The majority of people that you speak to would tell you that their life could be improved in some way. Yet many people who want to change their lives for the better, or for what they perceive to be better, are not able to achieve what they desire. Whether that is losing weight, overcoming a fear or anxiety or simply becoming more confident in an aspect of their lives, many people find that while they can make a temporary change relatively easily, the lasting changes are more difficult to achieve.
There is a very simple reason for this. We have been conditioned to take an ‘outside-in’ approach to changing our lives from a very young age. When children have a problem with another child in the early days of school they are encouraged to tell the teacher who will ‘sort out’ the issue for them. Things are similar at home if we have siblings of a similar age. When we visit the doctor, the allopathic or mainstream approach to treating illness or ‘dis-ease’ is often to hand out medicine or some kind of pharmaceutical drug to treat the symptom, as opposed to encouraging us to look inside ourselves and our habits for the root cause of the issue.
Those are just a few examples of how the accepted way of doing things is almost without question, an outside-in approach. We simply place a plaster, or a band-aid on the issue and hope that it sorts itself. This way of doing things is very deeply ingrained in society. Many people deal with emotional discomfort by using coping mechanisms which involve producing physical pleasure by taking in a substance, such as comfort foods, or partaking in a physical activity for the same reason. Shopping and social media have becoming increasingly common methods of coping with underlying negative emotion.
These activities are not wrong by any means in principle, but they are far from being lasting solutions to emotional disquiet. In the case of people looking to lose weight, the desire to eat, often too frequently or at the wrong times, is often masking an emotional issue or discomfort of some sort. While many may be able to suppress the urges for short periods of time, (for example at the start of a new year, Lent, new exercise routine etc) ultimately it is the beliefs, habits and programs in the subconscious mind that usually win out and end with the person slipping back into their old ways, sometimes to an even worse degree than before due to the cumulative disappointment of ‘failing’ again. With anxiety, there is often a root cause hidden in the subconscious mind which prevents lasting change from taking place easily. Anxiety is telling you that something needs to change- that you’re a long way from home, or your innate, natural state.
“There is no failure, only feedback.”
The issues are similar with anxiety- some people try to consciously force their desired changes with ‘positive thinking’. The issue with this is that long term, this forced ‘positive thinking’ is likely to be overridden by the dominant subconscious mind. Ultimately we must tackle the root cause of the anxiety deep in the subconscious mind- and often it has been triggered by a past emotional trauma.
The great news is, the mind is very ‘programmable’ and ‘re-programmable’, which means that you can make these changes in your mind, in your subconscious, to enable you to change your life in the way you desire. The work of Dr Joe Dispenza has demonstrated scientifically that changes in the brain can be observed- the scope of the ‘neuroplasticity’ of the brain has been shown to been much greater than was once thought.
One of my favourite ways of helping people to produce these changes is through visualisation. Visualisation with intense focus and positive emotion has been proven to help the brain change more quickly. It seem that the emotion is the most crucial part- strong positive emotion appears to help the changes happen faster and more permanently. Dr Joe Dispenza believes that this is best done first thing in the morning, before the usual habitual thoughts and beliefs have again automatically taken over when we begin going about our daily routine.
Through this visualisation of the ideal you, the ‘quantum you’, in the intense focus and positive emotion, in the words of Dr Joe Dispenza, you “begin to make your brain fire in new sequences, patterns, and combinations.” If we add in the knowledge of Dr Bruce Lipton here, we know that in this intense process of focus, the mind is unable to tell the difference between ‘real’ and ‘imagined’. By doing this consistently over a period of weeks and months, you are able to make permanent and lasting changes, as the changes in your inner world begin to reflect in your outer world.
Real, lasting and positive change can only come from the inside-out. By making changes in the mind first, only then are you able to move towards being the greatest version of yourself.
Wishing you all the best,
Liam
