|
Book Snips... |
SPECIAL
PROBLEMS NEED SPECIAL TOOLS.
While most of us can recognize our surface problems, it is usually a big
challenge to harness these and successfully manage them.
Let’s use the image of an octopus representing the problem of sugar
addiction. It’s not enough to see the octopus head poking out of the
sea. You must locate the tentacles
of the problem that lie under the surface.
The origins of some tentacles of sugar addiction are buried deep in the
ocean of the subconscious mind and although hidden from sight, send up emotional
messages that connect to current life experiences.
When parts of a problem are not
identified, it is often difficult to make a good plan for recovery or to find
ways to implement it. Even when the
problems and it’s parts are identified, there is still the matter of staying
motivated and persisting through obstacles for the seemingly never ending
periods of time necessary to manage addictions or to solve other lifestyle
changes.
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK
Lynn’s question helps us to see the problem from many different
aspects. She speaks of her problem
with sugar, her family medical history, as well as her family addictions
history. While all of this is
important, what sings out are her beliefs, especially whether or not prevention
is possible because of the genetics. As people learn to take care of their genetic
“wallpaper”, prevention is indeed possible.
Chapter
3
Preparing
to lick sugar addiction and make healthy lifestyle changes involves a very
special kind of
planning. This planning means that you will be needing
information about yourself that may not be in your current memory bank, but
waiting for you in your subconscious mind library. Some of these things
will pertain to your family of origin, as well as from your own health history
starting from the time you were a child and up through today.
You will also be reclaiming memory files about your beliefs, how you got
them and whether or not they are blocking your recovery from addiction.
In this chapter you will
learn how to access this information and utilize for healing as well as for
heightened creativity and goal achievement.
This special work is called Your Personal Assessment and as you
continue working through the book you will be referring back to this area.
You will be needing power tools for this work and will receive instructions for utilizing them as you work through your assessment. They include Interactive Awareness, Mental Biofeedback and, Interactive Self-Hypnosis. As with any other skill building, the more you practice the better you get and the better you get, the more information will be made available to you by your subconscious librarian.
Perhaps
no other illness touches as many people as that of addiction. I am convinced
that addicts are born with a tendency towards addiction and the sooner the
addiction-prone individual faces that reality, the better the chance of recovery
and building an enriched life.
This book is a tool
designed to help you discover and break free from your addictions and regain
control of your life. Many people don't like the word "addict"
as it conjures up rather nasty images that conflict with how one likes to view
oneself. This special self is known as the false self, how you would
like people to view you.
As you work through this book you will become familiar with your own false self, and learn to view it with compassion, forgiveness and love. As you do so you will be given access to your subconscious mind programs and be able to edit many aspects of your false self, enabling you to become more authentic. The authentic self is a healthy self that walks the road to high level achievement. You will also come to understand that your basic physiology, your genetic wallpaper, is responsible for your addictions and that this is truly not about your false self. As you wake up and begin caring for yourself at higher levels, your authentic self will step forward right then and there without further ado.
Jon:
I have failed so many times at making lifestyle changes. There is a part
of me that doesn't even want to read this book. It is so difficult for me
to concentrate and I'm overwhelmed with what I have to do. I've not felt
well for years. How can I get a handle on all of this?
Jon's problem is
all too familiar in the world of chronic disease and symptom management.
It is often labeled helpless and hopeless by those who experience it. The
problems appear very big and insurmountable, like a large mountain with sides
too steep to climb. If you look up this mountain you can see
people that are climbing successfully. Those are rock climbers and they
have special hooks that they place into the crevices they find. These
hooks hold their ropes and allow them to get a footing. In this work you will be
like these rock climbers. The knowledge hooks will help you to move
forward one step at a time. You will find hooks for the many aspects of
high level nutrition, hooks for managing emotions and thoughts, as well as those
for planting goals. Jon had been viewing the mountain as a whole, feeling
helpless as he stood at the bottom looking up to the summit. This
work takes his focus off the helplessness, to the knowledge hook and
the crevice where it is planted.
