If you want to strengthen your character, where do you start?

Your brain is complicated – more complicated than anything else known to science. A modern computer chip does not come close, and once it is made a chip does not change. The human brain changes every second, seeking to better adapt to your experience.

That experience is complicated. You see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. You feel sensations in your body. You move through space and navigate ideas. We convert resources to tools and adopt relationships. We feel emotions and influence our community.

Each of these skills are learned. Scientists can tell, in a vague way, which parts of the brain participate. Does knowing that the insula cortex or dopamine is not right help us change our character?

Instead, remember how you learned handwriting. We do not command neurons to fire. We look at the ‘o’ and try to make a circle. Then we do the same thing again and again until it matches the letter in our book. The part of the mind that does the drawing is called the subconscious. The part that does the comparing is the conscious mind. The subconscious keeps on adapting until it makes the conscious mind happy.

This leads to a much simpler picture of how character develops. When we are born, our first goal is to learn to control our bodies. Our parents help us, teaching us with touch, demonstrations, and words how to care for ourselves. This is practical intelligence, also taught at school.

Once we can control ourselves, we then get find that some activities and people create pleasant feelings inside us, while others bring unpleasant feelings. Gaining emotional intelligence helps the conscious mind guide the subconscious as it learns to balance feelings against outcomes. We may want to play another video game, but we know there will be trouble if that history report is not finished…

Ultimately, of course, our happiness depends upon other people. This leads to the last foundation of character, moral intelligence. We learn concepts such as “fairness” and “freedom” and the contradictions of trying to live them both at once.

At Hypnosis Rising, we organize character goals as practical (doing), emotional (feeling), and moral (relating) actions. We build understanding in the conscious mind so that it can be a reliable judge of experience (just like it was the judge of how round our ‘o’ was).

With that established, we then enlist the subconscious. In the worst case, it is frustrated, bitter and demoralized by the lack of consistent direction over the years. Given clear direction and committed practice between sessions, hope and enthusiasm are rekindled.

Kick-starting the subconscious is a powerful advance over talk therapy, but in addition few therapists can apply a lifetime study of philosophy and religion to guide moral discussion.

My investment in moral philosophy had its origins in my childhood. My father was brilliant but emotionally remote. Each generation passes its learning on to the next. Parents that never learned to manage their emotions create emotional confusion for their children. Lacking that foundation, we struggle to acquire moral discernment.

Having walked that journey, I can lead you on that same path. Using the tonic of trance, you can rely upon the natural partnership between the conscious and subconscious to release past frustration and achieve new growth.

Let’s start today!