Anxiety, depression, and mental health, issues are reaching an all-time high these days.
 
There are multiple reasons and explanations for why this is, but one of the contributing factors surely is the state of the world as well as our daily interactive experience with it.
 
As a certified hypnotist, I help people to feel better and to reach and achieve goals that will.
bring about life fulfillment through reaching their personal and professional potential.
 
Anxiety and fear about navigating a toxic world that often feels unsafe remains something that a lot of people want help with.
 
Though we may fight to change and improve the world, it's obvious that no one individual can ever bring about the change that's needed. The change has to come from the collective.
 
And collective change takes time.
 
I wanted to bring up five important things to remember whenever it fills as though the world is toxic, unsafe and about to come apart at any moment.
 
1. This is nothing new. Humans have not changed and we tend to deal with the same issues over and over. These same issues tend to change on the surface level, but at their core we have dealt with this before, and often in worse circumstances.
 
2. It feels more terrifying because of the speed of information and the monetized hyper focus on fear-causing news. Thanks to the magic of the internet and the constant presence of social media, we now have an almost god-like omnipresence where we can hear about the tiniest
thing that happens in the most remote places in the world.
 
When you combine this with the fact that the media and algorithms are designed to grab onto anything that induces fear, paranoia, anxiety, horror, and dread, you have a concoction for a constant maddening stream of violence, negativity and terror.
 
No wonder our mental health is degrading.

3. It is still a great time, the best in my opinion, to be in this world. I personally can name a million worst times to be on earth. I am a Black woman of color living in what is arguably the most racist nation in the modern world. Almost every bit of my nation’s history was a single-minded attempt to destroy people’s bodies, souls, dignity and happiness.
 
But I will say that I would still rather be here, in the 21st century, then in any other time and place. And in fact, though I’ve often cried with anguish, fear and pain over the senseless violence and our government’s refusal to protect us, I also have broken down with wonder and gratitude that I have been born when and where I was. To me, both are true.
 
Now, obviously there's a lot that needs to be done. And we should still do that work and never stop. But it’s so important to also occupy a space of gratitude for the immense gifts that we have that came out of the work of those who have come before us.
 
4. Challenge is part of our earthly experience. Even if you aren't a straight up woohoo, spiritual person, like I am, I believe that we are all here to overcome challenge.
 
There is actually a philosophical movement called Stoicism that is really built around fully accepting challenge as an integral part of our experience and our growth.
 
The fact is, the way the world is has always been the state of the world.

Uncertainty. Calamity. Conflict. Wildness. Unpredictability. Violence. Cruelty.

These are parts of the earthly experience. They have always been parts of the earthly experience and they will always be parts of the earthly experience. I personally believe We can reduce it, but I believe it will always exist.
 
In order to reduce it, we need to do so as a collective, and that is what we are working on as a society. But no one person can make these changes by themselves at once. All social change must come from the collective, and collective change takes time. But in the meantime, it's important to remember that everything that you want that exists now, alongside everything that appears broken and frightening.
Beauty. Joy. Happiness. Contentment. Desire. Love. Abundance. Enlightenment. All of these exist too and are also very very much a part of the earthly experience.
 
Both the light and the dark, the wanted and the unwanted and everything in between exists right now.
 
When you can't change and eradicate one, it's important to embrace and focus on the other.

5. The best revenge you can ever have is to thrive, to have joy and to celebrate life, yourself and each other. After all, the ultimate goal of any terror campaign is to steal your joy, your happiness and your peace

Don't let anyone or anything steal your joy in your life, your beautiful body and your power and potential.
​
If you would like to listen to a free hypnotic video designed to reawaken these very changes in your life, check out my YouTube channel, New World Mind & Spirit.




​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  .
 

​Emotional health is so important.
 
You only have to look at the world around you and read the news to realize how vital it is to learn to care for, support, guide, heal and master our emotions. It is a social and educational short coming that this is not a part of our foundational education (yet), but there are discussions and signs that this could be changing.
As a certified hypnotist, I really see up close and personal how our emotional health directly correlates to our happiness,  our goals, our desires, our relationship quality, our work quality and our overall success and fulfillment in life.
 
