Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
An almost-daily podcast for the State of Mind Community.
Offering ideas and answering questions on how to use your mind for growth, happiness and ultimately peace.
Send us your questions: info@somhypnosis.com
Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
What Can I Do About This? - Navigating Fear, Media Influence, and the Path to Authentic Happiness
Ask us a Question or Leave a Comment!
Today's episode explores the chaos created by external pressures and how our minds often focus on what we cannot control, leading to anxiety and confusion. We discuss the influence of media, the importance of critical thinking, and how adopting a perspective of curiosity can help reclaim our minds and emotions.
• Understanding how outside distractions create chaos in the mind
• Recognizing the importance of self-reflection over external concerns
• Examining the role of media in shaping our fears and information consumption
• The function of AI in amplifying certain narratives at the expense of others
• Discussing anxiety related to news and the desire to remain informed
• Viewing fear as a guide for action rather than an obstacle
• Encouraging critical thinking to navigate emotional responses
• Emphasizing the significance of personal agency in determining focus and attention
We hope this helps a little as you go through your day.
We would love to hear your feedback or questions.
We will respond to both in future episodes.
Check us out at
www.somhypnosis.com
Email us at
info@somhypnosis.com
I suffer from it, everybody suffers from it. You know you're living outside yourself. You're busy being concerned with things you can't control, trying to control them, trying to control them, trying to control yourself so that you can control them. You're just so focused outside of who you are and what you are and what you can be and what you can accomplish and what you can influence and what you're really able to impact, and this just creates chaos in the mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what's going on, and it's what's going on for most people most of the time.
Speaker 2:This is Coffee with Hilary and Les a podcast about the mind. Join us by the lake as we sip our coffee and talk about the mind and how to change it. Join us by the lake as we sip our coffee and talk about the mind and how to change it.
Speaker 1:Together, we explore how to break free of the past and open up a whole new future. I am back. I am here, we're back. How long has it been? It's been a long time.
Speaker 2:I don't even know. I don't even know. I don't even know. We're just. It's been a crazy couple months or crazy month, and this is now. I mean, we're really doing this at the craziest time of that time the good news is we yearn to do it.
Speaker 1:The good news is that inside us we have a desire to be doing this and that life just seems to get so darn busy. So you know, they say busy is good, so we've got to be happy that we're very busy, yeah, um, and we need to find and balance time to do this. So there's maybe the first sort of reframe I offer is that if you examine yourself and allow yourself to be honest with yourself, you'll know what it is you really want, and when you start to miss something, it's probably because you want more of it in your life yeah and these are, uh, instincts or inspirations to follow.
Speaker 1:So we want more of this in our life, but we've talked lots about changing it, haven't we?
Speaker 2:Changing the podcast. Yeah yeah, so we're just throwing around ideas. We think we've come to a you know, a loose outline.
Speaker 1:And here we are. I think the new outline still might include the fact that the sun is shining. Yeah, that the weather would work. The lake is half frozen.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We enjoyed watching an eagle this morning pick apart a fish on the ice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was cool. It was kind of inspiring.
Speaker 1:It's funny how certain players in nature have a higher meaning, don't they? Yeah, it would have been one thing to see a crow out there picking apart a fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'd be like me.
Speaker 1:But we saw an eagle doing it and that somehow inspired us. The meaning we put on things is amazing isn't it Speaking of eagles the? Oh yes, we have a constant barrage. We've now once again become highly focused on everything that's going on in the united states of america. We're in canada. Most of you are not in the United States. So to tell you, those of you who are in the United States, yeah, the world is really looking on and talking about it and fascinated by it in so many ways.
Speaker 2:Our fascination, or my fascination right now.
Speaker 1:now, Les's fascination due to me is the drones to me drones, hmm, yeah, and there are people out there listen to this. You say what are you talking about drones? Because they they weren't aware of that, you know, and all of these things that we're aware of and not aware of that we we put into our awareness. You know, all change sort of the context at which we're looking at our life right now. Yeah, and all of that is relative to our own individuality yeah, it really is amazing.
