The Science of Change: Working With - Not Against - Our Inner Systems

I enjoyed reading The Science of Change: Working With - Not Against- Our Inner Systems by Hal Williamson with Sharon Eakes which appeared in the February 07 issue of The Systems Thinker. As a sometimes student of self-hypnosis I was fascinated with the description of how the use of affirmations, imagination and visualization can be used to purposively reset our autopilot which captains our daily habits. Though the term hypnosis was never used, it seems to me that self-hypnosis is exactly what was described in the article.

Roger Elliott of Uncommon Knowledge has described hypnosis this way "Hypnosis is simply the deliberate use of the imagination, paralleled with strong focus and relaxation. Done well, it can work in the same way as when you are dreaming - the mind's 'Reality Simulator'. "The first step to being confident within a situation is to truly imagine being confident in that time and place. Your imagination is aligned to your instincts, and so can program them. People can imagine something scary, sexy or annoying, and their instincts can produce emotional responses - even when those these things aren't actually happening in reality." The more dream like and rich this imaginative experience is, the more fixed the new hypnotic blueprint or 'template' will be for actually being more confident in those times in the future."

Compare this definition to the three-step "Affirmation-Visualization Process" outlined in the article:

1) Craft an affirmation that you will repeat mentally.
2) Visualize an image of the way the world will look as viewed from your own eyes when that affirmed fact is reality.
3) Recall simultaneously an event that triggered positive emotions in order to chemically tag the new neural circuit formed by the affirmation and the visualized image.

Beyond this apparent connection with self-hypnosis, the article introduces several concepts useful to coaches. One is the concept of the mind's "future sub-conscious system" which is our thoughts about the future. When we help our clients visualize themselves as their future ideal self, we are helping them create a future sub-conscious system.
Interesting.