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
Rediscovering Joy: The Transformative Power of Hobbies and Creativity
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Can rediscovering your childhood passions transform your daily life? Join us on a rainy morning as we explore the profound impact of hobbies on our mental well-being. We dive into how even fleeting bursts of creativity can lift our moods and break the monotony of everyday routines. Using personal anecdotes, like rekindling a love for playing the guitar, we illustrate how hobbies serve as both a grounding force and a joyful escape from life’s demands.
Imagine a house obscured by fog but still standing strong—this metaphor captures how our true selves remain intact despite life's challenges. We delve into the essence of creativity and how engaging in hobbies can disrupt negative thought patterns, elevating our moods. By discussing heart-mind coherence and the importance of positive actions, we emphasize that pursuing activities that bring joy and fulfillment is not just a luxury but an essential part of personal well-being.
Life’s overwhelming responsibilities can often lead us to neglect what truly makes us happy. But what if we revisited our childhood passions and envisioned a life unburdened by financial constraints? We explore the importance of creating time for hobbies and personal interests, stressing that life should be more than just about meeting obligations. To wrap up, we discuss the transformative potential of hypnosis and invite you to explore our website for more information and a free consultation to help you unlock your full potential.
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Welcome and thank you for joining us for Coffee with Hilary and Les. Brought to you by State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Center, located in the heart of the Kawartha Lakes, this is our almost daily community podcast about the mind and how you might change it in the most simple and helpful ways. Every day, we sit staring at the lake and sipping our coffee, having a chat about hypnosis and how to make those meaningful adjustments to our state of mind, Because nothing is more important than your state of mind.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're on the line On a rainy morning. As soon as I woke up today started complaining about the rain and I started to moan about my body, the gym, and then we started to think about moods, and then you came up with an idea for a podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sort of reached out to the universe.
Speaker 1:Good place to reach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the importance of hobbies came up and I thought, what? But we went down that road and we talked about it a little bit and we thought it was time to turn on the microphone yeah, I think. I think there are a lot of different aspects of it that can be chatted about. Yeah, Hobbies.
Speaker 1:I've had a few hobbies in my life, some of which are just absolutely gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:There's no involvement. Some of them have gotten bigger, I suppose. Involvement Some of it. Some of them have gotten bigger, I suppose even to the point of ridiculousness, like my silly obsession with baseball.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:To Oscar Hernandez won the home run, der derby. Just in case you needed to know yeah like that'll change the world, but what it will do is it will change some people's moods what it?
Speaker 2:will do is it will raise people up, sometimes by engaging in their hobby, whatever that would be yeah, what's coming to me right now is hobbies also don't have to be things that carry on for years, you know. They can be like tiny blips of energy that need to be almost looked at and released. I thought I was weird for doing this, but I would go through fits I would call them like fits of creativity or a hobby where I would get so deep into something and it could last a week, it last a couple months, it could last a day, and there was something inside of me that clicked and it was like okay, that's good, you're good. I know you spent five hundred dollars on knitting, but you're good after the day right, like well, I've always seen you as jumping from hobby to hobby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've got a million of them.
Speaker 2:I do, but um you know, I just it. It feels in that moment, like you know, I just it feels in that moment. Like you know, I just need to be creative. Now I spend time since I recognize that in myself I spend time assessing what comes into my mind, thinking, okay, do I, do I really need to invest in this, do I? You know, I've got so much stuff in in tubs, paintings of lives and everything Um, that, yeah, it's there. If I, if I have one of those little fits, fits and starts, um, but yeah, it does, does it raises your vibration? For it's like you're, it's like there's a, there's a base, and when you start to go down and down towards that baseline vibration, it's something inside says, no, we're not going down down there and almost has this I hate to say pressure, but almost like this. Okay, come on, let's raise our vibration. And how we know how I know how to do that is to involve myself in something right, like a creative outlet.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the creativity and curiosity part is huge. You know, that's a mood uplifter. You know creativity and curiosity, things that drive us a little bit. Yeah, I think that we're constantly trying to feel better.
Speaker 1:feel better and I think that thoughts and ideas um will bring us down in in our overall vibrational mood, and that we will want to not be in that vibration, in that state, and we will seek to do something to get us out of it. You know it's an old idea but I think about it a lot and I share it with clients a lot. Our natural state, who we really are, is a natural state of expansion, a natural state of love, a natural state of happiness. This is who we naturally are and it's not that we have to try to achieve that state. It's that our day-to-day life and the way we think about our day-to-day life and the way we think about the things that we feel compelled to do on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 1:Those are the things that actually suppress our happiness. You know, like for me, my lifelong hobby and it's in the last three weeks it's come back to life and I've been really enjoying it is playing the guitar. I started when I was 10. I got sort of interested in it when I was 14. By the time I was 21, I was really good at it and so through my 20s, early 20s, I was playing for money in all kinds of bands and my own stuff and with a partner and we were writing songs. And then I went to law school. God knows why I did that. And even in law school I went out of my way to be part of the musical people and we even, you know, after law school we created the Advocats Big Band and I got the pleasure of being part of the Advocats Big Band for like 10 years, playing jazz festivals and fundraisers, and that was important to me.
