No Matter where you go...

Today I spoke with someone who was calling because a friend had passed away and what she told me kind of amazed me I thought I would write a short not about it. The person advised me that their friend (whom was of many advanced years) was recently removed from a nursing home and brought home because they had asked to be taken home to pass away and they were just satisfying her wishes. The elderly woman was indeed brought home but was no longer conscious and within an hour she expired. It amazed me, if she was not conscious how is it she knew that she was home.

The answer is that our unconscious minds are constantly aware of everything that is happening to us at any time. The unconscious mind is responsible for controlling our autonomic nervous system, and the automated systems that maintain our bodies when we sleep at night. The unconscious is also what wakes you when your alarm goes off in the morning or when you hear a sound in the night that wakes you, all of these things and more the unconscious can recognize and use as a signal to wake us from our sleeping process.  No matter what state we are in the unconscious is always listening and doing its best to protect us. This also is the reason why there are so many stories about things people experienced while being operated on in hospitals, modern anesthesia has come a very long way and be quite powerful, but still the many do not experience complete unconsciousness and are unfortunate to suffer surgery simply unable to give any indication that they are painfully conscious during the procedure they are enduring at the time.

I myself have experienced this phenomenon more than a few times the one that comes to mind was for a kidney stone that I had to go into the hospital to have removed. I went in for the surgery and I was put under anesthesia and that part was fine. But when I woke up I was very angry to say the least, I expected my wife to be waiting for me when I woke up, but that was not the case. I woke up and I was in the same prep area they had brought me to before I went into surgery, and not in a sort of recovery area like I had been in as I had in a previous surgery for a cist on my leg, and not seeing my wife when I woke up like I had expected made me totally angry and a bit hostile. Meanwhile they had put the devices on the bottoms of my legs to sort of massage my calves, the Dr. Had mentioned they were to keep a blood clot from forming in the veins in my legs during the surgery, I thought it was a bit extraneous as I do not use these devices at night when I go to bed but I digress, any how as I woke up these things were still squeezing my calves, after not seeing my wife I was instantly for lack of a better term “enraged”, I looked at the nurse and told her in no uncertain terms that if they did not removed those devices from my legs that I would be removing them myself. Even though my words were quick and rude, I can tell you at the time I could recall those devices squeezing my legs for some time and I did not like the sensation what so ever.

The power and focus of the unconscious mind amazes me constantly. In just this small example it shows how it dutifully follows our wishes even up till the end of our days. If I could but say one thing about it’s about its place in the grand scheme of our lives it is that, your unconscious mind is like a 7 year old child that loves you very much, in that it takes everything you say to it as if it is an unquestionable order and must be carried out to the letter, and it is also is you greatest protector and guardian in that it keeps your vital systems functioning for however long you deem is right, and it is always listening and always taking everything you hear and say to heart. So remember always accentuate the positives in your life and about yourself, even when your just talking to yourself because, in the immortal words of Buckaroo Bonsai, “No matter where YOU go, There YOU are.”

Either …. Or

An interesting point that I heard recently heard in a seminar is that we are taught that through out our lives we have to make constant decisions between one thing or another. Like as if we are to be successful in one part of lives then another part of our life is to suffer, or as if for each time we achieve a positive outcome we must also suffer a negative consequence or failure in some aspect of our lives.

This type of thinking leads me to speculate is this a belief held by so many because people keep an actual internal counter that tabulates all of the good and bad occurrences and calculates the balances of  the good and bad events in their lives thus proving to themselves that mathematically this type of thinking is possibly correct, or would it be more correct to say that this is an unrealistic expectation that we set within ourselves that causes us to search for negative consequences to happen any and every time we achieve some modicum of success. It is easy to see how this type of thinking would cause anyone to then in their search find just about any unfortunate even in their life and qualify it as being the “consequence” they have to suffer in the name of success. Finally there is the possibility that in just simply believing that something bad must happen when something good happens may cause us to actually create an opportunity for something negative to happen in our lives. Each one of these possible beliefs creates what is called a limiting belief that could keep anyone from achieving almost any level of success. 

