A basic NLP technique of visualization and anchoring can help you to choose your state and remain in control of your feelings.

Visualization and anchoring in NLP can help control emotions and choose a positive state.

Taking Control Of Your State

My mantra is "You will always get more of what you focus on". In Matthew's Gospel, it's "Seek & You will Find". In my 121 coachings, I tell people who are catastrophizing that they are just making stuff up (though I use a shorter S-word!), and if you MUST make stuff up ... MAKE GOOD STUFF UP. Here's a tiny exercise to create simple goals.

Focus on positive thoughts to attract positive outcomes, using the mantra "Seek & You will Find" to set simple goals in coaching sessions.

Easy Goal Setting

Simon & Garfunkel provide the background to this little lesson. After a couple of negative reviews when he was starting Paul Simon wrote The Boxer and one line yells out to me as an important observation of how many of us filter things in our world.

Paul Simon's song "The Boxer" reflects on filtering perceptions in the world, inspired by early negative reviews.

Notice What You Are Noticing

Letting go of the past, of a bad experience or memory, of a toxic person or people is easier said than done. This is a short NLP exercise to help detoxify that person who "grinds your gears". I talk about a person and this exercise will work just as well for a specific memory.

NLP exercise helps let go of toxic people or memories; easier said than done.

Detox A Memory

They are only words. And the words we choose to express ourselves and express our goals and objectives can have an enormous impact on the way we feel and ultimately on the outcomes we achieve. This short reflection invites you to begin to notice certain crushing words and phrases that sound helpful and at the same time act as demotivators.

The words we choose impact our feelings and outcomes; be aware of demotivating language that sounds helpful.

You Don't Need To Listen To This

The stories we tell ourselves create our expectations. And our expectations lead to our experience so if you can begin to notice your language and then change the stories ... you can begin to change your experiences.

Our stories shape our expectations, which shape our experiences. Changing our language and stories can lead to a change in our experiences.

Expectation To Experience

Reading an article on the "Greater Good" reminded me of the importance of gratitude in our lives. And when we make it a habit, gratitude enhances our well-being - and that of those around us. Seek out the article to discover the references to actual scientific studies! You'll thank me for it.

Gratitude is a powerful habit that enhances our well-being and impacts those around us, as highlighted in an article on the "Greater Good."

The Gratitude Habit

Helping you focus on sleeping rather than NOT sleeping. A gentle meditation to prepare you for a good night's sleep.

Meditation helps you focus on sleeping for a good night's sleep.

Meditate To Sleep

How do you sleep? This gentle soothing meditation first takes you through a body-scan relaxation and then leads you through the stages of sleep. Helping you understand the stages of sleep and the importance of the sleep cycle and guiding you to your own sleep cycle.

Learn to sleep better with a guided body scan relaxation and understanding of sleep stages and cycles in this soothing meditation.

The 'Teach Yourself Sleeping' Meditation

Take 3 minutes out to start your week and focus on the good stuff

Spend 3 minutes at the beginning of each week focusing on positivity.

Monday Morning Micro Meditation - Mmmm

We all use phrases that lose their meaning over time. This is a very quick reminder of the power of language and your ability to take control and notice the meaning of the phrase "Come to your senses" and an invitation to literally come to your senses and notice what you notice.

Language loses meaning over time; come to your senses to notice what you notice.

Come To Your Senses

When 'they' say breathe from the stomach they don't always tell you how. Here's a lesson from 4-month-old Hazel.

Learn how to breathe from your stomach with a lesson from a 4-month-old baby named Hazel.

Breathe Like A 4 Month Old Baby

Imagine all your worries, anxieties, and pain drifting away. The Letting Go Bubble meditation helps you do that ... and can become an occasional practice that invites your inner child to play.

Letting Go Bubble meditation helps alleviate worries and anxiety, and encourages inner child to play.

Letting Go - The Bubble Meditation

A micro meditation for when you wake in the night and choose to go right back to sleep.

A quick meditation to help you fall back asleep when waking up in the middle of the night.

Three Minutes to Sleep

A gentle mental journey...a full body relaxation with an invitation to go deep inside and search for and find your inspiration.

Mental journey for full body relaxation and inspiration search.

Everyday Inspiration

At moments when you feel overwhelmed and anxious, this very quick guided meditation offers three steps to restore peace & calm. Three steps in three minutes.

Quick 3-step meditation brings peace & calm in 3 minutes during overwhelming & anxious moments.

3 Steps to Calm

A mental journey and visualization to guide you into a relaxed and eventually sleeping state. Loaded with positive suggestions the gentle voice guides you to a state of comfortable relaxation. The cover photograph was taken at the very spot I wrote this meditation.

"A guided meditation with positive suggestions to induce relaxation and sleep, accompanied by a cover photo taken at the meditation's origin."

Coast Your Way To Sleep

A gentle reminder that you can make any moment ... a mindful moment. And it's really easy. Being Mindful in everyday life can help you develop a mindful mindset.

Develop a mindful mindset by making any moment a mindful moment in everyday life.

Make A Moment Mindful

A companion to the long version. Use this as a reminder.

