Chapter 9
The Root, Trunk, and Limb: Overcoming Procrastination, Overeating, and Other Common Issues
Ashley had wanted to become a mother at a much younger age than most of her girlfriends. She would always say, “Bringing happy babies into the world is the fastest way to a happy humanity!” She always thought she would be a mom by age twenty-three. She felt that was the perfect age. She saw the number twenty-three everywhere for years; it seemed to follow her. She thought this was a wonderful confirmation that she was meant to become a young mom. Well, she felt this way all the way up until her twenty-fourth birthday, which she spent without a partner and without a baby. It was then that the first flicker of doubt came into her mind. “If I was wrong about this, what else was I wrong about?”
Ashley’s twenties seemed to drag on with few significant relationships and nothing to write home about. On her thirtieth birthday, she looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize herself anymore. The vision she had of herself for so many years and the vision others had of her simply had not come to fruition. Her eyes were resigned, and her lips were tight. Her identity had been in crisis for so long that she finally said, “Enough. I give up.”
At this age, all of her friends who had wanted to “wait until I’m older” were starting to have children of their own. She put on a strong face at all of the baby showers, but it was difficult for her. With every passing day, she felt herself retreating, becoming a bit more numb as it was easier to just paste on a smile and feel nothing. She tried to build a new identity for herself by teaching yoga but nothing was clicking like the idea of motherhood. She knew she was drifting through life instead of living it, but she didn’t know how to change. One day, when she was setting up in the yoga studio, a pregnant woman came into the studio and asked whether this was where the HypnoBirthing class was taking place. “HypnoBirthing?” asked Ashley. “No, it isn’t, but that sounds interesting! What is that?”
The woman laughed. “Oh, I’m not even really sure. But my sister-in-law took this class before her third baby, and she said it’s criminal that it isn’t mandatory at all hospitals. She said having her third baby was one of the most enjoyable experiences of her life. She’s really not a dramatic person or a hippie or anything, so it was really weird. She’s actually an attorney and doesn’t like anything ‘woo-woo’ but my sister-in-law described her birth as ‘peaceful and beautiful!’ Can you believe it? She’s so convinced all moms-to-be need to take this class that she gave it to me as my baby shower gift. So, here I am, lost, looking for the class!”
As Ashley listened to the woman, she felt something she hadn’t felt in the longest time. Her cheeks were flushed, her ears felt tingly, chills ran down her arms a few times, and she felt as though her heart was going to burst with excitement! After a quick Google search on her phone, Ashley found out that the correct yoga studio was a few blocks away.
Ashley offered to walk the woman to the class so that she would be sure to find it, but also because she wanted to find out more. When they entered the classroom, Ashley quickly found the instructor, told her she taught yoga, and asked whether she could audit the class. The instructor welcomed her warmly and told her where she could find a seat.
The instructor began by asking who there had never experienced hypnotherapy before, and 90 percent of the class raised their hand. The instructor joked how the prospect of giving birth seemed to have a way of inviting even the most skeptical of women to sign up for something they never would have considered before. Everyone laughed, and the room palpably relaxed.
As Ashley looked around, she was thrilled to see the diversity of the class. Everyone came with a “birthing partner,” yet every partnership looked completely different. Some families had a mother and father, some had two mothers, some birthing partners were the mother of the soon-to-be mother, and some were dear friends. She felt it was a beautiful testament to all of the different meanings “family” can have.
The instructor then said, “Who here thinks we’re guaranteeing you a pain-free birth?” A few people looked around the room, and someone in the back cracked, “If that’s the case, I owe you more money.” The room erupted in laughter, and the instructor said, “I want to clear this up. Every birthing experience is different. Every mother is different. Every baby is different. What HypnoBirthing does is teach us how to relax into giving birth, to breathe through a process that’s been in our DNA since the time when women were giving birth in forests without any help. Now, I’m not recommending you go pick out a comfy spot on the mountainside to have your baby. Modern developments in birthing centers, home births, and hospital births are wonderful so long as they meet your preferences. The point is, you already know how to do this, and your body already knows how to do this. The simple truth is, when we feel afraid, we tighten up. When we tighten up, the process becomes painful. When we feel pain, we become even more afraid and tighten up even more… and the cycle continues.
“In HypnoBirthing, we teach you how to relax, relax, relax, breathe, to trust your body, to trust your baby, to trust yourself. When you relax, you open, open, open, making it easier and often faster for your baby to come into the world. Do some HypnoBirthing mamas report a pain-free birth? Yes, but not all. Through all our case studies, we tend to find the word pressure is a much more common description of the sensations HypnoBirthing mothers feel, rather than pain. HypnoBirthing is about returning to what’s natural. It’s about empowering you to make the right decisions for you as you develop your birth plan. It’s about teaching you to work with your health-care providers to meet your needs. To be clear this is not an ‘us vs. them’ situation where we’re the crunchy-granola radicals and they’re the evil medical staff who wants to force C-sections on all unsuspecting mothers. Hospitals, nurses, and doctors save lives every day, and maternal mortality rates in the Western world are lower than ever before, largely due to advances in medicine. At the same time, not every woman needs Pitocin to induce labor so that the shift change can occur on time. Does this happen? Yes. Does this happen at every hospital? No. It’s all about being an educated advocate for yourself so that you can build wonderful rapport with the people who will be by your side, keeping you safe, happy, calm, and open during this experience.”
Ashley was hooked. After the class she ran up to the instructor and asked, “When is the next certification course? I would love to be there!”
“You’re in luck!” the instructor answered. “The next class is just twenty-three days from now.” Ashley broke out into a massive smile as she felt happy chills running down her arms. Maybe one day, she’d have a child of her own, maybe not, but either way, she could be an advocate for mothers and their babies. She could teach them how to experience a deeper connection and how to choose relaxation and openness over the fear. In short, her dreams were finally coming true.
I wanted to provide a story about HypnoBirthing, created by the brilliant and brave hypno-pioneer Marie “Mickey” Mongan, because it is one of the most powerful uses of hypnosis and it is one of the areas I am most passionate about. We discussed earlier the use of hypnosis instead of anesthesia for dental procedures and cancer treatments; now with that in mind, allow your imagination to run wild with just how effective hypnosis could be during childbirth. A calm, peaceful birth is possible. As my HypnoBirthing instructor and mentor, Dr. Vivian Keeler, told me,
What if the day you give birth is the best day of your life? Imagine looking forward to a birthing experience that is filled with peace, comfort, and joy rather than dreading a birth filled with the stress, fear, and pain that we have been conditioned to believe is inevitable. There is more to giving birth than just the physical act of getting the baby out. There is an emotional and spiritual aspect that far outweighs the physical. Giving birth without fear and surrounded by love and calm results in a feeling of powerful accomplishment and infinite joy. All of this and more is possible with HypnoBirthing.
