Looking around in there

Looking around in there is this weeks reading from my award winning book, Becoming Slender For Life. Winner of the Pen & Quill Award from the International Medical & Dental Hypnotherapy Association (IMDHA), “For Excellence in Literary Contributions That Integrate Hypnosis for Weight Loss.”

Looking around in there

So let’s look at how your mind works. (Refer to the diagram on the next page.) We all have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. The conscious mind protects your subconscious mind from the outside world. The conscious mind is the rational, analytical part of the mind. It’s the thinking, judging part of the mind that expresses your free will. It is our ability to rationalize that keeps us sane.

As long as we can rationalize our behavior, we will do it. When we can rationalize having a cookie, we will eat the cookie. Our rational mind invents reasons to make it okay to eat a cookie, even when intellectually we know that the cookie may be full of fat and sugar, which slows us from letting go of excess weight. As long as your rational mind can create a reason for your actions, you will continue the behavior.

The rational mind does not need truth—only reasoning. When actions can no longer be rationalized, change will occur.

Willpower also resides in the conscious mind. Most people diet with willpower and of course they fail. To diet with willpower, you have to focus on power: you must keep constant vigil on your behavior. The second that you lapse in consciousness, the subconscious mind will automatically kick in with the old behavior patterns. Willpower is not part of the internal mind and it cannot create internal change. When willpower and imagination meet, imagination wins. Imagination is part of the subconscious mind.

The next component of the conscious mind is temporary memory. Temporary memory is where we store names, phone numbers, birthdates and where we left our car keys. This temporary memory is nothing compared to the permanent memory of the subconscious mind. In fact, the conscious mind is weak when compared to the power of the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is the most powerful goal achieving tool we have. And yet, your subconscious mind cannot judge; it is not a seat of reasoning or creative consciousness. Judgment occurs in the conscious mind. The subconscious mind is a stimulus-response device. When an environmental signal is perceived, the subconscious mind reflexively activates a previously stored behavioral response—no thinking required. The subconscious mind is a super computer loaded with a database of programmed behaviors and resides within every cell of the body. Some of these programs are genetic and most are acquired through our developmental learning. A suggestion placed into the subconscious mind will powerfully produce results.

The subconscious mind operates in a world of interior impressions. Its meaningful reality consists of ideas and images of that world. The subconscious world is where the heart is, and its reality is completely subjective. It can never be adequately grasped by objective knowledge or directly observed by another person.

No one else can ever give your subconscious mind enough love, nor will there ever be enough comfort food to soothe your subconscious mind. This love and comfort can only come from you.

Imagination is your perception of or orientation to the world. Is your glass half full or is it half empty? Are you cheerful and excited about life and living life to the fullest, or are you fearful, filled with anxiety and imagining the worst? Imagination is not about truth. It’s just a perception. Once a perception is installed in the subconscious mind, the subconscious mind accepts it as fact and makes it so!

Again, imagination is your perception of the world. It is your identity. This perception is a point of reference that determines your direction. If you imagine the world as fearful and filled with anxiety, you will experience fear and anxiety. If your perception of yourself is that of a fat person, you will be fat. If you believe that you are not good enough, you will live your life as not good enough. Consciously, you may set a goal to lose weight or to improve your self-esteem. But if you don’t believe you can be slender, if you don’t believe you are already good enough, you will never achieve your weight loss and self-esteem goals. All the willpower in the world will get you nowhere.

Real change occurs when the old perceptions in the subconscious mind are changed to match those of the conscious mind. Or, as famed hypnotherapist Dr. Milton Erickson, MD put it; the subconscious mind must be in rapport with the conscious mind.

The subconscious mind is also home for our permanent memory. All information that we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted and experienced kinesthetically (both internally and externally) is stored in permanent memory. As neurobiologist Dr. Candace Pert has proven, neuropeptides—the chemicals triggered by emotions—are thoughts converted into matter. Our emotions reside physically in our bodies and interact with our cells and tissues. According to Pert, “these molecules of emotion regulate every aspect of our physiology. A new paradigm has evolved, with implications that lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise can offer profound, safe and natural mood elevation.”

