When you think of hypnosis, what comes to mind? Probably stage shows where people are made to do silly or mystifying things. Possibly also the controversial subject of "lost memory retrieval," or dramas where unsuspecting victims are made to commit crimes without their knowledge. In any case, it's not something you think of in the context of ordinary life.

So this may come as a shock—each one of us is basically in a state of self-hypnosis all the time. We are constantly entrancing ourselves with a steady stream of hypnotic suggestions in the form of beliefs about ourselves, our lives, the future, and everything we consider to be "real."

Rarely do we stop to consider the sources of these beliefs, so we accept the negative ones along with the positive. Then we suffer the consequences with a shrug and ask, "What can I do? That's just how things are."

As a psychotherapist, Dr. Marta Hiatt sees this principle at work every day in the people who seek her help. Each of them wants to improve his or her life in some way, but it is the rare individual who starts out realizing this fact—they are the source of and only remedy for their unhappiness.

This is not a fuzzy philosophy or wishful thinking. It's a demonstrable fact that your life is built on a foundation of imagination, for better or worse. So if you want to change your life, you will be fighting a losing battle if you start by changing the outer conditions like your location, partner, or job while ignoring the underlying beliefs that create your dissatisfaction.

Every day, you hypnotize yourself unconsciously. To create the life you want to have, you need to start doing it consciously. You need to reprogram your system so life delivers the results you would really like, rather than what you think you have to settle for.

This is the purpose of Mind Magic—it gives you a clear set of instructions for using self-hypnosis and visualization so you can prove to yourself that your life really can be whatever you imagine. Free from hype and mumbo-jumbo, it also clearly explains the reasons why these techniques work, as below:

1. Imagination is more powerful than will power.
   In any battle between the will and the imagination, the imagination always wins. If you imagine something under hypnosis, even though your reason is telling you it isn't so, you will produce the effect.
   
   Using this principle, you should employ your imagination, not your reason, if you want to achieve something. For instance, if you want to lose a few pounds and are offered a delicious dish of ice cream, you should immediately imagine how attractive and happy you will be when you reach your weight goal, rather than trying to use will power to argue against accepting the dessert. If, instead, you begin to imagine how good the ice cream will taste, and then attempt to use your will power to resist the temptation, you will be defeated.
2. Imagination is more powerful than reason.
   This principle has led many normal, rational people to blindly follow a despot or dictator because their imagination overpowered their reason. This is why the con artist is successful: He manipulates people's imagination. And it is also why we sometimes fall in love with someone our reason tells us is totally wrong for us, but something about them has captured our imagination (our fantasy), and we are overcome by it.
3. Only one idea can be entertained by the mind at any one given time.
   If a hypnotist tells you that your hands are stuck tightly together, you must either affirm to yourself that they are, or think: "No, they are not." Conflicting ideas cannot be held at one and the same time thus, to be successful in hypnosis, you must not resist the suggestion given.
4. Any imagined condition will become real if persisted in, provided only that it is logical.
   The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between an idea that is strongly imagined and something actually happening in the outer world. That is why hypnosis and imaging work. After the hypnotic suggestion has incubated, it will begin to manifest itself in your life, provided only that the suggestion is logical.

The point is not that you can make your own reality—the point is you do make your own reality. That power is already in your hands, and you use it every day. So if you don't like the life you have, what kind of life would you like?