I’ve always felt that the lack of widespread access to hypnotherapy is a human rights issue and I believe that bringing babies into the world might be where this issue is the most acute. If you or your partner are bringing a baby into the world anytime soon, I highly recommend spending some time researching HypnoBirthing and watching a handful of success story videos. You might want to keep a box of tissues nearby; happy parents with happy, healthy babies always set off my waterworks!
Dissecting the Tree
Something as profound as pregnancy and childbirth can naturally bring a supercharged magnifying glass to all areas of one’s life including outward habits, day-to-day stress, and subconscious beliefs. It is a crucial time to take stock of the conditioning that has led us to where we are, and the conditioning we will need to become the kind of parents we want to be. It’s why I’ve taken the time to further explain the phenomenal tool of HypnoBirthing in this chapter. That being said, while pregnancy is the perfect time to Close Your Eyes and Get Free on a regular basis, you don’t need to be going through something quite so life altering to be able to alter your life. Whatever your life circumstances, you can choose to pick up that magnifying glass, look more closely at your life than ever before, and begin the journey toward the best version of yourself, today.
Over the years I’ve developed the concept that there are root, trunk, and limb “topics.” We will now dig into what these mean. This is a system I have devised that makes the progression of transformation clearer to all involved. Put simply,
• Limb topics are the issues we can see. They are the physical manifestation of bad habits, such as smoking and overeating.
• Trunk topics make limb issues worse. When a trunk topic is exacerbated, so, too, are the limb topics, such as when increased stress and anxiety result in more smoking or eating.
• Root topics we can’t see, but they are the puppeteer holding the strings. Heal the root issue, such as lack of self-love and lack of self-worth, and the rest of the tree heals, too.
I approach the result my client is looking for by first determining which limb topics are holding my clients back most. Limb topics are the result of a root topic. They’re the physical manifestation of a problem we can’t see. Common limb topics include:
• Smoking
• Nail-biting
• Overeating
• Unhealthy eating (not in need of weight loss, per se, but in need of healthier food choices)
• Procrastination
Root topics go deep. They’re “unseen,” and they impact everything we do, think, and feel. They’re the neurons that have been firing together for a long time and are wired together. Their connections run as deep as the roots of a redwood tree. With their reach, they cover proverbial miles inside your brain. In my experience, there are three primary root topics, and they’re all interconnected:
• Lack of self-love
• Lack of self-confidence
• Lack of self-worth
While all root topics can be summed up by lack of self-love, I do find it helpful to segment them out into confidence, love, and worthiness because it’s easier for us to see them this way. For example one might draw the conclusions, “I didn’t ask for that promotion because of a lack of self-confidence” and “I can see that I continually dated people who put me down because of my lack of self-worth” more easily than “I can see that I overate because instead of wanting to nourish a body I loved, I was trying to hurt a body I hated.” Of course, these actions are all subconscious until we reveal them through the process of hypnotherapy.
Prior to hypnosis, the answers are more along the lines of “I didn’t ask for the promotion because I didn’t have time to update my resume,” or “I dated that guy because he was so nice to me in the beginning and took such an interest in XYZ, which my ex never did, so I figured they were nothing alike,” or “I overate because I loved food, and my job required me to take clients out for dinner all the time.” The lies you tell yourself are simply a mechanism of rationalization. They’re not actually why we do what we do.
In this chapter, we’re going to go over the primary factors I’ve found in my work relating to each of the most popular “limb” and “root” topics. Before we dive into those, however, there are a few things, such as negative thinking, which are not so obviously a root or limb topic. I call that a “trunk” topic, because negative thinking is really the conduit through which a root topic becomes a limb topic. Two other very important trunk topics are stress and anxiety. When our stress levels go up, the topics in our roots manifest more rapidly in our limbs. Everyone has some combination of the same root topics, and everyone has the same trunk topics to varying degrees. But everyone’s limb topics express themselves in a unique way.
We are now going to work our way backward, just as we did with the four steps to mental freedom, because it’s easier to see and recognize limb topics than trunk and root topics. The latter two are buried deep “underground” in our subconscious mind, so we’ll visit those last.
How to Use This Chapter
In this chapter I will cover a few of the most popular limb topics that my clients have sought hypnotherapy for; however, there are literally hundreds of other limb topics that I will not get to cover here. Please visit www.CloseYourEyesGetFree.com to see the additional resources available for topics you may need help with that we didn’t have the space for in this book. In this chapter I will also cover the core trunk and root topics. While I believe you could benefit from reading the entire chapter in full simply because something that might not apply to you may apply to a loved one or colleague, I understand that you’re busy and time is your most precious commodity! If you need to, by all means skip the sections that do not apply to you and focus solely on the sections of the tree that most need your focus and attention.
Limb Topics
Let’s begin with the most common request I have. Now, this is not the number one reason clients come to see me in the first place, but once someone is working with me privately or have joined Grace Space, this is the topic that comes up most frequently when I ask, “What are all the areas you’d like to work on?” Procrastination is almost always on the list.
Procrastination
The world we live in is becoming filled with more and more distractions by the day. Esteemed leaders in business have already said that our ability to focus is the highest predictor of success in the approaching decades. This is because so few people will be able to do it. This means future generations will be less able to focus than millennials. The fact of the matter is, an ability to focus will be the slight edge, the margin separating the elite performers from everyone else.
Isn’t that interesting? That is not at all the message I grew up with. In Chapter 2 we discussed what I believe are the biggest factors to our subconscious programming as children, which I call the “three E’s,” but for now, suffice it to say that my “Entertainment” and “Environment” inputs did not train my brain to think focusing on a single task was the coveted skill I would need to cultivate in order to excel at life. While growing up, the images of “success” I remember from movies and TV were of impeccably dressed people who were multitasking like robots, getting everything done without breaking a sweat. I grew up knowing that admissions counselors at the colleges I wanted to go to the most didn’t want me to focus on and excel at one thing. Oh, no. They wanted us to have great grades, to be great at at least one sport, to play a classical musical instrument in a way that would make a high school band director cry (Mom, why wasn’t I allowed to get an oboe in fifth grade again?), to be running every club, to have perfect SAT scores, to star in the school play, and to have a letter of recommendation from a previous president of a small nation.
I didn’t have all those things, but the pressure of knowing I was supposed to excel in all those areas did have me running around like a maniac, going from club meeting to club meeting and extracurricular activity after extracurricular activity.
The conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time. The subconscious is taking in everything that happens all around you, processing it and storing it—the smells in the room, what the people behind you are talking about, the brightness of the Kindle screen, the sound of the pages turning, and so on. But your conscious mind, the one you’re using right now to read this book, the one you use throughout the day to get your work done, can only focus on one thing at a time. That means every time you’re focused on a project and your phone dings with an update from Instagram, when you take a “second” to look at it, your progress could be derailed for as much as ninety minutes.
