Self Hypnosis Secrets: That Voice In Your Head Is Not Your Friend

Have you seen the movie, “The Soloist?” It’s based on a true story about Steve Lopez an LA Times reporter named who tries to help a homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers whom he encounters playing  a cello on the street. It’s clear to Lopez that Nathaniel is a very talented musician. How did he end up on the street?  

Lopez learns that Nathaniel was a brilliant musician with a great future until he started hearing voices in his head that told him the world was an unsafe place. Unable to escape these voices, Nathaniel gave up his studies at the Juilliard School and ended up homeless.

Consider that the only difference between you and Nathaniel is that you’re not homeless and on the street.

Like Nathaniel, you hear voices in your head. If you doubt this, stop reading and listen. If you’re thinking, “What voice?” that’s the voice. You don’t believe every voice in your head, but you do believe some. Consider the possibility that it’s the voices you do believe, the one’s you’re sure are “true,” that keep you stuck.

For example, I’ll bet there’s a voice in your head that says, “Change is hard.” You’ve hypnotized yourself into believing those words through a lifetime of repetition (yours and everyone around you) until you are now “sure” change is hard.

But is it really? Consider: How long does it take to stop smoking? If you answered anything less than a millisecond, you’re wrong. Yes, it may take years to choose to finally stop smoking. But the actual transition from being a smoker to a non smoker takes about as long as it does to throw a pack of cigarettes in the trash.

Or, consider: How long does it take for a dieter to choose to stop eating desserts?  You now know the answer. But it may take decades to make that choice.

What happens during those decades?

What happens is that you’ve spent those decades hypnotizing yourself into believing the voice in your head that stopping smoking is hard or losing weight is hard that your brain is now “hard wired” to believe that voice. Then, when you try to replace that voice with a different one that says, “I’m going to stop smoking (or lose weight)” the “change is hard” voice takes over and change seems very hard.

I know that “Change is hard” feels very real. But there are lots of things in life that “feel” real but aren’t. Feelings are like the weather: Wait a while and they will change.

All of these are just voices, no different in essence than the voices Nathaniel heard. If you want to hypnotize yourself to stop believing them it’s quite simple: Stop believing them.

Here’s a video you must watch if you doubt this:

Self Hypnosis Secrets: When It Comes To Weight Loss and Exercise, You Are What You Think

Choose the statements below that most closely aligns with what you believe about weight loss and exercise:

Statements A: Weight loss is easy . Weight loss is fun. Weight loss is peaceful.

Statements B: Weight loss is stressful. Weight loss is tough. Weight loss is like being in prison

Statements A: Exercise is fun, easy and satisfying.

Statements B: Exercise is drudgery, hard and unpleasant.

Obviously, what you believe will dictate how you approach diet and exercise. In fact, it’s likely that if statement B most closely aligns with what you believe, you haven’t kept weight off and you probably don’t have a regular exercise regimen.

Put another way, you’ve hypnotized yourself into believing Statements

A versus Statements B and you’ve done so through life long repetition of these statements which has created an association in your brain. This is exactly how hypnosis works.

Through repetition, you’ve created neural pathways in your brain that have become “hard wired.” You’re now like Pavlov’s dogs (see video below) who were conditioned to salivate even when there was no food around.

To change, you have to break the connections in your brain by creating new neural pathways. This is done through repetition of new thoughts and new behaviors. Use self hypnosis to create new thoughts which then create new ways of behaving.

The techniques are simple:

1.   

Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Dim the lights and close your eyes.  You might play relaxing music in the background. Say the word “relax” to yourself every time you exhale. 

2.    In this relaxed state, visualize your desired outcome: Being thin, feeling great, looking as you want to look, having tremendous energy, etc. Visualize yourself actually achieving your goal.

3.    Repeat to yourself words that correlate with your visualization. Make sure the words are in the present tense.  For example: I am feeling wonderful. I enjoy the way my body looks and the way I feel. I love eating nutritious foods that keep me thin and healthy. I am exercising and loving it, etc.

4.     Do this for as long as you want. The key is regular practice.

It took you years to create the neural pathways you now have. It will take time to create new neural pathways. The old neural pathways won’t disappear. You may always associate certain foods with feeling good (comfort food) no matter how unhealthy those foods are.

But over time, with practice, those pathways will diminish in power and be replaced by new and stronger pathways that will support you in achieving your dreams.

Self Hypnosis Secrets: Self Hypnosis Is An Everyday Thing

You don’t have to wonder if self hypnosis will work for you. You actually hypnotize yourself quite frequently. You hypnotize yourself when you daydream and lose track of your surroundings. You do it when you drive and suddenly ask yourself, “How did I get here?” You do it when you suddenly have a memory from your past or a fantasy about your future and time seems to stand still.

