Changing a belief

Changing a belief

***************************** A WARNING *****************************

The following is a very mind blowing model of the world. If you are unwilling to find yourself noticing new things about your life, or if you are afraid to change your beliefs so that you may break through the bonds that hold you back from achieving those levels of success you have convinced your self that are a fact that can not be change. If you believe that you are limited in this way or uncomfortable the idea of making these kinds of changes, please read no further.

But if you are open to the possibility of real change, and know that you can achieve anything you can set your mind to also be warned that the following connected series of statements could have a very powerful and radical effect on your thoughts, so much so that you may find that in the days to come that you will begin to notice things about your life and the world around you in new ways that can be only totally interesting and helpful to you in all of your endeavors not only today, but for everyday into the future, starting now.

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I have mentioned previously that it is a fact that on average everyone goes in and out of trace at least 16 times everyday. I have found that this statement has been proven to be a falsehood and I would like to clarify further. It is more correct to say: We are all in trance at all times. We are all in what is classified as a clinical state of hypnosis, right now. How can this be? It is because you have built a model of belief and you’re using that model of belief to interpret the world around you. You are taking this model of belief and acting as if it is in fact, your life. You are acting as if it is the world, when in fact it is just an arbitrary set of beliefs, understandings, and perceptual filters that you have been trained to think is the world.

 As a hypnotist my job is to break people free from these models of belief in such a thorough and professional way that one can not possibly go back to who they were when they first came to see me. I have had clients that had to leave the room after working out some problems in their lives that changed their belief systems so radically it literally caused them to throw up, simply because what happens is that belief systems have physiological consequences, have you ever had that kind of butterfly feeling in the pit of your stomach when your feeling uneasy or anxious? Have you ever considered that it could be that the mind controls the body? Have you ever felt that flush of exhilaration when you know that you have done something really well and you not only know that you did but other people know it as well? To effect real change in your life the first step is to understand that what you have believed to be true about your life and the world around you is nothing more than arbitrarily chosen beliefs. You may have been taught these things by people who care about or love you, or teachers and friends, or other people who could be described as people who are walking around like zombies all around you, I use the word zombie as a neutral phrase, the word zombie is a voodoo term for death within life, if you haven’t had a look around you lately, tomorrow morning or evening, please look around you in traffic, and you might notice that many people surrounding you with kind of almost dead look in their eyes, and this way you definitively know the zombies have moved to North America! But more seriously, my point is you need to understand two things: One everyone around you is asleep and it’s not their fault. Two up till now you have been asleep and it is your fault.

We live in a reality that states that we must learn to realize and accept the fact that your reality is your responsibility and you are in control of it.  Think about it for a moment, this is a very liberating belief.  After all if you are in control, well then you really can do anything that you want. No one cares, they are all asleep, it is a mistake to assume that people are going to come leaping out of doorways and around corners saying “NO, NO, NO, YOUR ENJOYING YOUR LIFE TOO MUCH! YOU THINK YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET THE THINGS YOU WANT? ...WE CAN’T HAVE THAT!”   There are no thought police, you can achieve as much success and pleasure out of life that you truly want. The bad news about this is that anything you have made mistakes about for one reason or another is your fault,  you messed it up on your own and are responsible not only for the act’s you have committed, but also the actions that have resulted from said actions. It was not the actions of other people, and it wasn’t how things were “supposed to be”.

If you can live with that, well then you are ready to accept a new concept in your life that states “There are no rules, only actions and consequences.” It is your job to think through what you want and how you are supposed to get it, and then ask yourself “can you live with the consequences?” Once you can do this you will then have a new model of belief that will serve you quite a bit better than the current model of being asleep. But also be warned that models of belief also contain traps. They contain traps that we can easily confuse as being what we would refer to as reality, why would we say that the realities contained in our new model of the world contains a trap that we could easily confuse as reality? Isn’t reality just reality? Sadly reality for most people is simply what happens inside of their own heads. Most people go through out life failing to apply reality checks to the things that mean the most to us.

For example: Let’s say you were going to buy a car, you might: do some extensive fact checking, look up how much horse power the motor has, what are the safety crash ratings, find out if it has the seating you might need, etc… You would probably do all this and more till you find a vehicle type you would like, then you go to the car lot, you know the salesman is going to try to squeeze you for every dollar he can, so you go, you haggle, you make a deal you can live with and you then get the car you want.

Now what about a career? In choosing careers people have the tendency to just launch themselves off into fantasy land to try to make this decision, without any basis of facts. They think about what kind of person are they, they use a model of themselves from the past as a basis for comparison for the future and try to guess what they might like to do everyday in the future. Is the person you used to be or are currently the person you will always be? No, the nature of our minds and emotions is to change. Not to mention how often do we find things that we think we might like, food, movies, friends, etc… and find that in truth we are less than satisfied with the thing we had found or the results we get from having it in our lives?

