Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
How Habitual Blame Fuels Suffering AND How To Stop From A Hypnotist Perspective
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Okay, we're all on the line.
SPEAKER_00:Oh boy, we're starting again.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're starting again.
SPEAKER_00:Technology continues to be our soft spot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's ducks out there in this beautiful sunny day, and yet we can find a way to suffer. Suffering, suffering. What are your thoughts on suffering?
SPEAKER_02:My thoughts are, I suppose sometimes I want to place it on other people why I suffer. And usually it always comes back to me. Putting myself in situations where I feel like I'm suffering mentally, right? I can't say I suffer physically. I suffer mentally.
SPEAKER_00:Where does suffering take place?
SPEAKER_02:I suppose in the mind.
SPEAKER_00:You suppose, as the hypnotist?
SPEAKER_02:No, it's in the mind.
SPEAKER_00:Can someone make you suffer?
SPEAKER_02:Oh man. I haven't had enough coffee for this. You're making me suffer right now, don't you? Interesting. Yeah. I I I uh, you know, as the hypnotist Hillary would say, Yes, at times I'd feel like others can make me suffer. But the hypnotist and the person who the part of me that jumps in afterwards clears that up by saying, you know, you can see this differently, or you can think about this differently, or you can make it so that this suffering doesn't really happen. What is suffering? Planning ahead.
SPEAKER_00:What is suffering at its core? What do you gotta do to be able to suffer?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Sorry, I'm looking at the chat and I was gonna use the answers in the chat.
SPEAKER_00:So what's in the chat?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, resistance.
SPEAKER_00:Resistance, resistance to what?
SPEAKER_02:Life, the situation, the person, resistance to your thoughts, resistance to the environment, resistance to your own learning. And what learning is that? I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00:There it is. There it is. Sometimes learning, you know, the lessons we're supposed to take away from something, sometimes it's not obvious. And the reason it's not obvious is because we don't we habitually think in in another way. We habitually think, well, one of the things we habitually think about is blame, right? We habitually, from the instant, from the instant something goes wrong. I have observed in myself and in my life that most of us are predisposed to fight to try to figure out whose fault is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, my life is not the way I want it to be. So whose fault is that? The act of blaming is your first, your first embrace of suffering.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:It's a focus on the problem and not the solution. When we have an easy solution, we don't spend a lot of time on blame, we don't spend much time on suffering, we don't resist, we shift, right? Things go wrong all the time. And we go, oh, oh, geez. And then we shift.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's what we do. When we have a solution, when we know what the right thing is, oh, oh, I should have done that. And then we just jump to it. You just, oh, I forgot to do that. And then we shift immediately to the solution because we're staying focused on the goal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Now it's much harder when you're dealing with other human beings because as you shift, they shift, and as they shift, you shift. And you're living in this constant anticipation of what they're doing, trying to predict what they're going to do next. And so relationships can be a place of suffering. But if you bring suffering back to what it is at its core, resistance, then there is absolutely no choice but to look within. Because the only place suffering happens is within. If I know you really well, then I can figure out how to push your buttons and I can trigger your tendency to suffer. Because it's what we all have. It's a tendency. It's a tendency to resist what is, it's a tendency to look at that as unfair, it's a tendency to look to blame somebody. And all of these tendencies are really uh the uh symbolic act of reaching out, putting your arms around the problem and pulling it in.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That is so nuts. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But we don't know that that's what it is, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And why do we want to do that? Why do we feel so comfortable but so sh crappy when we, you know, it's like this comfortable crappiness.
SPEAKER_00:Well, because it's a story that we tell ourselves. So thoughts, I I think you stress this enough. I was talking about this yesterday in one of the records. Thoughts are habits. Yeah, these habits are developed early, early on from being around and watching and mimicking and learning from the people that we love and admire. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm not, this is not about blame. This is about understanding how it happens. Because understanding how it happens is sometimes worthwhile if you can use that to keep it from happening, or if you can use that to find another way. So we're not taking that unnecessary next step into judgment.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:We're not, we're, we're understanding how these things arise in the human mind, but we're not about saying, you know, it's dad's fault or it's mom's fault, or it's Uncle Joe's fault. We're not into into trying to find blame. We're trying to understand how our mind gets into these habits. So the way I try to explain it is that the subconscious mind is the place where we learn to do things without thinking about it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right? A habit is an action without thought.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think about brushing my teeth. I just do it. I just do it the same way every day.