Keys for managing
sugar addiction, eating disorder and healthy lifestyle change include paying
attention to details and examining moments in transition, designing and building
new disciplines and motivations. This
chapter is about paying attention to the many aspects of the food connection and
moving in the direction of change. It's not enough to know
what to eat and what not to eat. The knowledge alone holds little
motivation for the long- haul discipline needed to achieve permanent
success.
Self-discipline walks
hand in hand with inner motivation. You already have the coupling of these
in your subconscious mind in the form of past successful experiences.
The tools you are utilizing will allow you to access these and apply them
to managing the different aspects of your sugar addiction.
You will also be able to mentor off of these, building new programs with
inner creativity tools. This book is providing knowledge, some new and
some old, but perhaps forgotten. Just knowing something is not enough.
The world is filled with people who know things, but don’t act. Knowledge must be contained and organized into a plan of
action. Then one must step into the
action.
INTRODUCING
KNOWLEDGE HOOKS
You will begin seeing the knowledge you are gathering in the different
areas of this book as having hooks, similar to coat hooks. After locating
or designing your motivations, you will be asked to hang them on the
knowledge hooks. There are different kinds of motivations.
Some will motivate you towards a positive or reward experience.
Others will motivate you away from positive experience and towards
negative ones. The levels of positive or negative motivation can be
enhanced or diminished. Here you will gain the tools to do this yourself,
thereby taking charge of your own mind programming. Both
types of motivation can work well, but what tends to work best in the majority
of people is a balanced approach. .
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK...
There is tremendous power
in awareness and waking up from automatic pilot. As your awareness is
heightened, new choices will appear almost magically. Change and
lifestyle change in particular is often perceived as being difficult, if
not impossible. While there may be some obstacles to overcome, if the
new chosen behavior is imaged with powerful, positive emotional states and then
placed hypnotically, the journey miles will be very different.
Lifestyle change means
what it says. This is not something temporary, but permanent. This
alone scares people who prefer to hang on to what they know, even if it is not
working or is truly detrimental to their health. You can see examples of
this without even looking very hard. In fact, why not look right inside
yourself and find some very personal examples.
Earlier you learned
about your family and personal medical history and how it connects to sugar and
carbohydrate issues and how they connect to weight gain or yo-yoing. While
it is important for everyone to pay attention to eating habits, it is paramount
for those with sugar, carbohydrate or any other addiction. Not to do so is
flirting with disaster in the present, as well as down the path. Make no
mistake, every meal is important and can either take you towards chronic killer
disease or towards a very high level of health and performance.
Once
you begin to be super-aware of the amount of hidden sugar you have been
consuming, as well as how it connects up to your emotions and level of
achievement, the next step is a visit to the supermarket.
As you walk around observing through “new eyes”, it seems like
sugars, highly processed foods and high-glycemics are the only ones available,
but a closer will reveal healthier choices that will even enhance your
previously made plan and shopping list. You are now gaining control in one of the more challenging
areas that you must confront in your freedom from addiction journey.
Believe it or not, you
will come to love this feeling and this will be a new inner motivator for you.
You will no longer be at the mercy of the food manufacturers, fancy
labels, packaging and other advertising gimmicks.
In fact you will wake up to their “game” and feel your confidence
growing.
Your goal is to educate
yourself and work at providing high level balanced nutrition for yourself and
your family. You know full well that by taking action now, you are
avoiding major problems down the road. You
also know that by taking action now you can utilize your mind in more productive
ways, and this is very motivating.
Planning is important,
as is attention to detail. Success
is found in self-observation that is heightened by
Interactive Awareness and then deciding what needs to change.
It’s usually a matter of many small changes that are just like pennies.
They add up!
It’s not uncommon for
people to balk at committing to change. This
is known as resistance, but the work you are doing here with Interactive
Awareness and Self-Hypnosis is helping you to bypass the old roadblocks and
to actually learn from them.
Designing a new eating
plan is relatively simple. This is usually a surprise to many, especially those
who followed different diet regimes throughout their life.
Your new eating plan is not
about dieting, but learning to think about what you body needs, translating this
into planning with "food groups."
In the previous chapter you learned about these.