Speaker 2:You know what we're researching and into things right now that have existed for so long and it had I didn't even know how much content was out there about the stuff that we're we're interested in now and how long it's been going on for, and, um, it's amazing to me how it was just not in my wheelhouse at all, like I had no clue about all these things. This isn't just the drones, it's other things we're interested in. But you know, it's just amazing to me that once you get into something, once you're interested in something, it's like it's everywhere Suddenly and you're thinking where has this been this whole time?
Speaker 1:suddenly and you're thinking where has this been this whole time? Well, I think that you know, if you rewind 25 years, media was really focused on being generalist. Right, there were two or three news outlets that were trying to give you all the news related to everything, all the time, and, and so you looked in newspapers or you watched television to feel informed, right. But what's important to understand is that media only gets paid when it delivers to advertisers a defined audience, and so what they work to do is to specialize their audience. They want to have people who fit specific demographics, who fit specific psychographics, so that they can sell their awareness, their attention, to an advertiser. And so, in that process of specializing, we saw the rise of specialty cable channels and specialty radio, and then the rise of podcasts and the rise of YouTube, and all of these things are really targeted in a very, very narrow way.
Speaker 1:You know to go after a particular audience that, for example, you know loves football. So you know it's easy. Example Doritos chips wants people who eat a lot of Doritos, and so their first target is a bunch of video gamers, and so in all media related to that, video gamers will consume. Doritos, tries to make itself available and with all the sports that people love because people who love sports tend to eat junk food and Doritos they find themselves making themselves present in sporting news and sporting channels and so in that narrowing in that focus, they're trying to improve the message that they're sending to meaningful people and they don't want to send the message to people who never eat Doritos and aren't interested in Doritos, so that that would be a waste of money to spend it on that. So the media tries to specialize this and they become more and more targeted. And now the advent of AI, which basically follows, watches you and what you consume and then sends you more of it, because it's in that process that they can specialize an audience for an advertiser, because always, always, media is not really focused on its content. It's focused on its audience and creates content to fit them.
Speaker 1:So as we, as we take news being a general idea for everybody and we, we refine it all the way down to the number of news outlets that there are now, targeted at particular kinds of people who are interested in particular kinds of news and can become fixated on particular stories, ai drives those particular stories into the way you consume the media and for a lot of people now. It's Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and it just drives to them the same topics over and over and over. So on the one hand, when you go on YouTube, you think, well, the world's my oyster. There's like a million things sitting there for me to examine and consider. I can do everything, from learn a new song on my guitar to fixing my tractor, to understanding the nature of cryptocurrency. I can do all these different things all on YouTube.
Speaker 1:But what I searched yesterday is now what's going to be offered to me today and that's going to allow me to sort of spiral into these topics and get in them really deep and, at the same time, it's going to allow others who didn't you know, all the people who had no idea that there was this phenomenon of drones going on over the US eastern seaboard.
