Learning how to hypnotize yourself is one of the simplest, rewarding yet challenging skillsets any person can develop. I mean, who wouldn’t benefit from the ability to alter every little facet of their reality, to play God and be master of their universe.
If there was one superpower everyone would be wise to develop (and at as early age as possible), its the ability to tinker and experiment with the subconscious programming of their mind! How effective would you be if you could unleash all your potential, whenever its needed! And instantly, effortlessly overcome every challenge that blocks your journey towards self-mastery. That inner yearning to be the best YOU possible is what drives desire in every human. Whether you want to get in better shape, be more attractive to the opposite sex, or just have more power and influence in your life.
Hypnosis allows us to create all this and more.
But learning how to hypnotize yourself can be a challenge, and thats mainly down to one specific and problematic reason…that reason being…
…There is a huge misconception about what hypnosis really is!
Truth is, you’ve been sold a lie, a life-long scandal that’s been draining your potential. Known by every great hypnotist, every pioneer of new industries yet hidden from those who struggle to tap into their greatness…So what is this great scandal of hypnosis?
First, lets look at a typical stage hypnosis show as illustration. Stage hypnosis is all about showmanship, and much like seasoned magicians, the major tricks of the trade are distraction and obfuscation. Otherwise known as sleight of hand. The magician has you focus on his left hand while his right hand (hidden from view) manipulates the illusion, setting up trick after trick that induces the mind of the audience to awe and bewilderment, from the perspective of the audience it truly looks like magic.
But once you’ve been let in on the secret, once you see the illusion from a different perspective, the perspective that reveals how the illusion is performed. The magic quickly fades and you may even say to yourself “It’s so simple, why didn’t I notice that earlier”
Hypnosis is no different, it has its illusion of magic and its more logical, simple explanation. What side of the act would you rather be in on?
Well keep on reading because I’m about to let you in on the hypnotists dirty little secret, secrets you can quickly use to harness greater wealth, happiness or power right this very instance, without having to enter a catatonic trance to do it, and without having to buy any expensive programs teaching you ‘the secrets of hypnosis’.
Because once you strip away all the showmanship of stage hypnosis, strip away all the fancy patter and linguistic flair, hypnosis boils down to one very simple principle. You tell people what to do…and they do it.
The sleight of hand in hypnosis comes from letting the audience believe there has to be a special trance state before subjects act out your suggestions.
But the power of hypnosis doesn’t come from the trance…It comes from the IDEAS! Ideas themselves are what contain the potential for transformation, trance is just the byproduct of having someone focus intently on the ideas we present them (you think the media and politicians don’t know this secret? How many ideas are you being presented with in the media every single day?).
James Braid the physician who coined the phenomena ‘hypnosis’ back in the 1840s, realised later in his career he had given hypnosis the wrong name. Initially he believed it to be a form of sleep but later discovered he could elicit all the same hypnotic phenomena without inducing trance in any of his subjects, he found that merely having someone concentrate on an idea was enough to get the desired physical response. He attempted to rename hypnosis with its more accurate definition of ‘monoideism’ (meaning the prolonged absorption in a single idea) but by then, his earlier term of hypnosis had already become famous and news of its power had spread across the western world.
You see the secret of stage hypnosis is not about the mystical trance state, its about people suspending their personal thinking and allowing the hypnotist to think for them, they’re focusing on the hypnotists ideas to the extent they begin acting those ideas out. The showmanship of hypnosis is all about keeping a persons logical mind in a suspended state of confusion or anticipation, the longer its kept distracted from thinking for itself, the more you can direct that person to act out your ideas. For more about this read my previous blog post on the first level of the mind. (here)
So if you want to learn how to hypnotise yourself, forget the ‘trance state’, learning meditation is much more effective for that. Focus instead on the quality of your thinking.
Science has discovered how people think anywhere between 40,000 to 70,000 thoughts every single day. That’s a lot of noise, lots of internal chatter dominating a persons mind. They’ve also discovered how out of all of those thoughts, a full 75% of them tend to be negative, critical, undermining, or self deprecating The majority of people spend 75% of their waking life telling themselves why they aren’t good enough, why they can’t achieve success, why they aren’t worthy of their dreams.
Now if it only takes a handful of suggestions from the stage hypnotist to directly influence a persons subconscious behaviours, imagine the impact 70,000 suggestions will have on your subconscious mind. Is it any wonder most people are stressed or depressed, their subconscious mind is in constant overload, being pulled in a thousand directions, never knowing which path to truly follow.