Although all information in this book is based on healthy eating and
behavior building, it is always best to check with your physician about any
lifestyle changes especially dietary change and exercise.
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK.
The body and mind
offer clues through hunger signals and
energy levels. Ferocious appetite,
low energy and poor concentration are often related to periods of low blood
sugar, or reactive hypoglycemia. When
you eat what your body needs regularly and in the correct amounts, your body
will deliver a manageable hunger level at meal time. The hunger should be sufficient, allowing you to consume
enough food to take you through to your next meal or disciplined snack.
You should be eating
every three and a half to four hours. As
you begin your recovery plan from sugar addiction, you may experience some
breakthrough hunger, but this usually subsides in a day or so. In those moments you can certainly eat a bit more protein,
but also take the opportunity to look back at your last two meals, noticing if
they were well balanced, containing sufficient amounts.
Sugar addicted
individuals tend to graze, usually on high glycemic or refined
carbohydrates. The more one
grazes, the more the blood sugars go up and down.
Even sipping on diet soda or coffee can cause fluctuating blood sugars,
as both beverages trigger insulin production.
While some grazing is caused by true hunger resulting from low blood
sugars, much of it is simply a bad habit or poor self-care discipline. Once you come to know which is which, you can correct it,
either with a better food plan or with
Interactive Self-Hypnosis mind programs, emotional
management and inner motivation.
Lynn: I’ve noticed that when I am eating lots of sugar foods my body is filled with tension. I’m a runner and areas of old injury hurt more on these days. Perhaps the most frightening part is that I have an underlying anxiety that doesn’t seem to be connected to anything that is going on in my life. I just feel awful. I would like to understand what is happening and why. Knowledge is definitely motivational for me.
In this chapter you will begin to understand more about listening to your body communications. Lynn is ahead of the game. She has already noticed that her body speaks a different language when her diet is inferior. More than likely the underling general anxiety is the reactive hypoglycemia. In Chapter One you learned how food stress changes your biochemistry. Now you will begin to see those Knowledge Hooks as they appear in your own body and mind. Remember that it is not enough just to know something. You must go the next step and join in the action.
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK – Working with Mental Biofeedback and
Body Scanning
Most of us are familiar with the term "biofeedback". Individuals are hooked up to a special machine and taught relaxation techniques that help the body to maintain a healthy blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, etc. The person can see the special screen that shows their progress. This type of training can be very empowering as the mind and body connection is personally experienced. This is especially important for individuals caught up in stress reaction that can be dangerous to health outcomes.
Body scanning is mental biofeedback. There is no need to be hooked up to a machine to change the way your body functions. Obviously this holds a big advantage because in any moment in time, the person practicing mental biofeedback can change a mind or body outcome. There are also other advantages. As one learns to observe the momentary body sensations over a period of time, the body sensation patterns become clear. One can see how they are attached to particular emotional states, or perhaps other triggers such as situations or even relationships. Another advantage is the feeling of self-confidence in being able to change an unpleasant or frightening sensation right there in the moment whether it be peaking or just beginning to build. As one becomes more practiced in the skills of mental biofeedback, it becomes easier to catch the body sensations at earlier moments, when it is much easier to diminish or release them. This is extremely empowering and later on you will learn many applications for doing this.
Interactive
Awareness is
the overarching umbrella for the many wake-up tools you are learning. In the last chapter you worked with mental biofeedback, also
known as body scanning. Now that
you have experience with cell manager communication, you are ready for your next
“containment”, that of emotional and thought management.
You will also meet up with the emotional crayons that color your
experiences.
These are powerful
holistic tools that allow you to manage sugar addiction right in the moment, as
well as in every nook and cranny of your life. Learning to work with
these will move right you out of automatic pilot and into the moment where new
choices are available in your subconscious filing system.
There are many benefits to working with mind tools.
For example, the skill of Interactive Awareness allows you to
practice the art of detachment from the presenting moment and emotions.
In detachment you are no longer participating in the moment, but come to
it as an observer. As such, you are
able to look very closely at what is unfolding, just as if you were the
producer/director of a this very moment in time.