Now, that’s not necessarily procrastination. It could just be an unintentional distraction that threw you off course repeatedly. Either way though, you can say sayonara to that deadline.
Distractions don’t just keep us from accomplishing our goals, dreams, and deadlines; they’re expensive. According to CBSNews .com, “A recent study by research firm Basex puts the ‘cost of unnecessary interruptions’ in terms of lost productivity and innovation at a shocking $650 billion. Merlin Mann blogged about the cost of the e-mail ‘ding!’; that little sound supposedly costs the U.S. economy $70 billion a year, according to the Guardian.”1
So, even if we don’t “have” procrastination, as if it were a disease one could catch (it isn’t), we all have distractions, and they’re mounting. The result of both giving into procrastination and giving into distractions is the same—getting less done than we wanted. In a day, this can add up to frustration or disappointment in ourself. In a lifetime, this can add up to deep regret and the memory of thousands of hours spent hunched over a screen.
If the result is the same, what makes procrastination different from giving into distractions? Motive. Procrastination is not a sign of laziness. It’s a fear of failure.
The fear of failure drives so much of our lack of initial effort. Because the subconscious wants to keep us safe, the underlying possibility of failure can be enough to keep us in our comfort zone, especially once giving into that behavior becomes a habit.
Overcoming procrastination requires that a number of different areas of the subconscious be transformed or reprogrammed. For example:
• Train yourself to begin with the biggest, most important task of the day.
• Bring greater awareness to the habit, and turn the negative “automatic” switches to “manual.”
• Reestablish what feels good. Instead of the distraction prompting the good feeling, link accomplishing the task with the boost of serotonin.
• Reestablish the view of yourself. Reclaim your self-worth! Program yourself to be your number one cheerleader.
• Learn to anchor taking action now, getting started now, and ending self-deception.
Instead of placing our self-hypnosis process at the end of this chapter, we’ll add it here since Procrastination is by far the most pervasive issue I’ve seen to date.
Self-Hypnosis Process: Break Through Procrastination
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.
• Imagine a color you love flowing in through the top of your head, all the way through your body, out the bottoms of your feet, and down those roots, down into the center of the Earth.
• Bring all of your focus and awareness and attention to the palms of your hands. Perhaps you can feel your palms tingling, perhaps you can feel your heartbeat in your hands, perhaps you notice a sensation of expansion in your hands. Just notice and breathe for a few moments (you can choose whatever length of time feels best, about 30 seconds is my personal favorite).
• 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…
• (Optional Step) Next, take a nice, deep letting-go breath, open your eyes, and, if you are comfortably able to do so, pick up this book or tablet and lift it up in the air so that your eyes are reading at an upward diagonal angle. Simply find the line where a wall meets the ceiling in your home. That is approximately where you want the center of your book to be—this does not need to be exact. If you are looking up at a diagonal, you are doing this correctly. Read the following hypno-affirmations at this upward diagonal angle until you have memorized them: I am safe, I am calm, I choose to be here. I easily complete the biggest item on my to-do list first. I am in the zone.
• Once you have memorized the hypno-affirmations, put the book back down and rest your hands comfortably in your lap.
• With your eyes closed, repeat the following hypno-affirmations you just memorized either silently in your mind or out loud, 10 times: I am safe, I am calm, I choose to be here. I easily complete the biggest item on my to-do list first. I am in the zone.
• Take another nice, deep, letting-go breath and with your eyes still closed, imagine being more productive than you have ever been until you curl up into bed tonight. See, feel, and experience yourself knocking items off your to-do list one by one. Have a smile on your lips as you imagine this.
• Once you’ve spent 1–2 minutes imagining the rest of your day being more productive than ever before, imagine the same color as before flowing in through the top of your head, all the way through your body, out the bottoms of your feet, and down those roots into the center of the Earth.
• 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 of 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.
• Take 4 deep breaths.
• Grow roots.
• Color.
• Notice your palms.
• Count down from 10 to 1 saying, “I am going deeper and deeper.”
• Hold the book on an upward diagonal angle to memorize the hypno-affirmations.
• Repeat the hypno-affirmations “I am safe, I am calm, I choose to be here. I easily complete the biggest item on my to-do list first. I am in the zone” 10 times.
• Imagine being more productive than ever before.
• Color.
• Smile, open your eyes, say, “Yes!”
• Notice new number on the scale of 0 to 10.
• Congratulate yourself for improving your state so quickly!
Smoking
There tends to be two kinds of smoker, as far as the subconscious mind is concerned. First, there’s the one who connects smoking with something or someone else that’s perceived as positive by the brain, such as a cool actor, a beloved grandparent, or a favorite teacher. This is becoming less and less common as the public perception of a “smoker” has taken a 180-degree turn in recent decades.
A hipster yoga teacher friend of mine living in Brooklyn coughed directly in a smoker’s face in retaliation to the person’s secondhand smoke and posted a video of it online. The post received so many likes so quickly that I was genuinely surprised. Just a few years ago, when I was living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, all of my friends still smoked. Now, rather than smoking being perceived as “cool,” “badass,” “dangerous,” or “sexy,” it is perceived more often as a gross habit that controls the addict. That’s a shift in perception, a massive reframe that was decades, if not centuries,2 in the making.
The second most common subconscious reason for smoking is to “protect” us from something else. It doesn’t make any conscious sense. Our subconscious rarely does before we start using hypnotherapy. But the idea is that if the subconscious links smoking with anything that’s very important to our survival, it will continue smoking. For example, if smoking is linked to stress relief in the brain, such as getting out of the toxic office environment to go out and get some fresh air and some downtime, to take some deep inhalations and exhalations (even if they’re filled with tar and carcinogens), then the brain will view smoking as a “good” thing. In my case, when I had my quit smoking hypnotherapy session, the subconscious “smoker” in me thought it was keeping me safe by making me look tough and unapproachable so that I could walk down the street in New York City without being bothered.
When we access the subconscious mind through the theta brain wave state of hypnosis and use something called parts therapy, where we can speak to different parts of the self, as if it is another person entirely, we very quickly learn the motive behind the continued existence of “The Smoker.”
Once we understand why the subconscious believes that smoking is somehow helping, it can be as easy a conversation as explaining the physical, mental, emotional, and financial consequences of smoking to the subconscious mind. My favorite phrase is “I know you’re trying to help me, and I know you’re trying to protect me. But the truth is that you’re hurting me.” When the subconscious “hears” this, it takes the message seriously. After establishing how smoking cigarettes is worse for you than any perceived benefit, however, it’s important to replace the habit with a new one.