Speaker 1:That has been going on for a month and people are very fixated on it right now. There are people out there who didn't know about it, who are now going to take out their phone and they're going to do that search and now it's going to be in their feed and the more they read, the more they watch, the more they pay attention to it, the more it's going to be in their feed, and the more they read, the more they watch, the more they pay attention to it, the more it's going to be in their feed, which means the less other things are going to be in their feed. Yeah, and so being informed and being aware has become very, very difficult in a world that's trying to sell you things and the media is not driven by anything other than assembling audiences for advertisers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we've all had that. If we're on the internet, if we have social media, we've probably all experienced that thing where you, you look up one thing one time, you know, and then suddenly it's all over marketplace trying to sell to you in different formats. I looked up a friend of mine, said she she was looking for a game boy. Um, uh, because there's this game. She really, you know, nostalgia is taking over her life and she wants to play Kirby's Dream Land. And so me, you know, being one of her best friends, I'm like secretly going on to my marketplace and looking for Game Boys and just typing it in one time. Now it's just all over, like I'm constantly trying to get it out of my feed because this was a couple months ago and it's still pushing it to me in different ways.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think we've all experienced that in some ways for sure, those those old goofy experiments where people would just say you know tennis racket a thousand times and watch tennis rackets show up in there because your phone's always listening. Yeah, you know, I the long and the short of it. I think for me, when I think about our mind, when I think about our mind, when I think about the way we manage ourselves in the world with our mind and some of the tricks our mind can play on us, is that we might think that because now I have all this information in my feed about these drones that are in the Eastern US, you know that's suddenly the most important thing. It must be the most important thing, or I wouldn't be seeing all these stories about it, and that's a misinterpretation of what's going on. I'm not suggesting it isn't important, nor am I suggesting to anyone who is upset by it that they shouldn't be I'm. I am suggesting that the amount that it turns up in your media is a function of advertising, not a function of importance, that there are other very important things going on in the world that are not showing up in your feed and that we are easily tricking ourselves into thinking we're informed when we're really not. We're not aware of everything we could be aware of, and not that you should be either.
Speaker 1:I want to draw that line in the sand. At some point or another we have to say this is not important to me, this stuff that everybody's worked up about in this area or that area or this issue or that political issue. At some point or another we're allowed to say you know, that's not important to me and I don't need to be pulled into other people's concerns, because if it doesn't relate to me, if it's not meaningful to me, then probably if I formulate an opinion on it, it's kind of it would likely be in incomplete opinion, based on incomplete information, with not fully, not full awareness of all the dimensions. And then we can dive into our opinion and start saying their opinion is really important and we have strong opinions about stuff that really doesn't relate to us. So at some point or another, you know, we all know, you know like there are people, you know when our I'll use the example you know when my, when my son is sick, right, that's important to me and I want to know.
Speaker 1:And when my son's friend is sick, that's just less important to me. And when my son's friend's friend knows somebody that's sick, that's not important to me and that's okay. It's okay for me to say, well, people are going to get sick and I'm not going to pay attention to everybody who gets sick. And it's not like I'm heartless and I don't care about people. It's that certain extensions of connection start to become less and less important. It's really easy to trick yourself into thinking everything is important to you and that's going to lead you down a heck of a spiral.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it ends up being, I see with clients all the time, especially this year, the fear and anxiety related to things totally out of their control, things halfway across the world. And again, not that we shouldn't think about our fellow humans and humanity as a whole, but I think, as a human, we get caught up in the idea that we want to help right, we want to help, and what the media tends to do, and with AI just driving it, especially if we look it up once, you know, um, if we can't help, there's this fear that comes up, there's this anxiety that comes up. We want to help, we want, we want them to be okay, we want, um, we want the whole world to be okay. Uh, and it's just not the reality of what can happen. Really, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, it's not the reality of your sphere of influence. You really have, you know, a certain reach, a certain ability to reach out into the world and have an impact on it, and you should never shy away from your ability to have an impact on the world in a loving, caring, supportive, meaningful way. But we can also find ourselves thinking that everything out there is somehow related to me yes right.
Speaker 1:Somehow this has meaning to me. If somebody else is experiencing this negative experience that relates to me and my kind and I need to be vocal and I need to be active and I need to be engaged and I think some of that's just a great big illusion.
Speaker 2:Just a great big illusion and uh, and then a huge um, I'll call it a misdirection of our energies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think, first of all, you got to deal with the fact that the information you're receiving is much more a function of advertising and your interests at the time than it is about really being informed. That your concern over things that are out of your reach, um is well-intentioned and good-hearted, but, um, in many respects, um I'm going to use the word impotent you can't have an impact on it. You can be of it, but there are a million things to be aware of at any given time, and the nature of mind says that our attention can only be in one place at a time. So, if I'm aware of 10 issues in the world, right, if I'm aware that there's a war going on in the Ukraine, I'm aware that there still continues to be rebel uprisings in Afghanistan, that there continues to be an enormous fear on the part of the people in Taiwan about what's going to happen with China and their perceived independence and their perceived independence. That there are citizens in New Jersey who are freaked right out about these drones that are flying over their head. That there are money systems in the world that are changing and changes are being are taking place sort of below people's awareness, um, and so you know, I I haven't even begun to list all the things that our listeners might be aware of and are concerned about civil wars and and crime, and just all these things that are within our sphere of awareness and then we feel like it's our responsibility to be aware and to take an opinion and to take a side, and there are dozens of these things we're busy being aware of and taking sides to.