These types of thoughts are called models of possibilities. Models of possibilities are short cuts we use in our minds that allow us to do things with out utilizing too much of our time thinking about the potential futures and outcomes in our lives. In order to escape these convenient models you must begin to make decisions that are fixed once your have made them. So first you will need to decide what it is that you want, next you make the decision of where this new choice you have now made is going to lead you in your life. In doing this what you are actually doing is creating a new model of belief that once you being to wake up to your new model of the world and live in it even for a short time, that if you just look back and remember your old model of belief that was changed it will greatly disturb you.

Your fantasies about what is possible and impossible in your life are just that, a fantasy. Do you know the difference between a dream and a fantasy? A fantasy is a thought form that allows us to think of imaginary things and events that carries no weigh or emotional charge. A dream is a thought form that is so emotionally charged and carries so much mental weight in our minds and emotions that we make it become truth in our lives. Most of the things we wish for in our lives we treat as fantasies, as if were never meant to have those things we wish for. It is easy to sit and imagine how nice it would be to walk out tomorrow to a store buy a lottery ticket and then later that week find yourself a winner of some odd number of millions of dollars. But think for a moment, what happens when the average person buys a lottery ticket? Do they buy them expecting to win? Would you choose a career by the same method? Would you pick a potential girlfriend or wife in the same way? Probably not, after all just picking the first person you find sight unseen and saying “marry me!” was proven to be a pretty bad idea by a bad reality TV show not to long ago.

Beliefs however are tools of the mind, which are formed when one couples thought with emotion. Now the tendency of the mind and the body is to stay at rest, and given half the chance it will stay that way or return to that state as often as it can. What you want to build is a system of beliefs that will in fact open opportunities for new experiences and continuous opportunities to lean new things. We can do this by taking our goals and the things we truly want to get out of life and turn then into a belief system that includes the ideology that once you reach this goal you will continue this process adding more and more beliefs to the system to so that we may sustain a system within ourselves that will assist us in a life of continual achievements and success. How do we get there? First we must learn to abandon our attachments to the eventual out come you will achieve. Because striving for just the individual out come actually stops the process of achievement, therefore by having another belief that continues after the original goal we began striving for we will have instead of just a goal that is to be achieved we create a pattern of success that will begin today and continue through out the rest of our lives that will make successfully reaching our goals and making all of our dreams coming true a pattern instead that will be perfectly normal for us in our everyday lives, instead of being the exception to what we normally see everyday and would view as failure or disappointment.

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!

Inspiration and How We Can Dream Good Things to Life

Inspiration: Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity.

Previously I have spoken about how we are separated from reality by our senses and how this can work against us in many situations. Conversely I thought I would take the time to also explain how we can use this very powerful and amazing ability can actually work in our favor.

Many studies have proven that our unconscious mind is incapable of making the distinction between the things we actually experience in our “reality” and what we simply imagine/wish to be a part of our “reality.” This is a principle in NLP that we refer to as “perception is projection.” Our unconscious minds supply our conscious mind with directions on exactly how to achieve any goal we wish and/or believe we can achieve. It supplies our drives and is directly responsible for the action or inaction we take toward the purposes of achieving any goal. In short, if you can imagine anything vividly and in any amount detail our unconscious minds will take this as reality and set upon the path of achieving the desired goal.

This concept has been proven by many studies most notably to me are the following two examples I believe were quite fascinating. In the summer of 1971 at Sanford University in California, conducted by Professor Phil Zimbardo took place where and ad was placed in the college paper for 18 students to be paid $15 dollars a day to take place in a psychology study, the students that responded were interviewed and chosen by the professor and his staff, all students chosen were of sound mental faculties, they all came from similar backgrounds and good family histories, and additionally were of similar height and weight. What they were not told was that this study was one where 9 students would be chosen to live as inmates and 9 of them would be guards in a constructed mock prison facility. The experiment was to take place over a two week period; it was stopped at the end of only the first week due to the psychological and physical danger to the participants. In just one week the student had gone from joking about the experiment to displaying the abhorrent behaviors reported in real maximum security prison facilities with long time inmates serving extended sentences. Additionally the students acting as guards displayed the same types of all too realistic behaviors, which included; stripping the prisoners of their uniforms and forcing them to stay in their cells naked, spraying the inmates with a fire extinguisher that contained CO2 to keep them away from the bars, inflicting physical injuries, as well as leaving certain prisoners in solitary confinement for time periods long over the dictated maximum time allowed to hold them there. The extent of the shocking behaviors of the students and even the faculty in some cases caused Professor Zimbardo to decide the students were in danger of potentially serious harm and thus he ended the study. No one expected this simple study to go as awry as it did, but it does stand out as strong example of how one perceives their experience produces complimentary behaviors.

