Self-Hypnosis for Self-Improvement: 3 Key Steps

To use self-hypnosis for self-improvement, the most important thing you can do is practice. Make sure you know at least a little bit about what you’re doing beforehand. For the first few times, focus on just relaxing and getting used to the state of a light trance. Then practice a trigger, something that can bring you into a trance at a moment’s notice. This isn’t a technique that can be learned in an afternoon. But once you are ready, you can try to plant more complex suggestions in your mind.

The most common thing that people seek out self-hypnosis for is to do things like lose weight, stop smoking, or develop better sleeping habits. Hypnosis can’t do these things all by itself, but it can help reinforce things for you. Self-hypnosis can help to take away the excess stress that makes a lifestyle change particularly difficult. In the case of trying to stop smoking, you will still want to work with a patch, gum, or other cessation tool. In the case of losing weight or sleeping better, you will still need to focus on your diet, exercise routine, and other living habits. But such a big change in your life can be difficult, and giving yourself a self-hypnosis trigger can help relax you when things seem to get too much for you.

To go through a self-hypnosis session for self-improvement, you will want to follow the basic steps to hypnotizing yourself that I have outlined before. This time, though, before you start, in addition to setting your internal clock and deciding how long you want to remain down for, you will also need to set your goal for the session. Visualizing what you want is better than just saying it. For example, if you want to lose weight, instead of just saying, “I am hypnotizing myself to lose weight,” try to imagine yourself in two phases: as you are now, and as you want to be. The same works for almost anything. Are you trying to stop smoking? Focus on the image of yourself as cigarette-free. Trying to relieve anxiety or grief? Imagine yourself at your happiest, as a stress-free individual. This visualization of yourself is very important.

Once you have visualized yourself in both states, it’s simple a matter of focusing on your ideal as you go into a trance. The key to the self-hypnosis technique that I am focusing on comes in three parts: breathe deeply in, hold, and then breathe slowly out.

Deep breath in. As you breathe deeply in, visualize yourself as you are now. You are taking everything that is you into yourself and preparing to transform.

Hold. This is the moment between breaths that will grow longer the more you relax. This is where you will repeat your trigger, drawing you deeper into a trance. This is where the old you begins to transform. As you sink deeper into a hypnotic state, feel yourself begin to transform.

Slow breath out. And now you visualize yourself as you want to be. Release all your tension and let yourself relax. Feel yourself move closer to this ideal you. The longer and slower you breathe out, the closer you are coming to that person.

As you repeat this exercise and descend deeper into your hypnotic trance, you will find that the person you visualize during your deep breaths in becomes less real, less detailed and focused. The ideal you that you visualize as you breathe out becomes more detailed. With every new slow breath out, you notice something new and special about this ideal you. Slowly, the old you melts away, and the ideal you becomes who you are.

That’s all there is to it, really. Again, this is not a miracle cure – it is a way of enhancing whatever other steps you are taking toward self-improvement. By letting yourself slip into this deep trance, you are training your mind to become the person you want to be. Furthermore, the trigger you use to go into a self-trance is now associated with that idea you. The more you use your trigger, the closer you become to the person you want to be. In the end, hypnosis is a tool that you are using to guide yourself along a clearer path to happiness.