How Hypnotherapy Can Help You Change (Hypnosis 101, Part 2)
“There’s a part of me that wants to change but there’s another part of me that doesn’t, and that part always seems to win out!”
Sound familiar? There is a lot of truth to this statement. What we are talking about is a conflict between two minds: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.
Let’s just put it in plain English: the reason it is so difficult for folks to change is because the subconscious mind makes up 88% of your mind and it likes what is known and familiar. It does not like to change. Your conscious mind makes up 12% of your mind and oftentimes cannot overcome the power and influence that the subconscious mind has over our behavior and thinking. To make changes in our lives, we must get our subconscious minds on board so that it starts to become familiar with the change we want to make. Hypnotherapy is a very effective way to do this.
Here’s an illustration of how this works. Let’s say you are born into a family where both mom and dad smoke. As children, we believe everything we hear and see. You hear dad saying quite often “I need a smoke”. Dad seems pretty happy after he has a smoke. So does mom. One day you ask for a cigarette. You are told cigarettes are for “big people”. You want to be a big person too. As you grow up, the people that care for you, love you, and keep you alive, smoke. This becomes your reality. Grownups smoke and they seem to really like it.
A few years down the road, you are smoking too. Maybe you started smoking to fit in with other kids who smoke. Perhaps life got a little challenging and somehow you knew that smoking would make you feel better about these challenges (think adolescence). Maybe you were bored one day, came across your parent’s cigarettes, and stuck one in your mouth. Soon, you are acting out a “script” given to you in childhood which goes like this: to be the person you want to be (cool, tough, grownup, etc.) you must smoke.
Fast forward to 2009. No one seems to like smokers anymore. It’s getting darn near impossible to find a place to smoke. Cigarettes are outrageously expensive. And just last year, your mom was diagnosed with emphysema. You start thinking about quitting. You try a few of times to quit but last only a couple of days. That time you quit for three days you almost strangled the kid behind the counter at Starbucks because the foam wasn’t right in your latte. You try gum and decide that that really sucks. The patch helps a little but it’s just not the same as pulling that pack out, smacking it against the palm of your hand, pulling out a cigarette with your mouth and lighting it with your favorite lighter. Man! That first hit. You may wonder how you can ever quit, it’s all you’ve ever known! It’s who you are, it’s what you do, it’s what you like, why, cigarettes are almost your…..friends.
But deep down inside you are starting to suspect that these may be false friends. And that these “friends” may be killing you, at least that’s what everyone says. Maybe you try again to quit, half heartedly. You start to become resigned that you may never quit. Then someone tells you they quit with hypnotherapy. You get the guy’s number, you give him call, you make an appointment. You wonder what’s going to happen.
What happens of course is that you come into my office and quit in one session. But how this happens, Iwill tell you in the third and final part of Hypnosis 101.
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Tman
Ted A. Moreno Personal/Small Business Coach Certified Hypnotherapist Specializing in Your Success www.TedMoreno.com (626) 826-0612
