“But it’s who I am” is the phrase I hear most. It’s the shield people tend to hide behind when they feel powerless. Most people hide behind it to justify their limitations and, thus, lack action toward achieving their breakthroughs.
If this phrase were utterly accurate, humanity would be stuck forever in impotence. Luckily, some people managed to overcome their perceived obstacles and rewrite a new definition of success. Those same people laid the path for all of us to move in the direction of our dreams and fulfill them.
In this article, we explain what happens during hypnosis and explore the mechanism that allows people to dissolve limiting beliefs through hypnotherapy.
How Does Hypnosis Work?
Hypnosis is a state of consciousness. It helps people experience a high level of awareness, focused attention, and increased suggestibility.
During hypnosis, you’re being guided into deep relaxation and concentration. The fascinating aspect of hypnosis is that the process puts the conscious mind to sleep, so there is nothing to guard the subconscious mind anymore. What does it mean to put the conscious mind to sleep? While it’s not absolute body sleep, it’s the sleep of the nervous system. It’s quieting the mind and pausing your current stream of thoughts. So your mind can be open to receiving new suggestions. By using visualization and imagination, it’s easy to absorb these suggestions.
Hypnosis can reprogram your mind to eliminate negative behaviors and install positive ones. You might be surprised that you experience hypnosis 70% of your day, from the most mundane to the most complex tasks. To better understand how easy it is to tap into a hypnotic state, think of driving your car. How often did it happen to you to go from A to B, but as soon as you got to B, you could barely remember anything specific about your journey? This autopilot experience is, in fact, hypnosis.
The same happens when reading a captivating book. You’re so immersed in the reading process you barely pay attention to the stimuli around you. If someone calls your name, it is not because you are ignoring them but because the book captures your attention. It’s very similar to a trance state. When you finally hear them, it’s like experiencing a shock, like you’ve been woken up, but you were never asleep.
When speaking about reprogramming the mind for success, we must consider two critical parts of the brain: the conscious and the subconscious mind.
The Conscious Mind
The conscious mind is the part of our mind responsible for our current perception of the world around us. It is where we process and analyze information, make decisions, and take action. It's in charge of attention, communication, organization, and logical and intellectual processes. The conscious mind is like the security guard for the subconscious mind. It constantly pays attention to what goes in and out. And that's why when we have a phobia, sometimes, it is difficult to change because the subconscious mind has stored them as patterns, and now they are embedded deep inside.
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When the suggestions are made at a conscious level, they don't access our psyche. Imagine someone advising you to stop smoking, although you've been a smoker for many years. You already know the theory about quitting yourself. Still, somehow, your mind works against you and proves the theory you know is wrong with completely opposing actions. Now imagine that you receive powerful suggestions to ditch tobacco at a subconscious level, where your mind can't intervene to say it's not possible. Your mind accepts these suggestions without finding more excuses. And that's because the critical mind, or the conscious one, has gone to sleep, and now, the subconscious mind is in charge, ruling over your behaviors. |
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The Power of the Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind is far more powerful than the unconscious one. The most groundbreaking aspect of it is that it's very literal and responds well to specificity. It is where our memories, emotions, beliefs, and automatic behaviors are stored. The subconscious mind is responsible for many of our feelings, even though we may not be aware of them. The problem is that they become beliefs when we don't process our emotions. These beliefs then turn into behaviors. They can hold us back if we don't identify and change our negative thought patterns. When addressed properly, the subconscious shapes our opinion about ourselves, making us more receptive to the idea that we already have everything we need to be successful.
But it goes further than this. When we are relaxed, our subconscious mind can provide a creativity spike. We can experience unexpected ideas or make connections that the conscious mind wouldn't typically do. It's interesting how all of a sudden, we can tap into our internal resources and access concepts that we may not have considered before. Lightbulb moments and breakthroughs all show up when your mind is completely relaxed.
Also, the subconscious mind is in charge of many processes happening in your body, such as breathing, heartbeat, blood circulation, digestion, and your gut feeling, which is strictly linked to your intuition. This explains the influence of hypnotherapy in lowering your heartbeat, releasing stress and tension, and putting your mind and body at ease. The same happens with losing weight, improving your diet, elevating your sleep, and even managing panic attacks - your entire body complies with the subconscious mind.
While the conscious mind is rational and logical, the subconscious mind is more emotional and intuitive. It can influence your behavior in powerful ways, often without realizing it. For example, your subconscious beliefs and fears can affect your confidence, self-esteem, and motivation.
The subconscious mind holds all of your memories, experiences, and events. The connection between the subconscious mind and your memory is that you must remember things you've done wrong, those that harmed you, so you make sure you don't repeat that mistake.
All in all, the subconscious mind is there to help you survive and thrive.