The result from this overload is…burnout, sloth and lethargy
The body can’t cope with so many conflictingly negative instructions. As indicated by the fact stress related diseases and depression continues to rise year on year to all time record highs. And the sad fact is most people are so distracted by the world around them, they’re completely unaware as to the quality of their thoughts, they have no awareness of the limitations they’re imposing on themselves by allowing self destructive thoughts to take seed in their mind, instead of blossoming positive thought patterns, they nurture the weeds that drain their vitality.
Even one simple suggestion contains the seed of hypnotic potential. The ideas and thoughts that get repeated most are what set your boundaries and limitations, remove the self critical thoughts from your awareness and all of a sudden you’ll be unshackled to move freely towards your dreams.
Learning how to hypnotize yourself then has nothing to do with the unconscious mind, its really the exact opposite, its about heightened consciousness, and bringing those 70,000 thoughts into full conscious awareness, shining the light of discernment on every idea and making decisions based on wisdom instead of ignorance. Its about monitoring your thoughts on a moment to moment basis, eliminating all the negative thought patterns while reprogramming your internal dialogue with more affirmative and self respecting statements of value.
Its no good writing a hypnosis script for yourself, recording it to mp3, and listening back when comfotable in a deep trance state. You may tell yourself a thousand positive ideas for change inside trance, but if (once you’ve roused from trance) the other 69,000 thoughts you might have that day undermine the good work you’ve just done, no amount of trance based self hypnosis will ever get you where you want to go, until you learn how to talk to yourself more positively.
Hypnosis is simple because everyone is already engaging in it, everyone is either absorbed in their ideas of success or absorbed in their ideas of failure. The hypnosis generating idea machine never gets switched off.
Hypnosis is challenging because becoming a good self hypnotist means directing consciousness to see the world from more empowering perspectives, hypnosis is the combination of consciousness infused with artistic thinking, we paint beautiful, empowering pictures inside our minds, and it takes consistent cultivation of those positive images to gather enough internal energy to inspire our actions. Hypnosis is the discipline of moment to moment self respect and only accepting the very best for yourself. We’re not just planting a few positive seeds to have one pretty garden in the recess of our minds, we’re creating an entire self sustaining ecosystem in Amazonian rainforest proportions.
Hypnosis is rewarding because once you’ve learnt how to hypnotize yourself, you’ll have complete mastery of every single idea you allow into your mind, no longer will you be swayed by negative influences, you’ll be strong willed and completely aware of everything in your internal and external environment. A true moment to moment mastery of life. Complete control of your emotions and energy levels. Creativity, inspiration and insight on tap.
So how do you start hypnotising yourself:
- First, you’ll need a pen and paper, spend 24 hours just writing down every single thought or idea that pops into your head (without judging and without attempting to change them just yet). This will help you become more conscious of how you’re currently thinking.
- second, once you’ve become aware of your thoughts, learn to stop yourself thinking the negative ones. Do this by affirming 3 positive thoughts for every negative thought that enters your mind. Over time this will sway the balance so you’re now 75% positive instead of 75% negative. This will have a huge affect on your energy levels and vitality.
- Finally, just keep going, keep finding better affirmations, offer yourself more and more positive words of encouragement. Begin infusing the positive statements with energy and emotion, get yourself energised about who you want to become. Imagine it clearly as you do so…the most important phase, just being patient while developing better thought habits. Through better thought habits you’ll develop better speaking habits, better communication means better quality friends, and its through the help of our friends and acquaintances that we really get what we want from life. People coming together under the banner of a charismatic leader or a just cause. Learn to inspire yourself and you’ll quickly start inspiring others.
Keep this up and before you know it your entire life will begin to change as you’re hypnotising yourself to believe in your own greatness, just as you’ve previously hypnotised yourself into believing your own limitations. People will sense the change in your energy, you’ll carry yourself better, you’ll have more confidence doors of opportunity begin to open and you’ll find yourself being motivated to walk through them.
And if this sounds too simple to be effective, just remember that having complete control of your personal thinking is such a rare skill that you’ll be separated from 99.999% of the population on this planet and as the saying goes ‘the cream always naturally rises to the top’. Everyone who ever becomes successful in any field got their because they believed in themselves, they talked themselves into lofty positions and they supported themselves with positive affirmative statements every step of the way, embrace your self worth and find yourself joining amongst societies elite.
For a brief demonstration of this principle in action, I’m reminded of the short scene below from the movie ‘Cool Runnings’.