Rita Black: Whoever tried self-hypnosis, it’s pretty cool to be able to focus your mind on the specific changes that you want to make in a relaxed state. And yet so many people shy away from it because they feel like it’s too complicated or hard to do. So in this session of Thin Thinking, I am going to walk you through an easy self-hypnosis structure that you can use to focus on your weight goals or other life goals as well. Stay tuned.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right, the key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist, weight loss expert, best-selling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict, and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need. Not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life. Sound good? Let’s get started.

Rita Black: Hello everyone. Happy October. I hope you are having an amazing week. I am getting out the pumpkin spice seasoning and having a great time. I love to put it on yogurt and on a baked apple, which is super easy to do. If you don’t know how to do it, you put an apple in the microwave. You can core it first, just a little tip from me and put it in for a couple of minutes and Wala a baked apple. So in addition to my pumpkin spice, how to bake an apple really quickly tip, I am going to share with you today the first part of one of my monthly mastery meetings and this particular meeting, we are focusing on self-hypnosis. In the first part of the session, I am walking my members through how to create their own morning self-hypnosis practice to be able to focus in on the things that they need to specifically work on. I thought you might want to do this for yourself, and it’s not just weight oriented, if you want to do it for other things in life, it’s works for that too. So, let’s jump into the session. Shall we?

Rita Black: Okay. So what is self hypnosis? So, why I really think that at a certain point in your way, those of you who are just starting and hypnosis is all new to you, you know, I would just say probably your best bet using the meditation in the morning, using the, the hypnosis sessions that you gave. That’s great. You can go far. I think that there comes a certain point on your journey to weight mastery, where it can be helpful to start to bring in some self-hypnosis so that you can get a little more specific with yourself on things that are holding you back in your journey. And, you know, because the more you work, your inner coach and the more you get to know yourself, because this is a self knowledge journey, right? This isn’t just a weight journey, but this is a journey of learning a new way of communicating with yourself.

Rita Black: I feel like self-hypnosis adds to that because basically self-hypnosis is communicating with yourself, but on a deeper level, and really, you know, as you guys have all been going through this journey of, of weight mastery, we’re learning that it’s not about being good, but it’s about learning to use your brain in the best way. And self-hypnosis can be just such a great tool to use your brain in the best way. So, so what the definition of self-hypnosis or hypnosis – a procedure which suggestions are given during a state of focused awareness. I think a lot of people think, well, how can I do self-hypnosis? Because hypnosis is such a relaxed state, but the state of self hypnosis, as you’ll see, because we’re going to approach it two ways today, we’re going to approach it from just doing the structure of our morning meditation, but yourself and focusing on a specific, maybe trouble area for yourself. But we’re also gonna look at recording your own self-hypnosis, you know, like, some of you, you’re, the hairs maybe raising up on the back of your neck, cause they’re like, I don’t want to record my own voice. I hate it. But I assure you, it will, it will actually be come fun for you if you decide to do this. You don’t have to do anything we’re suggesting today, but I just want to open up your eyes to, this is a powerful tool.

Rita Black: So you are in a state of relaxed, but focused awareness when you’re in the state of self-hypnosis or when you are doing self-hypnosis. And, somebody ask a question for you. Hold on just a minute. I’m just going to check. No. Okay.

Rita Black: So why self-hypnosis, so we don’t have to just use self-hypnosis for weight management and, believe me, in the last year I’ve used self-hypnosis for a lot of things, for motherhood, and you know, managing, you know, like how I’m reacting or being active in my, you know, relationships with my children, in my marriage. I use self-hypnosis for my business and, you know, goals that I’m setting for myself. I use self-hypnosis, you know, with my home and you know, you guys, I, you know, those of you who know me, from the group, I like to garden, I’ve gotten into garden, gardening even more during COVID. I have had some epic failures this year. I, but, you know, I’ve had some successes. So, but, you know, like I like to challenge myself in my mind with the things it, because I feel like self-hypnosis is a great way to change your belief about yourself and, and, you know, we, can’t just like hope to wake up one day and be completely changed in our opinion of ourselves. And we can’t hope to always just wake up and have those things that are holding us back in our lives just, you know, magically changed. Some of them do, you know, and hypnosis is a very powerful tool for change, but, you being able to do that yourself and to notice like, oh, you know, this is a little area I could focus on in self-hypnosis. It just gives you that power. And like I said, the more you can manage your mind, the more you’re managing your mind, rather than your mind managing you, Hey, all the better. Right?

