Imagine you have a short distance to walk to reach a destination and you wish you didn’t have to walk the distance and you begrudgingly engaged the trek feeling stressed because of it even though you have on comfortable clothing, shoes and no time constraints. You’re sorry you even embarked on the intention even though it’s a short distance.

Now imagine you’re about to walk a short distance and you’ve been looking forward to this walk and the invigorating exercise it provides. You enjoy the pace you’re walking and your mind perhaps drifts into a state of endorphin-induced bliss during the joyful trek as you become one with the experience and the present moment of aliveness.

Consider both scenarios. The distance is the same. The time it takes to walk it is the same and the comfort with which to walk the distance is the same.  In fact, all things are equal yet, the context in which the walks are engaged is different with the treks described.

There is a significant chance that the first trek when completed, you’ll feel stressed, perhaps in a bad disposition because of it and maybe out of breath and filled with more than a little anxiety. The latter trek will leave you with a sense of accomplishment, invigoration, and a refreshed disposition and likely, less stressed than before the trek began.

This simple example illustrates a potent point: The context from which you view your experience, life, affairs, situations and circumstances inform the ensuing experience with potential or constriction – even determining the course of subsequent occurrences.

Although it seems the brain determines, in reality the brain reacts. It reacts to our interpretation of what is considered. It is largely one’s conditioning that determines interpretation, hence,  context from which something is considered . One person’s love of birds is another’s terrifying reaction to them. (I know, I use to terrorize my sister when we were kids with my caged pet finches). When life or a particular area of it is challenging or arduous it is largely due to our conditioning and not the essence of the matter itself.

This is the point of personal growth; to release attachment to the conditioning that constricts living. The emphasis in that last sentence is on the word attachment. We cannot escape being conditioned however we can release our attachment to our conditioning. This is therapeutic maturity – to increasingly realize that you are not your conditioning. To release attachment to conditioning is to grow; to become available to greater expressions of fulfillment.

The challenge with releasing attachment to one’s conditioning is the psychological inclination towards the familiar. You may not like a particular dynamic in your life but familiarity with it unconsciously breeds comfort. The subconscious (sometimes called the unconscious, but that’s really a misnomer) does not deduce. It does not deduce what is desirable from what is undesirable (that responsibility lies in the domain of your conscious, day-to-day cognitive thought process). The subconscious operates on the associations it has formed. If the subconscious association with money is of struggle then it (the subconscious) seeks money struggles out of familiarity. This is also true with affairs of the heart and other matters. Familiar association is the program on which the subconscious operates.

Fortunately, there’s a big upside to the subconscious’ inability to deduce. It means that it is readily reprogrammed because it doesn’t have a “stake in the game” as incentive (does not deduce value or the length of time a limiting association has existed), it neutrally will accept reprogramming. This is why you need not be fooled by your attachment to old programming to thinking personal conditions and perceptions are intractable; you simply want to awaken to the fact that what has been programmed can be reprogrammed. The classic example I use in my hypnotherapy practice illustrating this point is the act of driving in a country where steering occurs on the right-hand side of the vehicle. You may have driven all your driving life in America where the steering wheel is on the left side of the vehicle and so the subconscious has been programmed to operate a car thusly. However a summer in Britain wherein you desired to drive would have you readily adapting to steering an automobile from the right-hand side of the vehicle. The prospect of steering from the right-hand side of the vehicle – before the reprogramming – would seem disorienting, largely because of the mental attachment – born out of familiarity and nothing more.

As a Hypnotherapist this is my purpose; to aid one with the reprogramming of the subconscious. As the subconscious is reprogrammed, about any matter, you essentially find your mind running on new mental programming. Consider it “YOU, four point O” (You 4.0) – an upgrade if you will!

Realizing the program-ability of the subconscious gives you such leverage to accomplish change in your life. You are not a body but rather you have a body. The subtle distinction in that statement can mean the difference between the mind controlling you or you being in control of it.

What do you want to reprogram?

(by the way, the image illustrating this posting is an image of both a young and older woman.)

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