A lot of people lose the ability to see what their life might look like, if they overcame their anxiety, depression, phobia, self-esteem issues, etcetera. But here’s the thing, you need to be able to see it to believe it. Whether you are literally seeing it or sensing it in another way, such as feeling it, your unconscious mind needs to know what it is you are wanting or aiming for, or it will simply continue on with its negative behaviours because it believes that it is helping you in some way by doing so.
See it to believe it, as an instruction to your brain
In order to tell your unconscious mind where you want it to take you, you need to give it instructions. After all, it has been doing the old way for a while now. In some illogical sense, it thinks that it is assisting you in doing this negative behaviour, and so why would it change anything, unless instructed to do so?
An example might be that you have an impulse to watch out for danger. That impulse keeps you awake but you don’t even know you have this impulse because the danger that your unconscious mind is trying to keep you safe from, happened a long time ago. But your unconscious mind doesn’t know it was a long time go, it just remembers that it was significant in some way. So now your unconscious mind is vigilant in protecting you, while you have to suffer without sleep.
In order to instruct your unconscious mind to behave differently, you need to show it what you want. The direction that your eyes move in, can actually be used as an instruction. This topic is known as eye accessing cues. There are of course many other forms of instruction such as direct suggestion hypnosis and many, many NLP techniques, but let’s look at eye directions here.
Most people will automatically look up and to the right when they imagine the future. A small percentage will look up and to the left. It’s like being left handed compared to right. So for most people, if they focus on an image of themselves of how they want to be, for example, 10 kilos lighter, while looking in that optimal direction, they are instructing their unconscious minds as to where they want to go. They see it in a very specific way, a way that tells the brain that this is the future and the destination, simply by looking in this direction as they focus on that outcome.
For those whose future direction is up and to the left, the focus on the ideal would need to take place in that direction. You can test yourself or ask a friend to help you to make sure you understand your optimal eye direction. Simply prepare a list of future based questions and notice which way you automatically glance as you answer each one. It can get tricky with recall entering the scene as well as conflicting thoughts which may cause your eyes to look in other directions, so you have to ask enough questions to get a strong indication.
A good question to ask is: If you could be anywhere in the world tomorrow that you have never been to before, where would you go? Then ask the person to look up to the right and imagine themselves there, and then up to the left and imagine themselves there. The most comfortable and easy direction to visualise in, will tell you how your brain works.
If you spent a tea break looking up and to that direction while focusing on your goal, you might be surprised as to how much easier it will be to realise that goal. And that is because your brain is starting to believe it. When you utilise eye directions in this way, you are allowing your brain to become comfortable with that new reality, for it to become normal, rather than out of reach. You have to be able to see it to believe it.
Why see it, and not feel it?
Some clients swear that they are not visual, so I ask them, ‘Can you recall what your kitchen looks like?’ I’ve not had one person to fail this test. You see, we were all visual creatures before our emotions became further evolved. We did cave paintings and drew maps in the sand to communicate information. Language changed everything and helped us to develop our feelings, but we are still imprinted with that visual ability. Some of us just need to practice it a little. It remains, for a majority of us, the most powerful ‘instructional direction’. Though there are exceptions.
Have you noticed that depressed people are often looking down? They are stuck in the feeling zone and have forgotten how to create. In order to get the life you want, you need to create it. You need to see it to believe it, and once you believe it, you can make it happen.
If you need assistance with instructing your unconscious mind to work better for you, we can help. Horizons Clinical Hypnotherapy Sunshine Coast.