Chapter 2
How Our Habits Were Formed
Jill has big doe eyes. When you look into them, you feel as if you are falling into a portal, transporting you to a place that’s deep with knowledge. She also has a beautiful, endearing smile.
She was always immaculately put together, but without seeming to care about her appearance in a self-absorbed way. If a strand of hair was ever out of place, it didn’t look messy. Instead, it seemed to spark an air of adventure, rebelling against the rest of the neat ponytail. She was the type of woman who had so many truly close girlfriends that she was a bridesmaid at least three times per year for close to a decade. She was a true friend. When she communicated, she checked in fully, writing a long message. She was somehow completely devoid of jealousy and meanness.
Even though she exhibited a great deal of happiness with everyone else, trouble was making its way through her system, starting in her stomach, a breeding ground for worry. It snaked up her spine and out her mouth, which she would fill with her fingers and then… bite. She chewed her nails and cuticles until they bled. She chewed them even though her mother made a face every time she did. She bit them even though everything about her was meticulous and ironed and looked as though she was going out for brunch in the Hamptons. She bit them even though the cuticles embarrassed her to no end. She couldn’t stop, and she didn’t know why.
She had developed the habit at a very young age, as many people do. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t bite her nails.
At the age of twenty-four, Jill decided to seek out hypnotherapy as a possible solution. A friend of a friend had used hypnosis to quit smoking with success, so she thought it was worth a shot.
On an unusually warm New York day, she walked into her first appointment with her hypnotherapist, Mary. Her hesitation showed because she was almost ten minutes late. She apologized for her tardiness and held her imaginary armor close as she sat down in Mary’s office.
Mary smiled to herself, knowing that this kind of body language was common during the first session. It was apprehensive, closed off, and while kind, definitely skeptical. It was in stark contrast to the body language people would show during their second and third sessions once they knew that hypnosis is nothing more than meditation with a goal.
“So, how can I help you today, Jillian?” Mary asked.
“Oh, you can call me Jill,” she said, as her body started to wriggle around in her chair a little—a sign that her body was attempting to get comfortable with the idea of sharing her feelings with a stranger. She looked up, and Mary was smiling, waiting patiently.
Jill smiled back and uncrossed her arms before continuing, “Well, honestly, everything is pretty good. My job can be really stressful sometimes, but overall, I really have very little going wrong. I’m not even sure if you can help me. You see, I have one thing in particular that’s really holding me back. It might sound silly or small. I kind of feel bad for making such a big deal out of it. I’m sure you help people with much bigger problems, but it does bother me.” Jill paused and looked into Mary’s eyes. “I’ve been biting my nails for years, and I can’t stop. I’ve tried everything. I put horrible tasting stuff on my fingers. I even tried wearing gloves. I know it’s gross and unsanitary. Since I can’t stop, I feel really weak, and that makes me so sad. I didn’t think I was going be a weak person.”
After another big breath, Jill began to sob.
Mary held space for Jill, letting her know in a soothing voice that the tears were an important emotional release. “Just let them keep on flowing for as long as it feels good to cry,” she said.
After a few minutes, Jill took a few deep breaths, began wiping away the tears, and grabbed a tissue from an oversize box on the table next to her chair. She let out a little laugh. “I guess this happens a lot here, huh?”
Mary laughed. “You could say that again! It’s wonderful because letting out all of that pent-up emotion allows us to get to the root of this even faster. You see, the nail-biting is a symptom; it’s not the problem itself. It’s how your system is choosing to cope with something else.”
Jill stared off into space and said, “That makes sense, but what is it then? What’s the bigger problem?”
Mary smiled and said, “Let’s find out, shall we? First you’re going to relax deeply. Once you’re relaxed and feeling safe, you’ll become more open to suggestions, but only those suggestions you want to be open to. In fact, the more you want to be open to them, the more open you will be. Does that make sense?”
“So, no clucking like a chicken?”
“Not unless you want to cluck like a chicken, and even if you do, I’m not sure that would be a good use of the money you paid for this session.”
They both laughed. At this point, Jill’s body language relaxed. She closed her eyes and took a nice, deep, letting-go breath.
Within a few moments, Jill was in a comfortable theta brain wave state—the sweet spot between the beta brain wave, which is fully awake consciousness, and the delta brain wave, which is sleeping.
