How To Stop Cravings

I was reading an article the other day entitled "the secret of self-control" in "The New Yorker" and was reminded of some experiments which were executed at Stanford University several years ago.  Walter Mischel was the professor in charge and his research involved young children and tested their ability to delay gratification.

These experiments were basically quite simple and involved offering each child one sweet immediately, but if they waited a little while to eat it they could have two sweets.  Each child was shown into a room where the sweets were and observed for a short period of time.  Some children gave in immediately and the sweet was popped into their mouth and that was that, others tried different tactics - some stared at the sweet in their attempt to not eat it, others turned their back on the sweet so as to try to put it out of their mind, and so on.  I’m really only providing the briefest of overview’s here, so as to show, from these simple experiments, how you can learn to easily train your mind to beat those cravings.

The researchers found that those who tried the tactic of staring at the sweet soon gave in and ate it, whilst those who distracted themselves by thinking of other things, or doing other things, successfully beat their desire to eat the sweet.  The same holds true in adulthood – the more time you spend time focusing upon something the more you will desire it.  The only way to effectively put something out of your mind is to distract yourself by focusing on something quite different.  This is why most people have difficulty in dieting; you know you need to lose weight, so you think about what you should stop eating, which in effect directs your mind towards food as opposed to away from it. 

The key to beating cravings and thus successful weight loss can be found in studying further the research findings from these Stanford experiments.  Mischel also found that simply by suggesting a strategy to the children which should assist did indeed do so.  By taking a child who had previously used the strategy of staring at the sweet, and suggesting that they instead image that the sweet was just a picture of a sweet, or suggesting that they focus on something else instead, they then showed that they too could join the ranks of children who quite effectively delayed their gratification.  This shows that such simple strategies can be taught and learned by all.  You may wonder if you can learn new strategies as easily as an adult as you might have as a child.  And the answer is yes, with the help of hypnosis. 

The first step to anything is being aware of what your thought processes and strategies are.  Most of us, however, tend to just react to circumstances in our usual way without thinking about the thought processes which trigger our reactions.  Whatever our learned methods of thinking and coping may be, we tend to replicate in later life.  Mischel observed this in his children when they later reached teenage and adult years.  Their ability to distract themselves from temptations as a young toddler were predictive of their success in school and then also in their careers.  If only all of us were shown the techniques involved in successfully delaying gratification at an early age!

But, as I said before, you can learn these mental skills now, and embed them in your subconscious mind so that they become as automatic as your old thought processes, with a little bit of help from hypnosis.  Hypnosis is a state of relaxation and it allows access to your subconscious mind.  As a young child your subconscious mind is open to experience and suggestion and absorbs new information easily, without the restriction of preconceived ideas or expectations.  But once you reach the age of 10 or 12 your basic attitude and coping strategies are formed and you tend to act within this structure of attitudes, patterns and beliefs.  Your subconscious mind is more difficult to access and this is why hypnosis is so important.

With the use of hypnosis downloads you can assess the inner workings of your mind and retrain your brain in new mental skills and strategies, enabling you to dissociate from your previous cravings in the same way as the child who was taught to imagine the sweet was in a picture as opposed to just sitting there upon the table.  You can learn to distract yourself and dissociate in many different ways and overcome your cravings quickly and easily with the use of hypnosis downloads. 

Your cravings may be for chocolate, or cheese, cigarettes or alcohol; whatever they may be you can now retrain your brain to overcome those cravings quickly and easily with the use of hypnosis downloads.  For more information and a free hypnosis download please visit my website.

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis downloads for stopping cravings and easy weight loss hypnosis.