 Limiting beliefs are limitations we place on our own potential that we create based on the beliefs we hold as true for various reasons. The true potential of any individual I believe is truly limitless, unfortunately most people spend most of their time and energy holding themselves back from achieving or getting the things they want most in life.  Two things many people experience that stop them from achieving their goals and desires are Conditioned Helplessness and Self Deservedness issues.

Conditioned Helplessness I have spoke about previously but I feel it is so important that it bears repeating. Another example I would like to give of conditioned helplessness previously I gave the example of how elephants are typically contained to a certain area at the circus by a simple wooden steak driven into the ground with a steel chain to keep the elephants in place when they are not performing. Today I would like to give a less elegant example to shed more light on the human condition involved in this type of problem. 

Ted is a college student whom is having trouble handling the work load of his classes and is carrying a low grade point average. He works very hard just to keep up the grade he has currently and feels that he may not be cut out for higher academics. Both of his parents never went to college and average a pretty respectable income. Ted also thinks to him self that since his parents never went to college, that he really doesn’t need to go to college himself and that if not going to college was good enough for them it is good enough for him besides he would be wasting his time if he continued working on getting a degree if he has to work so hard to make a grade just well enough to pass. With in all of this Ted keeps thinking of a teacher he had at one time in high school that had told him that if he didn’t  work hard and get good grades in college he would never get a degree and that he would be wasting his time.

From just this example do you think Ted has truly thought about all of his options? Is his future guaranteed to be just as successful as his parents without a college degree? Does it seem Ted has even thought about maybe looking into a different course of study?  Of course the answer is “no” on all counts. Ted has built a belief that there is only one course of action at the college he is attending and that he does not have the capability of gaining any form of satisfaction from learning more without gaining a higher grade point average than he currently holds. Additionally he is deciding in a way that his parents are a perfect example of how successful one can be without a college degree and that he is no better than them. Ted is making these momentous decisions and has not even bothered to ask himself if he even likes the courses he is taking or the career he is studying in college. Again the answer is no all that he is focusing on how this is simply a waste of his time because he is not achieving high grades and that his efforts are not getting him the results he feels he should be getting. All of these are limiting beliefs he is allowing to hold him back from a potential college degree. Even if he simply continued the way he is now, he is passing and would get a degree at the end of 4 years. In this right he fails to see that he would succeed, despite feeling helpless about further to improvements to his grades and instead found satisfaction in the grades he has earned thus far. 

He has cornered himself in his thoughts and emotion, and has the idea that to get out of this trap he has set for himself he could either quit school and get a job to start a career out of a job he could get and work now like his parents have, or he could stay in school and eek out a barely passing grade and then get a job after college in the field he has studied for. But if he quits now he would not have to put into getting his diploma and get a job he may not like, or he could finish college and get a job he probably will like but have to do a lot of work to get there. Either … Or

Deservedness issues are another story. What we all believe we truly deserve to receive in our lives is often a very deep value that we ourselves may not even truly be aware of. Our conscious minds can believe that we deserve many things, while deep down our unconscious mind holding all of our deepest thoughts and emotions holds a fundamentally different set of values concerning the things we deserve. The most commonly found conflict concerning what one deserves appears in the areas of careers and relationships. May people make attempts at achieving success in various fields of employment but in their lifetimes achieve very limited results because they do not feel they deserve to achieve anymore than a certain level of success. This is well noticeable amongst those in business related fields. Have you ever known anyone whom is very hard working and generally very easy to get along with, but for some reason every time they are up for promotion seems to have some unfortunate circumstances they could have easily avoided but did not, that causes them get passed up for the promotion they should have received? For further example, often has it been quoted by those in horribly abusive relationships, they could not leave their abusive relationship because they deserved that kind of treatment, or they would never find anyone better than the person that abused them. These are only a couple of examples of how these types of issues can affect a person and cause many problems that range in size from things that are just minor inconveniences, all the way up the scale to constant life threatening danger, and most people are never even aware they have this kind of conflict in their internal struggle. Deservedness issues have a way of creeping through our lives and literally cause us to hold ourselves fast to the idea that we do not deserve many things, that if we but knew they existed and took a moment to look at ourselves through the eyes of those whom truly care about us, would evaporate like the morning dew as the sun rises into the summer sky. 

