Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Offering ideas and answering questions on how to use your mind for growth, happiness and ultimately peace.
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
The Future is Imagination: Living in the Now While Creating the Future of Your Dreams
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Can you imagine a future where your thoughts and mindset literally shape your reality? Join us for an enlightening conversation on "Coffee with Hilary and Les" as we uncover the transformative power of imagination. We reveal how our perceptions of the past are just myths that serve to guide us, while our future is a boundless landscape of potential. Learn how your current mindset towards the future can either fill your present with anxiety or hope, and why it's crucial to live in the moment while using your imagination to paint a vibrant and optimistic future.
Ever wondered how visualizing your future self can spark personal growth? We dive into how shedding outdated views of your past and ignoring others' limiting perceptions can pave the way for a better you. Reflect on fascinating research about self-awareness and change over time, and discover the magic of meditating on your future self. Finally, we conclude with a heartfelt discussion on hypnosis as a tool for personal development. Explore how our hypnosis services can help you achieve your life goals and why booking a free session might be your next best step. Don't miss this episode; it's your gateway to a brighter future.
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Welcome and thank you for joining us for Coffee with Hilary and Les. Brought to you by the State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre located in the heart of the Kawartha Lakes. This is our almost daily community podcast about the mind and how we all might change it in the most simple and helpful ways. Every day we sit staring at the lake and sipping our coffee, chatting about hypnosis and how to make those meaningful adjustments to our state of mind, because nothing's more important than your state of mind. Because nothing's more important than your state of mind.
Speaker 2:We're online.
Speaker 1:The doggy comes running in because we're laughing. Yeah. He says how come you're having fun without me? It's a beautiful summer day and I'm all filled with I don't know what you would be filled with oxytocin. Just come back from the gym. It's like a perfect summer day. It's 25 degrees, the Sun is shining, the sky is blue. There isn't a lot of breeze, just a tiny hint of it. Man, oh man. What a day. Who could have predicted this?
Speaker 2:Nobody Me, you, you.
Speaker 1:We knew it was coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's on time.
Speaker 1:Just like we know, winter will be back. No, but it doesn't do us any good to think about it, does it?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:In fact thinking about the future, because yesterday the past is myth and the more I think about that, the more I like it right. The past is myth yeah because it's just a story we tell ourselves to learn lessons from mm-hmm right, like, like the myths, the Greek myths, the Greek gods, all that stuff. It was just lessons right, yeah. Lessons. It's the past and it might have happened. Might not have happened whatever happened happened, but the point is, we make up really good stories, Mm-hmm, Right, and that's what we should do with the future.
Speaker 2:I came up with something amazing this morning the future is imagination.
Speaker 1:Oh you, thief, you just dreamed that up, did you? You saw that in your future. Yep, yesterday was about the past is myth, and so today it's about the future is imagination. It's nothing but imagination, your imagination, is this amazing thing that we mostly forget to use once we sort of cross the age of 12.
Speaker 2:Yes, our dog is imagining that people are walking around on the gate.
Speaker 1:She's full of anxiety because there's somebody out there in the driveway in the neighbors and she's decided she needs to tell everybody that it's happening and she's running in now to find out if we were listening. Were you listening? Nope, she's going straight to the front door so she can get a better view.
Speaker 2:It's just imagination.
Speaker 1:She's imagining Her anxiety, her upset, is imagining that something bad might happen, but she could imagine something good could happen. And that's really the thing about the future. I thought about the future. I thought, well, what's negative about the future?
Speaker 2:The only.
Speaker 1:Thing negative about the future is how we think of it right, if you think about all the negative ways, you approach future with worry and avoidance, fear and anxiety, a concern about having and grasping and feeling like you might be or have less in the future than you have now. Right, you imagine aging as a negative thing and that you're going to lose and lose and lose and lose, and all of that makes the future something you have to suffer through.
Speaker 2:Or suffer about.
Speaker 1:Suffer about. But the future could be positive. Right, it could be bright. It could represent your growth and your evolution. Right, it could mean you have more. Right, this growth mindset. The future can be inspiring things yet to do things yet, to have things yet to accomplish. The future can have all these positive thoughts, but when it comes to just, can we have neutral thoughts? Well, I think that thinking is a neutral thing. Thinking is just what you do. Thinking is what happens in the mind. Thinking is pushing thoughts through, and it can be positive or it can be negative, depending on what you think.
Speaker 2:Or what emotion you attribute to that thought.