Speaker 1:It is just no surprise that we have a flood of people coming in with anxiety that they can't deal with, that there are people going to doctors and just wanting pills to get rid of this anxiety. And knowing their sphere of influence, knowing that they can't influence all these things, while at the same time hearing in the media that they have somehow a global responsibility as a global citizen to be engaged in this, you know and feel so utterly powerless in regards to it. It's just no surprise that depression and anxiety are just rampant, right, and it really starts, I believe, with having a better awareness of why certain significant dynamics in the world are being brought to your attention and that if they can't, in their messages, make them related specifically to you, then you won't care, and so they're always trying to find a way to get you to care about things you have no ability to impact right. And in that process and it's a phrase I love, you know, because it's so many of us I, I, suffer from it, everybody suffers from it.
Speaker 1:You know you're living outside yourself. You're busy being concerned with things you can't control, trying to control them, trying to control yourself so that you can control them. You're just so focused outside of who you are and what you are and what you can be and what you can accomplish and what you can influence and what you're really able to impact, to impact, and this just creates chaos in the mind. Yeah, and I think that's that's what's going on, and it's what's going on for most people most of the time.
Speaker 2:Hillary and Les offer both in-person and online hypnosis services for clients around the world. If that that interests you, visit our website psalmhypnosiscom and sign up for a free consultation or send us an email at info at psalmhypnosiscom. There's different emotions going on with the people that are taking the video, emotions going on with the people that are taking the video. There's different questions from people taking the video, as they're looking at it or when they're sort of showing the video to people and then in the background making a commentary. So we kind of wanted to break it down into kind of understanding what these you know where they're coming from emotions, belief systems. I mean, this is all hypnosis. Right, it's all related to hypnosis. I mean, anything in life can be, I suppose in a sense. But we wanted to kind of take a deeper look at what's going on for these people and what they're uh, going through yeah, it's about the way we use our mind.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of times, you know probably for all of us our mind can get the better of us. Better of us, we'll be using our mind in ways that we think is important and the result won't be positive because there are too many things outside of our sphere of influence and we're using our mind and, more specifically, we're using our attention. So I always like the analogy that our mind is kind of like our hand. Right, our hand has this infinite potential. It can do everything from write a letter to play a musical instrument, to make food, to send love and caressing touch. You know we can do so much with our hand. It has this unlimited potential, but it can only do one thing at a time. It's only able to. It can't beat an egg and write a letter at the same time, and that's really the same as your mind. Your mind can't do multiple things at once. So whatever is drawing your attention is pulling you away from something you might prefer. The mind can only hold really one idea at a time.
Speaker 1:This idea of multitasking has been sort of debunked yeah, that's a good word for it and replaced with psychological studies that have proven that. It's not that you multitask, it's that you switch. You switch from task to task and you're actually very good at switching. You're very fast at switching. Most people are. Most people are very good at switching from. You're very fast at switching, most people are. Most people are very good at switching from task to task, from idea to idea. You can be sitting reading a book and someone can call your name and you can lift up your head and see another situation that needs to be dealt with and jump up out of your chair and go deal with that. We're really really good at switching. We're really good at switching from cooking the eggs cooking the eggs to also, you know, preparing the plates as we make a meal, and these are things we can switch back and forth with, and we switch them very well and very quickly. But it's not that we're doing multiple things at once. It's that we're switching so quickly from thing to thing to thing that a whole bunch of things can be accomplished simultaneously, right? So this, this isn't. This is where we are.
