The Success Nuggets

Success Nuggets #37 - Unlocking Thought Awareness for Transformation with Imogen Lamb

• David Abel • Season 2 • Episode 17

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Join us on the Success Nuggets Podcast for an enlightening conversation with Imogen Lamb, the brilliant mind behind the Mindseeds app. 

What if merely being aware of your thoughts could radically transform your life? Imogen shares her compelling journey from wrestling with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks to discovering a life-altering realisation about the power of thought awareness. 

Through her experience, she crafted the Mindseeds app, a practical audio tool designed to help users reshape their thoughts for improved sleep and overall wellbeing.

In this episode, Imogen and host David Abel unravel the intricacies of hypnotherapy and the science of repetition and the creation of new neural pathways, revealing how the Mindseeds app employs these principles to facilitate behavioral and habit changes. 

Whether you're navigating your own struggles with anxiety or seeking ways to enhance your mental health, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice to help you on your journey. 

Nugget of the day: "The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes."

Special thanks to One Golden Nugget and Maxwell Preece for production support and conversation editing. 

Speaker 3:

Amazing, amazing wisdom entrepreneurs success success around the world.

Speaker 1:

This is the Success Nuggets podcast. Have you ever wondered what you could learn and how inspired you'd be if you asked incredible people from around the world about the patterns that drive progress? Get ready to dive into a world of insights and inspiration, of insights and inspiration. This is the Success Nuggets Podcast, with the founder of the Digital Lightbulb and your host.

Speaker 2:

David Abel. Welcome to today's episode, where we dive into the fascinating world of thoughts, reality and personal growth. Joining us is Imogen Lam, the visionary founder of the Mindscenes app, a transformative tool designed to help individuals recognize their thoughts and shape their realities in practical and meaningful ways. Hello, imogen.

Speaker 3:

Hello David. I am supporting in a nice bright orange top today to bring some light and some sunshine into a very dreary January. Well, it's the end of January, isn't it? We're moving into February tomorrow, thank goodness.

Speaker 2:

We ask for some people, they can have a drink. So if you've done dry January, congratulations. Now tell us about the Mindseeds app. Am I right to sort of describe that as a hypnotherapy tool that helps to promote sleep and wellbeing?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely yes. The whole concept of Mindseeds is basically a practical audio app to help you start to become aware of your thoughts, and I created it because about 15 years ago, I started suffering from really, really bad panic attacks and anxiety which felt like they'd come out of nowhere, and it got to a point where I almost felt agoraphobic, where I didn't want to leave the house. Everything frightened me. I was so afraid of everything and that was what was forming this anxiety and I just was in a real mess, you know and I'd not been an anxious person all my life, you know it just felt like, all of a sudden, I just had this fear of life and fear of kind of just doing everyday, normal things where I just have this acute anxiety.

Speaker 3:

Once I started to understand this, this kind of separation of just becoming aware of my thoughts, my anxiety levels just completely dropped. It was like I found this magic formula. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe that I have been existing in this state of fear and anxiety and now I understand it's just by being aware of my thoughts. So I was so excited not excited, that's probably the wrong word but I felt like such a drive to like why doesn't everybody realize this? You know everybody around me is anxious or you know they've got certain behaviors or things and it's largely down to how they think.

Speaker 3:

So I studied hypnotherapy so that I could start to help people recognize their thoughts through the power of relaxation therapy, so that they could start to look to change those thoughts. And then I realized very quickly that I could create content that was accessible for everybody by listening to some audio content that they could basically access via an app and could help them also start to use the therapy that I was recording to help them become aware of their thoughts. So that's what the app is all about. I'm very much kind of what the app is all about. I'm very much kind of you know, about you know how can I help more people? Because any behavior or habits or behavior stems from what are you saying to yourself in your mind and the thoughts that you're thinking.

Speaker 2:

So the sleep bit really fascinates me.

