Do It for Yourself Now! - Advanced Focusing Exercises

Written by Ilan Shalif, Ph.D.

For instance, before walking at night through a dubious area, we can imagine a fire-spitting dragon attacking us. After a few short focusings, the scene ceases to arouse strong feelings as the trash-programs involved have been updated and improved. If one persists for too long, the scene could even become boring. After these deliberations, it is improbable that the encounter with an unexpected wailing cat during a night trip will cause little more than a small and/or brief increase in the blood pressure and pulse.

This synthetic "remedy before trouble" is most helpful when activated before meetings, interviews, or other encounters the main details of which are known in advance.

VI. SPECIAL PROJECTS

(second section - for advanced focusers only)

It is hard to find even one person who is really totally satisfied with himself and has no wish to change his life or himself. Most people would fundamentally change themselves and their reality if only they had the chance. Many want to improve their relations with their spouse, mate, or partner. There are many who wish to disentangle themselves from unwanted and/or destructive emotional ties.

Many people have internal conflicts that prevent them from finding or committing themselves to a permanent work place, employment or spouse, art field or intellectual subject... Still more seem to lack the ability or the guts to change the situations they find themselves in, even though they are totally suffocated by them. Sometimes, months and years pass by and one realizes that one is still stuck.

Few people try in vain, all their lives, to change their life styles and personality characteristics in a radical way. All or nearly all people want change at various points in their lives. Many want to free themselves from a compulsion to behave in a certain pattern when receiving a specific cue. Many more want to rid themselves of the compulsion of always behaving in the same rigid style, like being an introvert or an extrovert.

Many would be happy to cease being forced from within to be always yea-sayers, considerate, pleasing or nice. A lot of people want to be able to say "no" or "yes" to others - according to their feelings at that moment - without paying an internal fine or suffering an instant penalty each time they do it. Many want to stop feeling chronically guilty, embarrassed, anxious, etc.

Instead of having chronically frustrated wishes and being used to straining mental resources in vain, the person well-trained in the general technique, can tackle each of the above "projects" with success. All that needs to be done is to combine the various steps and tactics mentioned in this manual to suit the specific task. Actually, the "projects" stage is applicable to each focuser who has a more specific purpose than "to get rid of unpleasant feelings".

For each focuser, we recommend that he start tackling these projects even as early as the second month of training - especially if he is in an intensive training-program with the supervision of a coach. The best way to choose these projects is according to the relative prominence of the subjective emotional problems at the time.

The practical aspect of being in a project is that each time one wants to dedicate effort to the advancement of one of them, one has to focus on more and other than the most prominent felt sensation of the spontaneous stream of feelings and sensations. One has to choose which of the sensations to focus on, what emotional content to recycle, and which behavioral steps to take, in order to force the relevant trash-programs to send sensations to the awareness.

For instance, when one has difficulty in entering into intimate relationships (or any relationship at all, in the more serious cases) with those of the opposite sex, one can focus one's way out of it. The best way is to start with a wide spectrum of recycled scenes. One can start by recycling all the feelings related to situations in which a relationship can begin. One can continue with the recycling of all the failures of the past. One can go on, after this, to all the real or imaginary reasons that may make the beginning of a relationship problematic. Afterwards, one can start the most important task, that of recycling and focusing on all that can go wrong at the first stage of a new relationship, and during its development into a permanent arrangement.

Generally, when the problem is a long-lasting one, and the assets of one's wit, charm, education, talent, economic resources, etc. are average or above, it takes about a year to solve. However, even in the most stubborn cases, the buds of change can be discerned after the first few weeks of intensive focusing.

The successful execution and completion of a project is not conditioned by the need for a well-built and strictly adhered to "one and only right program". The underlying fundamental character of the successful project, is the gradual accumulation of plenty of focusing episodes, the content of which is within the general direction of the aim of the project (things that are more or less associated with it).

Therefore, no project that has a realistic goal can fail, even if at the beginning, no improvement is discerned and the unwanted results of the trash-program continue to occur. Actually, each reasonable project will achieve its goal as soon as we dedicate enough time, effort and thought to it.