The second example is of a different nature. Please keep in mind that this is a real case file of an actual patient that took place in 1957. We shall call the Patient Mr. White in this example.  Mr. White was a cancer patient whom was diagnosed with no more then 3 weeks to live. He had metastic tumors the size of grape fruits that were causing fluid to fill his lungs; he required oxygen and an oxygen mask constantly. Simply he was dying and modern medicine at the time had nothing left for him to hope to live for much longer. Mr. White however fervently believed that something was going to save him from the cancer that was destroying his body. His doctor had heard of a potential cancer cure called Krebiozen that was being tested on human subjects at the time, he obtained a supply of Krebiozen and offered it to a group of his patients that included Mr. White.

Mr. White believed that this was the answer he was waiting for, and after just one treatment his tumors started to shrink, his lungs produced less and less fluid in a matter of days. After 6 weeks Mr. White was tumor and cancer free and in turn was released from the hospital. A few weeks after his release from the hospital Mr. White came in for a check up with his doctor and reported that he had even returned to flying his private plane that he had not been able to fly in over 2 years.

Six months after this the news was released that Krebiozen was found to useless in most of the cases it was used as a cancer treatment. Within a couple of weeks Mr. White was back in the hospital with small tumors and on oxygen once more. The doctor was deeply affected by the severity of Mr. White’s condition in such a short span of time, so he decided to try something desperate to save Mr. White. The doctor came to Mr. White and explained that it was found that Krebiozen had such poor response from most patients because it had an unstable shelf life and would lost most of its potency in transport and sitting on the shelf waiting to reach the patients. The doctor then explained to Mr. White that he had obtained a sample of the next generation of this medication called Krebiozen 2 that now had a stable shelf life and was guaranteed would retain its potency for a much longer period of time than its predecessor. The doctor then began treating Mr. White with a clear liquid Mr. White thought it was Krebiozen 2, when in truth it was only distilled water. Mr. White again fully recovered and returned to flying his plane for the next 2 months. Unfortunately though the final verdict on Krebiozen was published in the press, and the drug was proven to be totally ineffective in the treatment of cancer. Mr. White died just a few days after the findings were released, much to the disappointment of his doctor.

In both of these cases their minds created beliefs and conceptions about their particular circumstances. The idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, has been often proven all to very true through many cultures, and the idea of placebo’s are so famous the in the late 70’s Dr. Richard Bandler himself even attempted to produce a useless tablet that he was going to market under the name “placebo,” for doctors to give to their patients that required the use of one. Ultimately the “placebo” pill was refused by the patent office and the FDA and never made it to the market place. But what makes these cases unique and so fascinating are the lengths to which the patient and the volunteer’s unconscious followed their own perceptions of their circumstances and acted to create both a cure and the potential harmful behaviors.

Sometimes it feels like the circumstances of our lives so desperate that we all wish for a bit of magic to make our circumstances more like our imaginations and morals say should be. Also I truly believe that everyone imagines the kind of out comes they wish to have in their lives and I’m eve sure that there is quite a bit of detail we all add to our own wishes in the hopes they might be realistic enough to come true. But the truth is that most people do not achieve the things they want in life simply because the on some level do not believe they truly deserve the outcomes that they seek. Deservedness issues are common for most people, after all how many people buy a lottery ticket, and if you wish them luck the first thing they say is something to the effect of "I'm not that lucky" when I hear that I have to ask "and what makes you any less potentially lucky that the other 10 million people who bought a ticket this week?"  Truthfully I believe everyone deserves to win the lottery after all it would only increase the potentially for everyone's dreams to come true in one way or another.

To show you the potential of how this can work for you I would like for everyone to do this simple exercise, and please let me know how successful it is for you.

You deserve a lot in my opinion but let start with something realistic that you can agree with, a quarter. You surely deserve to find one quarter. Imagine that sometime in the future you will find one quarter, it doesn't matter where you will find it, or how you find it, just imagine a moment you stop and see a quarter before you and you reach out and pick it up. Imagine the year of the quarter, how scratched up is it? What time of day it will be, what location will you find it at?  Are you alone or with someone? Is it at home or out somewhere? Where every you will be, what ever the circumstances, you just find a quarter and pick it up. Surely you have worked hard enough to deserve a simple quarter, and you shall have it easy enough if you just pick it up. Get this picture in your mind and then clear your mind, think of a bill you have to pay, whats your date of birth? Then think of that clear picture you have of finding your quarter, clear your mind again once you have it fixed in your mind, then imagine you have found the quarter again, do this 3 times to send the signal to your unconscious that this is what you want, and within the next week you will find that quarter exactly as you imagined it will happen.

Success is always within our reach and all we have to do it simply dream that good thing life.

Again please let me know about your success.

Who's line is it anyway?

Did I just say that out loud?

Have you ever had to ask this question of someone you were talking to? Most people have had this experience at least once in their lives. Previously I have written about the representations we use in our minds that are the summation of our experiences and memories. But just as important as these representations is how we talk to our selves inside our minds that is called internal dialog. Our internal dialog is simply the thoughts that naturally occur in ones mind from moment to moment. For example, do you feel smart, or ignorant on a consistent basis? Is what you’re wearing comfortable? Or fashionable? Any answers you may have heard in your mind are a part of your internal dialog. Internal dialog is very large part of our life, it is I believe best descried as “an ongoing conversation with our selves.”

