#99 Relax & Sleep Hypnosis Daily - THE POWER OF YOUR THOUGHTS (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Relax and Sleep Hypnosis Daily. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. If you would like to support this free service please go to paypal.me forward slash Jason Newland and the link is on my website and on my Facebook page.

Now I have made a few changes. One of the changes, well the main change really, is that due to requests I have added an extra recording every time I do a new recording. So there's the regular recording without any background music.

There's the other one that I normally do which is a recording with background music and that lasts for two hours. And now I'm also including the regular recording which has five hours of music. So this is being requested a few times so I decided to to do it and had quite a bit of positive feedback.

Especially for people that are listening because they want to go to sleep and the music's very relaxing. It's by Kevin MacLeod and the details for the music and the copyright information will be in the details section of the podcast. So I just thought I'd let you know.

So there'll be three versions of this recording to choose from. So what I thought of doing today is something a bit different, a little bit different. Now it's quite well known in psychology, the psychology world that how we think about ourselves affects our behavior.

How we think about ourselves affects how we feel about ourselves. How we think about ourselves affects how we feel in the moment. So the way that you know our minds work, the way that when we think about something we may see an image and that image kind of has a quite an impact upon how we feel.

So the way we think and what we think is hugely important to take, I guess to take stock of that, to actually start to notice what we're thinking about and how we are, you know, the things that we're saying to ourselves. Because ultimately what we think about ourselves, what we say to ourselves, and what we say about ourselves generally is just going to happen very, very often.

You know it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense.

If we keep telling ourselves something then our unconscious mind pretty much just picks it up and thinks that that's what we actually want and then we start to move towards it more and more. A very basic example would be if you said to someone and you're on a journey, there's another passenger, maybe you're in the back of a car, the passenger next to you, you know, you say to them, I can't believe how many red cars there are today on the motorway, it's so many red cars.

And that person's starting to look and what are they going to notice? They're going to notice the red cars.

Wow, there really are a lot of red cars. Blimey, how weird when the simple fact is there may be way more blue cars than there are red cars. And I think statistically there probably are a lot less red cars on the road than there are black cars and blue cars.

But you're noticing, oh wow, those red cars, they're everywhere. That's a very simplistic example of how easily we can be influenced to notice certain things and start believing it. To start believing that wow, there are really a lot more red cars than normal when there probably isn't.

But that's what you're focusing on. And we are magical in a way that we can talk ourselves into believing absolutely anything. We're just built that way.

Think of all the things that we believed that we were told when we were kids. And not just the fun stuff, not just the small lies that actually made things like Christmas magical for us when we were little kids maybe. Or losing a tooth could be exciting because the tooth fairy is going to come and leave some money behind.

And that stuff, those little lies can bring fun to a child's life. But that child will believe pretty much every single thing that he or she hears from the parents. Because from a certain age, maybe up to the age of seven.

So before that child has the ability to cognize, to really sort of research or to fact check stuff that they're being told, they absorb it. And if they hear it enough, they'll believe it. And they may spend their entire life believing it.

So if a small child is told by their parents, you're gifted. You've got special, highly intelligent, and you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. And that child is told that from the beginning of their life, up to the age of seven.

They're going to believe it and there's a good chance they'll keep that going. That belief system will be there for the entirety of their life. And even misfortune and, you know, whatever happens in life, they will be able to maneuver themselves around it and still have that belief.

Alternatively, of course, there's the flip side, you know, if a child is told something negative, and if they hear it enough times, they'll believe that. And they won't question it. And they may keep that all their life.

Which is why I think it's really important as we get to adults and any age to start to question our belief systems, start to question the things we believe in, especially those things that are holding us back from being happy. So this recording isn't really about that necessarily. But it's based upon the ideas that I just said, how we view ourself affects how we feel in this very moment.

So for example, if you think about yourself as being highly stressed, or anxious, or unable to sleep, which are the kind of things to, I'm guessing you may actually refer to yourself in that way. Some people listening, I can never sleep, I'm an insomniac, almost like that's something that you are. That's a fixed state of being, I am an insomniac.

Not sure how helpful that particular label is, outside of communicating an issue with sleeping, or an issue with not being able to sleep as much as you'd like. You know, insomniac is, you know, most people are going to understand what you mean when you say that word. They might not understand the severity of your situation.

In the same way, I am anxious. Most people are going to understand the word and the meaning of the word, but not the meaning of your experience. But then if you keep saying these words, you keep referring to yourself in that way, I am this, then you're getting in your own way.

