Making Your New Year’s Resolutions Stick

Happy New Year!

The new year is a great time to set new goals and achieve new levels of health and wellness.  The big joke this time of year is how many people make a resolution that only lasts about a week.  Well, this is the year you can change all that!  Its true, habits and patterns are difficult to break by their very nature.  But its NOT because you are bad, wrong, or broken!  It’s only because we rely on our patterns and habits to get us through busy days.  The more complicated our lives become the more we must depend on our “auto pilot” mechanisms.

As a hypnotherapist with certifications in 4 different schools of hypnosis and therapy, I have realized that hypnosis is much much more than “tricks” to control the subconscious.  Hypnotherapy is applied psychology.  It is a method for understanding how the mind learns and applying the quickest, most lasting methods for learning new patterns and habits.  As a matter of fact there is no “controlling” the subconscious or unconscious mind, there are only best methods for communicating our needs and desires to what is essentially a second mind.

Your subconscious IS YOU!  As they say, two heads are always better than one.  This is only too true!  The other-than-conscious parts of your mind genuinely want YOUR best happiness and success.  In fact, they are working for you every day making your life easier.  One of the ways they make your life easier is to memorize your patterns and routines and run them for you like an autopilot so you don’t have to think so hard about the ordinary tasks of life.

Student Driving

One great example of your subconscious working for you is driving.  When we first learned to drive it was nearly overwhelming.  We had to remember which foot goes where, how to work the shift and when, keep our hands at 6 and 9, our eyes on the road and simultaneously on the rear and side view mirrors, all while scanning ahead, reading signs, monitoring our speed, and checking for dangers all at once.  No wonder we felt like shouting, “Shut up, I’m driving!” whenever anyone tried to talk to us.  Now, though, we get in the car and do all that and we feel…bored!  We turn on the radio, drink a cup of Joe, or (God forbid!) talk on the cell phone just to keep from falling asleep.

How can we do ALL of that?  Well, we can’t!  It is our subconscious mind that is driving the car for us.  Most people can recall a time when we got in the car at the end of a long day’s work and then found ourselves pulling into the driveway at home without any awareness of how we got there.  I’ve even heard stories of people who found themselves pulling up to the house they USED to live in after an autopilot drive like that.  Your subconscious has learned not only how to drive but also the route home!

That is a great example of how your subconscious mind works hard so you don’t have to.  It never gets easier to do the 10 tasks at once that driving a vehicle requires of us.  It only SEEMS easier because our best buddy, the subconscious, takes over the job for us as much as possible.  Whenever something new or different demands our conscious engagement the whole task is tossed back to the conscious mind.  So if a car suddenly pulls out in front of us, our conscious mind must engage.  Suddenly, we drop the cell phone, throw that coffee in the air and yell, “SHUT UP! IM DRIVING!” all over again.  See?  Its not easier, its just that our old reliable subconscious is hard at work so we can better contemplate the joys of life.

sleepwalking thru life

Now that you can appreciate what your subconscious does for you, maybe you’re beginning to like the idea of forming a REAL partnership with your “other self”?  Maybe you can also better appreciate how many tasks your subconscious takes over for you (You know you’re still asleep in the shower each morning.  Who do you THINK does the scrubbing and shaving for you?) and how easy it is to misunderstand WHICH habits you have decided to drop and WHICH you want to reinforce?  Those old “bad” habits that tend to repeat themselves are just like driving up to the house you moved out of months ago.  You’re subconscious is not sabotaging you, it has simply learned its job too well.  Now, that’s where hypnosis comes in.

Hypnosis is the easiest way to communicate clearly to the subconscious exactly what patterns should be changed and which should be repeated.  Otherwise, it gets confused.  Of course, the subconscious in all of us speaks a different language than the conscious mind and everyone’s subconscious language is unique.  A qualified hypnotherapist will need to be a good interpreter to custom translate your goals into the language your subconscious understands well.  A few sessions for fine tuning, and those old nasty habits are gone for good.

And its easy!  And its fun!  And all you really have to do is relax and let your subconscious mind do what it does best!  You can simply be the beneficiary of your ‘partner’ (subconscious You)’s  hard work and tenacity!  There’s no reason you cannot make your resolutions REAL lasting changes that make life better and happier.  And if you’re having trouble thinking of new patterns to replace the old ones – your subconscious is great at THAT job too! That’s what its there for.  Isn’t it time you took a load off and let someone else do the hard work for you?  Wouldn’t it be great if you had a partner to help you through all the tough parts of life?  And wouldn’t it be lovely if that partner was YOU and was as easily accessible as the air that you breathe?  Hypnotherapy makes all that real, tangible, and fun.

