November 6, 2025 • 38 mins
Ask us a Question or Leave a Comment!
We hope this helps a little as you go through your day.
We would love to hear your feedback or questions.
We will respond to both in future episodes.
Check us out at
www.somhypnosis.com
Join our online Community!
https://www.skool.com/infinite-mind-school/about
Email us at
info@somhypnosis.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:09):
Okay, we're all on the line.
SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
Oh boy, we're starting again.
SPEAKER_02 (00:12):
Yeah, we're starting again.
SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
Technology continues to be our soft spot.
SPEAKER_02 (00:16):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (00:17):
There's ducks out there in this beautiful sunny
day, and yet we can find a wayto suffer.
Suffering, suffering.
What are your thoughts onsuffering?
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
My thoughts are, I suppose sometimes I want to
place it on other people why Isuffer.
And usually it always comes backto me.
Putting myself in situationswhere I feel like I'm suffering
mentally, right?
I can't say I suffer physically.
I suffer mentally.
SPEAKER_00 (00:45):
Where does suffering take place?
SPEAKER_02 (00:47):
I suppose in the mind.
SPEAKER_00 (00:49):
You suppose, as the hypnotist?
SPEAKER_02 (00:52):
No, it's in the mind.
SPEAKER_00 (00:56):
Can someone make you suffer?
SPEAKER_02 (00:58):
Oh man.
I haven't had enough coffee forthis.
You're making me suffer rightnow, don't you?
Interesting.
Yeah.
I I I uh, you know, as thehypnotist Hillary would say,
Yes, at times I'd feel likeothers can make me suffer.
But the hypnotist and the personwho the part of me that jumps in
(01:20):
afterwards clears that up bysaying, you know, you can see
this differently, or you canthink about this differently, or
you can make it so that thissuffering doesn't really happen.
What is suffering?
Planning ahead.
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
What is suffering at its core?
What do you gotta do to be ableto suffer?
SPEAKER_02 (01:38):
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm looking at the chatand I was gonna use the answers
in the chat.
SPEAKER_00 (01:49):
So what's in the chat?
SPEAKER_02 (01:50):
Yeah, resistance.
SPEAKER_00 (01:52):
Resistance, resistance to what?
SPEAKER_02 (01:55):
Life, the situation, the person, resistance to your
thoughts, resistance to theenvironment, resistance to your
own learning.
And what learning is that?
I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
There it is.
There it is.
Sometimes learning, you know,the lessons we're supposed to
take away from something,sometimes it's not obvious.
And the reason it's not obviousis because we don't we
habitually think in in anotherway.
We habitually think, well, oneof the things we habitually
think about is blame, right?
We habitually, from the instant,from the instant something goes
(02:33):
wrong.
I have observed in myself and inmy life that most of us are
predisposed to fight to try tofigure out whose fault is.
SPEAKER_01 (02:41):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (02:41):
You know, my life is not the way I want it to be.
So whose fault is that?
The act of blaming is yourfirst, your first embrace of
suffering.
SPEAKER_02 (02:52):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (02:52):
It's a focus on the problem and not the solution.
When we have an easy solution,we don't spend a lot of time on
blame, we don't spend much timeon suffering, we don't resist,
we shift, right?
Things go wrong all the time.
And we go, oh, oh, geez.
And then we shift.
SPEAKER_01 (03:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:08):
It's what we do.
When we have a solution, when weknow what the right thing is,
oh, oh, I should have done that.
And then we just jump to it.
You just, oh, I forgot to dothat.
And then we shift immediately tothe solution because we're
staying focused on the goal.
SPEAKER_01 (03:22):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:22):
Now it's much harder when you're dealing with other
human beings because as youshift, they shift, and as they
shift, you shift.
And you're living in thisconstant anticipation of what
they're doing, trying to predictwhat they're going to do next.
And so relationships can be aplace of suffering.
But if you bring suffering backto what it is at its core,
resistance, then there isabsolutely no choice but to look
(03:45):
within.
Because the only place sufferinghappens is within.
If I know you really well, thenI can figure out how to push
your buttons and I can triggeryour tendency to suffer.
Because it's what we all have.
It's a tendency.
It's a tendency to resist whatis, it's a tendency to look at
that as unfair, it's a tendencyto look to blame somebody.
(04:09):
And all of these tendencies arereally uh the uh symbolic act of
reaching out, putting your armsaround the problem and pulling
it in.
SPEAKER_01 (04:21):
Yeah.
That is so nuts.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (04:26):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (04:26):
But we don't know that that's what it is, right?
SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
Yeah.
And why do we want to do that?
Why do we feel so comfortablebut so sh crappy when we, you
know, it's like this comfortablecrappiness.
SPEAKER_00 (04:39):
Well, because it's a story that we tell ourselves.
So thoughts, I I think youstress this enough.
I was talking about thisyesterday in one of the records.
Thoughts are habits.
Yeah, these habits are developedearly, early on from being
around and watching andmimicking and learning from the
people that we love and admire.
(04:59):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:00):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (05:00):
And I'm not, this is not about blame.
This is about understanding howit happens.
Because understanding how ithappens is sometimes worthwhile
if you can use that to keep itfrom happening, or if you can
use that to find another way.
So we're not taking thatunnecessary next step into
judgment.
SPEAKER_01 (05:17):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (05:18):
We're not, we're, we're understanding how these
things arise in the human mind,but we're not about saying, you
know, it's dad's fault or it'smom's fault, or it's Uncle Joe's
fault.
We're not into into trying tofind blame.
We're trying to understand howour mind gets into these habits.
(05:39):
So the way I try to explain itis that the subconscious mind is
the place where we learn to dothings without thinking about
it.
SPEAKER_01 (05:46):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (05:46):
Right?
A habit is an action withoutthought.
SPEAKER_01 (05:49):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (05:50):
I don't think about brushing my teeth.
I just do it.
I just do it the same way everyday.
SPEAKER_02 (05:55):
Do you know what's amazing I've noticed about the
brushing the teeth things?
I think it's again, it it leadsinto the subconscious, is my
toothbrush has a two-minutetimer on it.
And brushing, brushing,brushing.
And I'm not even thinking aboutthe timer.
I'm not thinking about time.
I'm just brushing.
And somehow I end up stopping,like right before the timer goes
(06:18):
off.
It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00 (06:19):
We have a routine, tooth by tooth, quadrant by
quadrant, inside, outside, don'tforget the tongue.
Yeah.
Like all these things, thesehabits.
And we don't even think aboutthem.
So there's a habit that we wouldprobably label as useful,
helpful.
It's a good habit.
(06:40):
It's a good habit to brush yourteeth every time you get up,
every time you get out of bed.
It's a good habit.
But what happens then is thateverything that we do can become
a habit.
Yes.
And that's probably a dilemma, Isuppose.
That's that is a dichotomy inour lives.
But habits can be really helpfuland good.
They help us function in theworld, they get things done
(07:02):
quickly, and they make us goodat certain things, right?
And then habits are also the waywe take away choice.
SPEAKER_02 (07:09):
Do we want to be conscious as we're moving
through life?
Do we want to be consciouslylooking at something and going,
okay, I don't want this to be ahabit, or I do want this to be a
habit, because otherwise thingswill naturally, in their own
way, choose to choose withoutyou even deciding to be a habit.
Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00 (07:27):
Like I I used to I used to play a lot of sports and
I used to coach a lot of sports.
And practice was an importantthing.
We used to call it get your repsin, right?
Do the thing that you do overand over and over and over.
You know, baseball's my thing.
Take take a lot of ground balls,right?
Throw that throw a thousandtimes.
(07:48):
You know, I used to say to my mykids that I coached if you do
500 throws a day and you take500 swings of your baseball bat
a day, you will be the bestplayer on this team.
And the kids would just look atme puzzled.
And I've had a few times wherekids took me up on that.
And everybody on the team, everykid, every parent watching would
(08:12):
notice the kids who were doingthat, right?
Things would become natural.
And so practice to me becamereally important to become good
at something.
And then I thought about thatand I realized that everything
is practice.
If I practice doing somethingover and over and over and over,
it's going to become a habit.
I'm going to get good at it.
(08:32):
So think about the fact that youget up out of bed and you don't
make the bed.
So what you're practicing is notmaking your bed.
SPEAKER_01 (08:39):
Yeah.
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (08:40):
Let's say you you have breakfast and you don't do
the dishes.
Well, you're practicing notdoing the dishes.
SPEAKER_01 (08:47):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:48):
So that will become your habit and your routine.
And then you'll come home fromwork and the dishes will be
there.
Yeah.
And then you'll suffer.
The damn dishes are there.
Right.
And you'll suffer.
Oh, I gotta do these dishesbefore I can even make dinner.
Oh, I hate doing dishes.
Oh, dishes are such a pain inthe neck, right?