If all memory and all emotion occurs and is stored in every cell of your body for future use, then your body really represents a cooperative effort of a community of about fifty trillion single cells. While each cell is a free-living entity, together they accommodate the wishes and intents of the central voice; what we call mind and spirit. You have a thinking body; this is the permanent memory. This is what makes you who you truly are. You are the sum total of all your past. You will think your next thought, act your next action and feel your next feeling based upon everything that has happened in your past.

Emotions, the ones that feel good and the ones that feel bad, reside in the subconscious mind. This is where you feel. Your emotions affect your health, and that includes your body weight. As you know, nature abhors a vacuum. When you feel empty, you consume. People consume with food, cigarettes, drugs, shopping, sex, gambling and many other vices.

The subconscious mind is the protective mind. Its primary directive is to protect you from dangers real and imagined. Phobias and panic attacks are the subconscious mind’s way of protecting us from dangers that are imagined—they are not real dangers. The subconscious mind wants you to feel secure. Unfortunately, security is familiarity. If you are used to feeling anxious, it is familiar, it is known—and as miserable as the anxiety might be, it is secure. You know what it feels like. For you, being overweight is what you know, it’s secure.

If you’re accustomed to eating frequently so that you’re never hungry, the experience or even just the thought of being hungry creates anxiousness. When we use food to numb out, to not feel, then when we do experience anger, hurt, fear or sadness, it’s unfamiliar. These emotions don’t match our inner perceptions of how life should be and thus we feel insecure.

We use perceptions to judge life experiences. If new experiences synchronize with our perceptions we feel very secure, the world agreed with us. Conversely, we feel very insecure when life experiences do not agree with our perceptions.

The most important part of the conscious mind, the critical faculty, has everything to do with internal change. The critical faculty is part of the conscious mind but gets its directions from the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind cannot judge a suggestion. If a suggestion reaches the subconscious mind, it will accept that suggestion as fact and make it so—no questions asked!

A first-time suggestion will be scrutinized by the critical faculty, which exists to protect the vulnerability of the subconscious mind. It takes all suggestions and compares the suggestion to the perceptions we hold on the subject of the suggestion. If a new suggestion is not in accord with our perceptions, the critical faculty prevents the suggestion from entering the subconscious mind. If the suggestion is found to be in accord with our perceptions, the critical faculty allows the suggestion to enter the subconscious mind.

The more times a suggestion is either accepted or rejected, the more powerful the perception becomes. Each acceptance or rejection reinforces our perception. This is known as compounding. Through that compounding, our belief in the accumulating perception grows proportionately stronger. This reinforces our human need to be right. In other words, we gather proof to reinforce what we believe to be true. If we believe that we are not good enough, then we live our life as not good enough and get to be right about it!

Since we want to accept only evidence that supports what we believe to be true, habit change becomes very difficult. We want to do what is known and familiar—not something new and unfamiliar. This is why imagination is stronger than willpower.

When it comes to new ideas and behaviors, our subconscious mind is like a blank computer disc. It has incredible storage capacity, but nothing has been entered into the data bank. So there is no data to judge against. If there is nothing to judge against, there is no critical faculty! The critical faculty cannot function until it has something to judge new input against. The very first viewpoint we consider on any specific subject, topic, or idea, goes into the subconscious permanent memory unjudged. Then instantly, you now have a perception on that subject. Now there’s something to judge against. And no matter whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, that first impression goes into the subconscious mind uncensored and (only because it got there first) becomes the perception against which everything is judged for acceptance or rejection.

Let me give you an example: People who grew up prior to the 1960s were surrounded by smokers. In the movies, cigarette smoking was portrayed as cool and sexy. No one thought tobacco could kill us. And despite the fact that the Journal of the American Medical Association first reported links between smoking and cancer in 1950, it was another 14 years before the U.S. Surgeon General issued a statement advising against smoking. That generation of people had the most difficult time believing that smoking was indeed bad for them. Their critical faculties had accumulated too much evidence to the contrary. Even today, if your first contact with smoking is perceived as positive, it can be tough to change your mind about it.

From Becoming Slender For Life, second edition,
page 39 – 45

Hypnosis for weight loss can give you the power to change old perceptions into new ones that support you in your goals. Use the power of your mind in healthy ways to love and comfort yourself.

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