A Moon That's the Colour of Bone

Driving home from work just the other day, my mind turned to thoughts of this month's column and, as if by magic, an old Tom Waits song came on the radio.

Appropriately enough, its title is 'November'.

'November --
It only believes
in a pile of dead leaves
and a moon
that's the colour of bone'

Pretty neat imagery, I thought. But then, Tom always was a gifted lyricist.

Yet, poetic though that song's imagery really is, it again brought into focus a truth I never tire of sharing with clients who come to see me:

If you're stuck, what need to change are your beliefs.
Because the simple truth is that we are our beliefs.

And our beliefs depend on our perspective. After all, we see things not as they are, but as we are...

If we choose, for example, to see November as nothing more than dead leaves and a moon the colour of bone then, poetic though this may be, that is exactly the November we will experience.

We will miss the colour. We will miss the fireworks. We will miss the whole wonderful experience that life in November offers each of us.

In other words, what we limit ourselves to imagining and to believing is exactly what we will get.

Just as when we convince ourselves that we are not up to scratch, that we are unworthy or incapable of succeeding, or that we're in for a bad day, in so doing we practically guarantee that we will not be up to scratch, we will be unable to succeed and we will indeed have a bad day.

But how would we act and respond, how would we feel if we allowed ourselves to imagine and if we truly believed that today was going to be absolutely great; that no matter what came up we would be able to handle it well, that come what may we would bounce right back -- that regardless of what we were presented with we really would be able to win through and shine?

Wouldn't these positive beliefs make us very nearly unstoppable?

All it takes is the imagination and a bit of work on your beliefs and you can change your reality; you can change your life.

You see, the home and repository of belief is the subconscious mind. And the language of the subconscious mind is the imagination. In fact, the subconscious mind really cannot tell the difference between something imagined and something real.

(Really imagine sucking a lemon if you want to prove this. And as you do so, notice how your subconsious mind makes you salivate and involuntarily clench your jaw muscles -- responding as if you were sucking a real lemon...)

So all you really need do is to truly imagine how the positive feels and then go ahead and allow yourself to actually feel that way.

Then, once you feel it, it's just a skip away from being it.

Today really is wide open. It's not yesterday, nor does it need to be like yesterday, or any other day for that matter -- if that's what we choose. And make no mistake about it, we do choose.

Whatever attitude we have, we choose that attitude and we can choose to change that attitude any time we like.

The reality is that no matter what your past may have been, no matter what your self-doubts may be, you are valuable and you are worthwhile and you are entitled to feel good about your life and everything in it.

This is the wonderful power of working with hypnosis and hypnotherapy.

With it we can reach into the subconscious mind and bring its beliefs in line with reality -- the reality that you were born to love life, to enjoy being here and being successful -- whatever you believe success to be.

All it takes is the belief.

Yes, the moon can be the colour of bone, but it can also be the colour of hope.

And we alone decide which one it will be.

" Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't
- you're right! "
Henry Ford