My favorite is to replace smoking with drinking water. Many people have a fear of gaining weight if they quit smoking. By replacing the smoking with the act of sipping water, they’re still satisfying the hand-to-mouth habit, but instead of food entering into the body, it’s cool, clean, clear water, which has the added benefit of flushing out toxins.
We can take it a step further and anchor the act of drinking water to the feeling of calm, relaxation, and relief. A lot of smokers perceive their habit as a mechanism for stress relief. In fact, it’s the opposite. The mental and physical addiction to nicotine creates more stress. Have you ever seen a nonsmoker dying to get through customs after an international flight, to be able to light up?
By anchoring the act of sipping water to the feeling of stress relief, you’re taking care of the perceived (albeit incorrect) link in the brain to smoking and stress relief, while satisfying the desire for the hands to be brought up to the mouth multiple times per day.
Depending on how badly clients want to quit when they arrive, a few “cut-down” sessions can be really helpful before the actual “quit” session.
For example, clients can determine their number on the scale from 0 to 10.
0 = “I still love smoking. Nothing bothers me about it except my family/friends want me to quit, and I’m tired of them bothering me about it/tired of worrying them.” At this stage, there’s no internal desire to quit.
5 = “I want to quit for financial and health reasons, but I still enjoy smoking.”
10 = “I hate the smell, I hate the taste, I hate how expensive it is, and I hate myself every time I light up. I’m SO DONE.”
If you find yourself at a 5 or below, a few cut-down sessions will help tremendously. If you’re a 7+ on the scale, you can likely go straight into a few quit sessions and see lasting success. Again, hypnotherapy isn’t magic. It isn’t about seeing if you can overcome decades of programming in one sixty-minute session. It’s about having as many sessions as you need to see the results you want.
On average, my clients have stopped smoking with all cravings gone after three to four sessions, typically a combination of both cut-down and quit sessions. This means some quit with fewer sessions, and some require more. You may need one, two, five, six, or ten sessions to quit and you might need a session or two down the line to keep you on the straight and narrow. In the grand scheme, that’s a very small investment of time and money to be free of an addiction that’s causing so much unnecessary pain.
When I first started out has a hypnotherapist, a friend of mine told me he had been to a hypnotist who only provided sessions for smoking cessation. The hypnotist guaranteed you’d only need one session or your money back. My friend paid $500 for the session, stopped smoking completely (he had been smoking a pack a day for ten years), and then three months later, had a cigarette at a party when he was completely wasted.
His response to the experience? “It didn’t work. I guess I can’t be hypnotized.”
Is this true?
No! He stopped smoking completely for three full months. That’s ninety days of no smoking, and then a relapse while drunk.
What this means is the following:
• The hypnotherapist who marketed himself as a one-session wonder made clients believe it had to work in one session, which is false.
• Even with a three-month success rate, the client believed he couldn’t be hypnotized, when he clearly had been.
• The effects of hypnosis target your subconscious mind, and your conscious mind helps to keep you on track. When you’re impaired through the use of drugs or alcohol, the parts of the brain that were transformed during hypnotherapy are no longer running the show. Every single “relapse” I have ever encountered with any client of mine, ever, started with alcohol, pot, or another controlled substance.
So, what should you do?
• Have the amount of sessions you need in order to see the results you want. It could be one session, or it could be ten. It will still be faster and more effective than anything else you’ve tried up until this point.
• If you happen to slip at some point in the future, come back and have another session! If you’re going to the gym every day and are seeing your body transform, but then one day, you decide to stay home and eat potato chips and start eating too much regularly again, do you say to yourself, “Oh, I guess the gym doesn’t work”? No! To see the results, you have to work the tool.
• Remember that hypnosis isn’t magic, but it’s likely the most powerful tool for personal transformation that exists today.
Avoid cop-out excuses, such as “I don’t have the money for hypnotherapy sessions.” Here’s some tough love: Guess what? You would have the money if you stopped smoking. Waiting for it to show up before you get the help instead of allocating the funds towards the help now is not serving you. I’ve had weight loss clients mention this, too: “I’d love to have sessions with you, but my food shopping bill is extremely expensive.” How is that ever going to change without reallocating how you’re spending your money up front? If there are other ways for you to stop your habit without investing money in reprogramming your subconscious mind, you probably would have tried them by now. Did they work? Private hypnotherapy sessions are typically the most effective and rapid way to see lasting transformation to subconscious beliefs and habits simply because the sessions are uniquely tailored to you. That said, dozens, if not hundreds, of people have overcome their worst habits by listening to my Grace Space recordings alone. If you live in NYC the monthly cost of Grace Space is the equivalent to 3.3 packs of cigarettes. Getting your financial priorities in order could mean that your life looks drastically different much sooner than you ever thought possible.
In addition, I’ve put a sample Quit Smoking hypnosis recording inside the bonus section of www.CloseYourEyesGetFree.com. Combine this with any of the stress relief self-hypnosis processes found in other chapters and you’ll be well on your way to a smoke-free existence without any additional investment at all. Huzzah!
Overeating/Unhealthy Eating
Weight loss sessions are among the most popular topics within hypnotherapy. I have also found that nearly all of my clients, even those who don’t need to lose a single pound, are very interested in sessions that help them make healthier eating choices throughout the day.
The important thing to remember here is Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate every time he rang a bell. To begin with, he would give his dogs food every time he rang the bell. Eventually, he removed the food altogether, yet the neurons that fired together for so long were wired together to the point that simply the sound of the bell elicited the same reaction that dangling a piece of meat over their cute little fuzzy heads had done.
For all of you foodies, prepare yourself for this section. I use language that may raise an eyebrow at first, but hear me out.
We’re trained to eat absolute garbage from a young age. Food is anything that comes from the earth. It grows in the dirt, grows on trees, and is a natural inhabitant of this planet. Food nourishes our bodies. It’s the fuel for our body machines.
Everything else is poison.
That’s how simple I make it for our subconscious mind during my sessions on this topic. You’re either eating food, or you’re eating poison. Why would I do this? Why would I degrade the preciousness of a child’s colorful birthday cake down to the level of a big pile of bug-attracting poison?
It’s simple! We’ve been trained through birthday parties, graduations, holidays, Grandma’s cookies, and “If you’re a good little boy/girl, I’ll let you have a treat when we get home” to associate sugary, carby, synthetic stuff with “I’m important!! I’m loved! This is the best time of year! I’m a good little kid!!” feelings. It’s Pavlov’s dogs reverse engineered. Instead of taking away the food, we’ve taken away the whistle. Whenever we want to feel as special, happy, and loved as we did when we were given a cupcake for our fifth birthday, we eat piles of lasagne while binge-watching Netflix. Remember when I said the subconscious mind rarely makes sense?
