Freedom in Mind

Hello again,

Hope you been enjoying the Sun! It has eased off today which means we can all regroup because I’m looking at the weather forecast there’s talk of the hot weather continuing for little while longer yet. Let’s hope it doesn’t begin to rain during the August school holiday months.

It’s been a few weeks since I last blogged and it’s been a fairly busy time. Nevertheless, here I am again. I would like to talk about something which I thought about earlier on today...

We In-prison Ourselves

I will talk today about our own minds and freeing ourselves from within them. Sometimes we, our subconscious mind, places one's self in the mind prison on purpose and other times we find ourselves unknowingly creating our own cell.

Okay, so I was travelling yesterday, transiting from seeing one client to attend a meeting in central Southampton and what really surprised me was the number of people with their eyes fixated on a mobile phone. Now we call the mobile phones smartphones but they aren't really. They are not smart and incidentally have you tried making a call at the moment while on the move? You find that they hardly keep signal. But anyway I digress, as I drove down the street I estimate that 90% of people were walking around looking at that tiny screen, even in groups. I turned left at traffic lights and one pedestrian almost walked in front of me, again guess what, eyes on the screen not on the road… What makes it worse, apart from the lack of social interaction with the people they were with, is that even as I sat there are traffic lights the amount of people that were driving that were looking at their phones whilst at the traffic lights was incredible; every car that had a passenger without fail, was glued to their phone. More about this later.

When people have fears, whatever that may be: spiders; salad (yes that is a phobia); fear of being judged; lack of confidence, often it isn’t the thing they’re scared of, it’s the adrenaline they receive when they think they are can be placed into a situation and that they may lose control. Really, what people are most afraid of is expectancy of fear. They convince themselves that their fear is going to hurt them which reinforces the need for adrenaline even more when in effect it is the fear of the event which is what we fear the most.

What Is My Prison?

I used a metaphor a few days ago to explain how I understood how a client felt, like been stuck in your own prison cell of your own making. And yet when you really consider it, the walls and the bars just made a paper, you could put your hands right through them. That’s absolutely true!

The reason that people don’t break free, and breakout from these paper thin walls is the fear, a new situation, the unknown, it’s perceived as safe in here. However, this isn't living in fact, in reality it is just surviving.  The photo that accompanies this blog is the north-east corner and floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum taken by Tim Evanson, I like it because it shows what could well be what you are experiencing right now, a normality of life inside a cell. Thought-provoking.

Escape

So how do how do you escape the cell? Well, firstly you have to agree that the cell is not really there? Agree that these thoughts are nothing more than self-limiting beliefs... The rest? That’s something I’ll do for you here in Southampton with hypnotherapy and coaching… Hypnosis can be amazing for dealing with all these Adrenalin related conditions.

But what about the mobile phones you may be thinking? It’s such a powerful medium, more so than the television ever was. The establishment, companies, et cetera can reach you wherever you are, whoever you with and you are maybe becoming addicted to the technology in front of you. Ever tried going out without your phone? Feels worse than being naked. Seriously, apart from the highly addictive interactive nature of these devices it’s a way of imprisoning you. Try to put down the phone, take a walk outside and re-engage with the world around you, life is a gift that is too precious to be squandered looking at the mobile phone screen.

Anyway, lots to be doing! So it is time once again to leave this blog here but don’t worry be back soon with some more observations on life.

Best wishes as always,

Iain