Guard Alpacas: Protecting Chickens From Foxes

Terrifying: An Alpaca will keep foxes away.

Guard Alpacas: Protecting Chickens From Foxes
How do you utilise what is in your environment? Maybe you have more available to you than you are aware of.

Recently Alpacas have taken off as the go to solution from everything from wool to walking! Yes, you can now walk an alpaca and learn more about yourself from this. But as with all animals under farming conditions, no one is sure what do with the excess males. One couple decided to turn them into burgers. “We went with them on the final journey.” I remember reading in the newspaper. I am sure that was a consolation for the alpacas before the cold embrace of death!

A somewhat more humane use for the males is now guarding chickens from foxes. Simply, the alpaca is a territorial animal and not scared of foxes. Foxes are not in danger from the alpaca, but like to keep a low profile and the alpaca startles them. This does the job! On the radio, a man was talking about this innovative solution. Surely nothing was quite so clever! 

The chicken farmer asserted it was an amazingly effective way of protecting the chickens. The radio host said, “Did you ever try geese?” The farmer seemed confused. “I’ve not heard of that before.” “I always thought you could use geese.”

Sure enough, just like there are other sources of fur and burgers, geese are sufficient to protect chickens from foxes. Aggressive, loud and territorial, the bird has no fear of the fox. There may well be a great and seemingly modern solution to something going on in your life. But if it is too exotic or expensive, search for something from the past that could be equally effective, and closer to home!

Find out about protective alpacas here.

Evan Burgess is a qualified hypnotherapist, and can help with issues including weight loss and achieving targets in all areas of life. With a degree in music recording and qualifications in English teaching, Evan has lived abroad and enjoyed learning languages and exploring alternative ways of living. This means he can see things from many points of view, and realises that differences make us richer. Having written a travel writing book about being a street musician, Evan has performed on street and stage in nine countries. So if you have any problems with fear or confidence, you can be sure to get some tried and tested advice. One thing you can be sure of is that no advice will be given on subjects that Evan doesn’t understand first hand. Constantly testing himself despite being a slow learner, Evan is comfortable being uncomfortable. Not a gifted student at school, Evan had an epiphany when learning Swedish and getting the best mark in his class on a test after six months of study. He had learned what worked for him, and can help you learn yourself. To book an appointment contact: Evan@cirencester-scene.co.uk

Your Mind as a Garden

Is your mind closer to a tulip field or a
building site with japanese knotweed?

Mental Gardening
Your mind is very fertile, and thoughts are like seeds that grow into plants. However, some thoughts are like weeds and are almost impossible to get rid of. This comes to such an extent that many people put the cart before the horse. Some people seem to believe their thoughts are something that just happen to them. This isn’t really true.

Your mind is more of an echo chamber, where what is put into it reverberates. Listening to the echo, it might feel like there was never a beginning to the noise. But there was. So to stop the echoing thought, take away the cause of its existence, whilst also replacing it with something else. A better, more constructive sound will soon take over until the negative one has disappeared. As with the negative sound, there must be a seed sound.

Japanese knotweed will grow anywhere
it can.

Like with plants creating their own seeds, a new better plant will replace itself. If you have a fertile flower bed, just imagine taking out all the weeds and then leaving it empty. No greater opportunity exists for the weeds to return.

Often I have noticed that with people who feel depressed, it is because their standards are very, very high. Sometimes they can keep the plates spinning, but they cannot achieve it constantly. This has a counter intuitive effect of making them endure an incredibly low standard of life. This for me, is because if they can’t have perfection, it doesn’t even matter. With your flower bed, maybe you can’t have the prettiest flower. But surely, you can have a better one than the weed that would grow instead?

Your mind as a garden
Your mind is a garden. For some people, it is a chore to sort out their garden. For others they take great pride in establishing their will upon it. Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter, the garden is organised and is doing what they can within the boundaries. No, they can’t control the weather, but they can control the garden.