Now you're practicingcomplaining.
(09:08):
Now you're practicing suffering.
Now you're practicingresistance.
And so it becomes a habit.
SPEAKER_02 (09:16):
Yeah.
Why is if I thought about thisfor more than two seconds, I
would come up with an answer.
But I I think it's good to askthese questions just out loud.
Why is resistance such a naturalnext step in in human living?
SPEAKER_00 (09:30):
We pick it up.
Like it's it's we can't dismisshow much we learn from watching
others, right?
I used to talk about this, youknow, when we think about
parenting, right?
You teach your kids way more bythe way you behave than you ever
do by what you say to them.
SPEAKER_01 (09:50):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (09:51):
They're going to pick up everything from your
habits to your mannerisms toyour postures to your systematic
reactions to things, you know.
So so here we are.
I'm driving down the road.
I got my little baby son in theback seat in the car seat,
(10:12):
right?
And he's in the backseat, andI'm driving him from the
babysitter, right?
And forgive me, I'm gonna saybad words.
So I'm driving on this four-laneroad.
Somebody from the right lanepulls over in front of me, and I
hit the horn because it scaredthe crap out of me, and it was
really kind of dangerous, andthey were just trying to hustle
(10:34):
their way through traffic, Iguess.
And I hit the horn, but in thebackseat, I hear shit.
Now he it's it's kind of likehow can he be so young and know
that word, right?
But it was the whole thing, youknow, the frustration on my
(10:55):
face, the fear on my face, theway I would have reacted to the
situation.
He already figured it out.
And he's not even looking medirectly in the eye, he's in the
backseat, looking over theshoulder, seeing the way I'm
moving, right?
He's he's maybe three years old.
Maybe, right?
This is this is the way we pickit up, and we all do it.
(11:16):
It doesn't have to be that waybecause the only person who
really controls my mind is me.
And when I recognize it inmyself, I completely have the
opportunity to change it.
But it's hard to break a habit.
SPEAKER_01 (11:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (11:30):
So it's it's not one of those things that we're aware
of because we were so habitualin suffering through our
problems.
We've been practicing it foryears that at some point, like
I'm gonna assume there aren't alot of 10-year-olds listening to
this podcast, and I'm gonnaassume there's a lot of people
between 30 and 60 listening tothis podcast.
(11:53):
Yeah.
Now you're at a place in yourlife where you can suffer, you
can resist, you can blame, youcan wrap your arms around your
problems, you can habituallyrespond with anger, frustration,
resentment, or you can say theold saying that people hear and
people laugh about suffering isoptional.
(12:14):
So suffering is embracing theproblem instead of the solution.
Let that be your refrain.
It's habitual, but it's stillonly going on inside you, only
being created by you.
Only you can change that.
And that's why I think the powerof hypnosis is we get to go into
the subconscious mind and say,hey, I'm done with suffering.
(12:37):
What do I, what am I going to doabout this?
Well, we analyze where it comesfrom.
Where it comes from is practicedhabitual thinking.
So, how do I change that?
I think this is something I'mworking on.
So I'll just share it.
And I think you know that I'mworking on this because you're
getting tired of me saying it.
What's the lesson here?
I'm trying to get in the habitof every time I'm upset to ask
(12:58):
myself, what's the lesson here?
The lesson sometimes ispractical.
You know, make your bed, brushyour teeth.
But sometimes the lesson ismental and it's emotional, and
it's about the way I interpretthe situation that I'm in.
And my emotions are wellpracticed, my reactions are well
practiced, my negative thoughtpattern is well practiced.
(13:19):
I've been doing it for a longtime, and I'm only just
beginning to try to say tomyself, what's the lesson here?
What's the lesson here?
And it isn't always practical.
Sometimes it's completely aboutseeing things as the opportunity
that they are.
Think of the one direction youcould go, right?
You could suffer, and you cansuffer about everything because
the world's full of crappythings.
And you can suffer and sufferand suffer, and there's lots of
(13:42):
people to blame, right?
And we're really in the habit ofblaming, but blaming is the act
of embracing, right?
It's that this is a problem andit's their fault, and therefore
there's nothing I can do aboutit, right?
So I can complain and I can beangry and I can blame and I can
go to town.
That's one direction I can head.
And we see it everywhere today.
(14:03):
We see it all over the place.
I mean, I opened up my Facebookand I found myself in the middle
of a thousand arguments, right?
You open up your Twitter feedand you're right there in the
middle of a thousand arguments.
People shouting at the air,blaming other people that the
world is crap, and that's theirfault.
(14:23):
And it doesn't do anything otherthan enhance my suffering,
deepen my suffering, and I'mpracticing suffering.
I'm getting good at suffering.
I'm getting habitual atsuffering.
And how am I ever going to getpast that?
Now let's go the other directionand say what I practice is
(14:43):
what's the lesson here?
I go even further and I say,everything serves me.
Everything is teaching mesomething.
Every difficulty is training me.
I talk about with my clientsalways learning things the easy
way and learning things the hardway.
And learning things the easyway, we're good at.
Somebody in a position ofauthority that you trust tells
(15:05):
you something, you accept it.
And your mother leans down,kisses you on the forehead, and
says, You're wonderful, and youaccept that.
And that's beautiful.
Life doesn't tend to work thatway.
Life tends to work with you'reall alone in a situation that
you can't figure out, andthere's nobody to turn to, or it
feels like it anyway.
Or your mother says, Get out ofbed.
(15:26):
Why do you always make me yellat you?
These are learning lessons thehard way.
When somebody criticizes you,you're learning lessons the hard
way.
The lesson is always, the lessonis all that you are lovable,
there's nothing wrong with you,and you can figure this out.
Yeah.
The lesson is always that.
I go to the gym, I don't, youknow, I don't pick up feathers.
(15:46):
I go to the gym, I pick upreally heavy weights.
I mean, we laugh at that, right?
No, that's that's the reaction.
Yeah.
So here I am at the gym liftingup feathers, wondering why I'm
not getting any stronger.
Here I am at the gym every day.
I go there and I just go throughmotions, but I don't pick up any
weights.
(16:07):
Lifting up a weight is teachingyour muscles the hard.
SPEAKER_01 (16:11):
Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00 (16:11):
When you go to the gym, you lift the weight till
you're so totally fatigued youcan't move.
You push yourself to the pointwhere you feel like I can't take
another step.
Yeah.
And then afterwards, you knowthat by engaging in what's
difficult, you made yourselfstronger.
SPEAKER_01 (16:27):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (16:28):
By in pushing yourself past your limits, you
made yourself healthier andstronger and more capable.
Learning lessons the hard way.
SPEAKER_02 (16:36):
Yeah.
I I think as you're talkingthere, I I'm really thinking
more about this idea of theonline verse where you go online
and you start to see all thesepeople suffering, shouting.
And my mind, when I when I whenI see those comments, I think,
what what's going on for thesepeople that they feel the need
(17:00):
to shout it or have their well,what comes to mind is needs met.
And so what leads from there isthis sort of this external
validation for their suffering.
Mom kisses us on the forehead,we feel good.
That creates this feeling likewe need some external
validation.
(17:20):
I know there's a point beingmade here somewhere, but I'm
trying to get there in my ownmind, I suppose, as I talk it
out.
It's almost like there's alittle dopamine hit when someone
yells their suffering, right?
And then someone likes it, andthen someone else yells about
their suffering, and it's itcreates this effect moving out
in all directions.
And then their suffering isconfirmed, right?
(17:42):
It's this confirmation fromoutside sources that yeah, we
should be yelling about this.
Now, I want to be I want to makeit clear that we're not talking,
well, I don't know.
We could go down a long roadhere, but there are things that
should be stood up for,obviously.
And but we see it a lot thesedays where people just have
stuff to get off their chest,right?
(18:03):
And you can tell that they'resuffering and they they always
seem to have a a thing to sayabout everything, right?
SPEAKER_00 (18:10):
So I think that the quick answer to that is I'm only
ever responsible for me.
It's the only thing under mycontrol, my mind, my behavior.
And sometimes it feels prettyout of control.
But the point is, is that it iswithin my sphere of control to
deal with me.
Now I can look at others and Ican say, I see in our world how
(18:33):
the practice of suffering comesabout.
I'm understanding the mentalprocess now, the embracing of
the problem, a well-practicedhabit of allowing myself to feel
bad, allowing myself to embracethe problem and think about it
as a problem and state it as aproblem and blame somebody
because it's a problem.
(18:53):
I can see how that happens.
But I think that's the firststep.
I think the first step isrecognizing it in yourself.
It's the only hope you have,right?
You know, peace only exists inour mind.
And the reason the world's notat peace is because there's a
lot of people out there withoutany peace in their mind.
And if everybody was to focus onputting peace in their own mind,
then the world would change.