Either…or equations are seemingly every where in our lives, but we can choose better ways to make these equation work for us instead of against us, after all we can either choose to make the most of our lives and seize the moment right now to make a positive change and get everything you want right now… or we can do it tomorrow after all we could all take a moment to relish the last moment of our miseries so that we may remember them when the time comes that you have made the decision to get the most out of you efforts and life, that have a way of leaving you with a never ending sense of satisfaction that you are truly getting all that you deserve in life. As you smile “that” smile that comes from know you can do it, and you hear the sounds on old chains breaking as the links scatter upon the floor and the wings of your heart take flight on the winds of the boundless future only you can create, as brilliant as the colors of the setting sun.

A Brief History of Hypnosis

For a while I have wanted to write some background information about the Science of Hypnosis, here is a very brief overview of the history of hypnosis.

A Short History of Hypnosis

In the latter part of the 18^th Century the group of “physicians” that were still finding our the science of Psychiatry made the decision that the only way that anyone in the medical field would ever take them seriously would be if they were to break completely from the historical roots and beliefs that were practically responsible for the entire existence of their field of study. The study of the human mind begins as far back as the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. Much is known about the philosophies of the ancient Greeks,

But this is largely due to the fact that the philosophies of ancient Greece were modeled and kept alive through many other societies, Greek philosophy was a cornerstone of the foundations of ancient Roman society; also it was much romanticized through out the Renaissance as well. So much so that the language of ancient Greece is still the root of almost all languages spoken the world over.  Much of the histories of the Ancient Egyptians have been lost due to factors including wars (both in recent and ancient history), the changes in the rule of the Pharos (it was often policy that if a previous Pharaoh’s policies and belief’s were unacceptable to the current Pharaoh and the Priests of the various god’s of Egypt that their histories would be destroyed after the Pharaoh’s death, much history was lost this way), Or simply that it was lost in the sands and still has not been uncovered to this day in Egypt. But it is known that the Egyptian’s practiced embalming (through which they gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about the body and the internal organs), surgery techniques, prescriptive medications and compounds, as well as many other healing practices still being used today in modern medicine.

*Note: Both Egyptians and the Greeks had temples dedicated to hypnosis, as it was used as a healing technique, religious ceremonies (still in common practice today), and relief from a variety of maladies that plagued their daily lives. The Term “Hypnosis” is actually the name for the Greek God of sleep Hypnos.

