Sometimes multiple times a day I’ll see newbies come out in chats and forums and go into a medium sized thing asking why a particular technique isn’t working out fully, commonly its stuff not completely working out for psiballs, they got some stage of it but can’t get any farther. Common problems being either they can’t get it to maintain its shape for more than a couple seconds, or maybe the psiball sticks around for a little but eventually fades away. These people *could* be doing everything right, which is the hardest thing for them to understand, as they really don’t want the answer to be as simple as it is. You probably already know that magical word I’m going to say but lets give it a dramatic pause…
…
…
…
…
Practice!
In all seriousness I found this truth out the hard way, sometimes you just need to hammer it in and things will get better. That’s how I was first able to eventually get to where I could make a stable temporary psiball on each try, then I found myself practicing hard again to raise it up to something that would stay together over long terms. Its not as hard as you think, not just for psiballs but for most things we’re talking for minimum maybe 2-3 times a week. There is more than enough time to put into practice if you really want to get farther. I know it should seem like its some elusive tweaking you have to do to your technique, but a lot of times psionics progression relies on practice and repetition, which lets your body get used to what you are working on. As a side note you will also notice that enough practice can slowly get you through a mental block, but not always.
Yes, most of us have heard it mentioned but I think it needs some more explaining. Bad days are probably unavoidable, maybe it was the weather, maybe you didn’t sleep well, maybe little green men from Mars had something to do with it, who knows? Whatever the reason, we all just get some days where we’re not at top strength. All across the board we can’t do psionics as well. This can put some real issues into progressing, not because it takes a day away, but because if you’re like me you are not going to notice it and think you’re just doing something wrong. Now you shouldn’t blame everything on ‘bad days’ but you got to be careful in instantly labeling one trial as bad for this reason. Now the other thing, you probably want to know how to cancel these bad days out, I probably can’t give a straight answer on that, basically just do whatever you do to get yourself up and going, I’ll talk about optimal conditions later so also take look at that since that information can help.
Now bad weeks/months are another story, there it is more likely that there something messing with your ability to generate energy. That you’ll likely have to figure out on your own, there’s too many causes to go into here, and each one would need a specific solution.
Now for Optimal and Reduced Conditions: This can be key for getting good results when you’re starting out. When you’re newer to psionics while you have the capacity for psychic activity, your body is going to be undeveloped for the job. This means you’re going to have to rely on treating your body well if you want the best possible result. What you need to do should be pretty obvious: reduced conditions can be caused by any lack of a basic bodily need – food or sleep, or by emotional problems (depression). Optimal Condition is when you got everything worked out, you slept well and for a sufficient time (I like a min of 8 hours and ideally around 9 hours), you’re feeling alright, you’re eating properly, etc. You might also want to avoid activity directly before any session that you think is going to be taking a lot out of you, since psi/energy use possibly runs off the same bodily resources as some physical activities (we’re not entirely sure).
Belief and focus are great things to consider, but let’s take a moment to talk about energy, since some people don’t fully grasp energy/psi’s role in psionics. As far as we know, everything or almost everything in psionics has some amount of energy consumption, while some are negligible amounts. Now don’t feel too limited by it, you are going to run into problems in your practices if you worry constantly about the energy consumption. Coincidental Reinforcement can make an activity take more energy than it needs to if you start to think that it will take a ton of energy *when it won’t*. Still, be aware there is a difference between knowing how much energy it will take and really worrying about how much energy it will take. While the second thing is harmful, the first is helpful. That said, you should have some understanding about the energy consumption of whatever you do for two purposes. The first is so you can avoid overextension: once you have an idea about how a particular activity will affect you, you can properly plan how much you can do. Ask around, most people can give you some kind of estimate on what a particular activity will take. The second reason is for more advanced purposes. When you start experimenting on your own you will need to do be aware how much a new technique takes out of you. The last thing I personally worked with turned out to be an extremely high energy cost, so I had to be very careful with practicing it. The same idea basically would apply with exploring anything else new.
Ehhh, I don’t really have much to say on this one, its three in the morning right now. Maybe you should just pretend you read this section… Nope just kidding. Anyways, you should understand that there are a lot of things that you may not consider that could affect getting what you are practicing to work. Freaking out about one unsuccessful practice is not healthy, while you shouldn’t immediately blame anything in this section as always the problem, remember them in the ‘no one’s perfect’ kinda way and try not to stress out. Remember the key lessons of the need for practice and repetition, and how energy use can factor into things, as these are the two things that most newbies do not fully consider.
Step #1: Practice more to see how it goes.
Step #2: Record every practice session in your journal.
You should work on this method for at least 10 days before proceeding.