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 2:Because you and I can have the same thought about the future, but I could have a different emotion about it because it would have a different meaning exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Whatever would happen in the future would have a meaning. Right, it could mean something positive, it can something negative, but the future does not exist. It's the same as the past. The past is the present gone. It's gone. There's nothing you can do with it. It's gone, you can't touch it, you can't do anything. You can just remember it badly and, if you're lucky, you learn from it. But either way it's gone, so you might as well just get rid of it. And the future is just imagining yeah right hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's kind of beautiful when you think about past, present and future.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a great way for us to have experience. Yeah right, there has to be some kind of um line, some kind of consistent measure for us to be able to move along through life and have experience. And experience, then, is basically sequential, and we can see how past experiences can influence what we do now and we can see what anticipated future experiences can influence what we do now. But the past and the future are only thoughts. They don't really exist. All that exists is now, and so, if the past is myth, the future is imagination, it's creation and you can use that imagination for negative purposes.
Speaker 1:You can imagine the worst. You can imagine horrible things coming. You can have yourself completely convinced that the future is going to be crap and you can have yourself completely convinced that the future is going to be marvelous. And the people who are convinced that the future is going to be marvelous and the people who are convinced that the future is going to be just crap, say to the people who think the future is going to be marvelous that you're naive and you're foolish and they rely a lot on past and they're focused only on the negative parts of the past.
Speaker 1:The people who think that the future is going to be wonderful are the people who think about the wonderful things that have happened in the past. The people who think that the future is going to be wonderful are the people who think about the wonderful things that have happened in the past and are imagining the wonderful things that could be happening. And no matter what, the future is a creation of your mind, whether it's positive or negative. So really like why? What value is there in imagining a negative future?
Speaker 1:yeah, really how does it help?
Speaker 2:well, I mean from a hypnosis standpoint it helps, doesn't help, but to our subconscious mind, it helps us feel like we're in control, like we're keeping ourselves safe, even though we're not it's just imagination, yeah it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1:You don't know what's gonna happen yeah, yeah I think we we, we tend to be.
Speaker 1:you know, what matters is the present We'll talk about that another day but the present and what's going on in the present. If you are obsessed with a negative past or obsessed with a negative future in the present, then your imaginings are not going to be helpful. If you honestly anticipate some negative happening right, then you could be positively imagining how you might avoid it, how you might get around it, how you might plan to get there, and that's sort of seeing a positive future because, although this horrible thing is going to happen, I'm gonna be okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, it's still about using your imagination.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's right. I think, too, we get caught up in the future, because what came to me this morning is thinking we don't have choice in the matter. Oh, did you just check, okay.
Speaker 1:I have a drinking problem Drinking coffee. Sometimes the coffee doesn't make its way in my mouth.
Speaker 2:So thinking we don't have choice about our future, thinking that we are, you know, the pawn in a chess game that's just being moved around by greater forces?
Speaker 1:And it's easy to see how we're programmed to play those roles. But it's also easy to see that you choose your thoughts. You choose how you use your mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's often out of habit, so it's not really a choice. It's often based on information given to us from people we trust as a suggestion accepted Right, and that can not be the best use of our ability to choose. But choice never goes away.
Speaker 1:And when you can see, you know, when you anticipate certain negative choices, worry, fear, you know, defending yourself against your future because it's just imagination, because it hasn't happened. It doesn't really matter what the odds are. The odds improve the instant you decide. You're not going to fall prey to that. The instant you decide I'm not going to allow myself to succumb to that. I choose something different for myself.
Speaker 1:It's remembering that you can choose. You can choose what you think about, you can choose what you imagine. Right, if you change your thinking and you know, to me it's really simple Start thinking about possibilities, not just negative possibilities. What are the positive possibilities? Think of the possibilities and then be curious about them. How might that happen? Then you're curious about possibilities and you're gonna do, maybe, some exploration, maybe you're going to do some, some research, or maybe you're gonna do some imagining, imagining a positive outcome and how you might get there. You, you know.
