When someone asks me what I do, I like to say that I’m in the business of hope. My job is to remind people that no matter how lousy things are right now, lives and circumstances are always evolving. With the proper application of hope, each of us has control over the direction our evolution takes. With the right dose of hope, each of us can take power back and drive change that we would like to see.
Over the past two decades I’ve simultaneously worked as a clinical hypnotist, a psychic medium, and an interfaith minister. These three fields rely on three different approaches to taking back control and driving change. Hypnosis engages both the conscious and subconscious mind in order to create the habits which serve as the foundation for change. If a client comes to me for hypnosis to lose weight, we use the modality to build habits of healthy eating, motivation to exercise, and aversion to trigger foods. We “program” the client’s powerful mind to eat when hungry and stop when full, and “deprogram” emotional eating, stress eating, and mindless snacking in front of the TV.
The clients who come to me for psychic readings or spirit communication are also seeking to acquire or regain a measure of control over their destinies. Having additional, sixth-sense insight into life decisions empowers a person with the confidence to make tough choices or endure previously unforeseen challenges. Messages from loved ones in the spirit world give my clients hope that they can forgive the past and move on, embracing the future without judgment or anxiety.
As a minister, guiding my clients with spiritual coaching to know they are loved, forgiven, and made for joy and abundance lightens the burden of bankruptcy, divorce, layoff, or other unwelcome circumstance. Knowing one is made in God’s image is a great comfort and provides hope to those seeking their mission here. When you believe God has a plan for you, even if you don’t know what it is yet, you procrastinate less, despair less, and handle disappointments more easily.
After years of working with my clients across these three fields I’ve theorized that there is one, fundamental tear in the fabric of hope, self-acceptance, and optimism. There’s just one issue at the core of bad habits, self-destructive behavior, self-sabotage, personal dismay, poor lifestyle choices, and pessimism. That singular root cause is low self-esteem.
You read that right: low self-esteem, or, as I like to call it, LoSE.
All of the conditions that cause us to dislike ourselves, to struggle with money, relationships, career, weight, and in some cases, poor health, boil down to low self-esteem. I believe that those conditions are symptoms of LoSE, and if LoSE can be addressed, many if not all of those symptoms will completely disappear.
As I explain in my book Fix Your Screwed-Up Life, low self-esteem is likely to blame if you are frequently defensive, angry, fearful, jealous, addicted, ill, overextended, over-committed, anxious, in debt, or codependent. It’s probably the cause of overweight (non-medical). Maybe you start things and don’t finish them or you daydream and never start at all. LoSE might cause you to feel unsettled emotionally, mentally, and physically. Maybe you compare yourself to others and never seem to measure up.
Do you focus your time, energy, and money on losing weight, changing “bad” habits, or finding new friendships, hobbies, and romances? Most people do, because most people don’t realize that the source of all those things they’d like to change is poor self-esteem, and that addressing that issue first will almost certainly cause all those other problems to vanish.
If this sounds like you, well, you might be a LoSEr and not even know it.
I believe every single human being is perfect in spirit. The part of you that is immortal and made in God’s image is flawless and perfect. You were born in this world as pure potential, even if there were physical challenges with your body. Your slate was completely clean, ready to receive whatever your mind would write on it.
Somehow most of us lost touch with that integral part of our make-up. We stopped focusing on the spirit, and paid more attention to the mind, which has the job of judging, comparing, and contrasting. The mind says, “More of this, less of that. This is good, this is not-good.” The mind measures us against our culture, our peers, and our expectations. Because there will always be someone richer, more beautiful, younger, smarter, more confident... we will always, at some point, fall short if we let the mind evaluate our worth.
I believe that our minds develop along with our egos, and usually serve the ego. But deep inside of you is your ageless spirit, your Self. If you can bring this spirit to mind, it’s the same “you” that’s been your point of consciousness or perception since you first became self-aware. You came into the world with this perfect spirit, and it’s my goal in my practice to reconnect my clients with their own limitless perfection. I call this process “Recovery of Inherent Self-Esteem,” or RISE. My clients rebuild their sense of Self because they reconnect with the part of them that cannot be under-esteemed: the perfect spirit within. When they RISE, all the other nagging challenges fall away entirely.
When they fully understand and agree that it is natural and acceptable to love themselves, RISErs’ mental, emotional, and physical health improve. With healthy self-esteem, RISErs navigate any environment, inner or outer, with grace, calm, and a sense of control and empowerment. Life is good. Habits change for the better. Destructive relationships are healed or released. Health and heart prosper.
So if you are a LoSEr, allow me to turn your attention back to hope by offering you this final thought: every morning before you get out of bed and every night as you’re falling asleep -- and any other time during the day that it occurs to you to do so -- say to yourself something like this: “I know there is a part of me that is unbroken, perfect, and whole. I am increasingly aware of this healthy, limitless Self within me, and every day I appreciate it more and more.”
Be prepared to find the whole experience ridiculous. LoSErs historically diminish themselves, and if your mind is saying, “This is silly! How can that possibly help me lose weight/get out of debt/fix my relationship? Bah!” then this is exactly the remedial healthy self-talk needed. Just start here. Talk encouragingly to yourself. However you consider that ageless Self to be (spiritual, High Mind), consider that you are beginning a dialogue, getting to know each other.
Every month I offer inspirational new stories of RISErs, techniques and exercises to RISE yourself, and how to recognize and re-program LoSEr behaviors. My mission is to bring hope to individuals, families, our communities. I believe if we all esteemed ourselves highly, we could make world peace a reality. Just imagine: if you loved and valued yourself as God does, you’d be at peace, wouldn’t you? And if your family members felt the same, your family unit would be peaceful, serene, optimistic, hopeful. Together we can scale up this movement infinitely!
In the meantime, I will bet my life on your holy perfection.
With hope, faith, and conviction,
- Priscilla