SPEAKER_02:Do you know what's amazing I've noticed about the brushing the teeth things? I think it's again, it it leads into the subconscious, is my toothbrush has a two-minute timer on it. And brushing, brushing, brushing. And I'm not even thinking about the timer. I'm not thinking about time. I'm just brushing. And somehow I end up stopping, like right before the timer goes off. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00:We have a routine, tooth by tooth, quadrant by quadrant, inside, outside, don't forget the tongue. Yeah. Like all these things, these habits. And we don't even think about them. So there's a habit that we would probably label as useful, helpful. It's a good habit. It's a good habit to brush your teeth every time you get up, every time you get out of bed. It's a good habit. But what happens then is that everything that we do can become a habit. Yes. And that's probably a dilemma, I suppose. That's that is a dichotomy in our lives. But habits can be really helpful and good. They help us function in the world, they get things done quickly, and they make us good at certain things, right? And then habits are also the way we take away choice.
SPEAKER_02:Do we want to be conscious as we're moving through life? Do we want to be consciously looking at something and going, okay, I don't want this to be a habit, or I do want this to be a habit, because otherwise things will naturally, in their own way, choose to choose without you even deciding to be a habit. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00:Like I I used to I used to play a lot of sports and I used to coach a lot of sports. And practice was an important thing. We used to call it get your reps in, right? Do the thing that you do over and over and over and over. You know, baseball's my thing. Take take a lot of ground balls, right? Throw that throw a thousand times. You know, I used to say to my my kids that I coached if you do 500 throws a day and you take 500 swings of your baseball bat a day, you will be the best player on this team. And the kids would just look at me puzzled. And I've had a few times where kids took me up on that. And everybody on the team, every kid, every parent watching would notice the kids who were doing that, right? Things would become natural. And so practice to me became really important to become good at something. And then I thought about that and I realized that everything is practice. If I practice doing something over and over and over and over, it's going to become a habit. I'm going to get good at it. So think about the fact that you get up out of bed and you don't make the bed. So what you're practicing is not making your bed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Let's say you you have breakfast and you don't do the dishes. Well, you're practicing not doing the dishes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that will become your habit and your routine. And then you'll come home from work and the dishes will be there. Yeah. And then you'll suffer. The damn dishes are there. Right. And you'll suffer. Oh, I gotta do these dishes before I can even make dinner. Oh, I hate doing dishes. Oh, dishes are such a pain in the neck, right? Now you're practicing complaining. Now you're practicing suffering. Now you're practicing resistance. And so it becomes a habit.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Why is if I thought about this for more than two seconds, I would come up with an answer. But I I think it's good to ask these questions just out loud. Why is resistance such a natural next step in in human living?
