Catherine Poole

Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

–Helen Keller

If it wasn’t for the optimist,

the pessimist would never know how happy he wasn’t.

–Anonymous

“>Listening to your own inner dialogue in all its many forms can be so enlightening and helpful. This week I talk about hypnosis, but not about the mesmerizing techniques of a stage hypnotist, nor the mind control aspect of a spy movie from the 50’s. My objective is to help you understand how you hypnotize yourself into where you currently are stuck. Yes, you have put yourself there, and yes, you can get yourself out.

Awareness is a powerful thing! In my new DVD, Affirmations: How Manifesting Really Works! I talk about language and the power of the mind. It is a great DVD, and today’s blog is about how we have put ourselves in our current situations using the SAME techniques I offer to manifest the positive.

For example, if you smoke and cannot quit no matter what you have tried reverse your hypnosis script! I hear you now, “but Catherine, I don’t have a script” you just don’t think you do.

My mother smokes. She is 78 years of age, she quit for 25 years and started up again when my sister and her children started smoking.

She has asked several times for me to hypnotize her and I will not. Why? Because she does not want to quit, she hypnotizes HERSELF constantly and until she is ready to shift and change her script, hypnosis will not work for her.

How many of you out there have been hypnotized for weight or smoking cessation and it did not work? You were not ready, perhaps you were doing it for someone else? -this can include a doctor, or an employer, not just a loved one.

The key is: you need to be ready to do it FOR YOU and for a POSITIVE pay off. What do I mean by that? Smoking cessation should be about breathing easier, cleaner fresher breath, healthy activities and healthy body, even something simpler like “I want to taste my food” not because “I don’t want to get cancer”.

My mom is already being hypnotized, she sits, she enjoys her cigarette, she tells me (and tells herself) repeatedly (hypnotically) “I love it”. We have also talked about what her emotional attachment to smoking is, because help with addiction is often about identifying your first emotional anchor with a habit, whether it is drinking, tobacco or other so-called vices we would like to shift. Identifying the anchor helps you identify your constant verbal (conscious) reinforcement, which can THEN be shifted to another pay off.

With smoking, mom began when she was 12 behind the garage in the alley with her friends. She felt grown-up, but more importantly, the emotional anchor was about being in control and being “hip”. When she began smoking again there were parallel circumstances in her life where she felt she needed to be in control, but also wanted to “fit in” with the individuals, her daughter and her grandchildren. It helped her stay connected (“hip”).

So, that being said, how many of you out there hypnotize yourself into staying stuck? When you smoke do you say continuously “I just can’t seem to quit” or worse, are you telling yourself you are “killing yourself” or refer to your cigarettes as “coffin nails” or worse? Think about what you are programming and how you are creating a repeated hypnotic suggestion.
Louise Hay, founder of Hay House Publishing talks about self-talk in one of her books, “The Power Is Within You.” She has my preferred method for smoking or addiction in general: bless your cigarettes! I tell my clients her philosophy before we even begin a hypnosis session for smoking, just as I tell a weight release client to bless their belly! Why? Because you are scripting/hypnotizing, yourself into doing the opposite of what you want to achieve. You alone are responsible for your actions.

I ask that you shift your thoughts, then your language and then your behavior will follow. So listen to your self talk when you light up, take a drink, eat something you feel you shouldn’t…then bless it and add that you no longer need it…or tell yourself it is OK to have some and you will save some for later. Those that just commented in their head “Oh, but I couldn’t eat just one bite” take note and pat yourself on the back, you were just given a gift of insight! How often do you say that when you step up to the buffet?

I had a friend that quit smoking because he would take out the cigarette, bless it and tell himself he would save it for later, then put it back. He initially smoked, but used this method to cut way back as he blessed more often than smoked. After four months or so he realized he hadn’t smoked but a handful of cigarettes… but never really identified himself as quitting.

How is that? Hypnosis. AND a very positive approach, his method was subtle and not the punishment of cold turkey, which again is viewed negatively as punishment…like we view exercise and diet as punishment. Also many of us like to have control and rebel when we HAVE TO do something, so cutting back, or ramping up an activity or a habit and using hypnosis to instill and maintain motivation is a wonderful tool. And yet another script in your head is (I caught it in my head as I wrote this…)

“if you tell me I can’t have it, I want it all the more!”

