The first principle is that you must escape your everyday mindset and be willing to change into a trancelike state of mind. Believe it or not, this can be accomplished largely by physical means such as changing your posture, calming your breathing, slowing down your thoughts, and the putting your awareness on what you desire. Actually, self hypnosis is a natural way of changing your awareness. Also remember that this exercise is a means of thinking differently about the world around you. Self hypnosis does not make the world change, it simply changes the way you perceive the world.

The next principle is to love and accept all that you are. You must develop a sense of self trust and cooperation with your entire being. If you do not respect yourself, it will be very difficult to get cooperation within your mind that is necessary for changes to occur.

Next, you need to immerse yourself into the flow of life in a spontaneous way unlike what might be prescribed by the logic of your cognitive mind. You have to let the thoughts of your cognitive self wander as if it were dreaming. Think about it, if you follow the same old logic train of your mind, how will you ever achieve anything new or different? You have to step into uncertainty occasionally to grow and find new adventures. And this is best achieved from the state of active dreaming. This is also where solutions to problems develop.

You will need to become aware of how the body reacts to verbal suggestions that are being made. Should your body start to tense up when hearing one of these suggestions, there is a good chance that you will not be successful in implementing them. This is very critical to the success of your program. In this case, you must find a way of presenting information and possible changes to your self that does not threaten, and is safe and supportive to your internal self. Do not take this aspect lightly as your internal self is very powerful and if left unchecked, can easily sabotage your efforts.

You must start considering every thought, feeling and desire that you have as being of equal importance, rather than giving more importance to any one particular one of them. We have all heard that often times it is the little things that end up having the greatest importance in the long run. Once again, this ignored thought could be the one that undermines your entire program.

Eliminate thoughts that label and make judgments. It is the thinking mind that discerns between right and wrong or good or bad that creates many of your problems. We burn an enormous amount of mental energy by classifying and judging our world.

Be aware that the whole concept of self hypnosis is to experience the thought that comes before thinking. To experience life with an empty mind that does not know. This is the state that experiences real truth.