Useful techniques for a Chrysalid

1) Anchoring emotions

• Anchoring means that you create a link between a movement and emotion so that the movement triggers the feeling. Anchoring is emotional conditioning, done by you, to yourself. Through anchoring, you can change your current mood and even trigger old, extremely positive moments of happiness inside you. But, be careful. You can fuck this up, and you can also do deprogramming if you use it too much.
• Read more about Anchoring and learn how to do it.

 2) The Little Notebook

•  Always carry a tiny notebook with you. When you get ideas or things you need to remember, write it down. This is how you never lose your fantastic ideas!

3) 2-minute-rule

•  When you get information that you should do something (pay a bill, call a friend, get moisturizer for your dry hands, do your homework), you have two options:

  1) If you can do it in 2 minutes, do it now.
  2) If you can’t do it in 2 minutes, write it down to your little notebook.

  Why? Because our memory simply doesn’t work so that you would be able to remember absolutely everything when you need to. And, if you don’t do any concrete action immediately, you just leave that undone task hanging somewhere in the air. Every day, you get several things you need to remember. We postpone even the easiest things because of looking for comfort in laziness, even when we could just do them right away. You can save yourself from a lot of stress if you do the simple things immediately when you can. Or, if you can’t, write it down. And when the time is right, you have a ready-made ToDo list for use.

4) Micro-habits and routines

•  A throughout mental, physical and spiritual transformation can be a bit too much for a beginner to handle without a little warm-up. Here,  micro-habits and routines are a great help. They teach your mind which switches to pull and what kind of mindset you will need. However, they should not be underestimated. Sometimes a small change in routine can be surprisingly challenging. Try this out: For one month, the first thing you do in the morning when you wake up, is drinking water with a slice of lemon. No, you do not touch your phone. No, you do not cuddle with your spouse. You go and you drink that lemon water. Every morning. Then you can do what ever you please.

  I challenge you. Can you do that?

• An article introducing some of the Chrysalid’s daily routines: “A week as a Chrysalid”

5) Mapping out your time

• Observe how you use your time. How much do you use on social media and the internet? How much do you use for hobbies and activities? How long do you stay in bed in the morning before you get up? How long do you use for private chats daily? How long do you allow yourself time to enjoy your morning coffee? Take notes and understand how you spend your time. Then, start optimizing it. If you use 6 hours on social media every day, think what would happen if you would use 20% of that time for creativity or exercise.

  This is one of the reasons why Pantheon regulates my time every now and then. We quickly noticed that most of my days were about replying to people on direct messages. And even though I love it and I love to talk to people, it benefits no-one if I reply to people about how my birds are doing. Our live meetings are where we can get to know each other – and online, my time is best used in creating this content for you. This is how I can truly help you. And, I also give you the space to get to know other Chrysalids and see all the shining stars inside our order.

6) Biohacking

• Part of the Temple of Chrysalis is biohacking. Biohacking is a wide term referring to “DIY biology” where you attempt to manipulate your brain and body and doing radical personal experimentation in order to optimize performance, outside the realm of traditional medicine. Especially in the beginning of the Temple of Chrysalis, biohacking was something that the early members explored. The Temple even considered if an initiated member would need to get a microchip. Even if we did not end up doing this, I strongly advise to get to know some of the techniques of biohacking.

  Some of the biohacking techniques are very easy and not as hardcore as one might think. Such as: sleep well, eat healthy and fresh food, breathe air from nature, optimize your working position, and monitor your body functions. But in the hardcore level, we are talking about slowing down one’s aging process, planting implants that bring performance or even doing human experiments with yourself. However, even meditation can be counted as biohacking. It’s all about the mindset. Just like in Chrysalis. Everything that is biohacking, can be counted as part of Temple of Chrysalis, if you do it with the chrysalid’s mindset and bring in also magic, rituals and our symbolism. But, because both Chrysalis and Biohacking have similar goals, a Chrysalid should have a look at biohacking techniques. Have an open mind! Remember that you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If your comfort zone is limited to proper sleeping, then that is where you can stay and be just fine. But if you are seeking for peak performances and truly making yourself “more than a man”, you might be interested in checking out the more hardcore ideas of biohacking, too.

7) Practicing visualization

•  Visualization is extremely important. It focuses your energy into what you truly want and gives your willpower a goal. And, because your brain can fuse your imagination and reality, you can use visualization to reprogram your mind. Visualization is one of the most effective ways to set your mind so that it aims to do things that take you closer to your goal.

8) Inner dialogue observation 

•  Learning to observe and recognize your inner dialogue and/or abstract thinking is a powerful tool. This is where you truly start taking control over the autopilot that your mind usually uses to operate. It is about switching from being a subject into being an object: you are looking at yourself from an outside perspective. I really want to encourage every Chrysalid to do this, because 1) it makes you more self-aware 2) it helps you to rule your mind 3) it makes you more powerful, when you can control your actions 4) it makes your change easier 5) it makes you more free, because you have more options to truly choose and not just obey the first chemical command that comes to your mind.

