October Tidbit: Changing the Story 10/26/2011
Several years ago while facilitating a creativity workshop, I asked the participants to decorate a box for a group exercise. One client told me she could not do the assignment because she was not artistically talented. She knew this because a 2nd grade school teacher had told her so, correcting the colors she had used in her drawing of the sky. And for 30 years she did not pick up a colored pencil, or paintbrush or gluepot. By the time she came to my workshop, the belief in her artistic ineptitude had become her truth. When she finally broke the mental constraint and set herself free, she was able to create a beautifully decorated box... and know more about her self. We all have ideas about ourselves that are founded in the opinions of other. If a significant person tells you often enough that you are "lazy, crazy, bad, or ugly" odds are good that you will come to believe it. Especially if it is something you are repeatedly exposed to in your childhood when the doorways to the unconscious are more open and malleable. Whether or not it is grounded in truth is irrelevant, for once you come to believe and act as if it is true, it continues to manifest as your reality. Sometimes we have beliefs that are the result of a conclusion we made from an experience that we might not have interpreted correctly. Perhaps you failed at something, say hitting a softball. And because some ill behaved yahoos laughed, you decided that you were clumsy and would never be good at sports. So the more you thought about not being good at sport the more you missed the ball, the more they laughed, the more convinced you became, and the more 'true' that story became, eventually becoming part of your operating system. Once a belief is established in the unconscious mind and becomes part of the operating system that runs your programs, it can be challenging to change it. Hypnosis and the energy psychologies can open direct contact with the unconscious and have demonstrated good success in rewriting limiting beliefs. The practice of mindfulness and somatic awareness can also open access to the unconscious and effect significant change. Whatever path you choose, think about what would happen if you released the misinformation that the world has told you about yourself and changed your story. How would your life be different? Perhaps you would find yourself to be artistic, graceful, brilliant, happy and talented in ways you have not yet imagined. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from out fear our presence automatically liberates others." Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love Add Comment Weekly Tidbit: Ways of Change 02/03/2010
Have you ever wanted to change something about your life but found that despite your best intentions you kept on doing the same thing? Maybe you wanted to get more exercise .... or be more loving .... or to change what and how you eat. And somehow you 'forgot' to go to the gym, or reacted instantly to that other person's behavior with anger.... and ate that whole bag of chips. Change can be really challenging when different parts of us have different agendas, and that is often the case when we find we cannot make desired changes on our own. Our conscious intention is a small part of our thinking process. The unconscious mind is the power beneath the surface and in many way acts like an auto pilot program. Which is mostly a good thing or we might spend a little too much time every day rethinking how we tie our shoelaces, how to make coffee, where to place our fingers on the piano keys. To take a look at how this process operates, think about learning something that you now do effortlessly, driving a car for example. In the beginning you probably broke it down to small pieces, learned and practiced each part, then put it all together and then when you were ready, let it go into the unconscious so you could focus your conscious attention on looking where you were going while you were driving. Oh, and then you sold that car and bought a stick shift so you had to bring back to consciousness the 'how to' of stopping and changing gears to add the clutch action, and then it went back to auto pilot mode. Pretty simple stuff, at least when it involves your car. It gets a little trickier when core beliefs about ourselves that reside in the unconscious are in conflict with our stated intentions. If there are two conversations going at the same time, one arguing for the status quo and the other pushing for change, we can find ourselves at a stalemate. When I decide I want to change my career, but my unconscious mind believes it is not safe to let go of my present job in this economy, I may find myself sabotaging my best efforts by missing deadlines for class enrollment or being late for job interviews. Or if I don't believe I deserve to be prosperous, I may unconsciously create ways to incur debt or to resist receiving the money that comes my way. I may very much want to be in a loving relationship, but if I hold the belief that it is not safe to be vulnerable I may avoid letting anyone close enough or will choose partners who prove me right in my belief that it is not safe. It is usually the relationship between the unconscious and conscious minds that needs realignment for us to achieve our desired goals. Two simple and basic ways to do this are 1.) inhibition and redirection approaches and 2.) the energy psychologies. You use inhibition and redirection when you learn how to change from a stick shift car to an automatic one. Cognitive behavioral therapies and stress reduction programs are often based on these principles. It is basically a 'stop that, do this instead' format that uses awareness, consciousness, and action, and often coaching or tutoring helps to make significant