HAH! Hypnosis right there!)

A funny example of how we keep ourselves stuck is in the old 70’s movie Airplane! When Lloyd Bridges kept saying throughout the movie “I picked the wrong time to quit drinking” and again, “I picked the wrong time to quit smoking” and so on…the hypnosis in this is that he has convinced himself he needs those things to cope with stress.

What are you telling yourself?

Are you programming yourself to keep up with the very thing you are trying to shift?

Even something as innocent as “I will quit when I am not so stressed” is still telling yourself that you can only handle stress one way. When you hear yourself say something to that effect when you are eating, drinking or smoking shift to something more positive and beneficial such as “Sitting and taking a few deep breaths is the best method for my stress relief” or something along those lines. You are shifting your pay off and eventually you will really do it. The key word here, eventually again, life is a process!

I am a certified hypnotist with the National Guild of Hypnotists, a wonderful and credible organization. If you need help identifying and shifting a script there are many wonderful colleagues that can help. I would like to give you a few examples and suggestions that I find common in my practice and common in my own experiences! I am confident that this will help you turn some issues around.

For Smoking Cessation:

“I bless this cigarette and no longer need it in my body”

“I bless this cigarette and choose to save it for later”

“I bless this cigarette and only need a taste” (take a puff or two and throw the rest away)

“I bless this cigarette and smoke less and less each day”

Think about how many times a day you will say this if you are even a half pack a day smoker and said it every time you lit up, or even better every time you took a puff! Repetition creates success, that is how affirmations work!

Weight Release, Exercise

First, I refer to exercise as manifesting. I personally use this time to listen to my “theme music” and dream about what I want to do and where I want to go in life. It is one of the few times of the day I have completely to myself, so I focus on that as a GIFT rather than focus on it as punishment. Here are some phrases you may want to adapt:

“Exercise is like a ‘shower for my insides’”

“I feel so clean and empowered afterwards.”

“I love me and how I feel when I exercise”

“It is safe to move forward”

These are some good mantras to use to get you going and keep you moving. Create your own, I envisioned myself releasing weight with each step and associated the walking/jogging with release. Not just fat, but everything else in my life that no longer served me was left on the side of the track! Visit some of my other blogs to help you with visualizing. “Catherine, Your Other Left…” is a great one to accompany this week’s Kick! Several others are As if by magic…about my magic refrigerator,  Don’t Worry, Be Happy! and The Power of Feelization is a “how to” on manifesting. The DVD on Affirmations would also be a great reference and a nice gift for someone you know that is struggling to get “unstuck”.

Diet/Water

Here is another area I would like to address where many of us do not realize how we hypnotize ourselves into our own behaviors. I mentioned before about “ramping up” an activity, drinking water is a good example. I hear so many say “I hate the taste of water” or “I can’t drink water” even “I don’t drink enough water” well that admission is fine, but what are you consistently telling yourself? You are telling yourself not to drink enough water!

So turn it around and come up with some benefits of hydrating yourself. For one thing, particularly when dieting (weight release) seems to be all about taking things away, water is something you can do for yourself! Right there is a shift. I tell my weight release clients to do two things, drink more water as it is healthy and hydrates the body and eat at least one apple per day. So, immediately there is a benefit and a positive affirmation script to focus your thoughts on.

“I love water it keeps me healthy and hydrated”

“Water helps me melt the fat away” is one of my favorites, then every time to go to the bathroom you tell yourself the same thing-so you double up on your script.

I hope this helps you look at your language and your life a little differently. Affirmations are a wonderful tool to help you achieve any goal you create. The key is to see yourself ALREADY HAVING ACHIEVED YOUR SUCCESS every time you say your affirmation. Again, if you want to know more about the affirmation process and how it helps with manifesting, please order my DVD entitled “Affirmations”. It will give you some wonderful insight into how the process works and what your role and your language plays in the manifesting process.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Topic Overviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.