Speaker 1:So things are drawing our attention away, and it's important to realize that it's very easy to draw your attention to things that you would be afraid of your mind has a bit of a hierarchy in the way it responds to the external environment, and it will respond always to threats. Anything perceived as a threat, anything perceived as dangerous, anything perceived as challenging your safety, right now is the thing that will rise to the top. And so, in a world that's constantly trying to make you afraid, here's another thing you should be afraid of. Here's another thing you should be afraid of.
Speaker 1:You can find yourself cycling, switching from negative thing to negative thing to negative thing, from fear to different fear to a different fear, over and over and over, and it becomes impossible to resolve most of those fears. There's absolutely nothing I can do about the drones that are going over New Jersey right now Absolutely nothing. But what I can be is have my attention pulled away and be afraid of it. And the question then becomes is it good or bad for me to allow my attention to be drawn towards it and having and dwelling in and spending time in the resulting fear of something that I can do absolutely nothing about?
Speaker 2:but then it starts, you know. Question is can you look at it and say, oh, isn't that interesting. I wonder what the people are going through. I wonder what I would do if they were here. Can you do that without fear? And more curiosity, maybe, and I think it's leading to where we're going. Is you know? You mentioned the context. What were your beliefs and thoughts, and all this before the drones showed up, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe that again, if I'm trying to sell you stuff, I know that I can get you to buy stuff. If you're afraid, if what I'm selling will protect you from something you fear, you'll buy it and it's the first thing. You'll buy it and it's the first thing you'll buy. And so when it comes to advertising, fear is at the top of the list of emotions to try to stimulate, to get people to buy. And if I can get a society as a whole generally afraid all the time, then they start to react to things with fear. Now I'm going to rewind and I'm going to come at it from a different angle.
Speaker 1:I have a son and he loves snakes. He just loves them. He can hold them. When you say, oh, there's a snake over here, he'll come running, he'll pick it up, he'll play with it. He has absolutely no fear of it. He's not the slightest bit concerned. He's been bit by garden snakes and that's no big deal. It hurt, but it's not a reason, you know. It's just because he picked it up wrong and he knows that and he's very, very comfortable. But he's probably the only one in our family that doesn't have an immediate negative reaction to snakes. For me. I see a snake and I just lock up fast and I then have a conversation with myself saying Les, this is not going to hurt you, this is just another one of the beings on the planet, just let it be. And then I do that thinking process.
Speaker 1:But he didn't have the fear of snakes programmed into him and so because of that, he's open to the world of snakes and lizards and all kinds of things that so many people go ooh, yuck, keep it away from me right, and I'm going to go to the extreme of you know, if you are raised in a world where orbs in the sky are scary and that if you're living in a world where multiple countries around the world are targeting, trying to destroy you and your life which I think is really common in the US to see China and Russia and all kinds of places even now Mexico and Canada, for Pete's sake they're getting people to say we need to be afraid of these guys, we need to protect ourselves. And then, all of a sudden, there's these unexplained drones over the sky and in the background are these other flying objects that people are being, you know, concerned with. You know, if all of this is to be afraid of, right, then you're going to be overwhelmed right now. And if you can take that fear back and say wait a second, I don't have to be afraid of these things, I could choose to be curious about them, the way my son is with snakes, right, I could be curious about them. I could see them as interesting. Yeah, I suppose there's the chance that my son could be wrong one day and pick up a snake that might hurt him. I don't think that's likely.
Speaker 1:Because I think that because he's curious about it, because he feels comfortable with it. He won't run from a snake because it's a snake. He'll look at a snake and say, oh, that one's different, because I know what I normally look at. He's got an awareness of these things, that that one is not the kind of one I should be picking up. I've never seen one with those colors before. I've never seen one in that shape before. Let me just step back and take a look for a second. Then he has the right degree of caution because he's not just plain afraid of snakes.
