Paul McKenna is the guest on episode two of the second season of the Life, Interrupted podcast hosted by Simon Thomas.
In the discussion Paul talks about his life growing up, working on pirate radio, the decision to pursue hypnotism, how he’s coped during the pandemic and how everything has affected us.
Paul light-heartedly calls himself a recovering Catholic as he opens up about how he had a happy upbringing but became a rebellious teenager because of his unhappy time attending a Catholic school. He describes it as a relentless, brainwashing process, instilling guilt. The experience gave him a taste for compassion after seeing so much cruelty.
When he was 20 years old, Paul began working in pirate radio, first on a small station in London, then on Radio Caroline from the North Sea. He talks about his love for radio, how it led him to become interested in hypnotism and the connection between both of them. It began as a stage act but we hear how it led to him deciding to go into self help after a conversation with Simon Cowell.
The pandemic has had a big effect on us all and Paul tells us how he’s been affected by it and the methods he uses to cope. It includes having a daily routine and compiling a gratitude list. He says: “I’m a big fan of this because what this does is it doesn’t just make you temporarily feel good…If you are continually thinking about all the things that could go wrong – of course we need to be thinking about things that could go wrong so we can head them off – but if you continually think about that then you’re catastrophizing and that will not only upset you, but it will make you less efficient because your bandwidth will be taken up with unnecessary stress and worry.
“So, I think to myself each day, what do I feel grateful for and the process of doing this says to the unconscious mind, first of all, look how much you have, so go get more of it…I think to myself, I feel grateful for my health, because without that you got nothing, right?
“Then my wife, my friends, my dog, where I live in the world – we live in paradise here in the Western world – my warm bed at night, you know, the first cup of tea in the morning, those sorts of things. Clean water to drink, things like that. And so as I do this, I begin to feel pretty good and if I’m ever feeling low, I go back and read through that list.”
Paul also goes into the stress caused to others by the current situation and how it affects us, but he also says there have been some positive things to come out of it.
Episode two of season two of Life, Interrupted is out now and available on Global Player.