(19:14):
It would have to.
And it's the same thing withblame and suffering.
It can only take place in ourmind.
And if we recognize that it'sjust a habit that we keep
practicing, that the only onesuffering about this is me.
And I'll often try to makesomebody else suffer.
If I'm suffering, I want to makesomebody else suffer.
And we we turn that into blameand attack, right?
(19:37):
Yeah.
But if we say suffering is mine,it's a well-practiced habit.
And I don't have to do that.
What I can do instead is pauseand remind myself that I'm
lovable, that I'm capable, thatI can learn, that I can figure
this out, that once I figure outthis lesson, I will not suffer
over it again.
Yeah.
I can develop a new habit.
(19:58):
And the one who's going tobenefit most is me.
The person I'm taking care of isme.
The one who's going to get themost out of me addressing my
suffering is me.
And that could be ourmotivation.
So what's the lesson?
What should I be learning fromthis?
What's my opportunity here?
Because every time I learnsomething, I'm kind of like
(20:19):
better, right?
Every time I learn something,I'm I'm better.
I'm better able.
If I learn something, you know,I learned something when my son
in the back seat said shit.
And I learned that the lessonthere was for me to watch what I
say.
That what I have in my backseatis a little tiny mirror, an
empty slate, as it were.
That's learning how to live lifeby watching me, not by me giving
(20:42):
it instruction.
It's learning to live bywatching me.
And that if I want to look atmyself and say, you're a good
parent, Les, I gotta get a gripon that.
Yeah.
I gotta start changing my habitsbefore I turn them into habits
in my kids.
I'm not trying to put morepressure on parents.
I know they're feeling enough.
SPEAKER_02 (21:01):
I don't think there's, I mean, I'm not a
parent, but I think I can say, Idon't think anyone can get it
right, perfectly right.
You know, no parent is perfect.
SPEAKER_00 (21:09):
Well, my never be.
My goal is not to make you feellike it's your fault that your
kids aren't perfect, right?
My goal is to help to reveal toyou the processes you can use to
help you feel like you're beinga better parent.
But that's mostly just being abetter person, being the person
you you really want to beanyway.
(21:30):
I I don't know anybody, I'venever met anybody who doesn't
want to be a good person, thatdoesn't strive to be a good
person.
And you know, sometimes thefastest way we think to be a
good person is to just blamesomebody else for the problem.
Right?
Yeah, can't be me, must be you.
(21:50):
I'm a good person.
SPEAKER_01 (21:54):
I'm a good driver.
SPEAKER_00 (21:56):
It's it's a it's a fast way to to try to feel
better about yourself.
Projection is just that thing.
SPEAKER_02 (22:04):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (22:05):
Suffering, wow, you know what understanding how it
comes about, understanding it'sa habit, understanding the
pieces of it, the blame and theanger and the resentment,
understanding that it's onlytaking place in your mind and
that you could do somethingabout it.
And the first reframe is what'sthe lesson here?
Knowing that there can never bepeace in the world if there's
not peace inside me.
(22:26):
And that's the part of the peaceof the world that I'm
responsible for.
You know, people joke, what canI get you?
And they say, Oh, get get meworld peace.
Well, what they really mean is Iwant to feel peace inside me.
And you can only feel peaceinside you when you learn how to
not suffer.
Everything has a lesson in it,everything serves me.
It's a wholly differentapproach.
It's certainly hard to do whenyou're habitually suffering and
(22:50):
you come about that habit in acompletely understandable,
honest, human way.
SPEAKER_02 (22:55):
Yeah, I think it it becomes so second nature that
you don't even know you're doingit.
I remember, and this was well, Idon't I'm not even sure I want
to say this, but I will.
When I was going throughuniversity, I I walked into one
of the rooms that we were doinguh major projects in.
And a friend of mine, he now Iknow he didn't say this with any
(23:16):
like malicious intent or any badintent.
He was kind of joking, but man,oh man, it freaking hurt.
He looked at me, and I guess myface, which has subtitles, uh,
was showing something.
I don't even know.
But he said, What's wrong now?
And oh, just even saying it outloud again makes me hurt.
(23:36):
But it really got me to takeanother look about uh at, I
mean, that was hisinterpretation of me, but it was
kind of accurate.
It was kind of accurate, and Iwas showing in different ways
throughout the days at atschool, I guess, that I was
suffering in in different ways.
And so I I tried in many ways tolook at how I was viewing things
(24:03):
or interpreting things or youknow, moving through my day in
in a more, I don't know,peaceful way, right?
Instead of getting overwhelmedor up in arms, suffering,
basically.
They they could see thesuffering on my on my being.
Anyway, I think that was themoment of recognition.
Oh, yeah, that's a that's a goodquestion.
(24:25):
Questions come through.
What about suffering withchronic pain?
I thought about that earlierwhile you were talking to, you
know, this is mental sufferingwe're talking about.
So, what about suffering withchronic pain?
SPEAKER_00 (24:35):
So, as hypnotists, we're aware that pain can be
addressed through hypnosis.
And in fact, there's a lot ofstudies that show that the most
effective pain treatment ishypnosis.
But let's step back from thatand just focus on the suffering.
Right now, I sit here and my mythumb and my first two fingers
of my left hand are tingling,which I consider to be a real
improvement because they used tohurt.
(24:57):
I've had a shoulder problem nowfor about a year, and it's
constant and it hurts.
And when I go to the gym, ithurts.
And I go to the physiotherapist,then I go to the massage
therapist, I've gone to thechiropractor, I've even resorted
a few times to takingpainkillers, which I don't like
to do because I really thinkthey mess with your body.
(25:17):
And that's just my opinion.
Uh, I have uh I I won't say I'llsay I have some experience with
that.
I'll say it that way.
I think that what I battle in mymind from it, and I'm lucky that
I it's a condition that's onlyarisen in the last year, and and
I already have my you knowextensive trainings and
learnings and focus on the mindfor 20 years.
(25:40):
I come to that with that alreadyintact.
So it creates a disposition inme to see the mental emotional
element in my in my disease, inmy injury.
But there's some things thatthat I use in my mind to not
focus on it.
I'll use some hypnotic painreduction techniques, you know,
(26:01):
and it's it's a simple idea,it's a reframe you can grab.
Pain is a message from your bodysaying something's wrong.
And it is amazing how you cansay to your body, I get the
message, I understand, I don'tneed the pain anymore.
You don't need to keep telling,I understand, I will be careful.
(26:21):
It's amazing what that alonedoes to the pain that you
experience in your body.
They train that one in themilitary.
SPEAKER_01 (26:29):
Really?
SPEAKER_00 (26:29):
Yeah, they train soldiers that to talk to the
pain, tell the pain you're awareof, tell the pain that you're
going to proceed through becauseyou have things to do and that
you got the mess.
And this kind of self-talk isactually trained.
So it's a technique.
I'm also a big believer thateverything that's going wrong in
our body has a mental andemotional element.
(26:50):
So I always say when I talkabout that, nobody's telling you
not to listen to the doctor andnot to take the treatments that
are recommended to you or theones that you find useful.
But that doesn't mean you can'tadd to it with some mental
practice.
Right?
Take the medicine, go get thesurgery if you need to.
I've had surgery, go do that.
But at the same time, I do anawful lot of self-talk.
SPEAKER_01 (27:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
An awful lot of sending mental ideas into my
body and seeing how theyrespond.
In fact, sometimes these mentalaffirmations can actually make
you feel the pain more, feel thediscomfort more because it
triggers it, because you've hitthe nail on the head.
Yeah.
So this is this is some stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (27:31):
And it's interesting that this is coming up because
it really ties into the cellwork that I'll be doing today.
Just talking to our bodies hasamazing influence.
SPEAKER_00 (27:40):
And and you can take that further by talking about
how you talk to that part of thebody and ask what its message
is.
But that that takes us back tothe answer to suffering, which
is, you know, what is thislesson?
What is the lesson here?
SPEAKER_01 (27:53):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:53):
And how does this serve me?
You know, and right now I'mfeeling all kinds of aches and
pains talking about it.
SPEAKER_02 (28:00):
Uh right now I've got some pain in my neck, and
I've had pains throughout thebody back in September.
My God, that was like the worstpain I've ever had in my life.
And I was like you're talkingabout, I was talking to my body.
I had every Louisa affirmationwritten down.
And one of my clients had boughtme this beautiful prayer book,
(28:21):
and I was pulling prayers fromthat, like a cashic record
prayers.
And I don't know, like I I saidthem every morning and
throughout the day, not justevery morning, to my body.
And I mean, looking back,definitely I'm sure they helped
to some degree.
What it did do for me is call upafter repeating these things
over and over, it was likecalling up the true center of
(28:45):
what was going on, you know,like the the feelings I was
having and the and also the thenew feelings and new limiting
beliefs that I had to battle.
