Ep. 93 Harnessing the Power of the Subconscious Mind with Craig Meriwether

[00:00:06] I'm Michele Simms and this is The Beauty in the Mess, a community where people who crave a shift in mindset, personal growth, and connection to like-minded people come together to start rewriting their stories. Through engaging, honest, and insightful conversations, the show will help you embrace the mess to recognize the meanings and the lessons it holds and discover its hidden treasures to help you start making a mindset shift. Let's listen, learn, and reclaim who we were meant to be.

[00:00:34] Hi friend, welcome to The Beauty in the Mess. I had the opportunity to sit with mindset coach and clinical hypnotherapist Craig Meriwether. Craig helps people eliminate negative emotions and trauma so that they can reach their full potential. And in this episode, we delve into Craig's personal journey through depression and anxiety, which led him into hypnotherapy as a means of healing.

[00:00:57] Craig shares insights on how the subconscious mind works, the importance of therapeutic hypnosis, and the potential for self-healing. We discuss the influence of childhood experiences, societal pressures, and negative media on our mental states. Our conversation also explores practical techniques to improve mental well-being, such as changing your body posture, daily mindfulness, and practicing self-love and confidence.

[00:01:25] Craig's expertise offers listeners valuable tools and strategies to rewire their brains and take control of their mental health. Craig is also able to help with test anxiety and has created a program called ACE Any Test. In this episode, we weren't really able to get into that this time, but hopefully next time he is on, we'll dive deep into test anxiety. But I wanted to make sure that you knew that that was available. Hi, I'm Michelle Sims, your host.

[00:01:51] I'm just a regular person who, along with my family, have had our share of messes that we too have had to overcome. Along the way, I got curious as to how others get through their messes, even triumph over them. Maybe there's a better way, a faster way. Maybe we can accelerate our journeys by learning from someone else. That started my pursuit. I think we can all learn from each other through the sharing of our experiences, lessons, and knowledge.

[00:02:15] So join me for episode 93 of The Beauty and the Mess, called Harnessing the Power of the Subconscious Mind with Craig Merriweather. So without further ado, let's dive right into today's conversation. Hi, Craig. Welcome to The Beauty and the Mess. I'm so happy to have you with me today. Hi, Michelle. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while, so I'm glad we're finally here. Yeah. Now, I know you're a mindset coach and a clinical hypnotherapist, among many other things.

[00:02:44] But before we kind of dig into some of that, I was wondering if you'd mind sharing some of your personal journey that led you down this path. Like, what made you want to gain control of your subconscious? What headed you down this route of life?

[00:02:59] Yeah, I think a lot of people who kind of get into the healing modalities, whether it's therapeutic hypnosis or coaching or counseling or some other form of healing, it's having had to deal with their own hurt and pain. I struggled with depression and anxiety starting when I was a teenager. And this is back in the 1980s, so there's no internet at that time. And there's not even those SSRI drugs like Prozac or anything like that.

[00:03:29] Those didn't come out until the late 1990s. And so as a teenager, I didn't really feel I had many options. There was talk therapy, whatever book you could find at the bookstore or the library. As a teenager, you're probably not going to do a whole lot of anything. Because to me, I really didn't know any different. It's just like, well, I guess this is how it's supposed to be. This is how you're supposed to feel. And so I just lived with it. Just held on to it like wearing an uncomfortable coat for a really long time.

[00:03:59] And it just felt like this is the way it's supposed to be. Because if you don't know any better, how would you know any better? Right. And it was really the birth of my son in the year 2001 that I really thought, or before he was even born, as my wife was pregnant, I was saying, okay, I really got to get my life together. And my mother struggled with depression and anxiety. I struggle with depression and anxiety.

[00:04:23] So whether it's nature or nurture, whether it's just growing up in a home with someone who struggled with depression, or it's just a genetic thing that got triggered, there's a good chance my son might have to deal with it. And so what could I learn to do to help him? And so I just started the research. I started finding the techniques and the exercises and strategies to deal with this. And one of the big things that really helped me was hypnotherapy.

[00:04:49] Because by kind of fighting down that conscious level of mind, that logical mind, that analytical mind, you can access that unconscious part of mind where that hurt and that pain and those wounds reside, where the trauma resides. And that's where the healing happens. And it really helped me. And over the course of some years, as I learned these techniques, I realized I had a toolbox full of tools because I woke up one morning realizing, oh, I don't feel that way anymore. And it had been a while.

[00:05:18] It's just sort of like the reverse frog in the hot pot of water. Instead of getting worse, it's like, oh, I got better until realizing, oh, I really feel better. And I had this toolbox full of tools. So I was kind of doing some other things, wrote a book about depression called Depression 180 and other things like that. Started my own podcast some years ago. But I got the opportunity to train as a hypnotherapist.

[00:05:44] Went to a really great school, Hypnotherapy Academy of America, premier institute in the United States. And went to a real class for 500 hours, two and a half months. So it was a real intensive training in therapeutic hypnosis. And just fell in love with it. And it not only helped me, but learning about the scientific validity and all these different techniques really solidified in me. This is a really wonderful tool to help people.

[00:06:12] And that's what I've been doing ever since. That's awesome. I'm curious, as I have some background in hypnotherapy too, but I was wondering if you feel like a lot of the problems that we endure or go through is due to something that happened in childhood and it was a child trying to process it. Or do you think we can pick up these issues anywhere along the path? Oh, yeah. Anywhere along the line.

[00:06:38] Oftentimes it's that impressionable age between day one and seven, eight years old. But it's also I work with teenagers who maybe they're athletes and something didn't go right or a dancer or they're doing cheerleading or something. And maybe something happened where they injured themselves. And now they have that lack of confidence or the fear of doing that twist or that tumble or taking a fastball to the head or something if they're a baseball player.