It wasn’t all too long ago when admitting that you had internal dialog would have gotten you diagnosed with a disorder and possibly help for “psychiatric assistance.” To me it is rather ironic that one of the primary questions that are asked in any psychiatric evaluation questionnaire to this day is: “Do you hear voices when no one else is present?” The true answer anytime this is asked is yes, because we all hear the voice of our internal dialog stating our opinions, giving commentary about a situation, making jokes, voicing our assessments of people, and situations we face constantly. It is also an amazing fact that our ability to speak is lost when our internal dialog is speechless and silent, and this is true100% of the time. If you think about a time in the past when you experience a moment of total silence inside your mind, you would also find that you were unable to voice any thought or opinion.

The quality of the statements and questions we pose to ourselves can have a very profound and dramatic effect on out attitudes and feelings in any situation. Most times our internal dialog is unwittingly very negative in its messages and meanings. Phrases like “I doubt it, that’s unlikely, yeah right, I don’t think so, Why did I say that? It’s because…, I bet they won’t like me, What if I am embarrassed? How could I ever? Why can’t I…, etc…” These are just a few of the negative things that we can say to our selves internally, continuously worrying about our future or indulging in memories of our past.

Often times it is also believed that this voice is our conscience. The conscience is a part of our unconscious mind, and yes it does communicate in the things that we say to ourselves internally. But it is better to say that your conscience is located in a much deeper part of your mind and at times its voice does surface with chatter that your conscious mind generates.

The important thing to remember about your internal dialog is that is does have a profound effect on the way you feel about yourself, your self image, and how you relate to others at any given time. But if you learn how to direct and change the voice that resonates through your mind so often, you will then be able to harness the benefits of all of its positive abilities to make changes in your life on a constant day to day basis.

Conventional cognitive approaches state that you can only make most positive changes to your internal workings by working purely with the content of your memories. For example one might say “every time I think about drinking a Coke I tell myself how bad they are for me.” And a Therapist would ask “How does this make you feel? When did you first start hearing this?  Why do you think it says that? Etc…” This is commonly called the insight approach. The thing about the insight approach is that by exploring deeply into the history of why we say these things to ourselves leads us into a potentially never ending pit of personal history that seldom if at all brings any real conclusion to the problems we experience. The basic idea is that gaining insight and understanding of the origin of the problem will change the problem and often it doesn’t. In NLP we assume that at the time you had any problem you were dealing with it with the very best resources you had at the time, but now you may have acquired new skills and or tools based on your experiences that will aid you better in resolving these unresolved conflicts.

As I stated in a previous posting the quality of our experiences can be increased by simply changing the nature of the representations we use internally as the construct for our ongoing experiences. In the following I would like to teach you a few ways that you can work with your own internal dialog so that you can increase the positive messages you give to yourself.  The structure of our internal dialog is very simple to change, however to make the processes you will learn in the following, an automatic process in your mind will need to practice these skills beyond just one simple test that I invite you to enjoy now. But once you have practiced these skills a few times, you will find that you can quickly and easily apply them to many different situations in your life every day.

Changing Critical Voices Quickly and Easily

The following technique will assist you in enabling yourself to quickly and easily change your internal dialog. If you have never practiced anything like this previously, please set aside 15 minutes to allow yourself to learn and see how easily you can use this wonderful tool, and once you practice this a few times you will be able to apply the techniques quickly and easily when ever and where ever you want.

Mickey Mouse Technique

1. Remember a moment in time where you were internally talking to yourself in a less than positive way. Maybe you forgot to do something? Maybe you did something wrong? Maybe you were trying to do something positive and it blew up in your face? What ever it was just remember that voice now inside your mind.

2. Next take a moment and become more aware of this voice, where in relation to your body do you spatially hear the voice coming from? Is it coming from behind you, in front of you, from the right, left, diagonally? As you are becoming increasingly aware of the direction the voice is coming from in your mind, what direction would you say best describes its current location?

3. Now as best as you can define for yourself the qualities of this voice, is it speaking loudly or softly? How fast do you hear this voice speaking to you is it fast or slow? Is the voice speaking towards you or away from you? What kind of tone is it speaking in, is it gentle, harsh, critical, cynical, etc…?  

4. What I would like you to do now is to use your imagination just a bit, I’m sure you will find this very easy to do with just a bit of your already well developed imagination. What I would like you to do is to make so that you move this voice from wherever it is now and move it to your little finger you feel would be the right one to choose.

5. Then I would like you to have this voice say everything it has been saying to you exactly the same way it was speaking previously with one exception, I would like it for you to change the tone of the voice to sound exactly like that of Mickey Mouse.

6. Have it repeat the things it has been saying a few times, or if you like you can pick one of your favorite cartoon character voices.