Emotions are natural. And even low emotions have their usefulness and their benefits.
Even unwanted, darker emotions have a place in our life as they provide important information and allow us to process our experience on earth.
 
However, when emotions begin to get in the way of living our lives in the best way possible, we need tools to learn to manage them.
 
Medication is, of course, an option. And for some people, it may be the best option.
 
For most of us, however, we can also benefit from learning to control and master our emotions. I'd like to start by asking you a question...
 
Are emotions real?
 
I would say yes...only in the sense that something is happening. But emotions are simply responses to neurological, physical and mental stimuli that are occurring in the body.
 
Many, if not most, of our emotions are actually in response to thoughts, and thoughts are simply interpretations of everything that is happening to us.
 
One of the brain’s main jobs is simply to make sense of everything that happens to us and everything that we see and experience. The objective truth is that we're all a bunch of electrons of varying density, speed and frequency.
 
But the brain needs a different story in order to make sense of that.
 
So enter the senses and our thoughts. Our emotions are responses to our senses and thoughts…so are emotions real?
 
One of the most powerful ways that I learned to regain control over my emotions was to question them and see them in a different way. This enabled me to strip the intensity from them.
 
If you find yourself feeling a way you don't want to feel, it can be helpful to sit with the emotion if possible and ask yourself, “I wonder what thought is contributing or causing this emotion?”
 
I can't tell you how many times I've done this myself, only to find that a brief painful memory, the perceived meaning I assigned to something someone said or a brief thought of something I have to do in the future has unconsciously caused me to feel badly.
 
Habits of emotion are often caused by habits of thought. So, if you notice a habit of emotion, it may benefit you to get curious and to peek and see what maybe lying beneath.
 
Remember that thoughts are not objective truth, but rather subjective interpretations of things that happen to us.
 
And because of that, they can be switched out for better ones at any time, resulting in better, healthier feelings more often.




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  .

Many of us deal with difficult feelings that can affect our lives in various ways.
I don't recall really learning anything helpful in school about emotions other than we should “calm down” when we're feeling very upset. On the other hand, I also heard many people say, “Hey, your emotions are your emotions and you just have to deal with them.”
 
But is that true? Can emotions be controlled?
 
Many years ago, I got a new job. I thought it was what I wanted. But within a couple weeks of joining, I realized I made a huge mistake. Unbeknownst to me, my new supervisor had serious neurological issues which resulted in erratic and abusive behavior towards me and my colleagues.

My new shiny new job became an absolute nightmare.
 
And I didn't know how to cope.

​I couldn’t just quit as I needed a new job first, but in the interim I was having to deal with a pretty bad situation every day with seemingly no end in sight.

I dreaded going in and got nauseous sometimes before work.
 
I began to have intense anxious episodes culminating in what I now know are panic attacks.
 
I had never had panic attacks before though I had, of course, heard other people describe them. I had always assumed that they were exaggerating when describing the feeling of impending doom and absolutely hellish levels of uncontrollable emotions, fear, dread and actual physical sensations.
 
Many times, I could hardly catch my breath due to uncontrollable sobbing, and I thought I was going to die.
 
Though my partner did his best to help me, our home life suffered.
 
Eventually, I tried medication. Though it certainly improved my situation and I was grateful for it, I knew it was not a long-term solution for me personally.
 
I needed my emotions. And I needed to feel. And medication that causes me not to feel anything was just not a solution for me.
 
That's when I discovered hypnosis. It changed my life. It stopped the panic attacks. And I haven't had any since.

The main takeaway this experience gave me was a spotlight on the incredible power of our minds and how it is the command center for the body. Hypnosis helped me regain control of my body by helping me regain control of my mind.

So, let's start with a question. What in the world exactly are emotions?
 
Essentially, emotions are a response to neurological, physical or mental stimuli that are experienced in the body.
 
For some people, medication will be the best option.

However, because a LOT of our emotions are actually in response to conscious and unconscious thoughts, many if not most of us also have the option of controlling a lot of our emotions naturally by controlling our thoughts.
 
Your mind is constantly going. And your body is constantly reacting to those thoughts.
 
Most people are capable of controlling some or a lot of their emotional responses by controlling their thoughts.
 