Mary then asked Jill to return to the very first time she ever bit her nails. All of a sudden, Jill was “Little Jilly-bean,” sitting in her kindergarten class. She described to Mary how music was playing in the classroom, and four desks were arranged in little clumps throughout the room, all facing each other. They were supposed to be coloring silently, and Jill was having a great time running her brightly colored crayons back and forth across her paper. All was going well until Julia, the little girl next to her, started asking Jill questions in a loud whisper.
Jill whispered back, “We’re supposed to be quiet!” But Julia kept at it. “Why aren’t you coloring in the lines? Why didn’t you wear pink today like always? Did Mrs. K say we were going to lunch soon?”
Exasperated and terrified of getting in trouble, Jill whispered loudly, “Please be quiet!” A hush came over the room as the squeak of their teacher’s chair across the linoleum floor indicated Jill’s worst fears were coming true. Mrs. K, not known for her gentle touch, came over and yelled at Jill for being a bad little girl. She told her the directions were simple—to color silently and that Jill couldn’t even follow the simplest of instructions. To add insult to injury, Mrs. K then took the picture Jill was coloring and pinned it up on the blackboard. “This is a reminder to follow the rules because Jill couldn’t,” at which point the students laughed and pointed at her picture, making comments about how she didn’t even color within the lines.
Tears began to run down Jill’s face as she described to Mary how Little Jilly-bean felt in real-time. “My face feels hot. My heart is beating so fast. I can’t really think clearly, and… oh my god… my hands are under the desk and I’m picking my cuticles.”
“That’s right,” Mary said, “and have you ever done this before?”
“No, this is the first time I’ve ever picked at my nails and cuticles. I just don’t know what else to do. Everyone is looking at me.”
The session progressed, and eventually included inner child healing by inviting adult Jill, the beautiful grown-up woman, to have a conversation with Mrs. K and share how this form of public embarrassment had traumatized her. During the conversation, Jill could see with adult eyes how tired the teacher looked, and she was able to feel compassion for Mrs. K, while strongly disagreeing with her teaching style. Adult Jill was able to kneel down next to Little Jilly-bean and tell her how much she loved her drawing, and Little Jilly-bean was able to remind Julia, the little girl next to her, that if she had a question, she should ask the teacher since whispering wasn’t allowed.
When the session ended, Jill blinked a handful of times, becoming aware of her surroundings. Then, she sat forward in her chair and said, “I had no idea! I had no memory of this until today! This makes so much sense. I feel so bad for Little Jilly-bean. I can’t believe how cruel Mrs. K was to her, to me. But I feel badly for Mrs. K, too. I’m so happy we did this. I feel so much lighter now. I can’t thank you enough. I’ll be back next week.”
Right away, Jill found a dramatic increase in her overall confidence, and her nail-biting decreased significantly from multiple times per day to a handful of times that week. This, in and of itself after one session, was fantastic.
Over the course of five more sessions, Mary and Jill worked on conditioning, a key component to maximizing the benefits of hypnotherapy. Simple phrases, such as I am safe, I am calm, I choose to be here, reconditioned her subconscious to be less anxious and calmer. Sipping water was offered to the subconscious as a replacement to nail-biting, and eventually, the habit stopped all together. For months on end, Jill was free from the habit that had caused her so much pain. After a few months, the habit did return sporadically, usually during a particularly stressful week at work, but never to the same extent as before the hypnosis sessions. Jill understood that the nail-biting was a symptom, not the problem, and that if it came back, it was her body signaling a level of stress that was seeking an outlet. Jill now thanks her body for letting her know, pops in her headphones, closes her eyes, and gets free.
As I mentioned in Chapter 1, I begin each chapter with a short story for a very simple reason: stories are hypnotic—they help us ease into a focused, relaxed, imaginative state; and we can remember information that we learn while in this state rather easily. I’m sure you can remember the premise of your favorite novel from childhood much more easily than you can the contents of a heavy textbook, and I imagine the stories from this book will stand out in your memory as well.1
Why Are We Creatures of Habit?
“I want to stop. I really, really do, but I just can’t.” “Even though I know it isn’t good for me, I just can’t seem to stop.” Sound familiar? It could be nail-biting as it was for Jill; it could be overeating; it could be shaky hands while public speaking, procrastinating, smoking, or yelling at a spouse or child when it’s the last thing you want to do. It’s painful. Saying we’re going to stop, promising ourself and others that we’re going to stop, giving our word, making resolutions… and then, nothing. It adds insult to injury and often impacts self-worth in a big way, which, as we’ll discuss in later chapters, only makes the cycle more difficult to break.
