As a certified consulting hypnotist, I always say that the number one most desired commodity in the world is not gold or silver or even money. Those things are simply tools to get to the real number one most desired commodity - change.
So why is deep, lasting change so hard to create and keep?
 
The shortest answer?  Your mind.
Your mind basically has two jobs: to keep you safe, and to give you what you want. These two jobs are often conflicting, and when they do conflict, the one that will always win is the impulse for safety.
 
Your mind considers your safety of higher importance than your happiness.

Yes, that's right. Your mind would rather you be safe than happy.
 
The thing is that this is the default mode that your mind has been set on from the beginning. You've inherited this mindset from your ancestors, and they from their ancestors, way back to the very beginning of the human race. Now, of course, the world has changed an incredible amount since then. And yet your mind has changed very little. It still is designed to be preoccupied with the basic survival things, the things most associated with the first level of Maslow’s pyramid of needs.

The result? Your mind is set on default mode, designed to keep you in place, doing the same things over and over again....because it's safe, even if undesired.

The good news about all this? Knowledge is power, and your mind has incredible learning ability. Once you understand this, you can actually change it. This is simply your mind’s default mode, but you can actually change the setting and learn to overcome the proclivity to stay in place.

Here are three steps to do that.
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1. Practice self-compassion always. Self-compassion is so important for your growth. In fact, it’s overly harsh criticism that is responsible for so much of our damage and our stuckness in life.
 t's so important to have patience with yourself and to know that if you are having a hard time changing nothing is wrong with you. Your mind is working exactly as it should on its default setting. You simply need to change the setting.

2.Bring the traits of the type person who has what you want into your your self-identity. This is so important and something that a lot of people skip. The reason that change is so difficult is because we try to force change, but allow our self-identity to remain as is, from the perspective of a person who is not changing.
For example, if you want to be healthy and change your body, we so often do this while still retaining the identity of someone who doesn't make healthy choices and quite frankly hates making healthy choices. Isn't it any wonder that we have a hard time keeping up and maintaining changes?
For the most effective and harmonious change, you must do it from a place of accepting who you now are going to be and asking yourself, “What type of person gets what I want ?”and then bringing those traits into your life.
 
3.Add the power of mental and emotional focus and attention. When we are trying to make changes, we so often find ourselves giving attention to what we don't want. This undoes the changes that we're trying to create. To create the most effective change, you really want to make an ascending upwards loop of self-identity, thinking and feeling that supports the change you desire.
You can best do this by focusing your thoughts on what you want as well as your emotions. When you give emotional and mental weight and attention to what you DON’T want, you’re undoing the work and allowing this collected power to leak out, slowing down your change and potentially shorting it out altogether.
 
Now, even though this is a simple three step process, I understand that it can be very challenging to do on your own. That's why hypnosis is so powerful. Hypnosis is designed to make these changes easier, because it affects you at your deepest mental level, your subconscious level.
 
Hypnosis can make these steps easier and happen faster.

But with or without hypnosis, these 3 steps are so important to create the deep and lasting change you most desire, and they are available to you always.



​ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kesha Dent is a certified hypnotist, certified RTT hypnotherapist, transformational coach and author of "Life Change Now: A 3-Step Guide to Manifesting What You Want Through the Magic of Being Who You Are". She helps professional adults to achieve life success, overcome anxiety, reignite their confidence and break out of their limitations to create a life of purpose, productivity and passion. You can find her at www.newworldcoaching.org  .

“Believe in yourself.”

If you're like me, you grew up with this phrase in your head and in front of you, day in and day out.

It was on posters in the school cafeteria.

It came from teachers. And counselors. And it also came from television.

It was everywhere.

And yet, so many of us grow up to not believe in ourselves, in our power, or in our ability to get what we want. Why is that?

As a certified consulting hypnotist, I understand that there's more to our mental programming then simply being told to believe in yourself.

As we navigate life in society, our self-belief is often being eroded.

So what is self-belief?

Simply put, your self-belief is your engine.

Self-belief is what shapes your response to life, and most specifically, to obstacles.
Obstacles are a constant in life and they certainly stand between you and what you want. How you respond to those obstacles depends on your level of self-belief. The more self-belief you have, the less chance obstacles have to get in your way and keep you from getting what you want.
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So what are some signs that you may have lower self-belief?
 
