Your mind is extremely powerful. But is it friend or foe? And, can we harness its power to help us with weight loss?
Theories on the mysterious mechanics of the mind have been plentiful throughout history. For example, Freud, father of psychoanalysis, believed that the unconscious mind contained primitive impulses and wishes, some of which were so disturbing and painful that our mind represses them in order to protect us. Freud was extremely focused on sex, believing it to be a huge motivator for most of our behavior. According to him, overeating or overindulging in anything was a substitute for sex.
Today, armed with new theories, the latest information in neuroscience, hypnosis and other energy psychology techniques, we have a more useful, updated, and expansive view of the inner workings of the mind. These new resources can allow us to achieve quicker and lasting success with weight loss, habit control, performance, health challenges, goal achievement and so much more. Now we can more easily break through the barriers that have prevented successful weight loss.
THE WEIGHT LOSS INDUSTRY
Two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese, based on research from the National Institute on Health. And every year consumers in America spend over $60,000,000,000 to fight this obesity epidemic. We spend money on diets, pills, surgeries, gadgets and other remedies and fads with little to no success.
TRENDS
According to 2016 trends, we are seeing several changes in the weight loss industry. Rather than focusing on deprivation as a means to lose weight as we did in former years, the emphasis is now on healthier living and mindfulness. Consumers are trying to mindfully make more and better healthy food choices while hoping these changes will lead to improved health and weight loss.
The fitness industry is growing to accommodate this trend with more exercise options than ever before. As we learn more about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, people are desperate to avoid ill health by adding more exercise to their daily routine. And, the perilous connection between stress, weight gain, and other health problem has created an urgency to reduce and eliminate stress from our lives as well.
People are aware of, and feel pressure to make lifestyle changes more than ever. But changing life long habits, negative thought patterns and manifesting the motivation to move more can be futile and fraught with failure.
However, success with weight loss and other healthy lifestyle changes is easier than you think. Follow me in examining the inner workings of the mind and learn three ways you can use that knowledge to lose weight.
THREE WAYS TO PROGRAM YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND
There’s no shortage of healthy, research-based, eating plans to lose weight. We can find them everywhere we look. And with exercise options galore, from boot camp to chair yoga, there’s really no excuse for not engaging in healthy movement every day.
Yet, in spite of eating plans, exercise options and focus on mindful, healthy living, most people fail at successful weight loss. The reason for failure lies in that three-pound mass of tissue located between our ears. This complex yet powerfully influential inner mind that includes your conscious and unconscious, as well as limiting, negative, and destructive thoughts, memories and beliefs, can stop success dead in its tracks.
The way to harness the power of the mind is to learn how to program it to be friend instead of foe. This starts with understanding the role of the conscious and unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind is a powerful computer and operating system. It successfully creates programs with the information it receives. For example, when we learn to drive a car, there are an overwhelming amount of things to learn. We have to learn where to place our hands on the steering wheel, the exact amount of pressure to put on the pedals, how and when to work the shifter, when to use the side mirrors, deciphering road signs, being mindful of other drivers, watching for pedestrians and animals and learning the rules of the road.
At first it’s almost overwhelming because there’s so much to learn and master. But what happens is, we continue to get in that car and repeat those behaviors day after day to the extent that today, we can drive hundreds of miles without ever having to think about how much pressure to put on the pedals, where to place our hands on the wheel, etc.
Ever wonder who is driving your car when you are not fully present to the act of driving, such as when you are talking to a passenger and reliving memories, listening to the radio, books on tape or you are tired and barely able to keep your eyes open?
Thank goodness your unconscious mind was paying attention while you were learning and repeating all those behaviors. In fact, your unconscious mind is so efficient that it created a program for the act of driving that operates in the background whether you are not fully present and paying attention or not.
Your amazing unconscious mind creates operating programs with all kinds of data that is repeated,similar to learning how to drive.
This data includes what we repeatedly say to ourselves and what others repeatedly said to us when we were children, from birth to age six. This is the most influential time for programming of the unconscious mind. During that time, your child’s brain is recording all kinds of experiences, which becomes the fundamental unconscious programs that shape your character.
So, if you were repeatedly called derogatory names, told you would always have a weight problem, victimized, traumatized, or told you were stupid, fat, dumb and ugly, or other repeated statements or actions, your unconscious mind may be running a program for it in the background.
In other words, your unconscious mind operates as if this is the truth. And today, that belief system and program may be interfering with your ability to lose weight or make any other life changes you want.
If you have repeatedly set, struggled and failed at achieving your goals, chances are you have a limiting, negative and possibly destructive unconscious program running in the background preventing your success.
1. YOU CAN CREATE NEW PROGRAMS.
Using this same powerful ability of your mind, you can create new mental programs that lead to your success. When you implement this program and use the same principle of repetition, your unconscious mind will believe and act on this new truth. Make sure to involve your senses by creating a program that includes pictures of you successfully engaged in new behaviors. Adding sounds such as affirmations, praise from others and including the positive feelings in imagining achieving your goals will increase motivation and success.