How did we get here? How is it that the most evolved species on the planet can’t just, for example, give up coffee if it makes us jittery, or practice a new language every day for just one hour when it’s something we really, truly want to do? It all comes down to habits, and habits live inside the subconscious.
Human beings develop habits by learning to mimic from a very young age. This is the way we learn how to be a human within the cultural context in which we grow up. It’s why we have the accent or mannerisms that we do, or why we think certain things are rude. We’re very much conditioned to be the kinds of people we grow up to be. Certain habits are actively taught, and other habits are absorbed. If someone grows up watching TV with their parents, depending on what the evenings were like, TV could subconsciously be linked to the idea of love, connection, feeling safe, and being together. Or TV could have been an escape from an otherwise unpleasant or scary experience at home. Strong sensations like these, good or bad, aren’t easy to overcome.
The aim of this chapter is to show that you are a combination of what you were told, what you were shown, and what you decided for yourself. Unfortunately, without sincere effort on our part, what we decide for ourselves usually loses out to the others. This is because very few of us come into our own until later in life, if ever at all. The opinions of others are whipping us into a frenzy of following along or rebellion. Yet even rebels act like other rebels; there are two levels taking place—rebelling against the status quo (“the man”) while needing desperately to fit into the community of rebels. I have yet to meet a person who didn’t want to fit in or be a part of some kind of community. The reaction we have to what others think of us is extremely visceral and is one of the reasons that public speaking often ranks higher on the fear litmus test, so to speak, than death. The fear of being ostracized is worse than death. The fear of being cast out is worse than death. The fear of being forgotten is the same.
When people develop habits that don’t serve them or that they don’t want, it’s always, always because the subconscious mind believes it’s helping them, somehow saving them and protecting them from something worse. You need to stop seeing your nail-biting, fear of flying, or chronic procrastination as a failure of your character, but instead as a series of neural wires clumped together in a way that doesn’t help you. You can become aware of what’s happening and say to yourself, “There’s a connection in my brain that I no longer want to have. It was built through repetition (or shock or trauma), and it can be unbuilt.”
“This habit was built, so it can be unbuilt.” Repeat that in your mind along with me. “This habit was built, so it can be unbuilt. In fact, by bringing my awareness to this fact, I’m already beginning to unbuild it.” Once you can step back and see this as a construct of your brain rather than an innate issue that you’re doomed to suffer with for the rest of time, the emotional charge dissipates. The guilt, fear, and doubt subside. It isn’t necessarily our fault that we developed these habits in the first place, but it’s our sole responsibility to change the firing of neurons in our brain if we want to have a different life experience.
Human brain development is created through complex interactions of genetic and environmental influences. While there are volumes written about how habits are created in the brain and how unique environments impact everything from obesity rates to ADHD to SAT scores and more, what we will focus on is how you developed the habits you no longer want. Let’s begin at the beginning—your childhood.
Childhood Development
I shared Jill’s story at the beginning of this chapter; what stood out to me was that she actively struggled with nail-biting every day as an adult; however, when she was regressed to the “source” of the issue, it was inside her kindergarten classroom. During the session, it was as if Little Jilly-bean was still sitting right there, her heart breaking as her teacher reprimanded her for something she had not done and then making her art a source of ridicule. All the emotions were as fresh as if they were happening in the present moment, and for good reason.
Under the age of seven, our brain operates almost entirely at the level of the theta brain wave state. When you’re in this state, you’re pure creativity and imagination. There are no inhibitions. Kids play their imaginary games, dance, and cry and laugh hysterically in this state. They don’t care who sees or judges them.
Our mind elicits a number of different brain wave lengths, and though we’ll discuss this at length in Chapter 4, let’s go over the basics now. There’s beta, which is our normal thinking state of consciousness. There’s alpha, which is light daydreaming and which allows us to be more creative. And then, there’s the theta brain wave state, which is a trancelike state of hypnosis. Finally, there’s delta, which is sleep.
In young children, the alpha and beta brain wave states aren’t fully developed yet. Imagine a young child in a grocery store, hearing her favorite song. She starts to dance with all of her heart. It’s because she hasn’t developed what we might call the ego, which comes from some of those faster-moving brain waves, such as the beta state.