Rita Black: So you can use self-hypnosis to focus on a vision or a result. Like, you know, I had a vision of my drought tolerant English country garden in the front of my house, and it looks more like a drought has hit it. Country guard, but it’s getting there there’s but I’m giving it some more love but it’s getting there, other than the my epic failure with my hydrangeas, which, you know, if we can talk about hydrangeas later. Or you can change a habit, right? Like, you know, a lot of us are all have different specific, like eating habits or exercising habits. You know, that’s something that you can use self-hypnosis for. You can use it just for relaxation. You can use it to work through problems. And that’s, you know, a lot of times when with my motherhood, I use self-hypnosis to work through challenges.

Rita Black: When, when is the best time to use self-hypnosis? Well, gosh, it can be any time. I like the, the best, why well, I think you guys all know that in the morning, our brain is fresh and we’ve already been in a sleep state. So we’re already sort of in a relaxed trance state in the morning as we’re laying in bed. So it’s a great time to practice self-hypnosis. But you know, sometimes I’ll advise clients back in the day where everybody went to work and, you know, we had cubicles or offices, you know, I said, you know, shut your eyes and, and tune out for five minutes and think about how you want your afternoon to go with regards to your self-care. And, you know, if you don’t want to end up snacking on chocolate, you know, like create that in your mind in a self-hypnosis session, or think about when you want to come home that night, how you want things to roll out if you’ve been in a habit of coming home and, you know, going into the kitchen and snacking, and then going, oh, why did I do that again? You know?

Rita Black: So, the nighttime is also great before you go to bed. I like the nighttime for setting things that you want to do in the morning. Like if you want to wake up and exercise in the morning, I think it’s great to do a self hypnosis at night, you know, like, and visualize yourself, getting up and getting out of bed and going and fulfilling your exercise and seeing how you’re finishing the exercise and how that feels. And, oh, that’s going to feel great and getting your clothes out and, you know, really using self-hypnosis to motivate and inspire yourself before you go to bed, then your subconscious mind can kind of work on that at night before you go to bed. And, so I have this little book by my bed and it kind of prompts me on all these kinds of visions and goals. And, I read a little paragraph every night before I go to bed. And so that I let that work. And then I wake up in the morning and I listen to some self-hypnosis. So, definitely I like to use my brain, you know, the best I can. So I, I really do encourage you then. And like I said, I encourage you not just for weight management, because really, life management is weight management. Right? So if we’re, if it’s tax time and we’re stressed out about our taxes, or if it’s, like I said, like managing the relationships in my life is I see is weight management, because when I’m stressed out about my kids or I’m, you know, if I’m not feeling like aligned with my husband, or if we just had a fight, how much easier is it for me to go and stressy than it is? You know, when things are running smoothly and I’m feeling connected to my kids and connected to my husband. Well, you know, it’s a lot easier and it’s a lot easier to manage your weight when your life is managed.

Rita Black: So, you know, really starting to, especially those of you who are reaching maintenance, because there’s a number of you guys in our group now that are reaching maintenance, I think part of your weight maintenance is life maintenance, right? So it was starting to work because as we start to solve those weight challenges, as that stops being so much what our focus is, then, you know, we’re expanding our vision broader too, because, because those things start to present themselves a little more too, because we aren’t so focused on weight. Those other things start to come up. And the wonderful thing I think about a weight manage, mastery journey is that then you start to master those things too, right? So it’s not just about weight, but it becomes this, this life mastery, especially because in your weight mastery journey, you have learned to manage your mind.

Rita Black: So there’s two parts to our workshop. There is the basic morning self-hypnosis which I’m going to go through with you, those of you who are listening in my group, you guys know this basic structure because you’ve been listening to the morning meditations in the monthly mastery program, but, um, I want to walk you through it so that you can focus or, you know, kind of do it for yourself and, but add in a little change of things. Then the other thing, like I said is to record your own self-hypnosis session. And again, this could be for weight management. This could be for, you know, getting your dog to, you know, not get it on the couch. Okay.