[00:07:06] And so, of course, that can be new. It could be something where maybe you're in your 20s or your 30s and you're speaking in front of people. You're doing the keynote speech or you're doing a presentation at the big meeting at work and it didn't go very well. You stumbled over your words. Your PowerPoint was upside down. People kind of laughed and giggled at you and it went really poorly and you didn't get the promotion. And so now you kind of equate having to get up in front of people as being dangerous. And so, yeah, we can learn all sorts of things.

[00:07:34] Brain is constantly changing, constantly learning new things. That's why when you get older and your retirement age are telling you to keep learning, keep learning how to play chess, learn how to play or learn how to dance or learn a foreign language or something. Keep the brain going because you're constantly learning new things. But what if you're learning things that can armor you? What about going through a divorce in your 40s or 50s? And now maybe there's trust issues around relationships that weren't there before.

[00:08:04] So whether it's something that happened yesterday or last week or last month or 50 years ago, the subconscious mind is there to protect you and keep you safe. Your subconscious mind is for you. It may not seem like that at times. But everything your subconscious mind does is for your protection, for your safety, for your survival. Not necessarily your happiness or your success in business or your career, but is to try to keep you safe. It just may be using faulty instructions.

[00:08:34] And whether those instructions were installed last month or, again, like 40 years ago when you were a child makes no difference. It's just computer programming. So, again, whether that computer programming was installed 20 years ago or yesterday, it's just going to give you the results that get filtered through those instructions on how to keep you safe.

[00:08:56] And a lot of the times when we feel unsafe in our environment, we may not really consciously realize it, but there may be a situation at work or at family or friends or just out in the world that makes us feel unsafe. And so we get the warning signals. And when somebody pulls the fire alarm in a building, you're going to get the lights and the sirens warning everybody that there's danger. Well, we also have a warning system, but instead of lights and sirens, we have feeling states.

[00:09:25] And so the feeling state of anxiety, feeling state of fear, feeling state of anger, overwhelm or worry, these are warning signals that there's danger. And we want that. It's that anxiety and that fear that keeps us from walking down a dark alley at midnight, even though it's a shortcut at home. You want to keep to the lightest streets. You want to keep to the crowded streets. I live in Arizona. And while I'm up in the mountains, down south in the desert, Phoenix and Tucson, those places, you go out in nature.

[00:09:51] You go out hiking on a trail and there may be a rattlesnake in the middle of the trail. It's not your friend. You want to keep away from that. That fear keeps you safe. So we want that fear and that anxiety. It's just due to the things we've experienced in life may have set up instructions to keep us safe that aren't very resourceful or very resilient to us. And you're allowed to change those. Even if you set those up as a child, imagine what you can set up as an adult.

[00:10:19] But nothing's going to change until you change it. And while I wholeheartedly say everybody should do some sort of talk therapy or coaching or something like that, it's always great to have a second pair of eyes. There's not one champion or one success story in the world that didn't have a mentor or a coach or a team of coaches to get them to that success. Sometimes those barriers to success, those blocks or that armor are buried deep within the unconscious mind.

[00:10:49] And that's what's extraordinary about therapeutic hypnosis is by just slightly relaxing the mind, the body, whether it's a session over Zoom or in person, doesn't matter because you're the one doing the healing. It's not like I have to send energy into anybody. It's like I'm just help facilitating somebody else healing themselves. You know about hypnotherapy, Michelle, and it's an extraordinary way for helping other people fix themselves.

[00:11:16] And there's Dr. Irving Kirsch, who wrote a lot of books in the early 2000s about Prozac and other things. But he called hypnosis a non-deceptive placebo because we know mind will heal the body. We see that in research studies all the time. You can't get a study published in a scientific journal or a medical journal without having that control group because they know mind will heal the body.

[00:11:42] So if a pharmaceutical company is doing research on a high blood pressure medication, half the people in that research study are getting a placebo or getting the sugar pill because they have to account that the mind will heal the body. They literally know that will happen, so they have to account for that in their research. And so they're tricking people into healing themselves by giving them a pill that they tell them will heal them, but in fact does nothing.

[00:12:08] And so the mind will heal themselves at least 30%, 40%. And when they see, let's say, 30% of the people in the control group of this high blood pressure medication get better, they've healed themselves. Let's say in the real medication, people getting the real pharmaceutical drug, let's say 40% get better. Well, they now have to subtract 30% because maybe 30% of the people getting the real medication got better.

[00:12:36] So really only 10% got better. And it's good enough and they'll put it on the market at 50 bucks a pill or whatever. But nobody really looks like, yeah, but 30% healed themselves through mind because you can't copyright somebody's mind. You can't patent somebody's subconscious mind. So you can copy a new pill, a new medication. So that's where the hundreds of millions of dollars and the billions of dollars reside in patenting some sort of new medication. But really what it's doing possibly is just tricking you into healing yourself.

[00:13:06] I mean, we know this because of the price of a pill will actually determine its effectiveness. More expensive medication works better than cheaper medication. Colors of pills. If you ever wonder why some pills are yellow, some pills are red, some pills are green, some pills are blue. It's because they have researched what color will help with whatever that pill is trying to do. And so they'll add dyes to the pill, such as blue pills work better as tranquilizers.

[00:13:36] Or as sleep medications, insomnia pills need to be blue to work at its most effective level. Because blue is a very, very calming color. And it works for everybody in the world except Italian men. And blue pills for insomnia or tranquilizers don't work in Italian men. They think because one of the football teams, one of the soccer teams over there is called Azure, which is blue in Italian.

[00:14:05] And they think the word blue gets them hyped up. Oh, wow. And so blue tranquilizers and blue sleep aids work with everybody in the world except Italian men. And so it's just these slightly little things. The price, the color, the shape. Having the name of the brand of the drug imprinted on the pill all help to heal. Because you're using these suggestions to help heal yourself, which is basically, that's hypnotherapy. It's the belief that it's going to heal you, right?

