Think Positive!
An entrancing article (ouch!) by Sue Handscombe

How many times were you hypnotised today? How much of your life do you spend in a trance? Do you think you are one of those people who would never be able to be hypnotised? You may be surprised to discover that you spend most of your life in the trance state. How many times do you realise you have been "miles away" or so engrossed in what you are doing that you haven't heard someone calling you?

Have you ever driven to your destination and not remembered driving there? You were miles away thinking of something completely different, "did I go through a red light?" In fact at that time your subconscious was driving the car and  would have alerted you to any threat, or danger. Once I was driving home from a particularly stimulating choir rehearsal, singing away, imagining myself on the stage with a huge audience, when a policeman stepped out in front of me. I had been driving too fast. I had been in a trance state and my subconscious had only just alerted me at the last minute. Oh dear, how bad I felt, but thankfully the policeman was in a kind mood. I wonder how many people who are fined for speeding are doing so because they are in a trance state, or how many accidents are caused in a similar way?

We spend much of our time in self-hypnosis, either imagining ourselves sometime in the future, going round the supermarket  planning what we will buy, in the kitchen cooking tonight's meal, at the office working on today's schedule, or back in the past, on holiday, "day-dreaming" about the wonderful time we had, at the dentist going through an ordeal, or tormenting ourselves with something that makes us squirm. We are either re-living something in the past, or imagining some event in the future, action replaying, or future rehearsing.

Either way, we can really be there in our mind, perceiving it as if it were reality. We often talk about seeing something in our "mind's eye" but have you noticed we also have our mind's ear, smell, taste and even touch. We can re-experience that lovely hug, the sensation of walking along the beach etc. "In my mind I'm going to Carolina" says the song and yes, we can do that. We can travel there, back to that holiday and experience it in almost virtual reality. We can be there in a split second in our mind, without the huge amount of time it usually takes to get there. We can literally be "miles away."

In fact any time that we are not completely in the here and now, (ie totally aware of the sights, the sounds, the smells etc around us) we are in a "trance" state. I reckon some people might say they spend the majority of their time like that.  Indeed it might be more appropriate to ask, "when am I not in a trance state?" It is important to realise that the past and the future don't actually exist, they only exist in our minds and that only this nanosecond is true reality.

So we spend a large amount of time in self- hypnosis, some of it positive and much of it negative, usually without realising it. If we have to face an ordeal, we will often rehearse it mentally for days, even weeks beforehand, visualising the event in glorious technicolour accompanied by fear, or dread. When the day dawns we have rehearsed so well that we are really good at being terrified, whether it's of the dentist, the interview, or the aeroplane flight. This kind of negative motivation is very powerful, as you've probably discovered and will produce a full technicolour negative response!

If you are learning to play an instrument you need to practise, or you'll never get anywhere. If you keep practising wrong notes, you'll find it very difficult to put them right eventually but you can in time if you work at it. The same applies to negative thought patterns.

Experiments have shown that the mind notices very little difference between real and imagined things, for example there will be the same if not more electrical activity happening in your brain when you imagine smelling that beautiful rose as when you do so in reality. So using our imagination is as powerful as reality.

I was working once with a lady who spent most of her life in this way, always rehearsing negative outcomes in her mind, things going wrong, things turning out badly. When I suggested she did the reverse and practice imagining events in a positive light, she looked shocked and said she couldn't do that because she knew she would only be fooling herself. I pointed out that in fact she was "only fooling herself" when she imagined things negatively, both are slight distortions of the truth, which really made her think and I hope, change her thought patterns. So our imagination is incredibly powerful, it is capable of causing us feel to intense emotions.

We (particularly British people) seem to accept the negatives more than the positives. When someone pays us a complement such as "that was a delicious meal" we tend to knock it down by saying, "the gravy wasn't hot enough" instead of accepting the complement. This is a very British thing, we're not good at accepting applause! We need to learn from great performers how to stand and receive applause with a smile on our face, rather than the quick embarrassed bow before we slink off.

"There is nothing good, or bad but thinking makes it so" says Hamlet in one of Shakespeare's plays. We can make ourselves feel good, or bad. I'm sure we've all wound ourselves up, re-living someone annoying, or upsetting us in the past, allowing ourselves to become really angry, or humiliated all over again, many times over. Either that, or we blow things up out of all proportion. Any action replay, or future rehearsal is only our perception of that event and often distorted. A good example is as follows:

The boss walks past you with a deep frown on his face and grunts he needs to see you later in his office. The rest of the day you worry about this, is he annoyed with you? Must be that report you did last week. Your inner voice torments you, will you get the sack? What if you can't get another job and have to sell the house? How are you going to tell your wife? What a headache you have by now. Later, in his office, the boss apologises for his mood this morning, had a row with the managing director. He is pleased to offer you the promotion you've been wanting for ages!

Many people have great expectations of Christmas, or holidays thinking it will be a wonderful magical time. It usually turns out not to be so and we feel let down. This is a positive future rehearsal but again a distortion, a false expectation.