You are no longer the actor and your subconscious mind responds very
differently to this mental/physiological shift.
For a start, stress chemicals are turned down as the physiology waits for
emotional direction. From the
position of producer/director, it is much easier to take off your self-judging
eyeglasses & to see through different perceptions, that are much clearer.
The producer/director’s job is to see all the details, so changes can
be made & the production will be successful.
The four steps of this program are
equally important, but the order of progression is also important.
Disorderly eating is like any other disorder or mess, and we get out of
this in the same way. First we wake up, and then we bring organization to all of
the facets.
Disorderly eating rarely lives alone.
When one area of a life is in disarray, you won’t have to look far to find
another. Disorder and stress go
hand in hand, bringing imbalance to the mind and body.
Addictions become the easy answer for managing the discomfort.
We can grow to like, even love them, and like other bad relationships,
they can consume us. It is important to understand that while we may have
genetic tendencies towards addictions, we do have choices in the matter.
We can choose to stop.
Changing disorderly life patterns and
addictions means giving up those dangerous relationships while managing stress
in new ways. This is where most
people make their mistake when looking to stop smoking, drinking, bingeing, etc.
First order of business is to have a very good stress management program
in place, one that includes the four steps of this program.
There
is an additional benefit to paying attention to already formulated automatic
pilot programs. They have self-discipline already ingrained through the
continuous etching or repeating of the habit. Ingrained self-discipline is
like gold waiting to be discovered, asking
to be utilized in a creative way. You are now ready to capture
this gold through the use of Pods. Pods are very special interactive
self-hypnotic images that encourage the subconscious mind to participate in your
life self-discipline.
Pods are like rooms that hold the particular discipline or activity. These can be automatic pilot activities or those that are especially important for initiating a lifestyle change, or for enhancing health and performance. They are particularly important for the management of disorderly eating and addictions. Health and performance Pods can include breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, teeth care, exercise, water, meditation. When you set and work with a Pod, the subconscious mind sees this as a very important focus and will work in a creative manner within the Pod. The inner mind will help program the mind for change, bringing forth details that might have slipped through the cracks. The subconscious will also make creative suggestions, some of which can be very serendipitous.
Learning how to become aware of emotional states is imperative
to Licking Sugar Addiction and self-management in all areas of life.
You learned in the area of Interactive Awareness that in this book you will be
working with images, picturing emotional states as little children, wearing tee
shirts with their names on the front and each child having their own
personalized box of crayons that they use to color your experiences. This type of imagery will allow you to work with any emotion
outside of yourself from the position of producer/director.
This gives you more power both mentally and physiologically.
It also helps to understand that you are not your
emotions. Emotions are simply a part of you that needs management, even if they
are acting out in a positive way. Your
emotions spend their day coloring your experiences.
Sometimes the colors work well and other times not so well.
On occasion the crayon colors are too heavy and other times too light.
And if the emotion holds the crayon too tight, or presses too hard the
crayon can break and you might experience this as a complete loss of control of
your emotional self.
Hopefully you have
been practicing Interactive Awareness out in the real world and have been
spotting some pretty interesting emotional states and their crayons.
Remember, the more you are willing to see, the better for you.
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK.
Working with emotional states is a skill just like anything
else. We have emotions that work in
a positive way for us, and others that don’t.
These are often called negative emotions, but it’s important to keep in
mind that even negative ones also have their good points and can be useful in
certain situations. You’ll come
to understand that these emotions can help to open the subconscious mind through
releasing.
When looking at
emotional states it’s a good idea to know that there are hundreds of them.
Few people can name more than twenty. .
Some emotions are experienced as having negative high-power such as
anger. You also have positive
high-powered emotions as well, for example ecstasy could be considered in that
group. You also have negative
lower-powered emotions, for example annoyance and
on the positive side you might consider the emotion of being pleasant.
Sometimes the momentary experience is about the choice of emotion and
other times it’s about the intensity of the crayoning.
In this section of the
book you will receive many advanced mind management tools to help open your
subconscious mind, as well as place even more detailed programs into your inner
file cabinet.. Like all tools, these are meant to be utilized and not to
be left on the shelf to get rusty. You already know it's not enough to
read about things, simply expecting them to happen.