[00:14:35] Belief that's going to heal you, yeah. Yeah, even though it's a sugar pill, it did nothing for you. Right. And what Dr. Kerr said is hypnotherapy is a non-deceptive placebo. We're using the mind to heal the body. We're just not tricking you into doing it. We're doing it on purpose. Do you feel like we can get better at believing that our mind has the ability to heal? Because I think on some innate level, we all know that. But yet, most of us, a lot of us still struggle at healing ourselves, right?

[00:15:02] Yeah, and it's like anything that it's a skill and it's a practice. It's that idea of what are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself you can heal? Are you telling yourself you can be successful? Are you telling yourself you can be confident? Are you telling yourself something else? And it's what you practice, you get better at. So what is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again. So what are you telling yourself? If you're telling yourself you're no good, if you're telling yourself you're worthless,

[00:15:31] if you're telling yourself you're no good at this, that, or the other thing, or you're not ever going to be successful in business, or money is the root of all evil is a stereotypical one that people mention. So what are the chances you're going to get super rich if you think money is evil? Or what are the chances that you're going to get better if you just tell yourself, well, I don't, I know that's for other people, but I can't, I can't heal. It's really coming down to mind and what you're telling yourself. But it's also what are other people telling you?

[00:16:00] Not to put doctors on blast, but somebody goes into the hospital for, let's say appendicitis, remove their appendix. And the doctor could say, okay, this is a really simple, really safe surgery. I've done thousands of these. It's really something that we do all the time and is very safe, very simple procedure. But over the next three weeks, you're going to be in a lot of pain while you recover. What are the chances that you're going to be in a lot of pain when you recover?

[00:16:28] Well, if the doctor says, yeah, and it's not only will this be really simple, easy surgery, but a lot of people find that they heal really quickly and safely and without any sort of discomfort whatsoever. So it's all of these suggestions that you're hearing, not only from parents or teachers or religious authority figures or even doctors, but what are you telling yourself? If you're telling yourself you're no good, if you're telling yourself that you're worthless, what are the chances that you're going to achieve success?

[00:16:57] However, what if you're practicing that you're confident? What if you're practicing that you're strong and empowered? And it's like a lot of people may say, yeah, but I'm not confident. Let's say somebody has to give the speech at the big conference coming up. I'm not confident. I can get up there and do a great presentation. Well, what if you pretended you are? What if you started wiring your brain just pretending that you're confident? But I'm not confident. But you're confident in a great many things.

[00:17:24] I'm sure most everybody, including yourself, Michelle, and everybody listening and watching this podcast, you're confident that you can tie your shoes or you can ride a bicycle. I was like, well, yeah, it's a small thing. Yes, but you're confident that you can do it. You don't have to think about it. You're going to walk to where your shoes are in the morning, put them on, tie a bow while you're thinking about something else, or drive a car, walk down the street. If you're able to do that kind of thing, you're confident that you can do it. You don't have to think right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. You're just doing it. So you're confident you can do it.

[00:17:53] So what does that feel like? Where do you feel confidence unless now link it to giving that speech at the big conference or getting up to home plate? If you're playing baseball or whatever it is, you want more confidence. So what if we start linking it to that? And that's literally how the Olympic athletes do it, how many professional athletes do it, how professional musicians do it. You watch that documentary about Tony Robbins. If you're like, your people listening and watching know about Tony Robbins.

[00:18:21] There's that documentary about him on Netflix and you see him doing the work every day, even though he's been doing it for 40 years. He's still putting himself in state before he walks out on the stage. In the morning, he's doing his meditation work as well as the physical work he does for his body. You just got to keep doing the work and that confidence will come. The strength and power will come because you're literally rewiring your brain and resetting your nervous system. You're allowed to do that.

[00:18:46] I was going to say, you do have to be mindful to do it every day, I would think, because to your point, we're getting bombarded every day by doctors, by social media, by advertising that we need the pill to get better. Or look at Joe and Martha. They just bought a new house, a new car and a new boat. And I'm still living in the same house I've had for you know what I'm saying?

[00:19:10] And that comparison technique and all these different things, every day I think we're bombarded by kind of the negatives, if you will. Sure, yeah. Yeah, so to remind yourself that you have the power to change these things, it's very hard to do. Yeah, well, especially a lot of us grow up thinking that that's selfish. Exactly. Or egotistical to tell yourself that you're awesome.

[00:19:35] And so we don't do it, whether that's a more just how your family was, a more of an American Puritan kind of thing, or maybe a more religious thing or something. But yeah, a lot of us don't feel comfortable telling ourselves how amazing we are. And if you're not getting that from somebody else, if you're not getting that from your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend or from work or wherever, where's it coming from? And if it's not coming from anywhere, what are you telling yourself?

[00:20:04] If you can't tell yourself that you're amazing and you're awesome, what are you telling yourself? And you're literally programming yourself to be that. Right. I think a lot of us look to feel better from the outside world, feel better about ourselves, get that confidence from the outside world. But it has to come from inside first. And then you'll see it manifest in the world. And even if you're not confident, maybe there's some blocks that need to be healed.

[00:20:30] Maybe there's just some hurt and pain and some wounds or some trauma that needs to be healed. Maybe you don't even know what it is. But if you're not living to the extent that you feel you're capable of or worthy of or deserving of, there's something you can do about it. And it's not to say it was your fault, but you're the one who installed those instructions on how to keep yourself safe.

[00:20:54] And whether you got hurt as a child or wounded or some sort of trauma, something that may cause fear or anger within you as a child. You're the one who installed those instructions to feel that way. Again, it's not to say your fault certainly wasn't fair and it shouldn't have happened and not to blame the victim. But actually it becomes very empowering when you realize, well, if I'm the one who installed those instructions to feel like that and to protect myself in that way, to armor myself that way, that means I can change it.

