How To Get What You Want - Just By 'Talking To Yourself'! (5 of 5)
A whole industry has grown up around selling tapes and CDs intended to change behaviour by modifying the internal 'beliefs' of the subconscious mind. Unfortunately, the one tool that can bring this about reliably is one that only YOU can make use of!
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Virtually all successful methods of bringing about lasting personal change have revolved around one idea - to actively re-write the internal instruction set that determines our behaviour. In short, to replace subconscious 'junk' directives that result in limitation, unhappiness, bad habits and dysfunction of any other kind, with new 'positive' directives that reflect and support positive conscious desires.
The concept is simple - change the 'program' to change the outcome, i.e., the pattern of our lives.
As we have seen in earlier articles*, the subconscious mind is powerful enough to ensure that you fail, no matter how much you consciously want a thing, or a situation, or some change in yourself, if it's internal directives conflict with your conscious desires. The most burning conscious wish is no match at all for an opposing subconscious directive, even when this directive arises from faulty or even laughable 'beliefs' embedded deeply below conscious awareness in the subconscious mind.
((( *see box at end of article )))
But the important thing to realise is that the subconscious mind is not in any way hostile to your conscious desires - it simply ignores them because they have not yet been presented in a way it understands!
So your task is in theory relatively straightforward:
1. Identify an area of your life where you would like to change. This can be anything from acquiring more money, through losing weight, to stopping an unwanted habit such as smoking,
2. Formulate this desire in a way the subconscious understands,
3. Communicate this information to the subconscious in a form it will pay attention to and incorporate in its directives, WITHOUT simulatneously communicating any conflicting messages, or giving rise to resistance.
A simple enough idea, but how in practice can it be achieved?
Upgrading Your 'Brain Software'
Over the years many methods of 'reprogramming' the subconscious mind have evolved - 'positive thinking', repeating affirmations, hypnosis, subliminal suggestion, and methods such as psycho-analysis and NLP, which make use of language, imagery and symbolism to try to access and influence the subconscious instruction set.
However, most of these methods require either a 'practitioner' or 'therapist' who must be present to facilitate and manage a session, or alternatively they require a great deal of introspection and work on the part of the subject. As a result, many of these techniques are not practical in an everyday context - they either cost too much because another person has to be involved, or they are too complicated and take too much of the time that busy people cannot spare.
What is really needed is an effective, repeatable system for bringing about personal change that is within the financial reach of most people, which can be delivered to anyone who wishes to make use of it, and which does not demand enormous amounts of time or effort.
In practice, the only two methods which at present meet these criteria are:
* Self-hypnosis
Most commonly involving induction of a hypnotic state, usually by means of spoken 'guided meditations' intended to relax the body, and followed by suggestions delivered at clearly audible levels.
* Subliminal suggestion
Normally involving the presentation of spoken affirmations delivered in some way that is not clearly perceived by the conscious mind, but which are intended to be understood and processed subconsciously.
Both are ideal candidates for the production of relatively inexpensive audio recordings which can be used at home at any convenient time. As a result, both of these methods have been employed in a vast and growing range of commercial audio recordings supplied on tapes, CDs and more recently in MP3 format. They have been promoted for relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, weight loss, increasing confidence and self esteem, pain management, improved sleep, super learning, enhanced creativity and intuition, and even more esoteric phenomena such as body change, remote viewing, telepathy, out-of-body experience and lucid dreaming.
Each of these methods has its merits and can be effective if properly delivered. However, most products available also have serious limitations, which have until recently prevented these techniques fully living up to their potential.
Unfortunately, until the results of some very recent research became available, even the very best products were compromised by a lack of information on subconscious mental functioning, and by some widely accepted (but incorrect) assumptions that have frequently crippled their effectiveness.
Research has confirmed the effectiveness of hypnotherapy for many problems. Clinical and experimental evidence indicates that repeated 'one on one' hypnosis sessions conducted by competent professional hypnotherapists can bring about success rates of up to 90% for many problems which have their roots in 'faulty programming'.
Multiple, individualized and tailored hypnosis sessions are therefore one of the most effective methods available for bringing about desirable changes in a relatively short time. But of course, such personalised therapy is not available to everyone, not least because of the cost, which could amount to £500 ($1,000) or more for the five or six sessions that are necessary to bring about relatively permanent changes. There is also the sheer inconvenience of having to keep a whole series of appointments, possibly miles away from where you live and work.
Of course, there are literally thousands of recordings on the market that promise all the benefits of personal hypnotherapy without the inconvenience and cost. But the problem with such recordings is very fundamental: most people listening to them simply do not achieve a useful hypnotic state. A reasonable level of hypnotic 'trance' is absolutely essential if suggestions presented in this way are to reach the subconscious levels of mind without distortion or interference by the conscious mind.
