Transcriber: Trang Tran Reviewer: Emma Gon
Raise your hand.
If you’ve ever had days where you felt like a complete zombie.
For years, I’ve been on a journey of discovery.
But not one of external exploration, rather an internal curiosity
towards what drives my day to day
robotic hypnotic behavior.
And how much could I really trust
and influence my mind?
Day to day hypnosis is not always a choice.
I bet no one chooses their stressors,
their fears,
their limitations.
Yet, so many of us live under a spell of disempowerment.
We have the power to break that trance
and shift our attention from external conditioning
towards internal intelligence.
Today, I'll tell you how.
Throughout most of my twenties,
I felt uncomfortable tension in my body
and emotions that would just keep me on the edge,
and different parts of my journey
would aggravate that feeling even more.
Like my marriage.
And I don’t know what it is about marriage.
But it's really, really tests you.
I got married in 2013
at the age of 24,
and as beautiful as it was,
I felt like I was stuck in shoes that did not fit.
Let me clear things out.
This had nothing to do with my husband.
Although nine years later, he still gets most of the blame,
it’s had everything to do with the awakening I was experiencing.
I started to become more conscious and pay closer attention
towards how my life was unfolding.
I started noticing the glass walls and the anxieties
that kept me from intuitively exploring
a more creative sexual expanded part of me.
My mind had accepted from its environment
all of these associations towards what’s sexy,
dirty, pretty, ugly
right, wrong.
And as I sat in the driver seat of my life,
I almost forgot who I am
as a wife, as a woman,
and as my own person.
And if that is not a hypnosis, then what it is?
And as my life went on, that tension kept building.
As I tried to build for myself a successful career.
I worked in corporate Dubai for ten years of my life
and if you’ve ever visited,
you would have probably looked all the way up
and you would have known the city
where dreams and opportunities are created.
But not even $70,000 in my bank account
could release me from my fear of failure.
By the age of 26, I would step out of my body
and witness myself in a trance state,
dreading Mondays, waiting for the weekend,
smoking, drinking, complaining,
and every day repeating the same stories
that evoke the same emotions of hopelessness.
But there was still a fire within me,
and it kept me wondering,
is this how life was meant to be lived?
And with every question I would ask,
I became more aware of the invisible chains
that ties me to a mind that was hypnotized
to believe in limiting stories
about love, success, and joy.
I was hypnotized to believe in those limiting stories.
And if that is not a hypnosis, then what it’s?
Fast forward.
And let’s think of
what could it be that really limits us today?
You see our subconscious programming in life
is very much like driving a car.
When we’re first learning to drive,
we have full concentration over our gear, the clutch, the mirror.
We’re so focused on the process of driving
that we lose attention of what’s happening around us.
The act of driving goes into our subconscious mind
and we tend to drive without making a conscious effort.
And as we pass down that familiar roads back home every day,
we stop noticing the beautiful flowers.
We stop noticing the signs on the roads.
We stop noticing what’s around us.
We are in a natural hypnotic state.
The familiar road becomes so comfortable.
But that moment would decide
to regain control of the steering wheel.
We shift our attention
and we choose a new hypnosis.
So where else in life are we missing the signs on the road
Any smokers here?
Yes?
No?
I was a smoker for ten years of my life.
You see, as a smoker lights up their cigarettes,
they look down at the smoking sign that clearly says smoking kills.
But it does nothing.
They see it, but don’t react to it
simply because what dominates and motivates their subconscious behavior,
addictive behavior are subconscious pathways
that trigger emotions from the past.
I couldn’t ever talk and cheer my way out of smoking.
I had to use hypnotic journeys
where the mind becomes open to learning and change.
One study actually shows
that the effectiveness of hypnosis on quitting smoking
is five times more than willpower alone.
No wonder why that smoking kill sign, it does not scare anyone.
And so as I got more and more curious
and gained a bigger understanding of who was driving this car
I became mesmerized by the power of the mind.
And I learned all about hypnosis.
Hypnosis is the Greek god of sleep.