Now, imagine a twelve-year-old in the same situation. It’s highly unlikely the child would start dancing. Children that age would be mortified if anybody saw them being silly! So, when Picasso said that to be a great artist, you have to paint like a child, he was, in essence, saying that we need to access the theta brain wave state so that our inhibitions are reduced.
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
—PABLO PICASSO
The theta state is also when you’re most open to suggestion. Imagine a child you know under the age of seven years old; they’re little sponges running around, soaking up everything they see and hear. Most of our worldview is formed before the age of seven—the way we see ourself, the skills we think we have, what we believe we’re capable of, what we believe we deserve, how we identify within our community, and how we identify within our family.2 I can’t begin to tell you how many of my clients say, “I’m terrified of public speaking, and I have no idea why.” After we complete a couple of hypnosis sessions, I witness them going back to an early moment at home or in school, like Jill, when someone made fun of them or a figure of authority told them they were stupid.
As adults, we wouldn’t necessarily think of that as a traumatizing event, but neurological associations are created at the time they happen. So, let’s say you’re six years old, and you make a painting for your father on Father’s Day, to which he responds, “What’s this crap?” It’s a traumatic, deeply embarrassing, and painful experience for you and can shape your beliefs about your own ability to be creative forever or inhibit your desire to share your creativity with the world. It might even be a factor in how you relate to other human beings, eventually developing into social anxiety. The way the brain deals with disappointment is a result of these early events in our life.
Now, parents, I know you’re wondering if every little thing you say to your children under the age of seven is going to scar them forever. Not at all! Not every moment of every day will have that same kind of impact on us for the rest of our life. It’s simply helpful to understand how subconscious programming develops at a young age and to do our best.
For example, a hypnotherapist I heard at a conference mentioned during his keynote that one day his son came home from school in hysterics because someone had broken his toy in half. And it was his favorite toy. He just couldn’t believe that person could be so mean.
As a hypnotherapist, he was able to recognize the importance of this experience and see it as a pivotal defining moment. “This could possibly forever define my child’s beliefs and understanding about other human beings and how to interact with them,” he said.
Some parents might just say, “What are you crying about? Don’t worry about it. You have a hundred million other toys,” and move on with their day. But taking those few minutes to recognize what could be fundamentally shaping our beliefs for the rest of our life is very important. In this particular case, the hypnotherapist helped to reframe the experience by immediately going out to buy a new toy, which they anchored to the importance of forgiveness. What could have been a lasting traumatic experience for the little boy became just another day. Also, just to be clear, the way to avoid a child’s potential negative subconscious programming doesn’t necessarily include buying them a new toy! There are plenty of ways to anchor a positive message into the subconscious mind, and in this instance replacing a lost item was a powerful way to do that, but it’s certainly not the only way.
Subconscious Programming: Environment, Elders, and Entertainment
There are many ways in which our subconscious mind is programmed, which can result in habits that serve us, hurt us, or limit us. For the sake of clarity, I have grouped the most common sources of our negative subconscious programming into the three E’s: Environment, Elders, and Entertainment. Understanding how we developed our nasty habits in the first place allows us to actively reprogram our subconscious with better habits so that our programming actually serves us in a positive way. The cornerstone of hypnotherapy is the knowledge and ability to weed out what limits us and plant what helps us in its place.
The First “E”: Environment
Our environment is one of the primary sources of our programming and can be positive or negative depending on various factors, such as where we were born, what kind of family we had, the customs and norms of our community, and our socio-economic condition, just to name a few. As mentioned, our language, accents, shared agreement on what’s rude or acceptable behavior, clothing, and even hygiene regimens are not innate. They’re learned through our environment.
For example, my college roommate, Justyna, is still a good friend, and we often laugh at the idea that her grandmother used to lovingly yell at her that she wouldn’t be able to conceive any children if she sat on anything too cold. She wasn’t supposed to sit on steps outside her apartment building on a cold day, for instance. Justyna was far enough removed from her native Poland to see the humor that I, as a foreigner, saw in her grandmother’s old-world belief but, nonetheless, as we inched closer to our thirties, Justyna couldn’t help herself. She would laugh as she found herself tugging on my arm, pulling me upward to keep me from sitting on any cold surface. Even when we know our customs are programmed, it just feels right to go along with them and wrong when we don’t. Is this because black cats or walking under ladders are actually bad luck? No! It’s because our neurons were wired to feel a certain way about predominant beliefs found in our culture from a very young age.
