We’ve all been there: an endless Groundhog Day loop. Maybe we read a book, attend a seminar, watch a video or podcast, or, given today’s attention span, just rapid-fire tap that heart on an Instagram meme and keep scrolling. Either way, the end result fires up our inspiration and motivation more than a Tony Robbins Pez Dispenser filled with Adderall.
We think, “Yes! We are going to start doing THIS! THIS is going to change everything!”
And maybe it does, and we make a change. For about a day. Or a week. Then we are back to doing the same old things we’ve always been doing, that have been keeping us stuck and held back.
A deep dive into our failures doesn’t have to unravel one enigma after another, wrapped in a riddle like we’re pulling clowns out of a wrecked clown car. The answer is simple.
Consciously, we say, “This makes sense! If we do this, things will change for the better!” And it does and it will.
But subconsciously, we say, “Of course this makes sense! But only for everyone else, not for us! We’re not good enough. We’re not smart enough. We’re not strong enough. We can’t succeed.”
That’s the programming of our subconscious mind. That’s where making real change deserves to start to happen.
I tell everyone, “Changing your mind is the hardest easiest thing you’ll do. It’s hard because people can’t believe it’s so easy.”
When I first began my journey into hypnosis and mediation, one of the areas I felt I deserved to upgrade was being more assertive: speaking my voice authentically and not being afraid to.
I began with listening to a daily self-hypnosis audio I'd found and did this consistently. After a few days, I didn’t notice anything. After a week, nothing. A couple of weeks later, still not so much.
Now, the thing is, the subconscious mind is stubborn. It’s fiercely resistant to change. Like trying to convince my eighty-year-old in-laws that text messaging is a legitimate modality of communication. And yet, with continued persistence, change happens, and you become pleasantly surprised: as when I got a “Happy Birthday” text message from a number I didn’t recognize, only for my wife to tell me the phone number belonged to my mother-in-law.
A few weeks after I began practicing my form of self-hypnosis every day, I found myself in a situation that was reflective of my previous experiences, where I would normally just suck it up and shut up. Only in that moment, a switch went on. I was thinking differently. I was feeling differently. I was feeling empowered to express myself.
And I did, and I was calm. Not that the situation was contentious. It wasn’t some road rage moment, screaming into a driver’s side window with eighty-seven video angles from everyone else stuck in traffic whipping out their phones. It was just a conversation about which approach to take. I witnessed my ability to express my voice and I’ve been able to do so ever since.
That’s when I realized I had changed. My old programming had been erased and a new program was written. This hypnosis thing was working after all.
An unusually interesting side effect from that was I discovered heavy metal music. I have an eclectic taste in music, but of heavy metal, I was never a fan. But I started to listen to it and found a lot of stuff that spoke to me with a liberating energy. I’m not talking about Satan-worshipping, kitten-sacrificing kind of heavy metal music, either. But themes of standing up, resilience, and empowerment.
I was poring through Apple Music, hearing songs that once made me cringe and dismiss after only a few seconds, but were now resonating with me. It opened me up to a whole new genre that I finally understood as to why it resonated with its fans.
This profound and powerful moment didn’t come after spending a week and thousands of dollars at a seminar. It was the result of spending a few minutes a day, in a meditative state, allowing my mind to receive new information that was aligned with my preferred state of being. Doing that part wasn’t hard. I just had to overcome the initial hurdle of believing spending those few minutes a day could actually make a difference.
John Moyer is a professional hypnotist and YouTube creator of Sleep Hypnosis and Guided Meditation Content.
Comments