Speaker 1:He is interested in snakes and knows that there are some to be concerned about and some not to be concerned about, and so I I guess what I'm getting at is it's important to recognize when you have been somehow trained or raised to be afraid of things that aren't necessarily fearful, necessarily fearful, and when you are trained to see everything as fearful, everything as attack, everything as something for you. You can't even listen to my words right now For me suggesting that everything that you're afraid of you don't need to be afraid of. You're going to say, les, you're nuts, you're crazy. Don't be saying things like that, because people will get hurt because they're not sufficiently afraid of the things they're supposed to be afraid of, which is everything, right, everything, anything that's unusual we need to be afraid of, and it becomes our natural response to everything response to everything, and so all I'm suggesting is that maybe everything you become aware of is much more a function of advertisers trying to get your attention, knowing that your fears are such a dominant thing in your life that they can trigger them in a heartbeat. Right, and while you're grabbing those YouTube videos that are all about the drones, don't forget you had to watch two ads before you could watch that video, and you had to watch two ads in the middle of that video and you got offered two more ads at the end of that video. And the only reason that video exists on that platform is so that they can show you some advertising, because they don't get paid because people post their videos. They get paid because advertisers want to be part of them, and now, all of a sudden, I'm looking at this information and I'm seeing it now is something that's being offered to me to try to make me afraid, so that I'll consume advertising.
Speaker 1:And being afraid means I can now be sold something, something that might protect me from my fear. And this is a cycle, and all I can say is just be aware of it, just allow yourself to be aware of it. There's got to be some aspect of the things that you fear that you can say I don't understand why we're afraid of that. Now there's that 's. I always use the phrase there's the door cracked open Right. There's the opportunity to reconsider, to use the phrase there's the door cracked open right. There's the opportunity to reconsider, to use your mind, to rethink this, to use your mind for you, about you, with your abilities, and say I don't know that I buy this. I don't know that I'm going to let myself get sucked into this. I can be aware of this without having it dominate my emotions. I can be aware that this is what's going on in the world and that, in truth, its likelihood of affecting me is very small and therefore I can be more aware.
Speaker 2:I can be more aware, more critical, less engaged, and observe it rather than become it, I suppose. Yeah, if you can't be there in person, you know. I guess what I'm getting at is if you're not on the ground filming the drones and whatever else is up there, the only way that that information gets to us is through what you feel about this. Have deeper critical thinking when you're watching it, and that will help to alleviate the anxieties or fears surrounding it. You know, I could go down a rabbit hole with this. I I think about, um, what came to me before, uh, earlier, was this idea that we were talking about earlier how people put trust in the government right, and how, something like this, where the government is, uh, what would you say tight-lipped, like nothing coming out, they first gaslit people saying that there was nothing up there, and and now they're saying, okay, yeah, there's some stuff up there, it's not an issue, but they're not coming out with things, and so you have a whole section of people that fear again comes from trusting in the government. And then suddenly, well, how can we trust the government? They're not giving us the information we need, right? So then there's another element of fear, and we could you know? I'm sure talk about that for ages, but there's just so many facets to you said to just take a step back whenever you're consuming the information about it.
Speaker 2:Number one, I mean what comes to mind is not believing every video. There's many made with AI, you know, and it's hard, it's hard to try to sift through those. Many made with AI, you know, and it's hard, it's hard to try to sift through those. There's videos of people sensationalizing it, hyping the fear. So it's all out there, you know, and even, unfortunately, people sharing this stuff, not even the news networks, know that fear sells. People will watch my video if I have an element of excitement or fear in it. So just being critical about what you're consuming, and that should alleviate a lot of, maybe, what's going on for you yeah, and remember that emotions are there for a reason.
Speaker 1:You know. We like to reframe fear. One of my favorite reframes for fear is that fear is a warning, it's not a wall. Fear is a warning, it's not a wall. Fear is a suggestion that there might be something you should be concerned about because there could be some danger there. But that doesn't mean you can't act. It just means that you probably should be thoughtful in your actions. So it's not to stop you from doing things, it's to warn you that some things could in fact, you know, be dangerous. So use the example of my son again, you know, for me.