Get ‘er done & have FUN!

 

 

Let’s Talk About Exercise

When clients start my hypnosis for Weight Loss program – a 6 week program including hypnotherapy, education, supplements and recordings to use at home, most of them tell me they know all about exercise. They have a type of exercise they want to do, they know when they need to do it and how, they know all about that. They know, know, know. When I ask if they are exercising daily the answer is also no.

Exer-science

So what’s happening there? I can tell you what. Knowing is something we do with our conscious mind. We need to get our of our heads and into our unconscious to make this work FOR YOU. The bottom line is you should NOT be working at exercise; it should be working FOR YOU.

Imagine you’re sleeping deeply in your bunk. Suddenly the air is pierced by a shrill whistle. The drill sergeant begins shouting. Its time for P.T. You are on your feet and in your uniform in seconds. Your boots and pack are on and you are running. Are you running because its good for maintaining your weight? Are you doing it because you want to keep fit and avoid heart attacks and degenerative diseases? Are you thinking of how to get to your optimum heart rate for your age and body mass? Are you breathing correctly, timing your run, hydrating before you need it? NO! You are on auto-drive. Your eyes are hardly even open and who knows how you managed to get your boots on right because you are not fully awake yet.

Best Warrior 2-mile run

Imagine you are on the plains in Africa. You are stalking your prey with your friends. Out of nowhere a sabre tooth tiger leaps from the underbrush. You take off! You run full out like the wind. You duck, you dive, you climb, you scamper. Are you calculating your average speed? Are you thinking about how good the endorphin release will make you feel? Are you pacing yourself, watching your heart rate, monitoring your blood pressure? No, No, No! You are NOT thinking! You are running for all you’re worth. If you notice anything at all it is on a subconscious level.

blog.sharefitness.com

That’s what I’m talking about: Unconscious automatic exercise! What if you could wake each day craving exercise the way you crave a cup of coffee or a trip to the toilet? What if the drill sergeant or the sabre tooth tiger were in your own mind driving you and all you had to do was ACT, move, get it in gear and get outta here?

Well, ok, what if it wasn’t quite that demanding? What if it was just automatic upon awakening, you woke up, got out of bed and did a few crunches? What if you did a pull up every time you passed a certain doorway? What if every morning, rain or shine you skipped rope for 10 minutes? What if you took a brisk walk everyday on your lunch hour? And maybe that walk helped you rev up your appetite so you enjoyed your food more? Or what if you craved a quick trip to the gym everyday to unwind and you didn’t let anything get in your way?

See, what if you didn’t have to think about it or know what you were doing? What if you didn’t have to try, you just did it? Then if knowing and thinking didn’t matter you might be eager to hear about exercising any chance you get. In fact, you might be interested to know that exercise you do first thing in the morning burns more fat because you’ve used up all the carbs from your last meal. Your body has to dip into the fat storage to fuel your activity. Or that 10 minutes of exercise a few times per day is actually better at keeping you trim and fit and its less stressful for your body.

You may also be interested to hear that a little daily exercise is essential for keeping your mind sharp in your later years. The mind and the body are made to work together. So using your mind to get your body in shape just makes sense. But its not an intellectual thing. Its automatic, unconscious. Your unconscious mind controls most of your body’s activities anyway, like digesting, breathing, healing. Doesn’t it make sense that your unconscious would be your body’s best personal trainer?

I once read that when asked how he managed to write so many books, Stephen King said he had a deep gravely voice in his head that comes up behind him when he’s fiddling around and shouts, “GET TO WORK!!!” Something about what he said stuck with me and now every Monday morning King’s monster voice wakes me up and drives me relentlessly till Wednesday with that same statement. I can’t get it out of my head. I’m productive from morning to night.

“GET TO WORK!”

Why don’t we get your old drill sergeant, or your gym coach in your head to wake you up each morning to the tune of reveille? You don’t have to worry your pretty little head about when, where, how, or how much at all. You’d just have to…GET YOUR LAZY BUTT OUT OF BED, MAGGOT! YOU’VE GOT 5 SECONDS TO HIT THE FLOOR AND GIVE ME TEN. YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD! PAIN IS JUST WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY! IN YOUR SHOES AND OUT THE DOOR AND GO, GO, GO, GO!!

personal motivation

The Myth of ‘Mind Control’

On my FaceBook page ( www.facebook.com/ClearMirrorHealing ) one lady offered an opinion about hypnosis for weight loss that included the statement “I would recommend not letting others play with your brain while you are not aware.”   Her concerns are worth more than a returned comment.  Who, after all would want someone messing around with your brain when they are not aware?! NOT ME!  But the idea that hypnosis is “mind control” is an old and persistent myth.

