Do you know the language of effective resolutions?

Have you ever told yourself to stop doing….(fill in the blank) or to start doing…(fill in the blank)? Let me guess–it didn’t work, did it? It’s never worked for me but that hasn’t stopped me from lecturing myself to do or not do whatever seems like the right thing.  It doesn’t work because we all have what we might think of as a manager of our actions and that manager speaks a different language. All our lectures fall under the category called “Talk to the hand!”

That manager is our subconscious mind. It isn’t the CEO–we get that job, but it is the part that’s running things on a day to day basis, according to the principles we’ve set down (albeit unconsciously for the most part). We can give new commands and they will be followed, but we have to speak in the manager’s language.

The language of the subconscious mind is image and emotion. So when we tell ourselves–angrily–that we’d better start/stop…., we are using emotion. The problem is there’s a stronger unconscious emotion–most often fear. For example, we might worry “if I stop smoking how will I get away from people and get time to myself?”  “If I lose weight and look sexy, how will Ibe safe?” “If I earn more money, what else will be expected of me?” These aren’t normally questions we ask ourselves consciously, but they can be whispers that have the manager’s ear even if we can’t hear them.

To make the changes we want, we have to be able to imagine the change. We have to have an image (using any of the 5 senses) that we’re associating with that change and it has to be rich in emotion. If we will spend time visualizing that image and feeling that emotion, we will successfully get the manager to follow the new program! The reason hypnotherapy is so successful is that it helps quiet the mental chatter and allows us to access the most powerful images from within our own storehouse of imagery. In hypnosis, we feel and imagine more intensely and so we get the message we want across to that manager. If you’d like help through hypnotherapy to make that communication, give us a call. However you want to do it, just be sure you spend time talking to the manager and using the right language.