SPEAKER_00:We pick it up. Like it's it's we can't dismiss how much we learn from watching others, right? I used to talk about this, you know, when we think about parenting, right? You teach your kids way more by the way you behave than you ever do by what you say to them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They're going to pick up everything from your habits to your mannerisms to your postures to your systematic reactions to things, you know. So so here we are. I'm driving down the road. I got my little baby son in the back seat in the car seat, right? And he's in the backseat, and I'm driving him from the babysitter, right? And forgive me, I'm gonna say bad words. So I'm driving on this four-lane road. Somebody from the right lane pulls over in front of me, and I hit the horn because it scared the crap out of me, and it was really kind of dangerous, and they were just trying to hustle their way through traffic, I guess. And I hit the horn, but in the backseat, I hear shit. Now he it's it's kind of like how can he be so young and know that word, right? But it was the whole thing, you know, the frustration on my face, the fear on my face, the way I would have reacted to the situation. He already figured it out. And he's not even looking me directly in the eye, he's in the backseat, looking over the shoulder, seeing the way I'm moving, right? He's he's maybe three years old. Maybe, right? This is this is the way we pick it up, and we all do it. It doesn't have to be that way because the only person who really controls my mind is me. And when I recognize it in myself, I completely have the opportunity to change it. But it's hard to break a habit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's it's not one of those things that we're aware of because we were so habitual in suffering through our problems. We've been practicing it for years that at some point, like I'm gonna assume there aren't a lot of 10-year-olds listening to this podcast, and I'm gonna assume there's a lot of people between 30 and 60 listening to this podcast. Yeah. Now you're at a place in your life where you can suffer, you can resist, you can blame, you can wrap your arms around your problems, you can habitually respond with anger, frustration, resentment, or you can say the old saying that people hear and people laugh about suffering is optional. So suffering is embracing the problem instead of the solution. Let that be your refrain. It's habitual, but it's still only going on inside you, only being created by you. Only you can change that. And that's why I think the power of hypnosis is we get to go into the subconscious mind and say, hey, I'm done with suffering. What do I, what am I going to do about this? Well, we analyze where it comes from. Where it comes from is practiced habitual thinking. So, how do I change that? I think this is something I'm working on. So I'll just share it. And I think you know that I'm working on this because you're getting tired of me saying it. What's the lesson here? I'm trying to get in the habit of every time I'm upset to ask myself, what's the lesson here? The lesson sometimes is practical. You know, make your bed, brush your teeth. But sometimes the lesson is mental and it's emotional, and it's about the way I interpret the situation that I'm in. And my emotions are well practiced, my reactions are well practiced, my negative thought pattern is well practiced. I've been doing it for a long time, and I'm only just beginning to try to say to myself, what's the lesson here? What's the lesson here? And it isn't always practical. Sometimes it's completely about seeing things as the opportunity that they are. Think of the one direction you could go, right? You could suffer, and you can suffer about everything because the world's full of crappy things. And you can suffer and suffer and suffer, and there's lots of people to blame, right? And we're really in the habit of blaming, but blaming is the act of embracing, right? It's that this is a problem and it's their fault, and therefore there's nothing I can do about it, right? So I can complain and I can be angry and I can blame and I can go to town. That's one direction I can head. And we see it everywhere today. We see it all over the place. I mean, I opened up my Facebook and I found myself in the middle of a thousand arguments, right? You open up your Twitter feed and you're right there in the middle of a thousand arguments. People shouting at the air, blaming other people that the world is crap, and that's their fault. And it doesn't do anything other than enhance my suffering, deepen my suffering, and I'm practicing suffering. I'm getting good at suffering. I'm getting habitual at suffering. And how am I ever going to get past that? Now let's go the other direction and say what I practice is what's the lesson here? I go even further and I say, everything serves me. Everything is teaching me something. Every difficulty is training me. I talk about with my clients always learning things the easy way and learning things the hard way. And learning things the easy way, we're good at. Somebody in a position of authority that you trust tells you something, you accept it. And your mother leans down, kisses you on the forehead, and says, You're wonderful, and you accept that. And that's beautiful. Life doesn't tend to work that way. Life tends to work with you're all alone in a situation that you can't figure out, and there's nobody to turn to, or it feels like it anyway. Or your mother says, Get out of bed. Why do you always make me yell at you? These are learning lessons the hard way. When somebody criticizes you, you're learning lessons the hard way. The lesson is always, the lesson is all that you are lovable, there's nothing wrong with you, and you can figure this out. Yeah. The lesson is always that. I go to the gym, I don't, you know, I don't pick up feathers. I go to the gym, I pick up really heavy weights. I mean, we laugh at that, right? No, that's that's the reaction. Yeah. So here I am at the gym lifting up feathers, wondering why I'm not getting any stronger. Here I am at the gym every day. I go there and I just go through motions, but I don't pick up any weights. Lifting up a weight is teaching your muscles the hard.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:When you go to the gym, you lift the weight till you're so totally fatigued you can't move. You push yourself to the point where you feel like I can't take another step. Yeah. And then afterwards, you know that by engaging in what's difficult, you made yourself stronger.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:By in pushing yourself past your limits, you made yourself healthier and stronger and more capable. Learning lessons the hard way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I I think as you're talking there, I I'm really thinking more about this idea of the online verse where you go online and you start to see all these people suffering, shouting. And my mind, when I when I when I see those comments, I think, what what's going on for these people that they feel the need to shout it or have their well, what comes to mind is needs met. And so what leads from there is this sort of this external validation for their suffering. Mom kisses us on the forehead, we feel good. That creates this feeling like we need some external validation. I know there's a point being made here somewhere, but I'm trying to get there in my own mind, I suppose, as I talk it out. It's almost like there's a little dopamine hit when someone yells their suffering, right? And then someone likes it, and then someone else yells about their suffering, and it's it creates this effect moving out in all directions. And then their suffering is confirmed, right? It's this confirmation from outside sources that yeah, we should be yelling about this. Now, I want to be I want to make it clear that we're not talking, well, I don't know. We could go down a long road here, but there are things that should be stood up for, obviously. And but we see it a lot these days where people just have stuff to get off their chest, right? And you can tell that they're suffering and they they always seem to have a a thing to say about everything, right?