Let me start by saying, I am not surprised by the persistence of this myth.  The main reason I am not surprised is that a lot of hypnotists use this myth to their advantage and some hypnotists even believe the myth themselves!  Stage/performance hypnotists do need to rely on the idea of mind control to put on a good show.  It’s kind of the way stage magicians do their “magic” Most of us know that card tricks are actually slight of hand.  Magicians don’t have to fight off angry hordes with torches and pitchforks because people admire the stage magician’s ability to make simple “tricks” look like magic.  So why does the myth still persist for hypnotists?

I’ll tell you why!  Because the human mind is nothing short of AMAZING.  You, my friend, are amazing!  In medical school, I studied neuroscience and I’ll tell you one of the biggest things I learned. I learned that the human brain is like a vast storehouse the size of planet earth and what we know about the brain is like the continent of Australia, plus Tasmania, and maybe the Hawaiian Islands altogether. By which I mean, we hardly know anything about our amazing brains AND what we do know is rather widely spaced and disconnected.

Australia, Tasmania & Hawaiian Islands

Now, add to that vast amazing-ness the concept of “the mind”  The functional MIND is even more vast, more amazing, and more unknown in its depths than the physical brain.  So when you see that hypnotist on the stage convince a person from the audience that their body is as strong as steel and then have someone sit on their belly while they are lying suspended across two chairs – your ooo’s and ahhh’s should be at the amazing power of that volunteer’s mind!  This is akin to the amazing, documented phenomena that occurs when a parent, pumped on adrenalin, manages to lift a truck off their child in the heat of passion and danger.  That stuff is REAL!  And it happens more often than we’d like to admit.

Now, imagine what you could do if you could tap into a little of that amazing-ness for yourself!  Think you could eat your vegetables? You bet you could!  Think you could stop cravings for things you know are detrimental?  Without a doubt!  Think you could make daily exercise fun and rewarding?  Piece of cake!  (er, carrot?)  And yes, you can do amazing feats of healing that will blow the minds of medical experts also.  I have seen it happen.

So, is that lil ‘ol me messing with your mind?  Well, I would love to take all the credit.  But, no, that’s not me.  That is YOU!  I am not “controlling” your mind – you are!  You are finally getting control of a part of your mind (unconscious, subconscious) that may have learned ways of behaving that worked as a child but now tend to work against you. You are finally gaining self control.  Honestly, I see it as you partnering with your own sub-conscious or un-conscious self to get the most out of life.

So what is my role?   I am not controlling you or your mind.  (please! I have enough trouble controlling myself! Don’t we all?)  I consider myself your guide and interpreter on the way to tapping into, managing and/or partnering with your own amazing mind.  What I do in a session is first: listen carefully to what your true goals are.  Then: listen to the words you use to get yourself there.  Finally, I figure out your own mind’s strengths and weaknesses.  Some people are visual people, some are feeling people, some are auditory.  I don’t want to paint you a beautiful picture in your mind if you are a person who dreams in black and white.  I don’t want to spend time droning on if you just need things to “click”.  Everyone’s mind is wired a little differently.  I am trained to understand your wiring by listening carefully to your words.

So then I put all my learning about you and your mind together to form a strategy that will get you where you want to go in just the way you need to do it so that it happens smoothly and naturally.  Then, if I’ve done my job right, it feels like magic!  That’s right, I used the “M” word.  It does often feel like magic.  It does sometimes feel like someone else has taken control. But its still all YOU.

Ever fallen asleep in a position that cuts off circulation to your arm? You barely wake up when you become aware of a hand lying by your neck that IS NOT YOURS!! OMG! You snap awake in a panic only to discover that the murderous hand is your own hand that has lost conscious feeling because it is “asleep”.   It is a harmless (actually, helpful) part of yourself that you simply lost conscious control of.  Well, your unconscious mind is a lot like that.  Because, by definition, you are unconscious of it, it may often feel like someone else. So when your magic inner mind kicks in and, say, wakes you one minute before your alarm goes off, or say, makes you crave water when you used to hate it, it may well feel like someone else is in control.  I would like to pretend its me 🙂 but its really not – its all YOU!

amazing strength of mind

P.S. If any of y’all want to tap into some of the even more amazing things your mind can do, talk to me about my specialization in Pain Free Childbirth, enhanced Test Performance and Study Skills, and Turbo-Charged Immune function, to mention a few.  Frankly, if you can put it into words, and the mind can do it, I will work with you to get you there.