I was battling every day for awhile there.
This, I guess this is who I amnow.
I guess I have to be reallycareful.
And I just said, nope.
(29:07):
You know, I try I tried anyway,and I think I got there where it
just had to say, nope, this isnot who I am.
But anyway, I find it kind ofinteresting, and I know probably
everybody has had a moment ofthis in their life, is noticing
the pain versus not noticing.
So say you have like a littletwingey pain in your leg, and
you're like, oh man, this thisthing is painful or it's
(29:28):
throbbing.
And then you get on with yourday and you don't even notice
it, and then you think about it,and then suddenly it's throbbing
again.
Do you know what I'm getting at?
SPEAKER_00 (29:38):
I do those instances, you know, where you
think, oh geez, I'm feelingbetter.
So you decide to test it.
Oh crap, there it is.
And it's kind of like going tolook for it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01 (29:48):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (29:49):
When you when you say, Oh, geez, I'm feeling
better.
And then you do the thing thatused to hurt and it hurts again.
And it's kind of like I'm goingto find that pain again that's
there somewhere.
So I guess I want to be trulyhelpful, and I'm just trying to
be helpful.
I'm not I'm not pretending thatthere's a snap solution here.
I believe that these things arechronic thought forms, that
(30:12):
these are these often come fromchronic behaviors, movements
that we engage in that we don'trealize aren't helpful or
causing the problem.
There's lots of things here.
So I just want to be helpful.
And so the first thing aboutpain is to understand that when
you give it your attention, itwill increase.
SPEAKER_01 (30:28):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (30:28):
That's just the truth of it.
As you give it your attention,as you look at it and examine
it, it's going to intensify.
Its dimensions are going toexpand.
Its depth is going to getdeeper.
You're going to become very,very aware of exactly how much
pain you're in.
Where our attention goes, ourenergy.
So I don't know what else totell you except that, you know,
(30:50):
do your best to put yourself ina position where the pain is
minimized, and then do your bestto distract yourself from it.
And I can't, I'm not making anysuggestion that it'll take the
pain away, but I think that it'sjust important to realize that
where I put my attention, that'swhere my energy goes.
And if I put my attention onthis, then I will truly
(31:12):
understand it.
It's like anything.
If I if I see an article in thepaper and I put my attention on
it, I'm going to trulyunderstand it.
If I see something going on outin my yard and I put my
attention on it, then I trulysee it and I see that.
And so that's putting yourattention on something.
So that might not be the bestchoice.
There's a mental process thatgoes with that, of course,
(31:32):
because then once you put yourattention on the pain, then the
mental process starts to be thatcomplaining and embracing and
blaming and frustration.
And this is right, like this isnot fair.
Because it doesn't feel fair.
And I'm not going to eversuggest that it is fair.
It's just there's a whole mentalcycle you can enter into when
(31:52):
you put your attention on yourpain.
And yeah, that's not helping.
And I'm not not saying you'rebad because you do it.
I'm not saying I'm bad because Ido it.
You know, I'll roll over in thenight, my shoulder shoulder will
scream at me, and I'll get allpissed off at it, and I'll wake
now and all those things.
But I I I know how to engage inthat thought process.
(32:14):
I know that I do and that Ihave.
I also know that it's what Ineed to stop doing.
That's what I know for me.
Now, understanding pain aschronic means that it comes and
it goes.
It comes and it goes.
And when it comes, we give itattention, but when it goes, we
don't give it attention.
And so what I would suggest isthat when the chronic pain goes,
(32:37):
start to recognize what's goingon and what you're thinking and
how you're feeling, and whatwere the events uh around this
pain going.
And that could be any number ofthings, whatever you can
recognize.
But now turn your attention tothe relief of the pain, to the
absence of the pain, not goinglooking for it, but looking at
(33:00):
the conditions around you, theconditions within you that are
obviously the ones that lead tofeeling better.
SPEAKER_01 (33:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:08):
And those are the ones you want to embrace.
Those are the conditions, thoseare the thought patterns, those
are the thought forms that youwant to do more of.
SPEAKER_01 (33:16):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
Right.
And it becomes a fundamentalshift in what you practice.
I'm no longer practicing myattention to the pain and the
thought pattern that thatevokes.
I'm now focusing my attention tothe thought patterns around the
relief.
And what can I learn from this?
SPEAKER_01 (33:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:35):
What's the lesson here?
SPEAKER_01 (33:36):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:37):
Yeah.
The thought patterns aroundsuffering, though, I think
remain.
And they're not judgmental.
They're just an observation thatwhen we suffer, there's a
thought pattern to it.
When we suffer, there's a seriesof expressions, thoughts, words,
attitudes, energies that goalong with suffering.
(33:59):
And it's only taking placeinside us.
And the only person who cancontrol that is us.
And we're not trained in it.
And we've been raised to beotherwise about it.
And we need to find our waythrough that because we are our
own mind.
And what we do here, what we doas hypnotists, what we do as in
our podcast, what we do in ourschool, is just to try to find
(34:23):
ways to use your mind so that itserves you, so that it serves
your life rather than our all ofus have the habit of using our
mind to make our life lesshappy.
And we've got to recognizethose.
We each have our ownresponsibility to ourselves to
recognize those and deal withit.
(34:44):
And for some people, they'rejust not there.
And okay, God bless you.
I'm here when you need me.
And there are some people whoare fully engaged in this now
who say, I want to think aboutmy life differently.
I want to experience my lifedifferently.
And what we try to teach aretechniques and methods that you
can use your mind to helpyourself.
SPEAKER_02 (35:05):
Yeah.
And I think it's so true thatyou need to recognize it first.
I I can I can see clients' facesin my mind where suddenly they
know they have a choice, right?
Whereas they've been livingtheir whole life thinking that
this was just how it is, right?
This is how it is.
I can't really do anything aboutit.
And now they're they're startingto like listen to your reframes
(35:28):
or reframes that I'll come upwith sometimes, you know, and
and get a sense that, oh yeah,there there is there is
something I can do here.
And it usually comes from doinglike a little meditation or a
little visualization or a littlefeeling exercise where they
suddenly recognize that, ohyeah, I'm in I am in charge of
(35:48):
thinking my bad thoughts, or I'min charge of thinking my good
thoughts.
Sometimes I'll do this techniquewhere I'm I'm gonna I say to
them, okay, I want you to thinkabout bad thoughts.
I'm gonna put the timer on 30seconds.
Think about bad thoughts.
Oh, okay.
Think about bad thoughts, andthen try to put the timer on.
Okay, I want you to think aboutgood thoughts, happy thoughts.
(36:09):
Oh, okay.
And they go through it, right?
And then I say at the endsomething along the lines of,
you know, did you notice youwere actually in charge of
thinking, right?
That you were the person doingthat.
Oh yeah, I guess.
But when we're so accustomed tothinking suffering, thinking
anxious thoughts, thinkingsafety thoughts constantly,
(36:32):
which I mean, I hate to say it,but it does come naturally for
us, right?
Our our these bodies are allpracticed.
Yeah, and and these bodies, evenat the the deep biological
level, are are tuned to stayalive and stay safe.
And and so we come by itnaturally.
So there is a recognition thatneeds to happen, I think, before
(36:55):
things can change.
SPEAKER_00 (36:56):
Yeah.
So I think it's important tounderstand that disease and pain
and and and illness is onething.
And there are lots of mentaltechniques you can use to
address those.
And what our topic today isabout suffering, which is not
the same as the bad situationthat you're suffering over.
Whatever the bad situation is,whether it's chronic pain or
(37:20):
it's a difficult relationship,or it's a job, or it's the
weather, or it's, you know, yourown bad habits.
Whatever the situation is, thesuffering part, the suffering
part has its own process and canbe addressed.
(37:40):
That doesn't necessarily takethe problem away.
But what it does is it changesthe way you feel about you and
your ability to deal with it.
It changes the way you feelabout life and whether or not
you're stuck with this, and itchanges your overall demeanor.
And I believe, truly, that justchanging your overall demeanor
is going to change the rest ofyour day.
(38:01):
Suffering is something we chooseand hang on to.
We do it out of habit, we do itbecause it's well practiced, but
we can choose different.
SPEAKER_02 (38:09):
So that was a good one.
SPEAKER_00 (38:11):
Any other questions?
SPEAKER_02 (38:12):
Not at the moment.
SPEAKER_00 (38:13):
Thoughts, comments?
SPEAKER_02 (38:14):
Nope.
SPEAKER_00 (38:15):
God, we love it when people turn up.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02 (38:17):
Thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (38:18):
We're gonna keep doing this for a while.
SPEAKER_02 (38:20):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
Tell your friends to show up.
unknown (38:23):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (38:23):
I think that those questions are really, really
powerful.