Try this activity to increase motivation to for exercise. Remember to practice “feeling” the feeling as you think about exercising and with repetition it will become more familiar and easier to access.
Activity – Love To Exercise
- Choose an exercise you could, realistically engage in.
- Think of a feeling you want to have about and towards this exercise.
- Then recall a time in your life when you felt that feeling. For example, if you want to feel excitement about exercise, remember a time in your life when you were excited. Remind yourself of that event and add other experiences of the same emotion.
- NOW, STEP INTO THAT FEELING AND RE-EXPERIENCE THE EVENT – imagine this experience as vividly as possible… recall the occasion you felt it before; notice what you see in this memory, what you hear, the sounds, and notice the feelings you are having in this memory. Make everything bigger, vibrant, attractive and alive… magnifying it and enhancing it. You might imagine it as a color that you breathe in or spread in your body and mind. Or it might be a sensation that you develop further, or even a sound that resonates within you. Really imagine, develop and build that feeling within you.
- As you think about and experience that feeling, imagine yourself doing exercise while keeping that feeling. Repeat this activity five times, intensifying the experience each time.
THESE UNCONSCIOUS PROGRAMS ARE HARDWIRED AND UNCHANGEABLE WITHOUT HELP.
Do you ever wonder why you seem to achieve some goals, yet repeatedly struggle, and fail at others? Maybe you start like gangbusters, thinking it through, setting great goals, getting an accountability partner, etc. Then soon after you end up giving up, giving in, and resigning yourself to failure. Or, perhaps you gain some success only to lose it and you find yourself right back where you started? This happens because your unconscious programs are hardwired and unchangeable without help.
BRAIN RESEARCH
According to the latest brain research, we create neural pathways in the brain as we learn a new behavior, feeling, or thought pattern. This makes it easier to repeat the pattern later, when needed. The more we repeat the pattern, the stronger the neural connections. They become similar to well-worn, concrete freeways that strengthen over time and make that pattern automatic. It is also good to know that when we stop repeating those patterns, they eventually get pruned away and dissolve.
2. DECIDE WHAT CHANGES YOU WANT TO MAKE
If we want to make healthier changes in behavior, thoughts and feelings, we may need to heal and clear previous emotional wounds and traumas, then create the changes we want. When we engage in and repeat these desired changes, we are creating new neural pathways that will replace the former ones and bring about the changes in our neurology and programming.
With repetition and clever mental training these new programs can become hardwired and permanent. And you may achieve far greater success with these new programs than with the old unhelpful ones.
Try this activity to increase a feeling. Remember to practice “feeling” the feeling and with repetition it will become more familiar and easier to access.
ACTIVITY – INCREASING A FEELING
- Think of a feeling you would like to experience more often, for example, happiness.
- Remember a time when you experienced it, or a time when you saw someone exhibiting that feeling.
- Think of a word that reminds you of that feeling.
- Step into the feeling and imagine it growing bigger, brighter and stronger. When you’ve made that feeling very strong, say the word.
- Repeat five times while intensifying with each repetition
THE UNCONSCIOUS BELIEVES THESE PROGRAMS WILL KEEP YOU SAFE.
THE ROLE OF THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND
CONSCIOUS MIND:
The conscious mind includes approximately 10% of your brainpower. It critically, analytically, and logically thinks and sorts through information, makes decisions and sets goals. This is your waking state, and the part of your brain that is active as you are learning something new.
It is sequential and its focus is limited to between seven, plus or minus two bits of information at any given time according to what’s referred to as Miller’s Law. This law was created out of a research paper written by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Princeton University’s Department of Psychology. It was published in Psychological Review in 1956 and is one of the most highly cited research papers on this topic. Your willpower is also located in the conscious mind.
UNCONSCIOUS MIND:
The unconscious mind includes approximately 90% of your mind power. Its ability and capacity to focus is virtually unlimited. The unconscious mind is literal, needs very clear direction, and communicates through emotions, imagination, and intuition. It organizes and stores all of your memories and habits, and is responsible for running all the physical systems in the body.
It’s the part of the mind that grows your fingernails, keeps your heart beating, lungs breathing, heals, and repairs your body. For example when you break your leg, it’s not the cast the leg rests in that heals the body, it is the body’s own inner processes that repairs and rebuilds the bone. Its job is also to ensure that you respond exactly according to the programming.
The primary directive of the unconscious mind is self-preservation. It holds the blueprint for the body as it is, and it has a blueprint for your perfect health. Because it is computer-like, it takes in data, perceives its ability to help with the directive, and then creates programs based on that information. However, some of this information is outdated, not based on reality and can interfere with changes you want to make.
