by jargan » Fri Mar 31, 2017 11:57 pm
(Gosh, I haven't visited in a while...)
Absolutely, it's kind of an unfair question. It's obvious that you want to make some changes in your life, and it's just as understandable that you'd like a little help from something as awesome sounding as hypnosis. Let's just take that as it is and go from there, right?
Here's the problem: to sell MP3 recordings, you have to try and convince people that your product is going to work. Realistically, however, there are always people for which the structure and approach taken in a recording doesn't work well, and many recordings are awfully similar in many ways. If your way of thinking clashes with how the recordings are trying to get you into a hypnotic state, they're not going to help you much until you get more practice at actually experiencing trance for real.
So, for many people these recordings might actually work just fine, but that doesn't mean everyone. To make things worse, the more serious something you want to change is, and the more time you spend thinking about the negative aspects of the way things are going right now, the easier it becomes to distract yourself out of any hypnotic state because your mind will tend to go back to that thinking.
What can you do instead? First off, if you can't find a provider of recordings who offers a free demo that clearly does something for you (even if it's just an experience of trance with no other primary goal), don't buy. Secondly, look into doing it all by yourself. Self-hypnosis is fairly straightforward if you don't spend too much time worrying whether you're "really in a trance". For quite a while you won't be while you go through the process you pick, and even when you start getting the hang of it you probably won't notice at first because the experience is quite subtle. If you don't let any of that stop you, I guarantee you that you'll find a way eventually.
The other part is figuring out what suggestions to give yourself. There are three simple rules: firstly, suggestions work best if they're in an if/then format: if I'm in situation X, I do/think/feel Y. This is because the mind works in terms of associations, and this format of suggestion piggybacks onto situation X so you have a much better chance of it actually "taking". Secondly, focus not on what you want to get rid of; instead focus on what you want instead. If you don't know for sure, focus on a rough direction instead. Thirdly, be careful what you wish for. It's better to make smaller changes at first than to overcompensate -- as they say, anything done in excess is harmful. (Incidentally, smaller changes are easier to make at first, too.)
One more note: suggestions don't need to be sentences. Do whatever feels right, whatever kind of mental processing you normally do. Think words or don't, make pictures in your head or don't, conjure up sounds or feelings or don't. Do whatever you can do effortlessly, don't think about the specifics too much. A richer representation is better (e.g. words plus images + sounds + feelings in the body), but it's much more important to have it feel effortless than to have it richer.
Good luck!