In practice, there is almost no difference between meditation, prayer, and self-hypnosis. All three of these actions share similar physical characteristics. Whoever is doing them is doing the same thing. We become still; we become quiet; we go within ourselves.

All of our lives, we have been programmed, we have been taught to pay attention to our thoughts and almost ignore our breathing. Meditation in its simplest, most pure form just reverses the focus of our attention. We become aware of our breathing. We breathe in…and we breathe out. We breathe in…and we breathe out. That’s meditation in its simplest form. A very common mistake that people who are new to the practice of meditation make – one that often undermines and causes people to give up the practice altogether – is the misconception that we calm our minds in order to meditate. That’s 180 degrees opposite of what we actually do when we meditate. We meditate to calm our minds.

Understanding levels of consciousness is also important when beginning a meditation practice. There’s beta, that’s us fully engaged in our daily lives, driving our car, going to work, talking to our friends and family – that’s a conscious state. The other three levels of consciousness are referred to as subconscious states. There’s alpha. Alpha encompasses everything from daydreaming through trance-like states, to deep dreaming. We also experience alpha when we’re watching television. That’s one of the reasons that television is so insidious. We are in a trance-like state, being bombarded with messages of fear and consumerism and crass commercialism. And when we’re in this state, these messages that we are getting – they take hold, they take root. The next lower subconscious state is referred to as theta. In theta, lucid dreaming is possible. And after that, the fourth level, delta – non-dream sleep. There are your levels of consciousness. Beta – wide awake, alpha – trance-like daydream state, theta – lucid dreaming, delta – non-dream sleep.

Tying this all together, through the simple act of shifting our focus away from our thoughts and towards our breathing, we can reach subconscious states. And in these subconscious states, there are lots of different things that we can do. There are lots of different tools that you can apply that help you in different areas of your life. Just some examples are accelerated physical healing, performance programming, dream programming, stress management, past life regression, habit control for those of you who are trying to quit smoking or stick to diets.

Which brings me back to Dialog with Feeling. When I began this journey of self-discovery 20 years ago, I was like most people. I was all too willing to abdicate the responsibility for my emotional well-being to anybody and everybody. I used words like, “you make me mad,” and “you make me happy.” Everybody does it. Take the next 24 hours – test this for yourself. Listen to people talk around you; listen to radio; listen to television. See how many times people blame their emotional state on other people. More to the point, see how many times you do it. How many times do you say other people are responsible for your emotional well-being? “You make me happy.” “You make me mad.”

What I learned is that our feelings are a unique language. Unique to us as individuals. And our feelings tell us much more about ourselves than they do about anybody else. However, most people have that backwards, and they try to use their feelings to figure out other people. I’m upset, therefore there’s something wrong with you. The meditation technique Dialog with Feeling enabled me to interpret my feelings and what they said about me. Instead of using my feelings to figure out other people, all of a sudden I was able to decipher my feelings in such a way that it freed me from the disempowering language of blame. But at the same time it enlightened me about the root causes of my emotions. As an extra bonus, I came to the realization that there’s no such thing as a negative emotion.

This podcast is designed to provide you with the basest of theories regarding meditation and hypnosis. For those of you interested in the actual practice of Dialog with Feeling, there is an additional download wherein I use guided imagery to take you from the beta state to the alpha state, and then through the Dialog with Feeling exercise.

I find in my practice usually I’m working with some feeling that I’m uncomfortable with – anger or fear or something along those lines – it doesn’t have to be one of those feelings. It could just as easily be the feelings of joy, happiness or peace. The biggest obstacle to enlightenment for people who are doing this meditation occurs when they judge the information provided by the subconscious mind. It’s our conscious mind that rationalizes – “That can’t be it,” “It doesn’t work that way.” Our subconscious mind will not lie to us.

Let me give you a personal example of how the Dialog with Feeling meditation technique works. A little over 16 years ago, my wife and I got married. We were married in

As I said at the beginning of this podcast, this is most enlightening and liberating thing that I have learned in my journey. Enlightening because I use my feelings now to better understand myself. And to paraphrase the Dalai Lama, to learn one thing about yourself is more beneficial than to learn a thousand things about somebody else.

Now that you know how to change your thoughts from negative to positive, the next thing that has to happen is that you have to become aware of it. We are habituated to think negatively. The trick is to pay attention to what you’re thinking. And whenever you catch yourself beating yourself up emotionally, telling yourself you can’t do this, that the situation is hard, that you are bound to fail, replace those negative thoughts with positive ones.