In these situations as in self hypnosis, you are completely in control, but your mind is focused on something other than your present reality. For example, if a car suddenly pulled out in front of you while you’re driving and daydreaming, you would be jolted back into reality and you’d hit the brake. Similarly, when you are hypnotized, you can end the session instantly if you choose by merely opening your eyes and noticing your surroundings.

Self hypnosis is simply a focused form of day dreaming in which you consciously relax your body while giving suggestions to your mind.

Here’s how you can focus your daydreams:

1.     Get in a relaxed state. There are many ways to do this. You can listen to relaxing music with your eyes closed. You can consciously relax each part of your body in sequence (“relax head, relax eyes, relax mouth, etc.). You can count slowly from ten to one and, with each decreasing number, imagine yourself going deeper and deeper into a relaxed state.

Once you are relaxed, repeat to yourself over and over again the object of your desire. It could be, “I easily and effortlessly achieve my desired weight. Visualize (that is, day dream) being at your ideal weight. See what you look like. Admire yourself. Turn this way and that in front of a mirror to notice how good you look. Feel your increased energy and vitality.

If you want to stop smoking, you might repeat, “All urges to smoke are simply melting away.” See yourself (that is, day dream) throwing away your cigarettes. Notice how exercise becomes easier. Smell your clothes and notice how fresh they smell. Take a deep and cleansing breath.

 In this relaxed state, take some time to enjoy (day dream about) your desired outcome.

Over time, with practice, your desired outcome will become your reality.

Self Hypnosis Secrets: Be Careful What You Ask For, You Will Get It

To use self  hypnosis to get what you want, choose your words carefully. our mind is a powerful instrument that will respond to your wishes.

So be careful what you ask for. You will get it.

Ancient wisdom supports this with the statement that, “We are what we think, we become what we think and what we think becomes our reality.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, echoing ancient wisdom wrote, “ A man becomes what he thinks about all day long.”

I was recently told of a woman who discovered the power of the words she used to hypnotize herself to get what she wanted.

The woman is 75 years old and had been wearing glasses since she was a little girl. At first, she needed glasses only to read but, over the years, glasses became a requirement for distance vision as well. She decided to use self hypnosis to improve her eyesight.

In a relaxed state, she kept repeating over and over again, “I have eyesight like an eagle.” In a matter of weeks, she no longer needed glasses to see distant objects. However, she still needed glasses for reading.

I suggest that “I have eyesight like an eagle” worked for her distance vision because eagles have excellent eyesight to spot prey from a great distance. She should now use the sentence “I have eyesight like a cat,” an animal whose minimum threshold of light for vision is approximately 6 times lower than that for normal human beings, to improve her eyesight for reading.

So choose carefully the words you use to hypnotize yourself. Our words create our future. 

Self Hypnosis Secrets: Lose Weight By Breaking Your Addiction to Food

The August 2010 issue of the magazine from the Anytime Fitness Clubs, had an article called  "Yep, Fatty Foods Are Addictive--Literally."

The article talked about a three month study in the journal “Nature Neuroscience” in which rats who gorged on cheesecake, bacon and other fattening foods became obese and addicted to those foods to the point where even electric shocks couldn’t keep them from eating those foods.

It’s not actually the food to which these rats were addicted. The food activated the “pleasure center” of their brains. Chemicals (called “neuro transmitters”) surged through their bodies telling them “I just have to have this food.” The rats became addicted to the pleasurable feelings brought on by eating. The rats would suffer mentally and physically if the food were taken away.

Sound familiar? You may sometimes feel the same way, as though you “just have to have” certain foods. Do you suffer “mentally and physically” when you try to lose weight?

But here’s the part of the study you should know: The rats were given these foods for 23 hours each and every day during the three-month study. Of course they became addicted. Wouldn’t you be addicted to anything you did for 23 hours each and every day (of course, you’d undoubtedly get sick well before those 23 hours were over).

While you would never gorge yourself like those rats, you ate foods that caused you to add pounds and you did that often enough to now weigh more than you would like. The pleasure center in your brain gets activated when you eat these foods and you suffer mentally and physically when you diet if you deprive yourself of these foods.

While this is how you became addicted to food, you can use this same process to break your addiction. Here’s where self hypnosis will make a difference. Just as you became addicted to food by repeating a behavior over and over again, you can become “unaddicted” through repetition of a different behavior.

So if you want to break a food addiction, do this:

1.   Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed and where the lighting is dim rather than completely dark. You may want to play soothing music in the background.

2.   Sit down and close your eyes. You could sit in a chair that reclines slightly and you might want to cover yourself with a light blanket. The goal is for you to be comfortable while awake. It's best if you stay awake so don't lie down. If you're so tired that you might fall asleep even sitting up, go to sleep and hypnotize yourself at another time.

