Changing Old Tapes

If you can imagine your bad habits and negative feelings as cassette tapes playing in your brain, self-hypnosis is the CD that can record over them, which can make the change permanent. You don't want to just add something new and leave the old stuff there to reappear.

So what you are doing is replacing the old habit or attitude with something new and profound.

This does not mean that you will not remember your old way of thinking. But it will not have power over you any more. We've all changed our beliefs at some time or another when we received new information that changed our way of thinking about an idea. You remember how you used to think about something; you just don't believe it any more.

Profound change is not instantaneous, except in rare instances where it is triggered by an external event. The rule-of-thumb for forming new habits is that it takes 21 days. You will use self-hypnosis to form new habits to take the place of the old ones, just like recording over old tapes.

There are other ways to change fixed ideas, such as through accepting authority or experiencing related shock, either positive or negative, but these are not as controllable as self-hypnosis. "During hypnosis, it is as though the mind temporarily suspends its attempts to authenticate incoming sensory information," according to R. Nash's writings in Scientific American.