Speaker 1:But really when I started practicing law, as much as I missed the guitar and wanted the guitar, I was so compelled to do other things. I was so compelled. At the same time I was starting a family and that was really important to me, and so it sort of fell in the background and my guitar life started to pull itself back to just playing lullabies to my kids at night and not really spending a lot of time with the guitar and then moving on to other things. The guitar has always been there, but it's amazing how my skills will grow and they'll recede just with the amount of time I spend there. And the amount of time I spend there truly lifts my mood and gets me almost instantaneously sometimes out of funks and out of negative thought patterns.
Speaker 1:And I believe that if you have a hobby and this is, I guess, my main thrust if you have a hobby that plays into your curiosity, that you want to keep getting better, and it plays into your creativity, so it lets you feel like you're expressing yourself, that emotionally and mentally you're expressing yourself, if you have a hobby like that, that's a real game changer that can truly change the way you experience your life and it's an incredible tool to turn back to. And so, have you had that experience? I'll stop there. Have you had that experience?
Speaker 2:Where I get really into something and then it falls away and then I go back to it.
Speaker 1:And that it builds your mood and you know you can turn to it.
Speaker 2:I think you know. That's interesting that you ask that, because I've I've had hobbies over the years and whether, again, like whether or not they last a week or years um, I've actually never taken the moments or the time to think about it as a mood booster until now. Right, so I would say yes, there are things that boost my mood. So when I'm writing, my mood gets really high, like excited. When I'm reading, I get a boost in mood. I get a boost in mood when I'm reorganizing the fish tank. I think that's a creative outlet. Like if I have something you know, like an idea for the fish tank to make it look a certain way, then I get excited. But I've never said to myself oh you know, I want to feel better, so I'm going to invest in my hobby now. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:I do know what you mean. I've been observing you for a while now and I see, I see it in you. I see, um, I guess that there's a point there that needs to be acknowledged is that sometimes our mood gets so low we don't think about our hobbies, and that's why they need to be hobbies, that's why they need to be habits, because they need to be something we turn to without thinking about it. Right, needs to be something that we would get engaged in yeah.
Speaker 1:You know hobbies as habits. Maybe is is important. I think it'd be worth just talking about the idea of a mood right?
Speaker 2:I think a mood is a is a an important idea?
Speaker 1:um, because I think, with a little bit of self-examination, what's interesting about a mood is that if we're observing ourselves, we find ourselves in an emotional place, some kind of emotion. It's probably some soup of negative emotions that are not you know, that have some thought patterns in them that are not really helpful. You know this always happens to me. Or why is life so unfair to me? Or you know why do I have to put up with that crap? Or why does it always have to rain Right these ideas? And that there's something about moods that we cling to them, that there's almost a choice we make sometimes to dwell in a mood. We find ourselves feeling moody, we find ourselves in a funk, in a negative mindset, and it's almost like we embrace it for a little while right, it's almost like a choice to stay there yeah, I have noticed that, you know it we sort of examine it and we try to justify it.
Speaker 1:we spend a lot of time, a lot of thinking patterns saying no, I'm right, life is crap for me, or people mistreat me, or that person's being really unfair to me and they're always unfair to me and my life doesn't work well.
Speaker 1:I think there's times in our lives when we tend to be we have a little bit of extra time and we tend to be more able or more indulgent in embracing moods and getting in negative moods and allowing ourselves to dwell there. I think sometimes we're really really busy and we just don't have time for negative moods. Again, I really believe that it is the things to not be naturally happy and joyous and loving, it's the things we do with our mind that sort of pull us out of that natural state, that quieted, empty-minded state that we will experience some things in life because we're busy doing things, and then we will interpret those things in a negative way and then we will look for the truth of that interpretation and we will be in an emotional state that we just dwell in for a while and then along comes a distraction.
Speaker 1:Right along comes a distraction, something that is that takes our mind off that. It might be, you know, a beautiful person in our life, or it might be a beautiful scene. It might be you know, a sound, a piece of music, it might also be a hobby, but what it does is it takes our mind off the mood. It shifts our mind away from the mood and in shifting it away we say, oh, this makes me happy. But what it's really doing is taking you away from the thinking and the emotions that you're dwelling in, that are causing you to be unhappy.