SPEAKER_00:So I think that the quick answer to that is I'm only ever responsible for me. It's the only thing under my control, my mind, my behavior. And sometimes it feels pretty out of control. But the point is, is that it is within my sphere of control to deal with me. Now I can look at others and I can say, I see in our world how the practice of suffering comes about. I'm understanding the mental process now, the embracing of the problem, a well-practiced habit of allowing myself to feel bad, allowing myself to embrace the problem and think about it as a problem and state it as a problem and blame somebody because it's a problem. I can see how that happens. But I think that's the first step. I think the first step is recognizing it in yourself. It's the only hope you have, right? You know, peace only exists in our mind. And the reason the world's not at peace is because there's a lot of people out there without any peace in their mind. And if everybody was to focus on putting peace in their own mind, then the world would change. It would have to. And it's the same thing with blame and suffering. It can only take place in our mind. And if we recognize that it's just a habit that we keep practicing, that the only one suffering about this is me. And I'll often try to make somebody else suffer. If I'm suffering, I want to make somebody else suffer. And we we turn that into blame and attack, right? Yeah. But if we say suffering is mine, it's a well-practiced habit. And I don't have to do that. What I can do instead is pause and remind myself that I'm lovable, that I'm capable, that I can learn, that I can figure this out, that once I figure out this lesson, I will not suffer over it again. Yeah. I can develop a new habit. And the one who's going to benefit most is me. The person I'm taking care of is me. The one who's going to get the most out of me addressing my suffering is me. And that could be our motivation. So what's the lesson? What should I be learning from this? What's my opportunity here? Because every time I learn something, I'm kind of like better, right? Every time I learn something, I'm I'm better. I'm better able. If I learn something, you know, I learned something when my son in the back seat said shit. And I learned that the lesson there was for me to watch what I say. That what I have in my backseat is a little tiny mirror, an empty slate, as it were. That's learning how to live life by watching me, not by me giving it instruction. It's learning to live by watching me. And that if I want to look at myself and say, you're a good parent, Les, I gotta get a grip on that. Yeah. I gotta start changing my habits before I turn them into habits in my kids. I'm not trying to put more pressure on parents. I know they're feeling enough.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think there's, I mean, I'm not a parent, but I think I can say, I don't think anyone can get it right, perfectly right. You know, no parent is perfect.
SPEAKER_00:Well, my never be. My goal is not to make you feel like it's your fault that your kids aren't perfect, right? My goal is to help to reveal to you the processes you can use to help you feel like you're being a better parent. But that's mostly just being a better person, being the person you you really want to be anyway. I I don't know anybody, I've never met anybody who doesn't want to be a good person, that doesn't strive to be a good person. And you know, sometimes the fastest way we think to be a good person is to just blame somebody else for the problem. Right? Yeah, can't be me, must be you. I'm a good person.
