Goals are the dreams to which you commit and take action to achieve them
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Lao Tzu
Similarly, the beautiful and adventurous journey of achieving your goals in life, too, begins with that single most important step… SELF-AWARENESS! Being aware of yourself. Being aware of WHO you are. Because when you are aware of WHO you are, you will have clarity about where you need to be. And then, being aware of WHERE you are. Because if you do not know WHERE you are at present, how will you know the way to reach your destination?
Now, self-awareness, in terms of achieving goals, follows a little script… a few questions, if you may, for personal assessment. Those questions are:
- What are my talents and abilities?
- What are the three things that I do best?
- What are the three things that I do least well?
- What are the three things I want to be remembered for?
- How do I want others to describe me?
- What are the three things I want to accomplish in life?
When you will have the answers to all these questions at the tip of tongue, you will know exactly WHERE you are in the journey of achieving your goals. And how does Hypnotherapy help in this self-awareness? It brings out all these answers, from deep within the layers of your mind, to the tip of your tongue, quickly, easily, clearly and vividly, by empowering your mind. How? I’ll talk about that after I finish talking about the second most important step that needs to be taken in the journey of achieving your goals.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. Eleanor Roosevelt
So now, you have self-awareness. You know your current status, you know where you are. What you need to know now is where you have to go, what your goal is.
Goals are the dreams to which you commit and take action to make sure you achieve them. And goal setting is the way, the means, of turning those dreams into reality.
Goal setting is tied into the reticular activating system (RAS) of the brain, which is a cluster of nerve cells in the brain stem that regulates alertness and attention. It is also believed to be the center of arousal and motivation. Our senses, particularly sight, are constantly flooded with a vast amount of information. Most of that information is unnecessary for our well-being, so it gets screened. We remain consciously aware of only a fraction of that data.
Now recall the last time you or your family decided to buy a new car, or a new bike. You finally chose the model and the color, and it seemed like everywhere you went, on the road, to a friend’s house, in television commercials, in newspaper advertisements, you saw “your car” or “your bike”. Obviously all these people didn’t suddenly purchase those cars or bikes when you did or those commercials and advertisements weren’t just suddenly out on TV or in papers. They were already there. But YOU only noticed them when they were of significance to YOU. And THIS is the magnificence of goal setting. By establishing clear goals, you are programming your brain to be aware and notify your conscious mind of the information and opportunities that YOU DESIRE.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. “Vincent Van Gogh”
Effective goal setting is the groundwork for success and effective goals are: SMARTER, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timelined, Enthusiastic, Rewarding
Now let’s talk about what is really happening when you are facing difficulties in achieving your goals. Usually when you don’t accomplish a goal, it’s either because you have set an inappropriate deadline, or you don’t have the right or enough information that is needed to achieve your goal, or that’s not the goal that YOU want and are unwilling to do what’s required, or you are encountering conflicts and experiencing blocks, OR NEGATIVE CONDITIONING.
People are greatly influenced by the things that have happened to them throughout their lifetime. Often we subconsciously allow our past mistakes, incompletions and even our successes to get in the way of creation and accomplishment of goals. We are not always aware how much impact our past has on our present and future, especially when it comes to accomplishing goals and being successful. But once you’re detached from these past negative conditionings and beliefs, you can build a new connection with positive supportive thoughts that help you live your life the way YOU want.
Many people use different clearing techniques to detach from negative conditioning and to pave their way to success. Hypnotherapy is one such technique that helps you to break free from limiting beliefs that are rooted deep into your subconscious mind. And how do you know that the failure you are experiencing with setting and accomplishing goals is coming from those deeply rooted limiting beliefs and negative conditioning? You’ll know that THAT is true for you if you find yourself bumping up against the same old behavior patterns and habits, confronting the same old thorny issues as you work your way up to achieve your goals! All you have to do is you have to listen to yourself as your do the self-talk, rather the self-punching, and catch hold of these signs:
Oh no! Not again!
What was I thinking?
Why even try?
Ugh! This is so frustrating!
I am not getting any better at this!
There’s no way it will work!
I always mess it up!
I knew I’d get stuck here!
I’m so stupid!
How Hypnotherapy works is, once these signs have been identified, the next step is to go directly to the subconscious mind using several Hypnosis techniques, get to the root and detach from these negative conditionings, replace it with ideas of success and accomplishment, get in touch with our ability to get what we want, make our positives more powerful and allow the conscious mind to act with that power.
And now, let’s see how that happens.
The three levels of consciousness is called Triune Mind. At the Upper most level there is the conscious mind. It is the analytical, reasoning, logical mind. This is where all our five senses are… touch, smell, sound, taste and sight. The conscious mind first analyses and inspects any new information, idea or suggestion before accepting it.
After this conscious mind, there is the subconscious mind. This is where the memories are stored, this is where the emotions are stored and the beliefs are stored. Subconscious mind does not distinguish between fact and fantasy. It is also called the creative intelligence and THIS is what you character is all about.
And then there is the critical factor which develops by the age ten and works like a gatekeeper or checkpoint to the subconscious. Located between the conscious and the subconscious mind, it compares the incoming idea, suggestion or information coming from the conscious mind with the already existing ideas or beliefs of the subconscious mind and decides if it matches with the recognized information of the subconscious mind, or if it should be sent back to the conscious mind for further inspection.
And now at the center of consciousness, is the superconscious mind. This is referred to as the problem solving intelligence. All that the superconscious knows and has is love, grace, forgiveness, ability to heal, peace, intuition, and creativity. This connects us to the universal mind, the universal power, the spiritual source or, in other words, God. This is our soul.
People often ask me “what is mind? Where is it located? Is it in the brain? Is it different from the brain? In what part of the body does it exist?” My question to them is “what is existence? Where is it located? Is it in this world? Is it separate from the world? In what part of earth does it exist?” Just as ‘existence’ is not merely limited to earth, the ‘mind’ is not limited to the physical body.
So… what happens when we are in hypnosis? During hypnosis, the critical factor of the mind relaxes because of which direct communication between the conscious and the subconscious mind is established. This direct communication allows for positive and beneficial ideas, information and suggestions to be easily accepted and acted upon by the subconscious mind without being constantly bounced back to the conscious mind by the critical faculty. That information gets stored in the subconscious mind as a new belief since; the subconscious mind does not differentiate between fact and fiction. To give you an example of this that the subconscious does not differentiate between fact and fiction, when we watch a movie we get so deeply involved that we start believing whatever is happening in it to be true. If it’s a romantic scene, we start getting feelings of love. If it’s a fight scene, we start feeling the anger, the adrenalin rush. If it’s a horror or a scary scene, how hard does it get for us to go back home and sleep peacefully! Even though we know that it’s just a film. Then why does it happen? Why do we start reacting as if everything was real? Critical faculty! We don’t realize that when we are watching a film, because there is nothing much for the conscious mind to do but to just sit in one place and watch the film, the critical faculty of the mind relaxes and we go into a light hypnotic state. This is what we also call an altered state of mind. The subconscious, in this state, does not differentiate between fact and fiction. And therefore, when we feed positive suggestions of goal achievement and success to the subconscious mind, in this hypnotic state, in present tense form, the subconscious accepts them, starts believing them to be true and starts acting upon them immediately.
A post by:
Swasti S Sharma, CMS-CHt FIBH (USA)
Medical Support Clinical Hypnotherapist / Past Life Regression Therapist
Certified by International Board of Hypnotherapy
E-mail: swasti.hypnotherapyindia@gmail.com
Cell: (+91)7042321200 / Web: www.lifebeforelives.com
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