I often talk to my clients about the importance of what we say about ourselves.
For me, the mind body connection begins with something very simple: the conversation we have with ourselves every day.
Everyone has a story they tell other people, but perhaps more importantly, we have a story we tell ourselves.
For some, that story has become so familiar they barely notice they’re telling it.
“I’m always unlucky.”
“I make bad choices.”
“I’ll never be that good.”
“I’ve always been like this.”
We hear things like this all the time. In fact, putting ourselves down often seems more socially acceptable than speaking positively about ourselves. Say something negative and nobody thinks twice. Speak confidently about yourself and you risk being seen as egotistical, self absorbed or overconfident.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that we become very good at talking ourselves down.
But what if those words are doing more than we realise?
The Hidden Conversation
There is a conversation taking place within us all the time.
We receive messages from everywhere. Family, friends, school, work, social media, advertising, news and the experiences we’ve had throughout our lives.
Everyone has a perspective.
Some of those perspectives help shape us. Others we simply absorb without ever stopping to question whether we actually agree with them.
But amongst all that noise is another voice.
Ours.
And I wonder how often we really listen to what it’s saying.
If someone followed you around for a week and wrote down everything you thought or said about yourself, what story would they hear?
Would it be the story you actually want to live?
Because perhaps those seemingly innocent statements aren’t always just descriptions of who we are.
Perhaps, over time, they can begin to behave a little like instructions.
What Are You Instructing?
Imagine someone working hard at the gym while continually thinking:
“I’ll always be overweight.”
Or studying something new while repeatedly saying:
“I’m a slow learner. I’ll never pick this up.”
On one level they’re working towards change.
Yet there’s another conversation taking place underneath it.
One says, “This is where I want to go.”
The other says, “This is who I am.”
Two very different instructions.
This is where I think we sometimes underestimate the relationship between our thoughts, our bodies and the way we experience the world.
Our thoughts don’t necessarily remain quietly inside our heads.
Our expectations can affect how we feel.
Our emotions can affect our bodies.
Our beliefs can influence our behaviour.
Our behaviour affects the people and world around us, and their response can reinforce what we believed in the first place.
A thought can create a ripple.
And those ripples can travel further than we realise.
The Mind Body Connection
This is one of the reasons I find the placebo effect so fascinating.
Not because I think it provides some magical answer to everything. It doesn’t.
I find it fascinating because of the question it raises.
How can expectation sometimes influence what we physically experience?
A person can be given an inactive treatment and yet sometimes experience a genuine change in symptoms because they believe they’ve received treatment.
Think about that for a moment.
The treatment itself didn’t contain the thing expected to create the change, yet something happened.
There are scientific explanations for parts of this, of course, and there is still much to understand. But for me, the interesting part is simply that the connection exists at all.
It opens a window.
If expectation can influence our physical experience, what else might be happening within that hidden conversation between mind and body?
And what happens when we begin consciously changing that conversation?
Changing Perspective
I spend a lot of my working life helping people see something from a different perspective.
I don’t believe I’m changing them.
They do that.
Sometimes I’m simply opening a window they hadn’t noticed before.
They may have arrived believing:
“This is just who I am.”
“I can’t change.”
“This always happens to me.”
And suddenly there’s another possibility.
Perhaps something isn’t happening to them in quite the way they thought.
Perhaps they’ve been following an old story, an old belief or an old instruction without realising it.
And if an instruction was learned, repeated or reinforced over time, perhaps a different instruction can be strengthened too.
This isn’t about pretending everything is wonderful.
It isn’t about ignoring difficult experiences or thinking positively until problems disappear.
It’s about becoming aware of the conversation.
Because once you can hear it, you have a choice about whether you want to keep having it.
You Are the One Person You’ll Spend Your Entire Life With
I say this to clients often.
You are the one person you will spend your entire life with.
Get to know that person.
Strengthen what you want to make stronger.
Educate what you want to learn.
Release what no longer needs to be carried.
We can’t control everything that happens around us. Life will always have its own plans.
But perhaps we can learn to take a firmer hand on the wheel of our own ship.
To notice where we’re heading.
To question the instructions we’ve been following.
And, when we don’t like the destination, to realise that changing course might be possible.
This is what fascinates me about hypnotherapy, relaxation, perspective and the mind body connection.
Hypnotherapy is simply one tool I use to help people discover something I believe is far more important:
Their own ability to change.
Perhaps your body is listening right now.
So what do you really want to tell it?
