Imagine your life is like a road trip. You’ve packed, you have your bottled water and snacks handy, you’ve consulted the map and, after much deliberation, you’ve picked your desired destination. You turn up the radio, and off you go. Minute, hours, days, and years go by. Soon, you’ve gone through all of your snacks and most of your water. You’ve spent a king’s ransom on gas and car maintenance, collected an impressive collection of road scars dings, dents, and flat tires yet somehow the scenery looks the same. You keep consulting the now dog-eared map, but it isn’t matching the territory your driving through. Everything just looks so familiar.

Hmmm.

Let me make a suggestion. Look at your hands as you are driving, and make sure that you are not confusing the rear-view mirror for the steering wheel. The practice is not as uncommon as it seems. Ask yourself, how many times have you found yourself in the same situation over and over? How many times have you found yourself dating, or even marrying the same kind of person, with the same annoying idiosyncrasies? How many times have you found yourself making the same choices, the same mistakes, and the same parade of life experiences? If you are steering based solely on your past, navigating using only the rear-view mirror, how can you expect to get anywhere different? Let us add to the saying “those who ignore the past are bound to repeat it” the additional clause “along with those who are stuck in the past!”

Realizing that things aren’t changing and that your goals aren’t getting any closer is a good indication that you might want to change your grip from the rear-view mirror to the steering wheel. One way to accomplish this is to become aware of the fact that we always consider the familiar more comfortable than the unfamiliar, even if it’s a familiar ‘bad thing’. You need only look at the person that keeps continually returning to an abusive relationship, because, painful and dangerous as that relationship is, it is better than the ‘unknown’ of a new relationship or no relationship at all. So often, in order to avoid the potential discomfort of the unknown new experience, we will forego opportunities to experience new successes, new pleasures, and new chances for fun. Our incredible minds can navigate a course virtually anywhere, but only if we are willing, from time to time, to leave the comfortable familiar behind. Sometimes, simply the awareness of how we have been constrained by the past is enough to goose us into looking forward. Often, however, we are as unwilling, or unable to free ourselves from the restrictions of past behavior patterns as the mighty full–grown elephant is unwilling to challenge that puny stake and chain that bound him so well when he was a baby elephant. We are afraid of what might happen if we release our grip on the mirror. In those cases, an outside observer and coach is required to point out, and free us, from those invisible, often unconscious, restrictions from the past. Hypnosis is the quickest, and most effective means to expose and break those chains to pry your hands from the mirror and place them on the wheel. An effective hypnotist can help you learn from the past, but not be stuck in the past.

Rumor has it that there is a whole new playground outside the windshield, new adventures, new challenges; new opportunities for success, and failure. Start looking out the windows rather than restricting yourself to the view in the mirror. The windows are bigger, easier, and much more exciting to look through once you simply redirect your attention.