You must take appropriate action, while managing your mind and body
connection in order to etch new programs into place. The more skilled you become, the better your outcomes.
Mind tools have been
utilized in the practice of medicine for thousands of years and continue to be
utilized in top Universities of the world.
There is a special area of medicine called psycho-neuro-immunology, PNI
for short, that encompasses research in the area of mind and body medicine.
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK
Imagery, or the thoughts you play in your mind are everything.
They are the crux of how you experience your body, your environment, your
relationship to yourself and to others, as well as your spiritual life.
You image continually like a VCR that is never turned off. Unfortunately, the most common imagery consists of negative,
non-trusting, insecure, failure-orientated, worrisome, highly judgmental inner
radio and visuals. These images are
often followed by behaviors that match the program blueprints, thereby
reinforcing the negative mind programs. You
are now in the processes of exploring change and transforming your own existing
images into ones that form the
basis for managing your sugar addiction, eating disorder or any other problems
and taking you towards optimum health and performance.
We all begin our life walk with our very own, unique first step, but you have come to know that while this may be your first walking step, every experience in your entire life will have a first step as well. Tune into the world and you will hear lots of moaning and groaning about having to begin all over again. If you take a moment to dissect these complaints, you will find the errors in these thought patterns, for the truth of the matter is that every experiential moment begins in a different place on the life path. Even the experience of failure is simply a step in a different direction. Later on as we explore the subject of failure, you will come to find that it really isn’t a bad thing, but quite a good one. We are surrounded with teachers on these subjects. Take toddlers for example. We can learn quite a bit from them. Observe what happens when they fall down. They may cry or not, but then they get up, center themselves, look around at their immediate environment and then look towards where they want to go.
Your own breath is your teacher in residence. As you learn to observe it, you will begin to find that each inhalation and exhalation is different from the one before. Therefore we do know how to live with ongoing change. This realization can help you to shift out of the fear surrounding change, into action. So following the lead of your breath and the toddler, let’s go forward.
KNOWLEDGE
HOOK -
DEEPENING
The tools you have learned so far are multi-faceted and work to reduce stress just by their sheer presence. The slowing of your brain waves is called deepening trance. You already know how to reach the alpha brain wave state right in the moment and even when others are around. When the brain waves are altered the body becomes balanced. This is called homeostasis. Your blood pressure normalizes, as does your heart and hormones. This act of mental shifting begins changes within every cell and also delivers you to the door of your subconscious mind that is located at the alpha brain wave level.
Changing
lifestyle patterns is like taking a journey.
First comes the decision and commitment to the journey, followed by the
planning and the unfolding of the experiences.
We enjoy some parts, detest others and sit in amazement as the unexpected
takes on a life of it’s own. As
we look with soft eyes it is clear that each experience carried with it the gift
of knowledge. We tend to be asleep
more than awake. If we practice
waking up more frequently, the number of experiences will mount.
Since each one carries the gift of knowledge, our goal is to stay awake
as much as possible, working as well to unraveling our past experiences, of
course looking for the gifts for they are there, in the vault of the
subconscious mind. In the
last chapter you set up gardens on your goal-den path.
You met up with your Master Gardener and your Higher Self, learned
something about weeds, your early belief systems along with ways to change past
self-image and esteem programming. Now
you are going to locate old subconscious mind files that are filled with all
kinds of gifts to help you manage your addiction issues and your life balance.
You are also going to design future mind programs to plant in your
gardens.
Interactive
Awareness and Self-Hypnosis can
be utilized in hundreds of creative ways. Throughout
this book you have been working with many of these and now you will experience
some of the more creative ones. Keep in mind that each and every moment holds opportunities
for practice and for re-programming the subconscious mind.
As you begin to truly wake up to this extraordinary power that you have
in place, you can become overwhelmed.
Therefore it is a good idea to set some goals for building skill levels,
for programming awareness and also for etching new subconscious mind programs.
KNOWLEDGE HOOK
Change is always a matter of choice.
Awareness or knowledge is usually not enough to motivate change.
