Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I was a pretty righteous and unhappy kid. I didn’t know I was unhappy – in fact, if you had asked me whether I was happy, I probably would have said, “Yeah, I’m fine” like most people do. But deep inside, I felt like I was different and that there was something wrong with me. As a result of these underlying feelings of inadequacy, I constantly felt an unconscious need to prove myself “right” to others. I used to argue with my friends and family over stupid things quite often, was highly judgmental without knowing it, and was miserable most of the time as a result.

In my last year of high school at the age of 17, my dad paid for me to take a weekend seminar called The Landmark Forum for Teens. He had taken their adult course from which he had experienced many benefits, and thought I might benefit from the seminar myself. Apparently, I was open-minded about it, and ended up going through a profound transformation that weekend.

The transformation occurred the moment I learned something I had never considered before: that up to that point, it had been more important to me to be “right” than to be happy. For some insane, unconscious reason, I was always arguing in order to be right and make others wrong, and this addiction was costing me my connections with people. It was robbing me of peace and happiness, creating misery for others, and keeping me from having the kind of life I truly wanted.

When I came back from the seminar, I was a changed person. My friends and family all noticed the difference in me. I was calmer, more relaxed, less argumentative, and far more enjoyable to be around! I felt more confident as well, and it sparked my interest in the path of self-improvement. I started studying hypnosis, NLP, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, meditation – anything and everything I could get my hands on that had to do with improving the quality of one’s life. Self improvement and spiritual growth became an all consuming passion, and it led me to take dozens of workshops and seminars, read hundreds of books, and listen to countless hours of audio programs from people like Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, and other great teachers.

Jumping forward roughly six years, or about one year after graduating from Cal Poly University in central California with a degree in Engineering, I was working as a patent engineer at a prestigious law firm in San Luis Obispo. I was making a great salary of about $50,000 per year, but was getting more and more discontented with the dullness of what I was doing. Finally, I decided that working as an engineer was only going to psychologically kill me over time, so one day I decided to just quit. I didn’t have a clear game plan, but I knew I was passionate about psychology and hypnotherapy, so I started working a few random sales jobs to better my communication skills. Shortly thereafter, I went and got certified in Clinical Hypnotherapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming, and Time Line Therapy from a well known trainer named Tad James.

After getting my certifications, I started working for a commercial hypnotherapy chain, and gained a lot of initial experience working with people who wanted to stop smoking, lose weight, eliminate fears, and who had other emotional issues. I did that for about 7 months, and then suddenly received an opportunity to start working as a group hypnotherapist for a nonprofit organization called New Life Clinics (www.newlifeclinics.org) conducting stop smoking and weight loss seminars all over the country. This is still my primary career at present, and it has allowed me to learn things that no other career would have taught me. Lately however, I have been feeling a desire to start moving in a new direction… utilizing my skills to help people learn and integrate deeper spiritual principles.

Throughout all these years of being a hypnotherapist, I had still been very passionate about personal and spiritual growth, especially regarding the use of these ideas for dispelling emotional blocks. Books like The Celestine Prophesy, The Power of Now, and Conversations with God became my “bibles”. Then, in early October of 2003, I read a brand new book in the spirituality section which completely transformed my view of reality. It is called The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard. It clarified the teachings of a A Course in Miracles, which I had tried to read in the past but hadn’t really understood. Gary’s book made the Course very clear to me, and it inspired me to start diligently applying its radical forgiveness teachings to every aspect of my life. Over time, this daily practice has brought me to a point where now I feel I have a relatively high degree of skill in the art of advanced forgiveness. I’ve observed that it’s very rare that I get upset these days like I used to, and even when I do get angry at something or someone, I find that my mind quickly goes to forgiveness and dispels the anger and the guilt underneath it. Through constant daily practice, forgiveness has become a habit. This experience of continued spiritual growth has been incredibly encouraging to me, and has allowed me to have access to a peace is greater than any earthly pleasure I could have wanted.

Currently, I live in Austin, Texas, and spend most of my time meditating, reading, and visiting my friends and loved ones both around here and in northern California. I’ve begun offering Forgiveness Hypnotherapy seminars based on the Course’s teachings, and will soon have a website up offering hypnotherapy CD’s for Course students. I also offer one-on-one coaching or hypnotherapy over the phone, with an additional service of creating personalized hypnotherapy CD’s based on individual needs. If you’re interested in contacting me to schedule an appointment or just to ask questions, my email address is erikarchbold@gmail.com.

With love,
Erik