Speaker 1:I see a snake and my fear might get the better of me and I jump back and I say what the heck is that? And I get all upset. But my son will do that oh, what's that? Which is the perfect question what's that? Then he examines it and says, well, it's just a garden snake. They're actually quite neat and the way they move, they're so different. I like feeling them in my hands, I like looking at them with my eyes. It's a wholly different interpretation. He still uses his fear response and says, hey, hey, what's that? But he doesn't have a universal fear of everything, right? So when you hear about these things and you have a fear response, understand, it's a warning, not a wall.
Speaker 1:You can examine it, you can consider it and you can use that conscious part of your mind, right, that incredibly powerful thinking part of your mind, to say well, what do I know? What do I know? What I know is that there's a picture here on a video. That may or may not be true, that may or may not be accurate to what was going on. What I see is a picture of this kind of dynamic, these kinds of things. What does that say to me. Well, it says to me something's up there in the sky, um, I don't know what it is. I turn to those in authority that I think should be able to tell me, and they're not telling me. But they are telling me, hey, we, we're not concerned about it, right, we don't know what it is, but we're not concerned about it, which is really, in a world so filled with fear, shocking. This government is not telling you to be afraid, right? So there's a certain amount of confusion there, because you're not getting the response you normally get. But you can use your critical thinking, your own ability to use that conscious part of your mind right, to think through and to examine and collect information without jumping to conclusions.
Speaker 1:The emotion needs to be processed, right? So I offer you this refrain I am not my emotions, I am not my feelings, I am the feeler of the feelings, I am the one experiencing the emotion. The emotion is there to take care of me, to help me live a better life. It's an indicator or a suggestion that something's going on. The emotion might be one of happiness, and then the suggestion is to engage it. The emotion might be one of anger, which suggests I'm being treated unfairly, and so I want to. I really want to address the person or persons that are treating me unfairly. Or maybe what's best is somebody's treating me unfairly and it's all because of them, so I'm just going to walk away from it. I'm just going to create a distance. These emotions are there to guide us, to understand what we're experiencing and to motivate us to act in a way to resolve the emotion, get the emotion to go away. Carrying the emotion around is not helpful. So if you're feeling afraid, of anything ask yourself what you're afraid of.
Speaker 1:Try to be clear and specific. What is it that I'm actually afraid of? Be sure, be confident whether or not it's something that's actually going to happen. Is it that I'm actually afraid of? Be sure, be confident whether or not it's something that's actually going to happen. Is it really something that could happen? Is it something that's going to happen imminently, right right now, right in front of me? Is it going to happen now, or is it something that might happen down the road? Understanding what you're afraid of allows you to then strategize on how to respond to it and taking the time, using that incredibly smart, conscious mind of yours to examine these things and not let them just flow into activating fear and then clinging to the fear.
Speaker 1:Using these things, I am not my emotions, I am the feeler of the emotions. The emotion is here to bring me an awareness of what I might do.
Speaker 2:Take the time and think about what you might do.
Speaker 1:that would be helpful Without getting yourself in an emotional state where thinking starts to become impossible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that was a good chat, hopefully it helps people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think awareness of how our mind works and awareness of how we're using our mind is the most important first step if you really want to live a life of happiness is the most important first step If you really want to live a life of happiness and curiosity and creativity and joy. We have to understand the things that are interfering with that and that's usually how we're using our mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the mind got us into it. It can get us out of it yeah, yeah, our mind got us into it, it can get us out of it. There you go, all right, all right, okay. So have a good day and we'll see you later.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that maybe it helped Even a little, so have a good day and we'll see you later. For more information about hypnosis and the various online or in-person services we provide, please visit our website wwwpsalmhypnosiscom. The link is in the notes below. While you're there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey, meeting with Hillary 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.
Speaker 2:Talk to you tomorrow, thank you.