Many eat to feel loved, or because it reminds them of someone they love, because they’re bored, because there’s food in front of them, or because they’ve developed a habit of eating. Do you think a session where I build up the delicious beauty of a Granny Smith apple but still allow room for Granny Smith’s chocolate lava cake will win out in the long run?
My black-and-white approach of food vs. poison works like a charm because the subconscious wants to keep us safe! Before our session, the subconscious “thinks” that setting off those reward centers, the pleasure centers in the brain, with all of that sugar, fat, and salt is helping us, but it isn’t. It’s hurting us. For starters, it’s keeping us fat, diabetic, sad, lethargic, and angry with ourself, which ruins a few other things, such as our productivity, sex life, ability to feel happy naturally, and general health.
If that still sounds too extreme for you because while you learn to make healthier choices and/or lose weight, you still want to leave space for the occasional slice of Key lime pie, take a look at what my client Julia has to say about her experience:
“First, I wanted to stop eating junk food. I’m healthy, fit, and knew that that was not something I wanted in my body. But I seem to have no control over the cravings. Goal 1: dropping junk food. Well, this has been a topic for me forever. After the first session, I began to see my craving thought process interrupted. I wouldn’t just jump into a box of cookies. Instead, I would think about what was triggering that craving and perhaps meditate through it. Now, the first week, I did have some sweets, but not as many and only one day. That’s a success right there! I listened to our session several times during the week—sometimes when I was out on a run. That was a great combination of healthy activity supported by healthy choices.
“The second session included an element of aversion, saying that junk food was poison and helping me to imagine how I needed real food from the earth to nourish my active and stressed body. I have a stubborn little girl streak, and this little girl was part of the narrative of my hypnosis. I was going to help myself by helping my stubborn little girl show herself (and myself) self-compassion by eating yummy, whole foods, and throwing away the junk food. In my hypnosis, I cleaned out all the junk food in my house. When I got home that evening, I did clear out all my junk food!!! Since that second session, I haven’t had any junk food. It’s not that I haven’t had cravings. Instead, I make a loving, healthy choice for myself.
“All this great behavior is happening while at work. I’m working fifteen-hour, very busy, stressful days. But by nourishing my body well, I’m managing the stress, and we hadn’t even done the stress hypnosis yet!!!”
Julia’s story illustrates that once we show our subconscious mind what real food is, it becomes natural to make the loving choice for our body, mind, and life. The voice that says, “I don’t want to give up junk food; I just want to eat less of it” is the mind that’s still hardwired to believe that junk food = reward. When we share the truth with our subconscious mind, that our body is magnificent and deserves to be treated as such, that real food is fuel, and our body deserves only the highest quality of fuel, then saying no to gross stuff cooked up in a lab becomes the obvious thing to do. The sense of deprivation melts away and is replaced by the knowingness of “I deserve better.”
Another example of how our subconscious mind can react to food-related hypnosis was showcased during my segment on CBS’s hit show The Doctors. My wonderful client Karyn completely overcame her addiction to sugar, the root of which was tied to loving moments while baking with her mother as a child. The experience was full of tears and transformation. You can watch the segment and experience one of my favorite weight loss/healthy choices hypnosis recordings by logging into www.CloseYourEyesGetFree.com and selecting Chapter 9. I’ve also included a self-hypnosis script for weight loss in Chapter 10.
Nail-Biting
Nail-biting, oh nail-biting. It’s important that a hypnotherapist never suggests a particular area is “difficult” to overcome because it may be very simple for you to leave nail-biting in the dust. At the same time, different topics tend to require different approaches, as nothing is one-size-fits-all in the subconscious. It’s important to discuss these trends so that clients are empowered to seek out the number of sessions they need rather than assuming, as in the smoking example earlier, that it just “doesn’t work” for them if one session fails to produce the desired end result. Let me put it this way: Many of my colleagues and I have noticed that most other popular hypnotherapy topics tend to see faster and longer-lasting results than obsessive-compulsive behaviors, such as this one.
“For many, biting your nails may seem like just an ugly habit. Recently, psychiatrists are changing the way we will view nail biters.”… “the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) will classify nail biting as an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).”3
Most people are very surprised by this! They assume quitting smoking would be the “hardest” case for hypnotherapists, but why? Now that you’ve quit smoking, the cigarettes are gone from your life. People don’t walk around with an unlit cigarette in their mouth all day, testing to see whether they will light it or not. Once the beliefs have been transformed, it’s actually quite simple to remove the smoking paraphernalia from one’s life, especially since smoking inside public buildings is now illegal. When it comes to weight loss, it’s a little more involved than quitting smoking simply because you still need to eat so as to sustain yourself. We can’t simply throw all food away for good as we would an ashtray. That said, it’s fairly straightforward to throw “poisonous” foods away and to fill your home and lunch bag with foods that nourish your body.
When it comes to nail-biting, our fingers aren’t going anywhere, and there’s always a fresh supply of nails every few days.
In that way, it might be safe to assume that the approach per topic could be determined by how quickly we can distance ourself from all factors related to the habit. An alcoholic is advised to remove all alcohol from the house. Why live with temptation in sight? For the person who doesn’t have that luxury and will forever live attached to “the culprit,” regular “upkeep” sessions are tremendously helpful in staying on track.
Is it possible to stop OCD-related habits altogether with hypnosis? Has it been done? Absolutely! Clients who seek out hypnotherapy for nail-biting, skin picking, pulling out eyelashes, and more have reported lasting results. Similar clients have seen results for weeks or months at a time and simply need to come in for a pick-me-up. Similarly, as long as enough sessions are done, there’s always a measurable improvement and palpable relief for the client.
The story of my student Lisa and her daughter, Emma, is a perfect example of just how powerful hypnotherapy can be for any anxiety-based behavior.
Lisa wrote to me to let me know her daughter was struggling. “Last year, my eleven-year-old daughter Emma’s eyelash pulling was at its worst. She had no eyelashes left, and she was getting small sores on her eyelids from picking at the tiny eyelashes that were trying to grow in. The eyelash pulling had become an even bigger problem than the aesthetic one. She was now feeling worse and worse every time she pulled an eyelash. She continuously told us how she ‘couldn’t stop’ and that she was ‘dumb’ and ‘not normal.’”
Lisa asked me whether I would be able to work with Emma on her self-esteem around pulling her eyelashes, and perhaps even the habit itself. When working with a child, I find it valuable to ask the parent what, in his or her view, a successful outcome would be, and then I ask the child the same. This lets me know early on if their goals are in alignment as sometimes the child isn’t even looking for the result that the parent has booked the session for. I always, always keep the contents of my discussions with clients confidential, and children are no exception, so this is not something I report back to the parent(s), it is simply so that I will know everyone’s point of reference when the work begins and it helps me to manage everyone’s expectations.
