Thinner too: with savvy - weight and see

Dear reader,

you wanted to be thin and cancelled your fitness studio membership, because you don't need it anyway. Now some food for thought to add to that.

I read once that hypnosis is the best way and one of the best possibilities to achieve that. I have no idea how much of what I did to be thin was in a sense “hypnosis” or not. Regardless of that I can see certain parallels between hypnosis and successfully being thin. Many people believe that hypnosis makes you lose your will. That's not correct. Apart from the conscious and the unconscious, there's also a third very important instance, which is often called “the critical factor”. It's the connection between the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious holds beliefs. The critical factor checks incoming new information with the already existing beliefs. If they are identical, they go into the unconscious, if not they're blocked out and stay in the conscious mind only.

Hypnosis only works when the critical factor is levelled down. Only then are phenomenon like an immobile (cataleptic) hand possible. Of course the person can still move their hand. But at that moment the barriers of the critical factor are at least that much down so what the hypnotist is saying, that the hand is impossible to move and cataleptic, is accepted to be true. This is enhanced even further through a chain of autosuggestion (“I notice that I can't move my hand. So it must be true that I can't move it. Therefore I can't move it.”) and the hand is immobilised, although under normal circumstances, the hand would be possible to move fully and without difficulty.

The critical factor is the reason why (New Year's) resolutions are so difficult to do and to keep doing them. The critical factor finds many more confirmations for the old habits and beliefs. So they are kept in the end. So for being thin you have to use tricks like a hypnotist.

The most important of all is:

1. State goals in the positive!

State your goals in the positive towards what you want. Remember: if you state it in the negative with „not“, you'll have the negative still in your head. That's not helpful in the long run. I'm warning you, if you state in the negative, you'll have an elephant in your head and he's so big, he'll crush all the positive intentions.

Our brain works best with pictures. That's why they keep saying in order to remember a string of things, to connect them to a story. I find a whole story to be difficult and complicated. I find it better to work with other methods and build yourself a memory palace. Do you know the film “The Machinist”? In it Christian Bale is a man, who's tormented with problems he repressed, so he almost doesn't eat at all, has massive sleeping problems and looks just the way someone would in that situation. It certainly wasn't healthy for him as an actor to lose that much weight for that role. Here are two picture of it:

It really does not look healthy at all. But it gives your mind very clear images of what you want. Only watch out, please, please, not to go just that far really. It should only be images, with which to work on your own goal. To have such a physique is sick and very damaging for you in the long run! Nevertheless: overdo it with the images, which you use, be it in your head or those you pick to remind you. (The 10^th Doctor in “Doctor Who”, David Tennant, is probably more of a role model for being thin, and very likeable, too. Although at least one of his companions described him as “just a long streak of nothing. You know, alien nothing.” Right she is.)

2. Find pictures (real or in the head), which are exaggerating, to be clear on what you want.

(Once someone wrote to me on the internet and wanted help with hypnosis so I would make her breasts bigger. I told her that when I wanted to be thinner, I was thinking about Christian Bale's role in The Machinist and advised to her to do the same. So she searched for a picture of a woman with breasts too big, printed it out and used that image then. A couple of weeks later she wrote to me and told me that her breasts actually had gotten bigger. I don't know if what she said was correct. It seemed so to me. In the end the most important thing is, that she was happy and she seemed to be to me.)

Sometimes I tricked myself and picked a bit wider cloths to wear, which wouldn't be so tight on my body. That gives a feeling of being thin. At least thinner for those cloths, which with more weight would have been tighter. Skinny jeans on the other hand sometimes are quite comfortable and make your thighs be a bit tighter than wider jeans would when you sit down.

Once again English seems to be even more extreme, once you start playing with words. To "lose weight" is, if you're saying it out loud, very close to "loose wait". (Not tight waiting, ey?) In English I like to ask then: Waiting for what? But even in German I don't think it's a good choice of words for the wish of “losing weight”. Nobody likes to lose something. You have to find the words that fit best for yourself. In the end all I can do is make you aware that different words also have diverse meanings that come with them.