Rita Black: So here’s the first part of your self hypnosis in the morning self-hypnosis and those of you who are not, familiar with the morning self-hypnosis, because you’re just listening to the podcast, why I believe the morning self-hypnosis can be very powerful, is like I said, when you are already in a relaxed state, but most of us end up in those situations in our life, like the afternoon snacking or the nights snacking, or, not exercising. We are, if we’re doing those things again and again and again, our brain is already in an automated pattern with that. Why hypnosis or self-hypnosis in the morning or morning meditation is powerful, is that it gets your brain. It’s an interrupter. It interrupts your brain. It says, Hey, we’re not going to do that this today. We’re going to do it this other way today. So you’re giving your brain an alternative route because by the time you show up to the vending machine, it’s almost, or by the time it’s one o’clock. And you’re thinking about that afternoon snack, the train has left the station. It’s going to be almost impossible for you not to follow through with going to the vending machine or, you know, grabbing a snack out of the kitchen. Those it, but making those pattern changes can happen in the morning because you’re thinking those situations through and you’re giving your brain, like, instead of, you know, today, when at one o’clock getting up and going to the vending machine, I’m going to sit at my desk, I’m going to take a breath. You know, I’m going to take that apple out of my bag that I brought instead, and I see myself eating it and loving it and enjoying it. And it’s juicy and it’s sweet. So, you can see that you can give yourself that alternative route and your brain now has somewhere else to go so that when you get there, your chances of following through on a new behavior are stacked far higher than they are had you just like fallen into your afternoon.

Rita Black: So, the thing about self-hypnosis is to practice self-hypnosis right? So you are not going to be perfect at self-hypnosis at the beginning, and please put the perfectionist, that self, the critic in the closet. And, and before you begin yourself hypnosis, don’t just like, kind of go into self-hypnosis and like, I’m going to do some self-hypnosis, but have a purpose for your self-hypnosis. Oh, I want to have a healthy day today. I want to break that afternoon snacking today. I want to, you know, focus on my relationship with my daughter today. You know, like what ever that thing is, you’re going in with that purpose for that. And then you’re going to take a deep breath and then you’re going to relax yourself.

Rita Black: Now, like I said in the morning, I am, when I do my self-hypnosis, I’m going to be honest with you. I take a deep breath and then I gained, I, I dive into myself hypnosis. I usually have a recording that I made that I listened to, but I mean, it’s literally take a breath and then I begin because I’m so relaxed already and I wake up early and do it. It’s fine. Like I’m relaxed enough to be in that state. So you might not need to super relax if you’re doing this in the morning, but if you’re doing this in the afternoon or the evening, you probably will need to relax yourself a little bit. Right? So here are three different choices that you could do to relax yourself/.

Rita Black: One. I really love because it’s so easy and, and we’ll practice this one, cause we’ll practice a little self hypnosis session at the very end of this, but you’re just like tensing up your muscles, really tight all the muscles in your body. And you’re going to do this. You’re going to tense, tense, tense, tense, tense, tense, and then you’re going to let it go. And you’re going to do that three times or more until you feel relaxed. You get relaxed pretty quickly doing that, especially if you’re lying in bed. So that is one of my favorite, like super easy, doesn’t require much thinking, just tense your muscles up and relax them, tense your muscles up and relax them. If any of you guys have questions about what I’m talking about, please feel free to throw them in chat.

Rita Black: The next one is progressive body relaxation. Most of you guys probably are fairly familiar with progressive body relaxation. Again, that is just starting to focus your mind on different parts of your body, either starting with your scalp and moving down to your feet or, or starting with your feet and moving up to the scalp. And all you’re doing is closing your eyes and just focusing on your feet and thinking about your feet and just imagining the muscles in the feet relaxing. And they might not be totally relaxed. That’s fine. But just focus on it’s really the focus that you’re putting on the different body part. That’s beginning to relax your mind. So just then focus on your calves. Focus on your thighs. And you’re going to move up a little bit at a time until you get to the head, right? And then you can move on into your self-hypnosis, or you can go down the five steps, which in the recorded, morning meditation that we have, in my group, the wonderful monthly mastery people. That’s what we do. We go down five steps and, with each step you are going, the idea is you go twice as deep as a step before, and don’t get caught up in, semantics, you know, like, just go with it, just going, I’m going down my staircase of relaxation. And I, I swear to you, the more you do it, the more relaxed you get, you know, you may not relax twice as deeply as a step before, really, but just act as if you are, and then you’ll start doing it. The more hung up on that stuff, the less you get relaxed. So just go with it, just say, yep, I’m relaxing twice as deep as a step before. And you can say stuff to yourself, like I’m opening myself to the, my day. I can’t wait to get started with this new, powerful step forward in my life. You know, like you can, you can say whatever you like to say, or you can just go, I’m going five down to four, four down to three, three down to two. Yeah. So you can choose.

