Many of my hypnosis clients and anatomy students complain about feeling like they’re running full tilt all day but not getting as much done as they think they should. This great little video talks about the science of the brain and how you can increase your productivity. If you’re still having trouble getting going or keeping going come on in for a hypnosis session so we can get rid of that block.
Enjoy!
http://www.wimp.com/productivityscience/
Recently there has been a lot of talk about genes affecting our weight. How some people are more likely to gain weight because of genes. If genes only account for 5% of the variation in people for height, how much of a role do genes actually play in weight?
How much do scientists actually know and how much is just guesses? We’ve learned a lot about what’s happening in the brain during certain procedures but how much do we really know about how the brain affects our bodies, thinking, and things outside of us (prayers for others?)
We know that hypnosis works for helping people change behavior (smoking, eating, exercising, etc.,) become less stressed, decrease anxiety, and many other issues. There have been a number of well done studies that show this. However, we don’t know how it works. Without this some people will call it “quackery.” Could it be that we simply need to be a little more humble and admit that there’s a lot that we don’t know yet.
If you’d like to get a scientist’s view of what we know take a look at this post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-rupert-sheldrake/why-bad-science-is-like-bad-religion_b_2200597.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
It’s great to have an outline of what to do to reach your goals, but what does it actually look like? We’re going to take each one of those steps and put it into outline form using a real life example so you can see how it works.
In my hypnosis practice many people come to me wanting to lose weight. We all know that in order to have your best weight you need to eat well and burn more calories then you’re taking in. Both of those will end up being their own goal. Let’s start with eating well and then you can make one for exercising. Remember, this is just an example and your body may require something different. Listen to your body to determine what’s best for you.
(Sorry about the look, it doesn’t seem to keep the formatting after posting.)
GOAL: Eat well
PLAN: A) Have healthy proteins, fruits, and vegetables available
B) Limit grains especially flour based products like bread
C) Drink plenty of water
D) Track what I eat
PROJECTS: A) Have healthy proteins, fruits, and vegetables available
1) Make a menu every week
2) Make a grocery list every week and stick to it
3) Prepare lunches ahead of time
4) Prepare snacks ahead of time so they’re easy to access
B) Limit grains especially flour based products like bread
1) 1 slice of bread or it’s equivalent every day
C) Drink plenty of water
1) Have a water bottle to fill up and drink from
D) Track what I eat
1) Find a tracking device that works for me
2) Fill out the tracking device every time I eat
TASKS: A1) Make a menu every week
a) Sit down on Saturday morning to plan meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner)
A2) Make a grocery list and stick to it
a) make a grocery list while planing meals
b) do the shopping Monday after work
A3) Prepare lunches ahead of time
a) make lunch the night before
A4) Prepare snacks ahead of time
a) put snacks in small bags so they’re easy to grab (Tuesday)
B1) 1 slice of bread or it’s equivalent every day
a) don’t buy bread, have it only as an occasional treat
C1) Have a water bottle to fill up and drink from
a) fill up my water bottle the night before and at each break
D1) Find a tracking device that works for me
a) ask my friends what they use
b) search the internet for what others use
c) try one out but be willing to change if I don’t like it
d) load the tracking device on my phone
D2) Fill out the tracking device every time I eat
a) Realize that it takes less than 1 minute to do this and be consistent
It’s that time when many of us think about what we want to do differently in the new year. We come up with many fine and lofty goals. Charge forward with enthusiasm and come February find ourselves where we were in December. What happened?
This year make your first resolution a resolution to do things differently.
First – have just one or two big goals. There’s no rule that says that you can’t add more in July and if you just have one to start with you’re more likely to succeed. Setting yourself up for success is important and that’s what we’ll be looking at for the rest of this article.
Second – make the goal clear, measurable, and achievable. If it’s not clear and measurable you won’t really know what the target is. It’s like the difference of “I want to grow some flower bulbs” and “I want a display in the front of my house that has 3 different types of flowers with 6 specific colors.”
It also needs to be achievable. If all you have is dense shade planting sun loving flowers won’t work well and you’ll be disappointed.
Third – make a plan. This may involve a number of things – researching which flowers work well in my area, the colors and textures of those flowers, where I actually want to put those flowers, when I have to plant them, etc.
Fourth – have a project for each of the plans. As an example, when researching the various points of these flowers I may go on-line, talk to friends, go for a drive to see what others have done, and talk to the local nursery. Each of these are projects.
Fifth – now to put all of those projects into your planner as tasks. Taking different routes to and from work every day will allow you to see what other people have done. Plan some time on a weekend, during your lunch break, or on the way home to stop at a local nursery. These are things that you can put in your planner with a specific day and time.