Our imagination is incredibly powerful and is really what motivates us. Any businessman who has reached the top of his profession has seen himself in that office, felt himself sitting in that chair, or heard himself giving that speech. He has already experienced success in his mind and thus his brain is drawn towards this outcome." You've got to have a dream, if you don't have a dream, how you gonna make your dream come true?" says the song. Sports coaches have the competitors imagining winning, in other words, using positive self-hypnosis. People operating their lives from a “winner” script motivate themselves  to succeed  all the time just as people operating from a “loser” script are successful at failure. 

How do you motivate yourself? Are you constantly talking to yourself, nagging yourself to do things you don't really want to do? Expecting yourself to live up to impossible standards? To be perfect wife, husband, mother? The "shoulds" and "oughts," or the "musts" and "Can'ts." Are you seeing yourself as a winner, or a loser? Examine these "shoulds" and "oughts." Who says you should? Usually only yourself, with false expectations of what others will think.

Sometimes we allow other people to motivate us, letting them talk us into being scared, angry, or upset. We can be so influenced by them that we mistakenly adapt our behaviour and or spend a great deal of our life being annoyed, or upset by what they said, only to discover many years later that they didn't mean what we thought they meant!

"Nobody makes me feel inferior without my consent" said Helena Roosevelt. Well this is true, I actually allow people to get to me, to upset me, it is me who causes the emotion. They don't make me angry, I anger myself. It is not the circumstance but what I feel about it that creates the emotion. Compare the feelings of someone driving to hospital, giving someone a lift there, with the feelings of someone being driven there to have a major operation. Both are in the same circumstance but will feel totally different inside.

Once we understand this we can begin to move forward. The next time someone upsets you deeply, stop and think, "Why am I choosing to upset myself?" If someone constantly upsets, or annoys you, imagine them speaking with a Donald Duck voice, or imagine throwing a huge bag of manure over them! Sit opposite another chair, put a cushion in it to represent that person. Close your eyes and imagine talking with them, shout at them, explain to them until you feel better.

Try to avoid negative people, or negative conversations and only listen to people who will empower, or positively motivate you, listen to the person who encourages you, who makes you feel strong. Only listen to your inner voice when it is encouraging. Check yourself whenever you hear your inner voice speaking negatively and change it to positive. "You'll never do it, you're not good enough" can change to "Go on, have a go, you can do it." Turn the volume down on the negatives and turn up the positives.

Lets choose self-nurture instead of self-torture, decide not to let past trauma haunt us. Maybe replay the upsetting event from the past in our mind with a different ending. Replay childhood images where you get hurt ending with the "bully" getting his, or her just rewards. Shrink them down to a tiny size and tread on them. Throw all the hurt and the bullies into a huge skip and have it carted away. Action replay events from the past and invent a choice of different endings. You can't change your past but you can change the way you remember it. Remember that your mind will believe these imagined images just as powerfully as if it had happened, so make them as real as possible in your head.

Choose to remember events from the past in a positive way, one which no longer upsets you. Take away their power to hurt you. Put all the anger, fear or hurt into an imaginary rocket, light the blue touch paper and watch it swoooosh up into the sky. See the coloured stars pop and gently fall back to earth, dispersing your emotions.

Do the same for future events, see them in a beautiful colour and only see yourself as successful. If the event might frighten you, then push the image right away into the distance, keep control of it by pushing it away.

Be encouraging to yourself, stop punishing yourself, pushing yourself to the limits, treating yourself as if you were a wicked parent, setting impossible goals for yourself. Yes we do need a bit of motivation to get going at times, but we also need the nourishing, encouraging "parent"  to provide a balance.

Be kind to yourself, reward yourself by spending a few minutes longer in the bath with some nice smelling fragrance in it, buy yourself some nice flowers to cheer the house up, cook yourself a nice meal, walk around the garden smelling the fresh air. Wrap yourself in a soft, warm duvet and curl up in front of the television. Treat yourself to a massage, or any relaxing therapy.Let your “inner child” have some fun and some comforting times.

Be careful not to sabotage. Sometimes we inadvertently muck things up when they begin to go well in order to maintain the loser script we have always been playing. Have you ever done that? It can become a pattern in people’s lives. You can change that pattern by becoming aware of it and choosing to change your attitude to yourself.

Take control of your brain, start running it the way you want it, as opposed to letting it run you. Think of someone you know, or a famous person that has all the confidence and any other qualities you want to have. Imagine a life-size photograph of them in front of you. Step into that photograph and walk around as that person, breathe as they breathe, think as they think. Stay with that positive feeling.

Lastly, why not have some therapy to help put all this into practice. Maybe talk it through in some counselling sessions. Perhaps some Hypnotherapy, or NLP  will really empower you to be different and give you more  choices as to how you will act in the future. You can change!

Give yourself permission to enjoy yourself, give yourself permission to be you!