Because you are ultimately hypnotizing yourself continuously by keep saying these things to yourself, by keep thinking these negative thoughts. You are almost, I know it doesn't feel like it, but you're asking your unconscious mind to give you that, because that's what you're focusing on. And when you focus on something, the more you focus on something, that is what your unconscious mind tries to give you.

You get what you focus on. And I don't mean immediately. Otherwise, I'd be living in a harem right now.

I want to be surrounded, you know, I want to be surrounded by 50 women. I mean, not, not immediately. I might take three months.

But seriously, what you think about has a huge, huge, much bigger effect than probably you ever realize. So how you think about yourself, how you perceive yourself, the things you say about yourself, either to you or to others. I've been telling people for 40 years, or maybe 30 years, I'm rubbish at maths.

I'm crap with numbers. I'm, I'm, you know, absolutely useless. I can't, can't do anything with mathematics.

Now I've been telling, I've been telling myself that I've been telling other people that for most of my adult life. And I believed it all the way through my childhood. Because I kind of, I guess I was told that as a kid as well.

I was told many, many times that I was stupid. And I was an idiot. And I just banged the microphone.

Lovely. So it took me years to realize the effect that that had on me. And we are all affected, have all been affected by the things that we were told at a very, very early age.

But it doesn't stop there. Because if you're, for example, if you're living with someone, and they're telling you the same thing over and over again, over years and years and years, eventually, you'll be affected by it, deeply affected by it without even realizing why. So it's not just, you know, a small child that can be affected by the things that have been said to him or her.

Adults too. It's just as an adult, we have the brain capacity to say, Oi, wait a minute. That's not right.

That's wrong. Don't say that to me. Or why am I saying that to myself? Why am I putting myself down? Why am I telling myself I can't sleep over and over again? Oh, you know, daily, however many times, however many years, because you know, logically, you may say, well, I say it because it's true.

Well, actually, it's true, because you say it. Stop saying it, say something different, and your life will change. When you hear the cat in the garden, you'll feel really relaxed.

Can't believe the cats come out when I'm trying to do recording. So what you say to yourself, how you think about yourself, how you view yourself, affects how you feel, affects the future you. And I could talk about this for another 10 hours.

But I won't, because that's not fair on anyone. The simple fact is, it's very, very simple. What you say to yourself affects your life.

And you might say, oh, I say something horrible to myself now, made no difference. Maybe, maybe it didn't, because you know, you were just saying it for the sake of it, to make a point. I could say to myself, oh, I'm so skinny.

I know I'm not skinny. Makes no difference if I say it. But if you keep saying something to yourself over and over again, it has an effect.

And it's either one of two things, either positive or negative. And that depends upon what you say. If you say something positive to yourself, then you have a positive effect.

Changes your life in a positive way. If what you're saying to yourself, or how you feel about yourself, or how you see yourself, you know, visually in your mind, if that's negative, then it's going to have a negative effect. It really is that simple.

So what we need to do, and I say need as in, yeah, I think need is the right word, hugely, hugely important. And that is to start to notice the things that we say to ourselves. Start to notice the way that we perceive ourselves.

What do we like about ourselves? What do you like about yourself? The way, well, the way you actually see yourself, is it real? Is it true? Because remember, we never see ourselves the way how other people see us. I mean, firstly, we see ourselves in the mirror, which is back to front, isn't it? So that's not how we look to other people. Secondly, people are going to see us differently depending on what height they are.

If someone's six foot, and they're looking at me, I'm five, eight, I'm going to look different to them, to someone that's looking up from being five, four, looking up at me, looking up my nose, what a lovely sight. Or someone six foot three, looking down upon my bald spot, probably just as bad. So they're going to perceive me differently, going to see me different.

And then everybody's going to see me different anyway. Because at their own perception, their own stuff that's going on in their head. Some people will look at me thinking, oh, he's old.

Some people will look at me and think, he's going bald. Another person might look and think, wow, he's super hot. Maybe not.

But you know, people are going to see you differently to other people. So our perception of ourselves, maybe shouldn't be quite so rigid. Anyway, so the idea of me, I'm fat, I'm overweight, I am.

Now, that's noticeable if I'm around lots of really slim people. But there's parts of the world where I would be a medium, not a large. So you know, it depends where you are.

Depends who you're around. And it gives you a different perspective. Oh, look at that person.