Sixth – work your plan. Do it! No excuses, just get started.
GIVING
On December 9th NPR had an interview with Marlo Thomas. She was talking about her dad, Danny Thomas, and his thoughts about giving. “There are 2 kinds of people in the world,” he would say to her, “the givers and the takers. The takers sometimes eat better but the givers always sleep better.”
At this time of year when things start to “heat up” and people become more stressed it’s nice to remember that the simple acts of giving can really make a difference. A smile and kind word to the harried store clerk, letting the person that only has a few items go in front of you at the grocery store, stopping to let that person cross the street are just a few things that you can do.
Notice that not one of the above ideas requires money. Giving isn’t just about money, though that can be helpful also, it’s about giving of what you have – time, talent, a smile, a kind word, extra clothing, food – the list is limited only by your imagination.
Find some way to give today.
This is a great comic from “I Fucking Love Science” on Facebook.
“Honey, have you seen my keys?”
“Where are those bills? They were due yesterday!”
“Did you floss at all this week?”
“When was the last time you hit the gym?”
Habits. They can be our worst enemy or our best friend. Dropping things on any flat surface when you come in the door at night is very inviting. The problem is that they often get left there, and you can’t find your keys, you miss bills, and you don’t know where the things that you need for the next day are when you get ready to go. This type of habit can cause stress and waste time that could be used for something enjoyable.
Brushing your teeth, planning weekly menus and exercising are also habits. This type of habit can reduce stress, save money and improve health.
Smoking, chewing tobacco, overeating, eating when you’re not hungry, making poor food choices, and biting your nails are also habits. This type of habit often times has an emotional piece that goes with it.
Habits are like a well worn path through a meadow. It’s very easy to stay on the path, your feet know it well. You really don’t have to think about it or even pay attention to where you’re going. In fact, getting off that path takes some conscious effort and a bit of work.
Your first step is deciding where you really want to go. Changing one habit or changing interrelated habits is much easier and more effective then trying to change many diverse habits at once. Deciding to eat healthier goes well with menu planning and meal preparation.
It’s said that it takes 21 days to put a new habit in place. I find it easiest to do it by the month. A new habit each month, reinforcing a habit that seems to be slipping a bit or refining an already useful habit (moving the furniture once a month when vacuuming instead of just catching the traffic area.)
For those habits that have an emotional piece, new habits that you find yourself resisting, or habits that just don’t seem to want to “stick,” hypnosis can be very helpful. Hypnosis can help you find out what your subconscious mind thinks about the habit, why it’s resisting change and how to move forward. Your lifestyle utilizing this new habit becomes very clear with hypnosis and the change becomes easy. When you’re looking for a hypnotist to help you with your habits, make sure that they do more than just use scripts and positive imagery, look for someone that will really dive into the issues.
Often times when people come in for hypnosis work they feel conflicted. Let’s take weight management (though it could be anything, stop smoking, fears, feelings of anxiety, etc,) a person comes in and says that she knows what to eat, understands portion control and how to exercise but part of her just doesn’t want to do it. This excerpt from another blog gives a bit of an explanation.
“Freud, it turns out, had it more right than he knew: far more of the “we” that we consider “us” lives beneath our conscious purview than we ever imagined. Not only are we composed of multiple “selves” often in conflict with one another—unconscious programs, or “zombies” as neuroscientists like to call them, that run far beneath our conscious awareness—the vast majority of our behavior comes from their interactions with each other, not with our conscious selves. (Studies have even shown our conscious minds may not even drive what we’ve always considered them to drive, becoming aware of the intent to move, in one study, almost half a second after the command to move fires from the pre-motor cortex!) As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in his book The Happiness Hypothesis: “The mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. Like a rider on the back of an elephant, the conscious reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does.”
The conscious mind, however, is a great explainer. It’s irresistibly drawn into making sense of the world and everything in it, including itself. Unfortunately, it prefers deluded explanations that keep its view of the world intact to true ones that threaten to shatter it. (The most dramatic example of this comes from experiments in which neurosurgeons have stimulated the motor cortices of awake patients, causing them to move their hands. When asked why they moved their hands, patients typically give answers like, “I was waving at that nurse.”)
Given our conscious mind’s propensity to tell stories that make the world cohere even at the expense of the truth, as well as the fact that most of our behavior emerges from places in our minds unseen, it’s little wonder we’re so often wrong about why we actually do the things we do, and the type of people we actually are. Add our ego-driven need to appear to be all things virtuous and good into the mix and we find ourselves mixing a potent recipe for significant self-delusion.”