Franz Mesmer and Austrian physician has been credited as being most responsible for bringing hypnosis to the attention of the medical community and world in the 1700’s. Mesmer was well know and sought out by many for cures for maladies from headaches to severe mental problems (demonic possession at the time), and all kinds of physical health problems. Near the end of his life and career the medical authorities of the day had started to form their own coalitions and boards of other physicians to judge medical procedures, restorative cures, and all sorts of medical techniques that were employed by both professionals and self proclaimed doctors and apothecaries of the time. In this time Mesmerism as it was known was judge by the Faculty of Medicine as commissioners appointed by King Louis XVI that included distinguished Members such as Joseph-Ignace Guillotine and American Ambassador Benjamin Franklin, the commission conducted a series of experiments aimed, not at determining whether Mesmer's treatment worked, but whether he had discovered a new physical fluid. The commission concluded that there was no evidence for such a fluid. Whatever benefits the treatment produced was attributed to the "imagination” of the patient. Mesmer was completely discredited by these proceedings and the science of hypnosis was forgotten for another 30 years or so until it was revived once more by a student of Mesmer named James Braid.
Dr James Braid was Scottish surgeon who had studied hypnosis in his efforts to develop a functional method of anesthetizing his patients for surgical procedures, which at the time were very painful for the patients that had to suffer through the very rudimentary surgeries that were available at the time. During this same time period doctors around the world were studying various kinds of anesthesia such as ether and chloroform, instead of the common bottle of whiskey used up till then. But Braid studied hypnosis and became highly proficient at inducing hypnosis and coined the phrase “neuro-hypnotism” which was shortened to become Hypnosis. Braid was a very successful surgeon and enjoyed a fair amount of notoriety for his pioneering use of hypnosis, and was directly responsible for bringing hypnosis back to the attention of the medical community which ultimately ended less than a decade later after one of the most famous doctors that pioneered the mental health sciences attempted to learn to use hypnosis and suffered such significant failure in gaining the ability to hypnotize his patients he ultimately gave up the study of hypnosis and decided to attempt to develop other methods of therapy to assist his clients.
Sigmund Freud is the therapist that was unable to utilize hypnosis to assist his clients. I have heard that it was because he suffered from problems with his teeth and like George Washington and had dentures that were made of wood, this was theorized that the imperfections with his dentures caused him such problems that he had troubles speaking and could not comfortably speak well therefore he designed a form of therapy that involved speaking little and having the clients describe their feelings, histories, and daily life experiences to be analyzed to find problems and ways to help clients fix them. Freud himself stated that his creation “Cognitive Therapy” would take many hours of consultation and years of analysis by a psychiatrist before a client could even begin to find solutions to the problems that plagued their lives. Freud unfortunately published many papers that disclaimed and defamed hypnosis as a form of therapy. He was directly responsible for the stigmatism that the science of hypnosis has endured ever since Freud began his studies to this very day.

It wasn’t until the 1940’s in America a Psychiatrist named Milton H. Erickson who has been heralded as the “Father of modern hypnosis” and was the man who is directly responsible for the techniques that transformed hypnotism from a cheap form of sideshow entertainment into the science it is today. Erickson lost his practice during one period of his career from 1945 till 1947 for the use of hypnosis in his practice. In 1947, after 3 days of hearings with a board of medical professional that included MD’s, Psychiatrists, and Psychologists, and not only got his practice restored, but also proved the value of hypnosis as a valid form of treatment once and for all. Since that time the American Medical Association not only recommends hypnosis as a treatment for certain problems but also recommends its use to its members and the general public.

An Interesting Case of Addiction

"What a piece of bread looks like depends on whether you are hungry or not."

- Arabic saying

Addiction is something that is a terrible problem in our modern world. It hides itself in such a variety of manifestations that the number of ways it can appear is only limited by the uniqueness of the individual that is addicted to something.  According to the National Survey on Drug use Health for the year 2009 sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 21.8 million Americans reported that they used illicit drugs and alcohol for non medicinal purposes regularly, 3-5% of the total population have a Sexual Compulsion Disorder, it is also estimated that 25% of the total population are pathologically addicted to gambling, while 1% or people suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and 4.4% suffer from eating disorders such as Anorexia and Bulimia, additionally 45.9% smoke cigarette’s. This adds up to be a staggering 76.06% or 109,492,000 people in the continental US alone that exhibit the behavior classified by mental health professionals as an addiction, thus amongst the population of the U.S. 109,492,000 could be and potentially are classified as an “Addict” and this is just a short list of things that can and are classified as an addiction.

Addiction is defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as: “A compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance or behavior.”

This definition from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is a very broad definition for a very common problem, just about anyone could be said to be addicted to any substance or a habit if you seemingly compulsively give in to the habit too frequently. In the Science that is NLP we have a list of core beliefs that teaches us how to look at our clients and their problems, this is a comprehensive list of over 25 beliefs that we assume about a client and the problem or habit they may present that they wish to be free of in their life. The one that I feel most directly relates to addiction states “The person is not the behavior that they exhibit or manifest.” Things like addiction are simply at base level a habit. As humans we have this learning mechanism in our minds that compares experiences and cross references solutions, then it applies the best possible solution it can conceive of to the problem and then we perform the solution in thought or action as needed in our lives. Take for instance smoking, most say that smoking is a very powerful addiction, but lets take a look at the thoughts and processes that potentially drive this particular habit.

