Is there a part of me that wants to feel better?

Even if it’s just ten percent or even one percent?

If there is then your healing journey is all poised and ready to go.

All it needs is your say so.

All it needs is that first step on that journey for it to begin; but how do I take that all important first step you might be asking yourself?

Well, try this;

Imagine you go to bed tonight and a miracle happens, and you wake up in the morning and everything is as you’ve always wished, hoped and dreamed it would or could ideally be.

What would that look like?

Where would you be?

Who would you be with?

What would you be doing?

Where would you be living?

How would you be feeling?

What would that ideal “you” look like, sound like, be like, feel like?

Take a few moments to conjure up that image in your minds eye, paying as much attention to the smallest details as you possibly can.

(To make these visual images feel more vivid and real, use all your senses;

your sight (eyes),

your sense of smell (nose),

taste (mouth),

your hearing (ears),

your tactile awareness, touch, (skin)

Use your face as a way to help you remember each sense; your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your ears and your skin.

Now, ask yourself; what behaviours would move you towards that ideal life in which that ideal ‘you’ lives?

If the answer doesn’t come immediately, don’t worry, this is not at all unusual, it can take time.

When we practice or try something for the first time it can be difficult, impossible even; remember learning to ride a bike for the first time?

Keep practicing, it will eventually fall into place and in time you’ll be effortlessly gliding around the streets, park, yard or wherever not giving it a second thought.

This can be the same with this exercise if you apply the same methodology here; repetition and practice. But remember; push yourself but don’t force yourself.

Focus but don’t be intensely overly anxious to make it work at all costs!

It is this kind of insistent, dogmatism that can cause the very troubles we are seeking to overcome.

If this does happen to you whilst performing this exercise, just notice that & move through it; lay it aside & carry on. If you can’t, or believe that you can’t, again, just notice that & then take a break but return to it again & often just this observational element to the process will reduce the time it takes to break & re-engage and eventually will allow you to stay in the exercise without any breaks at all.

If at first no images come to you, don’t worry, just go about your daily life and in time images, ideas, thoughts will come; this is your unconscious doing it’s thing and bringing images to mind for your consideration.

Scrutinise the images, thoughts, memories, to make sure they’re appropriate and useful and then implement them into your behaviours.

And now, go ahead, and from this moment on practice those behaviours and keep practicing them.

Make your vision clear, specific and animated.

Use your senses to make it come alive; sight, sound, smell, feel, taste.

Commit to conjuring up this image regularly and behaving in ways that move you closer to this ideal that you have conjured up about where you want to be in your life.

Do this as regularly as seems efficacious; neither too much nor too little.

This will differ for everyone but be remarkably similar too.

This is your vision, make it yours by regularly visiting it and acting it out in your behaviours that move you further towards it each time.

Be open to the possibility of moving into that ideal self.

Be willing to be healed of past troubles and afflictions.

Be willing.

Believe.

Be.

“Heal me from this addiction, release me from my pain

Believe that you can be healed

Believe that you can

Believe

Be”

Begin with the end in mind – all things are created twice; once in the mind and the second time in the world.

In this envisioning exercise you’re creating the “mind” image that you then bring into the world as a new lived reality, a new life, a new you.

You’ll be moving towards that ideal through your behaviours.

Feel your life force again.

When was the last time you felt it?

Can you remember?

When did it stop and fade away?

And why?

We learn through repetition.

Remember learning your times tables?

Remember that first euphoric bike ride when everything finally fell into place?

Take a moment to recall other things you learnt through repetition in your childhood and know that it is not only possible but that you have actually done this before.

If you find this difficult or challenging it might be that there is trauma in your childhood that makes it hard to go back?

Call a counsellor/therapist.

Therapy can help you to connect to those memories that can free you to live in the present free of the past’s insistence on pushing you into those habitual behaviours you have acquired that promise relief and release from past pain and hurt, or simply promise pleasure that has become short lived and in many cases entirely absent. In fact it is just the act of staving off the down feelings that keeps us habitually returning to the same tired old habits that have stopped returning any reward and now just exhaust and empty us, yet we keep repeating them.

“The Counselling Directory” the “BACP” the “NCS – National Counselling Society” all have extensive listings of qualified therapists in your postal area with full details of qualifications, orientations and contact details for you to call and arrange an initial consultation.

Many of them, like me, will offer a free initial consultation which allows you to test the “fit” between the two of you and many, again like me, will offer couples and family counselling too should you require that?

You don’t have to suffer alone.

Reach out, connect and start the journey to the you you really are and the you you want to be and become, rather than the you you have come to believe you have to be; you don’t, you can be so much more and with the right help you can get there.

We become what we think about.

This practice can help you cultivate a focus on the ‘ideal’ you as you really want to become rather than the ‘you’ you have become accustomed to believing is the only version of you that’s realistically available to be.

This practice can give us a glimpse of what lies outside the confines of our egoic prison by allowing us to begin a communicative dialogue with unconscious parts we may not have accessed for a very, very long time.

The Miracle Question embodies at it’s core imaginative yearning, desire and hope for a perfect world that is a phantasy not a reality but it does show us our idealised version of how we would like the world to be and how we would like to find ourselves in it.

This allows the unconscious a way int to our everyday thoughts & imagining s in a far more deliberate and conscious way and permits the possibility of making our unconscious far more conscious that it hitherto has been.

Carl Jung liked to observe that good mental health and optimal functioning of the psyche rested on making the implicit explicit; in other words, bringing our attention to things we don’t normally notice.

Or as he put it;

“To make the unconscious conscious. If we fail to do that it will continue to dominate us and we will continue to put it down to fate; it’s just the way we are” (My paraphrase of a Jungian tenet)

We become what we think about.

I wish you immense success and joy on your journey.

By Bradley Riddell