Why you need to focus on what you DO want

Why is it so important to focus on what you DO want and not on what you DON’T want?
What does your subconscious mind hear and what are the consequences of getting it wrong?

If I ask you to NOT think of a pink elephant – well you might just find pink elephants pop into your mind.

Your brain can only focus on the object in question, so if you focus on what you don’t want, then you are just going to get more of it – in abundance!

Additionally, your conscious brain can only focus on 5-7 things at a time + or – 2, so if you are filling your mind with everything you don’t want or things you are fearful of, how can your mind get the space to start finding solutions and looking for what you do want.

When you are giving your mind directions such as :

• I don’t want to FAIL my exams

• I can’t FAIL my driving test this time

• I can’t BE LATE for the meeting

• I don’t want to GET NERVOUS in the interview

• I don’t want to FIGHT with my partner again tonight.

• I mustn’t LOSE this time.

• I hate being FAT

or when you phrase your thinking in the negative, you focus your brain on the activities of the negative and create anxiety.  Creating your own anxiety has more serious implications, especially in the long term if you keep doing it.

If you focus your imagination on all the negatives things you don’t want to happen in the future – ie worring or what if-ing, then you start to create anxiety and your brains interprets that anxiety as some impending danger, disaster or emergency and goes into action producing stress hormones, Adrenalin or Cortisol, then, with your brain now on red alert, you focus even more on the possible dangers – its a vicious cycle.

Our bodies are excellently designed for reacting to short term dangers or emergencies and the adrenalin we produced enhances our performance, mentally and physically.  We can channel that adrenalin into our performance exactly how top athletes and sports people pull out personal bests and world records at major championships, but our bodies cannot cope with adrenalin flooding our bodies constantly.  Too much adrenalin long term has a negative impact on our health and our mind, the longer that negativity goes on, the more it affects and mental and physical health.

Mentally, prolonged anxiety can:-

• Make it difficult to focus or concentrate on tasks

• Make us obsess about problems

• Imagine the worst scenario

• Make us paranoid

• Obsess about illnesses

Physically, prolonged anxiety for some people can have serious implications and the following conditions have all been linked to stress and anxiety:-

• Insomnia or Sleep Disorders

• Irritable Bowel/Bladder Syndrome

• Weight Loss/Weight Gain

• Panic Attacks

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

• Unwanted habits

Some people don’t so much worry about the future; instead they negatively introspect about the past, perhaps lamenting about a time or something in their past they don’t have any more – maybe a job they left and now wish they hadn’t or a relationship that’s gone and they can’t move on or even something which happened to them they are finding it difficult to get over.

By thinking about these times in the past in a negative way, you not only bring back the memory, you bring back the feelings and emotions connected with that event or past time and if you are doing this in a negative way – it will make you feel miserable.

If I asked you – “Do you like feeling miserable?”  most people would say they dodn’t like feeling miserable – so why do it?

Mostly because people don’t realise that it is their own thoughts which is causing the misery or that they have control over it.

‘How we think determines how we feel and, how we feel, determines how we behave.’

This is the basis for depression and anxiety.  Depression is a big word and often it is just miserableness or prolonged miserableness we feel, but allow that misery to continue and it will lead to depression.

As a rule of thumb – Anxiety is created by us worrying about the future and depression is created by us negatively introspecting about the past and many people do both!!!

The problem with both of them is that they prevent us from doing the things we need to do in order to keep ourselves mentally and physically healthy.

Anxiety, for example – you worry about what might happen, you worry about failing, you worry about the dangers and what might go wrong – so you avoid doing it.  The part of your brain responsible for keeping you safe will actively try and stop you from stepping outside your comfort zone.  If you are telling your brain that something bad could happen, then you are encouraging it to take control and stop you doing that thing and so you don’t do anything different, you keep following the same patterns of behaviour and you get exactly the same things – including the negative thought patterns.

Depression, the other end of the scale, has the same end results but in a different way.  People who make themselves miserable, don’t tend to get out and do things because they don’t have the energy, motivation or enthusiasm – the negative thinking has their brain believing that there is some crisis emergency or danger which isn’t over yet, so the safest thing to do is stay inside the cave until its past.  Unfortunately, because they are not doing anything else with their brain, it is left to focus on the negative past and perpetuates the problem.  If you’re not doing anything, then you’re not producing the chemicals or neurotransmitters necessary to helps you cope and motivate you such as serotonin, so you don’t do anything and you’re back in that vicious cycle.

The good news however is that you can become aware of HOW you are thinking and learn to reframe that thinking to be positive focusing on what we DO want instead of what we DON’T want.  Solutions Focused Hypnotherapy helps you learn how to do this and rewire you mind for more positive thought patterns.

Start by focusing on the positive achievements in your life.  It doesn’t matter how small you think they are, they are your positive achievements – even if it is just getting out of bed and getting dressed before midday – it doesn’t matter what level you are at, the first step is the most important step and the step of decision and sometimes the hardest step.

Most of all, we need to understand and remember that it is OUR responsibility to make ourselves calm, happy and relaxed.  We can easily learn the techniques and we can get help to learn, but it’s no good blaming anything or anyone else for the past or the future, if we do that, we just make ourselves the victim.

Everyone can take responsibility for their own happy lives and make life happen the way they want it to by focusing on what they want to have happen.

Remember I said NOT to think of that pink elephant?  Well, now DON’T think of the pink elephant chasing the tail of a blue elephant round in circles!  Hard not to isn’t it?

If there is something you would like to know more about, drop me an email, I’m always happy to hear from people.