We have come to understand that groupthink is one of the ways in which everyday people seem to be able to commit atrocities, but we can also apply this same thought process to the development of our more benign habits. By studying groupthink we can more easily understand how a mother who tells her children “We’re just not good at math in this family” could result in a family who isn’t good at math. Her children may all experience heightened anxiety during math exams and might assume they’re not going to get into a certain college due to their math SAT scores. They might not even apply for jobs where statistics or analytics are required, all because of a subconscious belief that to go against the group, to go against the accepted idea that the entire family is bad at math, would make them an outcast and an outsider. The survival instinct kicks in and even though consciously it would make sense to excel in math if possible, the subconscious clings to the familial groupthink in order to be accepted. To the subconscious, acceptance equals survival and we will often act in our own worst interest if there is a perceived choice to be made between fitting in or getting kicked out of the group. A place where this shows up quite a bit is in making more money than one’s parents and even in breaking the pattern of obesity in a family.
The Second “E”: Elders
The second primary source of subconscious programming is our elders. Something very important to keep in mind is that under the age of seven, we’re nearly pure subconscious, meaning we’re open to suggestion with a lack of inhibition. The conscious mind has not yet developed, and we’re little sponges absorbing everything. That isn’t to say that everything we experience during childhood becomes a habit, but what we experience with repetition and/or during a heightened state of emotion can stick and forever shape who we become.
We’ll discuss this further in Chapter 5, but as a quick primer, the same brain waves being produced during a deep hypnosis session (theta brain waves) are what we produce almost exclusively under the age of seven. This means we’re in a relative state of hypnosis throughout childhood. It would be difficult to learn how to be human, how to speak, and so on, if we were unable to access our subconscious mind readily. What this also means is the people we perceive to be authority figures during that time of our life (parents, guardians, older siblings, teachers) have an even greater influence on our overall subconscious programming. Jill’s story is a perfect example of this.
I was taught throughout my studies in hypnotherapy that approximately one third of our developed habits are a direct rebellion against our parents (guardian or most dominant authority figure in our life), and two thirds of our developed habits are a result of mimicking our parents. We either rebel or mimic, and our subconscious mind doesn’t know any different path than to either be the same as our parents or to be the exact opposite of them.
An interesting component of the power of suggestion is that beliefs and habits are absorbed more readily when the person making the suggestion is perceived to be an authority figure. In hypnosis, there tends to be a correlation between efficacy and just how much the client views the hypnotherapist as an expert. This led to the development of “Authoritarian” or “Paternal” styles of hypnotherapy, which included the hypnotherapist employing tools to place them in the dominant position. For example, a hypnotist would ask someone to change the position he or she is seated in or touch the client in a way that shows dominance, or would shout such commands as “Sleep!”—techniques which are ridiculous and unnecessary. Eventually, this method gave way to what we now refer to as Permissive or Ericksonian hypnosis (largely developed by and popularized by Milton Erickson). This method is referred to as the “maternal” style of hypnosis.
This authority figure mechanism is why in hypnotherapy school we are advised to never work with our own parents. Parents would need to overcome a deeply embedded belief that they themselves are the authority figure in the relationship and would need to give way to a new belief that their child is the expert. For example, even if my mother is proud of me for being an expert in my field, to her, I will always be her little girl. Therefore, any suggestions I make during a hypnosis session will be seen through this lens, potentially rendering the session less effective. The inverse is true when we view someone to have a great deal of authority. For example, when a doctor flippantly gives the worst-case scenario to a patient with no regard for the vulnerability of that patient’s subconscious mind. “It could be cancer” versus “we need to do more tests right away” still conveys urgency without sending the client into a tailspin that could ultimately result in further health issues simply due to panic, worry, and obsession over an inconclusive diagnosis. Even simple changes from “You may feel pressure” to “This might hurt a little” can change everything. In the former phrase, the patient is prepared for a procedure with words that are relatively soothing, whereas the second option causes the subconscious mind to hear “Hurt, hurt, hurt.” Then, the body instantly tenses up. In summary, the way we perceive authority figures in our life, especially when we’re children, deeply impacts the development of our habits.
The Third “E”: Entertainment
The third primary source of programming is entertainment, which is really divided into two categories: media and advertising. We’re all aware of how powerful and impactful the media can be. However, in the context of this conversation, some of the most common ramifications of the media on the subconscious mind have to do with our devastating self-criticism.
