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Have you just about had it with those endless diets and joyless, kilojoule-stripped mini-meals that cause you to lose weight for a while, only to put it all back on again? If you’re like millions of other people who struggle with weight loss, you’ve probably tried every diet under the sun. But as the scale painfully reflects your lack of progress once again, you’re forced to the conclusion that it’s all your fault – If only you had more willpower, more discipline, if only you weren’t so weak! Sound familiar?
Well if it does, take heart – because the truth of the matter is that losing weight is really not all about discipline and willpower at all.
The truth about dieting and willpower
The more you try not to do something, the more you actually end up doing it. Hypnotherapists even have a name for this – we call it the Law of Reverse Effect. If someone tells you not to think of a purple elephant, what image pops into your mind? That’s right – a purple elephant. If you focus all your willpower and discipline on not eating, all you’re doing is pressing the Eat! button in your subconscious mind. What we’ve got to do instead is find out what motivates you at a very deep level to eat inappropriately or to store more fat than the body actually requires. That’s where hypnosis comes in.
How hypnosis helps you lose weight
The problem with diets is that they don’t change the underlying pattern, the true motivations for your eating or storing fat. So as a hypnotherapist I’m going to spend some time with you uncovering the inner reasons for your weight gain and helping you find solutions that are acceptable to you. I’ll generally follow these treatment steps:
- Find out if there is a hidden reason for the weight gain
Your weight gain could stem from a forgotten incident from early childhood. Kids are incredibly suggestible – so a comment from an adult about your weight or some early conflict over eating could easily program your subconscious mind to make you put on weight. - Work on improving your self-esteem
Most people with weight issues have some degree of negative self-perception. You probably imagine that when you are thin you will finally be happy. But the truth of the matter is that ‘being’ precedes action – so in order for you to be thinner, you must first regain some happiness. - Find out what types of food your body really wants
Your subconscious mind will always cause you to reject a diet that is forced on you, so we’ll work together to help you find an eating plan that your body and mind will accept. When you’re enjoying the empowering effects of hypnotic relaxation you will be aware of the foods and portion sizes that your body really needs. - Reprogram the subconscious to enjoy small meals
In the last step, I’ll help you visualize and imagine yourself eating the foods that are just right for you and in just the right amounts. This visualization will help to change your actual neural pathways so your body is rewired to accept different eating habits.
So how do you feel after reading this? More hopeful? Great! So give yourself a break and let’s use the power of hypnosis to help you lose weight and gain a healthy self-image. If you’re in the Cape Town area, give me a call and we’ll schedule an appointment.
Much of what I’ve written on this site concerns ways of finding clarity on life’s great questions: Who am I, what is my purpose, what really matters? As a life coach and hypnotherapist I have a range of processes that can be used to help people dive deeply into these questions and find answers or new directions that bring greater meaning to life. But what happens when the answers are elusive, or when you get several answers to one question?
I was thinking about this recently when I found myself in my characteristic condition of alternating frustratingly between two quite different modes of being. One part of me wants to be out there making a name for myself, and the other wants to sit quietly in a chair, contemplating life and letting the world go its way undisturbed. So who am I, which path should I follow? As I sat with this perennial question, I noticed a kind of quiet space develop around it. The question had always been with me and always would. It was a knowing that a straight answer would not be forthcoming, and that it wasn’t required. I could have several answers at a practical level about who I was and what I could do with my life, but at a deeper level, where I tried to connect everything, logic did not work. The tools and processes ran aground. The purpose of my life, then, was not a thing at all but rather a space between things. The question would be forever asked and never answered.
Perhaps it is never answered because the answer is hidden within the question itself. The answer is to be in the “I don’t know” space, in the not-knowing. When we find answers to things we discover certainty, and certainty hardens our self-image, our separation. But when we discover the question that refuses to be answered it is like stumbling upon a doorway into Being itself. Suddenly our words stop, our constant stream of self-defining thoughts have nowhere to go. In that moment there is space, the peace of knowing you do not need the answer. You don’t know, and that’s OK.
It can be a great comfort for people who are suffering an intractable problem or serious illness to finally put down the burden that they should know how to fix it or how to heal themselves. In the end you simply don’t know the purpose of your condition or what it means, and perhaps there is no meaning other than that it has brought you to the place of silence, of not knowing. You don’t know what death is, either, and if you’re honest, you don’t know what life is. Do whatever you can to know, but if the question evades your best efforts, perhaps it’s one of those questions … the questions that open up into Being itself. Sit with it, be with it, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. This is it.
To find your true purpose in life, look to what you love. You don’t need to meditate and look up to the heavens – your purpose is already being shown to you by those things you would do without reward, simply because you love doing them. You can receive reward for them and you might want to and need to, but they are those things you would do even if you won the lottery. They are innate and unique – you did not put them there, they come from somewhere else.
So what can you do to get clear on what is most important to you?
Step 1: Identify your passions
Begin with the clues that are already in your life. Sit down and make a list of those things you would do if you won R30 million and didn’t need to work at all. Would you sleep all day, or would you get up and do something? Would you work at something rich in meaning but that gave little financial reward, or would you build a financial empire? Chances are good you are already doing some of the things that will form the basis of your ideal life. The only reason they haven’t manifested yet is because you haven’t got really clear on them.
“When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life, and only to the extent you are clear.” – The Passion Test, Chris and Janet Attwood.
Go deeply when you make your list and ignore, for a moment, the practicalities and all the ‘yes buts’ that your mind will probably offer. Your job right now is to get clear on what you love. When you are clear on what you want and are excited by it, the ‘how’ of things begins to take care of itself. Suddenly new possibilities open up, synchronicities happen, money appears.