This doesn’t mean you can turn your garden into a 7 acre plot, but you can certainly make the most of what you do have. Imagine how long you can leave a garden before it needs something done to it. The weeds are always trying to take hold, and what stops them is actually the fact something else is there. The earth has been dug and raked, and something intended is planted and cultivated instead.

Can you begin to see the parallel between the mind? In order to stop thoughts of negativity, something else must be put in its place. Unless you believe nothing is a thing, it is quite hard to just blank something out. It is easier to replace it. All too often we forget we have the power to switch off a bad TV show, turn down the volume on the radio or change the playlist. But with our minds, a lot of the time we are even less aware the wonderful choice we have.

Something will grow in your mind if you do not put something better in. Some happy go lucky minds might get beautiful wild flowers, but a lot of the time weeds will take hold. Decide to replace it with something! If you can’t decide on the perfect thing, just decide on something that is better.

If rust never sleeps, and life is what happens when you make other plans, do you really need perfection when right now, you just need a more comfortable ride?

Evan Burgess is a qualified hypnotherapist, and can help with issues including weight loss and achieving targets in all areas of life. With a degree in music recording and qualifications in English teaching, Evan has lived abroad and enjoyed learning languages and exploring alternative ways of living. This means he can see things from many points of view, and realises that differences make us richer. Having written a travel writing book about being a street musician, Evan has performed on street and stage in nine countries. So if you have any problems with fear or confidence, you can be sure to get some tried and tested advice. One thing you can be sure of is that no advice will be given on subjects that Evan doesn’t understand first hand. Constantly testing himself despite being a slow learner, Evan is comfortable being uncomfortable. Not a gifted student at school, Evan had an epiphany when learning Swedish and getting the best mark in his class on a test after six months of study. He had learned what worked for him, and can help you learn yourself. To book an appointment contact: Evan@cirencester-scene.co.uk

A Boy With No Ears

Napoleon with his famous book.

A Boy Born With No Ears

Imagine you had a child born with no signs of having ears. 

Instead there would be a sealed area of skin where ears would be. This would be a shock, but Blair Hill was born before this could have been ascertained before birth, and before plastic surgery was viable. The son of Napoleon Hill, perhaps Blair was born to one of the few people who would not accept nature.

Napoleon Hill had met Andrew Carnegie when he was 21, and asked if he would write a book about the 500 most successful people at the time. Carnegie was so well connected and wealthy he could make this happen. Hill said yes. Hill hadn’t known, but Carnegie was timing him to 20 seconds. Afterwards it was explained to him that if he had been indecisive the opportunity would have been taken away before fully explained.

Hill decided his son would one day hear. Not only that, he would also speak, as if he had no ailment. Every night, he would talk to Blair, with his lips pressed against the skull of his son. He didn’t understand it at the time, but the resonance through the bone activated the functioning inner ear, and in fact this meant that Blair could hear. Thus he thus didn’t miss the formative years of hearing that enable someone to speak properly.

When Blair grew up, his mother was always worried about him. And she worried for his future. What would he do when he grew up? Blair didn't hesitate. As a young boy, he was fearless. He took a job as a paper seller, hawking them on a street corner. He had the skill of selling. Later in life, a company called Dictograph made a hearing aid that allowed Blair to hear. He wrote to the company expressing his gratitude for allowing him to now converse normally.

He gave them feedback on the design, which led Dictograph to invite him to meet them. Soon it became clear they would be perfect bedfellows, and Blair began working for Dictograph. Who better to help sell something than someone who uses it? Living proof sells.

An example of bilateral microtia, the condition
Blair was born with.

It would have been easy to accept things as they were and not expect anything of Blair. But Napoleon Hill believed something strongly. Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage.

Do you have stories of adversity and how you turned it around? I am keen to know. Contact Evan@Cirencester-scene.co.uk with your stories.

Read more about Napoleon Hill here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill

Don’t like your memories? Change them.

Having suffered from polio, Milton Erickson canoed around America.
He discovered the power of making memories.
Learn how you too can benefit from these ideas.

