Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre

What Has Not Been Working? Turn Old Patterns Into Creativity!

Hilary & Les Season 4 Episode 17

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We trace how a simple shift—asking what has not been working—turns frustration into fuel and builds a practical bridge from intention to creative action. Emotions become messages, contrast becomes a compass, and a four-stage process carries ideas into real steps.

• Morning light as cue for aligned intention
• The four questions for setting purpose
• Why “has not been” places problems in the past
• Contrast as clarity between want and current state
• Emotions as messages to try something different
• Anxiety narrowing focus and how to widen it
• Story: guitar frustration and unhelpful reactions
• Rest and relaxed focus to unlock insight
• Inner child patterns and updating mental design
• The four stages: clarify, ideate, develop, implement
• No judgment during ideation to keep flow
• From strategy to steps with constraints in mind
• Tease of next questions: direction and vision

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SPEAKER_01:

We are on the line. As long as chooses the card. He doesn't want that card.

SPEAKER_00:

I won't get distracted by the card. You know what's really nice today is that I can see my notes by sunlight outside, daylight. I wouldn't even call it sunlight. The sky's not bad, but the sun's up. And it's like Yahoo, I can start to get up with the sun. I think that's the way human beings were designed. We were designed to get up with the light, not before the light. The day obviously begins when it starts to get light out. That's when we should begin. That's just me and my pig-headed approach to getting up early in the dark.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I think that's uh uh I think that I like that too. I know in the in the summer, it's just easy for me to hop out of bed at five because there's light.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you could believe the day should begin.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a very cold day out there and the sky is relatively clear. Yep. And there's a little hint of pink up on the clouds.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So the day is here, the podcast has begun. What are we going to talk about?

SPEAKER_01:

So yesterday we spoke about. Sorry, I'm laughing because you don't remember.

SPEAKER_00:

So for the last little while, we've been talking about setting intentions.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so we've had a couple of days of intentions, and somehow in the conversation, we were sort of guided to four questions that have really revealed themselves to be really powerful and in so many ways. It's not just the question, it's even the way the question is framed that that I think is really beautiful and amazing. And yesterday we talked about the first question about what do I want? And and we talked about the importance of being clear about what you want and not being clouded by sort of generalities and and more importantly, being feeling open to break away from your old programming and vague programming and programming that doesn't help us really. And we talked a lot about that. And that was the first of the set of four questions steps to be able to formulate an intention, an ability to be mindful and to engage in an whatever activity we're in with a purpose.

SPEAKER_01:

That's right.

SPEAKER_00:

And guiding that purpose, guiding our actions, our reactions, you know, with that focus, that mindful focus, and how much that really changes the way we really appreciate what we're engaged in in a day, rather than just simply ticking off a to-do list. Yeah. So here we are with the second question. Yeah. Which is, and I'm really amazed at how this is framed. So the subtleties of it. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So the second question is what has not been working, you know, in your life, in your mind?

SPEAKER_00:

Relative to the intention, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So we're always focused on what we're intending to do. So what do I want? What is it that I want to make happen? What do I want to have happen? How do I want things to happen? What do I want for myself or whoever I'm I'm focused with this intention for? You know, when I'm clear about what I'm trying to do, then it becomes really clear by contrast. And I think that's the first thing to talk about, the idea of contrast. What has not been working? Contrast. It's the way we we perceive, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I I think, you know, contrast, you with contrast, I find you have you have to be able to know the opposite of it to know what's not working right. So or sorry, my brain, my brain this morning. So you're gonna feel contrast in the body, in the mind, in your emotions. But in order to feel contrast, you have to sort of want for something. You have to want the opposite of how you're feeling, if you're feeling negative, let's say, or stuck. And so that contrast sort of comes about from thinking about what do I want? Right? That beginning question.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, it's it's a natural thing, I think, when we when we don't like something, when we're reacting negatively to something, when we're resisting something, right? We immediately go to the resistance, we go to the negative feeling. But what's really neat is that it's that's an opportunity to think about what you really want. We often find ourselves trapped in those negative thoughts. We often find ourselves complaining, we often find the emotion of this to be one of frustration, right? This is not working. But we get into an emotional state that feels negative, that is focused on the negative, and it's really easy for us to fall into that that that focus, that embracing of the thing we don't want. So when when I think about what I want and I think about what has not been working, what I'm really doing is creating a bolder contrast between what I want and what's presently going on. And it it naturally, if I use that contrast, if I use that that negative contrast to move me back towards what I want, that's a really useful way to do it. If I use the negative contrast to dwell in the negative contrast, to spend time unhappy and complaining and frustrated, I'm not moving towards where I want to go. But at the same time, that contrast, it's useful to push us back towards what we want. It's also worthwhile to understand, and I love the way the question is asked, what has not been working. It's not what is not working, right? It's what has not been working. It implies that there's something you prefer. And I think that's the wonderful thing about contrast is it guides you towards what you prefer. And I also think that it's a statement that implies, first of all, the negative is in the past. It implies it can change, it implies sometimes it implies where the problem at, where the issues are, right? It guides our attention towards that which needs to change. And so for me, that that question, what has not been working, is like an invitation to creativity, creative problem solving.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and when you don't uh when you don't know what's working, if you can find yourself not spiraling or being pulled back to old ways, old patterns, and just taking a deep breath and not being in anxiety or or fear, those that create them creative problem solving is easier to access. I think I mentioned it yesterday on the podcast, just how pinpointed our vision metaphorically gets when we're in fear and anxiety. It's like that's all we can focus on. And it's really hard to see how to solve things. It's hard to see the opportunities, it's hard to problem solve. Uh, I've heard many people over my lifetime say, you know, don't don't make decisions when you're in fear, or you know, take a deep breath at least, and and try your best to open up the mind because when we step back from the fear and the anxiety and the spiraling backwards into how life is right now, let's say, what has not been working. Yeah, that sort of shuts down that creative part of our mind and we get caught up in in the past. And what that looks like is people call it sabotage, they sabotage themselves, blocks, stuck. Just these, you know, kind of words that you hear people use mostly when they're talking about themselves to others. Like, uh, I'm just thinking about us when people come in to say it see us, those are the words that they usually use.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the things I focus on a lot is some stuff I learned about how to use emotions for your own benefit. Emotions are not an end in themselves, right? And I think for a lot of us, we treat them that way, right? We we experience an emotion, and the emotion keeps our focus on the thing that causes the emotion, which then keeps our focus on the emotion, and then the emotion gets hung on to. And then the emotion becomes a mood and off it goes, it takes control of us, and we start to become really just ineffective in anything we're trying to do. So for me, it's always good to remember that an emotion is a message, it's a message from your subconscious mind that's suggesting something needs to change. And the message of frustration is do something different. So, how do I do something different? I start with being clear about what I'm doing and what has not been working. When I'm aware of what has not been working, then I try something different from there. So, as much as frustration can be a really real sidetracker, like it could just drag you off in a direction where you're, you know, when I was young and learning how to play the guitar, I remember once picking up, I was playing my guitar and I was so frustrated with it, I stood up and I threw it on the bed and it bounced up to the wall. And then I freaked out because I thought, oh my God, I broke my guitar. I was so frustrated. And it was that dwelling in the frustration, staying focused on the thing I couldn't seem to do that brought let that emotion just build up to the point where I did something stupid, right? Where I did something that was wasn't helpful, it wasn't getting me any closer to the solution, and could be setting me back because it's hard to learn to play the guitar when you don't have a guitar. So it's like uh these emotions, these negative emotions are really meant to guide us in a positive direction. It's a message from your subconscious mind. So when you when you think about what you want and you compare that to what has not been working, again, I love the way that question is framed because it implies you know the past. It's not present, it's not what isn't working, right? It's what has not been working. That's been in the past, that implies that there's a future, that implies that something different can happen. And if I take that emotion of frustration and I turn it into its meaning, which is try something different, it's when I'm aware of how I've been doing things that's not been helpful, that I can from that point, that's like a point of departure towards doing something different. And that's where creativity kicks in. You know, I I think it's really natural. One of the places where I see it, I've seen it in my life really clearly, is watching my kids play video games. You know, when you see, you know, uh three 12-year-olds or you know, a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old sitting in front of a video game, and it's a new video game that they're so excited to get, and they can't seem to get past level one, it's amazing how they they get collaborative, right? They start talking to each other. What if you tried this or what if you tried that, or let me try, or let's right? They they start yeah, well, there's some of that. But but they get collaborative and they start to try different things, right? And I've heard my kids say things like, well, just push a bunch of buttons and see what happens, right? And and sometimes that works. I'm I'm not recommending that you push a bunch of buttons. I'm recommending that you see this moment as one what has not been working implies the positive outcome you're seeking, implies that this has all been happening in the past. It implies that you need to try something different. It implies that you have the creative ability to re-engage this. And I can't think of anything more powerful in the world today on on every level, in every way, in every part of our society. We really need to be more creative. You know, it's very easy for us to look at the world today and say, what has not been working? And many of the things that are going on in the world today are actually a response to that question, what has not been working? And that doesn't mean that the thing we come up with next is the thing that will work. But the fact that we're asking the question, what has not been working? And then we're trying new things, and those new things maybe aren't working, implies that there's more creativity to be had. Our frustration continues, and it's inviting us to try something different.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So as we look at the world today in our grand view of everything that's going on, or if we look at our life today in our very personal view of what's going on, or if we look at a specific task we're working on and our intention to accomplish that task, our frustration needs to be used as an invitation to try something different.