Lisa said that her goal was simply to free Emma from the burden of how picking her eyelashes made her feel and that she wasn’t concerned about the habit itself. Emma said that if she went from pulling five to ten eyelashes per day to pulling that many per week, she would consider that a success.
Emma and I then had her first hypnosis session over the phone. I recorded the session for her as it was very positive and instructed her to listen to the recording as often as possible. Lisa wrote to me soon thereafter with the following,
“Within twenty-four hours, Emma started noticing that she wasn’t picking as many eyelashes! I also noticed that when she did pick one, she didn’t seem to feel so bad. And she had just picked one! She usually would pick one, feel bad, and pick more and more. But she would pick just one! She continued to listen to the recording and saw impressive results!” A few months later, Lisa wrote again, “Now, six months later, Emma has some full eyelashes back, and more are growing. But most importantly, her habit doesn’t affect how she feels about herself! She is happy and carefree again and not focused on how many eyelashes she has or doesn’t have! It’s truly amazing! Emma has carefree childhood freedom back and I am so very grateful for that!”
Remember when I said it very well may be easy and effortless for you to leave your habit in the dust very quickly? Emma just had the one session, but had she needed more, I know her mom would have booked those sessions. Whenever I think about Emma, I tear up. Imagine if Lisa hadn’t called me simply because she believed hypnosis was just for stage show stuff or that it was the creepy mind control portrayed in movies, such as Get Out. How needless Emma’s ongoing suffering would have been.
Emma closed her eyes and got free at eleven years old. How magnificent is that? Magnificent enough for me to continue this journey until hypnosis is mainstream? Damn straight. The icing on the cake? Lisa is now studying with me to be a hypnotherapist herself! She’s just as fabulous a student as she is a mother, and it’s a joy to have her in class. Thank you, Lisa!
Trunk Topics
Trunk topics are the conduits through which our hidden root topics show themselves to the world via visible limb topics. The more someone experiences a trunk topic, the “worse” the limb topics tend to become. For example, the more stressed we are, the more we tend to bite our nails, eat, smoke, and procrastinate. The more negative thoughts we think about ourself, the more likely we’re willing to express our limb topics.
Trunk topics are also interrelated. For example, as our stress levels go up, typically so do our negative thoughts. When our negative thoughts increase, it’s likely that our stress and anxiety also increase.
Negative Thinking
Negative thinking is a habit. If you think negative thoughts chronically, you’re not a negative person. Your brain is simply trained to think negative, heavy thoughts, and it can be trained to lighten and brighten up. That’s not meant to be a dismissal of the crushing weight that comes with clinical depression. The pain that comes from depression is real and can result in suicidal thoughts, cutting, and painful isolation. There is a real difference between simple negative thinking and clinical depression, and it is important that you speak with your primary physician to determine where you fall on the spectrum.
The good news, though, is that there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing. Let me say that again: There’s nothing wrong with you! Remember the Truth? You are perfect just as you are. There are simply sections of your brain where the lights have been turned off and where the electricity isn’t passing through. That’s it. So many of my clients experience shame about their depression, or even if it’s not clinical depression, they feel terrible about thinking negative thoughts when they’re actually having a bad day. I’ve found that clients who are especially hard on themselves are people who work in the wellness world. Apparently, yoga instructors are simply not allowed to have a negative thought, or if they teach aspects of the Law of Attraction, they panic that every negative thought they think is attracting a disaster. So, let’s clear those two up quickly.
You are allowed to have a negative thought if you’re having a bad day. But see it for what it is. Our lives are dictated by the lens through which we look at it. If you choose to think more negative thoughts than positive ones, that’s what your world is going to look like.
The same thing is true of the Law of Attraction. Whatever thoughts you think most predominantly will be the experiences you attract into your life most predominantly. So, one slip up of “I look so fat in this” doesn’t mean 50 extra pounds are waiting around the corner doing a happy dance and finally have permission to pounce on your thighs. Especially if you catch it right away!
Remember when I taught you what I do earlier in the book? Whenever I recognize my mind just thought a lie—an untruth that if believed would move my life in a direction I don’t want to go—I take a deep breath and say “Cancel, cancel” to remind myself that I didn’t mean it and it isn’t true. Then, I replace it with a thought that actually serves me. Something like, “My body is magnificent. Every day in every way, I feel better and better about how I look in this dress.” All of those things are either true or could be becoming true. I don’t say “Cancel, cancel, I look hot as hell and I drop two dress sizes every time I put this on.” To my brain in that moment, that would be a tad far-fetched. Make sure your replacement thoughts are believable and that they support the vision and version of yourself you want to become.
Does this process mean you will magically drop 10 pounds right in the moment or never think a negative thought about yourself again after practicing it once? At this point, I think we’ve established the snake oil marketing has no place here. This process is a pattern interrupt. It weakens neurons that are firing from wiring together and making the old negative pattern stronger while strengthening the new, positive pattern. We interrupt the pattern with something that serves us, something that is true.
The Truth is, whatever the degree of negative thinking you may have experienced in the past, there’s nothing wrong with you. Those sections of the brain where the power is out may be the result of an organic change in the brain or chemical makeup of the body. Or it could be programming you picked up from one of the Three E’s, which we discussed earlier. It could have been the result of a trauma, diet, or a combination of all of the above.
You now know that hypnotherapy can help you tremendously in transforming the state of your thinking. When it comes to medication, you and your physician know the right steps for you, and you can always look into TMS and neurofeedback as well, which are powerful tools without any adverse side effects (more on this in Chapter 4).
Stress/Anxiety
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), “Everyone experiences stress and anxiety at one time or another. The difference between them is that stress is a response to a threat in a situation. Anxiety is a reaction to the stress.”4
This means we can be stressed without being anxious, but we can’t be anxious without first being stressed. When we experience stress or both stress and anxiety, our brain flips into “autopilot” even more than normal. It begins to run almost completely on the big, thick, often-used neural highway of habits. This is because it takes a lot of energy to do something new, and when we’re stressed, the body and mind are worried about surviving the perceived threat. This means it’s all hands on deck. All available energy is hoarded for survival, which doesn’t leave enough juice left over to create a new outcome. For example, “I’m stressed but am choosing not to smoke a cigarette” is not going to fly. The brain goes into autopilot so that it can save energy and use that energy to survive.
But stress doesn’t just trigger our habits; stress itself has become a habit. We’ve spoken a lot about stress and anxiety in this book already because one of the most effective ways to reach the theta brain wave state is through deep relaxation. There are other ways to do it, such as confusion, loss of equilibrium, startling the client, and more insidious techniques, like torture. I use the relaxation technique more than the startling or loss of equilibrium techniques, which are popular in stage hypnosis, simply because the theatrics aren’t necessary. Also, I want you to know that you’re the one making this change. When you learn to relax yourself deeply into this theta brain wave state, there’s no room to consider that perhaps it was because of the fancy way I dropped your arm or interrupted your sentence. You’re the powerful one, and you’re powerful enough to do this with the assistance of a trained professional or thorough self-hypnosis.
