What do I want with my life? What you need
What is the problem you are going to work through? When you answer this you make all kinds of assumptions, namely that there is a problem and that it will soon be gone. Because you are going to work through it and then it will be gone.
You will do this because you will also work. For example, you can work on answering the question, "What do I want to do with my life?"
You can then add all kinds of interesting questions in a session
For example, you can ask, "What would you like?"
Pay attention to your focus
People often know very well what they don’t want. I don’t want to be afraid on a plane. I don’t want to be depressed. I don’t want this, I don’t want that.
It all seems very logical to say this. But then you just keep dealing with your anxiety and the plane.
When you say, don't think of a pink elephant, you think of it anyway.
So it is much more convenient to think about what you do want.
For example, you can say, "I want to feel free on an airplane."
In that case, don’t associate airplanes with fear, but with freedom.
So what you do want in your life is a good question to ask yourself sometime. In doing so, you will also help yourself focus more on what you do want.
What do you want now?
During a training session, this was also asked and then the answer came, "I want to feel good again. I feel inferior and I feel like people look down on me. I just don't want that anymore. I want people to look up to me. That I matter."
This found this very interesting. That you want people to look up to you. You actually want to do what you don't want other people to do to you. Because if you want people to look up to you, then you have to look down on them. There is no other way then. Then they must be lower than you, so to speak.
Very interesting and a classic example of the bullied and the bully. People who have been bullied, for example, don’t want that to happen anymore, so they end up bullying others. After all, that way, they won’t be bullied anymore.
This doesn't always happen in the classroom. The bully might be bullied at home, by parents or an older sibling. Then they go to school to beat someone up, or suppress someone, so at least that doesn't happen to them at school.
Unfortunately, this is a bad strategy, because there’s always someone else who becomes the victim. Actually, though, there are two victims.
Because imagine if the person who plague had a fine home situation and who had a fine childhood, would he still do it? No. Now you can have an exception of someone who likes it, but that doesn't happen very often.
We see the bullied boy or girl as the victim. This makes perfect sense because it can affect the rest of one's life.
But if you really want to eliminate bullying entirely, you also need to help the bully. The bully needs to receive positive attention to work through their own issues.
If you take out the aggressor, there will be fewer victims.
This is often a better strategy than just helping victims.
The interesting thing about this session is that despite the hypnosis of "I want to matter," something special happened. We did a regression. Then you go back to the moment when the feeling arose that people were looking down on you and then you change that moment so you can deal with it in a different way.
After that, he felt great and no longer felt the need to look down on other people—or for people to look up to him. Instead, he felt like an equal.
From what emotion do you want something with your life?
That’s also very interesting. He deliberately wanted people to look up to him. This stemmed from a feeling of inferiority. Once that feeling is gone, you’ll want something completely different.
If I am very scared and you ask me something, I answer it from that feeling. But if I feel very free, then I give a very different answer.
So what you consciously want is probably not what you need.
So that unconscious drive for recognition can change if you can change your story. Then what do you want? Then a very different answer can come.
This is the beauty of what can be achieved with hypnosis. You don't necessarily get what you want, but what you need. Often, then, that is what you actually want.
For example, when I look at bullies and those who have been bullied. Imagine that in those individuals, we neutralize the stories that cause these behaviors. This is often difficult with children because they are still in the middle of the situation at home. Then you have to help the parents.
Imagine having a fine childhood, would you still hurt anyone? Imagine having enough self-confidence and self-esteem? Then you won't bully and you won't be bullied.
If you strip everything away, only one thing remains, and that is love. Out of true love, people never do harm.
Also listen to this podcast:
Emotion and decision making
What you want in life is, of course, a choice you can make. Research also shows that emotions have a tremendous influence on the choices we make. They greatly influence what we do and don’t want.
Emotions can have both a positive and negative impact on the decisions you make[1].
Often we want to make rational decisions about our lives, but then it can be helpful to process emotional events from your life, so that you can decide from a loving foundation for yourself (and therefore for the world) what you want with your life (or just dinner😊), for example.
When you look at what you do on a daily basis, emotions also play an important role. For example, if you are working on personal relationships or personal goals that require people, many people often try to avoid conflict.
Distraction and reframing are often used to make you feel better. So you might listen to music, read a book, play video games, or do something else entirely to distract yourself from negative emotions[2].
Reframing, for example, is something you do with regression therapy when you receive help from a hypnotherapist, but it’s also something you can do with self-hypnosis. In that case, it’s helpful to know what you’re doing.
Your goals regulate your emotions
Just as emotions influence your goals, the reverse is also true. Depending on the goal you have, this can also influence your behavior. So if you make a choice in advance, the emotion can follow.
For example, if you want to feel good about yourself, you are more likely to choose the situation you want to be in, change that situation faster, distract yourself faster and also reframe a situation for yourself faster.
Do you have goals like making more friends? Then you’ll focus more on reframing, and when you’re busy managing how you come across, you’ll suppress your emotions more (you might not stand up for yourself right away, whereas you’re more likely to do so if you don’t care how you come across)[3].
Hypnosis and what you want
In hypnotherapy, what you want is very important. Usually before therapy, you conduct your own exploration conversation. In this conversation, you state what you think is important and what you want to achieve, as in the example of the session in the text.
When hypnosis is then induced, you can be reminded of these values and life goals, so that during the hypnosis session you can focus on your goal and on what you want to achieve[4]. This can help reduce your stress and bring you greater satisfaction in life.
You can also do this when you're doing self-hypnosis in the morning, so as to get your focus right for the rest of the day. That way, in fact, you will start doing more of what is right for what you really want and need in your life.
Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and how it can help you achieve what you want in life? Then join a free online masterclass.
Or sign up for one of our training programs. The courses are taught online to ensure your progress and so you can stay in the flow. This way, outside distractions have much less impact on your ability to follow the lessons.
Sources:
[1] https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115043
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5482525/
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12447
[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207144.2020.1722028