Wesley Anderson Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy Serving Atlanta Georgia

Secret # 1 Pattern Interruptions

The human brain learns habits, that is patterns of behavior,

throughout a lifetime. A great many of those habits are useful and
worthwhile. Who would want to have to re-think the matter of getting
dressed in the morning each and every day?

And then, there are those patterns of behavior that are not so
useful. For example, do you know anyone whose eating is triggered by
sensations of boredom, or who procrastinates important tasks, much
to his or her later sorrow?

If you ask people who behave in those ways if they could do

something else, typically the answer will be something like, "It's
just what I do" or "I know better, but I can't seem to make myself
do anything else", or "When I'm in the situation the consequences
just don't seem to matter. It's later that I give myself hell for
doing it AGAIN".

We all know just how easy it can be to change a habit, and just how
hard it can be to change a habit. Moving from one house to another
means adjusting thousands of habits,
where we sleep, the stores that we shop at, and the route that we
drive home from work
are all different. All those habits change in the blink of an eye.

Yet, there are those pesky habits that seem to cling on no matter
what: that snack after
work, the credit card spending, waiting until the last moment to get
something done. Will
power doesn't seem to work to overpower those habits for very long.

The good news is that our brain is always fooling us about time.
It's always later than we
think. To clarify, here's a passage from Training Trances, by John
Overdurf and Julie
Silverthorn.

In a series of ingenious experiments (Benjamin Libet) demonstrated

that
conscious awareness occurs only about a half-second (500
milliseconds) after the
time a stimulus is introduced. This makes sense in that it takes
time to develop the
electrical activity which eventually results in conscious awareness.
Here's the
interesting twist. Even though a half-second elapses from a time a
stimulus is
introduced to the time we are conscious of it, it appears to us as
if no delay in
 awareness has occurred, and we are accurate at identifying the time
and the
stimulus. We make a subjective referral back in time…. p.5

And, why is it good news that there is a little lag time between a
stimulus, its subjective
interpretation and a response? Simply put: in that split second we
can consciously choose
to interrupt our normal (habitual) response.

One of the most highly respected hypnotherapists of our time, Dave

Dobson, teaches a
simple technique to interrupt an unsatisfactory habitual response.
It's as simple as a sigh.
Have you ever thought about the purpose of sighing? Animals and
humans both can be
observed to sigh on occasion, and the value of a sigh is simply to
release pent up
emotions. A sigh briefly interrupts the emotions of the moment.

So far so good. Yet there's more to Dobson's wisdom. A key to

asserting conscious
control once we've sighed and interrupted that pattern for a moment
is, simply to step
back and laugh at ourselves. We give the habit power by taking it,
and ourselves,
seriously. A simple thing to do is imagine how silly it would be to
try to fit into our
favorite clothes from when we were three years old.

The third step is to simply forget about the old pattern and get
busy with some useful
task. Wash the dishes. Get some work done. Not only does that
further interrupt the
pattern, it gives us a new one. How much more productive would we be
if we had the
habit of interrupting old less than fulfilling habits by
accomplishing some useful task?

Don't accept these ideas on faith. Try them on for yourself and
determine just how
effective they are for you. And, give yourself enough time to test
these ideas thoroughly.
A habit that has been repeated 100,000 times might take quite a few
interruptions to
extinguish completely.

Wesley Anderson Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy Serving Atlanta Georgia, Atlanta, Buckhead,
Fulton county, Hypnosis, Atlanta hypnosis, Atlanta weight loss,
Secret # 2 Words Matter 1 (Why Bother?)

Imagine precious little three year old Suzie Darling innocently

asking "Why?" to
whatever her mother says. At that age it's simply a request for
information, however
tiresome it might be for her parents. Little does Suzie know that in
a few years that
"Why?" is going to be turned around on her with a vengeance.

Time passes. Suzie Darling's eight years old, and now it's Mom's
turn to ask "Why?".

"Why didn't you clean up your room after school, like I told you to
do?"

Suddenly that innocent little "Why?" has acquired a sharp edge of

accusation, and we all
remember just how little good an honest "I don't know" will do as an
answer.

So some years later Suzie's all grown up. She married and has a good
job. And, what
happens when Joe asks her "Why" she filled out the paperwork for the
new A-1 widgets
that way? She automatically gets a tiny bit defensive.

Joe was merely curious, and with his innocent question he

unknowingly set off an old
response. Even though Suzie "knows" it's a simple request for
information, lingering
traces of the eight year old's feelings from Mom's "why's?" resonate
to this day.

So how can Joe safely satisfy his curiosity? Simply by rephrasing.

If he had asked, "What
was the purpose of cross filing the A-1 widgets with the crumpet
displacers on page 2?",
Suzie would have happily supplied him with her reasons, and both
would have felt good
about their conversation.

Human minds make associations. Flags remind us of Mom, and apple pie
because
they've been mentioned together so many times. And, a great many
seemingly innocent
words can inadvertently evoke none too desirable feelings at times.

So now that you've taken the first step, and become aware that
eliminating "why"
questions can promote more positive responses from simple requests
for information,
what are you going to do? True, putting your new knowledge into
practice will take a
little effort, but surely by now you can imagine the rewards vividly
enough to be
motivated to take action.

Curious about other hot button words? How about the "right/wrong"
and "good/bad"
concepts? Imagine if your boss said, "That doesn't really fit what
we need here. Go ahead
and move the eggs in the large cartons." Instead of, "That's all
wrong. Put the eggs in the
large cartons." Which of those two would make you feel the best?
Which of those two
would motivate you to do your best job for the boss?

In becoming aware of the power of words like "why", you can begin to
appreciate the
value of choosing words with care. By now, it's become easier to
appreciate how a little
verbal precision can make a decided difference in the relationships
that we care most
about.

The good news is, that after a little effort, new speaking habits
can be established, and we
begin to speak with an increasingly easy and automatic precision.