They're a lot bigger than me. I don't, I don't feel, don't feel fat around them. I think I'm going to spend more time around them.

But you know, it's perception. So how we see ourselves, and quite often, the way we think of ourselves can be based on how we think other people see us. Oh, I'm boring.

I'm, I'm this, I'm that. Well, not everybody's going to see and perceive you and experience you the same way. Just like you don't experience everybody else the same way.

So that said, this leads me to the actual part of the recording, which can help you to feel different. Now, what I want you to do is to take a snapshot of yourself. So to play, to put on the, that role of being a stressed person or anxious person, or insomniac.

So put that little, put that little hat on for just a couple of seconds. And see yourself being that person that you spent maybe a lot of time thinking that you are. Even though the reality is, you're way more than just that word, that word stressed, or anxious.

You're much more than the word, you know, not being able to sleep, forgot the name of the word now. So, and the reason because I don't want to think of it, because I don't like the word. Weird, isn't it? I actually do this recordings to help insomniacs, but I don't actually, and people with stress issues, but I don't like the word.

It's just seems so, so limiting. So almost definite. And it's not definite.

It's temporary. And also what's proven time and time again is people that lie in bed thinking that they're not had no sleep, actually have had sleep, because we fall asleep without knowing we're falling asleep. I know some people say no, no, I've been awake all night for the last 72 years.

No, you haven't. Because you'd be dead. Simple fact, you have to sleep.

If you don't sleep, your brain and your body will force you to sleep. It doesn't mean that you'll be aware that you're asleep. Because let's face it, we're not aware, are we? When we're asleep, we're asleep.

We're not generally aware that we're asleep. We're aware when we wake up. How often are we aware when we actually fall asleep? Pretty much never, I'd say.

But we're aware when we wake up. Now, if you think you're awake, when you wake up, you won't think that you've been asleep, possibly. Have you just gone to bed and you know that you're going to go to sleep? When you wake up, you just assume you've been to sleep.

But if you're sitting there watching television, thinking that you've been up all night watching television, you might not even be aware that you've been asleep. But the brain forces us to go to sleep. It might not be, clearly, it's not for the amount of time that a lot of people would want.

But it does happen. It might not be the amount that we need. So that's where the brain forces us to fall asleep, rather than just the basic necessity that you get from falling asleep when you're not aware of it.

And you can argue this, but this is just, this is based on science. Also, I had a machine on me a while back, a few years ago, a sleep apnea machine. It was being tested for sleep apnea.

And I had this machine and I had to sleep all night with it. And it had my blood, you know, it was attached to my thumbs, to my heart. I had all these things attached to me, not directly into my heart, but attached to my pulse parts and my blood pressure and my rhythm of my heart.

All that stuff was taken throughout the night. And when I went in with the machine, I said, I didn't sleep. I just laid there all night.

And they said, and I probably gave myself 10 hours. And I said, I was in, I went to bed, gave myself a long, a long time, 10 hours. And I might have dozed off once.

But I don't think so. But I was just lying there awake, and it's frustrating. And I hated it.

You can have the machine back, thank you very much. But that was just a testing machine. It wasn't the actual sleep apnea machine.

But this thing was strapped to my chest, and it was very uncomfortable. They got the results of the test. They said, no, actually, you slept six hours during that time.

Because they can tell from the pulse. They can tell, you know, based on that, when you're in sleep mode. So it might be worth remembering that.

Remembering that sometimes the things that we say to ourselves may not actually be true. It's not that we're lying. It's our perception of what's happened.

Our perception is that, oh, I didn't get any sleep at all. When actually the reality is, maybe you did get some sleep, you just didn't realize it. It may not have been enough.

But then how much of that negative thinking about, oh, I didn't get any sleep, thinking about that affects how you feel during the day. And then when you start to think and realize and examine the idea behind the facts that actually, pretty much everybody does fall asleep, even when they're not aware of it. Maybe that can change.

You keep focusing on that. The idea that maybe there's more happening than you realized. The fact that you can fall asleep without knowing it.

I'd say most people do that every day of their life. They don't know when they're falling asleep. But maybe the difference between somebody that just generally falls asleep and somebody sitting there or lying down and not feeling that they are not sleeping ever is the level of relaxation that that person is experiencing.