Don’t like your memories? Change them.

Does an incident from your past dictate your life? 

In my personal experience, some very negative events have over shrouded my life. But when I look at it on paper, and calculate the amount of time the events actually took, I realised something shocking. These events that lasted days or hours, had an influence on years of my life. But this is the snag, the events had happened! They weren’t happening. I didn’t actually have to be affected by them anymore. But how can hour long, day long or even month long events keep you pinned down for years? 

The answer is they don’t, but the memory of them do.

Imagine if you saw a terrible film, but then kept pressing play again and again. That would not be constructive, however with our own memories we do this all the time. This might be called ruminating for some. It is unhelpful for everyone.

So someone did something bad to you? Can you do something about it? If so take action, but if you can’t do anything, recycling the event and consequences of it only punishes yourself.

Hypnosis can help improve someone’s recollection, but something fascinating was discovered in a terrible way. Adults who some hypnotherapists believed had experienced childhood trauma were regressed back in time to find what these incidents might be. In one case, a daughter was induced into hypnosis and with the therapists guidance started to reveal stories of abuse from her father. She had no conscious memory of this, but the sessions were recorded, and when the girl heard them played back, she became certain it was true. She stopped talking to her father, and decided to warn her sister. Did her father abuse them both? The only way they believed they could find out, was if the other daughter tried hypnosis. She did so, and sure enough, in trance memories of abuse surfaced. They both were certain, and contacted the authorities.

Pressure testing the stories however, meant that whilst the trauma induced by remembering these events was very real, it was proven that they could not have taken place. More alarmingly, when the recordings were examined by other professionals, they realised the therapist had not been asking “What happened, when did this happen?” etc, but “He touched you, didn’t he?” This generated a memory, but did not reveal one. In fact, a scenario was presented to the subjects, which they began to agree with, rather than a solid question being asked and an internal search being conducted.

Hypnosis can be very useful in memory recall, helping people find lost things, but it is very difficult to determine the accuracy of memories if there is no outside proof. For example, if you lost your car keys, and then were hypnotised to relax and remember, and you then found the keys, this is provable. But if the hypnotherapist says, “You lost them because you were stressed weren’t you?” that is an opinion, and a generalisation, dressed basically as an instruction. The subject may well agree, but it doesn’t make it true. It might be the subject had just forgotten. This is called adding a narrative.

But there is an amazing power in narratives. For all the damage they have done with what is now known as false memory syndrome (FMS), it has been realised for a long time this same phenomena can have a positive outcome. Milton Erickson used the insertion of a false memory, for people who didn’t have much worth remembering. Imagine living in a cult, living in an abusive environment or an ultra religious household where you don’t seem to celebrate a second of your life. Then for some reason you are thrust into the real world, where you are chained by your past expectations.

One could grow up and become very bitter and sad because of what they did not have. But such clients of Erickson’s were given therapy where they were taken back in time and introduced to someone with names such as The February Man, or The November Man. This was a good man, who would visit them one month a year when they grew up. He would treat them kindly and give them something nice to remember. This had tremendous results in making the clients’ life worthwhile in the present.

False memory syndrome has also been experimented with in breaking habits. As habits become like reflexes, hypnosis was used to introduce a pattern break for these reflexes, such as over eating. A memory of over eating and being sick was given to people who were obese, and it seemed to strongly disassociate them from the pleasure of over eating.

Now, I would never suggest to try and forget something bad. However, I would suggest to stop replaying it, when there is no benefit to it, in the same way you are aware a movie sucks, and you no longer put it in the DVD player. You might even ditch the mental DVD and never watch it again! You still know the basic outline of the story, but don’t have to endure it.

In the same way I would never suggest deluding yourself, I would suggest that if you didn’t like the screen saver on your computer, you changed it! Change the radio station if you don’t like it. Harmless positive memories are like nice background music. You don’t have to believe they actually happened, but they are pleasant!

