Increasing the volume may work with music, but with human thought it only produces distortion.

There are musical nuances we may miss at lower volumes, but the delivery of cacophony into our mind is in direct proportion to how much we crank up our internal volume.

The louder the volume, the less of an opportunity there is to hear anything but our own thoughts. We become incapable of listening. It’s time for an agreement.

Make an agreement with your mind that when you are only hearing your own thoughts that you turn down the volume. Install a triggering mechanism into your mind that notices when your mind is totally occupied with your own thoughts. Just the fact that you notice, automatically turns down the volume. Reminds me of a story . . .

My late teacher, Dr. Dave Dobson introduced us to the concept of “Bad Hypnosis” - Something I’m threatening to write a book on. Bad hypnosis is something we are exposed to every day. If we don’t notice it as being such, we will reinforce the unproductive suggestions being offered.

These suggestions start in childhood and continue throughout our life if they go unchecked. For example, take the proverbial “Money doesn’t grow on trees” maxim as one of your early experiences with bad hypnosis. Every time it gets reinforced, you experience a mindset of lack.

What Dave had us do was take a nice deep breath, exhale slowly and close our eyes. He then suggested as we were in this less stimulated frame of mind to ask the part of our mind that recognizes bad hypnosis to alert us every time we experience it. The exercise took less than a minute and 22 years later I see and hear bad hypnosis everywhere.

The agreement I’m requesting that you make is to ask the part of you that notices full volume to automatically turn it down. After requesting this a few times, something magical begins to happen. You start to notice the process happening on its own without any conscious request on your part. It becomes an automatic response.

When the volume of your internal dialogue is lowered, you have the ability to hear something besides your own thoughts. It’s this ability to hear something new that has us dance off in new directions rather than retracing our steps again.

Take the time to make an agreement with your mind to notice and turn down the noise. It only takes a minute of quiet time and with a little practice, what you hear will be music to your ears.

All the best,

John