If you are experiencing an increase in unwanted, undesirable and destructive emotions, a good place to start, if possible, is to become more mindful of the thoughts that are going through your head all day.
 
Practicing thought mindfulness and thought work is a powerful way to grasp more control over your emotions. This can certainly be done using several different methods.
 
Hypnosis is one such method that can make it a lot easier.
 
It worked for me, and it has worked for millions of other people.
 
But regardless of if you choose to try hypnosis or not, it can be very beneficial and powerful to check in with yourself frequently and ask yourself the following questions.

“How am I feeling right now?”
 
“Why am I feeling this way?”

“Do I want to feel this way?”

“I wonder what thoughts may be causing or contributing to this feeling?”

​And finally...

“Can I choose a better thought right now?” (HINT: The answer is  always YES!)




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 many people ask me about hypnosis, naturally. One of the questions I get is, “How can hypnosis improve my life? Kesha, you say that it can help me to reach my goals and make me more successful. But could you please explain how it does that?”

​The first thing I want you to know is what master hypnotherapist Marisa Peer calls Three Rules of the Mind.
 
These rules are important for you to understand how your mind works. Once you understand how your mind, aka your greatest tool, works, you can better understand how hypnosis comes into play as a way to improve your life and to make you more successful towards reaching your goals.

1.Your mind has two main jobs - to keep you safe and to give you what you want.
That's it. All of the incredible, miraculous perplexing, powerful things that your mind does for you can best be distilled into these two categories.
The thing about these two main jobs, however, is that they often can conflict, and when they do, your mind is more likely to place importance and emphasis on safety over getting what you want. To your mind, if left on default mode, it is more important that you be safe than happy.
 ou can see how this can be an issue when it comes to wanting to go after things that you want. This becomes an even bigger issue when you can consider the fact that under the category of safety lies a whole bunch of things that most people don't realize, chief among these comfort.
To your mind, being comfortable means to be safe, and being uncomfortable means to be in danger.
This is an issue because in most cases going after what we want creates discomfort.

2. Your mind loves what is familiar and avoids what is unfamiliar. This piggybacks directly off the previous rule and the fact that your mind seeks comfort and avoids discomfort.
 What is familiar is what is comfortable, and to your mind, it would rather keep doing what it knows then do something different that could possibly contain threat. Therefore your mind on default mode seeks out repetition of the past. It seeks out repeating behaviors, even unwanted  behaviors.
 
3.An unconscious subconscious belief, once accepted by the mind, will remain so UNLESS challenged and replaced by a new belief.
Your beliefs determine your behavior, your responses, and also how you react to adversity and challenge, which is an absolute given in life. The problem is that many, if not most of our beliefs are formed early in our lives when we are children, adolescents and even early adults.
 
We are so often wanting to change while using old, outdated beliefs that were formed when we were younger, less wise, less powerful versions of ourselves.
 
If you are experiencing issues in getting what you want, it may be time to take a look at what you believe about yourself, about your place in the world, about the world itself and what you're actually capable of.
 
Hypnosis is a powerful and natural method to override unhelpful patterns and to create new ones, giving us more success in life.

Can you make these changes on your own without hypnosis? Absolutely! The mind is such a powerful force of nature and is just beginning to be truly understood.

​However, hypnosis can make these changes easier.
 
Because a lot of our obstacles are on the unconscious level, hypnosis provides an excellent tool that works at that level to create deep and lasting change.



​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, 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.
​
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.
​
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 .

​

​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  .

​Most of us have goals that we are aiming for or that we want to achieve. However if you find that you are just spinning your wheels, not making any progress whatsoever, running against the same issues over and over and over again and trying to achieve the same goal for a long time, I want to ask if – hear me out! – you could be actually standing in your own way.
As a certified consulting hypnotist, I know that our brains are crazy and interesting things, and that we often can play dual roles of main character and archenemy in our lives.

I’d like to ask you a few questions. 

1. Have you desired the same thing for a long time now without getting it?

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?

3. Do you tend to hyper focus on everything that is going wrong as opposed to everything that is going right?

4. Do you notice repeating patterns in your life where something often happens that prevents you from getting what you want?

5.Do you frequently procrastinate?

6.Do you often get distracted from doing things that will move you closer to 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?