In a fascinating yet heartbreaking study, Harvard professor Anne E. Becker measured the effect of television on cultural norms. As you read the results, keep in mind that television was only catching on in Fiji in 1995 and that a decade before, even electricity was rare. As reported at thoughtmedicine.com:
The results were startling. In 1995, without television, girls in Fiji appeared to be free of the eating disorders common in the West. But by 1998, after just a few years of sexy soap operas and seductive commercials, 11.3 percent of adolescent girls reported they at least once had purged to lose weight. To illustrate this rapid transformation of ideals, Becker quoted from the 1998 interviews. “I want their body,” said one girl of the Western shows she watched. “I want their size.” By the glow of television, young girls in Fiji “got the idea they could resculpt their lives,” said Becker—but they also began to “think of themselves as poor and fat.… [In 2007] Becker found that disordered eating habits were “alive and well in Fiji,” with 45 percent of girls reporting they had purged in the last month. (In some cases, they got traditional herbal purgatives from their mothers.)3
On the other side of the globe, my wise, wonderful Nana shared with me a similar experience. At the time of writing this my Nana is as bright and beautiful as ever at one hundred years old and I love asking her about what life was like “back in her day.” She told me that when she was a child, she tended to be very happy, in large part due to the fact that she wasn’t aware of what she didn’t have. Born in 1917 in Belfast, Ireland, she didn’t see glossy magazines telling her what her body “should” look like. Without television, there weren’t any advertisements for gadgets, clothes, houses, and vacations to show her all that her family couldn’t afford. Everyone wore clothes from the same stores and had the same simple toys. The people who had more lived in an entirely different part of town and went to different schools. So, the crushing weight of constant comparison and coming up short didn’t exist for her, and her subconscious wasn’t shaped by lack. Of course, Nana had her fair share of challenges growing up during extremely turbulent times in Northern Ireland, but the bombardment of advertising leading to self-criticism wasn’t a part of it.
Today, the concept of beauty has become askew in a way that’s harmful to many girls and women. Most of my weight-loss clients hold themselves up to photos of supermodels in magazines, which have been Photoshopped for hours. Media also shapes what we believe is possible as far as overcoming our existing challenges. Movies continue to portray stereotypes, and we unconsciously compare ourself to them. Luckily, this is all common knowledge now, yet it doesn’t diminish how destructive these influences are.
Movies themselves are kind of hypnotic, aren’t they? When you watch a movie, you bypass the critical factor of the mind, which is one of the definitions of hypnosis. For example, someone finds a magic potion and drinks it and now that person can fly. The conscious mind would say, “That’s impossible! I’ve never seen someone fly before.” Yet you suspend your disbelief and go along with what you’re seeing because you know anything can happen in a movie. The problem is that the subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imaginary. It also can’t tell the difference between real emotions and “fake” emotions, such as crying as you watch a tragic movie scene versus crying during a real-life tragedy. To the subconscious, your heart is broken, and you’re crying.
Similarly, the subconscious can’t tell the difference between real and perceived stress. When you’re about to be actually attacked or you’re simply panicking about getting a report in to your boss on time, your subconscious just perceives it as “stress, fight, flight, or freeze time.”
At the movies, you’re looking up at a screen, and when your eyes become tired, the rest of your body relaxes. This is one of the reasons that some old-school hypnotists used to use a swinging pocket watch. While watching the watch swing back and forth, the eyes tire quickly, which relaxes the body quickly, making it easier to enter into the meditative state of hypnosis. Unfortunately, the swinging watch was used in so many movies and posters with a creepy, cloaked dude leaning over a starry-eyed waif of a woman that the swinging watch has its own bizarre connotations today. Luckily for us, swinging watches aren’t a requirement. Looking up at a diagonal has the same tiring effect. Just think about sitting in church and looking up at the pulpits.
So, during a movie, you’re looking up at the screen, and you’re in a state of focused attention. A common definition of hypnotherapy is: “a relaxed, focused state of concentration.” When you’re watching a movie, you’re not thinking about the fact that your taxes are due in two days. You’re completely immersed in the story. Then, when the credits start to roll, you start to think about all the things you still have to do for the rest of the day. It’s almost instantaneous that the hypnotic state is over.
Anecdotally, another example is “highway hypnosis,” where we enter a relaxed, focused state of concentration while driving on the highway. Before we know it, we’re sitting in our driveway asking, “How did I get here so fast?”
