Be sure to read Part 1 here.

Awareness is the Gateway

As always it starts with awareness. Most people are not even aware they talk to themselves. In fact, there are likely some of you reading this, saying to yourselves inside your head right now, “what voice in my head? What’s this guy talking about? I don’t talk to myself!”

Others are aware of their thoughts and internal dialogue, but judge it, beating themselves up for negative self-talk. If ever there was an ironic twist to missing the point that would be it. Imagine that your unconscious mind is the five-year-old who is listening to every word you say as if it is Holy Scripture.

Would you talk to yourself the same way?

Once you develop awareness, then you must develop your facility with perceptual positions. It is only from the Observer position of that of Witness that you can give yourself clean feedback, and shift your thoughts to one of resource.

1. Practice awareness [meta-cognition]
2. Develop facility with perceptual position
3. Add positive and resourceful phrases and imaginings

Self-Hypnosis

To fully experience the power of intentional self-hypnosis, I recommend the following practice. Do it daily. Do it morning and night. Do it intentionally until it becomes the new habit pattern of your mind such that when you adjust your rear-view mirror, when you walk down the street, when you are about to go into a meeting, what is happening habitually and “naturally” is you are hearting positive thoughts and seeing positive images. And…you are aware of it all the while.

1. Pick 3 sentences you need to hear, believe, or accept.
2. Look in the mirror. As you do, pick one eye to stare into.
3. Say each sentence 5 times using second person language as if you are talking to the you “over there”
4. Notice how it feels [any resistance, incongruence or conflict, relief, joy, etc.

Some examples are:

• You will achieve all you desire
• You are on track
• You will enjoy a long life and vibrant health
• You can do anything
• You are loved [or safe, etc.]
• You’re awareness is becoming more and more acute

Pick your own. Which sentences you pick again depend on your particular outcomes, your needs, and your personal hurdles.

Optimizing Your Results

Use only positive language. Notice I did not say, “do not use negation” or “do not use negative language”. That is because the unconscious mind does not understand negation.

If I say, “do not think of a pink elephant, with yellow polka dots, and a small palm tree growing out of its head”, what do you imagine? At best it is a two-step process, so always use positive language.

One common mistake is to say things like:

You will not fail
You will overcome this illness
I will not be rejected
Etc.

While these may seem like positive messages, the focus for your unconscious mind is on the problem; failure, illness, rejection. A simple way to train your mind to use positive language is to ask, “what do I want instead?”

Some people ask, “Why pick just one eye?” You cannot look in both eyes simultaneously with a direct gaze. If you switch back and forth, uncertain or unable to choose just one, that is also less direct. A direct gaze is more powerful and more hypnotic. The suggestions go in more easily and deeper. Try it all three ways, you should feel a tangible difference when choosing just one and gazing directly.

If you do this daily, it will become a habit. Your self-talk—your internal dialogue—will become more and more positive. Self-doubt will melt away more and more. And you will find yourself being hopeful, optimistic, and engaged in positive self-hypnosis as if it were second nature.

You will reap the benefits and experience the results.

When most people hear the word “hypnosis” they get a little unsettled. They usually get unsettled as a result of some fantasy about what hypnosis is or is not. Some associate it to stage hypnosis on the Vegas strip. Others are afraid of what someone might do to them when they are unconscious. Still others are afraid of clucking like a chicken when the phone rings. Others my simply roll their eyes thinking that hypnosis is more mumbo-jumbo for the woo-woo set who wear patchouli oil and live on the West Coast or in Boulder Colorado.

Hypnosis Defined

So what is “hypnosis”? For our purposes, hypnosis is simply the use of language and imagination to direct experience. If you have ever watched television and felt enraptured in a show, you were in a hypnotic trance. When it seems like time flew by, you were in a hypnotic trance. If someone has ever told you a story and you began to visualize aspects of it, you were in a hypnotic trance. If you have ever fantasized about someone or something positively or negatively, you were in a hypnotic trance. If someone has ever asked “how are you today?” and you took a moment to truly consider it, they had put you in a hypnotic trance.

And the list goes on.

The truth is, we are in a state of hypnotic trance more than we are out of it.