This text is a concise reminder or summary of the long version.

Teach Yourself Sleeping (Short Version)

We all have default thinking patterns & reactions based on our knowledge and experiences. The unconscious uses stereotypes to help us make decisions...this meditation/teaching invites the listener to notice some of those patterns and become more aware of how you can think differently. It's not Pollyanna thinking... it's just thinking about thinking.

This meditation helps you become aware of your default thinking patterns and encourages you to think differently, without being overly optimistic.

Accentuate The Positive

Let's release the tension. Instead of wallowing in anxiety & creating more tension begin to remember that you are in control and you can release that tension by depriving it of attention. Just five minutes to change your state.

Take control of your tension by giving it less attention, relieving anxiety and changing your state in just five minutes.

A Lack Of A Tension

There are opportunities EVERYWHERE to remind yourself to be mindful. Here's a short reflection on how you can capture a mindful moment in the everyday mundanity.

Find opportunities in everyday life to be mindful and present with these simple reflections.

Orange Juice has Mindfulness Lesson

A gently guided journey into a place where you can find sleep ... loaded with positive suggestions diverting your attention away from the things that keep you awake and refocus you to help you relax ...

A guided journey with sleep suggestions to divert attention from stress and induce relaxation for better sleep.

Meditation For The Sleepy

A visualization guiding the listener to a place of sleep

Melt into Sleep

A short guided relaxation seeking to find clarity from the ubiquitous question "What Do You Want?" and set an unconscious direction. It's always my first question to my 1-on-1 coaching clients. What Do You Want? From the session. From a project. From your life.

Guided relaxation helps clarify desires and set goals, a key question in coaching sessions: What Do You Want?

The 'What Do You Want?' Meditation

We all know what we should do. This essay presents the "shoulds" meditatively as a gentle reminder that you can make physical changes to help you sleep. It finishes by slipping into a relaxing meditation to settle the listener into sleep.

Reflective essay on creating physical changes to improve sleep, ending with a calming meditation to aid in falling asleep.

Sleep Easy Sleep Essay

It's a sleep meditation about time. The language of time. The very concept of time. To make you think about time so you can forget about all else and be ready to sleep. It's about time for a nighttime meditation.

A sleep meditation focusing on the concept of time to help you relax and drift off to sleep.

It's About Time

Even the mundane can become a mindful experience. Noticing what you notice in your daily life is the very essence of mindfulness. Take this short mental journey to the supermarket and just relax.

Mindfulness is found in the everyday, even in the mundane tasks like grocery shopping - just relax and notice what you notice.

Making A Supermarket Shop Super-Mindful

Someone said to me recently "I have to do my mindfulness". They were getting stressed about relaxing!! This is a reminder that being mindful is easy, quick, and a choice; not something that you add to your to-do list.

Mindfulness is a choice, not a task to stress about; it's easy, quick, and always available to you.

Instant Calmer

An original twisted fairytale about the 'talking' cat who gave counsel to the villagers. There are learnings to be extracted and a couple of laughs.

A twisted fairytale follows a talking cat who advises villagers, providing humor and lessons to be learned.

The Cat In The Hut

We've meddled a little with the narrative of the famous Hans Christian Anderson Fairy tale ... to make it a bit more fun. And it's read in a gentle, soothing manner with just a hint of irony. Helping you switch off and hopefully smile.

A fun and ironic twist on a famous fairy tale, read in a soothing manner to help you relax and bring a smile to your face.

The Princess & The Pea (Re-Imagined)

A story about dreaming. Georgia knew she had experienced a good dream but she couldn't remember it, so she tried to recreate the conditions that led to the dream. Maybe she was dreaming about dreaming.

Georgia tries to recreate the conditions of a good dream she can't remember, questioning if she was dreaming about dreaming.

The Lost Dream

Toads & Diamonds is a French fairy tale by Charles Perrault that was originally titled 'The Fairies.' It tells the story of a grumpy widow and her two daughters. The older daughter Elspeth is also bad-tempered and arrogant, and because she is so much like her mother, she is the favoured daughter. Rose, the youngest daughter, was kind and beautiful much like her late father, and as a result, was mistreated by her mother.

French fairy tale "Toads & Diamonds" by Charles Perrault follows mistreatment of kind daughter Rose by her grumpy widow mother and sister.

Toads and Diamonds

This tells the story of a man watching a video of another man (Henry) clearing out his attic. There might be some subliminal suggestions as the listener drifts off to sleep.

A man watches another man clear his attic, possibly inducing subliminal suggestions as the viewer falls asleep.

Henry's Attic

A drifting story about one man's hobby of making up stories about the inscriptions he finds on headstones in small country churchyards. There's no point to it, just a meander to distract the hive mind and create some internal space to relax and go to sleep.

Man invents stories about headstone inscriptions for relaxation.

In A Country Churchyard

Some memories are more vivid than others. This story is Freddie's reminiscence of the time he saw the Aurora Borealis 32 years ago as a nine-year-old wide-eyed boy.

Freddie recalls seeing the Aurora Borealis vividly as a nine-year-old boy 32 years ago.

