Why do we often act like unflexible robots with few choices or degrees of freedom? What holds us back from attaining a truly satisfying life? What makes us fly off the handle and ruin relationships? What makes us overindulge our appetites? What keeps us from becoming the person who “coulda, shoulda, woulda?”
Do we have hidden scripts that we must follow blindly as if our life played out on a movie screen, a film that we cannot alter no matter how painful the story? If such scripts exists, how can we change them for the better? Can we make changes without adding more things to remember, resolutions to keep that require constant vigilance and effort?
By following the simple instructions below, you can change your scripts, substituting positive statements for the negative ones that we got from our parents, peers, and teachers who may not have meant us harm, but who inadvertently passed on the negative programming they received during their formative years. You no longer need to obey or pass negativity on.
What prevents us from accessing and rewriting the beliefs and negative self-talk that keep us stuck in our ruts? It seems that we all have a watchman who stands guard during our normal waking state. This guard censors any messages that try to override our old programs. It seems as if we have a fear of change. Erich Fromm warned of a fear of freedom that compels us to choose the devil we know over the devil we don’t. So when we affirm “I love to exercise” or “I prefer deep breathing to smoking” or some other change message, an inner voice denies it, and the message never gets to first base.
Fortunately, we now have a simple technique that puts the guard to sleep and opens the door to our subconscious, allowing new messages to replace the dysfunctional scripts from childhood. This technique, known as brainwave entrainment, uses pulses of lights and sounds choreographed to lead our mental and physical rhythms into a state of deep relaxation called Theta. In this state, a pleasant, dreamlike, timeless place, the conscious mind takes a vacation and allows access to the unconscious and its repository of scripts.
During a Theta session of heightened receptivity, messages fall on fertile soil and have a good chance of taking root and producing the desired changes. So the question then becomes, what kind of messages work best? How do I know what to put into my receptive mind?
Indeed, some researchers believe that our deep self structures reality and determines outcomes in ways that would seem miraculous to our conscious mind. Letting go and trusting our intuitive, connected higher mind pays off.
When you start a self-hypnosis session with your light/sound device and CD or MP3, it pays to spend a minute or two imagining that the change you want exists. This imagining should involve as many of your senses as possible. For instance, if you want a new car, visualize the car, see yourself opening the door, smell the new car smell, see yourself getting in and sitting down, hear the car door close, see and feel your hands on the wheel, hear someone say, “You look great in that car,” and so on. Be there and your subconscious will believe that such an outcome exists and will have to configure reality to agree. Because it believes that you have the car, the steps necessary to get the car must also exist. Miraculously, your body/mind, in tune with more of reality than your conscious mind, will arrange events and point you in the right direction for your desired outcome to occur.
Once you have imagined your desired outcome, let it go. Relax knowing that you have planted the seeds and trust that they will grow if you simply allow them to. At a certain point, effort can hinder progress. Your unconscious self does miraculous things every second. Do you have to think about digesting your food, growing nails, pumping blood? Your body/mind already does more than you could ever do consciously, and it takes care of a vast number of tasks simultaneously with little to no input from your conscious mind. So just make the suggestions and then allow your body to relax and destress. It will then reward you by making the changes you want.
The automatic changes that come from using properly scripted affirmations in the theta state will appear spontaneously and may surprise you when you realize that they have happened without your conscious effort. You may notice yourself reacting calmly to the same situation that previously would have made you angry. You may realize that you look forward eagerly to exercising vigorously when just a week before, you dreaded getting off the couch.
You now have the key that can unlock the door of your script vault. Now go in there and make some real, lasting changes.
©Phil Safier and Elixa, Ltd. 2016