SPEAKER_02 (38:26):
Yeah, they are.
Thank you.
Thank you for those.
All right, we will see youlater.
Okay, we're all on the line.
SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
Oh boy, we're starting again.
SPEAKER_02 (00:12):
Yeah, we're starting again.
SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
Technology continues to be our soft spot.
SPEAKER_02 (00:16):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (00:17):
There's ducks out there in this beautiful sunny
day, and yet we can find a wayto suffer.
Suffering, suffering.
What are your thoughts onsuffering?
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
My thoughts are, I suppose sometimes I want to
place it on other people why Isuffer.
And usually it always comes backto me.
Putting myself in situationswhere I feel like I'm suffering
mentally, right?
I can't say I suffer physically.
I suffer mentally.
SPEAKER_00 (00:45):
Where does suffering take place?
SPEAKER_02 (00:47):
I suppose in the mind.
SPEAKER_00 (00:49):
You suppose, as the hypnotist?
SPEAKER_02 (00:52):
No, it's in the mind.
SPEAKER_00 (00:56):
Can someone make you suffer?
SPEAKER_02 (00:58):
Oh man.
I haven't had enough coffee forthis.
You're making me suffer rightnow, don't you?
Interesting.
Yeah.
I I I uh, you know, as thehypnotist Hillary would say,
Yes, at times I'd feel likeothers can make me suffer.
But the hypnotist and the personwho the part of me that jumps in
(01:20):
afterwards clears that up bysaying, you know, you can see
this differently, or you canthink about this differently, or
you can make it so that thissuffering doesn't really happen.
What is suffering?
Planning ahead.
SPEAKER_00 (01:34):
What is suffering at its core?
What do you gotta do to be ableto suffer?
SPEAKER_02 (01:38):
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm looking at the chatand I was gonna use the answers
in the chat.
SPEAKER_00 (01:49):
So what's in the chat?
SPEAKER_02 (01:50):
Yeah, resistance.
SPEAKER_00 (01:52):
Resistance, resistance to what?
SPEAKER_02 (01:55):
Life, the situation, the person, resistance to your
thoughts, resistance to theenvironment, resistance to your
own learning.
And what learning is that?
I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
There it is.
There it is.
Sometimes learning, you know,the lessons we're supposed to
take away from something,sometimes it's not obvious.
And the reason it's not obviousis because we don't we
habitually think in in anotherway.
We habitually think, well, oneof the things we habitually
think about is blame, right?
We habitually, from the instant,from the instant something goes
(02:33):
wrong.
I have observed in myself and inmy life that most of us are
predisposed to fight to try tofigure out whose fault is.
SPEAKER_01 (02:41):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (02:41):
You know, my life is not the way I want it to be.
So whose fault is that?
The act of blaming is yourfirst, your first embrace of
suffering.
SPEAKER_02 (02:52):
Interesting.
SPEAKER_00 (02:52):
It's a focus on the problem and not the solution.
When we have an easy solution,we don't spend a lot of time on
blame, we don't spend much timeon suffering, we don't resist,
we shift, right?
Things go wrong all the time.
And we go, oh, oh, geez.
And then we shift.
SPEAKER_01 (03:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:08):
It's what we do.
When we have a solution, when weknow what the right thing is,
oh, oh, I should have done that.
And then we just jump to it.
You just, oh, I forgot to dothat.
And then we shift immediately tothe solution because we're
staying focused on the goal.
SPEAKER_01 (03:22):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:22):
Now it's much harder when you're dealing with other
human beings because as youshift, they shift, and as they
shift, you shift.
And you're living in thisconstant anticipation of what
they're doing, trying to predictwhat they're going to do next.
And so relationships can be aplace of suffering.
But if you bring suffering backto what it is at its core,
resistance, then there isabsolutely no choice but to look
(03:45):
within.
Because the only place sufferinghappens is within.
If I know you really well, thenI can figure out how to push
your buttons and I can triggeryour tendency to suffer.
Because it's what we all have.
It's a tendency.
It's a tendency to resist whatis, it's a tendency to look at
that as unfair, it's a tendencyto look to blame somebody.
(04:09):
And all of these tendencies arereally uh the uh symbolic act of
reaching out, putting your armsaround the problem and pulling
it in.
SPEAKER_01 (04:21):
Yeah.
That is so nuts.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (04:26):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (04:26):
But we don't know that that's what it is, right?
SPEAKER_02 (04:29):
Yeah.
And why do we want to do that?
Why do we feel so comfortablebut so sh crappy when we, you
know, it's like this comfortablecrappiness.
SPEAKER_00 (04:39):
Well, because it's a story that we tell ourselves.
So thoughts, I I think youstress this enough.
I was talking about thisyesterday in one of the records.
Thoughts are habits.
Yeah, these habits are developedearly, early on from being
around and watching andmimicking and learning from the
people that we love and admire.
(04:59):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:00):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (05:00):
And I'm not, this is not about blame.
This is about understanding howit happens.
Because understanding how ithappens is sometimes worthwhile
if you can use that to keep itfrom happening, or if you can
use that to find another way.
So we're not taking thatunnecessary next step into
judgment.
SPEAKER_01 (05:17):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (05:18):
We're not, we're, we're understanding how these
things arise in the human mind,but we're not about saying, you
know, it's dad's fault or it'smom's fault, or it's Uncle Joe's
fault.
We're not into into trying tofind blame.
We're trying to understand howour mind gets into these habits.
(05:39):
So the way I try to explain itis that the subconscious mind is
the place where we learn to dothings without thinking about
it.
SPEAKER_01 (05:46):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (05:46):
Right?
A habit is an action withoutthought.
SPEAKER_01 (05:49):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (05:50):
I don't think about brushing my teeth.
I just do it.
I just do it the same way everyday.
SPEAKER_02 (05:55):
Do you know what's amazing I've noticed about the
brushing the teeth things?
I think it's again, it it leadsinto the subconscious, is my
toothbrush has a two-minutetimer on it.
And brushing, brushing,brushing.
And I'm not even thinking aboutthe timer.
I'm not thinking about time.
I'm just brushing.
And somehow I end up stopping,like right before the timer goes
(06:18):
off.
It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00 (06:19):
We have a routine, tooth by tooth, quadrant by
quadrant, inside, outside, don'tforget the tongue.
Yeah.
Like all these things, thesehabits.
And we don't even think aboutthem.
So there's a habit that we wouldprobably label as useful,
helpful.
It's a good habit.
(06:40):
It's a good habit to brush yourteeth every time you get up,
every time you get out of bed.
It's a good habit.
But what happens then is thateverything that we do can become
a habit.
Yes.
And that's probably a dilemma, Isuppose.
That's that is a dichotomy inour lives.
But habits can be really helpfuland good.
They help us function in theworld, they get things done
(07:02):
quickly, and they make us goodat certain things, right?
And then habits are also the waywe take away choice.
SPEAKER_02 (07:09):
Do we want to be conscious as we're moving
through life?
Do we want to be consciouslylooking at something and going,
okay, I don't want this to be ahabit, or I do want this to be a
habit, because otherwise thingswill naturally, in their own
way, choose to choose withoutyou even deciding to be a habit.
Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00 (07:27):
Like I I used to I used to play a lot of sports and
I used to coach a lot of sports.
And practice was an importantthing.
We used to call it get your repsin, right?
Do the thing that you do overand over and over and over.
You know, baseball's my thing.
Take take a lot of ground balls,right?
Throw that throw a thousandtimes.
(07:48):
You know, I used to say to my mykids that I coached if you do
500 throws a day and you take500 swings of your baseball bat
a day, you will be the bestplayer on this team.
And the kids would just look atme puzzled.
And I've had a few times wherekids took me up on that.
And everybody on the team, everykid, every parent watching would
(08:12):
notice the kids who were doingthat, right?
Things would become natural.
And so practice to me becamereally important to become good
at something.
And then I thought about thatand I realized that everything
is practice.
If I practice doing somethingover and over and over and over,
it's going to become a habit.
I'm going to get good at it.
(08:32):
So think about the fact that youget up out of bed and you don't
make the bed.
So what you're practicing is notmaking your bed.
SPEAKER_01 (08:39):
Yeah.
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (08:40):
Let's say you you have breakfast and you don't do
the dishes.
Well, you're practicing notdoing the dishes.
SPEAKER_01 (08:47):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:48):
So that will become your habit and your routine.
And then you'll come home fromwork and the dishes will be
there.
Yeah.
And then you'll suffer.
The damn dishes are there.
Right.
And you'll suffer.
Oh, I gotta do these dishesbefore I can even make dinner.
Oh, I hate doing dishes.
Oh, dishes are such a pain inthe neck, right?
Now you're practicingcomplaining.
(09:08):
Now you're practicing suffering.
Now you're practicingresistance.