7. Notice how it sounds, notice the difference in how you feel about it. Is there any way you could hear this voice nagging at you and find anything less than its own ridiculousness in its words?

8. Now imagine a time in the future when this voice would normally nag you again, and then repeat the steps 2 thru 7. Once you have done that successfully Find another point in the future it would have nagged you and repeat steps 2-7, and repeat it only as many times as you feel is necessary so that anytime you might have been nagged by this voice, you will only find it pleasantly amusing.

Voice Recording / Rewind Technique

1. Identify another one of those less than helpful voices for one last time.

2. Become aware of its qualities, tones, volume, pitch, timber, etc…

3. Now hear it as if you were playing it backwards on an old cassette tape.

4. Hear it both fast and slow in playback, and then hear it backwards, rewinding very fast in less than ½ a second. Now repeat this no less than 3 times.

5. Now replace that backwards voice with a new positive message and give it to yourself in the sexiest voice tone you have ever heard.

Slow – It - Way – Down Technique

1. Become aware of those inner voices that you would like to be rid of.

2. Notice its qualities, tone, volume, pitch, timber, etc…

3. Hear it from the beginning, only this only this time slow it down, and put pauses in between or the words.

*Note: It can be fun to hear the voice in a Regional accent as well.

4. Now hear it again from the beginning and slow it down even more, be sure to even stretch out the sounds of each syllable of every word.

5. Repeat slowing down and stretching out the words until you can REALY HEAR IT SSSSLLLLOOOOWWWWEEEEEDDDDD DOOOOOOWWWNNNNN.

(*Note: This technique can be especially helpful in falling asleep for some who have problems sleeping. Insomnia has been reported often due to chattering away to your self in a fast paced voice, so this technique can really help.

The more you apply these techniques, the more optimized your internal dialog will become!

With the techniques I’ve listed here you can easily and quickly change those bothersome internal voices. By becoming more aware of your internal dialog, and a little practice, you will be able to apply one of the techniques listed here when ever one of your “critical” voices arises in the future. This will not only assist in helping you get things done when you need or assist in allowing you to feel more at ease when you should, thus allowing you more time and space to think clearly.

You can gain all the benefits of having a positive internal dialog today! Yes, it is that easy!

Cause and Effect At The Heart of Any Problem

Recently I talked to a woman who told me about many problems she knew she had, and while she was talking I noticed that everything she said was a problem that she assigned to other people and circumstances that she believed were out side of her ability to control. It made me wonder why so often people surrender themselves to any problem simply because they feel their circumstances are outside of the locus of their control.

In any problem there are at least 2 parts that make up its base equation and those are cause and effect. I believe that when we assess any problem in our lives, the first question we should ask ourselves is "Am I on the Cause or Effect side of this problem?" By definition a cause, literally causes a certain effect. Now if you are on the cause side of the equation then you then say “yes, I create all of the effects that happen in my life, yes, I’m create all of the effects that happen in my world. I am responsible for everything I create” in a joyous and meaningful way. Now on the other part of the equation, which by the way is the most uncomfortable side, and is also the side that most people in the world are on at this time. Is the effect side of the equation, on the effect side one would say “Yes, everything that happens to me someone else did, every thing that happens to me I didn’t do it myself someone did it to me.” It is definitely more popular to be on the effect side than the cause side of any problem it seems.

What this means is that we have to ask our selves in these times is “Who is in charge of the results you produce?” or as Dr. Richard Bandler is often quoted as saying “who is driving the bus?” I think that this is a very good question, now think about this for just a moment. If you’re on the cause side of the question, then you are the one who is going to produce results for which you can take credit for and fell wonderful or at the very least successful. But if you’re on the effect side of the equation, instead of results, you’re going to have only reasons why you didn’t get the things you wanted.  I don’t know how much you have thought about this, but the reasons side of life is not really best side to be on. It certainly is not the most empowering or even fulfilling side to be on for sure. I want you to know through any number of years, no matter how many numbers of years it may be, it will not be the most satisfying side to be on. Unfortunately the fact is that it is the most prevalent side most of society is on today. I think that this type of thinking is best summed up by the great American philosopher Bart Simpson who said “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, and you can’t prove anything!” or maybe that was one of our presidents? Anyhow the effects side of the equations we like to be on and this is true for most societies around the world. In business there is a saying that goes “If at first you don’t succeed, fix the blame fast, and sue the SOB for every dime you can get!” Even in the things we see in our media we have advertisements that say “If you’re injured in an accident, it’s not your fault! Find out who did it and call “these” lawyers and we’ll help you sure them for everything you deserve!”