SPEAKER_01:

I like uh the the little story of Einstein. Einstein with his releasing anxiety by just sort of dozing.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the two steel balls they say.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Can you explain that story better?

SPEAKER_00:

They say, and uh, I've never, you know, snoked this. I've I just always believed it. And I I believe it because I I know from my own experience that often it's in the releasing of a problem that the solution comes to me. They say that when he had questions that he had no answers to and he was getting frustrated with the task, is he would put these two steel balls in his hands, little, you know, small they fit in his hands, but of course they were heavy. And he would sit in a chair and he would allow himself to go into his deeper mind. And when he would doze, his head would bob and he would fall asleep. The steel balls would fall out of his hands and crash on the floor. And when he heard them crash on the floor, he'd immediately write down what was ever in his mind at the time. So it was basically this is the signal, this is the alarm that says whatever's in your mind right now might work. And he used that to sort of dip into his deeper mind for creativity.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, he was basically doing hypnosis.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's a really amazing. We'll have to look it up and make sure that what we're saying isn't just made up.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, and if it's if it's completely false, it just sounds good. Yeah, but we don't want to be spreading rumors. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah, I think I think when we go into that relaxed state, it it can uh I I remember when in in my past life, when I was training to be a designer, we had to use uh I found it fascinating. And I wouldn't I wasn't even into hypnosis at that point, really, in a big way. But before going to sleep at night, I would, in my mind, because I'm very visual, there was a CAD program online. I was working on my thesis, which was building out a 3D model of a vehicle. And I would every night go into my mind and build it before going to sleep. And I somehow, like I knew the program so well that I could see where faults were. So in my mind, it would it would be like, nope, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. And I struggled and struggled for weeks to make this vehicle in the CAD program. But when I started doing this, I literally got up the next day and built the vehicle in like, I don't even know. I I did it one thing after the other, tickety-boo, like it all just came together in a matter of a few hours when I when I went to back to university that morning. So it yeah, it it really, really works. But as we know, these blocks, they they come from our past, right? These these emotions, the sabotage that we find ourselves going through is very normal, right? Because you haven't known anything different up to this point. And like I said to somebody the other day, like this is a new chapter in your book. So just look at all the chapters that came before this moment and see them as number one, I like to think of it as practice, practice for the future, but also noticing and giving yourself grace and forgiveness for not even knowing, because the person that is running the show up until this very moment is your child self. It's your inner child. And if that inner child went through some crap, right? Learned behaviors or patterns or programs, that's what's running the show. So you can't be mad at yourself for that. It is the awareness that that happened, that that's driving you in, you know, right now. Just looking at that and and saying, okay, tomorrow, this moment, tomorrow, next week, this month, it can be different just by understanding that the patterns from the past that you grew up with that are very normal, they can be changed. And like I said yesterday, like we we are designing our mind. So imagine yourself as a designer, just thinking, well, what do I want now in my mind? What do I want? How do I want to feel? I can be different because the things that have been going on for me are actually not mine, they are from my parents, from my teachers, from doctors, people in authority, right? All these people that we see as as authority when we're growing up.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I like that. I think that's so important to remember. We are creatures of habit. And often, you know, we are the reason it's not working. And when you when you explore that, that's yeah, that's your invitation to create completely differently from now on. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. So, what has not been working is not a question to cause you to dive into deep frustration and and complaining. It's an invitation to use your frustration and invite some creativity. So I uh I took a a course on this. I used to teach this. There was a program at the University, uh State University of New York at the campus in Buffalo, and we had instructors from the School of Creativity come and teach us because it it's it's a neat idea that creativity is not an innate characteristic of a human being as we have defined it in society. Creativity is something that human beings do naturally. And when you look at the way human beings engage creativity naturally, not in the way we've come to think of it, there are really a series of you know, four thought structures, four thought approaches that everybody has different strengths in. And in fact, people have a tendency to be, or uh a better way of saying it, that they have a tendency to effectively engage one of the thought processes representing the stages of creativity. And when we stop thinking about, you know, this is some people are creative, some people aren't. And we say that some people are really good at clarifying problems, some people are really good at coming up with ideas, ideation.

