"When you use your mind, it's a useful tool, when your mind uses you, you're a useless fool." A. Bryce

I can across this quote the other day and it made me wonder how much our minds do use us instead of the other way around. The fact is that we know so very little about how our minds actually work, even though we learn new things on an ongoing basis.

We know that how we think impacts greatly upon our physical reality as well as upon our emotions. In fact merely by being optimistic you can add seven years to your life expectancy, as well as having a better of quality of life along the way. We also know that each night as we dream and we go into the REM state our minds are performing the task of conflict resolution and that this is essential to our well-being; if this process did not take place we would become psychotic very quickly. The latter demonstrates how the human brain is hard-wired to do certain tasks as a matter of survival, and we have no conscious or logical control over such things. The survival instinct is primary.

On a daily basis we see the effect of another of our basic survival instincts - the fight or flight response. Whenever we encounter a situation of perceived threat our brains immediately trigger a surge of adrenalin to enable us to run or fight. We know that this response is not necessarily appropriate to modern day types of stress and threat, but this is what our minds are hard wired to do. Having said this, the things which we have learned to perceive as a threat are individual to each person depending upon their own unique experiences in life.

Often the associations which have been recorded in our minds as being threatening are there for outdated and erroneous reasons. Many fears and phobias are examples of this. Another type of situation which is frequently perceived as a threat is when you want something badly but fear that it will not happen. For example, when you really want to sink a putt on the 18th green and the yips kick in. This is only threatening to the golfer who badly wants to get the ball in the hole. To an observer it is just a game and no threat at all.

There are many situations in which we have somehow recorded a pattern match which our subconscious mind instinctively perceives as a threat and on these occasions it can very much seem that our minds are using us as opposed to the other way around. It is possible to change these instinctive responses by assessing the subconscious mind with the help of hypnosis and using positive suggestion to assist in seeing things in a different way.

Hypnosis is a state of relaxation and creates a similar REM state as that experienced when you dream, which of course is a state in which conflict resolution is easily affected. Hypnosis is key as this is the state of mind which allows access to your subconscious mind which is the part of the mind in which such generalizations and patterns are stored.

Another example which demonstrates the way in which your mind can seem to be using you is when you are experiencing a conflict between your logic and your emotions; a situation where you know that you should do something but you want to do another. Or it could be a situation where no matter how hard you try to stop yourself doing something you end up doing it anyway. In actual fact, the harder you try to not do something the more likely it is that you will do it. Try to not think about a rabbit. What happened? I bet you thought about a rabbit; in fact you most likely pictured a rabbit.

Where there is a conflict between your will power and your imagination your imagination wins. If you want to control your mind instead of just letting your mind control you, it is necessary to learn how to align your conscious mind with your subconscious mind, logic with emotions and also the pictures you are seeing with the words that you are saying.

This is why hypnosis is such a powerful tool in helping you to control your own mind and focus clearly upon what you really want. When in hypnosis you have access to your subconscious mind and so both conscious and subconscious can communicate more easily. In hypnosis you can more vividly visualize and picture things and so you can learn to picture what you want instead of what you do not want and align your visualizations with your desires.

You can easily learn to use hypnosis with the help of a hypnosis recording. There is no reason to allow your mind to control you and to be a "useless fool".

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis recordings to help you to gain control of your own mind.