In a personal hypnotherapy situation, the practitioner establishes just the right conditions and will constantly monitor the feedback from the client. He or she will adjust his or her patter accordingly until the desired hypnotic state has been obtained, and only then will the desired affirmations be introduced.
But when people listen to recordings, even under ideal
conditions, most of the time one of two things happens. Either the listener remains in a normal fully conscious state, or he or she falls asleep! In the first case, spoken affirmations are almost completely ineffective, and in the second case, are much less effective than they would have been in a true hypnotic state.
Because of the misconceptions and misunderstandings that often guide the production of many commercial 'subliminal' recordings, their potential for effecting personal change is often also seriously compromised. At best this means that only modest changes are bought about, and often no change is experienced at all.
These are some of the most common problems:
Over-masking
Many 'subliminal recordings' contain speech recorded at that are hundreds, even thousands of times quieter than the music or nature sounds that cover them, or which have been shifted to very high frequencies, played back at very high speeds, or even played in reverse ('back-masked').
Unfortunately, research has made it clear that while subconscious perception definitely extends beyond the conscious ability to understand speech masked by other sounds, or distorted by frequency or speed shifts, the limits are only slightly extended relative to normal conscious perception.
This means that suggestions embedded in recordings must be within the normal range of detection and (at most) only just below the level at which they could normally be consciously understood, or replayed at a speed or pitch which is only just beyond normal perception limits. The vast majority of 'subliminal' recordings fail to meet this very basic criterion, and are in fact completely undecipherable by the subconscious mind.
Incorrect phrasing of suggestions
Spoken language is a tool the conscious mind uses to communicate with other conscious minds, and so reflects the way in which the conscious mind works. For this reason it is not an ideal tool for communicating with the subconscious mind, which has very limited language processing capabilities. Badly scripted suggestions are likely to be ineffective, and may even have effects opposite to those intended!
'One size fits all'
The designer of a subliminal recording has to make a lot of assumptions. He or she obviously cannot know the actual needs of the listener, and so usually attempts to guess at the causes of a problem and then address these issues. This means that the embedded suggestions are often generalised, and may even miss the mark entirely.
Unfamiliarity
The purpose of using subliminal suggestion is to over-write with positive suggestions the negative and damaging store of 'self image' phrases previously acquired at random. But consider for a moment how most of this negative trash got there in the first place: It was put there by the people you have known!
All though your childhood, your parents, relatives, teachers and so on will have said things to you that were highly negative - often with the best of intentions, sometimes out of anger. You may have experienced more negativity from siblings, friends and schoolmates. Negative admonitions tend to outnumber positive loving comments by anything up to 100:1 for most people.
And as an adult, you will have probably been criticised by people you work with or for, and by your flatmates, spouse, partner or other adults in your life, and although the effects of such criticism or put-downs will be much less than during formative years, it all adds up.
But what do all these 'inputs' have in common, apart from the fact they are negative in nature?
Simply that they have virtually all been said by people you know. The opinions you take notice of are those of people you know: The closer they are to you, the more their negative opinions matter to you.
This means that when you hear a subliminally-presented voice that your subconscious doesn't recognise, then it is not surprising that it may fail to pay much attention. This virtually guarantees an 'unfamiliarity' problem with commercial recordings.
The Real Answer......'Personal' Subliminal and Hypnosis Recordings
The solution to all of the problems decribed above is actually surprisingly simple......
...... All you need to do is make your own 'personal' subliminal and/or self-hypnotic recordings - - using your own voice!
There are many huge advantages:
1. You have complete control over the 'components' that go into the mix - the exact phrasing and content, so that it will exactly match the issues you want to address, in exactly the way you want them to.
2. You have complete control over selection of masking and background tracks and of relative sound levels, which you can adjust for your own hearing.
3. Most importantly, you can employ the simple 'ace up your sleeve' that NO commercial manufacturer can use - your own voice. The opportunity to use your own voice in subliminal and self hypnosis recordings is an asset of enormous importance. Your own voice is the 'ultimate' in familiarity - you hear it all the time as you speak. It is so familiar that you even create it in your head when you 'self talk' or think in words.
So when you use your own voice in a subliminal or hypnotic recording, it is almost as if you are thinking to yourself, just as you would when you mentally say to yourself 'I could never do that', 'what a moron!', 'I could never own one of those', 'I wish I was like that', 'S**t, why did I say THAT!' and all the rest of the mental self abuse that most of us are prone to. Only, when you make your own recordings the stream of 'self talk' is NOT negative or abusive, it is completely positive; a steady flow of supportive and inspiring suggestions that YOU design, and which are automatically accepted at the subconscious levels of mind.
And this is not just theory - the power of your own voice to convey beneficial suggestions to your subconscious mind is established fact.
If you have only ever used commercial subliminal or hypnotic products and experienced little or no change in yourself or your circumstances, here at last is the simple secret you need to 'turbocharge' the power to direct absolutely any area of your life. About the Author
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