Smoking:

 If you’re a smoker you may have noticed there are times when a cigarette is almost immediately mandatory and times when you go for hours without even thinking about them. For most smoking is a habit that is based on the need for relaxation, when we smoke most take a moment to clear their mind and just experience the moment of smoking, no matter the problems they may be facing at any given moment, they stop, light up, and what ever problem they have it immediately is down graded and they can relax. For many people this allows them to look at their problems in a less critical or in a less stressful way, thus allowing them to find new ways of coping with their problems or even solutions at times. So the mind equates stress = smoke, now this is a solution to a problem that happens quite often depending on how easily a person gets stressed but in this model we see the formula stress = smoking = relax, now the mind has this solution it believes and then it cross references, when they drive they like to relax and enjoy the experience so to truly enjoy driving we want to relax as much as possible to enhance this experience what’s a good way to relax? I know smoke, since  smoking = relax  if I’m stressed it should work great here, now we have a second equation driving = relax = smoking. So that is two situations where the habit of smoking are applied and we repeat this in another situation, the person wakes up, for many first waking up can be a pretty traumatic experience (some of us do wake up very rough, from my own experiences I can tell you when I wake up, it feels like I was just in a car crash at times.) Also let us not forget the experience of having bad dreams at night, thus what can be done to ease those rankled nerves? Smoking is a way to do this; our unconscious being helpful looks at it and say “well it worked on this and this similar situation so lets do that!” So, waking up = trauma / exhaustive state = smoke. This pattern repeats till we have a complicated web of behavior that has one end result in this case “smoke” and would seem simple in a surface level but in truth is used as a solution to many smaller problems so frequently that after a while we make the pattern of doing this so automatic we cease to notice even the idea of smoking beginning to surface other than the re-occurring thought, “ok time for a cigarette.” Now, yes cigarettes do contain nicotine that is an addictive substance, but the physical addiction to nicotine has been proven to only last for up to 72 hours from the last time it has been ingested by the body. So after 3 days the physical addiction has ended and everything after that is all mental process.

About 15 years ago an interesting study was undertaken by Dr. Richard Bandler and his colleagues, in the particular field of heroine addiction. They took a group of volunteers whom had a severe heroine addiction and checked them into a full time care facility for a period to last for 6 months. Then they explained to the participants that the would be put on a revolutionary detoxification program that would involve them to continue to use heroine for a period of time and that it would be administered by a doctor on a daily basis. One group was told they would be receiving medical grade heroine that would be far better than the illicit version they had been buying and that it was so excellent in fact that they would only require one shot per day to continue to not only enjoy they habit but also to avoid any withdrawal symptoms they might other wise experience if they didn’t take the multiple doses that they were used to, and they would receive counseling for the next 6 months and their dosages would decreased until they were weaned off of the drug through traditional drug therapy treatment standards. The second group was told that they would receive the same medication for the first six weeks of the program but then after that they would be given a revolutionary new medication that would replace the heroine they had previously used that would completely eradicate their cravings for heroine, by lowering their doses over the following 20 weeks and that they would receive counseling only once a week to simply check in on their status. Both groups would be constantly monitored by the personnel at the facility and completely taken care of full time and they would incur no charges for taking part in the study.

Both groups of patients were advised that hypnosis would be a part of the treatment for their addictions and that they would be expected to undergo hypnosis as a part of the program, all participants agreed and at the onset were hypnotized,  the suggestion that they were given were that the medications the doctors would be injecting them with was indeed medical grade heroine and for the second group first it would be initially heroine and then after that it would be the miracle secondary medication that would eradicate their heroine cravings. Secondly all of the patients were heavily medicated for the next 3 days during witch they were also subjected to dialysis to scrub their blood of any and all toxins.