And hypnosis is a natural state,
we all experience at least 2 to 3 times a day.
Like that moment in bed at night where the mind drifts off
between worlds of wakefulness and sleep
and becomes open to learning and change.
The mind loves repeating the familiar past,
no matter how harmful.
But in that hypnotic window,
we get an opportunity to remove our focus from day to day stressors
that keep us in a fight-flight-freeze mode.
And instead shift our attention to the bigger picture.
With that wider lens, we can reorganize our mental garden,
clear out the trash and plant new subconscious seeds.
The two reinforce our ability to live fearlessly.
The use of such hypnotic states
have been part of perhaps every culture throughout time.
Some of the earliest records come from over 5000 years ago.
Back to Egypt’s old Kingdom and ancient Greece,
where ailing individuals would visit sacred centers
called sleep temples for healing.
Fast forward to today
and in a more modern sense,
the same wisdom is still available to us, but has evolved.
And it has evolved to address current stressors,
current fears and current needs.
My meditation mat at home became my plug into a new reality.
I learned to reprogram my mind into a body I love
and connect to into a career I passionately enjoy.
And into believing that stress is not the way of life.
And today I work with people who are also ready to wake up.
And I’d like to give to you a new pair of glasses.
One which you could use to see life with a new story.
And it’s simple.
Practice internal awareness.
And let’s start with awareness.
I invite you to write down your autobiography
and witness your existing story.
The one you keep telling yourself
of who you are and who you’re not.
Notice your default habits, your default behaviors and the masks
in which you choose to see life.
With awareness, change is possible.
And second, travel internally.
Create your own sacred space and rituals
where nothing and no one on the outside
can steal your attention away from you.
And in that space, envision your future story,
write it down.
As wild and creative as you would like it to be.
Connect to it, feel it.
And let it be your guide
to your day to day behavior an actions.
And lastly, practice.
You will start noticing yourself in that zombie state
and when you do, catch it.
Catch a conditioned word,
and conditioned belief or thoughts.
And cuts right through it.
Retire that old personality, this is no longer who I am.
You don’t need to accept it just because it’s familiar.
And the more you focus on the future story,
who I want to become, this is me.
You create new neural pathways in the brain
that paved the way to a new destiny.
Let’s do this simple exercise together just to release
what’s not serving us.
So I’d ask you to sit up straight
and bring both feet down towards the floor.
And I’m going to ask you to bring one arm
and stretch it up as much as possible
for you and bring that palm into a fist.
Very good and close your eyes.
And as you close your eyes,
I’d like you to tune in
and become aware of one limiting belief or a stressor
that you currently have in your life.
And it might sound like this,
“I’m not good enough.”
“This is not possible.”
“I don’t have the courage.”
“Why am I stress?”
Of all of these negative beliefs
that you might have about yourselves, pick one.
And when you get it,
I wanted to start building that energy up in your body,
build up that limiting belief.
And as I count down from 5 to 0,
you’re going to start moving that energy from the body into the arm.
At five, building that energy up and driving it in towards that arm.
At four, really moving it all the way into that arm.
At three, that arm becomes strong like steel
as you squeeze that energy in towards that arm.
At two, one inhale deeply, hold the breath,
squeeze that arm as tight as you can.
And as you exhale through the mouth,
let it go, shake that arm,
release it fully and completely,
and really take a moment to shake it.
Keep your eyes closed. Let that go.
Let that conditioning that’s not serving you go.
And bring your attention... you can relax your arm
and bring your attention towards your heart.
You can even bring the palms towards the heart if that feels right for you.
And take a moment to visualize
and bring an intention for what experiences
would you like to invite instead?
How would you like things to look like?
Believe in that vision.
Because that's what drives your life.
As you come back and gently open the eyes,
we are all this one organism.
But the mind with its stories, it tends to separate us.
The more we ignore who we are
beneath the masks that we keep on wearing,
the higher the voice of our true selves gets.
Don’t wait for it to knock you off of your feet.
Shift your attention now.
Shift your attention and choose a new hypnosis.
Thank you. (Applause)