For example, imagine Mom A and Mom B are in the backyard with their four-year-old kids, Johnny, and David respectively, and gardener snakes. Mom A might feel positive about this snake. She and Johnny examine it with interest, appreciation, and curiosity. Whereas Mom B may be frightened of the snake and caution David to stay away, telling him snakes are dangerous and disgusting.
While Johnny grows up with a positive feeling about snakes, David’s unconscious mind has perceived danger and creates irrational fear at the thought or sight of them. This fear may plague David even as an adult.
We have collected a menagerie of these perceptions throughout our lifetime. Some may be good and helpful while others may be limiting, negative, or destructive and interfere with the goals we want to accomplish.
3. USE HYPNOSIS, NLP AND ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY TO REPROGRAM YOUR MIND TO LOSE WEIGHT
With mental training techniques using hypnosis, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), coaching and other energy psychology techniques, we can quickly and easily make lasting changes in our lives. We can re-train, re-educate, and reprogram your unconscious mind with new, more helpful and healthy thoughts, feelings and actions that help you begin losing weight immediately.
WHAT IS HYPNOSIS?
Hypnosis is defined as a state of focused concentration or trance state. It is being in an altered state, similar to daydreaming, or that state of mind just before you are entering sleep and just before you awaken in the morning. It is when the mind leaves the present moment and you are thinking of anything other than the here and now. For example, think about where your mind goes you when you are taking a shower, brushing your teeth, watching TV, surfing the Internet and so many other activities. When you are involved in these actions, your mind goes somewhere else and is in a trance.
When you are taking a shower, chances are you are not feeling every drop of water on your skin or thinking about how the shampoo smells or the feel of the soap on your body. Typically, your mind has left your body and it is thinking about other things, such as conversations you’ve had or will have, your to-do list or a variety of things other than being in the shower.
This focused concentration is an extremely powerful state of mind for making changes in your life. In this trance hypnosis state, your mind is open to suggestions as long as those suggestions are in alignment with what you want for yourself. Make no mistake, hypnosis cannot make you do anything against your will. But if you, for example, want to love exercise, and you currently hate it, hypnosis can help you change your feelings about it and you can even look forward to it.
WHAT IS NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING (NLP)?
Neuro Linguistic Programming is a highly effective discipline that enables you to think, communicate, and manage yourself more effectively. It is one of the most powerful skills used in sales, business management, psychology, sports, coaching, and all forms of personal development.
Using NLP we are able to reprogram our minds to immediately transform limiting beliefs and behaviors into new, more successful strategies. This can instantly transform the way we think and behave. That is why together with hypnosis, NLP is one of the quickest and longest lasting processes for permanent personal change available today.
With a skilled practitioner trained in the art of hypnosis, NLP and coaching, the following lasting changes can be made with speed, ease and enjoyment.
- Create distaste for unhealthy foods
- Create attraction for healthy foods
- Enjoy healthy alternatives to satisfy hunger
- Make healthy life choices
- Eliminate stress, anxiety and fear
- Improve motivation, commitment and determination to achieve goals
- Increase desire and love of exercise
- Commit to a routine
- Create a confident, healthy self-esteem
- Improve performance and success
- Change habits
- Heal release and change past traumas, negative beliefs, and behaviors
- Change attitudes
- And many others…
SUMMARY
The latest brain research and knowledge about the inner workings of the mind has given us tools to transform our thoughts, feelings, and actions more quickly and easily than any time in history. Positive change is within our grasp.
With this knowledge we can unravel former failures and create successful new programs for healthy living. Creating new programs can help you achieve your weight loss goals easier than you think. You can add repetition, involve the senses, and make those goals so attractive that you won’t stop until they are achieved.
Find a certified, educated, and experienced coaching, hypnosis and NLP practitioner to help you begin to make positive changes today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patricia Eslava Vessey PCC, CHt is the owner of Integrity Coaching & Training Systems, a personal development company dedicated to empowering people to succeed in their personal and professional lives. Patricia is passionately committed to supporting her clients and students in transforming, negative and destructive beliefs and behaviors into empowered thoughts, feelings and behaviors so they can achieve their goals and live their best life.
Patricia has successfully helped thousands achieve and maintain their fitness goals and manage their weight as a personal fitness trainer, group exercise instructor and health coach, since 1980. Using hypnosis, NLP, and other energy psychology techniques has added even more ease, enjoyment and success to her client results.
Her clients are groups and individuals. She works with all ages, including children whose lives are challenged by stress, anxiety, fears, phobias, lack of confidence, lack of focus and follow through, insomnia, addictions, excess weight, lack of motivation, self sabotage chronic pain, relationship problems and others.
Using coaching, hypnotherapy, NLP and energy psychology in workshops and in hypnosis recordings and written material, she teaches people to empower themselves by harnessing the power of their mind. Her students and clients learn new skills as the reprogram their minds for success.
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