1.Comparison-itis. This made up but very real word refers to our tendency to compare ourselves to others. The catch is that we most often come up short. If you frequently compare yourself to others and find yourself feeling as though you are broken or inferior, then this is a sign that you may have lower self-belief. If you don't believe you are actually capable of getting what you want, you are likely to sabotage yourself or to give up when you meet resistance.

2. Believing more in obstacles than you do in yourself.  We all have obstacles, though many of us will have more than others. There are many obstacles to success and achievement that relate to wealth gaps, race, class, education, social connections, bodily ability and more.
 
And these obstacles are definitely real. And we have a lot of work as a society to do to make this world more fair for everyone.
 
However, for every person who claims that these obstacles keep them for what they want, you will find three or five others who have those same obstacles and overcame them.
 
If you believe in the obstacles more than you believe in yourself, the obstacles will persist. You must believe in yourself more than any obstacle that stands in your way.

3.An excessive attachment to obedience. Many of us are raised to be extremely obedient to authority figures and to others.
 
This has been proven to be even more so among girls and those raised in very restrictive or religious families and communities.
 
Obedience in itself has virtues and benefits. But too much of it can absolutely rob you of your self-belief. Self-belief grows best when you are allowed to make mistakes, to push back and to experience your own power. Obedience notoriously conflicts with this concept.
 
So what can we do when we want to increase our self-belief?

A very simple formula that anyone can do right away is this:

Praise. Act. Repeat.

Praise is so important to grow your self-belief.

How often to do this? You want to do it every day, aggressively and so much so that you begin to install what master hypnotherapist Marissa Peer calls the Inner Coach to counter and challenge the inner critic, which is what so many of us have in our heads that rob us of our self-belief.
 
You want to act relentlessly and take not just any action, but action that takes you out of your comfort zone and that requires courage and resilience.
And you want to repeat this over and over. You want to create an upward cycle of praising yourself and encouraging yourself to act, and acting and creating and giving birth to more of your own power.
 
Praise yourself again for being a witness to that power and seeing all the incredible effects that you have on this world and in your life.

And this way, you can build your self-belief like a muscle and begin to see wonderful changes unfold for you.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kesha Dent is a certified hypnotist, certified RTT hypnotherapist, transformational coach and author of "Life Change Now: A 3-Step Guide to Manifesting What You Want Through the Magic of Being Who You Are". She helps professional adults to achieve life success, overcome anxiety, reignite their confidence and break out of their limitations to create a life of purpose, productivity and passion. You can find her at www.newworldcoaching.org  .

As a certified consulting hypnotist, when I tell people what I do, I am asked all the time…
“Oh wow…hypnosis! That’s cool! But, um…what is it for? WHO is it for?”
Excellent question!
 
So a quick response to that is hypnosis really is for you. Hypnosis is for anyone who's looking for change and who is having a hard time creating that change.
If you're having a hard time with that on your own, hypnosis can help.
 
So can most people be hypnotized? Yes. Though it’s true that some people are more resistant to hypnosis. These people include those with mental conditions such as bipolar or schizophrenia, and people that may have a lower than average IQ.
 
(And it's not to say they can't be, but just that the approach may have to be different.)
 
So what can hypnosis help with?

What is hypnosis for?

The short answer is…hypnosis is for change.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, change is the number one, most desired commodity on this planet. No matter what you want in your life, it probably can be best summed up in that one word: CHANGE.

The thing is, the older we get, the more challenging change becomes.
 
Now your mind’s job is number one, survival. It wants to replicate as much as possible of what has worked before.

If you are experiencing the same sort of results over and over again that you are not happy with, there is likely something happening in your response to life and stressors which is conditional, and hypnosis is a powerful and effective method to change that.

Common issues that people use hypnosis to overcome include low confidence and self-belief, low self-esteem, destructive habits, weight loss and management, stress management, sleep, anxiety and fears and more. This is definitely not an exhaustive list.

Hypnosis can also be used effectively for pain management, sports and career performance, overcoming limits on earning income, increased memory, concentration, creativity and even less conventional uses such as past life regression.

