Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

A Review: Havi Brooks And The Procrastination Dissolve-O-Matic

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I have giant Internet crush on the very cool Havi Brooks.

She is an expert in patterns and habits, specifically;

-how to gently and compassionately notice the patterns that are keeping you stuck

-how NOT to beat yourself up over the fact that you have patterns that keep you “stuckified”

-how to gather important information from these stuckified places

-and how to use that information to gently and easily create new patterns to get you where you actually want to be.

Havi has created a lot of great products to help us with our own, personal destuckification, such as her “Emergency Calming Techniques which I reviewed in an earlier post.

My other favorite product, which I almost bought just for the name alone, is her “Magical Procrastination-Dissolving Fairy Wonder Dust.”

Most of the other things I’ve tried in order to help me get past my procrastination start with the assumption that, because I am experiencing some temporary procrastination, I am “bad”. Quite often I have already made this assumption about myself, so the new person or technique begins this process by joining with me in agreeing that I am somehow wrong, and basically just giving me some more ways that my Inner Slave Driver can use to beat me up some more.

But not Havi. She starts out by telling me that I’m okay. Yes, I am temporarily experiencing some “stuckness”, but that’s okay. That’s just life, and my “stuckness” does not mean anything who I fundamentally am.

She helps me meet myself exactly where I am with kindness and compassion, which in and of itself goes a long way toward dissolving the resistance I’m feeling to doing the things I want-or need-to do.

Then, when I’m in this gentler place, she gives me a simple-and slightly wacky-technique I can use to help soften the rest of my resistance.

Just for fun I decided to track this process for a bit, and these are a few of the tasks on which I used my magical fairy dust over the past week:

-cleaning the cat box
-taking out the trash
-calling the phone company to report a problem with our phone line
-making a vet appointment for one of the cats
-making a phone call I’d been dreading for a week
-writing a new blog post and announcing it on Twitter
-answering 2 emails which I’d been avoiding
-emailing a friend to ask for some help with a project I’m working on

My application of this technique also had an unexpected benefit. As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, a few months ago I was diagnosed with fibromyalagia, and I’m having to re-learn how to be me, in my life, with this new health situation. It involves a lot of trial, and error, and bashing around on this occasionally steep new learning curve.

So one day last week I had a list of things I thought I should be able to accomplish, but I was feeling very reluctant to actually work on any of them. So I applied a liberal dose of my fairy wonder dust, and was able to get through maybe a third of my list. However, when I got to that point and actually stopped for a moment I realized that I was in a fair amount of pain, and instead of working anymore I needed to take some medicine and go rest.

So instead of just encouraging me to push my way through the pain so I could complete my list, the Dissolve-O-Matic helped me see that my procrastination was actually there for a very specific reason; to help me stop working and deal with my pain so that I could feel better.

Here, in Havi’s own words, is what’s included in this seriously, you-need-to-have-this kit:

1. “MAGICAL PROCRASTINATION-DISSOLVING FAIRY WONDER DUST (the instant-help-right-now guide)”

2. “THE E-BOOK: DISSOLVE PROCRASTINATION (108 pages of pure unadulterated problem-solving)”

3. “Bonus mp3 recordings of me (Havi) doing the emergency genius technique with real, live people who are in the throes of stuckness. This is a great way to experience how it’s done in a powerful, visceral, body-memory kind of way so you can get even better at doing it on your own.

So if any of this feels like something that could help you get through your stuck spots a little bit more easily and gently, just click on the graphic at the top of this post, or you can click here.

And here’s to all of us learning how to be just a little bit kinder and gentler with ourselves.

A Quick Reminder

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Just in case you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time to register for Havi Brook’s “Stuff Havi Thinks You Should Know About How to Get Really Really Great Testimonials, Recommendations & Referrals Without Having To Feel Gross and Horrible” class this Sunday.

Here’s an excerpt from the the post she wrote today which talks about what we will be learning :

My thing: we destuckify and we make practical changes.