This brings some light to our person that wants to control her weight, her conscious mind is simply making up stories for what the unconscious mind is doing. That’s where hypnosis comes in, being able to redirect those zombies to achieve the outcome that you’re desiring.
You can see the entire blog at: http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2011/09/18/how-to-know-yourself/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HappinessInThisWorld+%28Happiness+in+this+World%29
I read an interesting article this morning that was talking about how our brains are wired to keep the same beliefs that we’ve always had. We actually work hard at keeping, building, and fortifying those beliefs even when they have negative consequences for us and those around us.
Hypnosis can help bring perspective to those beliefs that aren’t useful, or even are harmful. So often beliefs that began in childhood when we had a much smaller viewpoint now color and add to our decisions about food, smoking, and the environment around us that causes us stress. Gaining insight on that view and getting rid of the emotional aspect of it can change the thinking and then change your life.
Here’s a link to the complete article.
http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2011/04/24/the-two-kinds-of-belief/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HappinessInThisWorld+%28Happiness+in+this+World%29
Thanks so much to a friend that passed this on from the New York Times. Teaching people to have compassion for themselves is a large part of the work that I do.
February 28, 2011, 5:26 pm
Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Stuart Bradford
Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?
That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.
The research suggests that giving ourselves a break and accepting our imperfections may be the first step toward better health. People who score high on tests of self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic. Preliminary data suggest that self-compassion can even influence how much we eat and may help some people lose weight.
This idea does seem at odds with the advice dispensed by many doctors and self-help books, which suggest that willpower and self-discipline are the keys to better health. But Kristin Neff, a pioneer in the field, says self-compassion is not to be confused with self-indulgence or lower standards.
“I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent,” said Dr. Neff, an associate professor of human development at the University of Texas at Austin. “They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”
Imagine your reaction to a child struggling in school or eating too much junk food. Many parents would offer support, like tutoring or making an effort to find healthful foods the child will enjoy. But when adults find themselves in a similar situation — struggling at work, or overeating and gaining weight — many fall into a cycle of self-criticism and negativity. That leaves them feeling even less motivated to change.
“Self-compassion is really conducive to motivation,” Dr. Neff said. “The reason you don’t let your children eat five big tubs of ice cream is because you care about them. With self-compassion, if you care about yourself, you do what’s healthy for you rather than what’s harmful to you.”
Dr. Neff, whose book, “Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind,” is being published next month by William Morrow, has developed a self-compassion scale: 26 statements meant to determine how often people are kind to themselves, and whether they recognize that ups and downs are simply part of life.
A positive response to the statement “I’m disapproving and judgmental about my own flaws and inadequacies,” for example, suggests lack of self-compassion. “When I feel inadequate in some way, I try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy are shared by most people” suggests the opposite.
For those low on the scale, Dr. Neff suggests a set of exercises — like writing yourself a letter of support, just as you might to a friend you are concerned about. Listing your best and worst traits, reminding yourself that nobody is perfect and thinking of steps you might take to help you feel better about yourself are also recommended.
Other exercises include meditation and “compassion breaks,” which involve repeating mantras like “I’m going to be kind to myself in this moment.”
If this all sounds a bit too warm and fuzzy, like the Al Franken character Stuart Smalley (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”), there is science to back it up. A 2007 study by researchers at Wake Forest University suggested that even a minor self-compassion intervention could influence eating habits. As part of the study, 84 female college students were asked to take part in what they thought was a food-tasting experiment. At the beginning of the study, the women were asked to eat doughnuts.
One group, however, was given a lesson in self-compassion with the food. “I hope you won’t be hard on yourself,” the instructor said. “Everyone in the study eats this stuff, so I don’t think there’s any reason to feel real bad about it.”
Later the women were asked to taste-test candies from large bowls. The researchers found that women who were regular dieters or had guilt feelings about forbidden foods ate less after hearing the instructor’s reassurance. Those not given that message ate more.
The hypothesis is that the women who felt bad about the doughnuts ended up engaging in “emotional” eating. The women who gave themselves permission to enjoy the sweets didn’t overeat.
“Self-compassion is the missing ingredient in every diet and weight-loss plan,” said Jean Fain, a psychotherapist and teaching associate at Harvard Medical School who wrote the new book “The Self-Compassion Diet” (Sounds True publishing). “Most plans revolve around self-discipline, deprivation and neglect.”
Dr. Neff says that the field is still new and that she is just starting a controlled study to determine whether teaching self-compassion actually leads to lower stress, depression and anxiety and more happiness and life satisfaction.
“The problem is that it’s hard to unlearn habits of a lifetime,” she said. “People have to actively and consciously develop the habit of self-compassion.”
To see the original article click here