But the fact remains that the effect side of the equation is not a very satisfying side to be on. Imagine being on this side of the equation for the rest of your life, and see your self around age 95, realize that you have never created the opportunity to get a single thing that you ever wanted in your life.  You will realize that this is not really a very satisfying side to be on at all. I’m sure you can think of at least one person you know like this, they always say something like, well I would have been a success if it had not have been for “blank” and then they will name someone, and they’ll say its the IRS, an ex partner, an ex spouse, someone that did “it” to them. That they didn’t do and it’s not their fault. Most clients come in and they ask for help, and most times they state that they have tried to change but they couldn’t and that this was their spouses fault, their employer’s fault, in education there are tons of disenfranchised learner’s, people that have developed a learning dis-ability, and they can’t learn because they have this thing or that thing, that particular problem that keep them from learning. In business we have a sales person who can’t sell because the economy is down, or they can’t sell because the economy is up, or side ways, or bonds are up, or who knows what, what ever the limitation is if you can move yourself from the effect side of the equation to the cause side of the equation you find something magical happens, you get to never have this problem ever again.

The important thing to know about being on the cause side of the equation is that any time that you assign someone or something as the cause of any problem, you are essentially giving up any and all power you have to not only resolve any situation, but also you are throwing away valuable learning’s that could assist you in avoiding future problems such as these as well as the piece of mind that comes with knowing you can overcome such obstacles, and just the knowledge that you have overcome that obstacle once previously is invaluable to our self esteem, self worth, and can only increase the positive messages to the unconscious that we do have control of any problem we face even if that means we simply have control over only our own actions.

I think it bears repeating that in life all we have either results or reasons, and results are things that we want, need, or desire, where as reasons are as my mother used to say “a pocket full could have’s”. Reasons are something you can not take to the bank; if I went to my landlord this month and told him “I’m sorry I can’t pay you because the economy is bad” you can imagine his response would be less than positive.

Another thing about reasons is also that if you have many reasons that fill your life, you will attract and find others that will support those reasons. Everyday there are literally millions of support groups through out the US. The fact is that people get together in groups like this and take care of each other needs to have these reasons that hold them back at times and often all this does for anyone is supply support for people’s reasons for why they can not change.

Now I can not really say if it is truth that we cause the bad things that happen to us, but I do know and believe that the sum total of our conscious and unconscious choices have lead us to where we are today. And if you find that you are on the effect side of any equation the only way we can achieve the goal that we were seeking that lead us there is if we move our selves from the effects side of the equation and bring ourselves over to the cause side of the equation, we do this by changing, the internal representations that occur in our minds, and by doing so changing the experience we currently have as a result of what has happened to you in the past so that they are of your creation. The moment that you accept that and move to the cause side of the equation saying “Ok, I chose this, I created this (even if it was an unconscious decision), now I’m done with it, I’ve really had enough of it, and now its time to move on.” In this we are embracing the situation so that you can get learning lessons from the situation, because learning is the key. I truly do not think that any one would consciously and willingly create any situation where they would have the government come after them, or people would do bad things to them. But I honestly do think that we do put ourselves in the situation that we are by our conscious and unconscious choices, and just knowing and deciding that, then you truly have the ability to decide where you want to be today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life.

The Blues Clues!

I thought today I would share a problem that is very personal to me, as I have a form of this particular dis-order. Being a hypnotists and a practitioner of NLP does give us a “golden ticket” that makes us immune to all of the problems that many people suffer from. I’ll start with a bit of history to foreshadow my writing about this terrible potentially debilitating problem:

When I was a child, Fall and Winter were the most magical time of year for me, I can still recall how I would wait mark off the days on the calendar counting down the days till it would be Christmas. The closer it got the more my home filled with the most wondrous aromas, ham, pies, cakes, brownies, cookies etc… My mom would wait every day for the mail to get the Christmas cards that came in to show us all which of our relatives remembered us and how pretty the cards were, then she would take the cards and tape them to the wall in our living room one at a time, and at the time I would memorize who sent each one so that if any one asked I could tell you who sent them. We had elaborate decorations that took weeks to put up; literally our house looked like Christmas was its entire reason for existing.

Christmas morning would arrive and I would find myself wide awake at 6am and lie in my bed for at least 30 minutes waiting to get up so that it would not be too extremely early to wake everyone in my family up because I knew Santa had been by and filled the space under our tree and I could not wait to see what I had gotten for being so good all year long! Then when the time was right I would spring out of my bed like a bat out of hell and run to my parent’s room, my mother would spring up and tell me to wake my brothers and my sister, they would be most annoyingly sluggish about waking up, but I was relentless in my determination and there would be no going back to sleep, for I had already waited long enough and there was no escaping my enthusiasm! After I made sure they were awake I would sprint to the end of the hallway and stop just short of my living room and peek around the corner barely able to contain myself looking slowly at the huge pile of presents stacked carefully under our Christmas tree.

I would then walk through the living room and join my mother in the kitchen, who would just be turning the coffee pot on, and she would ask me about the status of my siblings, and I would report to her how hard they were to wake up and then she would tell me it was time to wake my dad, and I would sprint like the flash down the hall again and wake my dad. He would always ask me “Did Santa come last night son?” I would then speak in what must have been an incoherent blurb about how huge the piles of gifts were and how hard everyone was to wake, in what I know had to be a single breath. He would chuckle to himself and then get up and grab his robe and head towards the living room camera in hand. The rest of the morning was a blur of ripping paper and adrenalin. My parents would sit and watch us play with a smile that I truly believe comes from a form of self satisfaction only a parent can truly know.  

