A short (3-minute) guided hypnosis/meditation by Paul McKenna that teaches a rapid mental-imagery process to reduce anxiety and stress. Listeners are guided to bring a stressful scene to mind, 'float' out to view themselves in the scene, distance the image, drain its colour to black-and-white, shrink it, increase its transparency, and then reassess decisions from this calmer perspective.
Chapters
Think about something that you've been finding stressful. Bring it to mind. Picture it now. It may be something from the past that still bothers you, or it may be something that you're worrying about in the future. You may see it as a few pictures, or you may see it as someone's face or a room full of people. Something like that. It doesn't matter what sort of picture or video it is, just see it in your mind. Next, step out or float out of the image like a special effect on a movie. And imagine floating further and further back so you can see the back of your head as you float further and further away until you see yourself in the picture. Now float the image further and further away from you so you can see that stressful situation almost like it's happening to someone else. Now drain all the colour out of the image until it's black and white like an old movie. Next, shrink it down in size and until it's really small. Keep looking at it and see how transparent you can make it. Finally, now the emotional intensity has been reduced. Ask yourself if you need to make any decisions about that situation. If you do make the decisions from this new perspective.