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New beginnings are associated with new expectations and new hopes. They often uplift us and give us a promise of positive change. Many of us view the start of a new year as a new cycle of life that brings potential for a brighter tomorrow. In fact, this time of year is so powerful that it inspires many of us to make resolutions for change. Of course, once the moment of inspiration passes and daily reality sets in, our commitment to the change often dissipates as well, and we find ourselves breaking the New Year’s resolutions we set just a few months or even weeks ago.
The answer to that is relatively easy – we operate on two levels – conscious and subconscious, and while our life circumstances and the decisions we make about positive change occur at a conscious level, the way we respond to life is mostly subconscious and that’s the part that does not change easily. As the saying goes, “you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl,” which means that even if we find ourselves magically transported into a royal palace, if deep inside we see ourselves as no more than servants, we would work hard to bend the outside reality to match our internal expectations and would soon transform the palace into the servants’ quarters. But why is our subconscious mind not on board with what a rational mind would consider a welcome change? Because our subconscious mind was formed primarily before our rational thinking kicked in.
Our subconscious mind is a deep vault filled with memories and associations that were deposited there during our childhood, as a result of significant events or trauma, and carried over from past lives (for those who believe in a soul’s on-going journey). For example, if as a child you kept hearing a family member saying, “money is the root of all evil,” you would likely grow up despising wealth, and if a fortune fell into your lap, you would subconsciously sabotage it so you could return to the state of goodness, in which you have no money. If in your childhood your father was expected to come home after a long and very successful business trip, but when he returned home, you learned that your parents were getting a divorce, you might fuse those and grow up believing that success at work leads to abandonment, thus subconsciously sabotaging every career path that opens before you.
Our subconscious beliefs guide the vast majority of our behavior, and this can become challenging when consciously we want to take our life in a new direction, but our subconscious part holds us back. Fortunately, there is a way to get both sides of our minds on the same page. In hypnosis, a therapist works with the subconscious mind to help it reframe outdated negative associations so that a person could stop associating financial abundance with evil or viewing success as a lead-in to abandonment. Once these associations are corrected, we no longer experience the dissonance between the outside circumstances and the inner beliefs, and we are free to live the life that we choose. What do you choose to have in your life? And does your subconscious mind support it?
