Five Steps to a Better Life

London Life Coach & Clinical Hypnotherapist Sloan Sheridan-Williams talks about 5 steps to improve your life. Follow Sloan on Twitter @SloanSW_London and check out Sloan’s website www.sloansw.com

Clients often come to hypnotherapy or life coaching expecting us to delve into the past and drag up and rake over old memories to produce a multitude of emotions for the client to then deal with. This used to be the way that the likes of Freud conducted his hypnotherapy sessions. However there is a much easier way to do this in a pleasurable and exciting construct. So rather than starting at the beginning, I often tell my client “let’s start at the end”. What would be the point of jumping into the car and driving using only your rear view mirror? You wouldn’t get very far in life. However, many of my clients and people in general often live their life concentrating solely on past mistakes.

In order to have a happier life we need to be thinking about what we want rather than what we don’t want. In a lot of circles it is believed that the Reticular Activating System (a specific part of the brain) will move you to what you concentrate on. For example, if you buy a particular brand of aftershave or perfume you’ll often smell it on other people or notice it in the promotions in shops far more than something you haven’t bought previously; just like if your car is silver you are more likely to notice other silver cars or cars which are the same make as your car. So if we apply that to everyday life it is actually quite easy to get more of what we do want by focusing on just that and ignoring what we don’t want.

Step 1

Write a list of what you do want in life, not only that which you desire but that which you also deserve. So for a moment just put out all the thoughts that are negative and concentrate only on how your ideal life would be looking at the follow areas:-

• Love & Romance
• Work & Performance
• Finance
• Friends & Family
• Travels & Hobbies
• Health & Vitality
• Your Home & Personal Life

Now just as our minds are very capable of seeing that which we don’t want to see, they are also an amazing tool to create pictures or movies in our minds at any given time. The aim here is to control what your brain works towards and make those negative images obsolete.

Start by looking at the list you created in Step 1 imagining what you do want out of life and just take a second to focus on that. Your brain will use its subconscious to store what you do want be it words or images, feelings, smells, sensations and start to get rid of those negative thoughts of what you don’t want. The good thing about the brain is that it does not understand the difference between your real life and your imagined life so as soon as you start imagining all the things you do want you are like a big magnet attracting as much as that to you as possible at any given moment in time.

So just start by imagining what you want. Get a very nice vivid clear picture in your mind and just have fun with this on a daily basis for up to a week. If you find visualisation hard, you can create a Vision Board. For example, over the next week every time you read a magazine, newspaper article or just see something that means something to you, just cut out the picture or object and pin it to a pin board – also known as your Vision Board. Over time if you are not able to visualise what you want you will have a concrete pin board with everything you need to work towards. Try and fill this up over the next week leaving a few spaces for additional wants, needs and desires.

Step 2

Once you’ve got your brain clear as to what you want, you need to align your feelings with your thoughts. We all know that the better we feel the more positive a story we can create and therefore we can attract a more positive reality. So in this step keep your feelings powerful, clear and concise. We often don’t realise that we are actually in control of how we feel at any given point. So to keep these feelings positive although may seem unnatural at first is very much following the principle of “fake it to make it.” Therefore the happier we perceive ourselves the happier we become and the more successful we will be in each and every area of our life that we’ve chosen to work on.

Step 3

Once you notice good things are happening and you are beginning to achieve that which you set out to on your Vision Board, the next step is adding exercise into you daily routine. For example, if you are an early bird getting out and doing what I like ti refer to as the Hour of Power in the morning before work is extremely good for not only your endorphin level but your general wellbeing. In this hour all you need to do is play music that makes you feel vibrant, happy and energetic or repeat affirmations as you either exercise like perhaps going for a daily run or doing something as simple as some sit-ups, crunches or push-ups in the comfort of your own home, repeating a positive affirmation at each rep. For example:-

“I am confident”
“I am successful”
“I deserve to be loved”
“I am doing well in my work”
“I am excited about what the future holds”

Step 4

Once you have accomplished this step the next stage is to avoid and cut out negativity in the form of bad energy. For example, those people around you that tend to complain all the time and are emotional vampires with their moaning and whining about just everything and anything. You will find that you no longer enjoy partaking in idle gossip and the more you stay away from it you will realise that not only are you privy to others gossip but you are no longer the subject of idle gossip yourself which allows you to complete the next stage.

Step 5

We all have a story. There is a famous Sex and the City episode where Miranda realises that she’s telling the same story on loop about not having a husband and being single in her 30s. As she progresses through the episode we find that Miranda notices that she is not the only one with a story but her loved-up married friends are also creating stories of their own. For example one of her friends has a story about why they haven’t conceived after two years of marriage. What this displays is that we all concentrate on what we don’t have and make excuses for it. However this goes against the attraction of positive thinking.

So take this time to notice what stories you are telling and just stop. Remember that whatever we talk about we attract into our lives, be it through the physiology of the Reticular Activating System or the more spiritual concept of the Law of Attraction. Either way whatever is causing it, this is one of the most powerful points in the series – change your story.

Now you’ve finished the main changes, I would like you to take a moment and write down five things that you are grateful for today and five things you need to action to get you closer to your life goals.

You know need to make a contract with yourself that you are going to do everything within your power to achieve what you both desire and deserve. With every new beginning you need to have a thought, an action, a feeling and then willpower. So using these steps you will be able to take abig leap forward into the rest of your life.

If you have any further questions about life coaching, go to http://www.sloansw.com/

Image reproduced from changeoflifecoaching.com

© 2013 – 2014, City Connect News. Copyright Notice & Disclaimer are below.

Follow