Speaker 1:So it's not so much a matter of turning something on to get to be happy. It's really about distracting yourself from the negative thing that was keeping you from being happy, that your thought patterns and your emotional patterns felt like you needed to stay there for a while, and I think, a lot of the times. That's just because we're trying to figure it out. We're trying to figure out how can life be so damn unfair, right? How can life be so difficult for me? How come, you know, I have these problems over and over and over again and this quest to really understand ourselves actually keeps us in moods and those moods can dwell, and that can be dangerous.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've been there, you've been there, we've both been there, everyone's been there. But it's kind of like this is kind of gruesome, but it's kind of like lopping off your arms and legs Right, like you are in a state of I am out of control, I am powerless.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, and I'm'm gonna sit in this emotion and feed it and figure out why it's true.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, and and all of that is keeping you, yeah, from who? You really are yeah all of that is keeping you from the freedom from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I this, this came up and I I really liked this. This came out of my mouth the other day and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. You can't lose who you are, right, it's at the base of you, it's there. Sometimes there's fog, right, if you stood at the end of your driveway and there was fog around, dense fog around your house, you would never go. Oh, my house is gone, right, so you can't lose who you are, it's there. You can't lose who you are.
Speaker 1:It's there. You can't lose who you are. That's a great reframe. Yeah, I'm just thinking about that. I'm loving that. You can't lose who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And hobbies break that thought pattern. Hobbies have the potential of breaking that thought pattern. You don't have to have one, you can have ten, you can have hundreds. Like Hillary, where there's just all these things that she can turn to Like I watch you and I see it, that she can turn to Like I watch you and I see it. You know, sometimes your energy amazes me because you sometimes just boom, you're painting and it's going to be the next month and a half that you're painting a certain kind of painting and you're doing four times a day and you're right into it and I notice just how light you are and how your mood is completely indisturbable, undisturbable, indestructible, and that's the essence of it, I think.
Speaker 1:The essence of it is that when we are in our natural loving, happy, peaceful state, there's a natural curiosity I want to try new things, I want to look at new things, I want to consider new things, and that's expressive, and that expression of your curiosity is really the essence of creativity. You know, there's obviously some themes here that we've discovered and, on a personal level, when we tap into our curiosity and our creativity, we shift vibrationally. Moods don't happen. Excitement is natural. Energy seems to flow. Action feels inevitable. You've got to move.
Speaker 2:This is really important stuff. Yeah, yeah, it raises our frequency. Yeah, yeah, it raises our our frequency. Um, something that just came to mind and I think it deserves its own podcast after a bit of research. But, um, it brings to mind heart, mind coherence yeah right. It would just be natural to tap into your things that you love doing, things that bring you joy, things that dissipate that fog. That would naturally bring your heart and your mind into coherence.
Speaker 1:I think that that's a worthwhile thing to investigate yeah, I'm trying to think of some thought patterns that you could engage in. Right, that would do that. That would bring that, that feeling of alignment, right that? Would feet bring that, but more that feeling that you're you're allowed to change your mood, that you want to change your mood, that dwelling in this negative mood is not helpful to anybody. It's not getting you anywhere.
Speaker 1:and I think about, you know that, that ladder. We've been working on our self-hypnosis program and I there's, there's this idea of a ladder that moves us from a state of feeling like we can't, I can't, I shouldn't, I'm not allowed, right, and moving to a more clear state of you know, I'm supposed to, I'm, I'm meant to do this. Right, we come up with these, with these ideas, you know, to sort of go from you know I can't to I'm permitted, right, I'm allowed, I'm entitled. See how these things feel better with each step up, I I am encouraged, I am helped To, I am supposed to do this, I am meant to do this, I am destined to do this.
Speaker 1:To bring you to the point of I am to do this, and it's just sort of a series of steps. You know it's using words, because that's what we got, and it's taking those words and seeing the vibrational meaning of each step along that ladder that takes you from the I can't to you're allowed to know, in fact, you're supported and and and encouraged, and to the point where you realize, no, this is something I'm meant to do, this is, this is part of who I am and this is going to happen, and you know that, I think, is a good approach for hobbies Like if anybody finds themselves without a hobby because life has just taken over, right?
Speaker 1:Life has just taken over. You're doing all the things that you think you're supposed to do, right? You're going to work, you're working hard, you're putting in extra hours, you're taking care of the family, you're paying the bills, you're trying to achieve financial goals. You're doing all these things that are really easy to get caught up in. I mean, that's exactly what happened to me All these things that I should be doing, that I think I'm supposed to be doing. I'm doing them. I'm doing them all the time. If I'm awake, I'm working on that stuff, and that leads me to a mood like life is not fun, life is not meant to be fun. I'm not allowed to have fun a lot fun is life is not fun for me.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I look around, I see other people having fun. That's just not fair. Life is not fair and we embrace these kinds of moods, but the truth is is not only are you permitted to have a creative outlet, to have a hobby, to have something you're curious about, to have something you're actively engaged in, but in fact life wants you to, life really wants you to be at your natural state, which is peace and love and joy. And in the process of all the shoulds I hate that word, all the shoulds all the things we should be doing, we have to find the thing we love to do, yeah, and find the time to do it. It starts off as kind of a gift to yourself, but what it really is is this beautiful pushing away of all the things that interfere with your natural loving, happy state yeah, yeah, and I think a means of, because a lot of us out there go, I don't know what I love anymore.