And so it becomes a habit.
SPEAKER_02 (09:16):
Yeah.
Why is if I thought about thisfor more than two seconds, I
would come up with an answer.
But I I think it's good to askthese questions just out loud.
Why is resistance such a naturalnext step in in human living?
SPEAKER_00 (09:30):
We pick it up.
Like it's it's we can't dismisshow much we learn from watching
others, right?
I used to talk about this, youknow, when we think about
parenting, right?
You teach your kids way more bythe way you behave than you ever
do by what you say to them.
SPEAKER_01 (09:50):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (09:51):
They're going to pick up everything from your
habits to your mannerisms toyour postures to your systematic
reactions to things, you know.
So so here we are.
I'm driving down the road.
I got my little baby son in theback seat in the car seat,
(10:12):
right?
And he's in the backseat, andI'm driving him from the
babysitter, right?
And forgive me, I'm gonna saybad words.
So I'm driving on this four-laneroad.
Somebody from the right lanepulls over in front of me, and I
hit the horn because it scaredthe crap out of me, and it was
really kind of dangerous, andthey were just trying to hustle
(10:34):
their way through traffic, Iguess.
And I hit the horn, but in thebackseat, I hear shit.
Now he it's it's kind of likehow can he be so young and know
that word, right?
But it was the whole thing, youknow, the frustration on my
(10:55):
face, the fear on my face, theway I would have reacted to the
situation.
He already figured it out.
And he's not even looking medirectly in the eye, he's in the
backseat, looking over theshoulder, seeing the way I'm
moving, right?
He's he's maybe three years old.
Maybe, right?
This is this is the way we pickit up, and we all do it.
(11:16):
It doesn't have to be that waybecause the only person who
really controls my mind is me.
And when I recognize it inmyself, I completely have the
opportunity to change it.
But it's hard to break a habit.
SPEAKER_01 (11:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (11:30):
So it's it's not one of those things that we're aware
of because we were so habitualin suffering through our
problems.
We've been practicing it foryears that at some point, like
I'm gonna assume there aren't alot of 10-year-olds listening to
this podcast, and I'm gonnaassume there's a lot of people
between 30 and 60 listening tothis podcast.
(11:53):
Yeah.
Now you're at a place in yourlife where you can suffer, you
can resist, you can blame, youcan wrap your arms around your
problems, you can habituallyrespond with anger, frustration,
resentment, or you can say theold saying that people hear and
people laugh about suffering isoptional.
(12:14):
So suffering is embracing theproblem instead of the solution.
Let that be your refrain.
It's habitual, but it's stillonly going on inside you, only
being created by you.
Only you can change that.
And that's why I think the powerof hypnosis is we get to go into
the subconscious mind and say,hey, I'm done with suffering.
(12:37):
What do I, what am I going to doabout this?
Well, we analyze where it comesfrom.
Where it comes from is practicedhabitual thinking.
So, how do I change that?
I think this is something I'mworking on.
So I'll just share it.
And I think you know that I'mworking on this because you're
getting tired of me saying it.
What's the lesson here?
I'm trying to get in the habitof every time I'm upset to ask
(12:58):
myself, what's the lesson here?
The lesson sometimes ispractical.
You know, make your bed, brushyour teeth.
But sometimes the lesson ismental and it's emotional, and
it's about the way I interpretthe situation that I'm in.
And my emotions are wellpracticed, my reactions are well
practiced, my negative thoughtpattern is well practiced.
(13:19):
I've been doing it for a longtime, and I'm only just
beginning to try to say tomyself, what's the lesson here?
What's the lesson here?
And it isn't always practical.
Sometimes it's completely aboutseeing things as the opportunity
that they are.
Think of the one direction youcould go, right?
You could suffer, and you cansuffer about everything because
the world's full of crappythings.
And you can suffer and sufferand suffer, and there's lots of
(13:42):
people to blame, right?
And we're really in the habit ofblaming, but blaming is the act
of embracing, right?
It's that this is a problem andit's their fault, and therefore
there's nothing I can do aboutit, right?
So I can complain and I can beangry and I can blame and I can
go to town.
That's one direction I can head.
And we see it everywhere today.
(14:03):
We see it all over the place.
I mean, I opened up my Facebookand I found myself in the middle
of a thousand arguments, right?
You open up your Twitter feedand you're right there in the
middle of a thousand arguments.
People shouting at the air,blaming other people that the
world is crap, and that's theirfault.
(14:23):
And it doesn't do anything otherthan enhance my suffering,
deepen my suffering, and I'mpracticing suffering.
I'm getting good at suffering.
I'm getting habitual atsuffering.
And how am I ever going to getpast that?
Now let's go the other directionand say what I practice is
(14:43):
what's the lesson here?
I go even further and I say,everything serves me.
Everything is teaching mesomething.
Every difficulty is training me.
I talk about with my clientsalways learning things the easy
way and learning things the hardway.
And learning things the easyway, we're good at.
Somebody in a position ofauthority that you trust tells
(15:05):
you something, you accept it.
And your mother leans down,kisses you on the forehead, and
says, You're wonderful, and youaccept that.
And that's beautiful.
Life doesn't tend to work thatway.
Life tends to work with you'reall alone in a situation that
you can't figure out, andthere's nobody to turn to, or it
feels like it anyway.
Or your mother says, Get out ofbed.
(15:26):
Why do you always make me yellat you?
These are learning lessons thehard way.
When somebody criticizes you,you're learning lessons the hard
way.
The lesson is always, the lessonis all that you are lovable,
there's nothing wrong with you,and you can figure this out.
Yeah.
The lesson is always that.
I go to the gym, I don't, youknow, I don't pick up feathers.
(15:46):
I go to the gym, I pick upreally heavy weights.
I mean, we laugh at that, right?
No, that's that's the reaction.
Yeah.
So here I am at the gym liftingup feathers, wondering why I'm
not getting any stronger.
Here I am at the gym every day.
I go there and I just go throughmotions, but I don't pick up any
weights.
(16:07):
Lifting up a weight is teachingyour muscles the hard.
SPEAKER_01 (16:11):
Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00 (16:11):
When you go to the gym, you lift the weight till
you're so totally fatigued youcan't move.
You push yourself to the pointwhere you feel like I can't take
another step.
Yeah.
And then afterwards, you knowthat by engaging in what's
difficult, you made yourselfstronger.
SPEAKER_01 (16:27):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (16:28):
By in pushing yourself past your limits, you
made yourself healthier andstronger and more capable.
Learning lessons the hard way.
SPEAKER_02 (16:36):
Yeah.
I I think as you're talkingthere, I I'm really thinking
more about this idea of theonline verse where you go online
and you start to see all thesepeople suffering, shouting.
And my mind, when I when I whenI see those comments, I think,
what what's going on for thesepeople that they feel the need
(17:00):
to shout it or have their well,what comes to mind is needs met.
And so what leads from there isthis sort of this external
validation for their suffering.
Mom kisses us on the forehead,we feel good.
That creates this feeling likewe need some external
validation.
(17:20):
I know there's a point beingmade here somewhere, but I'm
trying to get there in my ownmind, I suppose, as I talk it
out.
It's almost like there's alittle dopamine hit when someone
yells their suffering, right?
And then someone likes it, andthen someone else yells about
their suffering, and it's itcreates this effect moving out
in all directions.
And then their suffering isconfirmed, right?
(17:42):
It's this confirmation fromoutside sources that yeah, we
should be yelling about this.
Now, I want to be I want to makeit clear that we're not talking,
well, I don't know.
We could go down a long roadhere, but there are things that
should be stood up for,obviously.
And but we see it a lot thesedays where people just have
stuff to get off their chest,right?
(18:03):
And you can tell that they'resuffering and they they always
seem to have a a thing to sayabout everything, right?
SPEAKER_00 (18:10):
So I think that the quick answer to that is I'm only
ever responsible for me.
It's the only thing under mycontrol, my mind, my behavior.
And sometimes it feels prettyout of control.
But the point is, is that it iswithin my sphere of control to
deal with me.
Now I can look at others and Ican say, I see in our world how
(18:33):
the practice of suffering comesabout.
I'm understanding the mentalprocess now, the embracing of
the problem, a well-practicedhabit of allowing myself to feel
bad, allowing myself to embracethe problem and think about it
as a problem and state it as aproblem and blame somebody
because it's a problem.
(18:53):
I can see how that happens.
But I think that's the firststep.
I think the first step isrecognizing it in yourself.
It's the only hope you have,right?
You know, peace only exists inour mind.
And the reason the world's notat peace is because there's a
lot of people out there withoutany peace in their mind.
And if everybody was to focus onputting peace in their own mind,
then the world would change.
(19:14):
It would have to.
And it's the same thing withblame and suffering.
It can only take place in ourmind.