Rita Black: And then I like to add that little door at the bottom of the stairs, or, you know, when you finish your progressive relaxation or finished tightening up, tightening up your body, I, as you guys know who done hypnosis and meditation with me, I like to have that little door cheer shift place. And I think of the shift place as a place of like, it’s kind of like a ceremonial or ritualistic opening of the door to your subconscious mind, right? So we’re opening that door to your subconscious mind, to that place of possibility and stepping inside. So just imagine any kind of door you want, open the door and you step through. And, that is, once you’re inside, then you can, you know, those of you who’ve worked with me know you can like create a very relaxing space for yourself and this space could be out in nature. It could be a wooded area. It could be a meadow, it could be a beach, or it could be a room that you love that actually exists. Or it can be something that you create in your own mind. Sci-fi. Just, but it needs to be relaxing. It doesn’t, you don’t want it to stimulating.

Rita Black: So once we’re in there, oh, I forgot I put on this other thing here. Let me go back up. Well, no, I’m not going to go back up, but, once you are in your wonderful relaxing space, I, another easy, easy, easy thing to do is as you guys know, in our morning meditation, we have a movie screen, right. And movie screen is just really a great sort of what would be the word that you would use. Drawing a blank. My brain is so fried, but a great vision. A great. I, a great conduit for, your creating something, right? Because a movie screen, we all know, we can sit in a chair in our wonderful, relaxing place, a nice relaxing chair and look up at our movie screen and we’re going to watch some stuff on the screen and that’s our, our palette of creation. Okay. Right. That’s our palette that we are going to create on. And, and again, we get that choice. We can create our life or our life can live us. We get to choose that. Right? So that’s another reason why I love self-hypnosis is so creative.

Rita Black: So start with a big vision. You know, what is that vision? If it’s a weight release, you know, imagine yourself up on that screen at your ideal weight and in the beginning, you want it to be you watching you, right? So, and get really specific about what you’re going to look like at your ideal weight and what you’re going to be doing and make it, you know, make it appealing and sexy and seductive and, and realistic to, you know, you don’t, if, if it’s, or if it’s too overwhelming for you to see yourself at your ideal weight, if that’s too far away like it, you can’t even imagine that that’s okay to really just imagine yourself up on the screen being healthy and maybe 10 pounds or 20 pounds down the scale, but just, you know, create a vision that inspires you, that you want to move towards, you know, your evolutionary point, right? Put that up in front of you.

Rita Black: And then you’re going to work backwards from that vision. So you’re going to have that vision, and then you’re, you’re going to bring yourself at least for weight management, you’re going to bring yourself to the end of your day. So you’re going to work backwards to, reverse engineer, and you can reverse engineer in increments that you want, like your ideal way. And then you could see yourself at the end of the month. And then you can see yourself at the end of the week, and you can see yourself at the end of the day. But I just like to start with the big vision and go to, how do I want to feel by the end of today? Like, how is today going to contribute to that vision up on the screen? Right? Like I do stuff for my, my like business, you know, I set business goals. I set goals that I want, like putting my weight mastery program online. Like that has been a big goal of mine for the last year. And there’s been a lot of fear around it. A lot of like, oh, I can’t, a lot of negative self speak and you know, all that stuff that goes along with, you know, in putting yourself at risk and having to do something you don’t know really how to do. And, you know, getting a team member that you don’t, you know, like you haven’t met, you’re not comfortable with bringing them on like, so there’s been a lot of like discomfort points I’ve had to work through in order to do this next step, including today was a very uncomfortable day. I was having to do a lot of stuff I was not comfortable with. And sometimes a big, big baby about that stuff.