When considering that we’re in a hypnotic state, therefore more suggestible, while at the movies or watching TV, it could give us pause to consider what we’re ingesting for hours on end. Imagine a six-year-old you watching every movie and television show. What would you censor yourself from, especially now knowing what you do about the suggestible theta state of that age?
In an instant, we can change how we perceive ourself, how we perceive our world, and how we shape our hopes and dreams by changing what entertainment we spend time watching. What a wonderful, drastic shift there would be in our society if more positive entertainment was developed by conscious creatives. While it may seem daunting to ask this of Hollywood, every time you purchase a movie ticket, you vote for what you want to see. Every time you contribute to ratings by how much and how long you watch a Netflix show, you’re voting. Consider the impact these programs and movies have on your subconscious beliefs, and allow that to impact where you spend your money and your time.
The second portion of “entertainment” is advertising, which typically reaches us through the use of media. It’s important to recognize the persuasive power of advertising companies. We clearly saw this in the 1990s, when tobacco companies were banned from advertising to teenagers. Prior to the ban, the advertising subliminally targeted teen consumers with bright colors on the cigarette packets, flavored cigarettes that adolescents preferred, and language that teens used. To varying degrees advertisers have always used sex and the prospect of sex to sell just about any product available on the market. Commercials of women, in bikinis or short shorts, eating hamburgers for fast-food franchises or falling in love with men who wear certain colognes are the norm.
This advertising has proven to be successful because it affects the subconscious mind. Does that mean we’re being brainwashed every time we see a commercial so that we run out like zombies to purchase the product? No. Again, hypnosis is only truly effective when you want the result.
According to Psychology Today, “While a surprising number of people today still subscribe to the idea that subliminal advertising can make us do things against our will, that’s largely just a myth. Research has shown that subliminal ads and other stimuli designed to influence us outside our awareness can do so, but not very powerfully.”4
That’s one of the reasons that marketing to the wrong person is so expensive. That person doesn’t want the result you’re promising, so those ad dollars are flushed down the drain. Let’s say you reach your target demo head on, but they’re still being bombarded by your competitors’ ads. Advertising companies know it takes a long time for those neurons that fire together to also wire together and make the association that purchasing the product will release the greatest surge of serotonin. It’s why customer service is so important. One emotionally charged bad experience causes a new strong neural pathway and a customer lost forever. It isn’t that we have to fear making purchases without any willpower, but we reclaim our power when we recognize we’re being targeted and that advertising companies want us to feel negatively about ourself so that we’ll buy more stuff to fill the void. Buying into their messages about what perfect legs look like in no way serves us. It’s time to learn how to Close Your Eyes, Get Free so that this self-criticism stops!
Luckily, with the use of hypnosis, we can speed up the process of creating new habits and breaking down old ones. Let’s get started with this chapter’s script.
Self-Hypnosis Process: Self-Worth
I suggest reading through the following directions two or three times before beginning so that you will be able to follow along easily. Remember, there are video tutorials and audio recordings available to you at www.CloseYourEyesGetFree.com that will help you to become a self-hypnosis pro in no time at all.
• Begin by making note of your starting stress level. 10 = a full-blown panic attack and 0 = zero stress, no stress at all, the most relaxed a person can possibly be. Remember this number.
• Sit in a comfortable chair and place your feet flat on the ground, rest your hands gently in your lap.
• With your spine straight but comfortable, take 4 deep, slow breaths, inhaling through the nose for 4 counts and exhaling out the nose for 8 counts.
• Close your eyes and imagine gentle roots growing from the bottom of your feet down into the center of the Earth, grounding you.
• With your eyes closed, count down from 10 to 1, saying “I am going deeper and deeper” after each number: Ten, I am going deeper and deeper. Nine, I am going deeper and deeper. Eight, I am going deeper and deeper. Seven, I am going deeper and deeper. Six, I am going deeper and deeper. Five, I am going deeper and deeper. Four, I am going deeper and deeper. Three, I am going deeper and deeper. Two, I am going deeper and deeper. One, I am going deeper and deeper…
• Take another nice, deep, letting-go breath and repeat silently in your mind or out loud the following hypno-affirmations three times each: Every day in every way, I love myself more and more. Every day in every way, I am more and more proud of myself. Every day in every way, I am more and more kind to myself. I love myself more and more. I am more and more proud of myself. I am more and more kind to myself. I love myself. I am proud of myself. I am kind to myself.