That was 18 years ago, and now I am an adult and a parent. My home is sparsely decorated but decorated enough. Both of my parents have passed away, and my brothers and sister live in different places both physically, emotionally and mentally. Until I met my wife this was the most unpleasant time of year for me, since my parents passed away I have suffered from something called “Seasonal Affective Disorder” otherwise known as the Holiday Blues/depression. Previously to meeting my wife and kids, I all but shut down during this time of year, I would not listen to any Christmas songs, watch any of the Christmas specials I used to enjoy most of my life from when I was a child, shows like the Santa Clause specials, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Charlie Brown, etc… My Favorite Christmas movie has always been ironically enough “A Christmas Carol” But I also avoided this like the plague as well. When it comes to how I treat others I have hardly ever been a Scrooge despite how I felt. Simply I just didn’t celebrate the holiday much. I felt a sense of disconnection, like the holiday was for everyone else but not for me. I still bought presents for others, went to parties, and even made cappuccino for my family every Christmas morning with breakfast, and would be very thankful for any presents that I received. But when no one was around, I would spend quite a bit of time crying, aching to see my parents again and practically dying to just hear them say my name, reliving those moment of Christmas from so long ago and mourning the fact that I would never see another moment as fine as those shared with my family in the past.

This type problem is a very common experience for many people, statistics on seasonal affective disorder in the United States include that this disorder occurs in about 5% of adults, with up to 20% of people having some symptoms of the condition but not sufficient enough to meet diagnostic criteria for this disorder (AMA). Seasonal affective disorder is less common where there is snow on the ground. Seasonal affective disorder is about four times more common in women than men, and the average age of people when they first develop this illness is 23 years of age. People of all ages can develop seasonal affective disorder. (AMA)

I would describe the symptoms commonly used to diagnose this type of depression but frankly, most times general descriptions of any dis-order is used by most people as a sort of checklist to create one, and personally I believe in curing problems more so that creating them. But often this type of dis-order is attributed to the Cycle of the seasons, the shorter days of the year when we see less and less sunlight which disrupts the body’s internal clock, it is thought that the disruption of our body’s natural rhythm could possibly cause depression like symptoms. It is also diagnosed that the disruption in the body natural cycle’s can also an acute decrease in Melatonin and Serotonin two chemicals produced in the body that maintains our sleep and awake cycles. Often for this light therapy is prescribed as a solution. The thought is that exposure to very bright light for the same periods of time you would have normally experienced sunlight will assist the body in restoring its internal rhythm. Also supplements of Melatonin are available over the counter, and additionally other prescriptions are available of many well know anti-depressant medications.

Recent studies relating to the change of the season as being the cause SAD lead us to believe that the changing season have little or nothing to do with SAD, when we consider things like; Norway, every year Norway spends 2 months in complete darkness, as well as certain parts of Alaska and significant areas of Russia such as Siberia and none of these regions of the world report any significant increases in the amount of the population suffering from this potentially debilitating form of depression. (Institute of Clinical Medicine, Dr. V Hansen 2008, Norway). More and more SAD is being treated as a form of clinical depression for which increasingly medications and cognitive and other forms of conventional therapy are being prescribed.

*Note: It is commonly believed that suicide rates increase during the Christmas season, this myth has been proven by many studies to be completely false. Studies have shown that suicide rates actually increase in spring conversely. The thought that suicide is more common in the winter is perpetuated and fabricated by the press and media, the American foundation for Suicide Prevention has also released articles that show a direct link between articles released within the last 10 years about this and many suicides that shortly followed their release. (Psychology Today and Annenberg Public Policy Center University of Pennsylvania, 2008)

With all of these fact figures and conjecture it can definitely leave one feeling overwhelmed! Which in truth can compound the problem of SAD even more, after all how many people have had the experience of going to the doctor and being prescribed any medication let alone anti-depressants that is only for a short period of time? Most doctors do not like to discontinue a medication regiment once it has been established. Additionally, even if it is a short lived, with a problem that is seasonal, who wants to be diagnosed as being depressed, especially with how closely our personal health information is monitored by certain organizations? This can make it almost impossible to get insurance or at least make it very costly. Anti-depressant medication can also take quite a toll on the body and be quite costly, how many people have adequate health coverage for both the multiple visits to the Psychologist / Psychiatrist and such medications for such an intermittent problem?

