How To Motivate Yourself Into Making Personal Changes

Have you ever tried to eliminate a negative behavior, only to not succeed? There is list of ordinary problem behaviors that people often try to change or eradicate using hypnosis. Possibly the most common are: Overeating and weight loss; stop smoking; quit chewing tobacco; stop nail biting; increasing self-confidence; overcoming insomnia and sleeping better; improving memory; and managing stress.

WHAT THE MIND CAUSES, THE MIND CAN CURE: The motivation for our behaviors starts in our thoughts. If you stop and think about it, all of these harmful behaviors are the consequence of negative thinking. In other words, you think and motivate yourself into all of these behaviors. Or at least you think yourself into feeling stressed out, and that can result in these behaviors. And in view of the fact that you think and motivate yourself into these behaviors, you can think and motivate yourself out of them. But in order to think and motivate yourself out of them, you will need to know specifically how to go about doing so.

DESIRE: You’re most likely reading this article because you want the motivation to change something about yourself. And that is fitting because the first component in the “Motivation Formula For Your Success” is that you must want or desire to change. If you have read this far, at least a little part of you wishes a change.

BELIEF IS REQUIRED FOR MOTIVATION: Before anyone can change a negative behavior, that person must be motivated to do so. Merely wanting a behavior to change is not adequate.

Motivation comes from what we believe. If we believe that something very important to us will get better or “become enhanced” if we make a change in our behavior, we will experience a high level of motivation. Conversely, if we believe that something very important to us will be in jeopardy if we don’t make a change in our behavior, we will also feel motivated to alter our behavior.

Some plain examples of these motivational beliefs might be:

If I lose weight, then I’ll be able to get a date or find someone to love me.

If I kick my smoking habit, then I’ll be healthier.

If I can improve my study habits, then I can graduate from college.

TECHNOLOGIES THAT CAN CREATE THE BELIEFS THAT LEAD TO MOTIVATION: NLP - which is short for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, provides strategies that are able to instantly generate the element of belief. You can find out more concerning this by reading the articles “How To Get Motivated To Exercise Using Hypnosis And NLP” and “Motivation Theory - How To Quit Smoking Using NLP And Hypnosis For Motivation.” These articles are both available in my free hypnosis research library.

DECISION: The dictionary defines the word “Decision” as making up one’s mind / a verdict or judgment. When you accept as true an idea that provides you with a powerful feeling of motivation to change your behavior, you will feel bound to make a decision to change a negative behavior. Decision is the key that unlocks the door to taking action.

ACTION: The dictionary defines the word “Action” as an act or deed / to do or perform. When you take action it means that rather than just thinking about making personal changes, you will actually take steps to bring about your desired changes.

SELF-TALK: One of the reasons that most individuals fail to change or eliminate a negative behavior is because of the way that they talk to themselves. Self-talk is vital because frequently it is an important part of what caused the negative behavior to begin with.

I’d like you to think about this for a moment: Let us say that you want to kick a cigarette habit. The first thing that you may well say or think to yourself is: “I’m not going to smoke cigarettes anymore.”

It’s universal for people to tell themselves what they are not going to do. Unfortunately, when we tell ourselves what we aren’t going to do, we are actually compelling ourselves to do it!

SELF-TALK EXERCISE: Say the following to yourself: I can’t see blue. I can’t see polka dots . . . . . . .

I’ll bet your mind showed you the color blue, and then it showed you polka dots. That’s because when we tell ourselves what we do not want to do, or what we won’t do, in order to make sense of it our mind must show us doing what it is that we would like to stop doing. And when we see ourselves participating in a behavior, our mind compels us to create that behavior.

SUMMARY: In order to alter a negative behavior, we must want or DESIRE to get rid of it. BELIEF is the factor that creates MOTIVATION. MOTIVATION is the drive that compels us to DECISION. DECISION is the impetus to ACTION. NLP is a method that we can use to facilitate beliefs, motivation, decisions, and actions.

When we tell ourselves what we aren’t going to do, we make a mental movie of ourselves engaging in the behavior that we want to alter. And that mental image gives us a powerful urge to create the negative behavior. So if we want to get rid of a negative behavior, rather than tell ourselves what we will not do, we must always tell ourselves what we will do.

To break the smoking habit say: “I can live without them.”

To erase cravings for fattening food or to quit chewing tobacco say: “I can live without it.”

To manage stress say: “I’m relaxed and calm, both mentally and physically.”

To fall asleep more quickly say: “I fall asleep promptly, and sleep soundly throughout the entire night.”

Alan B. Densky, CH is a certified hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner. He runs the Neuro-VISION Self Hypnosis website and the Self-hypnosis Video Blog. He offers NLP & hypnosis CDs for motivation. Visit his website for his free MP3 downloads, newsletters, and his hypnosis research library.

- Alan B. Densky, CH