If We Want to Change Our Story, We Need to Learn a New Script

Our Brain Records Everything:

From the time we are born until we are about eight years old, our brain is in the theta brainwave state, the same state we experience when we are in a state of hypnosis, when we are daydreaming, in deep meditation, and light sleep. This is the brainwave that is linked to different types of learning. It is here that we are hyper-suggestible, soaking up everything in our environment, and storing it deep within our unconscious and subconscious mind. From the time we entered this world, our mind has been switched on and recording everything it hears – everything we are telling it, both positive and negative, and everything those around us are telling us. Our mind hasn’t forgotten a thing, but has soaked up every word it has heard like a sponge. We are in a state of self-hypnosis.

What we expect to happen, tends to be realised.

Once we have a thought or an image, it is like a map, and the subconscious mind does everything it can to ensure that map is followed. Every thought we have sets in motion a physical chain reaction. So once we know where/when we received the *imprinting that doesn’t serve us, we can use the highly suggestible state of self-guided visual imagery or hypnosis to reprogram the mind. (*Imprinting is any kind of learning that happens at a particular age or a particular life stage that is rapid and apparently independent of behavioural consequences. )

Most people hypnotise themselves several times a day without being aware of it.

We lose ourselves in a good movie or in the pages of a good book. We forget our surroundings watching waves roll in and out, gazing at fish swimming in an aquarium, or relaxing in front of a fire crackling in an open fireplace. Athletes call it being in the zone, artists call it being in flow. We become so focused that we’re barely aware of our surroundings, but in no way have we lost control of ourselves.

If we have been driving long enough, we may at some point have experienced highway hypnosis, something that happens when we find we were essentially allowing our subconscious to drive, literally driving on autopilot, sometimes for miles at a time. When we suddenly find ourselves pulling into our driveway with no recollection of the last mile of getting there, we experienced highway hypnosis. Self-hypnosis occurs when we intentionally put ourselves into this state.

Since we are highly suggestible in the state of hypnosis, it can be used to modify behaviour, develop new skills, increase productivity and concentration, improve confidence and self-esteem, and improve our relationships. More than 15,000 studies on the use of hypnosis have been published in the US National Institutes of Health database, and the benefits of hypnosis that have been established to date range from stress reduction, improved sports performance, the treatment of various disorders such as anxiety, pain, weight loss, sleep disorders, addictions and many more.

Some Things We Should Know:

• • If we wish to change our stories we need to stop using outdated language and telling outdated stories.
  • As long as we keep talking about the symptom, our mind keeps it alive.
  • What we focus on we get more of. That is why the greater the conscious effort to stop doing something, the less the subconscious responds and why trying to employ sheer willpower never seems to work over the long haul.
  • The mind learns through repetition. Practice makes perfect.

A Few Guidelines for Self Hypnosis:

• Keep suggestions in the present tense (i.e. visualise how we want to be and suggest as if it were so, “I love giving presentations with confidence and ease” or “My thoughts are clear and my sentences flow eloquently.”)
• Suggestions should be meaningful and excite the imagination, because imagination is more powerful than knowledge or reason.
• Keep suggestions formulated in the positive (i.e. “I have a superb memory” is much better than “I am not forgetful” or “I am calm and relaxed” instead of “I am not anxious”).
• Once an idea has been accepted by the subconscious mind, it tends to become a fixed habit of thinking. This is how both good and bad habits of action are first formed. And once the habit is formed it becomes easier to follow and harder to break.
• Suggestions should be repeated to make an impact but varied as not to become boring (i.e. we need to find different suggestions revolving around a central theme we are working on.).

Are you stuck in old habits and wish to learn more about how you can use self hypnosis to create new habits? Then contact me.