Most of us know someone who has tried hypnotherapy to quit smoking, lose weight, or maybe to overcome anxiety or a phobia. Olympic athletes seek out hypnotherapists to improve performance, and hypnosis has even been used in operating theatres in place of anesthetic in surgeries as extreme as amputation.
But an alternative application for hypnosis is becoming popular among entrepreneurs and executives, and that is for the transformation and enhancement of their mindset.
Mindset plays such a key role in our lives. It affects the decisions we make and the actions we take. Your mindset is the attitudes that you hold, the beliefs that fuel those attitudes and the emotions that arise in any given situation because of those attitudes and beliefs.
Mindset is Everything
Your mindset can help and it can hinder you. A “can’t do” attitude will prevent you from taking risks and keep you safe (and small) within your own pre-set boundaries, while a “can do” attitude will see you stepping beyond your comfort zone into new experiences knowing you’ll be able to cope with what you find there. One limits your potential, the other expands it.
If you’ve hit a point that you can’t seem to progress past in your business, perhaps an income figure or a number of clients that you don’t seem able to grow beyond, then it is probably down to your mindset. The good news is that the filters in your brain that keep you where you are, repeating patterns of self-sabotage such as fear of failure, procrastination or imposter syndrome for example, can be changed, or at the very least cleaned up.
By leaning self-hypnosis and bringing it into your daily routine, you can direct this process yourself from within. This will help you to overcome the barriers that have until now prevented you from taking the action that you need to take for the next stage in business growth.
Seven Simple Steps for Successful Self-Hypnosis
There are many different ways to do self-hypnosis. The key to remember that it is something you ‘do’. You take an active role in it, you participate fully in how it goes. It isn’t something you wait to happen to you. Hypnosis is a verb, not a noun. If you’re following the instructions below with conviction and enthusiasm, then you are doing self-hypnosis!
- Choose a goal for your self-hypnosis session and create a positive suggestion that you are going to give yourself. This should be positive, in the present tense, and something that would feel great to achieve. For instance: “I am a confident entrepreneur”, “I attract money with ease”, “I am a confident public speaker”. Visit my website for more tips on crafting hypnotic suggestions.
- Find somewhere comfortable to sit where you won’t be disturbed. Legs and arms uncrossed. Hands and feet not touching.
- Focus on a spot directly in front of you, then defocus your eyes so that you are in the peripheral vision state. Allow yourself to become aware of everything in your entire field of vision at once, without focusing on any particular thing.
- Take 4 deep breaths here, and then close your eyes as you say to yourself: “I am going into hypnosis now.”
- Count really slowly from 10 down to 1, and as you do, imagine what it would feel like with each number to go deeper within. Tell yourself you are going deeper into hypnosis. You could imagine that you are going down steps as you count.
- Repeat your chosen suggestion ten times. As you say it confidently to yourself, allow yourself to smile inwardly and accept the suggestion as truth. State it with conviction. Imagine what it would look/sounds/feel like for this to be true.
- When you are finished, take a deep breath and open your eyes.
Victoria is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and Business Mindset Coach with over a decade direct experience working with clients to improve their lives and businesses. Find out more about her work, and her Self-Hypnosis for Business Workshops on her website.