How Hypnotherapy Helps you Keep Healthy Habits

Are you wanting to make a change?

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Maybe you’re inspired to give up smoking, drinking, or eating junk food, or you want to get up earlier, procrastinate less, and exercise more. Whatever old habit you want to kick out, or whatever new habit you want to adopt, the decision is made and the desire to change is there.

We often start well but lose the impetus quite quickly. Why is this? There are a few reasons that it’s difficult to maintain positive change in our lives. Often our enthusiasm dips, and we lose momentum for our new habits when we come up against obstacles. It can be more difficult than we imagined to keep the new habit going. Often we just become so involved in our busy lives again that it’s just easier to resort back to our familiar thought patterns or habits. Another common reason that we don’t follow-through on our healthy habits and positive actions can be a lack of self-esteem: a feeling that we are not worthy of the time and effort it takes to care for ourselves properly.

How hypnosis helps with keeping healthy habits

When we’re creating and learning new habits or kicking out old negative ones, we need both parts of our minds (the subconscious and the conscious) to be onboard. Both these parts of us need to be convinced that we want to change. This is where hypnotherapy can help. A good hypnotherapy program to assist you to create change in your life will work with the conscious part of your mind to;

  • support you to create a clear and achievable goal for your new habit
  • help you to make a realistic plan and time frame to change, one step at a time, so that you feel relaxed and confident rather than daunted
  • identify any potential obstacles and put practical strategies in place to deal with them
  • encourage you to focus on the positive benefits of your change and how life will be better, rather than dwelling on any short-term challenges

Hypnosis can be used to identify the 'root' or reason for the issue or habit you want to change. This is often 'stored' in the subconscious/emotional part of the mind and needs acknowledgement before we can let it go for good. The subconscious part of the mind stores all of our beliefs, emotions, memories and habits, some of which are outdated, false, and unhelpful. We use hypnosis to communicate directly and gain access to these and replace them with more positive and helpful habits, beliefs, and thought patterns.

Think about the following analogy when creating any positive change in your life. You have two pathways in a forest. The familiar one (the old habit) is well-trodden, easy to follow, and takes you back to your old habit or behaviour.

When you start to take the new path (your new habit), it is not immediately as easy to walk down; you may need to clear away any brambles and tread down the earth/leaves so that it becomes easier and more comfortable to follow. Once you have trodden this path a few times, it will become easier and, eventually, it becomes your familiar, chosen route. As this happens, the old path becomes overgrown and impassable, and your new route becomes the normal, familiar, and comfortable way to go.

It is the same with the mind, which favours the familiar. When you stick with the new path, even if it is out of your comfort zone in the short-term, after not very long it will become your new normal way of being.

A good hypnotherapy program will help you in the short term and until your new habit becomes a permanent aspect of your life.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author. All articles published on Hypnotherapy Directory are reviewed by our editorial team.

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Written by Becca Teers, DIP CBH MNCH (Reg) CNHC (Reg) GHR RTT
London SE22 & NW1

Becca Teers DIP CBH MNCH (reg) CNHC (reg) GHR

Author, therapist, trainer and speaker.

Hello and thanks for reading. I'm an author, cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist, certified RTT & NLP practitioner and holistic therapist. I am passionate about helping my clients to overcome limiting beliefs and to empower them to make positive change.

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