A Bad Habit Solution

By Gayle North

"Hypnosis is considered to be one of the best tools to access, mobilize, and actualize human potential."  

             -  Dr. A.M. Krasner,  author of  The Wizard Within

“New Years Resolution Season” is here! You may already be thinking about plans for improving your health and your life in the coming year.   I offer a few thoughts here on using NLP and hypnosis to ignite and augment your personal will-power.

First of all, let’s talk about the mind. You know that your mind has two major parts to it – your conscious mind and your unconscious mind.  However, did you know that you can never be aware of more than 5 or 6 pieces of information at any point in time with your conscious mind? 

In contrast, your unconscious mind processes over two million pieces of information every second!  It is your auto-pilot.  It runs your life for you.  It has been building habits for you perfectly since the day you were born .

Almost everything you do is an unconscious habit.  The way you brush your teeth or put your shoes on in the morning,- even your breathing is handled by your unconscious.  The autonomic nervous system is run by your unconscious mind.  It breathes for you, it pumps blood around your body, it takes care of all autonomic functions. 

When you were learning to drive you had to think – to look in the mirror, change gears, use turn signals, turn the wheel – almost an overload for the tiny conscious mind.  Then the little conscious mind downloaded the information into the powerful unconscious mind, and all of those things became automatic habitual behaviors. 

When the conscious mind does something three, four, or five times, the unconscious mind says, “Aha, I’ll do that job for you” and it takes it on board as a habit.  Some of those habits are useful, like driving a car or swimming.  Some of those habits, like smoking and overeating  become useless or detrimental.

Your Unconscious Protects All Habits!  You can try – and you probably have tried to change unhealthy habits with conscious will-power.  But the far more powerful unconscious mind will protect these habits along with the useful ones.  Otherwise, a person could forget how to drive on the way somewhere, or forget how to swim in the middle of a lake.  It is a survival mechanism. This is why a battle goes on between the conscious and the unconscious mind when we want to change a habit.

Think about habits with food: When you were small, did your parents say, ”Eat everything on your plate - there are starving children in the world?”   Most of us heard it a few times.  And so here we are – years later- and we’re still doing it even though it may no longer be a good thing for us.

Lets look at smoking.  Most people try smoking when they are young.   Some of us persisted through the coughing, sputtering, dizziness, and burning eyes – not to mention the awful taste – and repeated this behavior until the unconscious mind said, “OK, let’s make it an automatic habit.” 

From that moment on you become a smoker.  Even if you say to yourself, “I will not smoke – I will not smoke”, you find yourself wanting to reach for one because the conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg and the unconscious mind is the like the iceberg itself!  It is bigger, stronger, and far more powerful.  When ever you have conscious will-power versus unconscious imagination  - the imagination always wins.  

Hypnosis is  A Powerful Tool for Change.  The reason why hypnosis is so powerful for changing unconscious habits and behaviors is because you don’t have to consciously try over and over again to think a certain way, or behave a certain way.  Hypnosis makes it instant.  It makes the change automatic, because it offers the ability to communicate directly with the unconscious mind – the place where all the habits are imprinted.

Myths and Misconceptions About Hypnosis

“I’m afraid I cannot be hypnotized.”  Hypnosis is simply a state of relaxation.  I often say to clients before a session, “Don’t expect to feel hypnotized, just expect to feel deeply relaxed.   Hypnosis is a familiar feeling. This is why when people ask, “Can I be hypnotized?” I tell them ANYONE can be hypnotized because we are all going in and out of trances all day long. 

For example, have you ever been at a stoplight and suddenly you hear this “honk-honk” and then notice the light  is green?  You had drifted into a relaxed state which is the alpha brain-wave state which is a state of light to medium hypnosis.  Hypnosis is something you already know how to do.

 “I don’t want anyone to control my mind.”  This is a classic fear.  Because people have seen old movies and stage shows, and sometimes it seems as though the person is under the control of the hypnotist.

People you see in stage shows volunteer to be silly because they have a desire to entertain. They know very well what is going to happen and they want it to happen.  The hypnotist cannot make them do anything they do not want to do.  The hypnosis relaxed them enough to overcome their fears of doing what they really wanted to do.

You can be confident that any instructions that conflict with your ethics, morals, values, or beliefs would be quickly filtered out by the deeper structures of your mind.  The real value of hypnosis is that IT CAN HELP ANYONE DO WHAT THEY REALLY WANT TO DO.

Is hypnosis safe?  There was an 18 month British government investigation into hypnosis after a lawsuit was filed against a stage hypnotist by a schizophrenic.   The case was dismissed and the government concluded that hypnosis is 100% safe.

Does hypnosis work?  The American Medical Association approved hypnosis as a viable treatment in 1958 and since that time many important scientific research papers and books have been written on the effectiveness of hypnosis.  Dr. Dednroth MD did a study published in 1968 on 1000 people using hypnosis for smoking cessation. After 18 months he found that with his method, 94% had remained non-smokers. 

Further improvements have been made in the methods since that time by combining the best of traditional hypnosis techniques with the fairly new science of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming).  We can now offer this high success rate in one session for STOPPING SMOKING – in about ONE HOUR.

So does hypnosis work?  YES – Hypnosis works if done competently and if the client is wanting the change for his/her own reasons.  It does not work well when people feel forced to change by a doctor or spouse. 

If you want to make positive changes in your life, why struggle?  Consider taking advantage of the wonderful empowerment techniques available today!

Gayle North  offers Personal Coaching for Positive Change using recently developed empowerment technologies to clear mental and emotional blocks that keep people stuck in unhealthy habits and prevent them from performing at their highest potential  in school, sports, relationships, work and finance. Call 406-837-1214 to learn how you can STOP SMOKING IN ONE HOUR and for coaching in person or by phone.

changeiseasy@montanasky.net                  www.PositiveChangeInstitute.com