It’s Time

This week I had the opportunity to work with a hypnosis client who wanted to lose weight. She was a single, working mom and felt she had devoted enough time to everyone else and was ready to devote some time to herself. She expressed her frustration with her own decisions and kept saying she “knew” she should make different choices.

With hypnosis, the important thing is that the person is ready to make a shift – they feel like it is time to cast off whatever has been holding them back and forge into a new area of their lives. Many times when I meet with people like this client, they almost seem ashamed that they couldn’t make the shift on their own without some help.

This is how it is for any of us who are seeking to be different in our relationships and different in the world in general with other people we encounter every day. Let’s face it – the political scene, the news scene, the local store where a manager might be yelling at an employee or the hockey game where parents are beating up on one another on behalf of their kids don’t give us many examples of strong relationships and a show of kindness and compassion for others.

But this doesn’t mean we can’t wake up each day and say to ourselves, “it’s time.” It’s time to stop yelling at my significant other and making them responsible for all of my unhappiness. It’s time to stop blaming my boss or my conditions at work for my bad moods every day. It’s time to stop engaging in the back and forth with my teenager as we go round and round with no solutions. It’s time to remove people from my life who are not contributing anything positively and who bring me down.

Whatever the situation may be for you, it’s time. Now, this doesn’t mean that it is easy. One can’t say they will wake up tomorrow and all will be well. We have ingrained habits and “triggers” that set us off, and many times our best intentions go awry because we mean to do something differently but we find ourselves right back where we started, and defeated. Why bother, we may ask.

But, like my weight loss client, we can make a renewed commitment to make some different choices. Yes, we did the hypnosis to talk to her subconscious mind, but she also had to make some conscious choices. She had to take out her calendar and mark the days she would do an exercise video that she enjoys. She had to put the chips that her son enjoys in a cabinet just for his use, and put carrots and snap peas in a bowl where she would see them anytime she needed a snack.

Similarly, we have to figure out what steps we can take to forge deeper relationships. Is it to listen more effectively? Is it to refrain from cutting someone off while they are talking? Is it to stop turning every conversation we engage in back to ourselves? Or maybe it is our behavioral style – do we need to practice more patience in some situations? Do we need to control our anger more effectively?

Identifying where we want to shift and then creating a plan for making the shift can be very effective. It gives us a way to watch what we are doing (Interested Observer) and also track our progress. If you want to deepen your relationships or change them in some way, this week consider making that your plan. Identify your triggers and see what you can do to put the steps in place to be different in the next exchange you have.