As you walk through the workshop of the world you will hear people who
have identified their problems, but not the tentacles under the surface, and
have no motivational or action programs to propel them into the actual desire to
change. Sometimes they will begin,
but if the programs for persistence and consistency are missing from their tools
belts, they will end up quitting at the first road-block opportunity.
You might even notice that they appear “happy” to see the road-block,
as they have been looking for some excuse along the path to assist in their
rationalization of not pushing forward. You
will hear it in their language and see it in their expressions, both big and
small. If you look closely you
might see a secondary emotion underneath the presenting one.
For example, in the heat of rationalization look for a glimmer in the
eye, or a small “almost smile” sitting on the lips.
You may have even felt this in one of your moments!
The
higher your awareness, the easier it is to keep the path clear and to stay open
to choice. Keep in mind that both
conscious and subconscious thought can lead you down the path of unimaginable incredible
success if you so choose. Affirmations, or self-talk help to keep the path
clear and aid in the heightening of awareness.
These mini-mind programs that can be utilized independently of other
programs. For instance, if you want to build motivation in a particular
garden, you might work with affirmations designed for that particular goal.
There are thousands of affirmations already written and ready to be
planted. Your local bookstore is filled with choices for you.
But, once again, it is not enough to simply read or have knowledge.
It’s like holding a packet of seeds in your hand.
No matter how long you hold it, the flowers will never grow there.
They have to be planted and nurtured.
Your
subconscious mind is vast, but very organized.
In the last chapter you began to work with in the inner library and in so
doing you were actually working on your time line.
The time line concept can be designed to meet your belief system.
If you believe in past life regression you might have a time line that
goes back many centuries, as well as forward through those yet to unfold.
However, for the purpose of this books book time time-lines will be
considered from the moment of birth, to that of death.
Take a piece of paper
and simply draw a line. On one end
place the word “birth” and on the other “death.”
Somewhere on your line is this very moment, “the now.”
Everything that happened before “now” is your past, and forward is
your future. It’s a simple as
that.
You are meandering on
this time line each moment you are involved in talking or thinking about the
past, the present, the now or the future. However
most of these moments are on automatic pilot and not designed for specific goal
achievement. In fact as you begin
to wake up to more of these, you
might find that you are working against your desired goals instead of going
towards them.
The time-line can
offer tremendous value to our self-development and certainly to the goal of
managing addictions, as well as eating disorders.
Throughout this book you have been in contact with your time-line, even
in the very first chapters and your personal assessment.
But now you are ready to apply some additional exercises that will
benefit all areas of your goal-den path.
The dream state is an
additional and very powerful way to program the mind for change. There are many kinds of dreams including waking and sleeping
varieties. You already have some of the tools in place for dream programming.
Earlier in this program you learned how to practice Awareness Meditation,
and it was suggested that you "fractionate" your day with practice.
You learned that following a period of fractionation, your mind would be at the
alpha brain wave level, and that by simply tilting your eyes up about 20 degrees
you could place a goal picture on the mind screen.
Goals can be anything you desire, and the desire to access or remember
dreams is simply another type of goal that you can program during waking states,
and especially before going to sleep at night when your brain waves are very
receptive to suggestion.
Sometimes it takes
weeks for suggestions to take hold, but if this is your mission, certainly keep
planting the suggestions, and preferably following a period of Awareness
Meditation fractionation. A good idea is to put an affirmation on your desk, or
in several areas of your home or workplace. A suggestion for an appropriate
affirmation could be, "I remember my dreams clearly." "I wake to
remember my dreams." "My dream recollections are clear to me."
Reiterating
suggestions such as these several times a day, coupled with "seeing
yourself in your mind’s eye remembering dreams easily," and further
energizing this picture, makes it clear to the subconscious mind that you do
want to remember your dream states. On a side note, following this suggestion or
inner command, you may find yourself waking in the middle of the night, or very
early in the morning as a particular dream finishes. Keep a dream diary by the
side of your bed, or a simple note pad will suffice for writing images or
messages from the subconscious mind. These notes or clues will help to trigger
further memories later on.
MIND EXERCISE: