The Power Of Imagination

Use Your Imagination To Enhance Your Self Hypnosis Skills

As kids we used our imagination a lot. I remember I used to play house and imagine myself and my playmates as grown-ups. I also used to imagine myself as the princess in the fairy tales I’ve been reading about, who would eventually meet her prince charming and be swept her off her feet.

As I grew older, I noticed I’ve been imagining less and less. This is probably because as adults our conscious and supposedly “rational” mind takes over and causes us to think that using our imagination is engaging in something “unreal” or “unlikely to happen”. Of course, no amount of imagination would suddenly turn me into Snow white or Cinderella. That is not the concept of imagination I want you as adults to believe in, especially in relation to self-development.

On the other hand, self-hypnosis, which is done by bringing yourself into a trance-like state of consciousness, engages the subconscious mind to bring about the desired effects of prescriptions, affirmations and even visualizations which are fed into the subconscious through post-hypnotic suggestions. While in this trance-like state, the conscious mind’s control is weakened thus it is unable to suppress what we feed our subconscious by labeling it as “unreal” or “unlikely” similar to what it does whenever we use our imaginations as adults.

You can say that the mind is more receptive to inputs received during this state because it does away with the need to discern whether what we think about is real or imagined. It just takes the stimulus as it is. This means that self-hypnosis has a higher success rate when it comes to causing a change in behaviors and attitudes.

However, this is not to say that imagination is an exercise in futility. Used with self-hypnosis, the effect of imagination becomes even more powerful and long-lasting. As I keep on saying, “If you can think you can, you will”, but “think” here is not merely entertaining the thought in your mind, it is “believing” with your mind, your heart and your soul. You can do this by “imagining” or “visualizing” during self-hypnosis that you have indeed been achieving your goals.

Often used interchangeably with imagination, visualisation is actually imagination taken a step further. In visualization, you “see, feel, hear, smell and taste” whatever it is you are imagining. It is pretty much like watching 3D movie going on in your brain.