The true problem lies in the unconscious mind, if you remember a principle of the unconscious mind is that it hides memories from us in order to protect us from things we may not be able to handle at the time they happened in order to maintain our well being. The Christmas season is a season filled with memories and associations, as we grew up when experienced November as the beginning of the biggest holiday season of our year, our parents would prepare and cook for Thanksgiving, our relatives we hadn’t seen through most of the year would come and we would get a chance to have a few special moments to share with our families that were at best rare in our day to day lives. Then Christmas would be right around the corner with the excitement of our parents and our families we all as children would fill with their excitement for the entire month and our own for that all important visit from Santa Claus, and the gifts he would leave us for being so good through out the rest of the year. We would practice this cycle every year, like a habit.

Then the inevitable happened, we grew up. Santa Claus for a time lost his relevance to us (until we had children of our own), and unfortunately our parents and dear family members got older as well and some of them passed way before their time. But our minds remain; they have kept their associations to this wondrous season, for some that have very large families it was easier as they may have had plenty of relatives that shared their lives and still to this day they can visit and find that sense of family and connection. While others who have smaller families losing family members can leave very large empty spaces that with no one to fill can take root in their psyche, that they are unable fill. And of course vice versa, folks with large families can lose important members and no one can take their place, and smaller families can lose member and knit tighter together to support one another. Either way the result is that we have very strong associations to the holidays, and every year we repeat the rituals and habits that as we have been through most of our lives, we repeat them because of our associations and then painful memories or unresolved issues we may have are then brought back to the surface from our unconscious. Because the unconscious is unable to both repress and share these memories simultaneously the strong associations we have are highly emotionally charged, and in many cases our feelings of grief or pain are repressed for our own well being the rest of the year, the automatic unpacking and being almost forced into dealing with it causes a sort of short circuit in our emotional balance to which the end result is holiday depression.  

I would also like to take a moment to address the medical diagnosis of the lower levels of Serotonin and Melatonin. Depression has been proven to cause our bodies to drastically change the levels of many chemicals in our bodies. Additionally our unconscious controls these levels and is also responsible for the function of keeping them balanced. Why someone’s unconscious would allow these levels to change drastically enough to cause such problems can indicate many things, such things are easy to solve permanently with hypnosis. This explanation I feel is very simplified and I would like to take a moment to give you an idea of why these kinds of imbalances happen, even if someone isn’t aware their unconscious is in conflict our bodies will still show the evidence of this type of conflict, and this is displayed through many types of dis-ease that many people suffer from today.

The phenomenon know commonly as dis-ease is, I believe the result of conflicting programs that confuse our unconscious minds. To explain best how dis-ease can be created by the unconscious I will start by saying that dis-ease is cause by one thing; improper functioning of the cells of the body. The causes of this breakdown or malfunction are various, but at a basic level it can be described as it relates to the pathways that conduct the energy that flows through our bodies.

Eastern Medicine describes the flow of the life force energy through out our bodies as “chi” and this is the term I will use to describe this energy. Chi is described as entering body when we inhale and is the forwarded to the body’s energy accumulators and transformers commonly know as chakras. Each of these energy centers focuses on one of the 7 glands of our endocrine system. These chakras modify the chi energy to be specific for the particular endocrine gland that uses it. The now modified energy flows through our body’s energy pathways or meridians if you like, to the cells via the endocrine gland and stimulates the cells to regenerate; not only do the cells regenerate but also they purge the body of toxins. If this chi energy is blocked and can not reach the cell community or is diminished, the cell community is deprived of its life force and begins to degrade. Blockages in the body’s main energy pathways (meridians) or its main energy centers (chakras) cause this type of phenomenon to occur. The causes for this could be from bad experiences in this life, previous lives, unresolved internal conflicts and biological memories carried over from our genetic ancestors, we shall call these energy blocking programs of the unconscious mind Negative Force Functions (NFF’s).  These NFF’s function in 3 ways:

1. They distort the body’s energy field thus disrupting the energy pathways.
2. They create negative habits that our unconscious dutifully follows.
3. They continuously support these negative habits which only embeds them further into our unconscious, which only makes them stronger.

These habits cause the distortions of our bodies energy field or blockages that affect our behaviors, the way we feel, how we relate to others, and the way we respond to life. Unless these distortions are cleared or removed, over time they can have serious consequences that affect every aspect of our lives, and ultimately can be potentially fatal in some cases.

Changing our habits and releasing the negative attachments that cause these NFF’s to exist, is ultimately the best and surest cure for most problems. Once the blockages and distortions are removed the life force energy is restored to the cell communities that have been deprived, these cells contain, in the base makeup of the cell, the blueprint for perfectly functioning new cells, and they will begin to regenerate and replace any damaged cells until the entire community of cells are restored.

The symptoms of any form of depression are mostly physical, and once the root of the cause of our woes is gone, then we are free to feel better, and true healing begins. When it comes to the "Holiday Blues" or depression in its many guises, the problem starts form with us, and the cure does also, because no matter what if you only cure a symptom, the problem remains free and unchecked to cause more problems in the future.

Now I'll sit down in my thinking chair, instead of my shrinking chair. Free to think after 18 years. Happy Holidays!