“The law of the subconscious mind works for good and bad ideas alike. This law, when applied in a negative way, is the cause of failure, frustration, and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success, and prosperity.”~ Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Have you noticed that whenever you set out to achieve a goal that’s important to you or make changes to improve yourself or your life, you almost inevitably encounter resistance—an invisible force thatsabotages your progress and success?

It could be that:

• Every time you’re about to sit down to write your book, you find yourself chatting with a friend on Messenger until you’re too tired to tackle the book (guilty!).
• Or you keep spending the extra money left from every paycheck at the mall instead of investing it in your future.
• Or you truly wish to lose the 20 pounds you put on during the pandemic before summer, yet, every night, you end up watching Netflix with a bowl filled with your favorite flavor of Miss Vickie’s.

If you’ve done these things or similar ones, that’s not your fault. There are likely programs in your subconscious mind that aren’t congruent with your goal, making you sabotage your progress and success.

The Subconscious Mind

“Anything you are struggling to try to accomplish—whether it’s health or love or relationships or whatever it is—it represents a simple fact: your subconscious programming doesn’t support that conclusion.”~ Dr. Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief

Unless you address your limiting, subconscious patterns and shift them into more empowering ones, you’ll be like swimming against the tide.

The question is how? How can we make our subconscious minds work to our advantage instead of against us?

I’ll share four ways you can do it in this article.

I have personally used these methods to cure myself of a mild form of social anxiety disorder, adopt a healthier lifestyle, and reduce self-doubt when building my business, among other things. They work! In fact, I believe my life wouldn’t be as fulfilling if I weren’t using them.

4 Simple Ways to Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind to Your Advantage

1. Listen to a Guided Hypnosis Recording

The first technique is easy: listen to a guided hypnosis recording. There are many free ones on YouTube. Personally, I love Michael Sealey’s voice. He has guided hypnosis for healing, empowerment, abundance, weight loss, and many other goals.

All you have to do is listen to his voice while relaxing. It’s an easy, pretty passive, and effective way to implant helpful ideas into your subconscious. The best times of the day to listen to guided hypnosis recordings are in the morning, just after waking up, and at night as you’re drifting into sleep. At those times, your brain produces more Alpha waves, making it easier to implant ideas into your subconscious.

2. Ask Yourself Lofty Questions

I learned the following technique from Christie Marie Sheldon and Vishen Lakhiani in a Mindvalley masterclass. It’s called “Lofty Questions,” and it’s similar to saying affirmations but more powerful.

Here’s how you can create your own Lofty Questions.

First, you can write down an affirmation describing a result you want. For example, let’s say you have an important meeting the following day. You could write: “I am calm, confident, and persuasive at the meeting.” Make sure it’s a positive statement in the present tense and in first-person.

Next, transform your statement into a question that begins with “why.” For example: “Why am I always calm, confident, and persuasive when speaking at meetings?” If you can, add the word “always” to your question if possible.

Mentally repeat your question throughout the day as you wake up in the morning, wait in line at the store, brush your teeth, and wash the dishes.

When you ask yourself a question, your mind automatically tries to find the answer. It’s a command in disguise and more potent than an affirmation.

You could have just one question or even three or five questions for different goals. I’ll share with you a few of my Lofty Questions to give you a few examples:

• Why do I wake up smiling every morning?
• Why am I always focused and disciplined? (I really need that one!)
• Why is my body getting stronger, fitter, and healthier every day?

3. Listen to Your Own Voice

“When your conscious mind (the Little Me) is full of fear, worry, and anxiety, the negative emotions engendered in your subconscious mind (the Big Me) are released and flood the conscious mind with a sense of panic, foreboding, and despair. When this happens, you can, like Caruso, speak affirmatively and with a deep sense of authority to the irrational emotions generated in your deeper mind as follows: “Be still, be quiet, I am in control, you must obey me, you are subject to my command, you cannot intrude where you do not belong.”~ Joseph Murphy

Instead of listening to guided hypnosis, you can listen to your own voice.

First, you can write down a description of an outcome you want. Write your description in the present tense and in first-person, as if describing your current reality. You can write just a few sentences or a whole page, whichever you prefer.

Once you’ve written your text, record yourself reading it aloud using the recorder app on your phone. When you go to bed tonight, listen to it as you drift into sleep.

I also like to listen to my recording before getting out of bed in the morning.

4. Practice Intentional Daydreaming

You may have heard that visualizing your goals and dreams is one of the most effective ways to speed up your progress and success. That’s because your subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate something real (happening in real life) from something you vividly imagine.

By visualizing your goal as attained, you trick your subconscious into believing that this is true—that you’ve already achieved that goal. You’ll then have less fear and doubt in regard to pursuing it because you’ll instead believe that you’ve already done it in the past.

Here’s what I recommend trying. If you choose to do the previous exercise I mentioned—writing down a description of the outcome you want and recording yourself reading it aloud—leave a few seconds or even up to a minute of silence in between each important statement in your description. It’ll give you some time to imagine the scene as you listen to your recording later.

For your visualization to be truly effective, do your best to feel how you’ll feel once you’ve finally achieved your goal.

The mind fascinates me. A few years ago, I got certified in hypnosis and NLP out of pure personal interest. The tools mentioned in this article are some of my favorites to reprogram the subconscious mind, and I use them almost daily. I hope they serve you well too.

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