Guest Article By: Linda Simmon, C.Ht.


Taking Back Control


"The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and their
destination." -- John Schaar, a sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of California Santa Cruz

Professor Schaar has stated the underlying philosophy of my practice so much more succinctly and clearly than I have ever been able to.

Over the years and especially since I’ve been working as a hypnotherapist, I’ve come to observe how frequently people relinquish the control over their future to someone other than themselves and so frequently to someone they don’t even respect or admire. The future is indeed a place that we are creating, and not just the future, each and every day we create our current reality as well.

It is our perception of any incident, occurrence, activity or situation that determines whether we are happy or sad, have feelings of joy or hopelessness, think we are making progress or stagnating. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

This ability may very well be the most powerful tool that each of us has at our disposal to shape and guide our present as well as our future and it seems as if it has been forgotten by so many of us. Or perhaps we are just afraid to try. Perhaps it is easier to place the blame for the negativity in our lives on someone else thereby abdicating any personal responsibility whatsoever.

My question to each of you is……. Why? Why do we not only allow others to take this power and use it, frequently we give it to them. Why do we allow others to start directing and controlling not only our present but our future.

I love what I do. It is the most rewarding career that I’ve ever had. One reason is because with hypnotherapy I can help every single person take back responsibility and control of their own life, their destiny and help them do it much faster and easier than on their own using only the conscious thoughts. It is rather ironic because so many people express a fear of “losing control” if they are hypnotized, when in reality the exact opposite is true, they regain and reclaim control and can again be the moving force in their own life.

Hypnosis uses among other things relaxation techniques, and this is how it achieves its strength, by using positive statements and suggestions while a client is in a fully relaxed state. This enables the client to more easily focus on past problematic patterns or behaviors and it is this ability to more easily focus that results in the desired change. A sort of spring cleaning for the mind. Working from the inside out, releasing negative thoughts, perceptions and behaviors and replacing them with the positive thoughts and suggestions that the client desires.

It is this technique of focusing and strengthening willpower that is responsible for hypnotherapy's high success rate, particularly for clients who want to change certain negative behavior patterns. A University of Connecticut review of six weigh-loss studies found that 70 percent of study participants rated hypnosis better than cognitive therapy alone.

Arreed Barabasz, director of the laboratory of hypnosis research at Washington State University in Pullman and coauthor of Hypnotherapeutic Techniques (Brunner-Routledge) agrees. For the client who wishes to quit smoking, positive suggestions about their body and visualizing their lungs becoming clear and free of smoke as well as instilling images of the client happy, healthy and smoke free are the types of suggestions that are most effective. When Barabasz tested this approach on 300 heavy smokers who had previously quit and relapsed, almost half stayed smoke-free 18 months after hypnotherapy - compared with 10 percent for the nicotine-replacement therapy alone.

If we are what we repeatedly do then we are also what we repeatedly think. So why not take control of your thoughts. Guide them, mold them and do it over and over again. One of the easiest ways to do this is by listening to a CD, tape or download that uses positive thoughts, phrases and images and listening every day or night for several weeks. It does make a difference.

Hypnosis can help you to take back control of your health and your life. You will feel stronger, happier and soon you will realize that you have taken back control of your own life and then the real fun can start, realizing all the possibilities available to you, all the directions you can go and finally realizing that your life is a journey not just a destination. A journey that you can now control.

Linda Simmon, C.Ht.
www.newhypnotherapy.com


After over 20 years of being a paralegal, Linda Simmon decided it was time to take a new direction with her life and is a graduate of The Hypnosis Motivation Institute, the first and only nationally accredited school for hypnotherapy in the United States. For more information on Linda, her CD’s and downloadable mini-session as well as telephone and face to face sessions, visit www.newhypnotherapy.com