9) Emotional observation

•  Close to inner dialogue observation, also emotional observation is extremely beneficial. Here, a Chrysalid can use the kaleidoscopes to structure the emotion, its reasons and causes, history and even the possible consequences. Understanding your emotions helps you to control them and either to dim them or to boost them, depending on the situation. It helps you to accept how you feel, without suffocating the emotion. Examples of how this can happen:
  
  “Oh, so I am crying now. Why am I crying? Where can I feel this in my body? I was upset because someone said something. Why did this upset me so much? Why do I take it so heavily? Is this the best reaction that I can give? Is there some other reaction that I can use to win this situation?”

  “I am SO angry! I want to rip his head off! Okay. I am shaking. Why? Where is this coming from? Why do I get almost violent? Is he really worth it? If I now publicly shame him and call him an asshole, how will it make me look? What will I gain? What is it that I actually want…? I think I want that he apologizes. Will I get that by calling him an asshole? Probably not. Maybe I am angry because he hurt my feelings with that stupid comment. Maybe if I explain how the comment made me feel, he actually understand what he did. If I call him an asshole, he will go to a defense mode and the others might think that I am over-reacting and asshole myself. Am I overreacting…? Hmm. Am I?”

 

10) Focusing techniques

•  Something that makes you really tired is when your focus gets constantly interrupted. Your mind has to keep working to get your energies directed to new targets. By multitasking, you lower your performance. By allowing yourself to be interrupted – whether it was the social media, phone, friends, kids or pets or your colleague showing you some funny meme – you sabotage your own work. According to the study of the University of California Irvine, after distraction, getting back to flow takes about 23 minutes and 15 seconds. Do the math. How many notifications do you get per day? Let’s say you get 10 notifications per day, and you check out each of them. That means you lose almost 4 hours of being at your most effective state.

  When you do something demanding focus, make sure you will not be disturbed. Move your social media icons to another tab than the front tab of your phone. Mute your notifications. Try out methods such as Pomodoro.

11) De-victimizing

• One of your worst enemies is the victim mentality. That takes the responsibility away from you and lets you think that there is nothing you can do, even if there would be thousand options. Often we find it more comfortable to take the blame away from us so that we would not have to face the fact that we could have actually affected our situation. For example a person who gets denied of their governmental support for psychotherapy (yes, this is a thing in Finland) usually blames the institutes who grant this support. But they should ask themselves: Did I find out what does the institute need to hear? Did I proofread it? Did I have a proper professional to help with the application? Did I REALLY make the effort to polish my application to be perfect? Am I truly qualified for this support? Am I that special case who need this free money?

  Whenever you want to blame someone else, the surroundings, politicians, the world, the weather, or your aunt’s cat’s lover’s cousin, stop for a moment and ask yourself “What can I do to make the situation better for myself?”

12) Make yourself uncomfortable

• When you experience things you feel uncomfortable about, you beat yourself and undress your labels. When you do things that cause mild discomfort, it slowly strengthens your belief in yourself and your skills to survive. When you beat yourself and do something that you thought you would not be capable of doing, you give yourself courage to survive situations that could cause even more stress. Simple ways could be for example taking a cold shower, debating peacefully about a topic that you feel passionate about – or going to a nudist beach (Unless you are a bit of an exhibitionist like me. To me, that would be more like a reward). Or, if you hate the noise of malls, go to a mall. Dive into that noise. Acknowledge it. Surf in it. Breathe it. Let go of your tension and accept the surroundings. Knowing that you will survive.

  Getting past the uncomfortable feeling doesn’t have to mean that you start enjoying the thing. It simply means that you can do scary things with more self-confidence.

  Sometimes we think something makes us feel uncomfortable, when we actually create that label ourselves. For example, I hate board games. I tend to tell people that I get anxious when I play them. And yes indeed. I do get anxious about board games. But why? To be honest, I think this whole fear has grown disproportionate. I have boosted the fear by feeding enforcement to this label. Every time I tell people that I get anxious about it, I strengthen the reality where this belief is true. If I would sit with nice people and calmly read the instructions and play the game, while keeping in mind that my goal is to proof my label wrong, I firmly believe that I will succeed. I can play a board game and even if I do not like it, I can survive it. And if I can survive something that has caused me panic attacks, I can survive many other things, too.

  You know what. I will do this. 

13) Switch

•  The switch technique refers to a complete change of mindset and mood in a moment. This happens by using willpower and one’s core energy while using visualization. With the switch technique, a Chrysalid can change anxiety into calm and jealousy into minding one’s own business. The Temple offers more in-depth lessons about the switch technique to its members.