All thoughts - negative or positive - along with spoken statements seem to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Have you ever noticed that? You think something may happen, and you keep thinking about it, and it really does happen.
Each thought contains a suggestion that becomes a part of the memory bank deep inside the subconscious mind, to come back at a later time for the conscious mind to put the thought into action.
Suggestion, added to by imagination plays a larger, more important role in our daily lives than anyone thought. Suggestions influence us everyday and has since we were born. Did you know that our earliest moments of life play a part in the formation of our life long habitual attitudes and behavior? This is important to remember. From the instant of our birth, we have received suggestions that influence us for the rest of our lives.
The suggestions we accept become the basis of our personal beliefs which become the guiding principles in our lives. More often than not, emotional memories from our childhood, both good and bad, give birth to habits that may serve us very well. Other habits may be down right destructive.
Our mind has the capacity to change. We can erase the negative influences and replace them with positive beliefs and behaviors. Everything that we see, hear, taste, touch and smell throughout our lives, we're going to call input. How we choose to react is called output. Our inner belief system that develops throughout our life is called programming, or our "life-script". Through the use of hypnosis, this programming (life-script) can be changed to transform our lives and alter the way we react.
From the time we are infants to the age of eight or nine, everything we are taught or told we accept as the truth. As small children we lack the ability to reason and think logically. At the age of eight or nine, we develop what is called the critical mind or the ability to reason. At that point the child will begin to pick and choose what he believes to be true based upon the experiences of his young life and his emotions. Now this information must bypass the critical mind to reach his subconscious.
It is believed that the first six years of life is when we, as children, develop our strongest personality traits and behaviors. This is the time when we would learn to trust or distrust the people around us. Have you ever watched small children, or do you remember being terribly shy around people because you just weren't sure you could trust them, or as a child did you used to run up to anyone and tug on their arms or hands to get their attention and talk to them? You didn't know them, but you trusted everyone. No one had planted that seed of fear about talking to strangers into your head.
A sense of self-confidence or self-doubt is developed at this time, along with establishing their sexual identification or gender confusion. Did you believe you could do anything you put your mind to, or were you afraid to even try? As you watch your child, or the neighbor children, do you see any signs of being friendly towards other people or alienating themselves? Does the child show signs of having a fear of failure or are they willing to give it a good try? These are also programmed into the subconscious during the early years of childhood.
It is proven that the early formative years of childhood provide them with the emotional foundation upon which they build the rest of their lives.
Newborns can "sense" a mood change in his parent, and they react to this "sensation". As the child grows, he learns that his actions and words can evoke specific responses. A smile is rewarded for good behavior, while a frown means the parent is unhappy or angry. It doesn't necessarily have to do with whether the child caused the frown or not.
Since the world revolves around the child's way of thinking, he feels he is responsible for the emotions of the people who are closest to him. For the remainder of the child's life all that his five senses (hears, sees, tastes, smells and feels) absorbs will bring about a particular image and reaction that is recorded forever in the subconscious mind. Have you ever smelled something or heard something and it takes you back to a favorite event, or to someone special or not so special that was in your life at some point?
Our habits are formed by leaving an impression on the cortex of the brain. With our life's experience, every time we repeat an experience, this impression is strengthened, which in turn makes it easier to repeat the experience. Our thoughts and behaviors become a habit through repetition.
When emotions are involved, suggestions become more powerful and we tend to accept these suggestions faster. Most often our habits are associated with the emotions. Take eating for instance, if we're happy, sad, hurt, stressed, the fact is the majority of the population will head to the kitchen for something to eat. Any sign of distress can cause you to run toward this habit. It's been proven that if your emotions are in high gear at the same instant a suggestion is given, a habit may be formed. And this may only be after one time! Imagine that!
Subconsciously we accept suggestions every day of our lives, and from those suggestions we create a system of beliefs. Through these beliefs we automatically react and logic may often be missing. Pay attention to your words, thoughts and actions to see if you can recognize what they are.
An example, in my own life, is when I begin to feel extremely stressed or frustrated the thought of chocolate immediately forms in my mind. The only way the stress or frustration will be calmed is by indulging in chocolate.
How often do you hear a woman make the comment "Typical - all men are alike"? Does that sound like a conditioned response to you? If you said yes, your are right. What about religious and racial attitudes towards specific groups of people? Children grow up hearing the slurs against these people, what do you imagine they're going to believe? How many people have habitual reactions that were formed due to some emotional experience from their past?
The good news is that with the use of hypnosis you are able to change these negative behaviors and attitudes that are stored in your subconscious. New beliefs and behaviors can be established.
If we imagine and believe something about ourselves or our surroundings we will feel and act those behaviors. According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, Biology of Beliefs, we can change our DNA by changing our thoughts and beliefs.
Through the use of hypnosis, the hypnotist can use the subconscious mind's creativity by giving suggestions the mind will accept if the connection is made between the suggestion and emotion.
There are three Laws of suggestion. Do you recognize any of these popping somewhere into your life?
1) Law of Concentrated Attention
When a person concentrates on an idea, the idea tends to happen. When someone mentions food, you start thinking about food, and your mind tells you that you're hungry.
The Law of Concentrated Attention is used in television and radio advertisements to get people to purchase their wares.
2) Law of Reversed Effect
"The harder I try to stop eating, the more I want to eat." When someone talks about a favorite dessert and you try not to think about it, you're more than likely going to think about it even more. This has nothing to do with willpower, but has more to do with your imagination. There isn't any "power" struggle between will and imagination. Your imagination will always be going to be the winner on top.
3) Law of Dominant Effect
This law is what I mentioned earlier - when a suggestion and strong emotion are experienced in the same instant. This new suggestion will remove any other suggestion that was in your mind at the time. Through hypnosis your imagination can be directed with the use of positive suggestions that assist you in achieving the changes you are seeking to improve your life.
Now, it's very apparrent to me why my parents always told me to use my imagination when I was sent to play (we didn't grow up with video games, and alot of television). We had to pretend and develop our imaginations. We could be anyone or whatever we wanted to be. There weren't any bars standing in our way.
So what do you think all of the video games and television shows are "suggesting" to our children? What do you think their imagination is conjuring up?
Namaste,
Sue