8.When you want to try something new, are you prone to worrying or imagining the worst case scenario?

9.Do you struggle with life purpose or direction, even after spending time to determine that?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, especially three or more, it's most likely that you are kind of getting in your own way.
 
So how can this happen?

Well it all comes down to the two parts of your mind – the conscious and the unconscious. When you plan and strategize on what you want to do, you are using your conscious mind. Now, the closer you get to what you want, the farther away you are moving from what is familiar.

​Your unconscious mind, however, loves what is familiar, and will pull you back into it with unconscious actions. To the unconscious, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
 
Anytime you are trying to pull yourself out of your comfort zone, that part of your mind is likely to want to pull you back and stop your forward movement.
 
Though self-sabotaging behaviors can look different for everyone, some common ones include:

• Overthinking
• Procrastinating
• Feeling ill
• Getting into fights and creating/attracting drama

 
Feeling ill is a big one for me. It took me a while to get wise to what my mind likes to pull, but often when it is time for me to do something scary or uncomfortable to move myself forward, I may get a headache, feel a little lightheaded or “just need to lie down” for a while. I noticed that this would only happen in certain situations. I began to dialogue with my mind, thanking it for trying to keep me safe, but telling it firmly that I’m well, I choose to be well thank you very much, and it’s time to move into a better chapter.
In order to move past the point where you always get stuck, it’s important to recognize what unconscious fear-reactive behavior (AKA self-sabotage) looks like 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  .

You know the classic advice for changing your life for the better.

Go to school.

Study hard, train, hard and do it all over again, right?

But the truth is, if that's all there is to it, why are there so many well-trained, well-educated, hard-working women who are so unfulfilled in life?

As a certified hypnotist and mindset expert, I know that confidence has everything to do with the type of career you have, the type of lifestyle that you have, what you go for, what you feel like you can go for and actually achieve, and of course ultimately what you do achieve.

After all, confidence is how well you feel that you handle the unknown. Confidence is all about your relationship to the unknown, and most likely the change that you want is to be found in the unknown.

A while ago, I read a book called The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance - What Women Should Know by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman.
 
It changed my life and forever changed how I look at how confidence can develop.
We are so often conditioned and shaped to be a certain way to please others, and though this traditional difference can be a beautiful thing, it can also cause intentional and unintentional side effects.
 
For example, traditionally, males are often permitted to have desires and to aggressively pursue them. They're actually praised for pursuing achievements and taking action.

​Now, on the other hand, females are often traditionally raised to avoid conflict and to be accommodating. They're more often encouraged to be neat and nice, kind and good.
They're more often discouraged from being aggressive and having worldly desires. And they're often praised more for qualities that are passive such as beauty, kindness, obedience, etc.
 
And how does that affect us?
 
Well, we're finding as this tends to increase male confidence more especially when it comes to going after things that you want, honoring your boundaries, asserting yourself and seeking and comfortably wielding power.


Women, on the other hand, often are more likely to hold back, to want perfection before any action is taken, and to doubt themselves. Women will tend to self-doubt themselves more often and this can go directly back to the way we are raised.

What can we possibly do about?

#1. Well, first of all, I want you to Number One have self-compassion for yourself. Societal conditioning is an old, old game, and though there can be beauty in tradition, there is a lot of fear that can go into society’s shaping of you. But the good news is that you can change beginning right now.
 
 
#2.  It’s time to give yourself permission to go after what you want.
Deciding that you deserve and desire to have more, to stick up for yourself and to go after what you want may feel very uncomfortable for you because you are countering previous conditioning. If you struggle to do this, you may need to work on giving yourself permission to thrive and play bigger and bolder.

#3. Learn to manage your negative and fearful thoughts. When you change, negative thoughts may occur to pull you back down to where you were. Learn to manage them and develop a plan to deal with them.
#4. When you take action towards what you want, no matter how small, praise yourself! Praise and self-praise is the antidote to low confidence and low self-esteem.
 
#5.  Do something every day, every week, every month, that scares you and praise yourself for doing so.

​In our formative years, we have little say in how we are shaped. But your mind is a force to be reckoned with, and you have the power and the ability to make changes to yourself that benefit you, your family and your life.

​

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  .