progress. Guitar or horseback riding lessons are great examples of how this operates. I've used hypnosis to successfully implement inhibition and redirection approaches in the unconscious, so hypnosis can sometimes be included in this category as well, even though it overlaps with the energy psychologies in many ways. The energy psychologies approach change from a different angle and do not require the same level of cognitive involvement and conscious action. The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) will sometimes bring unconscious beliefs to conscious awareness during the experience of tapping on specific points on the face and upper body, often in an 'ah ha' epiphany. Other times the inner change occurs without conscious awareness that anything has happened. Some methods, like Tappas Acupressure Technique (TAT), work beneath the surface of consciousness, and are therefore especially good for people suffering from the aftereffects of trauma as they do not need to revisit the specific wounds. Psych K, another energy approach, has been described as learning "to rewrite the software of your unconscious mind" and the use of computer analogy is probably a good way to look at the operations of our minds. A special quality of these energy techniques, as with computer software, is that you can learn with specialized training how to do it yourself or you can have a professional 'technician' rewrite the program..... and it works either way. This is simply an overview of two approaches to encourage positive changes into your life. There are, of course, many other ways that reorganization occurs, and people have individual preferences as to how they best learn and change. Bringing your conscious and unconscious minds into a collaborative relationship rather than an oppositional one is a powerful facilitator for creating more of what we want. Making desired changes is easier now with the advent of energy psychologies and they can also be used in conjunction with more traditional approaches. Weekly Tidbit: Puppy Paws on the Blanket 11/11/2009
One day some years ago I was at Muir Beach in northern California with my dog Toby. Toby was a really great dog, but he had a nasty habit of rolling in things that smelled bad. Well, on this day he found a ripe stinky dead fish and had a very vigorous back roll on it. And then, being delighted with the experience, he wanted to share the joy and snuggle up next to me while I was reading on my blanket. I did not like the idea of being cozy with a fetid dog, so I spread out a towel for him downwind and instructed him to lay himself down on it. When he did, I returned to reading my book. Within a few minutes there was a white paw next to me on my blanket. I looked at it and thought about what happens when you let a camel put his nose in your tent. And also thought about how I did not want to ruin the energy of this beautiful beach day by chastising him, so I just picked up the paw without comment and put it back on his towel. Less than a minute later it was back on my blanket and I returned it to his towel, again without saying anything. This went on for probably 6 or 8 more times until finally I heard a deep sigh and Toby settled down for a nap. The paw did not return, and I was grateful for the undisturbed beauty of the day and especially for the breeze blowing sweetly over us carrying his pungent scent away. Afterwards, I thought about how this mirrored an approach to changing human conduct as well as canine behavior. To simply hold an intention (no stinky dogs on blanket), inhibit behavior that does not support that intention (pick up the paw to prevent further intrusion) and redirect the action to support the intention (return paw to towel). So if I want to change a behavior or thought pattern, I can apply the protocol of "puppy paws on the blanket" with the recognition that I may have to repeat the process over and over and over until the new response settles in. That is the part that Toby taught me.... to be gently and firmly persistent. Too often, we give up after the second or third try and then need a crisis to bring our attention back to the now dramatic need for change. Determine your desired change, break it down into manageable pieces, attend to each step with loving attention and repeat as needed. We have the ability to change ourselves, and sometimes we can use a guide to show the way Weekly Tidbit: Making Changes 07/08/2009
The culture and family influences we are born into and grow up with have a powerful hold. No matter how much exposure we have to other experiences or beliefs on a conscious level, unless we reach into where the original program lives in the subconscious mind and make updates, that old program stays pretty much the same. Which is why positive affirmations or cognitive restructuring techniques are often not as effective as we would like them to be. It is estimated that 85-95% of our behavior is the result of our unconscious formatting, most of which occurred when we were very young. Weekly Tidbit: Change in Consciousness 04/08/2009
For years people have believed in the immutable power of genetics as the primary factor in human behavior and condition. While the debate between nature and nurture continues, isolated genes have been given credit for ADD and heart disease and dyslexia and cancer and a whole range of dis-eases. I have often heard people use family history as immutable evidence of not being able to change being overweight or some other issue in their life. However, the dogma of DNA as the immutable determiner is now being challenged in the fields of energy psychology and energy medicine. | AuthorCharly Hill is a Life Skills Coach and Self Empowerment Teacher. ArchivesDecember 2010 CategoriesAll |
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