Hypnosis is awesome! It changed my life, it’s changed the lives of my clients and it certainly can change yours.

After all, your life is simply the compounded result of your habits.

Want a different life? Change your habits.

And fortunately, hypnosis is just the thing for that.



​ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kesha Dent is a certified hypnotist, certified RTT hypnotherapist, transformational coach and author of "Life Change Now: A 3-Step Guide to Manifesting What You Want Through the Magic of Being Who You Are". She helps professional adults to achieve life success, overcome anxiety, reignite their confidence and break out of their limitations to create a life of purpose, productivity and passion. You can find her at www.newworldcoaching.org  .
 

 
Have you been trying to create change for a while now (months? years?) and keep finding yourself in the same place? We've all been there! As a certified hypnotist, I know that understanding how your mind works is key to breaking self-defeating patterns and finding your way forward. So how to know when you are getting in your own way and sabotaging yourself? Here are 9 signs (and explanations)!
 
1. Have you desired the same thing for a long time now without getting it? This hints at cyclical, repeating patterns of behavior, which often occur because of our ingrained, automatic responses to challenge and obstacles.

2. Do you tend to compare yourself constantly to others and repeatedly come to the conclusion that you are somehow a lower value than other people? “Comparison-itis” is a fun, modern word that defines the not-so-fun tendency we have to measure ourselves against others. If you do this a lot, and find yourself coming up short, it is likely you may not believe you have what it takes to get what you want, which can cause you to behave in just that way.

3. Do you tend to hyper focus on everything that is going wrong as opposed to everything that is going right? Very, very few of us can make changes without at least something NOT going the way we planned. So in other words, things are almost guaranteed to go wrong while you are working to make them right. When – not if – that happens, the only way to keep yourself moving forward is by focusing on what is going right. Focusing on what is going wrong I easier to do, and unfortunately this also just tends to scare you from moving forward.

4. Do you notice repeating patterns in your life where something often happens that prevents you from getting what you want? Again, this can hint at repeating patterns in your life, and repeating patterns give us the same results over and over again. In order to move forward, we must find the place of personal power where we are repeating and change the behavior.

5.Do you frequently procrastinate?  This is probably the most famous and well-known sign! Yep, procrastination is avoidance. If you are avoiding what you know will move you forward and get you what you want, you are definitely getting in your own way. But you probably knew that already!

6.Do you often get distracted from doing things that will move you closer to what you want? Distraction, like procrastination, is another form of avoidance, which is behavior that is designed to keep you from moving towards what you want.

7. Do you believe that you would have what you want in your life if it weren't for other people, your family, your genetics, other outside people and other things? While outside obstacles are very real, are they useful? You could just throw up your hands and say, “I can’t get that because of all the things that are in my way.” But will that make you happy? And for every person who claims that, there are several more with the same obstacles in their way that overcame them. Blaming outside obstacles is a way to keep yourself where you are and not move forward.

8.When you want to try something new, are you prone to worrying or imagining the worst case scenario? Again, you must focus on what is going right and what could go right in order to move forward. Focusing on what is going wrong will just keep you stuck, afraid to disrupt anything.

9.Do you struggle with life purpose or direction, even after spending time to determine that?  If you have struggled with finding life purpose or direction for a long time, even after spending time to determine it, you may just be in your own way. It’s not unusual for us to approach our life purpose through a lens of perfectionism, wanting to figure out our “perfect” purpose and the ”perfect” job and the “perfect” path. The most important thing is to move, and often you may not realize the right direction until you’ve picked just any direction. If you are obsessing over which way to go, you are getting in your own way. Move first, and you’ll find where you really want to go.
 
If you suspect you are getting in your own way, check out our free online program “Stop Holding Yourself Back!” at www.newworldcoaching.org .

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​ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kesha Dent is a certified hypnotist, certified RTT hypnotherapist, transformational coach and author of "Life Change Now: A 3-Step Guide to Manifesting What You Want Through the Magic of Being Who You Are". She helps professional adults to achieve life success, overcome anxiety, reignite their confidence and break out of their limitations to create a life of purpose, productivity and passion. You can find her at www.newworldcoaching.org  .