Speaker 3:

It's actually just quite a simple concept. As I said to you, you are basically just relaxing somebody into a place where their brainw waves are so slow that you can start to talk to them. That's it. That is it.

Speaker 2:

That's it, me, and you have got a similar background. We've been in branding, marketing, sales type roles and we know the power of not hypnotherapy through messaging.

Speaker 3:

Repetition. When I go and sell an advertising campaign to somebody and they're on the London Underground or they're on radio. It's about frequency how many times are people seeing it? How many times are they hearing it? Are they hearing it enough times to change their behavior to go out and buy your product? And it's exactly the same. It's exactly the same with hypnotherapy. You say something over and over and over and over and over and over again and the science bit is you create a neural pathway and that neural pathway your brain, it starts to create a thought process that just sticks. And that's the only reason why people in a pattern of something because they've been saying it to themselves over and over again to break that pattern, create a new one.

Speaker 3:

There is a real misperception with hypnotherapy, isn't it? Unfortunately, the media has made hypnotherapy be quite fearful because people think that somebody is going to get in my head and they're going to make me do something, which is ridiculous. And again, I probably feel like that's by design, because it's such a powerful therapy. Your mind has got five different frequencies, so you've got gamma, alpha, delta, theta. All of those waves are like brainwaves, so the waves are vibrating at higher frequencies. So when you are in, say, alpha mode, right, your mind is on overdrive, so you've got lots of thoughts coming through all the time. And that's a good thing, you know, because you, your mind, is there to look after you. It's it's trying to solve problems, it's trying to get answers to questions, it's trying to, you know, sink everything in your body. So you should never be afraid of your mind. You should look at your mind as as a really powerful tool, but often because it's firing thoughts all the time, sometimes when you're in survival mode, so when it's on overdrive, it might be firing out the worst case scenarios or things that you're worrying about. Before you know it, you have got this mass pile of negative thoughts that are triggering this fight and flight all the time. So you're in a state of anxiety all the time You're worrying.

Speaker 3:

So the key and this is why hypnotherapy is so powerful is hypnotherapy. Relaxation therapy is a way for somebody to listen to my voice, which basically distracts them from their thoughts. Because they're listening to my voice, they're in the moment, and what that does is it then brings their frequency, their brain waves, down from being really, really high to just reducing until they're in like what we call theta mode. So theta is like loose just before you're about to go to sleep, and because those brain waves slow down so much, your thoughts are less active and in fact the you get to a point where there's just hardly any activity at all. And that's when hypnotherapy is a very potent opportunity to replace the thoughts that you're thinking with some new suggestions.

Speaker 2:

Wow, I really love that. I love the whole thing about the brainwaves. I see that as such a good solution just to people medicating or numbing with a glass of wine or sleeping tablets. Yeah yeah first place, activating the subconscious.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's you see the danger with like self-medicating, as you've quite, quite rightly said, and I and you know I totally get it. You know why you would do that. I just want to switch off the noise. I just want to get so drunk that you know I'm not, I'm not paying attention to my thoughts, or I just want to get so high that I'm just in a different, you know space or whatever. The challenge with that is that because, particularly alcohol, it's a suppressant right. When the alcohol wears off, what it does is it just makes those thoughts even more prominent and even more on overdrive. So actually it's counterintuitive because you are just feeding into that machine to make them even worse.

Speaker 2:

Where can the audience follow you and get involved with Mindseeds?

Speaker 3:

On Instagram, so it's mind underscore. Seeds is the Instagram handler and I am on Facebook as well, so everything follows on there. But then there's also the Mindseeds app, which is on Apple, the App Store, and on Google Play, so it's Apple and Android, and that is really a tool for you to become aware of your thoughts, recognize your inner dialogue, watch your negative dialogue and then we look to change it. In week three we go OK, let's remind ourselves of actually how great we are, what's all the positive things that we've got about ourselves that we can remind ourselves of. And then into week four, it's very much about using your thoughts to start to visualize the things that you want out of life. So it's a bit of manifestation.

