Pride

The Olympics are here. Love it or hate it, the 2012 Olympics have arrived in the UK. As with any event which has had such a build-up, there was a lot of scepticism amid fears of how the event would represent the country and affect the people living alongside it.

If you managed to watch the opening ceremony I am sure you will agree that Danny Boyle’s celebration of Britain, and interpretation of what it means to be British, was absolutely fantastic. A great combination of eccentricity, inventiveness, talent and of course humour, with Mr Bean, James Bond and even The Queen making an appearance. How many countries have a Queen that in her Diamond Jubilee year, who has carried herself through her whole carrier with dignity and pride always representing Britain to the best she can, would join in the celebrations by acting alongside Daniel Craig and “jumping out of a plane”. What a lady !

Even before Friday the buzz in London and the rest of Great Britain has been electric. People are proudly supporting their country and willing their athletes to perform and win gold. It’s fantastic that yet again this year, people of all backgrounds come together in unity and share that same sense of pride.

Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to have that same pride and self-worth helping you to achieve your goals in a positive and focused way.

Personally I feel very proud to be British and to cheer on such superb athletes from all around the world. Enjoy the wonderful Olympic buzz that is in the air as Great Britain shows just what an amazing show it can put on when we all pull together.

© EKTherapies

Negative self-talk: how it affects us

What is self-talk? Self-talk is the internal dialog we all have ongoing through our minds every day. This internal dialog can take two forms, positive and negative.

Are you a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Do you tell yourself: Yes I can do this. I can reach my goal. Or do you tell yourself: I will never get that job so there is no point going for the interview. I am fat. I am stupid.

We all have moments of self-doubt where we question whether we can achieve something, but the difference between a constant negative thought pattern and a positive one is the difference between a person who never feels good enough and a person who feels content with life, happily challenged.

We all know those people who seem to have it all. They are always so happy. But when you stop and look at their life next to yours they have nothing more than you - sometimes they even have less than you. The difference is their internal dialog is set to positive; they look for the positive and they appreciate the things they have got.

Negative self-talk affects us in many ways. It can lead to stagnation, self-pity, depression and many more negative influences. When we repeat a negative statement over and over again we begin to believe it. “I am not good enough” may prevent us from taking the steps to achieve a promotion that we are easily qualified for. It gives us a lack of confidence that isn’t based on anything real, but reinforced by the internal negative dialog. Eventually these thoughts become all consuming and you find that you approach every aspect of your life with this negativity, beginning to feel stressed easily, depressed and having a lack of confidence and motivation.

Changing the internal dialog to positive statements makes our life better and assists us in moving forward, giving us the confidence to achieve our goals. If instead of saying “I am not good enough”, say “I can do this”. Not only will you achieve your goals but you will happier and healthier. Positive self-talk gives you a permanent cheerleader in your corner, one that carries positive messages to all areas of your life and helps you to move forward. Once you have this positivity no one can take it away from you, as it comes from within you, from your own though process.

Very often the nature of our self-talk originates from a very early age. It may be a teacher that said you weren’t good enough, or a parent that always made you believe anything is possible.

Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to challenge the source of the negative thoughts and change them to positive ones. Eventually you will surround yourself with positive thoughts and that will create an environment that will allow you to live your best possible life.

Here a few easy steps to start to become positive:

· Smile more.

· Replace your negative thoughts with positive ones. This can be hard at first. Start by talking positively. When you have a negative thought or catch yourself about to say something negative, stop yourself and see if you can spin it on its head and turn it into a positive one. Soon this will become second nature and you will find yourself thinking in the positive first.

· Expect positive results. When you set a goal expect that not only will you achieve it but you will be better than you thought.

· Actually visualize the success you want. Picture it in your mind, picture what you DO want, rather than having a list of what you DON’T want. Have an image of what you DO want, and see yourself achieving your goal.

We all have the ability to retrain our minds, we do it every day. Give it a go. What do you have to lose? Nothing. What could you gain? Everything.