SPEAKER_01:I'm a good driver.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's a it's a fast way to to try to feel better about yourself. Projection is just that thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Suffering, wow, you know what understanding how it comes about, understanding it's a habit, understanding the pieces of it, the blame and the anger and the resentment, understanding that it's only taking place in your mind and that you could do something about it. And the first reframe is what's the lesson here? Knowing that there can never be peace in the world if there's not peace inside me. And that's the part of the peace of the world that I'm responsible for. You know, people joke, what can I get you? And they say, Oh, get get me world peace. Well, what they really mean is I want to feel peace inside me. And you can only feel peace inside you when you learn how to not suffer. Everything has a lesson in it, everything serves me. It's a wholly different approach. It's certainly hard to do when you're habitually suffering and you come about that habit in a completely understandable, honest, human way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think it it becomes so second nature that you don't even know you're doing it. I remember, and this was well, I don't I'm not even sure I want to say this, but I will. When I was going through university, I I walked into one of the rooms that we were doing uh major projects in. And a friend of mine, he now I know he didn't say this with any like malicious intent or any bad intent. He was kind of joking, but man, oh man, it freaking hurt. He looked at me, and I guess my face, which has subtitles, uh, was showing something. I don't even know. But he said, What's wrong now? And oh, just even saying it out loud again makes me hurt. But it really got me to take another look about uh at, I mean, that was his interpretation of me, but it was kind of accurate. It was kind of accurate, and I was showing in different ways throughout the days at at school, I guess, that I was suffering in in different ways. And so I I tried in many ways to look at how I was viewing things or interpreting things or you know, moving through my day in in a more, I don't know, peaceful way, right? Instead of getting overwhelmed or up in arms, suffering, basically. They they could see the suffering on my on my being. Anyway, I think that was the moment of recognition. Oh, yeah, that's a that's a good question. Questions come through. What about suffering with chronic pain? I thought about that earlier while you were talking to, you know, this is mental suffering we're talking about. So, what about suffering with chronic pain?
SPEAKER_00:So, as hypnotists, we're aware that pain can be addressed through hypnosis. And in fact, there's a lot of studies that show that the most effective pain treatment is hypnosis. But let's step back from that and just focus on the suffering. Right now, I sit here and my my thumb and my first two fingers of my left hand are tingling, which I consider to be a real improvement because they used to hurt. I've had a shoulder problem now for about a year, and it's constant and it hurts. And when I go to the gym, it hurts. And I go to the physiotherapist, then I go to the massage therapist, I've gone to the chiropractor, I've even resorted a few times to taking painkillers, which I don't like to do because I really think they mess with your body. And that's just my opinion. Uh, I have uh I I won't say I'll say I have some experience with that. I'll say it that way. I think that what I battle in my mind from it, and I'm lucky that I it's a condition that's only arisen in the last year, and and I already have my you know extensive trainings and learnings and focus on the mind for 20 years. I come to that with that already intact. So it creates a disposition in me to see the mental emotional element in my in my disease, in my injury. But there's some things that that I use in my mind to not focus on it. I'll use some hypnotic pain reduction techniques, you know, and it's it's a simple idea, it's a reframe you can grab. Pain is a message from your body saying something's wrong. And it is amazing how you can say to your body, I get the message, I understand, I don't need the pain anymore. You don't need to keep telling, I understand, I will be careful. It's amazing what that alone does to the pain that you experience in your body. They train that one in the military.
SPEAKER_01:Really?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they train soldiers that to talk to the pain, tell the pain you're aware of, tell the pain that you're going to proceed through because you have things to do and that you got the mess. And this kind of self-talk is actually trained. So it's a technique. I'm also a big believer that everything that's going wrong in our body has a mental and emotional element. So I always say when I talk about that, nobody's telling you not to listen to the doctor and not to take the treatments that are recommended to you or the ones that you find useful. But that doesn't mean you can't add to it with some mental practice. Right? Take the medicine, go get the surgery if you need to. I've had surgery, go do that. But at the same time, I do an awful lot of self-talk.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:An awful lot of sending mental ideas into my body and seeing how they respond. In fact, sometimes these mental affirmations can actually make you feel the pain more, feel the discomfort more because it triggers it, because you've hit the nail on the head. Yeah. So this is this is some stuff.
