It’s that time of year! Perhaps frustrations of the past year or even years have you looking forward to starting 2023 with positive change. Are you wanting to be rid of an old habit? Have you gained a few holiday pounds that you would like to drop? Maybe it’s time to address that annoying pandemic weight gain that has been hanging on for the past couple of years. Whatever you would like to change, hypnosis is your friend. Habits reside in the subconscious mind and as hypnosis is one of the most powerful ways to impact the subconscious mind, it becomes the choice for those desiring to successfully keep their new year’s resolutions.
You Can Achieve Permanent Change with Hypnosis
Hypnosis is the key to resetting your brain, it is the doorway to permanent change. Habits are created through repetition. No one became addicted to smoking with the first puff of a cigarette, nor did fast food become their downfall with just one Big Mac. Similarly, you didn’t become comfortable driving a car the first time you slid behind the wheel, no one became a gym rat the first time they did a workout. By repeating a behavior, we create a habit, whether it is good for us or not.
Subconscious Patterns Become Habits
Taking what I refer to as the path of least resistance, the subconscious mind basically runs on autopilot. It operates in patterns; these patterns become habits. The subconscious repeats these habits without volition, in other words, the path of least resistance. Once we have created a pattern—positive or otherwise—the subconscious mind continually repeats it. When we try to shift a subconscious pattern through conscious willpower, we are likely to fail. Using willpower is stressful and is a short-term strategy which is not meant to run our lives. The conscious mind can handle up to seven things at a time, and the closer we get to those seven, the less effective it becomes at juggling them.
For instance, it’s one thing to focus on losing weight, but if we get bogged down dealing with personal or professional commitments, relationship issues, family obligations, financial woes, or other stressors, our desired focus is quickly crowded out of the forefront of our mind. Overwhelm, which is what occurs when we try to consciously address too many things at once, causes our willpower to give way; when this occurs, our old patterns reemerge, and the subconscious resumes its travels down the more comfortable path of least resistance. You have likely experienced this if you have ever tried to break a habit and failed. It is a well-established fact that when the subconscious mind and the conscious mind are in conflict, the subconscious—which is simply larger, and by its very nature always “on”—will win every time. Hypnosis can change all that.
Hypnosis Is Your Friend
Putting it simply, this is how it works. Hypnosis affects the subconscious mind which is where habits reside. Anytime we create a subconscious pattern, we are creating a neural pathway. This makes hypnosis the logical tool as it can rapidly and efficiently create change in the brain. We create a new behavior while establishing a new neural pathway; in turn, this new behavior becomes our normal behavior. In other words, the new behavior now becomes the path of least resistance making it easy to keep our New Year’s resolutions and successfully attain our desired change.
Causing the Subconscious to Work for You
To achieve your goals, electing to work with a professional hypnotherapist is the quickest and easiest route, but there are also several hypnotic techniques you can implement yourself. To be successful with any change, it is helpful if you have a goal in mind. Perhaps you have a family reunion or class reunion coming up, or maybe you are going on a cruise, or there is an event that you want to look your best for. Perhaps you want to achieve a certain level of fitness for your own wellbeing. Whatever it is, becoming relaxed and imagining yourself meeting your goal is most helpful, and it is essential to maintain these successful goal images with consistency. The more you maintain the desired results in your awareness, the more the subconscious will work in your favor.
Create those mental images to be so believable and so real that it is as if your desired result has already occurred. This is what I refer to as foregone conclusion, or presupposition, and since the subconscious mind is goal-achieving, this will work in your favor. Your inner self-talk should be present tense—as if what you desire is happening right now. There is no past or future in the subconscious mind, so you must communicate the future in present tense—again, as if it is happening now.
There needs to be no doubt in the communication to the subconscious; to create t this new reality, you don’t want to think in terms of maybe it will happen, or I’m hoping it will happen, but that it is happening right now in your subconscious. Another beneficial way to put your subconscious to work for you is to visit the achievement of your goal as you drop off to sleep. As we are drifting off to sleep, we enter what is known as the hypnogogic state. This is a natural state of hypnosis that we enter very easily, and it is a time when the subconscious is particularly receptive to positive suggestions and images. So, practice achieving your goal as you drift off to sleep each night.
Don’t Think of The Eiffel Tower
When I say don’t think of the Eiffel Tower did that actually cause you to not think of the Eiffel Tower, or did you suddenly get images of that popular Parisian structure? With any habit change, like stopping smoking, we can’t imagine ourselves not doing whatever it is we want to release. The subconscious mind responds to visual information, to what we see, whether we deliberately bring it forth or intend to not see it, we create it in the mind just like with the Eiffel Tower I told you not to think of. If we create images of being at our goal weight or fitness level, for example, this is what the mind will respond to. These are what are referred to as transformational suggestions. We are giving the subconscious a suggestion that it can move toward, or what we call toward motivation. If I were to say, imagine yourself as not smoking—the mind can’t imagine a not-something so therefore experiences the smoking version of you because that is the image it can create.
Here’s The Solution
If you can’t imagine yourself not smoking, (or whatever) what can you do? What you can do is create images of success that preclude being a smoker. What is it that you will gain by being free of the tobacco habit? Perhaps you would like to do some extensive hiking in the mountains, or how about those thoughts of running a half-marathon? Maybe you want to scuba dive (it’s hard to keep a cigarette lit under water), or perhaps you want to live long enough to walk your daughter down the aisle. We can easily imagine these activities occurring sans cigarettes, and in so doing, the subconscious mind becomes focused on what we do want. It will then help us achieve the desired outcome, even though it is not stated directly. This is the hypnotic technique known as indirect suggestion, and it is the solution to not seeing the Eiffel Tower.
Make Use of All the Senses
Imagining yourself on that sunny beach with your new fit, healthy body is great, but it’s even more effective when you include your other senses. Notice how the sun feels on your skin, listen to the sounds of the seagulls or the waves rolling into shore, breathe in the scent of suntan lotion, taste that piña colada. The more we make use of all our senses, the more we anchor the expectation of success, the reality of having achieved our goal. Imagining your healthy body at the beach is one example of how to engage the senses, you can take it and apply it to whatever change you desire.
Change Your Mind Change Your Life
Hypnotherapy is a rapid change and solution-focused process as well as a mind-body process. Think of the subconscious as being in every cell of your body. Because of this, by focusing on the subconscious we have direct access to the body. Many of the positive changes you desire can be achieved through simple methods such as those I have laid out. Hypnotherapy goes beyond do-it-yourself hypnosis and is especially helpful in complex scenarios or when self-hypnosis methods just aren’t enough. The power of the mind is enormous, and hypnosis is one of the most valuable tools available to access that power and keep those New Year’s resolutions once and for all!