Step Three is preparing for the job interview. If you enjoyed the television technique in Step Two, then you have probably already realized that this technique could work equally well for an interview. If you would like to try this, first self-induce a trance state:

Observe your breathing, and relax your breathing. Imagine all of your muscles relaxing, muscle group by muscle group, moving either from toe to head or from head to toe. Next, choose a number over five, and tell yourself that as you count down from that number, with each number, you will be relaxing ten times more deeply than before. Count down, and when you reach the number one, start the television technique.

If Step One, deleting the terminated job from your thoughts, was very difficult to impossible, you are in good company. If we stop to consider how many applicants there are for a given job, and if a certain percentage of them lost the previous job under stressful circumstances, and then we multiply that vague figure by every job that is now open, it is clear that multitudes are at risk for perseverating on thoughts of the old job and how they might have done things differently or had things done differently to them, or both.

If you are still haunted by thoughts of the old job, and you are not sleeping well due to these thoughts, it is wise to notice how long this situation goes on. If the insomnia does not naturally resolve itself, and you also find that you feel removed from your feelings, are often irritable, have trouble concentrating and feel all alone and somehow to blame for the whole experience, all of this makes sense. These are some of the more common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and are natural responses to a traumatic experience.

You probably already know about the Global Hypnosis eSummit happening this weekend (Mar 13-15), an online conference with over 100 hours of sessions (wow).

This is the direction that many conferences are taking this year, with the travel and fuel expenses and economy the way they are. And technology is here just in time: online conference technology before last year was still a little clunky. We now have companies that are specializing in online conferences - expansive, organized web seminars, really - and have brought developed Flash technology to bear. Thanks to the now widespread availability of broadband Internet service, this is probably really the first year that offering large online virtual conferences is really a viable option.

This will be my first time attending an online conference using this company, exPos2. I'm excited to see how it all works.

And as much as I'm glad to be missing all of the travel hassles and expense (and parking!), an online mix of folks just isn't the same as live, face-to-face time, and I don't think it ever will be.

However, I'm always looking to get closer to that face-to-face level of experience. To support getting as close as we can this year, AAPH is sponsoring and operating the eSummit Virtual Lounge in Second Life, a 3D world with Avatars that move, talk and interact.

Everyone knows how important clear thinking and a positive attitude are to a successful job search, particularly at the interview stage. Since the same qualities are also important to a successful search for a good friendship or partner relationship, the following suggestions could be applied to that subject, also. Hypnosis offers a bountiful array of techniques for reversing the inner energy drain that can come with the loss of a relationship or a job.

People who have felt a positive sense of identity from their work may feel a sense of loss after termination that goes beyond what's missing from their bank accounts. Losing a job can also result in self-blame and regret, not to mention a drop in the self-confidence that is vital to the search for a new job.

We have shifted from an Industrial economy to a Information economy. Of course, the remnants of the industrial age businesses are still struggling, some transforming successfully and some not. But the fact that the economy has shifted is, at this point, indisputable.

New skills, new knowledge, new tools, new opportunities all abound. You can drown in new information; as a species, we literally have ten times the knowledge than we had in 1999, across hundreds of different domains of knowledge and science. This does not mean you simply need to learn ten times more than your grandfather knew, but it does mean that you need to learn how to filter and manage information far differently than your grandfather did.

The 21st century is characteristically different than the 20th century, although there are many parallels in the effects and our reactions to the massive changes. Just as we shifted from an agricultural society to an industrial one around the turn of the 20th century, so we shift again.

In the book, "Nine Shift" by Julie Coats and William Draves (link below), they explain that we are going to be replacing commute time with learning time.

Whenever many people are working longer hours just to get by, and many others are searching longer just to get a job, it becomes medically more important for people to become skilled at relaxing their bodies and calming their minds quickly and effectively, on a daily basis. Here is an exercise, based on the pioneering work of Dr. Milton Erickson, that you can learn to use in the next twenty minutes. While this method is easy to learn and use, it can be applied in almost any situation without anyone else knowing that you are self-inducing an alpha brain wave state. To follow is a fictional example that you can use as a reference as you apply the steps to the situation you are experiencing right now. Before beginning to experiment with this method, it is imperative to make sure that you are in a place where it would be safe for you and those around you if you fell asleep. This exercise is never to be used while driving or operating any machinery (not even so much as a battery-operated mini-fan.)

I'm always on the lookout for good resources for NLP, and these are the best I've seen so far:

The User's Manual for the Brain (Vol 1)

User's Manual for the Brain, Vol. II: Mastering Systemic NLP

With these books on my shelf, I don't really need any other basic NLP books. They are a comprehensive summary and reference for the same NLP concepts, methods and techniques that you cover in your training classes. I like the way they are laid out and the information in them is excellent.

It isn't hard to figure: higher energy costs, unstable gas prices, reduced travel and expense budgets, and the need to make more happen in less time with fewer dollars. The cherry on top is that flying just isn't fun - or even really pleasant - anymore.

Put it all together, and it spells fewer in-person meetings, fewer conferences, and less travel. Yet, somehow, more contacts, more connections, more partner projects need to get done? The pressure is on for electronic meetings to become a normal and usual part of modern business. It's been trying to come into regular use for some 15 years, but now finally have both the technology and the demand for it to happen.

When a friend tells us something like,"Boy, Jason and Jessica really know how to push my buttons," many of us know all to well how it feels to be in our friend's position. And, if we are highly sensitive people and our button pushers are expert technicians, our inner control panels may be consistently flashing as brightly and variously as that of a commercial jet in flight mode.

And, while our family members and friends are flicking and pressing our psychological switches and buttons, we may be having something like the jet's experience: coasting comfortably for a while on autopilot, all at once, we find that we're streaking above the clouds with elation, hardly noticing the light mist of confusion that is beginning to gather around us until we are in a zero visibility fog of disorientation. As we break through into the light, there is momentary relief until we note that the ground is straight ahead, and rapidly approaching.