[00:21:23] You don't have to look outside of yourself. And I think that's where some people, again, like I said at the beginning, I think it's really important to have coaching and to, whether it's talk therapy, psychotherapy, or just a life coach or something, depending on what you're doing. And Pavarotti, considered one of the greatest opera singers while he was alive, saw a vocal coach every year.

[00:21:46] He just goes, if you win the World Series or the Super Bowl, you probably have multiple coaches, let alone somebody who's winning the gold medal, silver, bronze at the Olympics. You're going to have a coach. Same with business, same with learning marketing, whatever it may be. It's always great to have coaching, but in terms of those instructions that you installed, you may not be aware of it. So how would your talk therapist know?

[00:22:11] How would a coach know how to help you if nobody really understands what the problem is because it's buried deep within the unconscious because it hurts so much? Well, you know what it is. Not maybe consciously. Right. And maybe put there when you were a child and under duress and great trauma, but you know what it is because you're the one who put it there. You're the one who's reacting to an external environment automatically. You're already hypnotized.

[00:22:39] If you're feeling anxious before getting up to give a speech, you've hypnotized yourself. If somebody feeling stressed or anxious or bored reaches for a cigarette to inhale toxic chemicals in their life, you've hypnotized yourself. You weren't born a smoker. You weren't born being nervous, getting up in front of people. You had to learn that. And now you're reacting automatically while you've hypnotized yourself.

[00:23:05] So a lot of this work, as you know, Michelle, is just dehypnotizing people from that. Right. And you're allowed to do that. You're the one who did it. And again, it's not to say it was your fault or that it didn't hurt or that somebody didn't go out of their way to maybe cause trauma in your life. But you're the one who installed those instructions. And again, that becomes actually very empowering because if you're the one who did that, that means you're the one who can change it. You don't have to look outside yourself. You don't have to look to somebody else to fix you.

[00:23:33] Because whether you're doing like surgery, like, yeah, if I have appendicitis, take me to the emergency room. If I have a car accident, take me to the doctor. But, you know, people may go to a talk therapist or some people like to do Reiki or do massage. And that's somebody else healing you, doing the work to help fix you. But in terms of hypnotherapy, you're going to fix yourself. I'm not going to fix you. That sounds like hard work. I don't like to do hard work. So I'm not going to fix you.

[00:24:03] And hypnotherapy in and of itself is not going to fix you. You're going to fix yourself. Yeah. Because this is a deceptive placebo. So fix yourself. And I've kind of come to the realization that, like you were saying, for reasons of being told we'll be selfish or whatever, I'm not sure. But one thing we're never taught, or at least in my lifetime, I've never seen anyone teach self-love, right? We don't get taught how to love ourselves or that we should even love ourselves, take care of ourselves.

[00:24:32] And then everything that happens to you is kind of confirmation in the other direction. That's kind of how we take it. So, yeah. Yeah. It's no wonder that all of us have all of these issues, right? With confidence and everything else. Well, yeah. And then we put up those filters that even if somebody is giving us a compliment or telling us we are awesome, we're going to block it. Do that keto stuff and just like, no, that's going to go over that direction. I'm not going to hear it.

[00:25:00] What neuroscientists, neurobiologists are saying is we're being inundated with 11 million bits of information per second. Wow. So through our senses, what we're seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, we're being inundated with 11 million bits of information per second. So it's like the temperature of the room, which is something you're probably not noticing unless it's too hot or too cold. Not really noticing the lighting in the room unless it's too bright or too dark.

[00:25:28] Like maybe not noticing the sounds around you unless that plane is flying really low overhead. You're like, wow, that plane's flying really low or some car alarm starts going off or somebody starts doing a chainsaw cutting down a tree in there. You really don't notice these sounds unless it becomes invasive within your five senses. That's because we're only cognizant of 50 bits of that 11 million. So we have to filter out a lot of stuff.

[00:25:56] And so that's that thing where if you're thinking about buying a new car and you're thinking about buying a Toyota Prius, all of a sudden you see Toyota Priuses everywhere. Well, you didn't notice them yesterday or the day before or the month before. They were there. But you just weren't focused on them because you weren't thinking about buying a new car. But now you're thinking, wow, my car is getting old and the repair shop says it's going to cost this much. And it's like, wow, that seems ridiculous.

[00:26:22] So maybe you should start thinking about buying a new car and Toyota Priuses get good gas mileage. I should get a Toyota Prius. And now you see Toyota Priuses everywhere. It's because the solution to a problem, your subconscious mind starts thinking about it. It's like, well, Toyota Priuses. And then you see them everywhere. And just like after thinking about Toyota Priuses for a while, you think, yeah, but I like being outdoors and I like camping and hiking and going out in nature. Maybe I should get a four-wheel drive car. I should get a Jeep. When I see Jeeps everywhere, it's like a Jeep convention in town.

[00:26:52] But again, the Jeeps were there last month and last year. You just didn't notice them because there's no reason to look at Jeeps or think about Jeeps. Just as you're not noticing the Kias or the BMWs or the Dodge Caravans. You're just noticing Jeeps everywhere. And it's that thing of your day going from bad to worse. You're just focusing all those 50 bits of information on, okay, well, if you want to look at problems, we'll find problems. And I don't find your problems. But you're also then ignoring all the good stuff that's happening.

[00:27:21] There's a lot to be thankful about. I know the world's on fire and there's a lot of things that can be put in that problem column. But there's also a lot of good in the world. There's a lot of other people helping people. There's a lot of love in the world. There's a lot of kindness in the world. A lot of compassion in the world. A lot to be thankful about in this modern world of ours. But if that's not what you're focused on, if you're not focused on Priuses, you're focused on Jeeps, then all you're going to see are Jeeps. If you're only focused on problems and what's going wrong in your life, that's probably what you're going to see.

[00:27:51] And so this is a thing of where taking some time every day to just put yourself in a state of gratitude or compassion or loving kindness or whatever it is you want, success, confidence. That will really change how you see yourself. Because if you start listing off all the things you're confident about, you're just going to find more things you're confident about.

[00:28:15] If you start thinking about all the things that you do well and you tie your shoes well, you boil water to make pasta well, whatever it is, you comb your hair well, you brush your teeth well. Then you're just going to find more things you do well. And so you're going to increase your self-esteem. And so there's all this little exercise and techniques and strategies you can do to really change your mindset. And you're allowed to do that.

[00:28:41] I mentioned Dr. Irving Kirsch a little bit ago, and he did a lot of research in the early 2000s around Prozac and some of those selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications. And what was interesting about the books he wrote is he did a Freedom of Information Act to get some of those research studies because a lot of those research studies around Prozac and some of those other medications for depression were funded by the National Institutes of Health.

[00:29:12] And there's no law that says you have to publish your research. Oh, wow. And so you just do your research and you can just hide it. I mean, there's no law or governing authority that says you have to publish every single piece of research. So, of course, you're only going to publish the research that makes you look good. But the government put a little money into it. The government owns it. And you have to send it to the National Institutes of Health for their big Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse.

[00:29:40] And so Dr. Irving Kirsch did a Freedom of Information Act and got a law that unpublished research. And one of the research studies showed that 90% of, and there was just one specific study, but in this specific study, 90% of the control group who are getting the sugar pill, the placebo, got better from chronic depression. Wow. Wow.

[00:30:02] And that's not, I'm not talking about Monday morning blues because you got to get back to work or your team lost on Sunday or your favorite TV show just ended and you're sad about that. I'm talking about years long chronic depression. 90% of the people healed themselves because they thought they were getting anti-depression medication. And of course, yeah, of course they're going to bury that. They don't want that getting out there and getting out there that you can heal yourself, but you can.

[00:30:33] And, but the thing is, okay, but that didn't happen in every study. So why is that? And of course, they're not looking at that. So who knows the reasons why one study, 30% healed their chronic depression and another study, 50% and another study, 90%. But it shows that you can do it. And so what else can you do? What else is possible for you to do? If you can hold on for 40 years, hurt and pain because you're trying to protect yourselves.

[00:31:03] How powerful is that? Actually, if you think about it, it's pretty extraordinary that you are for that's actually for you. And again, it hurts and it's heavy to have to deal with that. But your subconscious mind is for you. It's for your protection, for your safety, for your survival. Which doesn't necessarily mean your happiness or your success, but it is that powerful. So what if you use that to your advantage? It's just a lot of people just don't realize that they have the power to do it. Yeah, that is amazing.

[00:31:31] Relating to anxiety and depression, how much do you think, because I'm also thinking of the 11 million bits of information you were talking about, and in the media and on the news, right? A lot of it is negative. They focus on the negative. They focus on what's going to get them the biggest audience. So how important do you think it is to purposely de-plug from all that? Oh, my God, it's extraordinarily important because we have these different brainwave states.

[00:32:00] And the famous ones we learned about in school are beta, alpha, theta, and delta. And basically, the brainwave states are how fast the neurons are firing in your head. The brain cells are firing. So walking down the street, me giving my hands around, me speaking, me coming up with thoughts and daydreaming and imagining or cooking lunch. Whenever you perform an action, think a thought or feel an emotion, you're firing brain cells.

[00:32:26] And how fast those brain cells are firing determines what brainwave state you're in. Because one wave is from the back to the front to the back again. That's one wave. So consciousness is the beta brainwave state. You're firing somewhere around 18 cycles per second. That's what you and I are doing right now, Michelle. We're having a conversation. We're having a discussion and listening to each other. Right.

[00:32:50] But as you slow that down, you move into a more daydreamy state called the alpha brainwave state. So if you've ever been bored in a meeting or if you remember back in high school, there maybe there was a class that you didn't like so much. And for me, it's math class. And so I'm there in class taking notes because it's going to be on the final. I got to do well. But it's boring to me. And I don't understand what the teacher's talking about. So I just start doing one of these and start staring out the window, thinking about how the weekend's coming up. And it's going to be so much fun. I'm going to hang out with my friends.

[00:33:19] I just slow down my brainwave state from 18 cycles per second to about 12 cycles per second. I move from the beta to alpha brainwave state. And then I'm in high school math class and I'm so bored and so sleepy that my head starts nodding down. My eyes are closing. I'm not really asleep. I'm not really awake either. So now I'm moving down to theta brainwave state, firing about seven, six cycles per second. Pretty soon I might be deep asleep in REM sleep.

[00:33:48] That's one cycle, half cycle per second. But the teacher instead sees me and says, hey, Craig, why don't you come up here and do the problem on the board? So I jolt away, kind of look around. And I don't know how to do the problem on the board. Everybody's staring at me. And now I'm really nervous and anxious because now I'm going to come up to the board and do this equation I don't even recognize. And now I'm firing maybe 25 cycles per second because I'm stressed and 30 cycles per second.

[00:34:13] So just in that short term of whatever that was, seven, eight minutes being in high school math class, I have altered my state of consciousness three or four times. And so we do this all day long, whether it's a boring meeting at work or we're driving home and we start thinking, oh, I got to get that PowerPoint presentation for the meeting tomorrow or I got people coming over this weekend. And I got a house together and I got to get the shopping done. And also we find ourselves in our driveway or our garage or our parking spot.

[00:34:40] And we don't remember the last five or six blocks. It was like you've just kind of moved yourself into an altered state of consciousness. And it's not anything mystical or magical or even dangerous. It's just your subconscious mind took over the driving because you've driven home thousands of times. If you've lived there several years, 365 days a year, you've driven home thousands of times. It knows how to do that. Like it knows how to tie your shoes or ride a bicycle.

[00:35:05] So it drove home while your conscious mind started thinking about the meeting or the people coming over or whatever, how much fun you're going to have over the weekend. And as you move into those lower brainwave states, alpha and theta, those are very suggestible brainwave states to be in. Those are very suggestible altered states of consciousness to be in.

[00:35:26] And what they found back in 1969 is that moving, that watching TV puts you in an altered state of consciousness. It puts you in the alpha brainwave state, which again is a very suggestible brainwave state to be in. And they didn't publish that research in a medical journal or scientific journal. They published it in the Journal of Advertising and Marketing. Oh, wow.

[00:35:50] And so they've known for some almost 55 years that watching TV puts you in what's called the hypnagogic trance state, but an altered state of consciousness that's very suggestible, the alpha brainwave state. And advertisers know that. Politicians know that. Certainly the news knows that. And so if you're watching TV and whether it's news or it's a horror movie or whatever it is, if you're watching that, you are being influenced by it.

[00:36:20] And they know that. They know that just by sitting down with your eyes open, with the lights on, watching TV will alter your state of consciousness and put you in a very influential state of mind. So you got to be really careful about what you're doing. It's always great to be informed, but you don't need to be inundated. Right. And so back in the day, the news, the evening news, the international news was 30 minutes. And they just go story to story to story.

[00:36:47] Walter Cronkite and all those people just go story to story to story. Here's what's going on. Here's what's happening. And now that since we've got the 24 hour news, they have to come up with something. And now they know how to manipulate. I'm not talking one side or the other. Everybody's doing it. But they're going to manipulate you into watching more. And what's going to watch you more? If they come out and say everything's happy and wonderful and amazing. Okay.

[00:37:17] You're going to turn it off. You know. And so what's going to keep you watching? Fear. Or getting angry. Or getting irate. And who better than to do that than creating some sort of enemy. And so you're just going to get angry and upset. And that adrenaline gets very addictive. And but it can also be very exhausting. So you've got to watch what you're programming yourself with. Yeah.

[00:37:43] I was going to ask how much of that is an interaction between what brain state you're in, but also the interaction with the nervous system. Right. Because like you said, when they trigger anger or rage or whatever. I mean, those are the times I think I forget what they're called, like light bulb moments or something. But the times when something happens in your life that's traumatic, they stick forever. I mean, you can remember right where you're at, what was going on.

[00:38:12] So there has to be some interaction between what state your brain is in and what's going on with the nervous system. Yeah. I mean, what you practice, you get better at. You know, what is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again. So if you spend hours and hours, let's say just since we were talking about watching the news and you spend hours and hours practicing being angry and irate and enraged, you're just going to get really, really good at it. You're going to get a black belt in that. Right.

[00:38:42] If you're correct. And the Dalai Lama still meditates every day. Guy's 90 years old. And read his books, read the Dalai Lama's books. He talks about the anger and the sorrow and despair of not only what's going on in Tibet, but the rest of the world. But he doesn't want that to be who he is. He's going to feel that. The Chinese government is still bulldozing down his monasteries and to build roads and buildings and arresting his monks and torturing his monks. Of course, it's going to cause anger.

[00:39:09] That's a natural human response to an extraordinary situation, an awful situation. But he doesn't want that to be who he is. So every day the Dalai Lama practices loving kindness and compassion meditation. That's his work. That's what he wants to do. And so every day, even at 90 years old, if anybody was to have it down by now, you think it'd be that guy. Right. He's not married. He doesn't have any kids. And he has a staff to meet his every need and want. And granted, he has great responsibility.

[00:39:40] He doesn't have a lot of the challenges, life challenges that the rest of us have. And yet there he is every day practicing who he wants to be. He wants to be filled with loving kindness and compassion. And even under the most extraordinary of traumatic experiences and situations. And that's who he chooses to be. And he will practice that just like going once to a personal trainer and working out at the gym two times is not going to keep you in shape for the rest of your life.

[00:40:10] Right. You have to keep going over and over again. A lot of your listeners, I mean, you, Michelle, may remember Jack LaLanne. He was a big health guru back in the 60s and 70s before Richard Simmons came around. But he had his own line of gyms. He had his own line of he was a vegetarian. So he'd go on the talk shows, Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas and Diana Shore and all those shows and talk about health and nutrition.

[00:40:37] And he would do his birthday celebration by pulling boats across the lake with people in them like rowboats. And he was doing that into his 80s. Wow. And he was working out the day before he died at the age of 96. 96. And it's like, yeah, it's extraordinary. But it's also if he stopped working out, there goes his health. There goes his muscles. Right. And the health he wants to have and wants to achieve. So again, it's not like Jack LaLanne could just work out, work out.

[00:41:06] And then at the age of 45, so, well, I'm done. I don't have to work out ever again. No, you have to keep working out. And Tony Robbins still does his work after that guy started in early 1980s doing this work. And I awakened the giant within book that really had him go viral. That came out like late 1980s, early 1990s, something like that. This guy's been doing it for 40 years and he's still doing the work. And you watch that documentary about him. I'm not your guru.

[00:41:32] You see him putting himself in state before he walks out on stage in front of 10,000 people. Right. Even after 40 years, he still knows he needs to put himself in state just like an Olympic athlete puts himself in state. And so if you look at the masters and what they're doing, it's like, well, maybe we should be doing the same thing. If they can achieve that kind of success and this is what they're doing, it's sort of like, who do you not want to be?

[00:41:58] And if you see somebody who's maybe really unhealthy and you see what they're smoking and they're drinking a pint of alcohol every day, a pint of vodka every day, and they're eating nothing but cake and candy, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a pizza for snack. And you see their health results. It's like, okay, well then don't do those things. Right. So, well, then what, who do you want to be? Well, I want to be this. I want to be like that. Okay. Well, who's doing that? Who's got the health that you also want?

[00:42:28] Who has the monetary success? Who has the success in their career or the success in their relationships? Okay. Well, follow what they're doing and mimic what they're doing. Most people have some sort of book out there telling you how they did it. Here's the blueprint. But it does, it takes effort and it takes almost a daily effort. It was just 10 minutes. It's like, you just kind of keep on keeping on. Yeah. What is strong what you do over and over again.

[00:42:58] And it's almost like society teaches us to be busy, right? You see all these people with young kids and they have their kids in every sport possible. And, you know, we all have work and we have hobbies or we have the, I mean, it's just, it's busy, busy, busy. So trying to find the time or make the time, it almost seems like a chore itself. And it shouldn't be because that's something we're doing for ourselves to better ourselves.

[00:43:25] But it's very hard to mentally allow yourself to have that time for yourself. Yeah. Well, probably a lot of your listeners and watchers, you know, just know about whether they're in business or their career, the marketing of it. It used to be back in the day, you just put an ad in the yellow pages and maybe an ad in your local newspaper. Right. But nowadays it's like, how many social media stuff do you have to do? Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. And I'm old. I don't even know what's out there anymore.

[00:43:54] And then you have to have your YouTube channel. You got to make YouTube videos and you have to try to figure out where the hashtags to make go viral. It's exhausting. It is. It's like not everybody can go viral. That's the point of viral. It's a unique thing. Right. And so we spend our time just trying how we get people's attention. And it's not just your point of a business and here's your little community and you're part of your town. So now you're going up to the world. And it's like with me, with hypnotherapy, I just worked in my little community.

[00:44:24] Some people down, I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. It's a small community, about 60,000 people or so. And there's also Phoenix and I'd have an office down there, but COVID not only shut down my Phoenix office, but if there was any sort of silver lining, it opened me up to the world. Because now because of Zoom and people's understanding of how that works now, I can work with anybody in the United States, let alone the world.

[00:44:53] So now I market to the world, I guess. It's hard. And how do you do that? How do you look at Google? And I just the other day, because I watch, I try for my keywords and you got to do all that nowadays. And I do everything right. And I make my blog posts and I make my Google business profile pictures and posts on that and reviews and all that. And then I just got bumped from second place to fourth place. Why? Oh, wow. And it's just like, it's like infuriating. And there's no...

[00:45:23] Because somebody gets a new buzzword or something. It's been hours trying to figure out why that's going on. It's like, I don't want to do that. Wow. There are other things I'd rather do with my life. It's supposed to make life easier. And it just seems to make life harder. All this stuff. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. I haven't got that far yet. Yeah. Yeah. It's just one of those things that it's like writing a book. It's if you're a writer, it's probably really fun to write a book where there's fiction or nonfiction or history or whatever it is.

[00:45:51] It's really fun to write a book, but that's, that's 10% of it. The next 90% is marketing your book and getting it out there. And the worst thing you can ever do is go to a bookstore after you've written a book. It's like, well, there's 500,000 books in this bookstore. How are you ever going to be found? It's confusing because you thought you were an author, but you're not. You're a marketer. You're a marketer of what your story, whether it's again, a fiction or nonfiction or what have you, personal growth book. It's like, how do you get it out there?

[00:46:18] And that's when not fun part begins. The fun part was writing the book maybe or researching or whatever you're doing, but trying to go out there and market and get the right Google ads or whatever. Oh gosh. So that's amazing. A scary way. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good, it's great because now on Google, you can easily find somebody, but if they change their algorithm and all of a sudden you get kicked to page two, it could be your, that could be your business. Exactly. Wow. So it's scary.

[00:46:48] That causes anxiety. Now I'm getting everybody anxiety. Sorry. I didn't mean to, but it's just the issues of modern business, modern careers to have to like get on Google and get on Instagram and get off. And then it's not just one, it's all of them. Right. That's the thing, which social media, there's so many choices and avenues and there's no way, unless it's your full-time job that you can keep up with all of these different platforms. And there's just no way.

[00:47:18] Yeah. Yeah. Now TikTok allows you to do 10 minutes, but Instagram only allows you to do 90 second videos. And so now you got to edit for different ones and Facebook allows you to put up an hour or what? It's like, oh my God. Now you got to edit three different videos of the same thing. And so now you got to hire somebody. So not yet. Yeah. And so, yeah, you just do it on your own and that's where it's fun. If you got, you can just tell your video person to edit all that stuff.

[00:47:47] But if you're already out, it might not be the thing. So how do you get out there? And that's like I say, back in the day, it was as simple as put a ad in the yellow pages. But nowadays it's a little head scratching because next week is going to be different. If someone's listening and they want to change something in their life and I mean, and they want to start today outside of seeking a coach or something. I mean, what are the first steps that they could do?

[00:48:14] I've heard you speak of repetition several times. So yeah. Yeah. Well, I would, if you ever want to change your state, if you just change how you move your body or how you're standing in your body, that's one. The best two ways to change state and how you feel is your body and your breathing. So if you start taking deep breaths into your belly and we all am going to exaggerate a bit here just for the sake of the camera.

[00:48:43] But if you hunt yourself over, when you start walking down the street and everybody's, oh yeah, that guy's depressed or he's not doing well. But if you put your shoulders back and your chest is out and you're breathing deeply and you put a smile on your face, even if you don't mean it, that's actually going to start sending signals up into your brain to start changing your brain chemistry. And so you can use your body to start changing how you feel. And if you just pull your shoulders back and especially if you start finding some way,

[00:49:11] whatever it is for you, even if it's just walking around the block or walking, taking a little walk at lunchtime or something, find a way to exercise. Because that's one of the keys to curing depression and some anxiety is just moving your body. And we don't do a lot of that anymore. We're a society that sits a lot because of work and getting in our car to drive to work and all that. So we don't find the time to exercise anymore.

[00:49:34] So if you move your body and change your body and even just breathing deeply into your abdomen, so you expand your vocal cords and breathe in and then breathe in just a little bit more and then exhale with a sigh. That would actually really help reset your nervous system. And it's really simple. It's not hard to do. But even just like you're sitting in your car before work, audibly sighing like that,

[00:50:04] it's going to vibrate your vocal cords and your vagus nerve goes past your vocal cords, attaches to your heart, to your lungs, into your gut. And the vagus nerve is a big part of the parasympathetic nervous system, the relaxation response, not the sympathetic nervous system, the stress response to the parasympathetic. And so by stimulating the vagus nerve, either through humming or sighing audibly or even singing,

[00:50:29] breathing deeply, you can actually activate the parasympathetic nervous system and reduce that anxiety. And you put your shoulders back and you feel, I mean, how would you stand if you're feeling strong and confident and successful? There's that Amy Cuddy TED Talk, the third most watched TED Talk in all of TED Talk history. Oh, wow. But there are power poses, one. And the Harvard studies that show that whether you're doing the Wonder Woman pose and or the

[00:50:57] Superman pose with your hands on your waist or just sitting back with your legs up on the desk, these power poses will literally change the chemistry in your brain and make you feel more confident, make you feel strong and empowered. So you got that meeting, maybe you got some, you got a new business you're starting, you got investors or you got to give the talk at the big conference or whatever. What if you just take three, four minutes and just stand with the Wonder Woman pose or the

[00:51:24] Superman pose and just breathe deeply and hum and then put yourself in a state and walk out there? How much, how different are you going to feel? And then how differently are people going to react to you because you feel confident, you feel strong and empowered. And so it's a lot of just becoming aware of how you feel in your body, noticing your body because you're kind of slumping in your chair and you've been there for six hours. You're typing on your keyboard and you feel awful.

[00:51:53] And it's like, oh, you're not maybe eating well, it's too much coffee. I'm like, okay, you got to stand up and shake it out, really jump up and down and shake it out, shake your hands out. Maybe go for a walk if you can, or walk up and down the stairs if it's bad weather outside or whatever you can do and shake it out and jump up and down, do some jumping jacks and sit down and then get on that Zoom call or go to that meeting and see how much better you feel about yourself. It's just all these little tiny techniques and strategies you can use.

[00:52:22] But the biggest part of it is just awareness, just mindfulness of how you feel. And I know we're kind of running up against time. Yeah. But if you just spent a little bit of time every day, just noticing a couple of times a day, it's like, how are you feeling? Or that phone call, man, that phone call didn't go well. Or you got talking to family, maybe there's some bad news going on in family. It's like, how did that make you feel? And do you need to change that? I was like, all right. Yeah. Maybe you're having a slump.

[00:52:49] You're doing some sales calls and unless you're going on that, that's hitting your confidence. All right. Change it. You're loud. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Before we wrap up today, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to make sure the listeners hear? Oh, boy. I know there's a lot we didn't get talking about. It's such an extraordinary, yeah. It is, yeah. Extraordinary subject mind and body and spirit and your energy.

[00:53:19] But again, probably the biggest thing is just realizing that what you practice, you get better at. What is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again. And so what are you telling yourself? What do you notice you're filtering in from other people who are telling you? Because the same people who are telling you that you hear them saying you're not doing well, you're doing a bad job may also be saying a majority of time how awesome you are.

[00:53:44] But if you're deflecting that because of your armor and that 50% cognizant intake of information, if you're blocking out all the good stuff, you may be missing out on a lot of wonderful things people are saying about you. But if they aren't and you don't have that kind of team around you to uplift you, then you got to start doing it yourself. Start telling yourself you're awesome. And if you don't believe it, just pretend you are. Mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. That's why a nightmare feels so scary.

[00:54:15] Okay, well, if you can literally change your physiology during a nightmare in the middle of the night while you're asleep, imagine what you can do in your waking world. So it's really just a matter of telling yourself it's time to take control and do something about it. Very true. So would you like to take a few minutes and tell us about your books or your programs? Oh, yeah. Well, probably the best thing to do if people are interested in finding out more about hypnotherapy, happy to talk to people on the phone about it, about what specifically they want to work on.

[00:54:43] But I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. So I named my practice Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy, which I know is a mouthful. But if you just Google Flagstaff hypnosis, I'll come up and you'll see Arizona Integrative Hypnotherapy. I also have a course on test anxiety. And it doesn't necessarily use only for high schoolers. But if you're a professional, you're a plumber, electrician, a real estate agent,

[00:55:09] car mechanic, police officer, firefighter, you all have to take some sort of certification, licensing exams. And it's called ACE Any Test. And that's a little easier to remember. So you can email me through there as well. Well, thank you. Yeah. And I appreciate all the wisdom and knowledge you've shared with us today. And I would love to, if possible, I'd love to have you back to focus on test anxiety. I know we... Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. So much to talk to you about. It's hard to narrow it down.

[00:55:39] But yeah, I would definitely like to have you back for that, if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to do so. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. It's been fascinating. Oh, you're welcome, Michelle. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Bye-bye. As we wrap up today's episode, I hope Craig sharing his knowledge, experience, and wisdom has helped you in some way. It's very interesting to me how many times during each day that we're actually in a hypnotic state and we don't even realize it or pay any attention to it.

[00:56:08] Realize it for what it really is, I mean. As Craig mentioned, if we have the power, and we do, to hypnotize ourselves in negative ways, imagine what we could do if we trained our brains towards the positive. I think it's limitless. And I love thinking of hypnosis as a non-negative placebo. That was pretty awesome. And I really liked Craig's emphasis on the importance of daily practice and repetition and changing your mindset and getting what you desire out of life. That is essentially self-hypnosis.

[00:56:39] So I hope you enjoyed today's show. I would love to hear from you. As always, I hope this episode helps at least one person. And with that, I hope you have a blessed week, my friend. Thank you for listening to The Beauty and the Mess. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share it with a friend. And if you haven't already, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite pod player. If you have any questions or comments, any topic ideas you would like to hear about,

[00:57:08] or you think you would be a great guest on the show, you can reach me directly at thebeautyandthemess.com. Thanks for listening.