Thoughts and Feelings | Massage and Hypnosis McKinney
How to Stop Being a Prisoner to Your Thoughts and Feelings
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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
How our thoughts create feelings
I wanted to talk about how our thoughts create feelings and this is just as important whether we are getting a massage, or we are doing some of the hypnosis to control habits, or the ways that we see reality.
And it's the understanding that as we have a thought, this thought interacts with our mind, and as it does that our brain produces these chemicals.
So these chemicals move through the body, through the bloodstream, as they interact with the cells of our body they create a physical sensation. The sensations that we feel, obviously with our feelings, or emotions, a lot of the time these emotions are allowed to control our automatic behaviors- our responses as opposed to a reaction.
A lot of time these responses that are more desirable, kind of have to be thought out and these reactions we have a lot of time we end up asking ourselves "why did we do that?" or "why am I doing this?".
My Grandmother's 'STOP' Technique
My grandmother helped me out when I was a young man by teaching me something called the stop sign technique. I'm going to share that with you right now.
It's very useful when we are trying to change a thought pattern, especially when it's associated with a particular outcome. so it's very simple, all we need to do is when there is something that is happening that you are not liking, you can go back and usually find a feeling associated with that.
If we take a few moments we can start to understand the thoughts that maybe we've been having that have led up to that feeling.
Now, we need to decide what we would like to do, or how we would like to respond, instead of how we are reacting.
Once you come up with an appropriate response, and you become aware of this feeling as that feeling is happening in the beginning, what you do is inside your mind imagine a huge red stop sign.
Everytime you imagine, you are going to imagine it three times, and as you do you are going to
yell in your head the words STOP, STOP, STOP inside your mind. Immediately following that, think about how you want to feel.
Think about the reaction changing into a response and how you want to respond to the stimulus.
The Wonderful Thing Called Neuroplasticity
It's an ongoing process. It's not like flipping a switch, although it can happen that quick. But as you continue to practice this mindfulness it gets stronger and stronger because you are creating a neural pathway in your mind.
You are changing this wonderful thing called neuroplasticity, the pathway that the stimulus will take and you're giving it the desired response as opposed to just an unthoughtful reaction.
This has so many applications that we can use in life, getting us to where we want to go or how we want to be. Because of this it's always important to remember that the past does not equal our future.
Just because we have been a certain way in the past doesn't mean we have to continue acting that way in the future.
A lot of people get stuck with "this is who I am" and the belief that they are not able to change but that discounts the idea of free will.
Yes, while we may have ingrained habits and ingrained ways of being or ingrained ways of doing, that doesn't mean that is necessarily who you are because you do get to choose how you respond.
You are not just a prisoner of how you react.
Those reactions where something programmed into us at an early age through people in our environment and the things that have happened to us.
You are not a prisoner to that programming!
There are so many ways to be able to become who you want to be, who you desire to be, those qualities and those people you look up to.
We often compare ourselves too, believing that maybe we're not quite good enough to be that person. The truth is that nobody is good enough to be you because there is only one YOU out there.
While we can aspire to always be better and better everyday, to do the best that we can, we've got to realize that there is nobody out there that is perfect.
All of us are perfectly imperfect.
As long as we are continually doing our best and trying to be the best us. That's the best way to be.
If we are always comparing ourselves to something that we can never obtain, being perfect, we're always going to feel a feeling of being less than.
But I guarantee we will take each day in stride, we are going to fail.
We are human.
The only time we really honestly fail is when we give up trying and we just give into our reactions.
When you always have a choice to respond in a different manner or tomorrow.
The things that have happened are in the past. There is nothing you can do to change that.
But what you can decide is where to place your foot along this journey.
The Present is a Gift
We can look to the future to help guide us in that direction but the future is not a solid thing either.
So all we have is right now. That is often why right now is called the present, because it is a gift.
You get to choose the path that you walk.
Sometimes things will happen to us outside of our control and it is what it is and those things happen and those things become the past.
But it is up to you to decide where you want to continue along this path, how do you want to continue on along it, how do you want to respond to these patterns that keep popping up in your life.
Because when you take responsibility for where you are going, your future becomes yours.
You are no longer a victim and things don't happen to you.
Sure things will happen in your life that you have no control over but you get to choose how you are going to respond to those events.
And that's given me great hope. It's given me a sense of direction. And I hope that you use this in the future too and if you ever have any questions you know that I am always here; I love talking about this. So when you come in, talk to me about it.
Let me know how you've used this technique.
How it's helped you. Or how maybe it hasn't.
Maybe I haven't described it or my communication hasn't been effective enough. I've got some many different ways to help get the idea across.
If you found this useful or if you'd like to find it more useful, just talk to me about it. we'll figure out a way to get you where you want to go.
As always I'm always here; I love helping. I will see you next time.
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