Rita Black: So, self-hypnosis helps me, like I can vision everybody going through the program and doing, you know, like having it really be a great. The, the program itself being like this great medium for them to be on their powerful journey of weight mastery. And, and then I can think about the fears and I can think about like, what am I like, what are my fears about today and where am I going today? And I see myself coming out to the end of today and I’ve accomplished these few things that I really wanted to accomplish. And then I can, and then I can start at the beginning of my day and work through and say, well, how am I going to do that? Who am I going to have to connect with? What am I going to do? Now with weight mastery, you see yourself going to bed at the end of the day, and you see yourself getting into bed and feeling light like you exercise, like you ate healthfully, like you are stabilized and aren’t, you know, too full or off kilter in balance that you really, you know, that feeling when you go to bed. And you’re like, wow, I’ve really took care of myself today. Such a wonderful feeling. Isn’t it? It’s so magical.

Rita Black: So imagining yourself on the screen, getting into bed, and then imagine yourself going through your day, seeing yourself go through your day. What meals are you going to eat? Where are you going to exercise putting those in your mind right ahead of time? What are you going to do at one o’clock, um, when you typically go to the vending machine instead, like you’re really placing these ahead of yourself, sort of like slides and a carousel, you know, those old slide carousels that used to go round and around and you could slides. And then we were like, kind of placing these different images in front of yourself, in your self-hypnosis. And then, like I said, you could really focus on one specific, one specific problem that you want to work on. Like I mentioned the afternoon snacking, but it could be something like evening eating or like the fact that maybe every day you come home and you say you’re going to exercise, and then you end up, you know, watching TV, watching the news instead. So, you know, really visualizing, seeing yourself, coming home, getting your tennis shoes on and going out for that walk.

Rita Black: Then once you’ve kind of gone through your day, visually, you want to imagine yourself merging into that screen and then going through actually going back to the beginning of your day and going through it as if it’s your life, right? Because you’re giving your brain a different experience of your day. You’re, you know, going from two dimensional into three dimensional and really being in your body and really feeling those feelings. Feeling that feeling of, wow, I ate an apple instead of going to the vending machine and I feel good and light coming home at night, or I came home and I exercise and I feel so good in my body going to bed, you know, like really feel those feelings because those feelings are going to tell your brain, yes, this is good. This is where we want to go. And it’s going to activate that part of your brain to help you achieve your goal. And then, thank you. I just saw somebody, Hey, you’re doing great. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, I know. It’s, we’re all hard on ourselves, aren’t we? Finish with going to bed feeling good. So you’re going to finish that and add any gratitude like I am so grateful that I had a, I ate an apple and I broke my afternoon chocolate habit. I’m so grateful that I have wonderful food to eat that’s healthy. I’m so grateful to be able to walk and to, you know, like really, because gratitude also adds a powerful, it’s like adding magic fairy dust all over everything. I think gratitude really engages our brain in a powerful way. So I try to add a lot of gratitude with my self-hypnosis every day.

Rita Black: Now, do you guys have any questions about this part of it before I get into the recording yourself? Any, any of you have any questions about the structure of this or the relaxation bit? Well, and then when you get to the end, sorry that I always I’m so used doing this. I, I didn’t mention. So when you get to the end of your day, you can just take a nice deep breath and you can walk up the stairs and open your eyes. Or you can just count up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 eyes open, or you can just take a nice deep breath and open your eyes and get on with your day or get on with your afternoon or head off into a nice sleep. If you are sleeping. If you fall asleep during yourself hypnosis, that might happen. That’s okay. Obviously your self-hypnosis will have ended, but don’t be hard on yourself, but maybe the next time you want to sit up. Sometimes when I listen to myself in the morning, I do dose back now, but if you’ve recorded yourself, you’re it is getting in there. But you know, you can definitely, when you finish your vision for, let’s say going to bed at night and thinking about exercise, you can definitely just allow that to help you fall asleep and fall asleep. So, I’m not seeing any questions, so I’m going to move on.