How Negative Patterns are Formed
Negative patterns often involve repeated thoughts or behaviors that lead to adverse outcomes or emotions. We barely recognize when a negative pattern is formed. And that’s because we recycle the same negative thoughts repeatedly and get used to listening to them all the time.
A negative pattern is formed when something detrimental to our well-being becomes familiar. We don’t stop to question its presence, and irrational thoughts take over. We become accustomed to catastrophizing and black and white thinking can become our go-to model of thought.
Another example is a learned behavior from our childhood. Suppose we grew up in a household where anger was common. In that case, we might resort to that behavior to recreate the feeling of a united family, only to divide it with our anger. The past should be a reference point to allow us to learn the lessons from our mistakes and not drag them into our present. Unfortunately, we tend to place too much importance on the past, particularly painful events. We then piggyback on those outcomes to predict our future because we think that the evidence of failure from the past automatically represents the failure of our present. But we’ll never achieve success if we believe that history will repeat because an event happened once.
While the subconscious mind is an extremely powerful tool, we barely use it to our advantage. It’s a place that can also store unwanted patterns. Think of drinking, smoking, doing drugs, or other disempowering behaviors. When hypnosis puts the conscious mind to sleep, so there is nothing to interfere with the subconscious mind anymore, the therapist can address your subconscious mind.
Our imagination is one of the greatest gifts we possess. But often, people use it the wrong way. Say you wish to attract new friends, but at the same time, you don’t consider yourself worthy of building valuable connections with others. So, suppose you have a social event approaching that could be an excellent opportunity to connect with new people. In that case, you’ll probably detrimentally use your imagination. You’ll most likely imagine the worst-case scenario and then wonder why you feel like a victim. When the moment comes to make a great impression, you’ll sabotage your chances by not putting your best foot forward.
The good thing about imagination is that it can reverse negative scenarios. Using visualization, you can go back to the past and rectify how you feel about specific events. The same goes for your future. If you visualize yourself as successful, you will likely operate accordingly when the opportunity for success presents itself. You’ll eliminate the negative behaviors, triggers, and connections that hold you back from acting the person you know you can be.
The Influence of Your Self-Talk
To have a healthy mind and experience a fresh start, regardless of how painful our past was, we must be mindful of the thoughts we allow in. Avoiding negativity is critical in reprogramming our minds for success.
People who watch the news and hang around with negative people tend to be more negative than people who don't. Gossip, doom scrolling, or even watching a deeply sad movie can make us miserable and alter our mood.
Seeing your mood as a make or break is essential because it sets the stage for your peace of mind. If you feel sluggish and unmotivated, you'll keep coming up with reasons to sabotage your progress. In contrast, you can succeed if you expose yourself to positive content and people. Your mood influences your entire physiology. A great way to elevate your mood is to invest your attention in activities that promote the release of positive neurotransmitters, such as endorphin, serotonin, and dopamine. They will create a general feel-good state, and your mind will operate differently, influencing your body to follow suit.
Affirmations mixed with incantations are a great example of positive self-talk that can change your mood and belief system in moments.
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Say you promised your friends you'd go trekking together, then you wake up and realize you're not in the mood. But, at the same time, you know you promised you'd go. At this point, you'll feel bad going and not going. |
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You could use an affirmation like, "I can do this, I can do this, I can do this."
And keep repeating it out loud forcefully, using your body to create emotion, an emotion connecting your heart and your mind, and allowing your subconscious mind to accept this powerful suggestion. The activity becomes easier to execute because you involve your mind and ask it to cooperate. You put your shoulders back, your chest out, say, "I can do this," and keep repeating it. Your mind won't argue that you can't.
If saying affirmations while involving your body posture can change your mood, consider what hypnosis can do for you. It can change everything and make the impossible become possible. Using hypnotherapy, we can eliminate fears, phobias, addictions, chronic pain, insomnia, chronic fatigue, negative behaviors, negative triggers, and connections. We can improve our brain power, concentration and memory, and attitude towards life in general.
Turn negativity into positivity, laziness into motivation, and shyness into confidence.
From Average Person to Everyday Hero
Hypnotherapy can give everyone the right to a second chance. It can reconcile the differences between the conscious and the subconscious mind and harmonize their relationship to help us feel more balanced, confident in our abilities, and fulfilled.
Over the last ten years, I've been developing the Accelerated Results Method (ARM) system, which I can only describe as the most direct form of hypnosis used today. It's based on speaking directly to the subconscious in the most simplistic form. People from all over the world have elevated their belief systems by listening to my hypnotic audios.
If you are interested in reprogramming your mind to be positive in many different ways, then my All Access Pass is worth checking out. It allows you to use every audio in my whole hypnotherapy collection. And most importantly, it helps you succeed in all areas of your life.
I’ve made it my life’s mission to make peace of mind and the ability to reach your potential available to everyone
- and that includes you!
Here’s to true freedom, happiness and health! - Jamie Clarke