On the fourth day each one was woken and within an hour given their first injections of “medical grade heroine” (which was actually nothing more than saline) and they all reacted as if they had indeed been injected with heroine, so much so most of them commented that it what they were given was far superior to any form of heroine they had ever experienced previously. Over the next six weeks the participants from both groups and experience counseling and are were hopeful about the treatment they were receiving. After that the second group now began to receive injections of a the “miracle medication” which also was nothing more than saline with a blue dye added to the mixture, they reported that the “high” effect they enjoyed from the “heroine” immediately stopped but they did not miss the sensation very much and felt no side effects of withdrawal. The first group then began to experience a gradual decrease of the “heroine” and reported minor tremors and cravings but nothing they felt was extreme or beyond their ability to cope with. As the dosages continued to decrease over the next 20 weeks they responded to the treatment just as if they were in a traditional heroine addiction treatment program.

All participants successfully reported at the end of the study in their almost final interview that they felt no cravings for heroine any longer and were glad to be free of their long time addictions.

At this point to fully test the success of the program the subjects from the first group were again hypnotized and explained that the entire time they had indeed been injected with only saline and had not had heroine in over 6 months. Each person immediately went into sever heroine withdrawal so intense that they had to be sedated before they could be re-hypnotized and suggested that the effects of the program were valid and that they had indeed been injected with heroine during the program and were now free of their addiction. The second group was also hypnotized to remove the suggestion that they had been injected with heroine but were suggested also that in the second course of the treatment they were given a medication that completely destroyed their ability to receive any of the effects from the usage of any form of heroine so that they could never be addicted to it again. Both groups were successfully free of heroine and so far to this day have reportedly never used illicit drugs ever again.

The most interesting part of this study to me is the fact that once the one group realized they had not had heroine at all in over 6 months they immediately went into withdrawal. They had long gone past any possibility that their bodies should have felt any effects of withdrawal. On average the physical addiction to most substances are completely gone after you have been without it for 3 days. So what remains are simply the mental habits that have been established and well rehearsed that remind us that these patterns we create and access usually with the intent to solve a problem or to put it into a perspective we can either forget or deal with as we wish.

The human mind is an amazing creation that processes information at high speed and actually with great precision, this mechanism that creates and maintains the habits of addiction is also the same mechanism that allows us to readily learn information so quickly that sometimes it only takes once to be exposed to some form of information to learn it instantaneously. Unfortunately it is what it is, a mechanism that is a valuable tool in our day to day existence that is a part of our unconscious mind that can be confused at times all too easily, but with assistance and true understanding can correct itself and the problems that seem impossible for us to rid ourselves of all to often.

Habits like addiction are programs we write in our own minds that we run so fast and so frequently we do not recognize that they are even there.  An example of this is shown to you right here and now. When you were born did you understand the English language? The answer is no, yet you are reading it right now, imagine for a moment how extensive the process of reading really is,  if you spelled it out by process one could use the following patter to explain how the process works; you see a letter then you match up in your mind with a sound, then you take that singular sound and put it together with other letters and their sounds to form a word, then we reference the meaning of the word and after that cross-reference the meaning of the word in accordance with the way it is used in the sentence with the other words that form a sentence. Then you compare that to previous sentences you have read or heard previously to figure out what its meaning is in reference to you. This is quite an extensive process we go through just to read a simple sentence! But you do it so quickly that you are hardly aware of it happening, if your are aware of it at all. And to think no matter how it works when ever you see something written in English and you really look at it you can not help but to be able to read it.

Addiction is truly what in the field of NLP is called “the chains of the free” and never have so many stood holding the their chains in there hands never realizing they are the masters of their own fate waiting for the right moment to set them selves free, never realizing that the moment is anytime they really want it to be.

Happy New Year!! Resolving Those Resolutions.

Yesterday I was listening to a group of people talking about New Years resolutions, and I was astounded but the things they were saying.

First I have to ask what exactly does it mean to make a New Years resolution?