© EKTherapies

Common Misconceptions about Hypnotherapy

There are lots of misconceptions people have when they think about Hypnotherapy. Here are just a few that I have come across whilst working with Hypnotherapy.

You lose control under hypnosis and say things you don’t want to say

Most people know about hypnotherapy through stage hypnosis and are nervous that if they went to see a hypnotherapist they would end up clucking like a chicken every time someone said potato. It is important to remember that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis and you remain in complete control the whole time. Take stage hypnosis, the stage hypnotherapist always chooses a willing participant from the audience. The participant goes onto stage expecting to act like a fool so when the hypnotherapist puts them into a trance and tells them to cluck like a chicken every time they say potato they react accordingly. However, if the hypnotherapist tried to tell them to stop smoking for example they would probably turn around and say no, as this was not what they were expecting to have to do on stage.

In the same way when you go and see a Hypnotherapist you are expecting to deal with certain things. By booking the appointment you are subconsciously and consciously agreeing to let the therapist speak to your subconscious about the thing you have come to see them about. If for example the therapist then asked you a question you weren’t willing to give the answer to you just wouldn’t.

Hypnotherapy is a magic wand

Lots of people think that hypnotherapy is a magic wand that can change the way their mind thinks without any effort from them at all. Whilst hypnotherapy is a very powerful tool as it speaks to your subconscious mind, it still requires strength and determination from the person to want to change. Just as under hypnosis the therapist can’t make you do something you don’t want to do, if for example you don’t want to give up smoking but your partner wants you to and sends you to a hypnotist the chances are that it won’t work long term as you didn’t want to make the change in the first place. If on the other hand you want to but just don’t know how, then hypnotherapy is the simple yet powerful tool you are looking for.

Only highly suggestible people can be hypnotised

Whilst people who find it easy to trust may find it easier to go into a deep hypnotic trance it is not a fact that only they can be hypnotised. Anyone can be hypnotised, the hypnotherapist will just use a different technique for a highly suggestible person than they would for a very analytical person. It may surprise you to know that we all enter a trance like state on a daily basis, when watching TV, waking, singing, etc. Take driving, when you do a journey you do every day it is common to “zone out”. You are still safe it is just that your subconscious brain has taken over the controls; the journey is so second nature to you that you just drive, sometimes arriving at your destination with no recollection of the journey. You know you were safe as you are still happily sitting in your car. If during that journey when you were on autopilot someone had stepped out in front of you that would be the time that you shocked yourself into action. This is all hypnotherapy is in its simplest form, quieting down the conscious mind so that the subconscious mind is listening.

As you can see Hypnotherapy is not something to be scared of, you remain in complete control the whole time. It is important to trust the Hypnotherapist just as it is important that you trust your doctor or your dentist’s professional capability. Recommendations are a good way to find a trustworthy Hypnotherapist, and when you have found them ring them up and ask them questions until you are happy. Listen to your gut reaction about them and you will find a therapist that can help you overcome most things, helping you to become the person you want to be.

Click here to see what things Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help with.

© EKTherapies

Overcoming a Fear of Flying

Do you dream of visiting Australia but settle for Bournemouth? If so you are not alone, fear of flying is a surprisingly common phobia that can limit your horizons both in business and pleasure. Using the powerful combination of Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP you can understand the fear of flying psychology. In a positive, quick and easy way you can overcome your fear and plan your dream holiday instead of talking yourself out of taking it.

Fear of flying is also known as aerophobia or aviphobia, it is caused by the unconscious part of your mind warning you that it is dangerous to get on a plane. This is an important part of our brain that helps to keep us safe and out of harm’s way. This part of your brain is developing all the time form the day you are born and on. Remember when you were growing up and an adult tells you “HOT” to stop you touching the stove. Your unconscious brain learns that when you're told “HOT” that you should be careful. However in the case of flying phobia that protection mechanism has become over sensitive, often from misinformation and is now a casing you to associate flying with danger.