Step2: Identify the top 5 passions
Go through the list, comparing one against the other, and ask yourself – if you could only have one, which would it be? Do this, comparing one item against the next, until you have your top 5. (The full process for doing this is described in The Passion Test book and is covered in my Passion Test workshops or individual coaching sessions.)
When you have your top 5 passions, write them down on a card and keep it somewhere in view. This will focus your attention on your ideal life and begin the process of manifesting it.
From passions to purpose
The Passion Test process outlined above gives you the important ‘whats’ of your life – the things you would love to be, do, or have. In my courses and individual sessions we take this further and discover the deeper reasons that motivate the passions – the ‘whys’ of your life. Once we know the motivations we can identify your Vision – your true purpose – and once we have the Vision and Purpose we can define an inspiring Mission Statement for your life. I call this process the Vision Spiral.
Here’s an example of a Mission Statement, written by an entrepreneur:
I declare that my primary purpose in life is to add value to the world by creating products and services that solve problems and bring people delight and happiness.
To do this I will create profitable and ethical businesses focused on filling voids and solving problems in the world around me.
In return I will receive handsome profits that I will use to build more businesses, to foster creative talent in less privileged people, and to build my dream home at the sea.
Inspiring? See the Workshops page for details on how you can discover your passions and write a powerful Mission Statement for your own life. Or if you’re in the Cape Town area, give me a call and we’ll schedule an appointment for some individual coaching. The Passion Test and Mission Statement can be covered in two or three sessions.
I found this great little article on heartlandsuccess.com that shows just how important it is to discover your purpose before starting any business. The most successful business are those that are created from a true sense of purpose – where the person who starts them really feels that their product or service is contributing meaning to themselves and the world.
Heartland Success LLC» 3 Keys for Quitting your job and starting a business
For details on my own coaching processes for helping you discover your purpose, see the post Finding your true purpose.
The ancient Vedic texts known as the Upanishads declare:
You are what your deepest desire is.
As is your desire, so is your intention.
As is your intention, so is your will.
As is your will, so are your deeds.
As are your deeds, so is your destiny.
So if you want to know who you are, look to your deepest desires. Your desires become your destiny. But here’s the interesting question – where do your desires come from? It would seem it’s not ‘you’ who gives them to you – they apparently exist before you. Perhaps they come from your experience, from conditioning, from karma. Or perhaps they are simply given by the nonlocal mind, the quantum field of intelligence, what some people might call God. Wherever they come from, they are beyond the you who thinks they have any control over them.
From the desires comes our intent. We like to think we are the ones who set intent, but if our desires precede us, who is doing any setting of intent? Well, one might answer, one could choose to feel that desire and not do anything about it, not set any intent. That is a choice that one is making. And if one can choose not to set intent, one can also choose to set intent. Therefore one is doing something. But to this I might say, where does the thought come from to set intent or not set it? How does it emerge from nothing before it is thought? Perhaps it comes from the same place that desire comes from – from God, from nowhere.
It would seem there is nobody here to do anything, and yet we are here. Still we are here in the world, doing whatever it is we do, apparently setting intent and making things happen. It’s a paradox – but one with some positive implications. If you are only apparently setting intent and running your life, perhaps you can take some of the pressure off trying to get it right. You are doing things, organizing things, but at the same time you are not. It’s just happening. Does this mean we can simply stop doing anything at all, just sit on the couch? If couch-sitting is to happen it will happen, but it’s unlikely it will happen for very long for our desires will begin calling to us, shouting louder than our doing of doing nothing. The energy will begin to move. Something will happen. It’s all just happening again.
So where am I going with these thoughts? The point is this – if you want to discover the right use of intent, allow the self, the ego, to fall out of the equation. Nobody is doing anything, doing is arising from the desires, which arise from nowhere. So discover what your desires are and be present with them. Allow the inner ‘yes’ to arise and let that do the work, let it bring the opportunities and synchronicities. This is what one might call enlightened doing, a manner of doing that brings no harm to oneself or others, that allows inner peace. In the end, there is nothing we have to do except what we are doing right now. In this moment, in the Now, there is no story, no doing, and yet something is happening. This is enough, and everything.
Most of us want more money, but so many of us just feel stuck in a financial rut, like we’re going nowhere and nothing we do seems to make any difference. Read More
A great friend of mine told me a long time ago that I needed to save 10 percent of my income every month if I wanted to achieve financial security. He worked in money and knew what he was talking about, but I had to restrain myself from grabbing him by the throat and demanding he tell me how on earth I could afford to save. There just wasn’t a single cent to spare, and I remember my great frustration at trying to find what else I could cut from my budget to try and make saving a possibility. I was in survival mode, and saving was a luxury for more fortunate people. Read More
I recommend self-hypnosis MP3s to reinforce your sessions with a hypnotherapist and to deepen the process of change. This video gives a good intro to how self-hypnosis recordings work – and the speaker is the person whose voice you’ll hear on most of the recordings from Hypnosisdownloads.
The two providers I recommend both produce effective self-hypnosis sessions at a reasonable price. I have tested examples from each of them and found them to be of a suitable standard (This does not amount to a guarantee – it’s merely an opinion and a general recommendation).
Browse downloads from Hypnosisdownloads: Self Hypnosis MP3s
Browse downloads from Hypnoticworld: Self Hypnosis MP3s
People who don’t suffer from a phobia have a hard time imagining just how some innocuous object or animal can evoke such a profound state of fear and panic in a phobic person. What’s so scary about a feather or a mouse? Well the phobic person won’t be able to tell you either – all they know is that the object of their phobia creates off-the-scale levels of fear and loathing.
Intention is the first act of creation. We reach inside and gain clarity on who we are and what we are here to do, and then we intend that this life comes into existence. Intention is the conscious declaration of what it is that we stand for, what it is that we are going to bring into the world.
