What you feed your mind determines your appetite
By Sally Race Clinical Hypnotherapist
Sounds strange? Well, its true!
Much like your body, your mind also responds to what it is fed. Eat a healthy nutritious diet and you’ll be healthy (and happier), feed your mind healthy thoughts and the same will happen.
So what do I mean when I say ‘healthy thoughts’?
I’ll give you an example. In my role as a hypnotherapist, I see people who want to change the way they feel. Many of my clients experience anxiety and when I ask them what they want from the hypnotherapy sessions, their answer is often ‘not to feel anxious’ or ‘to get rid of the anxiety’.
Question; What do you want to change in your life? (remember your answer… we’ll comeback to it).
At that point, I put in a rule; your answer must not include any negative words, such as ‘not, don’t, rid, anxiety, stress or anything else that has negative connotations’. So, what do you want?
This is the point that often has people scratching their heads, often starting a sentence and then realising it has a negative word slipping in and stopping again.
Coming back to your answer, are there any negative words in there? if so, can you change it so it contains none?
Why do I do this? Why do I make people sometimes struggle to change that sentence? Because what you think feeds your mind. If your thoughts are full of what you don’t want, then your mind will be too focused on that to focus on what you do.
Experiment: DO NOT THINK OF A BLACK CAT! Whatever you do, don’t let a black cat thought enter your head, no, don’t do it, don’t think of a black cat at all.
So, how was that? did you manage it, or is that furry little feline still in there?
My guess is probably. So if your goal, your desire is to be rid of anxiety and you keep thinking about it in that way, your mind will be focused on anxiety, want it or not.
Time for new healthier thoughts
Our subconscious minds love repetition. Whenever we repeat something (and it doesn’t matter if its a thought, words we speak or hear or something we do), our subconscious mind takes it on board and puts it on autopilot. Eventually we just do/feel/say things without thinking about them. This is brilliant as it means that we can multi task better and be faster, however, if we feed our mind with the wrong things to put onto auto pilot, we automatically end up with that we don’t want.
So its time for change (if you are ready). Every time you catch yourself thinking something in a negative way, STOP. rephrase that thought into a statement of what you want and repeat that instead.
‘I don’t want to be anxious’ could change to; ‘I feel free and happy’
‘Get rid of anxiety’ could change to; ‘I feel more confident and comfortable everyday’.
In essence, feed your mind with what you want and your mind will take you there, maybe not today or tomorrow, but be consistent and it will and you will notice.