SPEAKER_02:And it's interesting that this is coming up because it really ties into the cell work that I'll be doing today. Just talking to our bodies has amazing influence.
SPEAKER_00:And and you can take that further by talking about how you talk to that part of the body and ask what its message is. But that that takes us back to the answer to suffering, which is, you know, what is this lesson? What is the lesson here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And how does this serve me? You know, and right now I'm feeling all kinds of aches and pains talking about it.
SPEAKER_02:Uh right now I've got some pain in my neck, and I've had pains throughout the body back in September. My God, that was like the worst pain I've ever had in my life. And I was like you're talking about, I was talking to my body. I had every Louisa affirmation written down. And one of my clients had bought me this beautiful prayer book, and I was pulling prayers from that, like a cashic record prayers. And I don't know, like I I said them every morning and throughout the day, not just every morning, to my body. And I mean, looking back, definitely I'm sure they helped to some degree. What it did do for me is call up after repeating these things over and over, it was like calling up the true center of what was going on, you know, like the the feelings I was having and the and also the the new feelings and new limiting beliefs that I had to battle. I was battling every day for a while there. This, I guess this is who I am now. I guess I have to be really careful. And I just said, nope. You know, I try I tried anyway, and I think I got there where it just had to say, nope, this is not who I am. But anyway, I find it kind of interesting, and I know probably everybody has had a moment of this in their life, is noticing the pain versus not noticing. So say you have like a little twingey pain in your leg, and you're like, oh man, this this thing is painful or it's throbbing. And then you get on with your day and you don't even notice it, and then you think about it, and then suddenly it's throbbing again. Do you know what I'm getting at?
SPEAKER_00:I do those instances, you know, where you think, oh geez, I'm feeling better. So you decide to test it. Oh crap, there it is. And it's kind of like going to look for it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:When you when you say, Oh, geez, I'm feeling better. And then you do the thing that used to hurt and it hurts again. And it's kind of like I'm going to find that pain again that's there somewhere. So I guess I want to be truly helpful, and I'm just trying to be helpful. I'm not I'm not pretending that there's a snap solution here. I believe that these things are chronic thought forms, that these are these often come from chronic behaviors, movements that we engage in that we don't realize aren't helpful or causing the problem. There's lots of things here. So I just want to be helpful. And so the first thing about pain is to understand that when you give it your attention, it will increase.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's just the truth of it. As you give it your attention, as you look at it and examine it, it's going to intensify. Its dimensions are going to expand. Its depth is going to get deeper. You're going to become very, very aware of exactly how much pain you're in. Where our attention goes, our energy. So I don't know what else to tell you except that, you know, do your best to put yourself in a position where the pain is minimized, and then do your best to distract yourself from it. And I can't, I'm not making any suggestion that it'll take the pain away, but I think that it's just important to realize that where I put my attention, that's where my energy goes. And if I put my attention on this, then I will truly understand it. It's like anything. If I if I see an article in the paper and I put my attention on it, I'm going to truly understand it. If I see something going on out in my yard and I put my attention on it, then I truly see it and I see that. And so that's putting your attention on something. So that might not be the best choice. There's a mental process that goes with that, of course, because then once you put your attention on the pain, then the mental process starts to be that complaining and embracing and blaming and frustration. And this is right, like this is not fair. Because it doesn't feel fair. And I'm not going to ever suggest that it is fair. It's just there's a whole mental cycle you can enter into when you put your attention on your pain. And yeah, that's not helping. And I'm not not saying you're bad because you do it. I'm not saying I'm bad because I do it. You know, I'll roll over in the night, my shoulder shoulder will scream at me, and I'll get all pissed off at it, and I'll wake now and all those things. But I I I know how to engage in that thought process. I know that I do and that I have. I also know that it's what I need to stop doing. That's what I know for me. Now, understanding pain as chronic means that it comes and it goes. It comes and it goes. And when it comes, we give it attention, but when it goes, we don't give it attention. And so what I would suggest is that when the chronic pain goes, start to recognize what's going on and what you're thinking and how you're feeling, and what were the events uh around this pain going. And that could be any number of things, whatever you can recognize. But now turn your attention to the relief of the pain, to the absence of the pain, not going looking for it, but looking at the conditions around you, the conditions within you that are obviously the ones that lead to feeling better.