3.   Count slowly from ten to one. With each number say words to yourself, that will encourage you to become more and more relaxed. For example: "Ten. I'm going deeper." "Nine. I'm going deeper and deeper." "Eight. I'm feeling completely relaxed." "Seven. My body and mind are letting go. It feels so good to let go."

Don't rush through this counting. Let yourself experience going "deeper and deeper."

Some people, instead of counting, find it helpful to consciously relax their bodies. For example, you might say to yourself, "Relax neck. Relax shoulders. Relax right arm. Relax left arm." Continue through each major body part. Wait three seconds between each body part to experience the relaxation.

4.   When you are relaxed, repeat to yourself whatever you want to hypnotize yourself into believing. If your mind wanders, bring it gently back to repeating what you want to hypnotize yourself about. Here are some phrases you could use. Make up your own if these aren’t appropriate for you:

A.   Losing weight is easy and effortless.

B.   I easily reach my desired weight.

C.   All desire to eat fattening, rich foods is draining away.

D.   I no longer have the desire or appetite to snack between meals or to get a late night snack.

E.   I am completely satisfied by a normal, well balanced meal

F.    I am not hungry between meals because my well balanced meal has satisfied my physical hunger and mental appetite.

G.   I have no desire, urge or inclination to overeat.

H.   I eat consciously and slowly and I thoroughly enjoy the healthy foods that I eat.

I.     Rich, heavy, greasy, sweet fattening foods and drinks no longer appeal to me.

J.     With my new, lighter figure, I have more energy, I feel stronger   and healthier each and every day.

5.  Whenever you're ready to end the session, open your eyes and slowly stretch to reconnect with the world.

You may choose to record your statements for playback during your hypnosis session so that you don't have to think about what to say as you are hypnotizing yourself.

The key is repetition. Consider those rats who became addicted to fattening foods. You have been eating fattening foods for so long that you’re now addicted to them. Like an addict, the pleasure center in your brain is saying you “have to have” these foods. You experience deprivation when the foods aren’t there.

It will take time and several self hypnosis sessions for your food addiction to go away and be replaced in your pleasure center by new ways of thinking and behaving.

Have patience. Be gentle with yourself. You can do it.

Self Hypnosis Secrets: Mind Over Matter

Does "mind over matter" really matter? Just how powerful are our thoughts?

A friend told me the story of his brother Bruce who, at the age of 10, developed rashes from an unknown cause. Bruce's mother had him wash with cocoa butter soap, assuring him that this would make his rashes disappear.

Sure enough, in the morning, his rashes were gone. What his mother didn’t tell Bruce is that she had made up the story about the powers of cocoa butter.

A pediatric dentist who never uses Novocain when drilling the teeth of her young patients told me that just before starting to drill she says, "This may tickle a little bit. Try not to laugh."

The May 3rd, 2010 New York Times carried a story about the "placebo effect" which the story defines as, "The improvement in health that some patients experience because of the feeling that they are receiving medical care."

In response, a doctor wrote about a woman he saw in the emergency room with "lower limb paralysis" but whose nervous system showed no sign of impairment. The doctor injected her with distilled water that caused her to regain the ability to walk almost immediately.

One skeptical commentator, in response to that New York Times article, asked if these are examples of "coincidence or causality?"

It doesn't matter. The fact is that these are examples of seemingly miraculous events for which we have no rational explanation. But they point to an unmistakable conclusion: Our minds can be incredible instruments of creation if we just knew how to harness our thoughts to create what we desire.

Self hypnosis provides the access to harnessing our thoughts. In self hypnosis, you relax and focus on the object of your desire. If any thought such as, "This is silly" or "This won't work" comes up, imagine that thought is a bird and let it fly away. Then repeat a phrase (silently or out loud) over and over that represents what is desired. Imagine the phrase as a recording that keeps playing the same message.

In fact, you can make a recording of the message and listen to it repeatedly. Or you can write the message down and place it on your bathroom mirror, next to your computer, on the dashboard of your car or anywhere you know you’re going to see it from time to time.

For example:

·      Some people use the phrase, "Every day in every way, I'm getting better and better."

·      I know a man with health problems who wakes up every morning repeating, "I'm happy, I'm healthy and I'm healing."

·      Others say, "Money is coming to me easily and effortlessly for my highest good."

·      A person who is always nervous when delivering a speech repeats, "These people are my friends. They want me to do well" whether she knows the people who will be in her audience or not.

·      A job seeker repeats, "The perfect job for me is here."

Whatever statement you choose, say it in the present tense and keep repeating it. Don’t give up. As the author Wayne Dyer reminds us, “Infinite patience produces immediate results.”