Matching Feelings With Desire
By: Kevin Linehan
Why is it that we cannot seem to make the changes we desire? We know intellectually that we should not smoke, should exercise more often, should eat right, are competent to speak on a specific subject, etc. Yet so many of us don’t do or feel we can’t do what we know is best. We even tell ourselves over and over (autosuggestion) that smoking is bad, or I need to get in shape, or my career will take off if I can just shake my stage fright and yet the undesirable behavior continues. If you have ever tried to eliminate a habit from your life you know what I am talking about. On the other hand, we all know someone that put down the cigarettes one day and never picked another one up, or lost 50 pounds and has kept it off for years. What’s the difference?
The person that has made a permanent change in their life has matched their internal feelings with their conscious desire. Will power can be used to put the cigarettes down for a day maybe even a week or a month. However, unless your internal feeling and external desire are in concert it is always the feeling that will win out. If there is a mismatch between your conscious desire and your feelings you’ll soon be forced to justify to yourself why you started smoking again, or put the weight back on. For some a permanent change can happen quite by accident. Watching a loved one live and die with cancer due to smoking may be enough for someone to have a change in their feelings about smoking and kick the habit for good. That person may simply get a feeling that they don’t want to live and die as their loved one did, and that feeling is stronger than the feelings they have that are associated with smoking.
You do not have to hope for change to accidentally take place.
Your feelings are generated within your subconscious mind. These feeling run just like a computer program and once established, through your beliefs, experiences, and memories they continue to run. As an example, many people begin the smoking habit when they are in their teen years, in many cases getting a feeling of belonging. Years later it is this feeling that will prevent them from successfully putting down the cigarettes, no matter how much they want to or how well that they intellectually know that smoking and belonging have nothing to do with each other. Another example may be what you have learned about eating when you were very young. Have you ever heard “eat everything on your plate”, or “eat, you’ll feel better”? What do people do to celebrate success? They go out to eat. You’ve heard the term “comfort food”. The programs that are established that drive feelings toward food will run until they are changed.
Hypnosis and self-hypnosis are excellent ways to access feelings. There are tools that can be used in conjunction with hypnosis to change the feelings that are associated with specific behaviors. In public speaking many people get nervous or frightened. This is due to those feelings being attached to the activity of speaking in public. Using hypnosis, feelings of confidence can be substituted. Searching for a memory in which the fearful speaker once approached the activity with confidence does this. What if this person has no memories of successfully speaking in public? It doesn’t matter. Any memory associated with confidence can be substituted. In the case of a smoker or someone that desires to become fit and healthy the feelings that they have associated with the smoking behavior or their eating behaviors can be modified. Once the newly associated feelings are established they can be made stronger through repetition and reinforcement. And once those feelings are in line with the conscious desire to make the beneficial lifestyle change then and only then will a permanent change take place.
Self-hypnosis classes are held monthly, contact Kevin or Christine at OnTrac Hypnotherapy Inc. at 603.362.8868 or email ontrachypnosis@aol.com. We also offer hypnosis CD’s for Weight Loss, Stress Management, and Smoking Cessation.
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