There is no one-size-fits-all approach to personal change. Since we are each unique we need to find individual approaches that work for us. That doesn’t mean that you need to reinvent the self-hypnosis wheel, just that you may need to play with commonly effective techniques and find out which ones work best for you. You may then tweak your self-hypnosis scripts or auto-suggestions to make them fit even better.

There is a useful general rule on which to base your  work: If you wish to change an unwanted habit or create a new positive one you need to re-direct your attention towards parts of your habits that bring positive outcomes. To create these positive outcomes, it is helpful to focus attention on the feelings, thoughts, and actions that move you towards your goal. Another way of saying this is that focusing attention on what’s wrong tends to reinforce what’s wrong. Focusing attention on what works tends to reinforce what works.

Lets look at a common situation. You have a co-worker who constantly complains. Understandably, this annoys you. You might try to change this person’s behavior, with predictably unsuccessful results. You might complain, yourself, to friends, family, or co-workers. Maybe you get sympathy, but chances are that your co-worker will still annoy you. You will probably try avoiding that person, but avoidance behavior is usually as stressful as the complaining. Now you have two stressors in your life. It’s pretty obvious that focusing on your upset isn’t making you any happier.

Another way of describing the situation is to say that you experience a negative trance state that takes over your thinking whenever you experience your co-worker, either in person or in thought. The complainer shows up and, bang, you go negative.

This type of negative reaction generally responds well to self-hypnosis, and you can approach the situation from a number of directions.

Hypnotic auto suggestion or self-talk might work for you. Something like, “Whenever _______ comes around I find myself FEELING REMARKABLY HAPPY, regardless of what he is saying. I ENJOY the practice of HAPPINESS and use his presence as a trigger for BEING HAPPY.”

Or perhaps you might use, “Isn’t it interesting to notice how _______ can maintain such an un[1]-HAPPY STATE. And it can FEEL SO GOOD to practice that noticing. It can FEEL SO GOOD that I actually LOOK FORWARD to running into him.” And so on.

Imagery can also produce positive outcomes in situations like this. Imagine yourself in a situation in which you FEEL VERY GOOD. You are HAPPY and RELAXED, enough so that you might even FEEL LIKE SMILING. Now, imagine that your complainer steps into that situation and YOU STILL FEEL GOOD. This might be less than easy at first but you will soon find that it becomes easier and easier as you practice.

Combining auto-suggestion with imagery can speed up the process. Positive feelings, thoughts, images and words all work to reinforce each other.

Cultivating compassion for this person who is so obviously suffering can also be helpful. I find that if I can develop some curiosity about what makes a person so annoying, then I often find a seed of compassion in my own reactions. I don’t use formal hypnotic techniques when I do this but practice a Buddhist loving kindness (Metta) meditation. (Meditation is a powerful trance inducing method, too.) A short version goes:

May I dwell in my heart. May I be free from suffering. May I be healed. May I be at peace.

May you dwell in your heart. May you be free from suffering. May you be healed. May you be at peace.

May all beings… . And so on. Repeated several times daily this will predictably change my relationship with anybody, even chronic complainers.

These are just a few possible directions from which to approach the situation. You might also imagine or auto-suggest that you and the complainer are actors in a movie or play and just saying your lines, which would dissociate you from the situation. Or you could imagine a clown face on the person, or that he is naked, both popular stress busting techniques for public speakers. Or you could use trance to uncover your reactive triggers and work with those. The list of possible ways to treat your upsets goes on and on.

There are a few points I’d like to make here. First, there are always multiple ways to approach changing your mind. Some will fit better for you than others, which suggests that bit of experimentation is usually helpful.

The second point is that none of these solutions change the external situation. They change you. You are the only person you have real control over.

Your co-worker will still complain, though you may find that as you are less reactive he begins to become (maybe fractionally, maybe noticeably) more positive. That’s not guaranteed, but is a common side effect of changing a negative reaction towards somebody. This is not manipulation, just a positive feedback loop. When your attitude changes, your behavior changes. When you act more positively, others will be more likely to be pulled into your good mood.

This brings up the third point. Until your behavior changes you haven’t really changed your mind. By mind, I mean both your thoughts and emotions. An intellectual insight is a good first step but an emotional change opens the door to behavioral change. When you act and react differently then you can know that change is real. And, since behavioral change usually requires repetition, you may have to practice your new behaviors to anchor them and repeat self-hypnosis to reinforce them.

[1] Here, we’re taking advantage of the fact the the unconscious mind tends to ignore statements of negation. For example, “I will not hate my teacher,” will get implanted in the subconscious without the negation and reinforce the thought, “I hate my teacher.”