Welcome to my Daily Inspiration - Daily Quote. See today's daily inspirational quotes below.
May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself. - Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Thursday, May 28, 2009

How To Talk Yourself Into Making Personal Changes

- Alan B. Densky, CH

Did you ever try to eliminate a harmful behavior, only to be unsuccessful? There is a long list of universal problem behaviors that people often try to change or eradicate using self-hypnosis. The most common are: Overeating and weight loss; stop smoking; quit chewing tobacco; stop nail biting; increasing self-confidence; overcoming insomnia and sleeping better; improving memory; and managing stress.

WHAT THE MIND CAUSES, THE MIND CAN CURE: The motivation for our behaviors starts in our thoughts. If you stop and think about it, all of these destructive behaviors are the consequence of negative thinking. In other words, you think and motivate yourself into all of these behaviors. Or at least you think yourself into feeling stressed, and that can result in these behaviors. And because you think and motivate yourself into these behaviors, you can think and motivate yourself out of them as well. In order to think and motivate yourself out of these negative behaviors, you will need to know the "Motivation Formula For Success."

DESIRE: You are perhaps reading this commentary because you want the motivation to make some personal changes. And that is fitting because the first element in the "Motivation Formula For Your Success" is that you must want or desire to change. If you have read this far, at least a little part of you wants a change.

BELIEF IS REQUIRED FOR MOTIVATION: Before anyone can change an unhelpful behavior, that person must be motivated to do so. Merely desiring a behavior to change is not sufficient.

Motivation comes from what we believe. If we believe that something very important to us will get better or "become enhanced" if we modify our behavior, then we will feel a high level of motivation. Conversely, if we believe that something very important to us will be placed in jeopardy if we don't alter our behavior, we will also experience motivation to change.

Some plain examples of these motivational beliefs could be:

If I take some weight off, then I'll be able to find a companion.

If I kick my smoking habit, then I'll be healthier.

If I improve my study habits, then I can graduate from college.

TECHNOLOGIES THAT CAN CREATE THE BELIEFS THAT LEAD TO MOTIVATION: Neuro-Linguistic Programming - which is commonly known as NLP, offers methods that can instantaneously generate the element of belief. You can discover more on this topic by reading the articles "How To Get Motivated To Exercise Using Hypnosis And NLP" and "Motivation Theory - How To Quit Smoking Using NLP And Hypnosis For Motivation." These articles are both available in my free hypnosis research library.

DECISION: The dictionary defines the word "Decision" as making up one's mind / a verdict or judgment. When you accept as true something that provides you with a powerful feeling of motivation to alter your behavior, you will feel bound to make a decision to alter a negative behavior. Decision is the key that unlocks the door to taking action.

ACTION: The dictionary definition of the word "Action" is an act or deed / to do or perform. Taking action means that rather than just thinking about making personal changes, you will actually take steps to bring about your desired changes.

SELF-TALK: One of the reasons that individuals fail to change or eliminate a negative behavior is because of what they say to themselves. Self-talk is vital because repeatedly it is part of what caused the negative behavior in the first place.

I'd like you to consider this for a moment: Let's say that you want to quit smoking. Possibly the first thing that you are likely to say or think to yourself is: "I'm not going to smoke any longer."

It is universal for people to tell themselves what they are not going to do. Unfortunately, when we tell ourselves what we are not going to do, we are actually compelling ourselves to do it!

SELF-TALK EXERCISE: Say the following to yourself: I can't see blue. I can't see polka dots . . . . . . .

I'll bet your mind showed you the color blue, and then it showed you polka dots. That's because when we tell ourselves what we are not going to do, in order to make sense of it our mind must make a movie of us doing what it is that we would like to stop doing. And when we see ourselves engaging in a behavior, our mind compels us to create that behavior.

SUMMARY: In order to eliminate a negative behavior, we must first want or DESIRE to get rid of it. BELIEF is the factor that leads us to MOTIVATION. MOTIVATION is the drive that compels us to DECISION. DECISION is the means to ACTION. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a tool that we can use to facilitate beliefs, motivation, decisions, and actions.

When we tell ourselves what we are not going to do, we make a mental image of ourselves in the behavior that we want to get rid of. And that mental movie gives us a compulsion to create the negative behavior. So if we want to abolish a negative behavior, rather than tell ourselves what we will not do, we must always tell ourselves what we will do.

To quit smoking say: "I can live without them."

To abort cravings for food that will make you fat or to stop chewing smokeless tobacco say: "I can live without it."

To reduce stress say: "I'm relaxed and calm, both mentally and physically."

To fall asleep more quickly say: "I fall asleep promptly, and sleep soundly and restfully throughout the night."

Alan B. Densky, CH is an NLP Practitioner and certified hypnotherapist. He operates the Neuro-VISION Self Hypnosis website.

4 comments:

  1. Nice post..
    I do believe that through self talk we can definitely improve ourself as we can get the confidence through our own words...
    I am looking forward for some more motivational like this..Keep posting.

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  2. I used to a negative person, which was affecting my health, and I took counsoling and I realized that I was making myself sick the way I was thinking, that's when I change my way of thinking, and I tried to be positive all the time

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  3. I thouroughly enjoyed this article. It inspires me. I needed that.

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  4. Thanks For The Booster Dose....This Is Something That I Needed An Year Before....But It's OK.... "BETTER LATE THAN NEVER"...

    ReplyDelete

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