Also don't underestimate the support from outside. If a child is big and should lose weight, it's best to make it a family project. It's not helping the child if the family keeps eating fastfood as the child is supposed to eat healthy food.

Two “tricks” I still use now and then are the following: often we mistake thirst for hunger and eat something. It can often help to instead first drink a good amount. In the evening it can also help, at a certain time of hour, to go and brush your teeth. As you know, after that you shouldn't eat anymore. So I only drink unsweetened tea or water then.

Until next blog,

sarah

Try Not To Try

Dear reader,

there is one thing that I want to write about as a sort of preparation for the topic that I know, some are waiting to read about already.

Today I want to write about the word "try" or "trying". There is a scene in Star Wars, in which Master Yoda is with young Luke Skywalker. They're in this moorland or whatever you call it. Luke's spaceship has gone under there and Yoda told him to take it out with the help of the force only, through the power of the mind. Luke says he'll try. To which Yoda says the famous words of, "Do or do not. There is no try."

Many people know, how I think about "try". If someone doesn't know and uses the word "try" in my presence, I usually tell Master Yoda says hi. Some don't think this is a bad word. They say, "if you don't know if the thing will work or not, you can well say you're trying." Can you? Either it works or it doesn't. If you try and it works, you made it. If you try and fail, you failed. In both cases this is a clearer position than "trying". I think, Master Yoda is right. Either the thing will work out one way or another: positive or negative. To "try" however is an uncertain position in between those and in fact unnecessary. Say, there's a person, who's uncertain if something will work or not, for whatever reason. Even then this person doesn't need to try. It would be far better, especially because of that uncertainty, to get at it with "I'll do it." If something isn't quite right yet and it will fail because of that, then it will fail anyway. A bit more self-confidence, please! A positive attitude works much to make something to well.

To try something means resistance, that something is difficult. Yes, to dare something new can be difficult. I still stick to it: if you have a positive attitude to go with this thing, you have a better chance of succeeding. And something that is bound to fail, will also fail with the best of positive attitudes. So there is no reason to anticipate failure in any way. Lately I told people of the pink elephant and said to them, "If your thoughts are negative, you'll have the pink elephant in your mind, and you don't want that, do you?" (Tag question, by the way! See my last post.)

I practically deleted "try" of my vocabulary. There would be only one exception, in which I would use that word very consciously and where it would be highly effective. If you want that something doesn't work. I'd especially suggest that in hypnosis. For example if you aim for the arm to be stuck and can't be moved, catalepsy, I might say, "Try in vain to move your arm."

While we're on hypnosis, one more thing about the topic of failure in the context of therapy and generally difficult goals: a therapy means work and relapses. Sometimes it doesn't quite work as the therapist and especially the patient wish. Or good resolutions like being thinner or quitting smoking and similar things seem totally destroyed with the first bigger meal or the first cigarette after some time without one. I personally don't have the qualification to do therapy, so I can't give therapies. But I would urge each therapist to anticipate relapses and talk about that in therapy early on. A paradox? First I write about not using the word "try" and now I suggest explicitly talking about failure or rather relapses in therapy before they happen? Yes! Absolutely! Say, someone is depressed. There can be days on which the person feels bad. This happens to not depressed people, too. If the therapist doesn't talk about the possibility of bad days, the person could feel like a complete failure. It would be better to talk about the bad days explicitly and make them part of the therapy process, "You will feel bad on one or two days." What happens, if the person some day feels bad then? Well, it's okay then. The therapist said, I would feel bad one or two days. No problem. What if the therapy ends and the patient is not depressed anymore and didn't have bad days? Even better! The person can be proud, because s/he is better than even the therapist seemed to have thought, who said there will be one or two bad days. The simple anticipation of bad days gives the whole thing a different, a positive view!

By the way, the irish writer Samuel Beckett said the following about failure, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Until next blog,

sarah