Speaker 3:

So that's available to download. I have made it as affordable as I can for people, because one of the things that I recognize with my one-to-one therapy is that it can be costly. You know it is to see somebody and have you know hypnotherapy or any therapy, unless it's, you know, on the NHS, which can be a lot of waiting time. I wanted to make sure that somebody has access to the app and it's it's relatively cost effective.

Speaker 2:

I tried the Mindseeds app and it it really does work and it does really get you in a calm space. But I've got a young boy who's eight, who's, he's quite hyperactive, and he doesn't settle down in bed. Sometimes he could, it could be there. You know reading, which is a great skill, but however he's, he's sacrificing some of his sleep with his alertness, and I read him one of your small parts of a monologue, a small monologue for him before bed. Yeah, the pillow is the biggest pillow you've had. The energy is coming down your body and your feet feel very heavy and again and you're now gonna have a lovely sleep and you know it really worked. And some, some nights he says to me our dad, help me, oh, I love that.

Speaker 3:

That is so nice yeah, it was.

Speaker 2:

I just wanted to thank you for that because I found it just a small little thing like that was able for a child to forget about their day, you know, and but that's the key, isn't it?

Speaker 3:

I think what you're actually doing there, without realizing it, is just centering somebody in the moment. You are making them become present. Presence, you know, it is the key. That's why it's called the present, isn't it? It's a gift, because when you're fully focused on what's right in front of you, in that moment you're not in your head, you're not engaging in thoughts. That's why all spirituality and Buddhism no mind, no problem. It's all about being present. And that's why having those moments with anybody, even if you're just having a conversation, where you're just completely listening to what somebody has to say, is taking you out of your head and into the moment, and I think that's a great thing. To do with children is just that's why bedtime stories work, because they're listening to your voice and then they are imagining what you are saying. They're creating it in their mind, aren't they?

Speaker 2:

They do For our audience. What patterns create progress?

Speaker 3:

So for me, every morning when I wake up, as soon as that starts, I just go into my affirmation straight away, which is you know, I'm going to have a great day today, I feel good, I'm really grateful to be alive, I know I'm looking forward to my day, and I start that trajectory of just starting the day on a high and I repeat those affirmations to myself over and over and over again, so they're always my go-to. And the other really, really important thing for me is number one sleep. I have to have nine hours sleep a night. I know that sounds a lot, but I know that if I compromise on that, then I can compromise by a couple of hours. Seven's okay. If I compromise on seven hours sleep, my mind goes on overdrive. It's weird, isn't it? You think if you had lack of sleep, you'd be tired and your frequency would be low. That's the opposite. When you're tired, it's almost like your mind is just off.

Speaker 2:

Indeed. And what is your one golden nugget for life?

Speaker 3:

My golden nugget for life is throw yourself into whatever gives you joy, passion, enthusiasm, and lead with that, absolutely. Whenever you feel excited about something or you get that feeling of, oh my God, exciting, lead with that, follow that, follow that joy and throw yourself into it, because that is what life's meant to be all about. You know, if you don't have joy in your life, then what's the point? You know, life's really stagnant. And I think I used to think that joy was this kind of elusive term that you sang in hymns and it was again a bit kind of religious oh joy, there's joy in my heart, heart. You know, until I started to really understand that joy is something. It's a feeling that you create just through being. It's not attached to anything external, so it's not like, oh, I've got a new handbag or I, you know I'm, I'm doing. It's more about an excitement of just being, and it's usually something creative, cool.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, listen. Wow, I love the show. I love the app. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me. You're very welcome For anyone who's been listening and you're new to the concept of mindful thought management and you're looking for a fresh perspective. As Imogen said, it is really affordable. It can just get you at least on step one, step two towards an easier life, mastering your thoughts and profound transformation, absolutely so. We'll see you again on the Success Nuggets. Thank you for tuning in.

Speaker 1:

Join David and his incredible guests next time on the success nuggets podcast and to find out more, visit one golden nuggetcom. Thank you for listening.