Getting further in your life, how hypnosis can help and other tips

Getting further in your life, it can be open to many interpretations. Moving forward financially? Making an important decision you've been mulling over for weeks (or even months)? Either way, if you want to move forward, you have the feeling that you are stuck in something, that something is blocking you from changing the situation you are now fed up with. But what can you do right now to move forward and what is stopping you from doing so? In this blog I address that question

Are you at a dead end though?

Initially, it is important to consider what you base your belief that you are stuck and not moving forward. Especially in Western cultures, it is normal to expect that you will get what you have always gotten or that things will go the way they go because that is the way things have always gone.

How realistic is that perspective, really? Unfortunately, if you grew up poor, you’ll always see yourself as poor unless you change your mindset. The same applies to relationships. If you’ve had a narcissist as a partner—or as a parent—there’s a good chance you’ll end up with someone like that again; here, too, you need to change your mindset to change the kind of partner you choose.

Take a look at a yin yang picture

Do you find it hard to think that the future could be different? The cool thing is that sometimes very simple tricks can cause you to see more opportunities and changes than before.

For example, a study was conducted in which people saw the yin yang sign on a researcher's t-shirt. This involved people from Western backgrounds. After they had "inspiration" from a more eastern cultural icon, they were able to predict more change than before. While people from eastern backgrounds were more likely to do so[1].

Get out into nature

Many Dutch people live in urban areas. This means that many things remain the same. The roads hardly change, if at all, and that bar you always go to was already there 50 years ago. This naturally reinforces the feeling that everything stays the way it is or was.

In nature, however, all sorts of things do change. Trees lose their leaves every year, and in the spring, flowers may even bloom on them. Autumn storms can even topple trees that have stood in one place for 100 years, and yet a new sapling can grow from the remains of that tree.

Spending time in nature allows you to see that change is possible, and this can help you see opportunities to move forward with what you are not doing now[2].

Move for more creativity

Solving problems often requires creativity. To spot opportunities and come up with ways to keep moving forward, creativity is key—and what makes you more creative? That’s right: exercise.

So if you do want to get out into nature, do so with a nice pair of hiking boots or go for a bike ride.

Don't stay curious, go exploring

Have you always been curious about how something goes? To a certain place or that you can master a certain activity? How annoying it is to always wonder if it's as fun, great, easy, difficult it is as you think it is.

Sign up for that course, go to that one place, who knows what change you will suddenly find that will move you forward in your life.

How hypnosis can help you move forward

So much for practical tips for moving forward in your life. Are you finding it difficult to implement the tips or have they not helped? Then hypnosis can help you change your outlook on things so you no longer have to put off that important decision or see opportunities where you previously saw no way out.

First, a hypnosis expert will talk with you about what’s holding you back right now. Next, they’ll explore which beliefs are causing this. These beliefs reveal how you view the world and how you think it works. This can also explain why you feel you can’t move forward, no matter what you do, and what opportunities you might be overlooking.

If you can’t resolve the issue through conversation, you can also undergo regression. With regression, you go back to the moment when you became convinced that the world works in a certain way—a belief that’s now holding you back. Because many beliefs originate in childhood, when you simply don’t yet have all the knowledge you’ll need later in life. By looking back at that moment as an adult with more emotional distance and viewing it from a different perspective, you can quickly let go of a limiting belief.

Hypnotic suggestions

Another way to suffer less from beliefs that prevent you from moving forward is through hypnotic suggestions. You can use hypnotic suggestions to view an experience in a different way and even experience it completely differently.

By acting on the subjective view you have of factual matters, hypnosis can be used to change your beliefs, change your motor skills, change your sensitivity to pain, change your focus and change your willpower. It makes you feel like you have more control over your situation than you currently think[3]. With this, it actually gives you more control over the situation because you start to see opportunities that you didn't see before.

Hypnotic suggestion and regression are often used together in a session. First, in fact, it is helpful to identify those beliefs that are not helping you to see how they affect your subjective view of things, your opinion of how things are going.

Helping hypnotic suggestions can then be offered in return.

For example: You have been haggling for months about whether or not to quit your job to start for yourself or look for another job. You have the belief that you can't do something, such as make enough money on your own or you have no discipline to work from home.

Then the suggestion may be:

"You can start working part-time and as long as you don't have clients, the rest of your work is marketing and networking."

"You can create a dedicated workroom with the working hours on the door," says Dr. K., who is a member of the group.

"You can go to a flexi-workplace so you still feel like you're going to work," says Mr. K., who is a member of the company.

These are just examples. Of course, depending on what you are up against and your beliefs on the subject, a hypnosis expert can give you other suggestions.

Seizing opportunities through hypnosis

Then, of course, when you see an opportunity, you have to seize it, but that too is easier said than done. For example, some opportunities are scary. For example, if you don't have any clients yet and have to start networking, that's exciting. After all, how much sense will networking make? Soon you will be too nervous to really start the conversation? Do you really have to start promoting yourself?

No matter what opportunity you see, fear can prevent you from taking action. To reduce that fear, hypnosis can help through guided visualization. In such a visualization, those feelings of fear are brought to the surface, but you immediately learn how to reduce that fear so that you can actually take the action you need to.

For example, you will learn how breathing calmly through your nose and relaxing your muscles helps to reduce the physical fear response so it does not affect your thoughts. In the process, you also learn that you can be in the here and now with your thoughts. Keeping your attention also makes you a better conversationalist than if you only think about what could go wrong later. This only makes things go better.

So hypnosis can certainly be a solution for seizing opportunities as well. If you have often had a guided visualization, your imagination is also trained so that you can more easily visualize yourself seizing an opportunity, making the actual seizing of that opportunity easier. In this way you will get further in your life.

So you have some practical tips to move forward and in addition, hypnosis can help you. It doesn't matter if this is to implement the practical tips or what to do if they haven't helped.

Want to know exactly how hypnosis works? Then check out a hypnosis workshop or browse our training programs and sign up. Ask about online training options if that suits you better.

[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-03773-002

[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-personal-renaissance/201902/feeling-stuck-4-ways-overcome-roadblocks-in-your-life

[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3538