And if we recognize that it'sjust a habit that we keep
practicing, that the only onesuffering about this is me.
And I'll often try to makesomebody else suffer.
If I'm suffering, I want to makesomebody else suffer.
And we we turn that into blameand attack, right?
(19:37):
Yeah.
But if we say suffering is mine,it's a well-practiced habit.
And I don't have to do that.
What I can do instead is pauseand remind myself that I'm
lovable, that I'm capable, thatI can learn, that I can figure
this out, that once I figure outthis lesson, I will not suffer
over it again.
Yeah.
I can develop a new habit.
(19:58):
And the one who's going tobenefit most is me.
The person I'm taking care of isme.
The one who's going to get themost out of me addressing my
suffering is me.
And that could be ourmotivation.
So what's the lesson?
What should I be learning fromthis?
What's my opportunity here?
Because every time I learnsomething, I'm kind of like
(20:19):
better, right?
Every time I learn something,I'm I'm better.
I'm better able.
If I learn something, you know,I learned something when my son
in the back seat said shit.
And I learned that the lessonthere was for me to watch what I
say.
That what I have in my backseatis a little tiny mirror, an
empty slate, as it were.
That's learning how to live lifeby watching me, not by me giving
(20:42):
it instruction.
It's learning to live bywatching me.
And that if I want to look atmyself and say, you're a good
parent, Les, I gotta get a gripon that.
Yeah.
I gotta start changing my habitsbefore I turn them into habits
in my kids.
I'm not trying to put morepressure on parents.
I know they're feeling enough.
SPEAKER_02 (21:01):
I don't think there's, I mean, I'm not a
parent, but I think I can say, Idon't think anyone can get it
right, perfectly right.
You know, no parent is perfect.
SPEAKER_00 (21:09):
Well, my never be.
My goal is not to make you feellike it's your fault that your
kids aren't perfect, right?
My goal is to help to reveal toyou the processes you can use to
help you feel like you're beinga better parent.
But that's mostly just being abetter person, being the person
you you really want to beanyway.
(21:30):
I I don't know anybody, I'venever met anybody who doesn't
want to be a good person, thatdoesn't strive to be a good
person.
And you know, sometimes thefastest way we think to be a
good person is to just blamesomebody else for the problem.
Right?
Yeah, can't be me, must be you.
(21:50):
I'm a good person.
SPEAKER_01 (21:54):
I'm a good driver.
SPEAKER_00 (21:56):
It's it's a it's a fast way to to try to feel
better about yourself.
Projection is just that thing.
SPEAKER_02 (22:04):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (22:05):
Suffering, wow, you know what understanding how it
comes about, understanding it'sa habit, understanding the
pieces of it, the blame and theanger and the resentment,
understanding that it's onlytaking place in your mind and
that you could do somethingabout it.
And the first reframe is what'sthe lesson here?
Knowing that there can never bepeace in the world if there's
not peace inside me.
(22:26):
And that's the part of the peaceof the world that I'm
responsible for.
You know, people joke, what canI get you?
And they say, Oh, get get meworld peace.
Well, what they really mean is Iwant to feel peace inside me.
And you can only feel peaceinside you when you learn how to
not suffer.
Everything has a lesson in it,everything serves me.
It's a wholly differentapproach.
It's certainly hard to do whenyou're habitually suffering and
(22:50):
you come about that habit in acompletely understandable,
honest, human way.
SPEAKER_02 (22:55):
Yeah, I think it it becomes so second nature that
you don't even know you're doingit.
I remember, and this was well, Idon't I'm not even sure I want
to say this, but I will.
When I was going throughuniversity, I I walked into one
of the rooms that we were doinguh major projects in.
And a friend of mine, he now Iknow he didn't say this with any
(23:16):
like malicious intent or any badintent.
He was kind of joking, but man,oh man, it freaking hurt.
He looked at me, and I guess myface, which has subtitles, uh,
was showing something.
I don't even know.
But he said, What's wrong now?
And oh, just even saying it outloud again makes me hurt.
(23:36):
But it really got me to takeanother look about uh at, I
mean, that was hisinterpretation of me, but it was
kind of accurate.
It was kind of accurate, and Iwas showing in different ways
throughout the days at atschool, I guess, that I was
suffering in in different ways.
And so I I tried in many ways tolook at how I was viewing things
(24:03):
or interpreting things or youknow, moving through my day in
in a more, I don't know,peaceful way, right?
Instead of getting overwhelmedor up in arms, suffering,
basically.
They they could see thesuffering on my on my being.
Anyway, I think that was themoment of recognition.
Oh, yeah, that's a that's a goodquestion.
(24:25):
Questions come through.
What about suffering withchronic pain?
I thought about that earlierwhile you were talking to, you
know, this is mental sufferingwe're talking about.
So, what about suffering withchronic pain?
SPEAKER_00 (24:35):
So, as hypnotists, we're aware that pain can be
addressed through hypnosis.
And in fact, there's a lot ofstudies that show that the most
effective pain treatment ishypnosis.
But let's step back from thatand just focus on the suffering.
Right now, I sit here and my mythumb and my first two fingers
of my left hand are tingling,which I consider to be a real
improvement because they used tohurt.
(24:57):
I've had a shoulder problem nowfor about a year, and it's
constant and it hurts.
And when I go to the gym, ithurts.
And I go to the physiotherapist,then I go to the massage
therapist, I've gone to thechiropractor, I've even resorted
a few times to takingpainkillers, which I don't like
to do because I really thinkthey mess with your body.
(25:17):
And that's just my opinion.
Uh, I have uh I I won't say I'llsay I have some experience with
that.
I'll say it that way.
I think that what I battle in mymind from it, and I'm lucky that
I it's a condition that's onlyarisen in the last year, and and
I already have my you knowextensive trainings and
learnings and focus on the mindfor 20 years.
(25:40):
I come to that with that alreadyintact.
So it creates a disposition inme to see the mental emotional
element in my in my disease, inmy injury.
But there's some things thatthat I use in my mind to not
focus on it.
I'll use some hypnotic painreduction techniques, you know,
(26:01):
and it's it's a simple idea,it's a reframe you can grab.
Pain is a message from your bodysaying something's wrong.
And it is amazing how you cansay to your body, I get the
message, I understand, I don'tneed the pain anymore.
You don't need to keep telling,I understand, I will be careful.
(26:21):
It's amazing what that alonedoes to the pain that you
experience in your body.
They train that one in themilitary.
SPEAKER_01 (26:29):
Really?
SPEAKER_00 (26:29):
Yeah, they train soldiers that to talk to the
pain, tell the pain you're awareof, tell the pain that you're
going to proceed through becauseyou have things to do and that
you got the mess.
And this kind of self-talk isactually trained.
So it's a technique.
I'm also a big believer thateverything that's going wrong in
our body has a mental andemotional element.
(26:50):
So I always say when I talkabout that, nobody's telling you
not to listen to the doctor andnot to take the treatments that
are recommended to you or theones that you find useful.
But that doesn't mean you can'tadd to it with some mental
practice.
Right?
Take the medicine, go get thesurgery if you need to.
I've had surgery, go do that.
But at the same time, I do anawful lot of self-talk.
SPEAKER_01 (27:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:12):
An awful lot of sending mental ideas into my
body and seeing how theyrespond.
In fact, sometimes these mentalaffirmations can actually make
you feel the pain more, feel thediscomfort more because it
triggers it, because you've hitthe nail on the head.
Yeah.
So this is this is some stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (27:31):
And it's interesting that this is coming up because
it really ties into the cellwork that I'll be doing today.
Just talking to our bodies hasamazing influence.
SPEAKER_00 (27:40):
And and you can take that further by talking about
how you talk to that part of thebody and ask what its message
is.
But that that takes us back tothe answer to suffering, which
is, you know, what is thislesson?
What is the lesson here?
SPEAKER_01 (27:53):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (27:53):
And how does this serve me?
You know, and right now I'mfeeling all kinds of aches and
pains talking about it.
SPEAKER_02 (28:00):
Uh right now I've got some pain in my neck, and
I've had pains throughout thebody back in September.
My God, that was like the worstpain I've ever had in my life.
And I was like you're talkingabout, I was talking to my body.
I had every Louisa affirmationwritten down.
And one of my clients had boughtme this beautiful prayer book,
(28:21):
and I was pulling prayers fromthat, like a cashic record
prayers.
And I don't know, like I I saidthem every morning and
throughout the day, not justevery morning, to my body.
And I mean, looking back,definitely I'm sure they helped
to some degree.
What it did do for me is call upafter repeating these things
over and over, it was likecalling up the true center of
(28:45):
what was going on, you know,like the the feelings I was
having and the and also the thenew feelings and new limiting
beliefs that I had to battle.
I was battling every day for awhile there.
This, I guess this is who I amnow.
