Bring the Sunshine Back To Your Life – 'Manifest with the Sun' Workshop and ‘The Happiness Trip’ Hypnotherapy Sessions

It has been a long, cold winter here in the UK, but now that the weather is beginning to warm up it is time to think about how you can start bringing the sunshine back into your life. If the grey skies and freezing temperatures have left you feeling a little blue, what can you do to make yourself feel happier, more vibrant and more energetic?

Is the sun rising or setting in your life at the moment?

One of the most important things is to realise that you do have control over how you feel.  It is surprising how many of us believe that we are at the mercy of our emotions and that if we are feeling miserable and unhappy then there is nothing that can be done about it.  One of the first things that you can do is to start monitoring how you are thinking and talking to yourself.  Is most of what you say to yourself negative, or are you more of a positive, glass half-full type of person?  Always try and use positive language and if you catch yourself thinking a negative thought press the delete key in your mind and immediately replace it with a happier, more constructive one.

What do we mean by positive language?  Let’s start by looking at a statement containing a negative. A good example would be someone who is trying to lose weight saying an affirmation like ‘I don’t want to eat chocolate anymore.’  A much more useful affirmation would be ‘I only choose to eat healthy food that I know is good for me’ as with the first statement you are basically telling yourself to eat chocolate, as your mind will just ignore the ‘don’t’.  Do you say horrible things to yourself if you think you have made a mistake or haven’t done something that you intended to do?  If so, next time that you call yourself a ‘stupid idiot’ or something a lot stronger, stop and think for a second.  Would you say that kind of thing to a loved one, friend or work colleague? 

So why are you being so critical of yourself?  Every time you say something negative about yourself, you are compounding it in your unconscious mind.  If you hold onto negative beliefs about yourself in your unconscious mind, you will find that you attract people and situations into your life that just reflect those beliefs back to you. So rewire your unconscious mind with positive beliefs about yourself, by being as kind, gentle and caring to yourself as you would be to anyone else in your life that you love. Then you will find that the people in your life will start offering you more consideration, love and attention and the events in your life will run much more smoothly and offer you greater opportunities.  You have to cherish yourself before you can be truly loved or give love to someone else.

Do you complain a lot?  Do you expect situations in your life to go badly?  Do you think that you are unlucky and that you have been born under a cursed star?  Every time you complain about something or someone, you are just locking yourself further into your misery and despair. Just look at how we Brits complain about the weather.  As soon as the sun comes out we are ‘too hot’, if it rains our day is ruined and if it snows the world has come to an end.  How much happier would we all be if we just accepted the weather we were experiencing on any given day?  Much better would be to bless the weather and give thanks for the awesome miracle that is the sun rising each morning and for the start of another day where we can choose to be as happy and content as we want to be.

Let springtime bring the sunshine back!

Do you choose activities, friends and surroundings that bring a smile to your face and help you feel great?  Should is a very pervasive and potentially damaging word and if you habitually feel that you don’t want to crawl out of bed in the morning to face another day, then maybe you need to examine all the ‘shoulds’ in your life.  So where do you feel obligated?  Are there friends that you see through habit and because you feel obligated?  Do you have friends who always seem to pull you down, draining your energy and always leaving you feeling flat? Would you be happier if you broke away from them and spent time with people or doing activities that make you happier and more energised?  Are you doing a job that you hate or find boring because you feel you ‘should’?  Maybe it’s because you are trying to live up to family expectation, or you feel that you have to do a certain type of work to earn enough money or that you have invested too much time and effort just to walk away now.  While these are all considerations, are they worth being miserable and unfulfilled for the rest of your life?  If you are doing anything that doesn’t bring you joy, have a look at how you could do it differently or choose something that does make your heart sing.  If you are dragging yourself to the gym every day because you feel you ‘should’ exercise, why not look at all the other different types of exercise you could do that would put the bounce back in your step like yoga, football, cycling, ice skating or even mountain climbing?

If you want to be happy you can start today.  You just have to start making different choices and making your own feelings of joy, peace and contentment a priority.  This may seem like selfishness at first, but can you really make other people happy if you are miserable and negative all the time?  Like attracts like, so allowing more light, fun, joy and laughter into your world is going to open up inspiring new avenues for you and bring exciting new people into your life. Choosing to be happy will help you know that you can reach the goals that you set, that you can take the exercise and eat the healthy food your body has been craving and that you can have peaceful, loving relationships.  Because you know that happiness is a choice, you will also lighten up when things do go wrong or wander off track a bit.  It is only the meaning we give to events that makes us unhappy, not the events themselves.  So if the train is late in the morning it is entirely your choice as to whether you get all riled up and angry or whether you just chill out and treat yourself to another coffee.

If you would like some help bringing the sunshine back into your life and consciously start choosing to feel happy, I have some great resources for you.

On Monday 22^nd April at 7.30pm, I am running the ‘Manifest with the Sun Workshop & Meditation – Taurus and the Second House’ at the The Peace Hospice, Peace Drive, Watford, WD17 3PH.  Entrance fee £15.

The sun moves into a new sign of the zodiac around the 20^th of each month, allowing us to tap into the energies of that sign to make powerful, positive changes in our lives. This month the sun is moving into the fixed earth sign of Taurus.  Taurus represents the material foundation of our world, so when the sun is transiting that sign it is a good time to reflect on what we have built, what we have, what we value and how solid we think our foundations are.  How have we nurtured our talents and do we have the ability to feed, clothe and sustain ourselves?  It is about our earnings and how we use them.

