Avoiding Happy - Focus On The Bad Stuff

In hypnosis we work a lot with metaphors. What a metaphor does is take an issue that seem too big and complex and condenses it into a simpler frame so that your creative inner mind can realise that things are much simpler than they seem.

So, I'd like you to imagine a black and white striped ball. Picture it in your mind. Most of you reading this will be imagining a ball with black and white stripes, and I thank you for that. Now without changing that image in your mind, I would like you simply alter your perception of it and accept that it is actually a black ball with white stripes. This does not change the way it looks but it perhaps, very subtly at least, changes the way that you understand it. Now again I would like you to, without changing the image in your mind, simply alter your perception of it and accept that it is a white ball with black stripes. Again, this does not change the way it looks but, does it change the way you understand it.

So it is with life. If you imagine that white strips are good things and black stripes are bad things then life is a black and white striped ball. If you want to be unhappy then perceive your life as a black ball with occasional thin white stripes.

If I could teach your mind though to shift its perspective to see life as a white ball despite the occasional black stripe, or even just a more balanced ball with even black and white stripes, would that be of interest to you?

Life has its ups and and its downs, but most of life happens in between the two, it happens in routine where you are just bimbling through – organising yourself and others, getting from one place to another, life admin – yet here and there things happen and they either go very right, as expected or in a direction other than planned. Some good news at the beginning of the day can make you feel bullet proof for a while regardless of what else happens, but why is it that difficult times, traumas and mistakes seem to weigh us down for even longer than the good stuff buoys us up?

Generally worry and anxiety is all about happiness although it does not feel that way – your mind is fixating on the things that threaten your happiness in order to try to avoid them happening or fix what has already happened. Your mind means well, but instead creates a sort of loop in which you are stuck and less able to experience the happiness that you are trying to protect.

If you feel that you need rescuing from a loop of negative focus, if you're just not as happy as you feel you should be, if you feel you need that shift in perspective, please get in touch for a chat.