Rita Black: So we are going to now talk about recording yourself and recording self-hypnosis, which I really, really think you guys should all try. It can really be a lot of fun. So, what you want to do is just start doing it really. It, it does take some courage because it, again, we’re typically, most people are a little shy of listening to their own voices, unless you’re a voice over artist or an actor or something like that. So, you know, you are, but you know, or maybe you have your own podcast or maybe you have some sort of, you know, thing that you you’re used to recording our musician or your singer or something. So then, I mean, you might not be, but, but most of us are a little shy. So just start doing it and, and really take that self inner self critic and put it to the side. I was working with a very high profile artist not long ago who had come to see me for, they had had a challenge with their voice, and you know, they’re a singer. And, and it was very interesting because they really felt like something had happened to their vocal chords, which, which something did. But I could see that the bigger issue, I was like, what’s happening when you’re practicing, you know? Cause they were going and practicing with a vocal coach and they just couldn’t do it. They couldn’t reach those notes anymore. And it was just like, and, and that expectation was holding them back. Right? So, and like, literally we did this, this exercise where I was just like, what does that inner critic look like? That’s talking to you, what did they sound like? And what did they, you know, and we do this in the shift, right? We get into like, what does your inner critic look like and sound like, and feel like, and very similar to what we do in the shift. And it was so helpful because she didn’t realize how critical she had, because it’s just becomes, so the water we swim in. And you know, this is somebody who just has an amazing voice, amazing artist but so hard, so hard on themselves. Do you think, oh, well, you know, they’re this amazing artist who everybody loves and you know, it should be so easy for them and no, so hard. So, you know, think about that and think about it’s, it’s, don’t put the critic to the side when you’re going to do your self-hypnosis session. So you can just love on yourself and go through this and do this. Cause this is, can be really funny, very powerful.

Rita Black: You know, best what you can hear. I mean, like, I can do some hypnosis for you, but like I’m telling you, if you get this down, you can get really specific about what you need and you can add additional recordings. I, I do this all the time. In fact, I listened to two or three recordings in the morning. I have one for, you know, being healthy and, and good immunity. And I have one that I made and they’re just short little things. I just listened to them because they put the right messaging in my mind. It’s like we sit in front of the TV and we get all these different messages all the time. Right? And we’re passive and they’re just coming at us that they’re hypnotizing us. And we rarely are putting our own messaging in front of us that we want to hear for what we want to do. So come on, we gotta make our own morning commercials or our own afternoon commercials for what we want the life we want to live. Right?

Rita Black: So, change your recording when you get bored or outdated. And it will probably be every couple of months, I try to do a new reporting every quarter because that is what works well for me. So you can write out what you want to say. You can write a script and usually it helps just to have an outline. You can write your relaxation, you can either do one, the relaxations, I just walked you guys through. And you can, again, if this is a weight one, you can see yourself at your ideal weight. And you can ask yourself, what does that look like? Or you could, you can even, you know, say you’re wearing that black dress that you bought in Monaco for that special event. And you look amazing and your hair is done and, you know, cause you can really get more specific because this is for you. You’re standing at that, in the garden of that hotel that you love in Guadalajara and you are, and you’re there because you’re celebrating, you’re achieving your goal. You like, you, you can get really specific.

Rita Black: And then you can move it to the day and say, you know, like, how do you want to feel by the end of today when we get into bed. And again, you can use the language and the questions that you want because they’re going to be specific to you. You know, you can say, how does it feel to have, you know, avoided our, you know, to have abstained from eating in front of the TV tonight, if that’s a thing that you want to break. How does it feel to have, you know, cuddled with your kids and given them some love and you know, whatever it is you’d like, how does that feel? So that’s engaging your brain.

Rita Black: And then, then you’re going to ask yourself, so how are you going to attain that today? And, and maybe again, you know, well before dinner, I mean, before I went and watched TV, you were going to, you know, make sure you’re done with all your meals, you’re going to brush your teeth, you’re, you know, you’re going to be food-free in front of the TV. That’s going to make you feel really good. You, you know, you, you can walk yourself through specific steps that you’re going to do to attain that goal. You know, remind that the yourself of the new habits that you’re creating and walk yourself through your day and through that new habit and, and focus on what you’re going to do, what you’re not what you’re not going to do. Right? Like, so I am going to walk by that covered where the chocolate is, and I’m just going to sit and have some water while I watch TV. Not like I’m not going to eat chocolate because your brain doesn’t really process negative. So then it’s just going to hear, I’m going to eat chocolate and focus on how following through makes you feel confident and fantastic.

