This is one of the most powerful principles of hypnosis.
Maybe even all of psychology.
Master this concept and everything becomes easier. And I mean everything. Whether you’re building a business, trying to be a better parent or partner, recovering from an injury, or just getting through the days, this comes in handy.
Heck, it might even be vital.
I’ve talked a lot about how powerful your unconscious is, how it’s the source of more than just your instincts and intuition. It’s the operating system for your entire body and mind, controlling everything from your heartbeat to how memories are retrieved…
To more advanced things, like insight, creativity, and elite performance.
Maybe using a computer analogy isn’t the best, but there’s a way that’s perfect:
You can have the best hardware in the world.
You can load it with the most advanced, sophisticated, elegant and powerful software out there.
But if you don’t give him anything to do, it’s a waste.
Your unconscious mind is similar, but there is a key difference.
Given how complex computer programming is, you tend not to accidentally give computers instructions. Sure, you might give them the wrong instructions… but it’s not like sleepwalking to your desk and starting to write assembly.
With your unconscious mind, you give it instructions all the time.
Whether you want to or not.
Because the interface between your conscious mind and your unconscious is subtle and surprising:
Your attention.
What you focus on informs your unconscious about what is important.
Let’s say you are lost in the desert. You are going to obsess over a few things: water, shelter, rescue. It would be hard to think of anything else. And so your unconscious correctly takes this as an instruction.
If he hears the slightest rumble of an airplane engine, he’ll pay attention.
Or the faintest glimmer on the horizon, suggesting that there is an oasis there.
In this case, the system works.
Here’s how it can, and does, go wrong:
Many people pay attention to the wrong things.
They fixate on their failures… which the unconscious mind takes as an instruction to fail more.
Or they fixate on their chronic pain… which the unconscious interprets as pain being important, so it creates more.
That may sound ridiculous. After all, ignoring pain doesn’t make it go away. And ignoring your mistakes means you don’t learn from them.
Good?
Well, there is a difference between noticing something and fixing on it.
But think of it this way:
Imagine someone going through life noticing the flaws and weaknesses of everyone around them. They ignore the virtues they see, paying attention only to vulgarity, mistakes, and suffering.
A naive person might think that this person is happy. Look how much better they are than everyone else!
Goal, no. By paying attention only to the bad things, they subconsciously seek out more of them.
Now consider the opposite.
Someone who sees the good within everyone.
Someone who recognizes that sure people make mistakes, but they tend to have reasons for it.
Everyone is talented and virtuous in some way.
Oh no, everyone else is so much better than them…! They must be miserable!
People with this mindset are hardly among the happiest you will ever meet.
It’s a simple idea: where attention goes, energy flows.
And for hypnosis, changing what you pay attention to is easy.