Tearing Out Pages from Your Life Book

During my recent hypnotherapy practicum, one particular tool (more like a metaphor) drew my attention. It was in line with my future book project on “Coping with Realities”. The tool was an aid to deal with past painful emotions or memories. If not properly dealt with, these become heavy baggage with a grave negative impact on one’s personality, emotions, and behavior. The general gist of such a hypnotic exercise is to bring awareness that whatever already passed is past; and cannot be changed. What we can certainly change is what we can do now. The exercise works best if you are a visual person and have the ability to imagine taking a trip through your mind’s eye into the unconscious mind. A hypnotist can guide you through, but you can also do it alone. It goes something like this:

Take some time to relax a bit, relax, yes, breath, relax, more and more…..
Close your eyes, and then imagine you could scan the inside of your mind. You’ll have all sorts of ideas that flow in and out; come to the spotlight then fade. That’s your conscious mind. It has only a limited amount of information lying in your immediate awareness. Scan your mind further. You’ll find a corridor leading to a closed door; one that only you have the key for. As you open that door, you’ll find a big dark room. You can barely see that its walls look like a vast library with books arranged all over. You can smell antiquity in that room. You can hear very faint voices from your past echoing. You feel cool in that room; not cold, not hot. Look around. That’s your unconscious mind. It’s your whole life kept in record in there; organized perfectly in order. You can hardly remember all the details each small book has, but in these, all your past experiences are documented. These have shaped your present automatic habits of thought, behavior, feeling, skills, reactions and even your perception. All constitute your implicit knowledge. Whatever you’ve learned in the past was largely at this unconscious level. Your unconscious mind is very secretive (it wouldn’t easily disclose the books to your conscious mind; hence, the locked door). It is also very clever at disguising and distorting many experiences (especially traumatic ones). You can, nonetheless, access all this data; albeit, with some difficulty.

Keep imagining…. There’s a long reclining chair in that room. Next to it, a big hard cover book rests on a side table. That’s the summary book of all your life experiences. It includes all past episodes assembled in chapters. Lie down on that chair. Hold that book and look inside. Flip through those pages. What do you see? Some pages are probably colorful carrying many wonderful memories. Others are dark and gloomy involving hurtful experiences. Pause a bit on those. Do you really need to leave those dark pages in there? They spoil the whole book of your life. You’d rather have it all colorful, don’t you? They’ve had their negative impact, but that’s long gone now. Look thoroughly for these episodes and decide that you don’t want to see them as part of your life any longer. Let’s tear out those pages! Yes, each and every one of them. Do it with force! Are you through? Your book is missing some pages now, but you have many more white pages to fill with colorful bright images and memories from now on. Wouldn’t you want to do that? Close that book now and carry those torn pages as you walk out of that room. Lock the door and choose to dispose of these in the closest recycle bin you can see in your mind’s eye. Come back from your short journey to where you are now gradually. Slowly open your eyes. You’re fully alert at this moment and feel fantabulous in every possible way, aren’t you?

There….. If you follow these steps while taking your time, I bet it brings you much relief and drastic life changes. This is how you deal with harsh realities that are past and gone. You can’t change these, but you can eliminate their negative impact by dragging them out of that store. They don’t need to define your life. You choose to let these go and free yourself by forgiving. Look at you! You have reassumed control over your life course at present. No such past episodes matter any longer. Your unconscious mind wants to be your best ally; befriend it. It’s only the vast library that helps you easily act, feel, perceive, and react. How else do you think you learn? When what you learn sabotages your growth, revisit your unconscious mind and do what’s necessary to remove that imprint from your life book. Tear out those dark pages. What’s important now is to author the rest of the blank pages with only good memories and bright colors….

Voila…. Just by reading this, you have indulged in some sort of self-hypnosis :) and if you had let yourself imagine the whole scenario, it would have definitely put you in a more empowered mind set :)

The Omnipotence of Self-talk

As you read these lines, don’t you hear your own voice in a whisper like tone echoing behind your eyeballs? Most probably you do; and it is not deliberate. You’re always engaged in self-talk and despite this being a characteristic of your mental chatter, you seldom monitor it or pay attention to. This is the way you think. That voice creates your inner idiosyncratic world; so private no one knows what’s going on in there.

HOW ABOUT WHEN YOU READ THESE LINES NOW?? WITH ALL THE LETTERS WRITTEN IN CAPITALS?? DID THE TONE OF THAT VOICE INCREASE IN VOLUME SOMEHOW? I bet it did. The tone of your self-talk changes volume all the time. Similarly, the type of language you use varies. Like it or not, your mind is constantly buzzing with thoughts and ideas. Your internal dialogue is quite a phenomenon of the mind; however, it is a double edged sword. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy. It steers your emotions and is the commander in chief of your behavior. Let me elaborate.

Think for a moment about a time when you did a grave mistake. Did you drone in endless self-reprimand? Did your self-talk resemble barking orders at yourself like an angry mother whose child had just dreadfully misbehaved? What sort of language did you use? How did that make you feel? Guilty as hell, right? Words like “Shame on you” and other inflammatory accusations could ignite a sense of being a failure. Invective language can swallow your self-esteem. How can you later be confident in anything you do? This activates a cycle of hesitation and inadequacy in dealing with the new.

Now, can you recall a time when you applauded yourself on a job well done? You probably used affirmative language recounted in the sweetest cheerful, even, sexiest tone ever. Your positive self-talk compounded your feelings of triumph till you were full to the brim. This process may have sent waves of euphoria to the rest of your body till you were ecstatically numb. And what a feeling! What a state to experience! It gives you an impetus towards further action. Now you’re full of yourself; more confident in doing the right things.

These are but few examples to demonstrate the influence of your inner voice on your feelings. Your emotions are so tied up to your self-talk; and consequently so are your actions. You not only engage in external battles with opponents or situations; you top it up by internal mental battles between thoughts that may sway you in disperse directions. There’s a dialogue running in your head constantly and it ranges from minor assessments of what you or others do, to making all sorts of decisions. You internally speak the ideas roaming in your head. You tell yourself what to do or how to do it. Your internal dialogue can focus your attention narrowly or makes you open to a world of new possibilities. It can cripple you dead, or serve you well.

Your self-talk makes you an almighty human being. Change your inner dialogue when you’re feeling down and your mood changes. To err is human, but you don’t need to keep whipping yourself for something past and done. “Note taken, I’ll learn from it” and then move on….. If you aspired to keep empowering yourself, you need to be a master of your thoughts. Change your language and be gentle with yourselves before your self-criticism escalates into self-destruction. And when negative self-talk seeps in, refuse to empower it by denying it further energy. Stop, and change that detrimental chitchat.

If you hadn’t before, start paying attention to that inner voice of yours. Befriend it and use it as a tool to appease you, guide you, and pull you towards progress. After all, self-hypnosis lies squarely on such self-talk. It’s what you want to become that you tell yourself. It’s the new “to be created you” that you converse about. And you don’t have to be hypnotizing yourself to change your inner language to affirmative statements. Just practice positive self-talk until it becomes an iron-clad ritual that works for you: not against you.