The reason why this is important is that our past expectations affect our future actions. So if we can override our negative past experiences, we can make it more likely good things happen in the future. Here is an example from my life.

When I was 9, it was 1994 and I was in France. I was trying to learn “Parlez-vous Anglais?” to ask the shop assistant how much the lollies were I wanted. It was the only bit of French I had been trying to learn, but I wanted to learn to show respect and try. It hadn’t crossed my mind what would happen in the person said no, but my mum assured me most people working in holiday camps would speak English. I went into the shop, and I took the lollies. I vividly remember hoping no one stood behind me so they wouldn’t hear if I made a mistake. Someone stood behind me. The young lady assistant broke my pattern, she said something to me first! In French. I had no idea what she said. I didn’t know what to do. I said “Parlez...” I went blank. The young lady assistant looked at me. I repeated, “Parlez...” then I started to go red, I couldn’t breathe. The girl said “You want to speak English?” Instead of saying yes, I started crying. I was so annoyed I couldn’t have remembered the French, I had no option but to runaway.

Now considering I had wanted to show respect, running away leaving the lollies on the counter didn’t help. But changing that memory, I imagine myself walking in confidently, picking up the lollies and having a little note in my hand with the translation in French for, “I am sorry, my French isn’t good, do you speak English?” and reading it to the girl. Enchanted by my attempts, the girl says “Of course I speak English, ‘ow adorable you try. It was 100 francs but for you it is 50. ‘Ave a nice day!” then sharing my lollies with the people in my tent, not the reality of explaining why I had no lollies to perplexed expressions of those around me.

I am now fluent in Swedish and speak passable German, should I need to talk to someone who didn't speak English. I nearly gave up on languages thinking I could not learn them, but I changed my perspective. I simply used the wrong strategy for that French experience. When I go to France now, I will speak as much French as possible, and I don't mind if I make mistakes. It helps me learn!

If you have had a bad experience which made you think "I can't do this/that", then consider whether or not it was your strategy then that affected things, not you.

If you wish to change your memories to aid your future life, here are some tips.

Stopping Habits
If you wish to stop a habit, imagine yourself doing the habit to a massive excess. Imagine all the terrible things that are associated with this, and then amplify that by making the colours in your memory more intense and real, the scents, the sounds, the feel. If you are taking part in a negative habit, you must be to some extent switching off, disassociating from the reality of this bad habit. This will help you stop the disassociation! If you do this habit in private, imagine doing it with an audience. If you smoke, imagine the audience is someone who should not be around cigarettes, like children or people with breathing difficulties. Feel the guilt and shame. Think, “If I say yes to this habit, what do I say no to?” such as the ability to walk up stairs, run or even fresh breath.

Feeling Better About the Past
If you want to feel better about the past, this is a simple exercise. Imagine yourself when you were one. Imagine being taken around a park, perhaps at a fete, and everyone wanting to hold you, treat you and make you laugh. Imagine your laugh making other people laugh. When you are two, imagine the same thing. Carry this on until you are an age when you can do something of your own volition. Imagine doing this thing really well, with the support of friends or family. It might even be something that had gone wrong. For example, I crashed a mini motorbike into a barb wire fence when I was about seven. I imagine this experience going quite differently, and riding the motorbike properly with skill. Then imagine once a year, someone kind, a guardian angel if you will, coming to you and helping you improve your life. This person gives you everything you feel you missed.

Starting Habits
Imagine the habit you wish to acquire. Imagine that you have been doing this thing for a much longer time, perhaps from since you were a child. Imagine picking up this skill so it becomes as simple as walking. Imagine there is a time line in your life, and that you go along this line and insert wonderful experiences of this skill into these times of your life. Like yourself for doing something well! This self esteem will help you reward yourself in the same way you seek to make others you like happy.

If you want to improve your memories, contact evan@cirencester-scene.co.uk

See a bit about the February Man! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZpV9ogKgfw

Hear the great man speak himself here (Erickson suffered from Polio and this caused difficulty with his speech)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORyNxBvvZyc