Thoughts themselves have power. Often it seems like we have no control over our thoughts. Our minds run around like wild children on the playground without supervision. Sometimes they run out into the parking lot, in front of cars, beat up other kids, or kick and scream on the pavement or seem to do nothing.

If we learn to guide our thoughts when we want, so that we were the master of our thoughts and emotions more often instead of them so often running over us, we could use it as a huge advantage.

As we use our thoughts and feelings more creatively, uniquely, wisely, and positively, we obviously become happier and more efficient. We also help the world in general, don’t you think?

Training your self-talk and your thoughts is a skill and a practice. It’s an exercise the way fitness, lifting weights, dance, and doing yoga is exercise and also like brushing your teeth, a daily practice.

Without consciously putting in strong positive thoughts it is easy for negative thoughts and past hurts big and small to replay in our minds. It takes a clear decision to put a new program in place to turn down the volume on something that may have given your self-esteem a knock or your ego a bruise or been a serious wound in the past. The more the incident hurt or was repeated or sustained and the more we relive these moments in our minds, the more charge they have for us. The more potent they are for us and the more we see the parallels with current moments in our daily lives the stronger and more repeated the new suggestions need to be to reprogram the ideas.

This is where hypnosis and self-hypnosis makes such a big difference.

The past hurts and our daily lives. The unhappier or thoughts become the more negative chemicals flow into our bodies, the worse we feel. It becomes a cycle that gets hard to break. At any given time many of these cycles are going on at a low level and we ignore them like small rocks we are carrying but get so accustomed to that we forget that we have them strapped to our shoulders.

Hypnosis is a state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination. In reality, it is more like daydreaming, or the feeling of "losing yourself" in a good book or movie. You are fully conscious, but you tune out most of the stimuli around you. You focus intently on the subject at hand, to the near exclusion of any other thought.

In the everyday “trance” of a daydream or movie, an imaginary world seems somewhat real to you, in the sense that it fully engages your emotions. Imaginary events can cause real fear, sadness or happiness, and you may even jolt in your seat if you are surprised by something (a monster leaping from the shadows, for example). Some researchers categorize all such trances as forms of self-hypnosis. Milton Erickson, the premier hypnotism expert of the 20th century, contended that people hypnotize themselves on a daily basis.

In conventional hypnosis, you approach the suggestions of the hypnotherapist, or your own ideas, as if they were reality. If the therapist suggests that you are drinking a chocolate milkshake, you'll taste the milkshake and feel it cooling your mouth and throat. If the therapist suggests that you are happy, you may feel excited or start to smile. But the entire time, you are aware that it's all imaginary. Essentially, you're "playing pretend" on an intense level, just as children often do.

In this special mental state, people tend to feel uninhibited and relaxed. This is because they tune out the worries and doubts that normally keep their actions in check. You might experience th