Believing in yourself is an endless destination. Believing you have failed is the end of the journey. Author unknown
Recently a client came in to my office in total despair. She said she had participated in every diet that was ever created, hired personal trainers, joined local weight loss groups and nothing had worked for her. She desperately wanted to lose weight permanently. Sure, she had lost lots of weight over the years, she said, but she gained it all back and then some. She was sick and tired of feeling like a failure, and had little hope she could conquer this big problem in her life. She’d heard that hypnotherapy worked and wanted to try it.
After learning specifically what she wanted to achieve we discussed her behavior, and how she sabotaged her efforts. I asked her what would make the biggest difference in her success with weight loss. She said, “If I could control my eating that would be half the battle.”
She was able to pinpoint exactly what happens during the minute she chooses the self-sabotaging behavior. I used a very effective Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) process with her called the New Behavior Generator. Here’s how it works.
New Behavior Generator – think of a challenging situation you want to change, then create a picture of what you are doing that is not working – step inside it and dim down the color, take color out, take feelings, thoughts, sounds tastes and smells out so the picture is dull and has no energy, then take the corners of the picture and shrink it way down so that it is very tiny…
Next, create a picture of yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing in that situation and then step into it. Notice what you are doing, how are you feeling, what you see, hear, tell yourself, taste and smell… now turn the dials up on that picture making it more intense, colorful, vibrant and alive…. See, hear and feel yourself in this picture looking out your own eyes… feeling very confident and knowing you are behaving exactly the way you want to in this challenging situation.
My client has had much success with this process. Using it during challenging times has helped her eliminate self-sabotaging behavior. You too, can now have full confidence in reacting just like this any time you want in every challenging situation.