Speaker 1:It's, I think, one of the most simple things in the world, the idea of planning. If you know exactly where you are and you know exactly where you want to be, the path is obvious. The trick is to spend some time thinking about knowing exactly where you are and then knowing exactly where you want to be and I think sometimes people don't really understand where they are. They forget to have choice, they forget to have an imagination, they forget to have curiosity and creativity and the ability to do things. I think we forget that because, as we've said so many times, our body can hijack our mind, fear can take over and that can really pump in the cortisol and kicking in the sympathetic nervous system and then having the body just sort of off in its own world. That's hard, it's hard to bring that back. But you can choose to think and to explore and to imagine something positive and see where you want to go, so you can clarify where you really are, which is right here in this moment. And maybe nothing bad in this moment is actually happening. You know, maybe some things bad have happened in the past, but in this moment, here's where I stand, where can I go from here In my mind, in my body, in my life? Right, and then you know, if you're going to use your mind to imagine, take it the next step and turn that imagination into a plan. What would I have to do to get there? What would the steps be for me to get there? Right now I'm using my mind to create my future right. I'm planning to create, I'm, and then I make that choice. I choose to create that. I choose to take my energy and my activity and my thoughts and I choose to create that. And as soon as I make that choice, inspiration just kicks in. Inspiration just kicks in and you start to feel inspired to do this or to do that. You start to see yourself doing certain things, acting in certain ways, calling certain people, see yourself doing certain things, acting in certain ways, calling certain people, going certain places, doing things, and there's a lightness in that inspiration. That inspiration lifts you up. And now, all of a sudden, this future that you've taken the time to imagine is positive. Now it actually seems like it's possible. You see it as possible. Now. This is just all in your mind, because the future is just imagination. It's all in your mind now.
Speaker 1:It's not easy. The past can be incredibly anchoring. It can be. It can be heavy, it can be hurtful. It's hard sometimes not to suffer about what's happened in the past. But when you just grab a hold of that mind and say no, no, no, no, no, no, I can control what I think. And even though these things seem overwhelming and we're all over me. I can choose something else and really like why wouldn't you? Why would you choose to suffer? Why would you choose to think about a negative past? Why would you choose that? Except that you think it makes you safer. And then when you see the truth that it doesn't it doesn't make you safer Then you can start to say well, why am I wasting my energy on that? Why am I wasting my brain cycles on that? Why don't I use my brain to think about something positive? Why don't I imagine ridiculously positive outcomes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Something came to me this morning. Where is it On my paper? Here there's a saying out there.
Speaker 2:I saw it in a meme or I don't know what, like probably a year ago or more, but it's always sort of stuck with me because it really is the truth. And that saying I mean I'm kind of botching it here, but basically it says there are people in the world that only know the old you, right? So someone from say, you knew someone 20 years ago and they had a version of you in their mind and that version is still in their mind. You've moved on, you've changed, you've done stuff. You, you are probably a totally different person, but they're still stuck in that version.
Speaker 2:So I thought, well, what would you have to do to bring them up to speed? Right? So you maybe meet, you know, you talk to them, you meet them, you tell them your feelings, you tell them your thoughts, you show them your life how it is and you create, right, and you create from there. So why am I saying this? I thought I had this thought that this is the same as the mind, right? So yet my mind from yesterday is saying no, you're yesterday, you are the version of you from yesterday, right? And what would I have to do now to convince the mind of yesterday that I want to be different?
Speaker 2:that I am different, that I am moving towards this new reality, or my imagination is changing, Right. So that sort of came to me and I thought well, isn't that just an interesting thought about how? What do we have to do to change the mind of yesterday?
Speaker 1:Wouldn't that be a beautiful meditation To spend a few minutes in meditation to imagine yourself in your future. It reminds me of a study that I just read about, maybe a month ago. It's a study that I read about people's awareness of how much they change. It's really really interesting. So what they did was they took a group of people. Change. It's really really interesting.
Speaker 1:So what they did was they took a group of people and they had them recount how much they've changed over the past five years and then they asked them to predict how much they would change in the next five years and it's amazing how accurate they were and detailed they were and how elaborate they were in explaining how much they've changed in the last five years. Just putting their mind to it. And people are really really bad at seeing themselves in the future anticipating the same amount of change. So if you use just sort of arbitrary numbers and you say, from five years ago I've changed like in 25 different ways and I predict how much I'll change in the next five years, I might be able to say two or three ways I'm going to change. But that's just not true because you're going to change in that same degree, in that same amount, and that change is really something that you can, if you want to take control of, turn into choices, really build it, really make it happen.
Speaker 1:So anyway, so take that meditation and imagine yourself five years from now with all your dreams coming true. Right, think about the things you're dreaming. This is what we do badly. We don't imagine very well anymore. We don't spend time dreaming. People think it's a waste of time. People think it's a waste of their mind. If you're going to think, why think negative things? There's just, there's no helpful value in negative thoughts. I mean, for me it's the battle that I have in my own head Every day, times I say to myself I'm not gonna think about this, I'm not gonna think that I'm not gonna remember those, those events, I'm not gonna spend any time dwelling on that.