SPEAKER_01:

Are these the four stages?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Some people are really good at developing other people's ideas, and some people are really good at implementing new ideas. They can turn it Into strategy. So if you look at those four steps and you accept that you're probably really good at one or two of them, and you're probably not really good at one or two of them, and then you start to see yourself as trying to be a little more deliberate than in your creativity. So taking the time to understand the problem, clarifying the problem, you know, taking the time to outline what has not been working, and contrasting that to what do I want? What do we want here? When we take that time to be clear about what we want and be clear about what's not been working, ideas just start to flow, and that's ideation. And one of the critical concepts in this model is that we don't mix the processes together. We stay focused on each of these four steps when we're in that step, and we in no way complain or criticize. We don't engage in negative thought, we engage in positive, hopeful thought. So ideation is a neat thing. Some people are good at it. It happens to be, you know, when I've done the profiles and the self-testing and things, that happens to be my strength. Some people are really good at coming up with lots and lots of novel ideas, to the point of some of the ideas being silly or don't seem to work. And that's the thing to avoid, right? Avoid any kind of judgment of any idea while you're in the process of ideation. You just want to come up with as many novel ideas as possible, something new, something new, and you just create ideas. And this is, you know, we sometimes refer to this as brainstorming. You know, when you get a bunch of people together and you put no limits and you say no criticism, no judgment, no, no bad ideas, we're not saying something's better than another. We're just throwing ideas out there, and we're taking somebody's ideas, and we're and that's triggering new ideas in me, and that's triggering new ideas in you. And the ideas just sort of blossom, like like they go from a little seedling into this massive bush. And if you're really lucky, at the end of this stage, you you literally have more ideas than you can count.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. My uh just a little funny story on that is when I was in design school, uh, my teacher would bring a giant bowl of like little Halloween candies, and they you'd get thrown one for every idea, like yes and idea, and uh, you know, and you just weren't allowed to say, oh, that's silly, or no, or shoot down anything, which was fun.

SPEAKER_00:

And so, you know, judgment is the the killer of all creativity, and that's what happens to most of us. We don't even start creativity because we start with, oh, I can't do that, or I'm not creative, or some people are more creative. You that kind of judgment is not helpful. But when you're clear about the goal, when you're clear about what you want, and then you're clear about what's not been working, and then you come up with as many ideas as possible, that's when development kicks in. Because some of these ideas that you will come up with will stand out as really effective. Like they're going to really solve the problem, they're really going to help you move towards the solution. And that's the development stage. Now you take some of these ideas, you might combine some of these ideas, you might, you might have to eliminate some of these ideas because you know, we all still live within constraints. You know, maybe there's no budget for that, or maybe there's, you know, not there isn't the skill set in our team to be able to deal with that. There's there's going to be constraints, and that's going to limit which ideas you can move towards. And yeah, generally speaking, most of the time we're combining ideas in this development stage, and we're trying to come up with the beginning of a real strategy. And once we have a new idea, what else can I try? What can I try now? What's the new approach we're going to engage? There's a whole skill set of people who have the incredible ability to plan that out. You know, the example I use because we talked about it so much when you were doing the school thing, was that it's one thing to design a car. It's another thing to be able to look at that car that was designed and somehow figure out how many nuts and bolts you need and what parts are going to look like and how they're going to fit inside the shell, and what order should we use to build them in? Like what gets built when, right? Like it's it's really neat to see how some people are able to strategically think in terms of stages and parts and pull that together so that what comes out underneath all this shiny, beautiful exterior is this incredibly capable moving machine, right? So some people, their strength is in implementation. How do I take this idea and what do I need to be able to do it? What have I got to? What's the steps in bringing this out? What are some of the critical points along the way where we have to make sure certain things are going in a certain way? You know, and that's that's the creative problem solving process, you know. And again, that what's what's absolutely essential, right, is no judgment. There's no room for judgment, no room for complaining, no room for whining, no room for being upset, right? The frustration has already come. We've used it, we've come to the conclusion we have to try something different. And now we've accepted the message of frustration. And in fact, when you accept the message of frustration, immediately you start thinking of other things that might you might do. And immediately the frustration goes away and excitement comes back. So on an emotional level, this creative problem-solving model from the school of creativity in in Buffalo, SUNY, is just a wonderful all-purpose tool for just about anything. And my professor, Gerard Pucci, he would give us examples out of his family life, right? He would say, Here, we're going to have this problem. This is the problem. And my son has a hockey game, and my wife has a meeting, and we only have one car. And then he showed how we solve it. Or, you know, the kids wanted certain things. They wanted certain things to happen. Mom and dad weren't going to be able to make it happen. How could they make it happen? He would use examples out of his personal life. So it's not just, you know, some little strategy tool that you use in corporations, right? It is quite literally understanding how we create and going into it deeply, knowing we have strengths and weaknesses in these processes and knowing the power of groups, you know, the power of more than one collaboration, how we can move from frustration to creativity to solution. So that's actually want to put a course together on that, on the uh the school.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that would be cool as like uh we were talking about doing things on weekends. And yeah, uh, that would be a neat like two-day workshop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What has not been work? It has so many benefits when you're trying to set intention.

