Our mind is a wonderful and powerful entity. It has memories, emotions, depth, awareness, motivation, survival instincts and so very much more.
One thing our mind struggles with though, is negatives. That means that if you’re thinking about something you don’t want, the brain translates it to be something you do want. So if you’re trying to change your diet and thinking ‘I don’t want chocolate’, your mind is hearing ‘want chocolate’.
So, if that’s something you do (and, to be fair, we all do it sometimes, some people just do it more than others) what do you need to do to start achieving and getting what you want? It’s not going to be easy to start with, but you need to be looking for what you want instead. Focusing on what you want instead allows your mind to be aware of what that is, to hear it, process it and to work with it, and it works for so many things.
So rather than ‘I don’t want chocolate’, think about what you want instead? Is it that you want a specific food (i.e. ‘I want to eat fruit’), is it that you want to be healthier (i.e. ‘I want to be healthier’), is it that you want to lose weight (i.e. ‘I want to be thinner/a healthy weight/ X stone’)? Or something else?
And it works for everything else as well.
‘I don’t want to work here anymore’ can become ‘I want to do X instead’ or ‘I want a new job’ or something else.
‘I don’t want to feel ill anymore’ can become ‘I want to feel well again’ or ‘I’m want to get better’.
‘I don’t want to be awake all night’ can become ‘I want to sleep through the night’ or ‘I want to fall asleep easily’.
To take that one step further, for those things you really want, rather than saying ‘I want…’ start saying to yourself ‘I’m going to…’ because that is directing your mind to seek all those opportunities for what it is that you want (and are going to do/get/have/be).
Hypnotherapy and BWRT® can both utilise the strategy of knowing how you want it to be and it makes the work incredibly powerful. You can start that power within yourself.
Next time you catch yourself saying ‘I don’t want…’ (or anything negative along this line) stop and think what you do want instead and then say that to yourself ‘I want…’ or ‘I’m going to…’. Practise and find out what works best for you. There will be lots of adjustments and tweaks that you can make to find the way it all works best for your mind, so play about with it. Most importantly though, keep trying, and keep thinking about the word ‘instead‘.
How do I want it to be instead?
How do I want to feel instead?
How would I like it to be instead?
And if that’s hard to figure out, maybe write it out, or talk it through with someone to work out what it is that you do want, rather than what you don’t.