Speaker 1:That does not get me anywhere except angry or resentful or sad or confused or somehow distracted from what I could be doing with my mind, which is creating my wonderful future, thinking about what's possible and so to say to yourself sit now in a meditation and meet the person of you in five years and let them tell you how wonderful your life has become, how many really positive things have come into your life, how many really negative things have been removed from your life you finally let go of, you finally stepped away from and just have that beautiful conversation with your future self. Look at your future self. There might be a few more gray hairs Not possible with me. It's not possible for me to have more gray hair.
Speaker 1:But you know, you might have a few more gray hairs. You might have a few laugh lines, a few wrinkles from the wonderful life you've had. You might have a nice tan because you're outdoors and doing things. Picture yourself that way. Picture yourself off in your future having accomplished a few of these dreams that you imagine. Imagine yourself there, few of these dreams that you imagine. Imagine yourself there and then have a conversation and ask what happened and let the happenings become part of your possibilities. Let it become part of your imaginations, let it become part of your opportunities to choose differently. The biggest I really believe that the biggest problem we all have with our minds is we don't use it in the way that we could be using it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mind is all over the place now Well, that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nothing wrong with that Thinking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nothing wrong with that Thinking yeah, yeah, I think we get caught up in. As you were talking there, I thought get caught up in what if it flops? Or what if it doesn't work out? It's almost like it's worse than anything.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:Right, Because then it's like a.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to describe it. I'll describe it. It's a lie that you tell yourselves because of a belief that we have. We have a belief that failure is possible. There's no such thing as failure. If you never quit trying, you can't fail.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You just keep trying, you just keep improving, you just keep learning, you just keep doing something else, you just keep trying, you just keep improving, you just keep learning, you just keep doing something else, you just keep grasping. It's. It's not that people fail, it's that they either say well, you know what? I tried this and I've discovered that it isn't really for me which is possible, though I think we should be cautious to take that conclusion. But it's that you know.
Speaker 1:We think that failure is a possibility yeah, and it isn't so that what if it doesn't work out? Well, if it doesn't work out, I'll just try something different, I'll just keep working at it yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll just improve my skills here or I'll take some courses in that, or I will meet some people who know and learn from them and I'll take some courses in that, or I will meet some people who know and learn from them and I will take incremental steps. And it doesn't matter if it's going to be 10,000 steps to get there. If I take all 10,000, I will be there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's this illusion that we tell ourselves that failure is possible. No, we can quit, and sometimes quitting isn't bad. But if we don't quit and we just keep learning, everything we do mistakes are just lessons, right, and this sounds like some pretty toxic positivity, right? Like don't you be telling me to think positive about everything? I'm saying that you're going to think. You're going to think, whether you want to or not. You can choose those thoughts. There are thoughts that you can think that feel good and there's thoughts you can think that feel bad. Why choose the ones that feel bad? Why allow the ones that feel bad?
Speaker 1:Today, if you wanted to look at that mythical past, you could pick a very, very happy event, a beautiful event, something that you'll never forget, because it was just so beautiful and wonderful and you could spend time, if you wanted, to thinking about that. That would raise your feelings, your emotions, your vibrations. It would raise things. Or you could choose to think about the worst emotions, your vibrations. It would raise things. Or you could choose to think about the worst day of your life, and that will lower your vibrations. That will lower your energy, that will lower your emotions. Either way, it's a choice. You have that choice. I have that choice and I spend lots of time every day catching my negative thoughts and telling myself stop it, and then trying to think of something different. And if I think of something different that isn't here, that hasn't happened. Well, that's my imagination, and that's what imagination is for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, keep us for yeah, keep us moving, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:Does that sound like too forceful?
Speaker 2:No, not at all. Am I too forceful today? Not at all. I think it was a good podcast.
Speaker 1:It must be all the endorphins in me from going to the gym.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should do this every day. After my meditation and after your gym, then we do the podcast. We'll have a really upbeat podcast. Yeah, that'll just piss people off no, no, I don't think this one is pissing anyone off I hope this helps.
Speaker 1:That's all I want. I want to be helpful. Grab that mind of yours and take control of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have choice. Maybe that'll be my ending every day now. Okay, we hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that maybe it helped even a little. If you have any questions, we would love you to send them along in an email to info at psalmhypnosiscom. Thank you for being part of the State of Mind community. For more information about hypnosis and the various online or in-person services we provide, please visit our website, wwwpsalmhypnosiscom. The link will be in the notes below. While you are there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey, meeting with Hillary or less, to learn more about what hypnosis is and how you might use it to make your life what you want it to be? Bye for now. Talk to you tomorrow, thank you.
