We often believe that changing our external reality will shift our internal reality. It seems logical, as if that’s how things work: “When I make more money, I’ll feel stable,” or “When I finally lose the weight, I’ll feel happy and worthwhile!” The list goes on. But what if the reverse is true? (Hint: It is!) We can only achieve what we believe is possible, and we can only sustain positive changes that align with our beliefs about ourselves. Hypnotherapy is the key to designing the life you want because it provides the tools to identify limiting beliefs and replace them with new ones that support your goals and dreams.
Event → Belief → Emotion → Behavior → Result
Let’s explore the structure of the mind and how it relates to your goals. The Simmerman-Sierra Results Model illustrates how specific events in our lives shape particular beliefs, which drive emotions, fuel behavior, and ultimately produce the results we see in life. That’s the good news. The challenge is that this belief blueprint resides in the subconscious, making it not only unknown but also largely inaccessible to our conscious mind.
The subconscious is the creative intelligence that runs the body. This is necessary so we don’t have to consciously digest food, manage heartbeats and breathing, or remember to blink, not to mention keeping up with cellular repair or healing injuries. Although these bodily functions operate autonomously, whether we’re aware of them or not, we can direct our awareness to improve our physical or emotional states through methods like hypnosis.
Not having to attend to the myriad functions of the physical body frees us to choose any point of consciousness at any given time. For physical survival, the subconscious mind also sorts, labels, categorizes, and stores memories of past events and our interpretations of them. We quickly learn from early experiences what seems safe or unsafe, and we formulate beliefs to ensure continued survival. These beliefs aim to keep us within the safety zone of the familiar, even if they ultimately cause pain through outcomes like overeating or undereating.
In the hypnotherapy process, we identify and introduce a new idea into the subconscious mind—the “behind-the-scenes” driver of emotions—to foster new behaviors that support your goals.
How do we access the subconscious mind? Specific methods can bypass the gatekeeper to change or replace limiting beliefs. These include non-ordinary, altered states of consciousness, such as meditation or hypnosis, which quiet the mind. We can achieve these states through profound physical or mental relaxation. Bypassing the gatekeeper allows us to choose and adopt more useful or expansive beliefs that support our goals and dreams from deep within.
The gatekeeper is the chatterbox we hear that interrupts our ability to embrace radically new ideas. As we calm this analytical mind, you become a sponge for the ideas you choose—ideas you know will benefit you.
The conscious mind, the more familiar part, analyzes, reasons, and uses logic and willpower. You consciously choose a goal, but you may find you lack the motivation to carry out the behaviors needed to achieve it. That’s because the subconscious mind holds old, limiting beliefs—not conscious to you—that block your progress.
Together, you and I will saturate your mind with positive ideas to support the desired behaviors, enabling you to effortlessly achieve the positive outcomes of the Results Model.
The subconscious is the doer. Have you ever experienced emotions you didn’t want? Can you think or wish them away? No. Emotions are thoughts traveling through the body, rooted in the subconscious and shaped by old beliefs. We aim to saturate your mind with new ideas to generate emotional adrenaline for change, as belief drives emotion, emotion fuels behavior, and behavior determines results.
New Belief = New Emotion = New Behavior = New Results!
Hypnosis is a natural yet altered state of mind in which the critical gatekeeper is relaxed, and selective thinking is established. These focused thoughts are then accepted into the subconscious, where they influence behavior—not through willpower, but through an emotionalized desire to adopt new behaviors.
The subconscious mind is the creative, problem-solving intelligence deep within you, independent of logic or analytical thinking. During hypnosis, new thoughts or ideas often emerge, so don’t be surprised if you gain brand-new insights or strategies through the process. Plus, the experience simply feels good.