Spring Cleaning Your Thinking positivetranceformations.com.au
One of the basic principles of hypnosis and hypnotherapy – and, indeed, of a lot of styles of counseling – is that what we believe deep down inside ourselves shapes our behaviour in a range of ways.
And often, we aren’t aware of the wrong or faulty thoughts and beliefs that we have buried down inside our psyches – down in the place known as the unconscious/subconscious or the spirit.
One of the things that hypnotherapy aims to do is to replace these deep beliefs with new ones that produce different behaviour, as a hypnotic trance makes it easy to access this part of a person’s psyche.
It’s good to evaluate what your beliefs and thoughts are and to have a sort of inner spring cleaning. In many ways, getting rid of toxic thoughts and beliefs could be better for you than a physical detox session.
In the old days, such as in the Middle Ages, they used to have regular periods set aside where you did both – cleansing your body via fasting and avoiding rich food, and examining one’s soul.
In the Middle Ages (and some people still do it today), this was done twice a year, usually in the lead up to the big festivals of Christmas and Easter.
You may or may not want to follow this pattern but now that the winter is more or less behind us, you might want to take time to examine what you think and believe about the world around you and about yourself.
You may or may not want to do this with the help of a counsellor. Often, talking something out without censorship can help.
Or you can find a very, very good friend who will provide a listening ear (make sure that you do the same for them, of course!).
The ancient Celts had a word for the sort of friend you could go to for this sort of support and a listening ear without judgement or criticism – they called this sort of friend a “soul friend” or “anmchara”, and they had a saying that “A person without a soul-friend is like a body without a head.”
If you haven’t got a friend you can trust in this way and you don’t feel comfortable going to a counsellor – at least at this stage – then journaling can often help – getting your thoughts down freely without censorship.
If you’re not much of a writer or a typist, you can try journaling in pictures or even into an audio file of some type (don’t you miss the old tape recorders and Dictaphones?).
Just remember that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are not your journal!
The important thing here is to identify your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves all the time, whether we’re aware of this or not.
I’m talking to myself right now as I type this article out.
And if we constantly repeat things that stem from faulty or incorrect thinking or beliefs, this will shape our behaviour and our attitudes.
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