We’re spending even more time on stress now because it’s a habit that everyone in the western world has, and it’s getting worse.
The more we feel stress, the more likely we are to feel it. Although there are some appropriate situations where a modicum of stress is understandable, it’s in your best interest to stay as far away from a stress response as possible.
Here are two examples:
Example A: You’re extremely stressed out because you have the biggest meeting of the year coming up. You’ve been preparing for weeks, and now, you’ll be late because your car was just rear-ended. Luckily, no one was hurt, but now, you might miss the meeting altogether.
Example B: You’re extremely stressed out while sitting in traffic every single day. There is nothing absolutely dire you have to do immediately following the exit off of the freeway, but you’re banging your hand on the steering wheel, huffing and puffing, and making hand gestures that range from childish to obscene.
Example A is an appropriate stress response. Again, until we peel back the layers of conditioning further, we don’t realize that even that wasn’t a big deal or “a deal” at all. But for many who are still beginners and a long way from Nirvana, example A is perfectly normal. It happens rarely, and it makes sense.
Example B is never okay. It isn’t an appropriate response to be that upset every day for the same thing and to blame everyone around you, who might also be blaming everyone around them. Think about it: it’s ludicrous.
More and more people are stressed all the time. It’s horrible to feel that way, and it’s horrible for everyone else to be around. I genuinely believe if we could cut overall stress levels down by 30 percent, the world we live in would be unrecognizably beautiful. Stress gives us tunnel vision. It takes an already egomaniacal society and makes it even more about “me, me, me.” I’m stressed, so the barista had better make my coffee now, faster, faster. I’m stressed, so I can be mean and say things I don’t mean to my assistant/spouse/friend/stranger and take them back later.
On the other side of the situation is: “I’m stressed because my boss is too cheap to hire another barista, and now this woman is glaring at me. When I’m stressed, I make more mistakes with the order and have to start over. My boss is such an idiot. Let’s see how stressed she is when I quit.”
Somehow, we manage to believe our stress is more important than that of everyone around us. The truth is, we use stress as a way to express in desperation, “I’m important,” and this, in turn, becomes an excuse for poor behavior. This is the opposite of taking responsibility.
For a fun little exercise, imagine that every time you feel stressed and act out because of it, that every single person you affected due to your stress is now just as stressed as you for reasons that are just as important as yours. Imagine this chain reaction throughout the world. Is this going to create the utopia of your dreams?
In other words, we need a collective message: Enough!
The beginner’s tool is to learn to take responsibility and learn to break down the habit of stress. The advanced tool is to know that none of the stress is real anyway. The Truth is, giving into the stress habit further separates us from who we really are. It activates our limb topics and lends itself to behavior that’s far below our best selves.
While the natural stress response to an actual threat may be useful every now and again, experiencing constant stress simply because our brain is used to doing so makes for an uglier world than we need to live in.
What about anxiety? For anyone who has ever experienced an anxiety or panic attack, you already know they’re outright debilitating and certainly don’t feel like a choice. Luckily, they can be reversed by using hypnotherapy. Then, the less you have them, the less likely you are to worry about having one, and the less likely you are to have one at all.
Luckily, all hypnosis helps to decrease stress and anxiety because that is the very act of accessing the theta state; feeling safe and relaxed. To decrease your stress and anxiety quickly, I recommend going back to the self-hypnosis process from Chapter 1 and practicing it or listening to it at www.CloseYourEyesGetFree.com back to back two or three times in a row. This will have a wonderfully compounding effect and you’ll feel as if you had a mini vacation in no time at all.
Root Topics
Lack of Self-Confidence
Lack of self-confidence reveals itself through many different limb topics. Our career, relationships, sense of style, even the music we listen to or don’t listen to can be a reflection of our self-confidence.
The beautiful thing about root topics is that they are a two-way street. If you were to go to Toastmasters (a group devoted to helping people learn to speak in public) to learn how to give a better speech, it might solve a fear of public speaking, but it wouldn’t necessarily cure the root topic of lack of self-confidence. This would be chopping off a limb, but with the root topic still intact, another branch could very well grow in its place. If you were to simply fix the root topic of self-confidence during hypnotherapy, but then never give a speech for the rest of your life, the public speaking limb might never fully heal.
The sweet spot is when you take the time to heal the root topic on the subconscious level, while also taking tangible action on the conscious level. For example, combining hypnotherapy for lack of self-confidence with the experience of practicing public speaking on a regular basis at Toastmasters.
In my experience, lack of self-confidence stems from a few key events in childhood that blew themselves out of proportion. For me, it was tee-ball. I was so nervous waiting in line to hit the ball, I got up to bat and kept hitting the stick the ball was on. I heard a few people laugh, and that was it: The “I can’t do it,” “I’m not good at sports,” “I hate sports” mantras began. I wonder what would have happened if I had somehow hit the ball out of the park. What would have happened if my first experience with sports had been an overwhelmingly positive one? My gym class experiences may have been very different for the next decade.
So, while my self-confidence in sports was destroyed right out of the gate, I didn’t really care. I may not have developed a love of sports because I was embarrassed so early on, or I genuinely may not have cared enough in the first place to do a good job. We may never know because I don’t feel the drive to improve that area of my life. The unfortunate thing is I also came to “hate” anything that looked at all like a sport. The idea of participating in a relay race or a game of charades makes me so nervous I can’t even tell you. A group setting where other people depend on you to do well is not my jam. Whether it’s extremely serious or ridiculous and playful, I’m out. “I can’t do it, I’m not good at it, I’ll just let you down.”
So, although my rendezvous with sports may not have had any truly crushing impact on my life on the surface, that lack of self-confidence is insidious. I know that the fear of playing sports was the cousin to my fear of singing in public, and singing was something I loved from the start. I also didn’t have any innate talent or singing ability when I was young. In fact, in a hypnosis session early on, I remembered a family member saying, “Who killed the cat?” when I was belting out a tune at around the age of eight. It was meant to be a joke because I was probably way out of tune. The person who said it had never wanted to be a singer and couldn’t imagine I would either, but I did. During my first session to overcome my fear of singing, I remembered that moment, and my little heart was crushed. It felt just like I did when I couldn’t hit the tee-ball.
Our subconscious mind lumps things together: bad experiences over here, good experiences over there; then it directs the conscious mind to go for more of the good, safe experiences and steer clear of the bad experiences. So, what happens when the bad experience is something you love or something that’s a requirement for you to advance at your job, like public speaking or flying?
The point is that lack of self-confidence about anything colors our self-confidence about everything. I may never choose to play sports, but my avoidance of them and all public forms of “playing” has drained a lot of color from my life that could have been there.