Rita Black: Now there is another step you could do, and whether it’s in your morning meditation or whether it’s recorded. And this is if you’re really trying to break a habit that is really hard wired in, right? Something that, you know, maybe you do a couple of hypnosis is self-hypnosis and they have it so kind of persistent. And that is to take yourself down the path of pain before the path of gratification. Meaning, if you go and get a bunch of chocolate and eat it in front of the TV every night, the first step would be, okay, so imagine yourself, you know, you, you watch yourself doing your habit that you do as if it were up on the screen. Are you walking yourself through it, see yourself, opening the cupboard, getting the chocolate out, standing there, eating it, you know, eating in mindlessly, eating those five pieces. You always eat. Now I’m putting the chocolate away or throwing the patch catch away. And now how does it feel in your stomach? Like how does it feel to have all that chocolate in your system? How does your blood sugar feel right now? How does it feel? Because you ate more than you wanted to? How does it feel you know, like ask yourself those questions and what you’re doing is asking yourself those questions that are going to make you feel negative, right? You’re going to make you feel a negative emotion and that’s going to trigger your brain. The brain is like, oh, you know, I don’t really want that because what we’re doing is overpowering the dopamine center in our brain that wants reward. Right? And our brain is wired to think that chocolate is reward. But if we can start to show the brain ahead of time in the self-hypnosis no, no, this isn’t a reward. It actually makes me feel like crap. The brain will start to get it. The brain will start to go, oh yeah, we don’t want that is a version therapy. Oh, we don’t want that. And then you offer it what you do want walking by, oh, isn’t it going to be wonderful to sit and watch television and drink a cool cold glass of water or a nice cup of hot tea on a cold winter night, all cuddled up in your blanket or whatever. Really paint that picture and how light and wonderful you’ll feel going to bed that night, having done that. Right? So you can use the aversion first and then bring in the good ending, the happy ending. And, and, and always go back to that vision of getting into the bed that night, feeling good. And you can go through your day a couple of times. One, maybe imagining yourself, like you’re on the screen. And then two going through your day in your body and seeing yourself actually living through that, that habit changed that you want to make, or, or, you know, pushing the plate away when you’ve had enough, instead of eating the entire plate. Now, whatever it is, you’re, you’re visualizing it. And you’re also emotionally connecting to it with your feelings.

Rita Black: And then add some gratitude. And imagine yourself already at your ideal way, you can go back to that and say, well, what am I grateful for? You know, how, what am I grateful for at my ideal weight? So it’s not just about like, I want this thing, but what, what is it? You know, like I’m grateful that I can feel healthy. I’m grateful I can run up a flight of stairs, because you’re acting as if you’re already there and you’re telling your brain what you’re grateful for. It’s a very powerful thing. It helps open up your mind. It helps engage your reticular activation system, which is a filtering system for your brain, because the brain is like, oh, we want that. Yeah. We’re willing to go without those things, because this seems way better. Write a list of what you’re grateful at your ideal weight as if you’ve already attained your ideal weight. And if you are maintaining, imagine what it’s going to feel like to have maintained your weight for a year. You know, imagine yourself a year from now, how are you going to feel? How grateful are you going to feel that you’ve maintained your ideal weight, that will be stunning, right?

Rita Black: And then, you know, add in, you know, I’m grateful I can move so much easier. I’m grateful that I feel safe and comfortable in my own skin. I feel grateful that I’ve learned to exercise consistently five days a week at that I felt energetic and alive. I mean, anything you’re gonna, these are ideas that I’m throwing at you, but you are the master. And you can see that self-hypnosis is a structure of sorts, but it’s an art form. It’s just like learning to paint something. Here’s the canvas, here’s the paintbrush. Here’s some colors, but now use your mind, use your imagination to start to create, and guess what? Painters don’t start out being awesome painters in the beginning, parking the parking alarm guy, gosh, somebody moved to her neighborhood and they have this alarm that keeps going off. There, it goes off now. But, you know, you’re the painter, you’re the creator, but you’ve got to just keep doing it. You’ll get better and better and more confident and, and it will become much more fun.

Rita Black: So there you go. I hope you are able to use this simple structure to help focus your mind on your goals in the morning and just to get started. It’s all about just getting started and getting going. Don’t worry about being good. Don’t worry about it being perfect. Just try it out and see how it works for you. I think you’re really going to like it. Now, unfortunately, I don’t have more time today to have you get into the second part, but email me or tag me and let me know if you would like to learn more self-hypnosis techniques and have a wonderful week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it. Thanks for listening.

Rita Black: Do you want to dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www.shiftweightmastery.com where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release, tips, strategies, and more, and be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking: Unlock Your Mind For Permanent Weight Loss.