Taurus is also a sensual, physical sign, so are you taking enough care of your body?  Do you choose to eat a healthy diet and take enough exercise?  Are you open to giving and receiving physical affection?  Do you give yourself enough time to relax and enjoy life?

In this workshop we will be doing a series of practical exercises and meditations designed to help us find out what it is that we truly want to manifest in these areas and release any blockages to our success.  By shining the warming, healing light of the sun into these areas of our lives, we will be able to identify and clearly see the steps that we need to start taking to achieve our goals and manifest our desires.

If you prefer working on a one-to-one basis, I have put together a special set of three hypnotherapy sessions called ‘The HappinessTrip’ which have been created especially to help you bring more sunshine and joy into your life.  During these special hypnosis sessions I will be helping you to identify why you are feeling unhappy, where these negative emotions are coming from and what areas of your life need some adjustment or unhelpful beliefs changing. I will give you some great practical tools to help you relax, cope with anxiety and improve your confidence.  The ‘Happiness Trip’ costs £170 and is a great investment because you will find that being happy and content will improve your health, your relationships and you will find that you start making much better choices in your life as you will be deciding from a place of joy not fear.

So if you want to book onto the ‘Manifest with the Sun Workshop & Meditation – Taurus and the Second House’ of book ‘The Happiness Trip’ set of three hypnotherapy sessions call me on 0777 051 5377 or email: cmarsh@cmhypnotherapy.co.uk

Choose to bring the sunshine back to your life today!

So Where Do We Start Our Weight Loss Quest?

Look at How You Are Thinking and Talking To Yourself - for us humans everything starts in the mind. You will find it much easier to lose weight if you are happy and thinking positively. Avoid using the words ‘weight loss’ as our subconscious minds tend to have very negative associations with the word ‘loss’. Always try to think of everything you will gain by being slimmer. Always think in the positive and concentrate your mind and thoughts on how you want to be; visualise the slimmer you enjoying your life and all the things that you want to do. Be kind and gentle when you are talking to yourself; and again always use a positive voice. Often we are much harder on ourselves than we would ever be on others – would you call one of your friends a ‘fat pig’ for instance? When talking with others, do not dwell on being overweight – talk about how slim you are now, all the things you can do now that you could not do before, and how much you are enjoying your new eating habits and exercise regime.

Affirmations are very useful; repeated out loud or silently to yourself and always positive (if you include the word not, as in ‘I will not eat lots of chocolate’ your subconscious will knock off the word not for you, and you will find yourself wanting eat even more of it!)

I achieve my goals regarding my weight effortlessly and joyfully
I choose the weight that I want to be
I choose to eat healthy and nutritious food
I am happy that I am the weight that I choose to be
I enjoy exercising and am pleased at the benefits it brings me

Set Your Goal – how much do you want to lose? Be realistic about how much you would like to lose and how long it’s going to take you. Work out your BMI and see where you really are on the charts. Very few women are naturally a size 8, and none are healthy at Size 0. The average size for a woman in this country is a 14-16. Remember, being underweight poses as many, if not more health problems as being overweight. In addition, you want to build a healthy eating plan that you will be able to keep up and, very importantly, enjoy for the rest of your life.

Start a Food Diary – write down in a notebook everything you eat – even the half of fish finger you took off your child’s plate – you will probably be amazed at what you can get through in one day. Also note down how you felt before you started eating and what types of food you chose to eat based on those feelings

Eat Three Meals A Day – and one of them has to be breakfast! If you want to snack have fresh fruit, nuts, or seeds. Do not skip meals, as this will lead to fluctuations in your blood sugar levels.

You Can Eat Everything – there are no ‘bad’ foods. You can still enjoy chocolate, cakes, pasta and potatoes but not all the time and not as a substitute for proper meals. Three packets of crisps, a Mars Bar and two glasses of wine a healthy dinner doth not make!

Get Enough Sleep – there is a lot of current research that says that getting enough sleep is crucial if you want to lose weight. Lack of sleep causes the ‘hunger hormones’ to malfunction which leads to an increase in appetite and an inability to recognise when we have eaten enough. Lack of sleep can also lead to sugar cravings. One study showed that the increase in appetite caused by not sleeping enough can cause people to consume an extra 1,000 calories a day. Another has shown that those who regularly sleep between seven to eight hours a night have the lowest BMIs. (See http://www.horlicks.co.uk/ for Dr Stanley’s sleep report)

Up Your Exercise Levels – the equation is really quite simple; if you consume too many calories that are not burned off, you will convert these calories into fat which will be deposited somewhere in your body – usually where you would least like to see it go! Try to boost your activity levels; walk if you can, take the stairs rather than the lift, don’t use the remote but change the channels on the set, go swimming, join a gym. Again, it’s important that it’s something you enjoy; if you don’t enjoy it you will not keep doing it for long.

Drink Plenty of Liquid – quite often we misinterpret thirst for hunger. Before you reach for the biscuit barrel, have a large glass of water, as you may just be thirsty. Try to keep well hydrated all the time by drinking plenty of plain water – remember alcohol dehydrates you, and coffee and tea are diuretics which help you lose water from your body.