SPEAKER_01:

In the chat, sign me up.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there's there's some really amazing power in that question. That's I would just, you know, when those four questions came up, I was just so taken aback at how beautiful they were, even to the way they were stated.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What has not been working? That's in the past. We're moving towards something new. We're using those feelings of frustration to move towards creativity. And in creativity, we get so excited, we get thrive in situations because that's where our uniqueness starts to come up, too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Yeah, that's true. I my mind, you know, we're talking about emotions and stuck patterns and stuck life and thinking about the world and how it relates to us. But uh yeah, my my mind sticks in the design world. So I'm thinking about it, of course, first from uh that's my language, right? So I'm thinking it from the design perspective. And what did you just say? Because it sparked that. Do you remember something?

SPEAKER_00:

I I said a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

I think a lot. Um but basically, like for the ideation stage, it was it was just do uh as many as possible, don't even think about it.

SPEAKER_00:

Stuff you've never thought about before.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00:

Something new.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and just keep going, keep going. I think I I had something I was going to say and I and I forgot, but that's fine, maybe later. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it'll come to you. Drop a steel ball on the floor. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Not later, not later to drop steel ball.

SPEAKER_00:

So the final two questions I think we we might do then together. Where do I want to go and what does it look like? You know, I I think that, you know, what do I want? Big picture, big, beautiful, detailed picture. What has not been working, that contrast, being aware that there's creativity here waiting for you. Where do I want to go and what does it look like? That's kind of acknowledging that you're not where you want to be yet, but you want to be really clear on what that's gonna look like to get those details. And in that, you come to a final picture that you can embrace in intention. So we'll talk about those next. And then, you know, you'll uh remember the thing you wanted to say.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I and I get so frustrated with myself when I forget that because it was just right there, and then I start talking and then I forget.

SPEAKER_00:

Frustrated. Maybe I should try something different.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe, maybe. Yeah, I guess for me, I find it an interesting exercise in trying to do it with emotions and what we're talking about, basically, because I've only really known it in another world, right? So, yeah, that's that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm gonna talk about stuff like that on the school today. I'm doing sort of a live where people can come and talk. I've started a school uh classroom on emotion because I really think more and more what I've learned for myself and what has really been effective working with clients is we have a tendency to embrace emotions, hang on to emotions, cling to emotions, hoping that they get solved when they don't, and often not knowing how to solve them, right? And they they, as Joe Dispenza says, they become moods, they become attitudes, they become personalities. And next thing you know, you're that grumpy old man walking around because something got you frustrated a long time ago and you've never been able to work past that. And so emotions are not an end in themselves, they're a messenger system. And when you look at them as messenger systems, then you don't cling to the emotion, you cling to the message, and that activates you, that gets you motivated, that triggers your creativity, that gets you going rather than clinging and swirling and dwelling and you know going down the vortex. You know, you want to be going up. So yeah, I've got a classroom just to go through that. Every emotion has its own meaning, its own message. When we use that message, we can find ourselves very quickly releasing emotion, feeling lighter and much more motivated.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So I mean, there is the classroom there, but today, if you go to the calendar, it's at for everyone. I know, oh no, for people in the chat, the time zones will show there, but at noon, Eastern Standard Time less is gonna hold a sort of a live chat about emotions.

SPEAKER_00:

Put the link.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll see how it goes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, for uh some people they prefer discussions about emotions in private. For other people, it's just fun to think of it differently. It's like everything else, it's just a reframing of the way we approach these things.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Well, thank you for hanging out, everybody. It's funny. Tyke just jumped up. She knows uh she knows when we end the podcast. That's so fun. Yeah, if you have any questions, just let us know. If you're listening to this from your favorite streaming service, sign up for the school if you want, and uh come on out and hang out if you wish. And uh maybe we'll see you. Okay. Have a good day, everyone. And we will see you later. You're welcome. Bye bye.