They packed the auditorium at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute to hear life coach Lou Ryan impart his wisdom. Mr. Ryan, the founder and creator of Selfhelpworks an online wellness programme was brought to Bermuda by Argus Insurance who use his website as part of its wellness programme. The health insurance company sponsored a free public lecture by Mr. Ryan while he was here.

In order to achieve what you want in your life he said it is vital to understand how and what you think. “Change your mind and you change your future,” he said.

According to Mr. Ryan, 90 percent of what we do is habit and bad habits stop you from reaching your potential. He said that habits are a result of the way the mind thinks and that if you listen to what your mind says you’ll agree.

“The way we talk to ourselves has a profound effect on the mind,” he said. “In order to change you need to have a willingness to change your mind.” This includes the conversations you have with yourself. The internal discussions you have with yourself that drive you to do or not do any particular thing. According to Mr. Ryan even what you are not thinking about impacts your thoughts. For example if you tend to be an optimistic person it may never cross your mind what financial woes you would be in if your spouse suddenly died. Consequently the need for life insurance or huge savings account may not interest you.

Thinking and conversing is what shapes your identity and not surprisingly then, what you feel is a function of what you think.

He said that success at achieving your goals is closer as you realise this. “Imagine your subconscious working like a video and storing the information in file folders for every relationship you have,” he said. He said that this comes to form your beliefs, what you think and in turn shapes the conversations you have with yourself.

“These conversations influence your emotions and your emotions move you to act or not act in a certain way.

“The bad news is that we are all just machines,’ he said. ‘ But the good news is that we can be reprogrammed.”

Key to reprogramming yourself is a willingness to change your point of view. Feeding or encouraging the type of thought processes you want to adhere to achieves this. Changing your internal conversations to ones that support the life you want to lead.

Critical in this is to be truthful, he said, and to take responsibility for your thoughts and actions. “We think in a particular way because we have trained ourselves to think that way,” he said.

Key in this retraining is to rid yourself of the notion that you must or have to do something. This makes you feel powerless and causes you to have an internal battle to defy that power over you. Mr. Ryan said the answer is to recognise your decisions are your choice.

“When you are on a diet and someone offers you a piece of cake, what’s the first thing you say? You say ‘I’m sorry I can’t. I must stick to my diet.’ But that is a lie,’ he said. “You can have the cake. It is that you choose not to.”

He stressed that the changes are unattainable unless they are a goal you want for yourself. “It is impossible to change for someone else,” he said. “Develop a habit of happiness and say to yourself ‘I choose to start training myself to retrain myself to choosing to be conscious.”

For more information on Mr. Ryan’s specific online wellness programs visit www.selfhelfworks.com.