Bryan Westra - Author, Minimalist, Hypnotist

I am the black sheep in my family. I love them. They love me. I'm still the black sheep though. I am the one who is "different" and who travels the indirect path. I don't think like the others think.

My brothers, sister, father and mother, all spend money the minute they get it. They never save a dime (or Steem?) because they have a completely different financial philosophy than what mine is. I think that there are tons of resources around us that beg to take the place of money--case in point, my wife works at a hotel and when I visit her there I am allowed to drink free coffee, eat a free breakfast, and use the internet and business center. The business center has state of the art Apple computers that cost me nothing to use. Why would I want to spend thousands on an Apple computer, when I can use these for free?

This does not mean I don't own a laptop. I'm using mine now to type this first Steemit story! The laptop I'm using, however, has nowhere near the computing power as those in the business center. I do a lot of design work at three and four o'clock in the morning there at the hotel. Those computers are great for that type of work. Writing a post or an email (book?), this Hewlett Packard $400 laptop works just fine.

My minimalism is showing through. My wife and I live part of the year out of a minivan and part of the year out of a 360 sq. ft. apartment. Neither one of us owns more than 20 items. Everything I own fits into my minivan. I live out of a 30 liter backpack. Everything I need fits comfortably inside the pack and still there is plenty of room to fit more, if need be. I never check luggage on an airplane. I don't have to lug luggage around. I love the minimalist lifestyle and the simple living, high thinking philosophy I live my life by.

How I became involved in hypnosis and NLP:

I have been hypnotizing myself and others since I was nine years old. My mother was a well-respected hypnotist; namely, because she trained under the late "father" of indirect hypnosis, Milton Hyland Erickson. My mother also trained under Krasner and several other big names in the hypnosis niche. She was also a hypnosis trainer. She trained me. So I am a second generation Ericksonian hypnotist.

In 1979, I met Milton Erickson, but I was just a baby. My mother told me he hypnotized me so I would quit crying and disrupting her meeting with him. She said she remembered him saying, "Adults are only little children grown taller," when looking at her, after hypnotizing me. Years later, when hypnotizing myself to remember this early interaction with Erickson, I gleaned that he was indirectly imparting the advice that it is just as easy to hypnotize an adult as it is a child. I believe the lesson I learned from this interaction with him was that the same tone of voice a parent uses to lull a child off to sleep is the same one used to hypnotize someone conversationally. I'm a hypnotic, what can I say!

I love hypnotizing people and training others to hypnotize. I can't imagine a world without hypnosis. It has become a 'way of life' for me--almost like a religion.

How do I make my money?

I am a content marketer. I create digital content and sell it online. I have authored over 500 books, created hundreds of training programs, and written thousands of blog posts. As a content marketer I operate out of several niches. My main niche though is hypnosis and NLP. My company's website is: http://www.indirectknowledge.com. You can find out a lot more about me and my work if you'll just take a couple minutes to jump over there and check me out. Even so, I hope this post helps you learn more about me, assuming you are interested in learning more.

I hope to write tons of posts on topics that interest me and build relationship with others here on Steemit.com. This is my first post! Please be kind as I learn my way around the platform! :-) Positive feedback and comments are always welcome!