The part that interests me in all this is figuring out how to dissolve the fear behind the thing that isn’t working, and then finding ways to make it work better when it is working.

So in this class I’m teaching on Stuff Havi Thinks You Should Know About How to Get Really Really Great Testimonials, Recommendations & Referrals Without Having To Feel Gross and Horrible, my whole goal is to help people do both.

The destuckifying part is dissolving the ew and the this is uncomfortable and the people will hate me so you can share your thing with the people who need it.

The systems part is where I tell you exactly what you need to say and do so that no one will ever have to feel uncomfortable.

It’s where I tell you how you get people to trip over themselves trying to help you promote your thing (see? there’s your thing again) without even necessarily knowing that this is what they’re doing.

But not in a manipulative way. In a helping-your-Right-People-feel-safe-and-comfortable way.

Important Bonus Information From Havi On How To Get A Discount On The Price

Also: you save $100 by being able to answer one of two questions and since I am an incredibly nice person, you can get the answers to those two questions by reading Naomi’s post where beans are spilled.

A Review: Havi Brooks And Her Emergency Calming Techniques

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I have giant Internet crush on the very cool Havi Brooks.

She is an expert in patterns and habits, specifically;

-how to gently and compassionately notice the patterns that are keeping you stuck

-how NOT to beat yourself up over the fact that you have patterns that keep you “stuckified”

-how to gather important information from these stuckified places

-and how to use that information to gently and easily create new patterns to get you where you actually want to be.

Havi has created a lot of great products to help us with our own, personal destuckification, and one of my favorites is her “Emergency Calming Techniques” kit, which includes

-a detailed e-book

-3 MP3 audios leading you through different calming techniques, according to whatever level of “freaking out” that you are currently experiencing (“emergency freakouts”, “when you need a dose of calm”, and a practice in “refining the art of calming down”)

-and an emergency “cheat sheet” for quick reference to the different calming techniques

One of the things I found most helpful about the e-book was the chapter that explains why, when we try a new personal growth technique, even if we’re really excited about it and committed to regularly practicing it in our everyday lives, it so often ends up not working for us. I can really relate to that right now, since I just spent this week gathering up all the programs I’ve personally bought over the past 7 years or so and then discarded. I want to clear out some space to try out some new things, and I was stunned to find that my “collection” takes up about a third of our den.

Of course, now that I’ve read this part of the e-book the explanation seems so obvious. But obviously it isn’t, as both my den and my credit card can attest. 😛

As Havi explains it, we humans are a complicated bunch, existing on a whole bunch of levels at the same time: physical, energetic, emotional, mental, and awareness. Yet most of us tend to hang out in the one or two levels that are most comfortable for us, and a great majority of the “helping” services and products that are out there are also specifically geared towards one, or maybe two levels at most.

But if we really want to make changes that work, and that last, we need to address our spots of “stuckification” on all the different levels. And that is what her e-book and her audios teach us how to do. First she gives a brief explanation of each of the five levels, and then she teaches you 10 Calming Techniques-5 you can perform “right out in the open”, and 5 to perform “behind closed doors”.

My favorite technique is called the Full Face Finger Flow, which combines activating certain pressure points on your face with specific calming, compassionate self-talk.

Which brings up a very good point: If you’re not really into anything “woo-woo”, or “wacky” (Havi’s word for it), this package probably isn’t for you. But it you enjoy exploring things like energy medicine (things like EFT and energy meridians) and self-actualizing techniques, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I have learned how to be so much kinder to myself by practicing these techniques, instead of automatically judging myself and beating myself up every time I bump up against a pattern or belief that is keeping me “stuckfied” and in pain. It’s really nice to know how to help myself in these situations, rather than just making myself feel worse.

If any of this feels like something that could help you get through your stuck spots a little bit more easily and gently, just click on the graphic at the top of this post, or you can click here.

And here’s to all of us learning how to be just a little bit kinder and gentler with ourselves.