Being Happy with Yourself: Hypnosis for Factors

Being happy with yourself seems so logical, but it’s far from always easy. Did you know, for example, that our blog post on self-hatred is one of the most-read posts on our website? That says a lot about how difficult it can be to be happy with yourself.

In this blog article, we explore ways in which being happy with yourself is possible.

Happier through self-acceptance

You basically are who you are, and sometimes that's hard to accept. We have never lived in a time when you can change so much about yourself as you can now. We know an awful lot about how our psyche works and what we can do with our thoughts.

In addition, we can use surgical procedures to make you look more like the opposite sex than the biological sex you were born with.

So it has also never been easier to not be happy with yourself, because suddenly you don't "have" to accept that you are, for example, a man or a woman. Or you can suddenly accept that you are in the wrong body. It's just how you look at it.

However, self-acceptance is important to be happy with yourself.

Research from China (also a modern society) shows that self-acceptance is important for feeling better. This manifests itself, among other things, in being more extroverted and exhibiting less neurotic behavior[1].

So the beauty is that you don't have to change yourself to be happy with yourself. Accepting yourself is already a great step to being happier with yourself.

If you find this difficult, a hypnotherapist can help improve your self-acceptance. Hypnosis, when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, can influence your understanding of how the world works, your thoughts about your own thoughts, and your emotions[2].

That scheme about how the world works, for example, involves your thoughts about how you are "supposed" to behave then, and if you can't do what you think you "should," it can make you unhappy.

This is, for example, a problem for people who are perfectionists .

If the schedule can then be adjusted with beliefs such as:

"I'm allowed to make mistakes, everyone does."

"Good enough is good enough."

And those kinds of thoughts, then this helps adjust your feelings about how you "should" function and you can accept yourself, without having to change yourself.

Being confident and happy

If you have low self-confidence, this doesn’t help you be happier either. Unconditionally accepting yourself also helps improve your self-confidence and reduces the impact of narcissism (which is ultimately a symptom of total insecurity)[3].

Improving your self-confidence is often also a step toward being happy with yourself, but to improve your self-confidence, it is also important to have an independent self-image. This means that you don't look or think about what others think of you in order to have a self-image, but you decide what your self-image is.

Creating this independent self-image in your mind is often linked to your self-esteem— that sense that you, as it were, deserve to be who you are[4].

Hypnotherapy helps to gain an independent self-image and good self-esteem for greater self-confidence. One of the exercises to increase self-esteem is the magic mirror exercise.

This is a visualization in which you are suggested to walk through a beautiful house, then suddenly see yourself in a mirror in that house. Along with this, suggestions are given so that you also see what a beautiful person you are, and that you deserve all the beautiful things that life has to offer, that you are strong, and that you have already survived everything to this day.

This exercise will help you quickly see that you are a valuable person worthy of achieving their personal goals.

Another approach is to reduce negative self-talk. This is where hypnotherapy can play an important role in strengthening the ego[5], and thus in helping people gain more self-confidence.

Giving meaning to your life

There are multiple ways you can experience being happy. You can do something fun that makes you feel happy during that fun thing or you can do something that gives your life meaning.

This can even be something difficult.

But when you are involved, you feel happier because you are contributing to the "bigger picture."

If you feel like you're not really doing meaningful things right now, it may help to do something that makes you experience that.

1. You can look for another job.
2. You can do volunteer work.
3. You can start projects to help other people.

All of this can make you feel happier because you are simply more satisfied with what you contribute.

In addition, giving meaning to your life also helps you develop greater self-acceptance[6]. For example, you can balance out the things you’re not satisfied with against the things you are satisfied with.

When life throws you a curveball—such as illness, job loss, or divorce—it can sometimes be hard to feel happy with yourself. After all, your body, job, or partner has let you down. You may start to feel as though you’re not good enough or something like that.

But that way of thinking doesn't help you become happier. Instead, you can think about what the "lesson" is that your body or the life event wants to give you. Hypnotherapy can help you make that spiritual connection with yourself to give meaning to your life by tracing your deepest thoughts and feelings[7].

This is another way you can bring more spiritual meaning to your life, and that can help you feel happier just the same.

Making others happy

So you can give your life meaning spiritually, or practically by doing something for people. The latter is also consistent with studies indicating that working precisely to make other people happy causes you to become happier with yourself[8]. This even helps you become happier than if other people try to make you happy.

And this can already be done with a small action, such as filling the parking meter for strangers. Something that is quite difficult in the Netherlands, but in the U.S. you have vending machines where this is easier with change.

So you don't even have to interact with other people to get this effect done. As long as you know you are doing something that makes other people happy.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where your talents lie that can help others—especially if you focus on everything you can’t do, rather than on everything you can do.

A hypnotherapist can help you focus on what you’re good at, and this can even be achieved by looking at past experiences in a different way[9]. That way, nothing has to stop you from making other people happy, too.

One way to make other people happy is to become a hypnosis practitioner 😉. Take it from me that even after more than 20 years of being a hypnotherapist, and training new hypnotherapists, that does not bore me and it makes me happy every day.

If you take the HIN's training courses, you can call yourself a hypnosis practitioner after the third course. It is then even possible in combination with a small 1-day course to have your sessions reimbursed by the health insurance company (or partially reimbursed if you ask for more than the reimbursement is).

That way, you can make an awful lot of people happy and, in the process, be happier with yourself.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and exactly how it works? Then come to a free masterclass.

Or register directly for one of our events and trainings. Then you'll also get many demonstrations of hypnotherapy sessions to watch.

You can take the training either classically in Assendelft or live online. You then participate live in the classroom lessons via an internet connection. Ideal if you are away for the weekend and still want to follow the lessons.

Or if you don't even live in the Netherlands and would still like to take the training.

Click here to learn more about our training programs.

Click here for our calendar.

Do you have a question about one of our courses? Schedule a one-on-one consultation here.

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