Here is an exercise you can complete to see what kinds of connections your subconscious is making without your permission:
Think about things you just don’t like to do and write them down on a piece of paper.
Circle any of those where you remember having had a bad or embarrassing experience as a child.
Ask yourself, could this experience have anything to do with why you don’t like the other items on the list?
In what ways has the avoidance of each of these items impacted your life?
This book is called Close Your Eyes, Get Free because freedom is paramount—the freedom to play along with a silly game without being mortified the entire time, or the freedom to say “no, thanks” with a smile on your face and mean it just because you don’t want to, not because you’re afraid to.
Freedom comes when all options are available to us, when we’re not limited to a few behaviors that happen to feel comfy. You don’t have to want to do everything, but believing there is anything you can’t do or aren’t good at is a limitation that we simply don’t need to have in life. While all of the self-hypnosis processes throughout this book will certainly lend a hand to increasing your self-confidence, you can also log in to www.CloseYourEyesGetFree.com and access a sample hypnosis recording all about this fundamental topic.
Lack of Self-Worth
Lack of self-worth as a root topic often manifests itself in limb topics that are relationship-based. Lack of self-worth can also play into things like overeating and procrastination, but that usually takes a little bit of digging to get to, whereas lack of self-worth is always a common denominator when someone stays in an unhealthy relationship.
Many of us reading this live in a society where we’re told we’re capable of anything, that everything we do is fabulous (i.e., “participation trophies”), but simultaneously, we’re told not to be full of ourself and not to brag or gloat.
The idea of authentic self-worth gets mucked up in this confusion. How can I believe I’m smart, beautiful, and capable when believing that would be narcissistic?
How can I know there’s someone out there in the world who would treat me better than this, who wouldn’t put me down, or lie to me, or hurt me? What if this is the best I’d ever get? Isn’t this pain better than the fear of the unknown or, God forbid, being alone?
Self-worth comes from knowing you’re just as good as everyone else, yet no better. This is such an antimillennial philosophy that it’s a challenge for me to wrap my head around it sometimes, and I’ve been teaching these concepts to my students for years! While I was growing up, the predominant messages I heard were hard at work telling me how special I was, but don’t brag; you can do anything, but stop being egomaniacal; you were born to be a leader, but don’t be bossy.
Everything we learn growing up in school is by comparison. They got a 98 on the exam, and you got an 86. They’re smarter than you. You ran the mile in five minutes, and they ran it in seven minutes. You’re a better athlete. He makes $50,000/year, and she makes $300,000/year. The latter is “successful.”
Take a deep breath, and consider what it means to be just as good as everyone else and no better. It means you are just as worthy of happiness as everyone else.
By knowing this to be true, it doesn’t limit us. It doesn’t automatically give the promotion to the other guy because even though everyone is just as good, worthy, and deserving as everyone else, only some people will do what it takes to get there.
Competition can be a force for bringing our best to the table, and it can create an atmosphere where the most creative solutions are produced. But far too often, it looks a lot more like a situation where there is always either a winner or a loser.
Our subconscious mind, in an attempt to keep us safe, will either have to put the other people down to defend the belief that we deserve to have more than them, or it will cause us to put ourself down so that we never enter into the arena. Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation.
But the Truth is, you are worthy whether you win or lose!
A lot of people have a conscious fear that if they actually believe that they’re worthy, no matter what, that they simply won’t act; that somehow the lack of self-worth is a powerful motivator. To the contrary, I’ve found that my clients act infinitely more when their self-worth has improved. They believe they’re worthy whether they win or lose, so the only “failure” would be to not try for something they truly want. If they get it, great. If they don’t, they learned something and it was still a worthwhile experience.
Lack of Self-Love
Both lack of self-confidence and lack of self-worth are derivatives of lack of self-love. If you loved yourself completely, you would naturally believe in yourself, take care of yourself, and be kind to others because there would be no perceived threat. If we have self-love, the nail-biting, phobias, insomnia, weight, and neuroses would melt away because the conduit trunk topics of anxiety, stress, and negative self-talk would cease to exist.
I realize this can all sound very “woo-woo” to anyone new to the topic, but truthfully, self-love couldn’t be more practical for whoever wants to live their best life as the best version of themselves.
For example, let’s say you have a fluffy golden retriever puppy with big paws and a goofy smile. His name is Sam, and you love this fur baby. Sammy can do no wrong! He may rip your shoes to shreds and more or less destroy the house in various ways, but after a moment of scolding or the hiring of a trainer, you go right back to loving Sam so much your heart could just burst. You want Sam to eat the very best food without grains or gross additives. You want to take Sam for walks simply because of the pep in his step and the way he wags his tail out of the pure need to express his love for the same walk he’s taken a million times before. You want Sam to be groomed by someone who loves him as much as you do, you hate leaving him even when you’re going on a fabulous vacation, and you genuinely believe he’s the best dog in the world. But that doesn’t mean you hate every other dog on the planet and hope they suffer and never get to play. Heck no, you love other dogs, too! You see their value, you see their cuteness, you love their unique personality, and you appreciate their people because you know they love their dogs as much as you love yours. Connection! Love! Appreciation!
Here’s an important exercise: For just one day, love yourself as much as you love your dog (or cat or your favorite sports team—whatever floats your boat).
Do what makes your tail wag! Feed yourself only the best out of love. Forgive and forget in the same instant. Go for the ball, and wag your tail when you miss. Wag your tail when you catch it, and take a nap because they’re great.
When you love Sam, you don’t say, “I love you so much, so eat garbage. We’re not going for a walk, and I don’t care if you cry when I leave. Stop being such a baby. You can’t do anything right.” Quite the contrary, if anything, that love drives you to be the very best you can be for Sam.
That’s what happens when you experience self-love. You want the best for yourself, because you know you’re worthy of it and that others are worthy of it at the same time.
We can get closer to self-love by peeling away the layers of conditioning, but self-love doesn’t need to be created. It already exists in pure form. Recognize yourself for what you truly are—perfect. If you want to boost your self-love starting today, move to the scripts on self-worth (Chapter 2) and gratitude (Chapter 3).
Next Steps
Excellent! In this chapter you learned a little bit about a lot of the most common topics within hypnotherapy and you have completed the Break Through Procrastination self-hypnosis process here!
• Now, go ahead and visit www.CloseYourEyesGetFree .com to access this chapter’s 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. Please also share with me the one root, trunk, or limb topic that will be most beneficial for you to overcome in your journey toward personal freedom. By using the hashtag, you’ll get to see how other readers are improving right alongside you, plus I will have an opportunity to cheer you on!
• Move on to Chapter 10 and keep a lookout for all of the wonderful benefits you’re no doubt experiencing as a result of learning the power of hypnosis.