Change with Wayne Donnelly

Identity – who am I?

This week I had a terrific insight open up for me. Again, it was a shift from a concept that I knew in my head to a concept I took on board as part of me.

Let me ask you, what do you identify with when you think about your own self image? (to keep it in the context of weight control). Do you identify as a fat person, a thin person, a well built person, a fit person, a flabby person or whatever you may identify your self as? Do you want to know how you can tell what you identify with?

Listen to your language! Every sentence that starts with I am….. gives you a clue. Every time you here say things like:-

I am fat,

I am hopeless at losing weight

I am no good with self control when it comes to food

I am worthless (plenty of subject matter here)

Or, I am great and valuable.

I am a loving person

I am a winner and a champion

I am……… you fill in your own statements here.

When you say “I am” at the beginning of a statement you are saying “I identify with myself as being ….” whatever it is that you say. This is so powerful. If you hold a positive identity then great. If you hold a negative identity then not so good, trouble brewing.

Let me share a story with you on how powerful this concept of identity is. You may or may not know of Natalie Cook. She and her partner won an Olympic Gold Medal in Beach Volleyball at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Last year on the Gold Coast I had an opportunity to listen to Natalie tell her story. What I found really compelling was that part of her story that related to her mindset and her identity as a Gold Medal winner BEFORE she became a Gold Medal winner. Yes, that’s right, BEFORE. Natalie focused on what she wanted, her goal of being the Gold Medalist at the Sydney Olympics. She took on the identity of being that gold medal winner, without any doubts. Natalie surrounded herself with positive affirmations – “I am” statements.

Personally I found another one of her “identification” techniques incredibly powerful. Natalie put up a picture of a gold medal on her bathroom mirror so that when she stood in front of the mirror what she saw was a gold medal winner. Her focus, her belief and her identity was totally on being a gold medalist. She became that woman that she saw in the mirror. If you would like to find out more about Natalie, click on the link below.

http://www.nataliecook.com/about-natalie.htm

Can you see where I’m going with this? Identity.

For me, I was walking across a city street in Sydney during the week. My thoughts were about various clients I have been working with on weight control. A question hit me out of the blue – Do they really identify with what they want to achieve? I put the question into a sharper focus and asked myself – What do I identify with? Am I a 90kg guy or am I an 80kg fit, healthy, vibrant man? When I considered the question and identified with the 80kg it created a mental shift that feels as though I am well and truly on the path to become what I am focusing on.

How do you relate to this? Do you believe and identify with the person that you are aiming to become?

When you look at the person you are aiming to become, can you put yourself in that picture, hear what you are hearing, see what you are seeing and feel what you are feeling at that time? Imagine yourself experiencing life in all aspects from that perspective. Are you enjoying it, can you improve that picture?

This is a very enriching and empowering exercise that can propel you towards becoming what you want to be. Not just in weight control but in all aspects of your life.

Creating this type of change in another person so that they have a powerful personal identity is a wonderfully rewarding experience, especially when using such tools as hypnosis and NLP.

Again, I ask you, what do you identify with? If you are happy with it then great. If you want to change that, let me know.

Have a great week.

Wow, what a week. This is now the 5th week of my personal weight control challenge. I’m bearing all as I share with you what I experience in my journey to becoming my ideal weight of 80 kilograms. What I’m experiencing is just what my clients experience as they also move towards their ideal weight.

Have you been following along with me?

Last week was about creating that movie of the you at your ideal weight with your voice, your photos, your powerful memories and feelings. That was the beginning of learning to focus on what you want.

Before we go further can I share with you some more observations from the past week? It could have been a challenge and instead it wasn’t a challenge at all. I had one of life’s dreaded events called “the corporate conference”. You know, those work trips in nice hotels, plenty of food, alcohol on tap as well as plenty of work of course. I’d been on those on a number of occasions over the years. This time it was different. I became aware over the course of the week that I was only eating small portions at meal times. I was consciously eating. Choosing fruits and at times also having a biscuit or sweet. Drank plenty of water and enjoyed a moderate intake of alcohol. So it was a good result for me. What an observation.

Last week I said that I would tell you why I don’t use scales. Here is the reason why. When you step on the scales, what you are seeing is an outcome from PAST choices and actions. You are seeing historic data. You had been making decisions, choices each day that could have been good or they could have been bad. You ate, you drank, you exercised,  you had certain thoughts and beliefs about yourself. The scales are just showing you the result of the PAST.

This principle can be seen in other areas of your life eg bank balance, relationship, career.

NOW, what if we flipped this around? What if, instead of looking at the scales to look in the past, we created our future. What would happen if you get in touch with the feelings, pictures and sounds of what it is that you desire.

This is why I don’t use scales. I’d like to suggest that we can create our future more effectively than by looking at the past. That is, look to the future. What is important is that we have an outcome that is well formed. In the context of our weight control challenge this would be stating our outcome – in my case 80kgs. In addition, creating pictures, sounds (our voice, music etc) and feelings of what we will experience in that time when we experience our goal.

I’ll share with you an example of an exercise that I recently took a client through. Imagine a circle on the ground in front of you, maybe about 3′ to 4′ (OK 900mm to 1200mm) in diameter. In the centre of this circle create a holograph. A 3D representation of you at your ideal weight. What are you wearing? Are there any sounds with this picture? What are the feelings that are present in this picture? Where are they located in your body? Is there a shape to the feelings? How does the intensity of the feeling rate?

Now, make that picture of your ideal you even better. Can you brighten the colours? Make them more vivid? Turn up the sound? Speed up the music or slow it down to suit the ideal you. What about the posture? Can you make it more confident? Stand taller? Maybe make the picture move in a way that represents the new you. Take it skydiving, surfing, water skiing for example.

When you have this holograph as best as it can be get ready. Take a deep breath and step into that holograph. From that new position, see what you can see through your own eyes. Hear what you can hear and feel what you can feel. Feel your hands running down those hips. See the body that you have. Listen to what you hear others saying and what you are saying to yourself. Play with this exercise so that you are so totally in touch with this new reality.

When you have explored this experience and increased the intensity of all the senses then step back out of the circle. Do this as often as you want to feel good about yourself. This is another part of taking you TOWARDS your goals, your ideal outcome.

Enjoy the exercise and I’d love to hear your feedback on what you experienced.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe to follow the journey or join me on Facebook. I look forward to hearing from you.

Welcome to the fourth week of my journey along the weight control challenge. To recap the journey so far we’ve discussed conscious eating, that is being mindful of our eating. We looked at decision making and noticing choices that were being made.

Interestingly, after adjusting my hypnotic recording to increase my desire to listen to it every day I have done just that, ie listen to it every day. Alexandra has noticed that I’ve been leaving food on my plate, making healthy choices and not participating in eating trances. The glass of wine or two has been cutback to Friday and Saturday evenings. Although we did enjoy a glass or two on Alexandra’s midweek birthday recently.

Moving forward, what’s the next step? Focus! Have you ever noticed that when you ask someone what they want that they define it by saying what they don’t want?Why not try it just for fun. What you might see is that they get so focused on what they don’t want that they attract it to themselves in double quick time.

There is a saying “energy flows where focus goes”. So if we focus on what we don’t want then we see our energy flow in that direction. Reference points here might also be credit card debt, driving accidents and so on.

You may have already done this in some aspect of your life – repeatedly saying to yourself “I don’t want my debts to get worse” ,”I don’t want to be fat”, “I don’t want to be alone” etc. What happens when you say that? You probably see a picture of yourself in debt, fat or lonely. The picture are vivid, may have some sound in them and most likely have intense negative feelings. And in the end, “you become that which your feared”.

Have you ever considered doing the opposite? That is, to focus on what it is that you do want. The trick is that first of all you have to define what you want, specifically. When you know what you want then you can begin to focus on it. How will you go about creating this focus in such intensity that “energy” begins to flow in this direction and change begins to occur? Little by little at first and then taking on more energy, increasing, creating that which it is that you are focusing on.

My suggestion is to create the vision. In this time we are blessed with many tools that we can utilise to create something wonderful. A focal point for our mind so that we can see the picture of what we want to be in bright vivid colours, sound and richness of feelings. With this in mind I set out to create a movie on my iphone. I looked for pictures that captured the times when I felt strong, fit, healthy, dynamic, a winner, and 80kgs. The wonderful thing is that we can use a voice that we trust implicitly – our own.

I made a couple of “takes” until I got something that captured the essence of what I am becoming, that is, me at my ideal weight of 80kg. You could just as well use the same concept for anything you want to create in your life.

My next bold step is to share it with you. If you are reading this in the interest of following my personal challenge and learning more then I know you will watch the attached video in the spirit in which it was made. Should you decide to have a chuckle then enjoy the chuckle but you missed the point of the exercise.

There it is  – focus on what you want.

Have a great week and next time I’ll share why I am not using scales.

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