That is the good news. Once you notice it, and have enough facility to intervene in the process, it becomes a tremendously powerful opportunity to harness the power of your mind. Once you notice it, you can be more respectful of other people’s experience and avoid adding anything negative. The truth is, we are directing each other’s experience all the time. We are hypnotizing each other all the time. Are you adding beauty and joy? Or are we directing people to their internal struggles or pain out of ignorance and “empathy”?

One of my favorite jokes to play in a partially full elevator is to look at the floor, placing both my hands on the side of my head, slapping lightly while say, “Shut up. All of you shut up!” What fun. However, there is an unfortunate kernel of truth in this joke for most of us.

Recent studies have indicated that over 77% of our self-talk or internal dialogue is negative. This is a stunning number. That is also an average from largely untrained minds.

You Notice What You Think About

The Law of Attraction has been one of the mainstays of personal development since its inception. That is, that we are likely to get what we focus on. Like a search engine, we put something in it, hit return, and we get ranked results. Our mind goes looking for what we often unintentionally tasked it with. And yet, we are often telling ourselves and our minds things that are negative, will not help us realize our potential, and will not serve our ultimate happiness.

There is a resurgent interest in and focus on this Law as a result of the movie The Secret. There is no magic to this. When we set our intention or focus on something, our reticular formation goes into action.

Some common examples:

• You decide on a new car you like and want to purchase; suddenly you see that model everywhere
• You make a decision to start a new business venture, and you overhear a stranger at a restaurant who may be helpful
• You make a commitment to a change in your life change and within the next week you see and/or hear multiple marketing messages offering solutions to the very problem you have decided to overcome

The results of the Law of Attraction can be traced to both the power of tens of thousands of years of evolution as well as the inherent limitations of our biology.

People who do not understand the science of the mind and body behind this will say things like “I manifested that/them”, and similar formulations that say more about their stage of development that any particular objective reality, After all, we interpret the world through–and react from–our stage of development and its accompanying filters and value memes.

The truth is, the thing we suddenly see or the opportunity that arises was already there, we just notice it now. Not only is our unconscious mind sorting for what it has been tasked with, but as a function of our biology, our senses have to reduce and filter out the majority of the stimulus we are exposed to for processing. We do not have the ability to process it all. Particularly visually and auditorally in an urban environment. In addition, our mind “fills in” information, again, as a function of how we are wired.

So our mind notices what we have consciously or unconsciously set it to notice. I recommend the conscious option as much as possible. becoming more and more intentional about this tool rather than leaving it to chance.

How do we train this powerful tool? How do we harness the full power of our minds for our benefit, rather than allowing it to run roughshod over us? How do we leverage this aspect of our consciousness to create a life in which we thrive?

…read about that in part 2 in a few days.

“There is no such thing as failure–only feedback for course correction.”

It is rumored that a missile is of course over 90% of the time. That the purpose of its guidance systems are to constantly course correct, course correct, course correct. Most of the time, with an effective guidance system, we know that even given that necessity for course correction, the missile hits its intended target with a reasonably high level of accuracy.

You are that missile.

Just imagine if scientists, upon the first major failure of the Unites States’ manned moon missions looked at the fire, balled up their papers in front of them and with a great wail, shreaked “We are such a failure! We better not try to explore space! It is God’s realm–not meant for man!”

Actually you can bet some of the general public did. Thankfully, the general public does not reside at Mission Control in Houston.

Your job is to be a scientist of results, communication, and your own experience. To be fascinated by it. To have it, but not to be so in it, that it has you. Have your experience, but do not allow your experience to have you.

What this means is that you are experimenting, noticing your results, gathering feedback, trying again, and again, and again.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison

There are many skills necessary for mastery of the internal navigation of your subjective experience. However, one of the major components is self-esteem. As previously discussed in Evolutionary Sales, it is your immune system for life and for results. It will give you the ability to look at your results practically, and adjust. Rather than taking it personally and making it mean something about your very worth and value in the world.

Be a scientist of subjective experience. A scientist of results. Ask not “is it possible or not”, but rather, “what do I need to do to achieve the result I desire; what do I need to learn, acquire, do, be”, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Your mastery is an asymptote. You will master your mastery and then realize that there are such subtleties that you have only begun.

And then you have reached an integral level of evolution and the game of development and personal evolution becomes a fun game indeed.

Cross Posted at I.D.E.A.