Speaker 2:I lost that a long time ago. There's a technique that I'll take clients through. Sometimes it's like, and it seems kind of funny, but it can open your eyes and just imagine going back in time to when you were a kid and each year I'll say to them okay, what does one-year-old really like doing? Right, and usually the answer is curiosity. Right, they like getting into stuff, stuff, pulling things off shelves. They're just into everything. And then I'll go okay, what does two-year-old enjoy doing? What does three-year-old enjoy doing up to?
Speaker 2:Well, usually it's an intuitive number, so I never really know where we're going, but usually there's a, there's a. One of them will really stand out and maybe it's finger painting or reading or just playing or creating. You know there's so many. And just to notice that in yourself, what did that young you before the world sort of took over, what did you enjoy doing? And it doesn't mean that you have to do that thing, but it's getting your mind sort of rolling forward going. Oh yeah, like I was curious once, I was creative once, and just like the house, it's there right through the fog, so taking the time to dissipate that fog and as I learned recently, you know, not waiting for a big gust of air to take away the fog, but just dive right in, dive right in and get it going. It's kind of like motivation, you know. Uh, you don't wait around for motivation to hit you.
Speaker 1:You get the train moving a little bit and then it carries you forward yeah, practices are important, right, that discipline beats motivation idea, right that if we you know, like it was my habit that, no matter what was going on, if I didn't feel compelled to do something right now, I would just pick up my guitar. I would just pick it up. The next thing I know I'd be creating some goofy little doodle and having some fun with it, and it's just the discipline of going to the hobby, the discipline of going to the thing that makes you happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used to do a thought experiment. I taught this course. That made me so darn happy. I taught this course at the college and I would say okay, let's just pause for a minute, let's pretend. Let's pretend that money is a non-issue, that's a crazy idea. But let's pretend that money is a non-issue, which means you don't have to have a job, you're living in a world of plenty, everything you need is taken care of for you, right, and you have this peace and sense that you are worthy. Mm-hmm. And then.
Speaker 1:I'd say so what would you do with your time? What?
Speaker 2:would you?
Speaker 1:want to do with your time. How would you spend your time? What if you just threw everything away? I think this is a worthwhile experiment because I think it it clears the slate. Um, if we said to ourselves this is my life, and you itemize it and you make a list and you got all the things that are there, he said, okay, well, what if I just dumped it all? What if I, just if I could get rid of everything and you know, in some cases that includes the people. So what if I could just go right to zero? I've got nothing. I'm doing nothing. I'm free to do anything. I'm free to go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Now yeah, I accept that for the vast majority of us that's not a possibility. We're not making a plan here. We're just doing a thought experiment. Just a thought experiment that says if I dumped everything in my life, what would I do? What would I want to do? What am I driven to do? What would be fun to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You might actually choose the thing you're doing. You might actually say I like what I do, yeah, whether it's the way I live or the hobbies I have or the job I do or the people I'm with. And then you might discover that it's got nothing to do with the stuff and the people and the activities and it has everything to do with the way you're thinking about the stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the emotions that you're carrying around. Yeah, about that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I think it's an interesting topic. I didn't think we would go that far with this topic, but when it came into my mind I thought what the heck Are we going to talk about this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you and you talk about heart, mind. I think that we could also talk about just vibration, the idea of vibration that we are not like um, happy, sad, good, bad. We talk about moods. We say that's a good mood, that's a bad. In fact, we're not just sort of a binary switch right, we are a dial of gradient vibrations and where you find yourself on that dial, that's where you're moving from. And I think it's natural for all human beings to always want to feel better, no matter where they are, no matter how high they are. They want to feel better no matter how low they are, although the lowness itself can be confining and trapped. We're just compelled to move up. We should talk about that Vibration gradients, the heart and the mind aligned. But in the interim, I hope everybody has a hobby, gets a hobby. I think I'm going to pick up my guitar right now.
Speaker 2:Right now, right now. One thing to note I did read today in the science, just to leave you with this is you want to be enjoying your hobby. Don't just pick up a hobby just because you know you need a hobby or you want a hobby. Think about what would bring you some joy, Right, Think about what's interesting to you and try it out. We'll see you later.
Speaker 1: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 somhypnosiscom. 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. While you are there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey, meeting with Hilary or Les, 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.