And also the thoughts and the mind activity that's occurring, which means, I guess some people will be lying on their bed with thoughts that they don't want. And let's face it, five minutes can seem like an hour when you're experiencing something unpleasant. So it's no, it's no surprise that someone would think that they've spent eight hours lying there feeling rubbish, when actually it probably felt like more than eight hours.

Because two hours would probably seem like eight hours, which is why I try to address the two things. Two precursors to being able to almost prepare yourself to sleep. And that's just to relax, to actually enjoy feeling relaxed without pressure to fall asleep.

Forgetting the fact that you're lying down to go to sleep and all that stuff. Have trust in your own mind, in your own brain and body that actually when you need to sleep, you will sleep. Which is why we set out those eight hours or seven hours daily or even every night so that our body can and our mind can make use of that time.

Now if we never did that, we would end up falling asleep at some point. So we kind of taken control of the situation by allotting that time. The idea of being able to just relax and not just relax but enjoy feeling relaxed.

Forgetting the whole going to sleep stuff, just enjoying, enjoying feeling relaxed. It's a nice feeling. And then the other thing I focus on is quietening the mind.

Relaxation does that. Focusing, distraction. You know there's lots of different ways to relax your mind.

And I've had something happen recently that's been very challenging for me when it came to lying down in bed. And you know I've had thoughts connected to a recent bereavement and I've needed to do my own, use my own things that I pass on in these recordings. And I sleep very well.

It's probably one of the only things that I'm good at is sleeping. It's the one thing that I really, really can do quite well. And I never used to be able to.

I had a lot of problems in the past sleeping but I learned. And again it was about the mind. It's about the mind being too active.

Once your mind slows down, things feel more relaxed. So I still, I'm going to do this technique. It's a little exercise that you can do if you're still awake.

And this is something where you can change how you feel. Okay. So first of all I want you to take a snapshot of how you feel now.

Now you may, you may already feel a lot more relaxed. And maybe you've found that whilst listening to me your mind is being drifting. And some people will already be asleep.

Now those that aren't asleep, here's something you can do to change how you feel very quickly. Take a snapshot of how you think you are. The perception of who you are.

So insomniac, stressed, whatever. Take a picture, a snapshot of that. So maybe see yourself with a tense face or angry face or whatever it might be, you know.

It's a negative image. But don't worry that negative image is something that we're not going to hold on to. Okay.

Now I'd like you to think of yourself. Remember a time when you were really super relaxed or super sleepy. I mean proper super sleepy.

Maybe it worked long long shift and you on a bus traveling home. You could hardly keep your eyes open during the bus journey or the train journey and you just, you just about, you wanted to go and you know go to the bathroom and clean your teeth and go to the toilet and you know, but you just made it. You just like got to the toilet, went to the toilet and just literally kicked your shoes off and just fell into bed and you were asleep.

Didn't even bother getting out your clothes or anything. You just didn't have the energy because you were so so tired. Or as I said a time when you were super super relaxed.

You know physically, mentally, your mind was completely calm. And take a snapshot of that. Okay.

Now I want you to do is look at the old picture, the original picture we had a little couple of minutes ago. And I want you to put this new positive picture over the top of it and remove it. So look at that picture, the old picture.

Notice how you feel when you look at it. That you, the scowl on your face or the angry expression or maybe stressed look, really tired look where you're just, just like oh you're grumpy. And now put that picture in front of you really really relaxed or so tired that you just fell asleep instantly.

Really really relaxed or just so deeply deeply sleepy and then move it up again and then move it down again in front. And just notice the change in how you feel when you look at the picture with that new picture in front. And every time that you lift it up and you see the old picture, the old picture seems to be fading.

Notice how that feels as you see it and the the sharpness is gone and it's it's just starting to fade and you can't really make out all of the characteristics of your own face. And then you put that new picture in front again and see yourself really really relaxed. So so calm and loose, so tired.

You just can't even open your eyes, just drifting in and out and wandering in your mind and just just and just there'll be no more. In the words aren't really making sense because you're so so tired, so sleepy. And you lift that picture up again and you realize that there's nothing left of the old picture, it's just gone.

And you put the other picture down and you look at that and you see yourself so relaxed, so tired. You realize that the other picture hasn't gone, it's now become one picture. The two pictures have now become one, absorbed, absorbed into that one picture, the positive picture of you feeling so relaxed.

And just allow that picture to move towards you. Imagine it's outside of you now, imagine that picture just to come straight at you and just hit you in the forehead and absorb into your brain and your mind. Sending you even more relaxed and tired, even more relaxed.