Some people who are afraid of flying they have never even stepped foot on a plane yet they still have this fear. This fear would be appropriate if the plane was missing a wing or was obviously not in a condition to fly, but statistics show that flying is in fact one of the safest things you can do. Air travel remains statistically safer than crossing the road and flying has been proven to be twenty five times safer than driving your own car.

• 21,000 people (on average) die on the road in the USA in a 6-month period. This is approximately the same amount of all commercial air travel fatalities worldwide in 40 years
• More than 3million people fly every day
• A Boeing aircraft takes off or lands every 2 seconds somewhere in the world – all day, every day
• 1 plane in 5 million crashes. Even then people still survive plane crashes, going on to fly again

Hypnotherapy, CBT and NLP will help you to understand why you have this fear, where it comes from and help you to feel relaxed and safe when flying. In your tailor made session you will learn relaxation skills that can become automatic when practiced and perfected. Hypnotherapy can help you to learn a new pattern of behaviour, helping you to simply relax and start to enjoy the freedom of flying and all the wonderful places you can visit.

Remember that during a session you remain in complete control, learning the skills you need to take them out of the session and put them into practice. You will leave the session feeling positive, motivated, confident and in control. All you need to do is bring you commitment and determination to become someone who can fly without fear.

© EKTherapies

Does the Past Form Our future

Does the past form our future? Just because we are used to acting a certain way or something happened to us in the past, does that mean that that is how we are going to be for the rest of our lives?

The past does form who we are, it helps us to learn and to get a better understanding of what we do or don’t want out of life, but it doesn’t have to control our future.

In my work I work in a positive direction, looking at where you want to get to, how you want to feel and what you would like to achieve. Although we may look into what contributed to you feeling the way you do, to me it is more important to focus on what you DO want rather than what you DON'T want. We can expect that the past is always part of us but we can choose whether or not to allow it to rule our future. It sounds so simple but we can choose whether to give a thought energy and momentum, be it a positive one or a negative one. We are the ones in control of our own minds - this in itself can be one of the most powerful thoughts. Look how powerful it can be if we start on a negative spiral for example. We can imagine things so vividly even though the chance of them happening is less than .001%, but we still feel the physical and physiological responses as if it had already happened. Or there are the psychosomatic cases when you tell your brain you are ill and it starts to give you the symptoms as if you really were.

It is also important to accept that even when you work with the positive, it doesn’t mean that you won’t have the odd "down" day - life is after all a wonderful rollercoaster - and we need the “down” days to appreciate the good ones, but the “down” days should be few and far between.

Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP can help you to realise any emotions/blockages from the past, and maybe not forgive, but overcome the power of the past so that you can focus on how you want to be.

There is no doubt that there are some things that may have happened in the past that form you and are hard to let go of, but if we accept that they are there, then we can either let them rule us or we can learn from them and allow ourselves the space to continue to grow.

In both my professional life and my personal life, I find great strength from my grandmother who was an Auschwitz survivor ( German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp 1940–1945, her story is told in her book, From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back ). Undoubtedly Auschwitz left her with her demons, haunting her throughout her life, but nevertheless she was the most positive person I have ever met; she found the strength within herself to forgive what had happened and used that strength to create the most amazing life. Her positive energy is always with me when I work, helping me to stay strong and be the best therapist I can be.

There are countless examples of people who have changed their destiny, let go of the past and focussed on what they do want rather than what they can’t change.

Hypnotherapy, CBT & NLP are amazing tools in helping you understand what drives you, helping you to become a more positive person. So many of my clients turn their lives around even though nothing has physically changed; they still have the same car, job, house etc, but simply their perspective has changed. Rather than allowing themselves to focus on the few tiny things in life that aren’t quite right they start to focus on all the things that are right, giving them the strength to challenge themselves and take on tasks they never thought possible.

© EKTherapies