Q: I have a sales job, where I get payed by the sale. Direct marketing. One thing I have noticed is, women love men who are present with them. They respond differently somehow. Next to the 15 minute breathing I try to be conscious of my breathing the whole day, by breathing as deeply as possible. However, I'm into self-help and am using hypnosis tapes for my work - one is for charisma and the other is for leadership ( which allows me to exude confidence, give me real hardcore focus and allow me to have grace under fire, it makes me feel like a leader and gives me that body language, also the tapes gives me the possibility to positively influence people etc.. ). I need this for my job and to keep up my daily income. I need the money for college and rent. My question to you is, could you tell me if there are any side effects when using these hypnosis tapes? I'm willing to drop them if you say so, if it means that it will interfere with the process in any negative way. But it would make a lot of things harder for me.
A: Personally, I cannot enter sales work. I cannot even do book signing in a book store. So, you are talking to the wrong person. I do not believe in the manipulation of others for personal benefit. Dale Carnegie is a creep. This is why I developed the tool, "Navigating Our Experiences" - available free on the Writings page. It is based on navigating our experience - not on the manipulation of others. Your email is timely. I have a friend who adjusts their personality for whomever is in front of them depending on what it is they wish to portray, or what they wish to get out of the encounter. To me this is parasitic. It is "importing a manufactured self" for each occasion - or self-importing - or self-importance. It recently became clear to me [again!], that if I entertain those who behave in this manner, I too become this way.
There are three types of people responsible for propagating ongoing suffering in this world: Priests, politicians, and profiteers. What they all have in common is they manufacture appearances deliberately to manipulate others. They are all the same type of person simply wearing different faces. I am disgusted with myself whenever I behave in this way. This manufacture of personality deliberately to acquire from others is called "iniquity". My work has nothing to do with furthering ones skills at manipulating others. Using this work to impress women and to get people to buy what they may not require has a price tag - eventually we have to pay the piper. The universe is crushingly merciless with those who practice iniquity - as we are finding out right now, economically and otherwise.
When I toured and taught this work I did not even allow my books to be sold in the same room where I spoke. I did not speak to people so they would buy my book. This kind of behavior disgusts me - and I am disgusted with myself whenever I entertain it within myself. We have to be who we are when we are talking to our mother, our lover, the person at the gas station, and the stranger on the street. If we change our face because a face changes in front of us - we are inauthentic, have no integrity, and the closeness we assume we feel with anyone is bullshit.
So, I am not going to tell you what to do. This is what you have a heart for. It appears you have very strong beliefs about what you think you have to do to be supported by the universe. I suggest you read "Navigating Our Experiences" and contemplate the difference between "navigating our own experience" and "behaving in a way as to manipulate another's". The difference between the two is so vast that "a manipulator" and "a navigator" appear as different species. Manipulators inevitably enter self-destruction, whereas navigators evolve. Both take many with them - so we have to take care whom we entertain. We have to choose which group we occupy - not through our words - but through what is in our heart. Then, we live with the consequences. To be sure - we live with the consequences.
