the story of Kubla Khan. He started writing it down his famous poem. He was called away (interrupted) on business. And when he came back, it was mostly gone...

Imagine all the stress and concern this created back then. And still does today. With the multiplicity of interruptions courtesy of Silicon Valley and technology.

In fact, don’t…imagine it. Recognise it, and take a deep breath. Knowing there is a way beyond this!

No one including coaches are immune to interruptions. However good your memory is, there is no doubt that memory, thinking and making new connections cannot occur only in your primary brain. There are too many variables.

Even for non-neurodiverse.

Which is why, all things considered, I came to a radical conclusion:

***What most knowledge workers and coaches need, above all else, is a decent workflow that integrates with their Second Brain.***

I know, we can argue for mindset, systems, and motivation. To just "do the thing and "get it done".

We'll discuss all of this as we go.

As a hypnotist, NLP trainer, author and coach by background, I have always been fascinated, with strategies. How to do things. How to be efficient.

I was fascinated even as a child.

It worked well. I didn't know that I learned best from visuals, but I kind of intuited it as time when on. Not everyone works this way. A good friend of mine learns through listening; only needs to hear it once, and finds it annoying and distracting to "see' lecture notes. The opposite of me!

The reason I mention this is that learning, assimilation of information and doing something with it is very personal.

It goes without saying that you need to tailor what we discuss here. So I want to identify common problems, list some research-based principles as we go in future chapters/articles and then gives blueprints as a jumping off point.

I dislike books and courses that say, "this is the way" (unless it's the Mandalorian of course because "This is the Way"). This is my contribution as a peer-based community. I'm the scout who's going on ahead saying, "Hey I can see the kingdoms of the Second Brain and Coaching. Let's parlay and see what happens."

As I said, this parlay started when I was running my regular Monday group for hypnotists and coaches which I've done for several years. One of them asked, "Where are you at in your thinking?"

Honestly, that one question floored me.

These guys are inspiring, and hungry for learning more. They sat back and listened for the next hour as I waxed lyrical, rambling no doubt, about the benefits of a Second Brain, the pragmatic approach, the PARA system, how I had evolved thought 6 major personal growth stages and how I had recently come across Obsidian. And gone to a heady height that did not even know was possible.

Just to give a bit of context, 7 awareness phases include:

1. Age 9 being introduced to mind mapping and speed reading. Both with variable results, but introducing me to the idea of thinking about learning strategy, the idea of positions thinking and thinking through how to approach it

2. Discovering NLP, hypnosis and meditation all the same time. Realising I could feel better and change my state without external stimuli was radical - and that I could even choose my states

3. Discovering the power of the placebo effect, its relationship to hypnosis, and creating a course around that

4. Discover the power of symbolism

5. The PARA system, Second Brain in the context of pragmatic corner marking method and organising my workflow - practically overnight

6. The Second Brain with Nick Milo and Obsidian. How to link thinking. Zettelcasten

7. This current stage, which is an ongoing integration. Hence writing and evolving my Second Brain with you here now.

So why and how could an integration of hypnosis, coaching and personal development happen within the context of the Second Brain?

And what could those few evidence-based therapy and personal growth approaches that really work have to inform us?

Beyond the evidence base, where do we dare to go?

How will we assess the effects of our efforts?

This is fascinating, and there is no physical biological brain that can do that. it’s not its purpose to hold tons of stuff.

Here's why:

The idea of coaching and hypnosis is that you set a goal, or have problem you wish to overcome. You work through that by accessing internal resource states, clarifying your thinking and picking the next smallest action.

With a wise coach, you take time to assess your overall life values, what matters most, and be as sure as you possibly can that this is the most valuable thing you can possibly be doing.

This ensures that you don't get lost in doing things you think you should be doing. And have natural intrinsic motivation build in.

But there are a number of problems with goals and traditional coaching, personal growth and therapy:

• How do you ensure the link between what happens internally in a client in a session and show a relationship externally real world?

• How do you keep track of goals outside your session?

• How do you take action when your mind is overwhelmed with all the mundane tasks and responsibilities?

• How can you focus on this and be sure that your unconscious mind is onboard (I call the unconscious mind "Inner Genie" throughout because it pleases me to do so, and it speaks to the magic that can truly be released)

• What happens when you have a great train of thought but it disappears?

• How do do you link one train of thought to another?

• What happens when you get ill, life gets busy, you get distracted then come back?

• How do you pick things up again?

• How do you maintain focus every day?

• Hypnotists and coaches love to mention visualisation but, honestly, how much time do you have free to do this? How do you know you are doing it correctly? How are you using it to enhance your everyday activities?

• How is visualisation helping you get specific tasks done?

• How can you both keep an eye on your goal. activities to support that and monitor your progress?

• How can you [[take every point of "failure' of which there will be many each day, and turn it into something useful]], and prevent it becoming soul-crushing?

• What happens when you get a punch in the gut, a kick in the ribs or a crushed by some black swan that upsets you?

• How do you make things happen when your ideas and information are scattered?

• Most goal-setting and personal development I have come across fails at some point. It doesn't work real-world outside some idealistic setting. Or unless you are only working with already successful type A people.

Listen: There is amazing stuff out there. And incredible people.

But coaches, hypnotists, knowledge workers - myself included - can and must do better.

We have to.

Post "covid" the world needs more decentralised knowledge workers who can evolve in awareness and model that, fearlessly, for everyone else.

I'm on a mission to develop a peer-based community where we support each other. Where we are all publishing books, doing our own research, sharing ideas, integrating technology where appropriate, and improving things for everyone. Making our own contributions.

We will have a different empahasis. Are we won’t agree agree on everything. Thankfully. Because that creative tension will keep things rich for all of us.

With an open heart. And without any 'assholism'. Without corporate BS.

Be real human beings connecting again.

One thing we've seen these past few years are the benefits and limits of technology. Aside from our health, the most important thing is our relationships, connections because that forms such a crucial part of our environment.

So this is about taking problems and evolving them.

And stage 7 of my own evolution is powerful. Because it speaks to going beyond any school, ideology or discipline. It's not about the 'best' form of hypnosis, or coaching or meditation or any label like author or product creator.

It's about developing an ongoing system of personal evolution and through metacognition that automatically, as part of the process, leads to more completed outputs. Where each of us, individually and collectively, evolve our Second Brains into something magical, something creative.

Something that helps us go past the dichotomies and bivalent hashtags of the day, the immediate Zeitgeist - and evolve.

Creatively. Enjoyably. Harnessing our trains of thought.

And outputting them into books, products, services, useful uplifting social media communication, better relationships, better health, maybe even greater wealth.

The basic ideas from neuroscience and neurotechnology are that we need some kind of scaffolding to externalise our thinking: a Second Brain.

Without this, our ideas suffer. We get stuck inside our minds We get left behind. We feel depressed and anxious and disconnected. And we don't follow through. If we are having the supposed 60,000 thoughts a day.

So we need a way to externalise our thinking to evaluate it, overcome the negativity bias, let it grow like a seed, connect with our inner genie and working memory.

I’ll how you how to evolve this, and some of the coolest stuff that you can use for your self and clients to get better results. And the science behind it, how it ties into personal experience and wisdom traditions.

Ch.2: Driving Principles Behind Second Brain Hypnosis

Ch.3 Principles of Coaching and the Second Brain

Recently, I showed a few subscribers how I use my Second Brain to do my thinking: