We’ve all experienced stress at some point in our lives. Often we are walking around at work holding stress uncounsiously in our bodies. It’s like we’re carring around a constant weight, it’s slowly grinding us down in hundreds of little ways. I’m going to introduce you to the 60 second anti-stress exercise. Once you have rehearsed this a few times you will be able to reduce your stress levels whenever you need.

Now, the important thing here is to note that this is a form of self-hypnosis … not in the ’spooky swinging-watch look-into-my-eyes’ type … but of the type that you are in total control of. (Shhhhh …. this is one of the secrets of hypnosis - changing state!)

So how do you change state in 60 seconds? You’ll have to rehearse a bit but the key is to immerse yourself in a real or imagined memory of something pleasant … not as an intellectual thing, but as a full sensory remembering.

You do this by doing the following:

  1. Make sure you are in a safe, non-disturbed environment (at least when you start-off to practice this).
  2. Close your eyes and recall a time when you experienced a wonderful feeling of release … perhaps walking in the hills one summer afternoon or when you first met you’re future partner and …
  3. Imagine that you can see the scene from a birds-eye perspective and as you do, gently float down into the ‘you’ in that imagining and look through the eyes of that person … as if you were there.
  4. Run the scene in your imagination as a movie … as if you were there.
  5. See things in color and as you do, recall any sounds that were there … sounds that you can hear now in this scene you are participating in.
  6. Begin to notice those great feelings you have as you ‘re-live’ the memory and let them amplify through you.
  7. Bask in the imagined memory, first person, surround sound, with the feeling you felt then welling through you in the present.
  8. And taking a deep breat, gently open your eyes.

You should have quite dramatically changed your state by doing the above exercise. Learning how to hypnotize yourself isn’t as difficult as you might imagine! Practice makes perfect. Imagine different memories. Fantasy works as well … use your imagination. Find out which ‘re-living’ example brings about the biggest state shift.

Make a promise to yourself to become more aware of when you are holding onto stress and use that as a trigger to do the exercise.