Dr.Wayne Dyer, one of the leaders of the New Thought movement, has as his central motto CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS, CHANGE YOUR LIFE. He is absolutely right that right thoughts will lead to right circumstances, but in many self-help and coaching schemes, the factor underpinning right thoughts is neglected. I am of course talking about the emotions.

Emotions are a much more primal force than thought and were there in our awareness long before we mastered the language that articulates thought. I would go so far as to say that the whole point of language is to communicate feeling. Emotions are the driving force behind life, overriding any principle however worthy that comes into conflict with them. As such, they can be controlled to some extent, but never crushed. In fact they work a bit like any gas - compress them into a smaller space and the pressure rises. Suppress them too far and they will be released explosively!

I am unconvinced that you can think or behave your way into feeling better. I have spent most of my life attempting to do so, with limited success at best. The breakthrough came when I started getting in touch with my feelings directly, and suitably impressed at the results began connecting my clients with theirs under hypnosis.

My recipe for success in emotional management requires the application of two ancient Dharmic disciplines - focus and surrender. In any particular moment we tend to give our immediate circumstances a label - boring, awful, great, so-so etc. In fact this label is only derived from the feeling that has caught our attention. In any one moment we are actually feeling several different feelings at once, some pleasant and some unpleasant. Using the discipline of focus it is possible to force your attention onto those good feelings, which in turn determine our thoughts and the state of our whole mind and body.

Focus is great for improving your attitude on its own in many circumstances, but a second discipline is required to manage the Monsters From The ID - (see the classic SCI-FI film FORBIDDEN PLANET) that discipline is surrender. When a negative emotion arises, we automatically mentally suppress it, for fear of it taking control. Unfortunately this is counter-productive, it makes the feeling stronger.

Surrender involves doing the last thing logic would think of - letting ourselves feel it. This is like relieving the pressure on the dam - the power of the feeling, unresisted, dissipates. The attitude of surrender is the same as allowing yourself to be hypnotized - you relax, lower all your defences and open your mind consensually. Imagine that some alien has being trying to possess you and take over your mind - terrified, you run from place to place and the alien just becomes more relentless in pursuit.

Then one day the alien threatens to hurt your loved ones. Imagine that to stop this, you decide to sacrifice yourself - you stop, relax, and lower all the defences and begin to feel the alien in your mind. You just relax deeper and offer no resistance. Unlike the alien, the emotions derive power from being denied. Once allowed full access, they dissipate harmlessly.

My clients are often appalled and terrified at the idea of letting their emotions run riot, although that's the point - they won't run riot if given space and recognition. Although there are other ways, hypnosis is a good "fast-track" way of training people to lower their mental defences and relax deeply enough to acknowledge their emotions and see for themselves that far from ending up possessed, they actually find themselves liberated.

With focus growing and developping feelings people do want, and surrender dissipating the power of the ones they don't, people are not only more likely to be successful, they will actually enjoy the path to it.