Default to the Known

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has

practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

(This blog was originally posted on May 2, 2017)

 

Photo by Rick Hustead

During my tenure as managing editor of Black Belt magazine, I became very familiar with this refrain/admonition: “You fight the way you train.” It didn’t matter that you have practiced your martial art for thirty years and have a tenth-degree black belt in that style. If your training and competitive expertise are in point-sparring versus contact fighting, chances are you will still be in trouble when it comes to defending yourself against someone who jumps you in an alley. The problem isn’t bad technique; you just defaulted to your subconscious “known,” your comfort zone. Over the years, your repeated training to pull your punches to not make actual contact with an opponent ultimately over-rode the natural instinct to connect a devastating punch or kick with the attacker’s body to defend yourself.

I keep this philosophy in mind when I help my hypnotherapy clients achieve their self-improvement goals by creating a new subconscious mental script to facilitate their desired behavior change. By the time they contact me for hypnotherapy, chances are they have been practicing that unwanted action or belief system for many years. No matter how many times they tell themselves they absolutely, positively do not want to smoke one more cigarette or eat another piece of sugary/fried food, this message is coming from the Logic/Will-Power/Decision-Making and Reasoning faculties based in the Conscious Mind. No matter how much you want to get rid of that negative habit, the Subconscious Mind will have a different perspective.

All those memories and positive associations (pleasure) with doing the “unwanted” behavior are stored in the Subconscious Mind, and the Critical Area of the mind, which is positioned in both the Conscious and Subconscious areas—is a great gate-keeper to prevent change in this status quo. For the Subconscious Mind, change—even desired change—equals pain, and it will fight very hard to prevent change from occurring. To our frustration, this usually means succumbing to temptation to smoke just one more cigarette or polish off your child’s left-over fries, and we go back to practicing those actions we want to stop once and for all.

The great thing about hypnosis is its effectiveness to overhaul or even delete those mental scripts that keep us in that loop of practicing unwanted habits. When you are in hypnosis, I can talk directly to your subconscious mind and, using your motivations, reasons and goals for the behavior change, rewrite that negative script to facilitate desired behavior changes. Once these new mental scripts are in your Subconscious Mind, resistance to making these changes melts away and are replaced by consistent repetition of new, healthy actions and belief systems to reinforce and achieve your self-improvement goals. With hypnosis, we can create a new “default” behavior and connect that metaphoric punch with the desired target: achieving your self-improvement goal!

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2018

Punctuality, Last-Minute Cancellations and No-Shows

(This blog was originally posted on June 20, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

A couple of months ago, the topic of punctuality and attendance came up at the business luncheon I attend each week. It was a relevant topic, because when an unexpected issue comes up at work or home it may be necessary to miss that week’s meeting. Perhaps it is an urgent problem at work that needs to be addressed or a child has to be taken to the doctor, etc. Or, a network partner has a long-planned vacation and will be away. Her car broke down. His dog got out. The hairdresser was late finishing the previous appointment before mine….

Tardiness and absences from a business-networking meeting can be inconvenient for various reasons, such as walking in late when a presentation is underway or having fewer members available to make referrals. As a certified hypnotherapist, I am very interested in and concerned about my clients’ reasons for being late or missing the appointment/last-minute cancellation because this reveals a lot about their motivations for and subconscious commitment and resistance to their therapy.

According to John Kappas, Ph.D., resistance to changing a behavior is the first stage of effecting this change. “We do things systematically to avoid change,” said the founder of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute. “Change is a threat to the unconscious mind.”

For example, being late to the first-ever hypnotherapy session with me to overcome procrastination and constant tardiness says a lot about that person’s subconscious mental script. Even though the client consciously wants to change this behavior, it is so familiar, comfortable and known that the subconscious mind is not going to change without a metaphoric “fight,” i.e., hypnosis. Or this person may mistakenly get on the wrong freeway and drive 30 miles the wrong way before realizing the mistake and making his way to my office an hour late (and having completely missed) the session. I typically call or text my clients the night before to remind them about the appointment; if someone is already 15 minutes late I will call to check in and make sure the individual is 1) okay/healthy and 2) still planning to come in. If so, once the client arrives at my office one of the first things I would explore is what the person thinks/believes the subconscious mind was trying to tell them. Slipping into a state of environmental hypnosis out of anxiety or nervousness about going in for the first-ever hypnotherapy session could be a given explanation. But another, equally strong subconscious motivation for being late is resistance to changing the behavior—even a behavior that the person has repeatedly insisted that he wants to change.

I understand resistance. I also know how to help individuals break down this subconscious resistance to replace an unwanted behavior with a wanted/more acceptable one in hypnotherapy. To change an unwanted behavior, however, it is as important to go for the cause of that behavior as it is for the person to be motivated to make the change. While this is principle does not exclusively apply for dealing with consistent tardiness, late-cancellations or “no-show” clients, their resistance to making a consciously desired change is very obvious.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2017