I guess I have to be reallycareful.
And I just said, nope.
(29:07):
You know, I try I tried anyway,and I think I got there where it
just had to say, nope, this isnot who I am.
But anyway, I find it kind ofinteresting, and I know probably
everybody has had a moment ofthis in their life, is noticing
the pain versus not noticing.
So say you have like a littletwingey pain in your leg, and
you're like, oh man, this thisthing is painful or it's
(29:28):
throbbing.
And then you get on with yourday and you don't even notice
it, and then you think about it,and then suddenly it's throbbing
again.
Do you know what I'm getting at?
SPEAKER_00 (29:38):
I do those instances, you know, where you
think, oh geez, I'm feelingbetter.
So you decide to test it.
Oh crap, there it is.
And it's kind of like going tolook for it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01 (29:48):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (29:49):
When you when you say, Oh, geez, I'm feeling
better.
And then you do the thing thatused to hurt and it hurts again.
And it's kind of like I'm goingto find that pain again that's
there somewhere.
So I guess I want to be trulyhelpful, and I'm just trying to
be helpful.
I'm not I'm not pretending thatthere's a snap solution here.
I believe that these things arechronic thought forms, that
(30:12):
these are these often come fromchronic behaviors, movements
that we engage in that we don'trealize aren't helpful or
causing the problem.
There's lots of things here.
So I just want to be helpful.
And so the first thing aboutpain is to understand that when
you give it your attention, itwill increase.
SPEAKER_01 (30:28):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (30:28):
That's just the truth of it.
As you give it your attention,as you look at it and examine
it, it's going to intensify.
Its dimensions are going toexpand.
Its depth is going to getdeeper.
You're going to become very,very aware of exactly how much
pain you're in.
Where our attention goes, ourenergy.
So I don't know what else totell you except that, you know,
(30:50):
do your best to put yourself ina position where the pain is
minimized, and then do your bestto distract yourself from it.
And I can't, I'm not making anysuggestion that it'll take the
pain away, but I think that it'sjust important to realize that
where I put my attention, that'swhere my energy goes.
And if I put my attention onthis, then I will truly
(31:12):
understand it.
It's like anything.
If I if I see an article in thepaper and I put my attention on
it, I'm going to trulyunderstand it.
If I see something going on outin my yard and I put my
attention on it, then I trulysee it and I see that.
And so that's putting yourattention on something.
So that might not be the bestchoice.
There's a mental process thatgoes with that, of course,
(31:32):
because then once you put yourattention on the pain, then the
mental process starts to be thatcomplaining and embracing and
blaming and frustration.
And this is right, like this isnot fair.
Because it doesn't feel fair.
And I'm not going to eversuggest that it is fair.
It's just there's a whole mentalcycle you can enter into when
(31:52):
you put your attention on yourpain.
And yeah, that's not helping.
And I'm not not saying you'rebad because you do it.
I'm not saying I'm bad because Ido it.
You know, I'll roll over in thenight, my shoulder shoulder will
scream at me, and I'll get allpissed off at it, and I'll wake
now and all those things.
But I I I know how to engage inthat thought process.
(32:14):
I know that I do and that Ihave.
I also know that it's what Ineed to stop doing.
That's what I know for me.
Now, understanding pain aschronic means that it comes and
it goes.
It comes and it goes.
And when it comes, we give itattention, but when it goes, we
don't give it attention.
And so what I would suggest isthat when the chronic pain goes,
(32:37):
start to recognize what's goingon and what you're thinking and
how you're feeling, and whatwere the events uh around this
pain going.
And that could be any number ofthings, whatever you can
recognize.
But now turn your attention tothe relief of the pain, to the
absence of the pain, not goinglooking for it, but looking at
(33:00):
the conditions around you, theconditions within you that are
obviously the ones that lead tofeeling better.
SPEAKER_01 (33:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:08):
And those are the ones you want to embrace.
Those are the conditions, thoseare the thought patterns, those
are the thought forms that youwant to do more of.
SPEAKER_01 (33:16):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
Right.
And it becomes a fundamentalshift in what you practice.
I'm no longer practicing myattention to the pain and the
thought pattern that thatevokes.
I'm now focusing my attention tothe thought patterns around the
relief.
And what can I learn from this?
SPEAKER_01 (33:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:35):
What's the lesson here?
SPEAKER_01 (33:36):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:37):
Yeah.
The thought patterns aroundsuffering, though, I think
remain.
And they're not judgmental.
They're just an observation thatwhen we suffer, there's a
thought pattern to it.
When we suffer, there's a seriesof expressions, thoughts, words,
attitudes, energies that goalong with suffering.
(33:59):
And it's only taking placeinside us.
And the only person who cancontrol that is us.
And we're not trained in it.
And we've been raised to beotherwise about it.
And we need to find our waythrough that because we are our
own mind.
And what we do here, what we doas hypnotists, what we do as in
our podcast, what we do in ourschool, is just to try to find
(34:23):
ways to use your mind so that itserves you, so that it serves
your life rather than our all ofus have the habit of using our
mind to make our life lesshappy.
And we've got to recognizethose.
We each have our ownresponsibility to ourselves to
recognize those and deal withit.
(34:44):
And for some people, they'rejust not there.
And okay, God bless you.
I'm here when you need me.
And there are some people whoare fully engaged in this now
who say, I want to think aboutmy life differently.
I want to experience my lifedifferently.
And what we try to teach aretechniques and methods that you
can use your mind to helpyourself.
SPEAKER_02 (35:05):
Yeah.
And I think it's so true thatyou need to recognize it first.
I I can I can see clients' facesin my mind where suddenly they
know they have a choice, right?
Whereas they've been livingtheir whole life thinking that
this was just how it is, right?
This is how it is.
I can't really do anything aboutit.
And now they're they're startingto like listen to your reframes
(35:28):
or reframes that I'll come upwith sometimes, you know, and
and get a sense that, oh yeah,there there is there is
something I can do here.
And it usually comes from doinglike a little meditation or a
little visualization or a littlefeeling exercise where they
suddenly recognize that, ohyeah, I'm in I am in charge of
(35:48):
thinking my bad thoughts, or I'min charge of thinking my good
thoughts.
Sometimes I'll do this techniquewhere I'm I'm gonna I say to
them, okay, I want you to thinkabout bad thoughts.
I'm gonna put the timer on 30seconds.
Think about bad thoughts.
Oh, okay.
Think about bad thoughts, andthen try to put the timer on.
Okay, I want you to think aboutgood thoughts, happy thoughts.
(36:09):
Oh, okay.
And they go through it, right?
And then I say at the endsomething along the lines of,
you know, did you notice youwere actually in charge of
thinking, right?
That you were the person doingthat.
Oh yeah, I guess.
But when we're so accustomed tothinking suffering, thinking
anxious thoughts, thinkingsafety thoughts constantly,
(36:32):
which I mean, I hate to say it,but it does come naturally for
us, right?
Our our these bodies are allpracticed.
Yeah, and and these bodies, evenat the the deep biological
level, are are tuned to stayalive and stay safe.
And and so we come by itnaturally.
So there is a recognition thatneeds to happen, I think, before
(36:55):
things can change.
SPEAKER_00 (36:56):
Yeah.
So I think it's important tounderstand that disease and pain
and and and illness is onething.
And there are lots of mentaltechniques you can use to
address those.
And what our topic today isabout suffering, which is not
the same as the bad situationthat you're suffering over.
Whatever the bad situation is,whether it's chronic pain or
(37:20):
it's a difficult relationship,or it's a job, or it's the
weather, or it's, you know, yourown bad habits.
Whatever the situation is, thesuffering part, the suffering
part has its own process and canbe addressed.
(37:40):
That doesn't necessarily takethe problem away.
But what it does is it changesthe way you feel about you and
your ability to deal with it.
It changes the way you feelabout life and whether or not
you're stuck with this, and itchanges your overall demeanor.
And I believe, truly, that justchanging your overall demeanor
is going to change the rest ofyour day.
(38:01):
Suffering is something we chooseand hang on to.
We do it out of habit, we do itbecause it's well practiced, but
we can choose different.
SPEAKER_02 (38:09):
So that was a good one.
SPEAKER_00 (38:11):
Any other questions?
SPEAKER_02 (38:12):
Not at the moment.
SPEAKER_00 (38:13):
Thoughts, comments?
SPEAKER_02 (38:14):
Nope.
SPEAKER_00 (38:15):
God, we love it when people turn up.
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02 (38:17):
Thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (38:18):
We're gonna keep doing this for a while.
SPEAKER_02 (38:20):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
Tell your friends to show up.
unknown (38:23):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (38:23):
I think that those questions are really, really
powerful.
SPEAKER_02 (38:26):
Yeah, they are.
Thank you.
Thank you for those.
All right, we will see youlater.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.