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And those are the ones you want to embrace. Those are the conditions, those are the thought patterns, those are the thought forms that you want to do more of.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And it becomes a fundamental shift in what you practice. I'm no longer practicing my attention to the pain and the thought pattern that that evokes. I'm now focusing my attention to the thought patterns around the relief. And what can I learn from this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What's the lesson here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. The thought patterns around suffering, though, I think remain. And they're not judgmental. They're just an observation that when we suffer, there's a thought pattern to it. When we suffer, there's a series of expressions, thoughts, words, attitudes, energies that go along with suffering. And it's only taking place inside us. And the only person who can control that is us. And we're not trained in it. And we've been raised to be otherwise about it. And we need to find our way through that because we are our own mind. And what we do here, what we do as hypnotists, what we do as in our podcast, what we do in our school, is just to try to find ways to use your mind so that it serves you, so that it serves your life rather than our all of us have the habit of using our mind to make our life less happy. And we've got to recognize those. We each have our own responsibility to ourselves to recognize those and deal with it. And for some people, they're just not there. And okay, God bless you. I'm here when you need me. And there are some people who are fully engaged in this now who say, I want to think about my life differently. I want to experience my life differently. And what we try to teach are techniques and methods that you can use your mind to help yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think it's so true that you need to recognize it first. I I can I can see clients' faces in my mind where suddenly they know they have a choice, right? Whereas they've been living their whole life thinking that this was just how it is, right? This is how it is. I can't really do anything about it. And now they're they're starting to like listen to your reframes or reframes that I'll come up with sometimes, you know, and and get a sense that, oh yeah, there there is there is something I can do here. And it usually comes from doing like a little meditation or a little visualization or a little feeling exercise where they suddenly recognize that, oh yeah, I'm in I am in charge of thinking my bad thoughts, or I'm in charge of thinking my good thoughts. Sometimes I'll do this technique where I'm I'm gonna I say to them, okay, I want you to think about bad thoughts. I'm gonna put the timer on 30 seconds. Think about bad thoughts. Oh, okay. Think about bad thoughts, and then try to put the timer on. Okay, I want you to think about good thoughts, happy thoughts. Oh, okay. And they go through it, right? And then I say at the end something along the lines of, you know, did you notice you were actually in charge of thinking, right? That you were the person doing that. Oh yeah, I guess. But when we're so accustomed to thinking suffering, thinking anxious thoughts, thinking safety thoughts constantly, which I mean, I hate to say it, but it does come naturally for us, right? Our our these bodies are all practiced. Yeah, and and these bodies, even at the the deep biological level, are are tuned to stay alive and stay safe. And and so we come by it naturally. So there is a recognition that needs to happen, I think, before things can change.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I think it's important to understand that disease and pain and and and illness is one thing. And there are lots of mental techniques you can use to address those. And what our topic today is about suffering, which is not the same as the bad situation that you're suffering over. Whatever the bad situation is, whether it's chronic pain or it's a difficult relationship, or it's a job, or it's the weather, or it's, you know, your own bad habits. Whatever the situation is, the suffering part, the suffering part has its own process and can be addressed. That doesn't necessarily take the problem away. But what it does is it changes the way you feel about you and your ability to deal with it. It changes the way you feel about life and whether or not you're stuck with this, and it changes your overall demeanor. And I believe, truly, that just changing your overall demeanor is going to change the rest of your day. Suffering is something we choose and hang on to. We do it out of habit, we do it because it's well practiced, but we can choose different.
SPEAKER_02:So that was a good one.
SPEAKER_00:Any other questions?
SPEAKER_02:Not at the moment.
SPEAKER_00:Thoughts, comments?
SPEAKER_02:Nope.
SPEAKER_00:God, we love it when people turn up. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER_00:We're gonna keep doing this for a while.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Tell your friends to show up.
unknown:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:I think that those questions are really, really powerful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, they are. Thank you. Thank you for those. All right, we will see you later.
