I have to admit I haven't been doing this exercise lately. My wife is very pregnant (maybe a week to go before the birth,) and this has been keeping me quite distracted. When I was doing the exercise I didn't have much problem with it. I recorded myself reading the visualization and played it back to myself. I was able to get all of the visualizations.
Looking back at my journal I see I recorded this entry "I did have a vision of an old style typewriter on a table. The message, calm down a little, or something to that effect came across. Not sure what this is about, but it feels like a past life event.", so something was happening.
Makes me want to get back to it, but I have been very unfocused lately.