A New Years Resolution is defined as: A commitment to a personal goal that an individual makes to a project or the reforming of a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous normally to go into effect on New Year’s Day. Traditionally it is believed that this tradition spawns from secular religious traditions such as the catholic tradition of Lent, where one sacrifices for religious purposes, or in Judaism the period of the New Year, Rosh Hashanah through the high holy days ending with Yom Kippur, (the Day of Atonement) where one is to reflect upon one’s wrong doings over the year and both seek and offer forgiveness. What ever the circumstances, the concept remains to reflect upon the theme of self improvement.

Unfortunately most New Years resolutions are never truly realized by most that make them. A University of Washington study in 1997 found 47 percent of the 100 million adult Americans who make resolutions give up on their goals after two months. This figure has grown to 80 percent in the past decade, according to recent research completed at the University of Minnesota. Most would say that this unbelievably high rate of failure is due to the fact that people try to make resolutions that they never truly intend to live up to. But I believe it is much closer to the truth to say that the failure of most individuals to manifest the change in their lives they wish is that they devote years of repetition to the habit they wish to change, and only a few minutes to devise a plan to make a permanent change to what is most of the time is considered to be a major portion of their lives.
Let’s use as an example a couple of the common New Year’s resolutions just as an example to I illustrate how we could actually be setting ourselves up for outcomes that are less than successful.
Weight loss
Most people who decide to lose weight in the coming year start by setting their goal to lose weight and do not decide an actual ideal weight they wish to be, most will just say I want to lose weight with no goal in mind, and some might say somewhere between 10  to 40 pounds. Others even decide on a diet they want to try, but I ask you are these goals specific enough? Most would say yes, but the truth is that these goals are vaguely specific and truly do not send a clear enough signal to the unconscious to even begin to help you achieve your goals.

Smoking
I have hear many people talking about deciding that they would give up cigarettes as their new years resolution. The thing that got me the most was hearing their reasons for not quitting before 1/1/11.  Truth be told if you are already making allowances for delaying any improvement you wish to make to your life the chances your going to continue to make allowances after you have reached the time period you have allotted to make the change in your lifestyle are so astronomical that very few actually even begin to make any changes at all towards the cessation of smoking.

These are two of the biggest resolutions people speak about making, there are other I could list, but I believe with just these two you can get an idea of how we can sabotage our own best plans for making positive changes in our lives. But there is hope, aside from the benefits of using hypnosis to make these kinds of changes I would like to offer an idea of how you can make a positive plan of action to achieve these positive goals you have set for yourself in 2011.

First, make a detailed plan. How will you achieve this goal specifically, diets generally don't work because most people are too focused on making it to the end of their diet and how they can eat normally again that they actually morn the loss of the ability to eat certain foods. In the case of smoking, will power can only carry this decision so far, as we can keep ourselves free of the addiction to a habit via a conscious effort. Smoking is a habit just like brushing your teeth or washing your car, now if someone offered to wash your car for you every week would you morn the loss of having to do it? Of course not, and cigarettes are no different. Your internal dialog also can work against you, when you see someone light up instead of saying something like " oh god I want one, or don't think about a cigarette" how about "I am so glad I am free of that habit, my life is so much better since I have made this change in my life."  Focusing on our will power to stop us from repeating a habit keeps us defocused on the actual goal, instead first decide that you have made a lifestyle change and make that decision complete by making it an automatic change that your unconscious can really get behind. Because once you have the idea that made this change into you unconscious mind it will generate the new good habits as automatic as the sun rising every morning.

Remember you have all of the tools available to you to make any change that you would like. You are the master of your destiny and your body, what you will it to do will be yours if you simply make a decision and plan a new tomorrow not only for today but for the rest of your life.

You have the power to make a resolution that lasts, not only because a  New Year appeared on the calendar but because you wish to live a happier healthier lifestyle that finds you free of the from the bonds you have forged and imposed upon yourself for portions of your life, but since you hold those bonds in your own hands, you have the unmitigated ability to set yourself free.

Happy New Year, and Cheers to the New Lifestyle you make the decision to have now!