• Take another nice, deep, letting-go breath and with your eyes closed imagine being kind and loving towards yourself for the rest of your day until you curl up into bed tonight. Pretend in your mind that you can see yourself thinking positive loving thoughts about yourself, imagine yourself smiling at your reflection in a mirror, or congratulating yourself on a job well done while at work, or gifting yourself a mani-pedi, etc.
• Once you’ve spent 1–2 minutes imagining the rest of your day filled with kind and loving thoughts and actions towards yourself, put a gentle smile on your lips.
• Open your eyes, stretch your arms over the top of your head, and say, “Yes!”
• Notice your new number on the scale (remember 0 = zero stress, the most relaxed you can be) and congratulate yourself on how quickly you improved your state!
Here is a simple summary for the process in case you need to peek your eyes open at any point for a quick reminder:
• Notice starting stress level from 0 to 10.
• 4 deep breaths.
• Grow roots.
• Count down saying, “I am going deeper and deeper.”
• Repeat the hypno-affirmations “Every day in every way, I love myself more and more. Every day in every way, I am more and more proud of myself. Every day in every way, I am more and more kind to myself. I love myself more and more. I am more and more proud of myself. I am more and more kind to myself. I love myself. I am proud of myself. I am kind to myself” three times each.
• Imagine being kind and loving towards yourself for the rest of the day.
• Smile, open your eyes, “Yes!”
• Notice new number on the scale of 0 to 10.
• Congratulate yourself for improving your state so quickly!
In this more advanced self-hypnosis process you may have noticed that the hypno-affirmations become shorter over time and we added the step of growing roots. Let’s take a look at why:
Why do we shorten these hypno-affirmations over time?
For most of you, repeating “I love myself” will be at the very least a slightly jarring new experience. For many of you, repeating “I love myself” for the first time could actually be a very upsetting experience because the pain in your chest that accompanies it will indicate just how much it isn’t true. Most people think negative, even hateful thoughts about themselves all day long. To immediately switch that up and begin affirming “I love myself, I am proud of myself, I am kind to myself” would result in the loud blaring of our BS detectors, which is not what we want. Hypnosis can certainly be aspirational but it does need to be at least moderately believable in order to be effective. A fantastic mechanism to begin gently shifting our thoughts is to add “every day in every way, I am 
more and more.” This way the subconscious just has to believe that we are learning to love ourself, we are learning to be proud of ourself and so on. And simply because of the fact that you are reading this book, you know this is true! That being said, repeating “Every day in every way, I love myself more and more” is a mouthful as opposed to the more concise and power-packed “I love myself.” In this self-hypnosis script we begin with what is most believable to the subconscious mind and over time transition into what is both more powerful and easier to remember. If you find yourself having a lot of resistance to these particular hypno-affirmations for increasing self-worth, stick with the “Every day in every way, I am… more and more” version until you feel comfortable with them, and only then move on to the more concise version. Eventually you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror and say out loud, “I love you exactly as you are” without flinching, knowing you mean it, and having your subconscious support you in that powerful belief.
Why do we imagine gentle roots growing from the bottom of our feet down into the center of the Earth?
I find that the vast majority of my clients spend countless hours on the phone and in front of brightly lit computer or tablet screens, shuttling between home and the office day after day, with very little time spent outdoors, connecting to nature. Simply walking on grass can have a very grounding, calming effect on our nervous system, and what’s the next best thing to actually getting outside and digging our toes into the ground? Imagining it! Those roots are simply sending a similar message to our brain to relax that we would experience if we were genuinely outdoors. This imagery connects us to nature, and grounds us in a lovely, calming way that facilitates an even deeper experience of the theta state.
Next Steps
Excellent! You have completed your self-hypnosis process for increasing self-worth!
• Now, go ahead and visit www.CloseYourEyesGetFree .com to access this chapter’s longer hypnosis recording. Pop in your headphones, sit back, relax, and Close Your Eyes, Get Free.
• After you listen to the recording, please let me know how it went! Using the hashtag #CloseYourEyesGetFree on Instagram or Twitter, message me @GraceSmithTV your starting and ending numbers on the stress scale. By using the hashtag, you’ll get to see how other readers are improving right alongside you, plus I will have an opportunity to personally cheer you on!
• Move on to Chapter 3 and continue to look out for all of the wonderful benefits you’re already starting to receive as a result of learning the power of hypnosis.