It’s up to you
Do you yearn to open your life up like a fan? Or are you content to close it down like a clam?
Shutting down your life
You can give up and resign yourself a life in which nothing much happens. You will drift sometimes from crisis to crisis but that it the only excitement which life will hold for you. Most often, when no disaster strikes, you will simply be content with emptiness and a lack of fulfilment.
Typically if you are the closed-down and intransigent type you will merely feel:
Nothing ever happens to me and that’s just how it is.
I am not the forging-ahead type.
No excitement ever touches my existence.
I am happy to push a pen in an office until I retire.
I have a partner and kids and, as long as they are all healthy, what more could I want?
There is little to do where I live.
My partner left me and now I have no life.
Ambition and contentment are for other folks.
What’s the point in striving, it gets you nowhere?
I never apply for promotion because I know I’ll never get it.
I am unhappy but that’s just my lot in life.
I am lost but I have no desire to find myself.
I have problems but there is no point in asking for help.
All these defeatist attitudes become ingrained in your way mind and you then live a life which is uninteresting, unhappy, unfulfilled and you never reach your maximum potential. The result is stagnation, inactivity, ill-health, fruitlessness and inertia. You may be content with living only a half-life in the shadows and somehow that existence is strangely acceptable.
But can you conceived that there could easily be another way?
Opening up your life
For the client who elects to seek therapy, he/she will often find that his/her life expands in numerous ways – as an add-on result of taking therapeutic sessions – which were not initially thought possible. This client will become more content, will be more fulfilled and will strive to reach his/her maximum potential in life – perhaps even beyond his/her wildest dreams.
With this path you will feel:
I might see if there is an opportunity for advancement at work.
I could start my own business as I’ve always wanted to.
I could retrain in order to change my profession and become more content at work.
I can stand up to my aggressive employer and inform him/her that his/her attitude and behaviour are unacceptable, even if I do need to leave my job it things don’t improve?
I can separate from my partner because our relationship has gone stale or has never worked.
I can separate from my selfish and abusive partner.
If I leave my partner, I will actually be doing him/her a big favour in the process?
I can sort out my differences with my kids and find a workable solution.
I can tell my parents what I think of them.
I refuse to be exploited by those who think that they can take me for granted.
I can refuse to comply with someone else’s selfish needs in future?
I can overcome my fears and phobias and rid myself of guilt complexes.
I will get out more in order to ensure that my winter blues are a thing of the past.
I do have the courage and the determination to complete my therapy sessions.
The summary of the mindset of a go-getting individual is “I can and I will” rather than “let’s not and what’s the point anyway?”.
When expanding, furthermore, you will see life more realistically. You will not believe that you win the lottery next week and hence all your troubles will be over. You may not meet the partner of your dreams who will jetset you off to a tropical island. But you will be fulfilled, content and able to achieve your maximum potential. What more could you ask?
If you have long harboured a desire to make something of yourself, to change your life for the better, to resolve unproductive relationships or to rid yourself of unwanted thoughts, feelings or behaviours, then maybe now would be the moment to get yourself some root-cause analysis and resolution therapy. This is the only way in which to move from the closing-down stance to the opening-up position. Treating symptoms or adopting coping-strategies, however, is not the answer and this route will merely send you back into despair, intransigence and may even close the shutters down totally.
Find yourself a therapist from the “Find a Practitioner” page of the JMHT website (www.jmhypnotraining.co.uk).
Jacquelyne Morison
Jacquelyne Morison Hypnotherapy Training