Habits

Ice Skating (in the 30-degree sunlight) at Union Square

I recently started reading Monsters and Magical Sticks, There’s No Such Things as Hypnosis. One of the things that I kinda-knew but now really understand is that we are in hypnotic states all the time – hypnosis is not a stage performer who has some lady cluck like a chicken for the entertainment of others… it’s a natural altered state of mind that we fall into and out of all the time in our everyday lives. In certain variations of these states, we become more susceptible to influence, or rather, our unconscious mind is more directly imprinted upon.

There was one example about habit formation that really stuck out for me. The authors recount a fairly common scenario – a young boy is caught by his father drinking beer. His father tells him, “You can’t drink that. Only real men can drink.” On the surface this looks like a fairly everyday occurrence across much of the world… however, if we delve deeper and look at the unconscious associations that are going on, we see what happens. In that boy’s mind, there is now a link saying that “only real men can drink” and… “to be a REAL man, I must drink”. And in that 5 second verbal lesson, a potential alcoholic is born. The father is not a hypnotist, and it is not his fault that the unconscious association is made – he is simply doing the best he can to pass on the lessons of life to the boy.

This story got me thinking: how many of these unconscious, and COMPLETELY RANDOM associations do I have going on my MY head?

I’ve spent the better part of the last few months untangling a lot of beliefs that I’d held for years – beliefs that governed as to what was possible, and what was not possible in my life. Tomorrow I am off on a 3-day seminar to untangle even more beliefs.

I think that everyone could benefit more from looking closely at the habits that they have in their day-to-day lives: where did they originate from? Are they still useful? Are they holding you back from what you want?

I’ve found that there are a couple of ways that you can blast away at non-productive habits:

1. Get one of your friends who is a hypnotherapist to help you out.
2. Do some change work yourself (if you know how).
3. Do what Eben Pagan suggests for forming new habits (and eliminating old ones): 1) Start now, and 2) Don’t deviate of course for at least 30 days. The psychology behind those two principles is pretty amazing, and we could throw around buzzwords like “escape velocity” and “habit gravity” around… but let’s just say that if you stick with it for 30 days, you’ll likely be stuck with it for life.

- Aaron P

Tagged as: beliefs, eben pagan, habits, Hypnosis, millionaire mind, nlp, t harv eker, trance