Coping with change: however you can look at it

When you look at how much has changed in recent years, such as with St. Nicholas, you see that change is difficult. I like the fact that my boys no longer believe in Sinterklaas, because at least when they did believe there wasn't as much security at an entry as there is now. There is an awful lot of security at Sinterklaas now. That is interesting

Coping with changes in society

What you think, you think.

What I like about it is that everything in life is subject to change. Many things that happened a thousand years ago are also gone. Everything is gone except the pyramids and the Great Wall of China. Remnants of an era.

I'm glad my boys celebrated and I'm glad they don't believe in it now. I estimate that in 20 to 30 years it will be completely gone. And you can think something about that, you can be happy about that or you can be sad about that, but it's going to happen and you see it happening.

What is so interesting is that when you see this happening there is an awful lot of resistance. Actually, this is meaningless energy or resistance. You can disagree, but it happens anyway.

The Netherlands also definitely has a chance that the dikes will break. That all of North Holland will then be under water. You may find this annoying, but you will move. It is also said that climate refugees will soon be the largest group of refugees. We will see if this is true, but even then there will be a lot of resistance.

This is a bit on the macro level, like the climate and Sinterklaas (sort of). If you look at your own life—on the micro level—you might also notice that you’re holding on to things that are ready for change.

People sometimes struggle with getting older. They find it difficult to transition from 20 to 30 or from 40 to 50. There, too, you see a kind of farewell—the idea that the party is over.

You see changes there, too, and some people have a very hard time dealing with them. While you know it's going to happen. And actually you don't know at all, there are plenty of people who are not your age. So actually it is just a celebration when you reach 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 or even older.

Actually, it's tops. That's how you could see it and it's going to happen if it's allowed. So why bother.

You have reasons for that, of course. These are certain values you adhere to.

Still, some things you can't change much about. Like the Americanization that Halloween is suddenly a thing.

In 10 years, it will be different again and 10 years from now.

I think it's good to join just that with an open mind and an open heart. To welcome the changes instead of fighting against them. Some things, like getting older, you're going to lose anyway. So there's no point in that anyway.

Regarding social change, many people say, "But you have to fight for your ideals, right?" But do you even know what your ideals are? If not, figure out how important you think something is, and if yes (very important), what do you think is important about it.

When it comes to smaller things—like a cup not being washed and that leading to an argument with your partner —what’s really behind it?

It's not about the headline? It's about what you think it implies, what it means behind it.

You might think that if someone does that, they don’t respect you, or that they don’t love you. It’s not about the cup.

Bigger business is often not about St. Nicholas; it's about something else. Something about why you want to be heard and seen. With St. Nicholas, it's about the lesson that you can believe something, which just isn't true. This in itself can also be done with Santa Claus.

It's always about something you want to be heard or seen in.

But if you know what this is all about, ask yourself why? Linking such a celebration to our culture is also a thing. Because then, what is our culture? What does our culture or the Netherlands mean?

Isn't it true that in the Netherlands everything is always changing? Isn't it true that we have turned water into land? Isn't it true that we have always embraced people no matter where they came from? Yes, we also enslaved people and we changed that too, so that we don't do that anymore.

This is how we have changed all kinds of things. We also no longer do public hangings as a celebration, which is much nicer anyway. Now it might even be a very separate idea to have public hangings.

Since things do change, be glad you live somewhere that can. I also think everything is changing everywhere.

Limits to change in society

Of course, you also discover that you have limits to what you want to change. For example, freedom of religion is incredibly important to me. It's up to everyone, to the point where they start oppressing or frightening people. I don't care if it's Muslims or Christians. There are always exceptions in religion that make me think, "This doesn't make any sense at all. It's not in any book."

There are those who do, but I simply disagree. It's as simple as that.

It does exist.

For me, the hypnosis of St. Nicholas is the hypnosis of life. Everything changes, everything passes, and if you strip everything away, not much is left.

Also listen to this podcast:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/2227088-sinterklaas-hypnose?play=true

Dealing with change in your personal life

As mentioned above, resistance comes with changes in your personal life due to beliefs you have about how life is supposed to go. For example, when it comes to getting older, many people struggle with this as indicated earlier in the text.

After all, old age comes with defects. Japanese, on average, grow incredibly old, so they have found all kinds of ways to cope.

One way is "painful self-disclosure" combined with humor. This means linking their flaws to the stereotype of growing old and turning it into a kind of joke. For example, they often laugh at them and the person listening laughs along with them. This, in turn, strengthens the bond between those two people[1].

What they do in Japan is very interesting, because that is, they start laughing at their problem. This is also a technique used in hypnotherapy. After all, if you can laugh about it, it is no longer a problem.

When you’re under hypnosis, you can use a Socratic dialogue to uncover why you find something important and what causes your resistance to change. The “why” question is then repeated several times. What lies behind your belief? What are the implications? Why is this the case?

Then when you get to your core belief and it doesn't really make any sense you can state it in a bizarre way. Just until it makes you laugh.

Research also shows that certain skills are helpful when dealing with negative changes in your life, such as a solution-focused mindset, focusing on specific goals, social support, reframing the situation, acceptance, and adjusting standards.

The more of these skills people had, the better they could handle negative life changes[2].

Hypnosis can also play a role in this list. For example, hypnosis can help you shift your focus from what isn’t going well in your life to what is going well, or toward opportunities to achieve your goals.

Acceptance or letting go is also something hypnosis can help with. One way to do this is to scrutinize and adjust beliefs so that you can more easily cope with the new situation.

In addition, hypnosis can also help to revisit a situation. This is done, for example, with regression. With regression, you go back to the first moment when a belief that is now causing resistance to change was created. This is a moment in childhood for many people, so you don't even always have to revisit the change itself.

You will revisit this moment, at which point the beliefs that are now causing resistance were created. With the knowledge you now have about life and about why people do what they do. This alone can change the belief, making it easier for you to deal with the change in your life.

You can either accept it faster or invent new ways for how you deal with the problem to still reach a solution.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis can help you? Then join a free online masterclass on hypnosis.

Or sign up for one of the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands. The courses are taught online from a professional studio with enough hypnosis experts to provide one-on-one attention.

Sources:

[1] https://search.proquest.com/openview/9b45ab659a22ce72ee679fec3bb1f5db/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=37022

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10433-010-0160-6