Dehypnotize Yourself!

“It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent, either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others, or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.” ~ Maxwell Maltz from Psycho-Cynernetics Have you ever watched a professional hypnotist at work and seen him get people under his spell and then get ‘em to do some *wacky* stuff? It’s amazing to see. Maltz shares a bunch of examples--from a championship weight-lifter who was hypnotized and told he was so weak he couldn’t lift a pencil off a table (and then couldn’t!) to a football player who was told his hand was stuck to the table--and therefore, he wasn’t able to lift it! He describes another set of experiments where people were POSITIVELY affected by hypnosis (e.g., simply telling people they were strong increased their strength). Now, the fascinating thing to remember here is that their ACTUAL strength was not affected. However, the power of our subconscious mind is SO powerful that when we simply BELIEVE something, it works in mysterious ways to make those beliefs reality. Stunning. So, Maltz makes the point that we’re ALL hypnotized to some extent or another. We’ve been conditioned by our parents, friends, television, etc. to believe certain things. The question is: Are these beliefs the ones we want running the show? It’s time to “dehypnotize” ourselves and re-program our minds with the beliefs we WANT running the show. As Maltz so beautifully says: “Within you, whoever you may be, regardless of how big a failure you may think yourself to be, is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you change your beliefs.”