Another thing you want to be aware of is you behavioral and environmental cues. If you are in an environment where you continually find yourself thinking negatively, it might be in your best interest to reduce your exposure to that environment. If you find yourself behaving in a certain manner, where afterwards you end up beating yourself up emotionally, telling yourself you’re no good, then I would like to suggest to you that it’s be healthy for you to stop doing those behaviors.

We’ve discussed affirmations, we’ve discussed awareness, now let’s add visualizations to the process. I find visualization to be an insufficient description of what I’m talking about. When you say “visualization, what most people will think is just seeing themselves doing some behavior. That works, but there are things you can add to it that make it work better, and I’d like to suggest that you use all of your senses. Not only sight, but sound and taste and touch-an example is sports psychology. Every professional sports team, most major college athletic programs have somebody on their coaching staff whose job it is to get people mentally prepared to play the game. If you’re on a baseball team, and you play third base, what a sports psychologist would do, is they would get you into a place where you could visualize being successful at playing third base. But they wouldn’t just say “see yourself make the play”, they would suggest to you that you hear the sound of the bat as it hits the ball. Feel the ball as it hits your glove. Hear the air as you throw the ball across the diamond to the first base. Hear the sound of the ball hitting the first-baseman’s glove. Feel the feeling of being successful as you throw that person out at first base. Incorporate all of your senses-what does the ground feel like beneath your feet?

Another thing that can help you feel better about yourself is if you start to achieve some of the things you’ve set out for yourself. Goal-achievement is a wonderful way to begin to feel better about yourself. On our website, Optimismisaskill.com, there is a document that you can download that will help you begin to create a plan to achieve some of your goals. Very simple process. First identify: what is the goal you are trying to achieve? Second is for you to identify the steps necessary in order for you to achieve that goal. Third, identify the resources available for you to help you achieve that goal. Fourth, you want to identify a start date: when are you going to start- and I would suggest to you- give yourself some credit, and write the date that you first download that document- because you’ve thought about achieving the goal, you’ve started the process.

Another thing that’s very important is for you to identify when you want to achieve the goal by-have a “date accomplished”. If you don?t have a date in mind that you’d like to have the goal accomplished by, then you don’t have a goal, you have a dream. And lastly, identify any possible barriers that might prevent you from achieving your goal, so that you’re not blind-sided by them.

Now, your goals may be very large; you may not be able to accomplish them all in a short amount of time, but having a list of things you can do to help you achieve that larger goal, and then doing one or two of them, and checking them off; what that does is that it allows you to put your head on your pillow at the end of the night feeling like you’ve actually achieved something, feeling like you’ve gotten closer to achieving that goal. I like to tell my students: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

Another thing that fosters healthy self-esteem is keeping your word. All too often, we say things that we don’t mean, and then when we don’t come through, what we do is we beat ourselves up, which feeds back into the negative self-talk cycle we discussed earlier. For some of you, these are going to be new behaviors, and I’ve found it very useful to use support when attempting new behaviors. What I’d like to suggest to you is that you find some people who have your best interests at heart, and share with them what you’re trying to go through. So, let’s say you’re trying to improve your negative self-talk. Tell your friends! Tell your family. Tell the people who love you that this is what you’re doing. And help them be on the lookout for this, and whenever they catch you downgrading or degrading yourself, have them call you on it. “Hey, you just said you couldn’t do this! Is that really the energy you want to put into this effort?”

There’s a saying that practice makes perfect. We’re humans; “perfect” is an unattainable goal. But practice does make progress. This new behavior of loving yourself, treating yourself well, being kind to yourself- it’s going to take practice. It may feel phony at the beginning because of all the practice you’ve had at NOT loving yourself. But practice makes progress, and eventually, over time, the new behavior of loving yourself and being kind to yourself will become your normal, everyday default mode.

Let me give you an example of what I?m talking about regarding practice. Think of something that you are really good at right now. Playing music, cooking, playing sports-ask yourself this question. Are you better now, than when you first started? My guess is, you’ll probably say yes. Now ask yourself another question. Why? Why? Probably because you practiced. You spent time visualizing yourself being good at it, you spent time thinking about being good at it. What you have been doing all of this time is planting those positive seeds that create the positive reality.

Now that you have the raw material to create positive change in your life, we have to discuss how to avoid self-sabotage. Many times we have tried to improve our health and tried to improve our situations and stations in life, but something seems to go wrong.

In our next podcast, we will discuss how to overcome the tendency we have to self-sabotage.

host: jim mclelland - music: anna huff - transcription: colleen mclelland - engineering: dave huff