How does happiness look to you? There is an enchanting transformation between sleeping and waking. It is a fleeting moment as you emerge out of deep, relaxed slumber, before the demands of the day come tumbling in on your world.
It is also a magical moment of pure potentiality that contains seeds of inspiration or solutions to that insolvable problem that has hounded you for days.
Just as you’re about to reach out for that breakthrough thought that teeters on the edge of your consciousness, the alarm clock rings, your smartphone dings a text message alert. Your baby cries or your dog is baying for food. And you lose, as if gone, that thread of inspiration.
What if you are able to access this state of pure potentiality as often as you want, when you want it? You may require some expert assistance in the beginning, to reprogram your beliefs that it is indeed possible.
However, once you’ve exercised the “mental muscle” and familiarised your mind and body enough to this process, what do you think about being able to tap into this infinite source of creativity, inspiration, solutions and possibility at will? Is this happiness?
Getting more ‘Happy’ in your life …
What if you can access this untapped power for health, for greater happiness and contentment, for peak performance and success. Imagine it were “second nature”? Because … you can, by unlocking the power of your subconscious mind.
It is the subconscious that keeps the heart beating, that tells your lungs to keep pumping oxygen around your body, which speeds up the movement of your legs as a car is threatening to run you down when you are crossing the street.
When you cut yourself, you don’t think logically to yourself, “Okay, time for the blood to clot now and the white cells to come fight off infection!” All these seemingly simple, yet intricate reactions are silently and efficiently orchestrated by the powerful subconscious. Think of it as your life’s Control Panel.
Accessing your inner Control Panel.
Imagine from your special place of relaxation and calm that you are going on a journey, a journey to your inner control room. This is the Master Control Room of your mind, where everything is taken care of. The control room is where all of your bodily functions, emotions, thoughts, and everything that happens inside you is controlled from.
Put yourself at the entrance of the control room, standing in front of a door. Become aware of what colour the door is, and what size it is, and then gently push the door open and walk on into the control room.
This is the control room of your mind, and inside here you can control, adjust, turn up, turn down, regulate and fine tune anything you want to.
As you walk through the control room, take a look around and just get a sense for all of the control panels, each one taking care of a specific function within you. You’ll notice that there are lots of control panels! You might notice also the sounds they make, whirring away as they regulate how you are working, from the inside out.
You can notice walking past the panel with a sign at the top that reads “blood pressure” and notice the lights flashing and the sounds coming from the panel, and you can keep walking, next noticing the panel called “appetite” and the lights and sounds coming from that.
The Happiness Panel!
Then you keep walking and come across the panel taking care of your breathing, and then one controlling your sleeping patterns, and then very soon you notice the panel you’re looking for – “happiness.”
You go to the happiness control panel now, and notice what you see, and the sounds your hear it making. On the panel there are a number of switches and buttons and dials and lights. Each one controls the levels and intensity of happiness you experience, which can be shown through the indicator screen on the control panel.
We can now make the adjustments needed to heighten those sensations, turn up your experience of those happy feelings, quieten the interfering thoughts and bring peace to you.
Turning up Happiness!
Look at the panel now and notice the indicator and the intensity level it is at now – between 0 to 10 – the number it’s set at now indicating the level of happiness that you want to increase. Now, reach out and turn up the dial controlling the intensity … and slowly turn it up higher … and higher. Keep turning until it reaches the level of intensity that your inner subconscious mind knows instinctively is the exact right level for you. Here you can feel relief and comfort from all of those unwanted unhappy feelings.
As you turn it up, hear the noises of the control panel slowly changing and quietening down, and very soon the indicator shows the intensity level at just the right level for you. Notice what number it’s showing now. Maybe it’s up to 7, or 8 or 9.
You’ll know deep inside what’s right for you. Just be guided by your mind. And when it’s there, just feel the relief and the peace. Then you can move your attention to one of the switches or buttons that will lock that indicator at the correct setting, keeping it there so that it permanently stays in that position, controlling all of those old happy feelings at the level that suits you.
When the indicator is locked off, then you can step away from the control panel and breathe a sigh of relief, as now … you are in control, you now are the one that dictates how that control panel works. From this moment forward you become in charge of any changes that you need to make there, or indeed in any of the other panels in your Master Control Room.
Now, you can walk back through the Control Room and back to the exit, walking through the door and closing it tight behind you. You let yourself then drift back to your special place of calm and peaceful relaxation, and after a few moments you take a deep breath, return to full mindful awareness, and stretch.
How happy do you feel?!
Keep practising this once a day for the next few days. You’ll be surprised at how much you can direct your thoughts to change your emotions when you have a strategy for doing it.
Tom.
Originally posted 2017-03-15 04:31:01.
Dr Tom Barber is an experienced integrative and existential psychotherapist and counsellor, who has been helping people overcome personal challenges for the last 25 years. He is a bestselling author of 6 books, and spends his time between private clients, teaching and lecturing internationally, writing, and developing programmes to help people improve the quality of their life. His academic speciality is in the subject of trauma and emotion.