The Northern Lights: A Reminiscence

Just the old Hans Christian Anderson Fairytale ... tweaked a little and given a tiny twist at the punchline.

A classic Hans Christian Anderson fairytale with a small twist in the punchline, presented in a concise and brief manner.

King's New Clothes (Re-imagined A Bit)

This sleep story is suitable for adults and children. Softly guiding you through a story within a story embracing lots of suggestions and comforting language.

A soothing sleep story, perfect for both adults and children, gently guides listeners with suggestions and comforting language.

Tim To Go To Sleep

A soothing voice & a pointless story complete with embedded help to send you off as you learn about dendro-chronology

A calming voice narrates a sleep-inducing story while introducing dendro-chronology.

Counting the Rings of Trees

Starting with a gentle relaxation, this leads into how Patricia discovered the phenomenon that is collecting pieces of old industrial waste

Patricia discovered the passion for collecting old industrial waste after a gentle relaxation.

The Story Sea Glass

It's a journey, a meditation ... an imaginative jaunt around an old comfy country house in Scotland. We play with language to lead you to a relaxing place and eventually sleep. Who knew the Bagpipes could be soothing?

A soothing and imaginative journey through a Scottish country house uses language to relax and lead to sleep, surprising with the calming effect of Bagpipes.

Finding Sleep A Scottish Country House

Habitual behaviors can be really useful when doing routine things and it can also keep you stuck. In this tiny allegorical story, Emily learns a new technique to change her thinking and open herself up to new ideas and solutions.

Emily learns how to break free from habitual behaviors and open herself up to new solutions in a tiny allegorical story.

How Emily Got Out Of A Rut

The moral of HANS IN LUCK is contested. As Hans barters his way home swapping along the way he begins with Seven years' wages and ends with nothing … and still sees it as a blessing. One view is we should be more considered when making decisions involving strangers …. Another view is that we can be happy with what we have however little. Like any moral or metaphor, the listener gets from it what message you need at the time. Enjoy.

HANS IN LUCK teaches two conflicting morals: be cautious in deals with strangers or find contentment in simplicity and gratitude.

Hans In Luck a Grimms Fairytale

Counting sheep has been thought of as way to send yourself to sleep. In ancient Britain the counting system they used was mesmeric and you can hear it here.

The Mesmeric counting system used in ancient Britain is considered a sleep-inducing method, heard in counting sheep.

Counting Sheep the Ancient Way

This sleep story begins tells the story of a woman who does a mental journey around a department store where she is a manager.

A woman takes a mental journey through the department store where she manages in this sleep story.

The Department Store

There's always a moral in the Aesop fables. This story has no hares and no tortoises ... but the same moral. Like Aesop's original it's short and to the point and as you listen and identify with the characters you might notice the lesson.

This story has a moral like Aesop's fables, despite lacking hares and tortoises, and is short and relatable.

The Hare & The Tortoise (Re-Imagined)

An unnamed little girl takes a walk in the woods in search of 'treasure'. An allegory to help the listener find their own treasure.

A girl searches for treasure in the woods in this allegorical tale to inspire listeners to find their own treasure.

The Girl Who Is Looking For Her Treasure

Another classic fairy tale from the Grimms Brothers' catalog.

Classic fairy tale by the Grimm Brothers.

The Elves & The Shoemaker

Katy had tried everything to get a good night's sleep. Called on family & friends for tips, went deep down internet rabbit holes, pricked up her ears at every mention of insomnia, and even turned to AI. She'd become such an expert that she finally recognized she had all the answers. This is a story with the style of a meditation. It might just ramble along long enough to help you find sleep.

Katy's relentless search for sleep leads her to realize she already possessed the answers, turning her story into a meditative journey towards finding rest.

Katy's Sleep Journey

Just a little meandering story inspired by an item of jewellry ('jewelry' if you're in North America) that I noticed my friend wearing. There's even a life lesson.

A story inspired by jewelry with a life lesson.

The Myths of the Hares

How one baker discovered the delights of sourdough in spite of herself. This is a story laced around a recipe and method of creating sourdough bread. Softly read to relax & unwind you and you might even learn how to make bread.

Discover the joys of sourdough bread making through a baker's personal story and easy-to-follow recipe.

Making Sourdough ... Slowly

Starting with a quick guided relaxation, this story is about the phenomenon of adults using coloring books as a way to relax. So a relaxing story about a relaxation technique with a soothing voice. Maybe you'll reach the end. Maybe.

Adults use coloring books for relaxation, as described in a soothing, guided story.

The Colouring Book

How The Camel Got His Hump is another Just-So story by Rudyard Kipling.

Rudyard Kipling's "How The Camel Got His Hump" is a Just-So story explaining how the camel gained its distinctive hump.

How The Camel Got His Hump

A true-ish story of a man who discovered a Swedish custom and tried to recreate it in urban Britain. The story gently follows his journey and even includes his recipe for happiness ... if you like pastries.

A man discovers a Swedish custom and attempts to recreate it in urban Britain, sharing his journey and a recipe for happiness, with pastries.