You Were Given the Most Powerful Thing in the Universe. Nobody Told You How to Use It.
By Shirley McLean | Clinical Hypnotherapist | NLP Practitioner | EFT Tapping | Reiki Practitioner
I spent 31 years managing a busy healthcare practice. Forty members of staff, multiple practitioners working across a wide range of disciplines, and a constant stream of new developments that meant we were often among the first to be trained on emerging conditions, treatments, and approaches. In 2017, I was runner up for the prestigious Chemist and Druggist Manager of the Year award — an accolade that, at the time, was almost unheard of for a practice manager rather than a qualified pharmacist. I had forged my own path, set my own standards, and proved that passion, dedication, and a deep commitment to people could take you further than a title on a certificate. I was good at my work and I found it meaningful.
But something was always missing. And it took me three decades to work out what it was.
The mind.
Not the brain as an organ — I understood that well enough. The mind as the invisible architect of everything. The force that determines not just how we feel, but what we notice, what we expect, what we attract, what we achieve, and ultimately, the entire quality of the life we live.
Nobody taught me that in all those years of healthcare training. Nobody teaches it anywhere, really. We arrive in this world carrying the most sophisticated instrument ever created — a mind capable of extraordinary creativity, healing, transformation, and joy — and we receive not a single word of instruction on how to use it.
But something was always missing. And it took me three decades to work out what it was.
The mind.
Not the brain as an organ — I understood that well enough. The mind as the invisible architect of everything. The force that determines not just how we feel, but what we notice, what we expect, what we attract, what we achieve, and ultimately, the entire quality of the life we live.
Nobody taught me that in all those years of healthcare training. Nobody teaches it anywhere, really. We arrive in this world carrying the most sophisticated instrument ever created — a mind capable of extraordinary creativity, healing, transformation, and joy — and we receive not a single word of instruction on how to use it.
We get a manual for every appliance in the house. Nothing for the most powerful thing we own.
When I discovered hypnotherapy, and then NLP and EFT tapping, something clicked into place that I cannot fully describe except to say: this is what I was always supposed to be doing. My healthcare background did not become irrelevant. It became the foundation. Because everything I now know confirms what I spent 31 years observing working closely with practitioners and patients — the mind and the body are not two separate things that occasionally influence each other. They are one inseparable system, and you cannot truly address one without the other.
Here is what I most want you to know, and what I wish someone had told me far earlier in my life.
You have two minds. The conscious mind — the part reading these words, the part that reasons and plans and worries — accounts for roughly two to ten percent of your total mental activity. The rest belongs to your subconscious mind. The vast, largely invisible engine that runs your body, stores every experience you have ever had, and quietly drives the overwhelming majority of your decisions, your feelings, and your behaviours.
Your subconscious mind does not distinguish between what has happened and what you have vividly imagined. It does not evaluate whether a belief is currently true or useful. It simply acts on whatever programming it has been given. And most of that programming was installed before you were seven years old, when your brain was operating in a deeply receptive state and had not yet developed the critical faculties to filter what came in.
When I discovered hypnotherapy, and then NLP and EFT tapping, something clicked into place that I cannot fully describe except to say: this is what I was always supposed to be doing. My healthcare background did not become irrelevant. It became the foundation. Because everything I now know confirms what I spent 31 years observing working closely with practitioners and patients — the mind and the body are not two separate things that occasionally influence each other. They are one inseparable system, and you cannot truly address one without the other.
Here is what I most want you to know, and what I wish someone had told me far earlier in my life.
You have two minds. The conscious mind — the part reading these words, the part that reasons and plans and worries — accounts for roughly two to ten percent of your total mental activity. The rest belongs to your subconscious mind. The vast, largely invisible engine that runs your body, stores every experience you have ever had, and quietly drives the overwhelming majority of your decisions, your feelings, and your behaviours.
Your subconscious mind does not distinguish between what has happened and what you have vividly imagined. It does not evaluate whether a belief is currently true or useful. It simply acts on whatever programming it has been given. And most of that programming was installed before you were seven years old, when your brain was operating in a deeply receptive state and had not yet developed the critical faculties to filter what came in.
This means that most of us are living our adult lives being run by beliefs formed in childhood. By experiences and environments and people that no longer represent who we are or the life we are actually living. Old programmes on a new computer.
You are not weak, willed. You have been trying to change a subconscious programme using a conscious tool.
This is why willpower so often fails. Why we know exactly what we should do and still cannot make ourselves do it. Why the same patterns repeat across different relationships, different jobs, different circumstances. The pattern is not in the circumstances. It is in the programming.
The extraordinary news — and this is what changed my life and changes the lives of my clients — is that the programming can be updated. At any age. In any area. The brain’s neuroplasticity means that new beliefs, delivered with genuine feeling in a receptive state, will begin to displace old ones. New neural pathways form. The old patterns lose their grip.
Hypnotherapy creates the receptive state. NLP changes the internal structure of the experience. EFT tapping releases the emotional charge held in the
You are not weak, willed. You have been trying to change a subconscious programme using a conscious tool.
This is why willpower so often fails. Why we know exactly what we should do and still cannot make ourselves do it. Why the same patterns repeat across different relationships, different jobs, different circumstances. The pattern is not in the circumstances. It is in the programming.
The extraordinary news — and this is what changed my life and changes the lives of my clients — is that the programming can be updated. At any age. In any area. The brain’s neuroplasticity means that new beliefs, delivered with genuine feeling in a receptive state, will begin to displace old ones. New neural pathways form. The old patterns lose their grip.
Hypnotherapy creates the receptive state. NLP changes the internal structure of the experience. EFT tapping releases the emotional charge held in the
body. And Reiki works at the level of energy — the life force that flows through us and that, when blocked or depleted, we feel as fatigue, disconnection, or dis-ease. Together, they form the most complete toolkit for the whole person that I have ever encountered.
I am in my element now. I work with clients who have carried fears and patterns for decades and watch them shift in ways that used to seem impossible. I am at an age where I can say with genuine conviction that life is good, my health is good, and the work I do does not feel like work. That is not luck. That is what happens when your life and your purpose finally align.
And I want that for you. For every person who has ever wondered why they cannot seem to change, why the same problems keep appearing, why happiness always feels slightly out of reach.
The answer is not out there. It never was.
It is in the most powerful thing you have ever owned.
You simply needed to know how to use it.
Shirley McLean is a clinical hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, EFT tapping practitioner, and Reiki practitioner www.shirleymclean.com
I am in my element now. I work with clients who have carried fears and patterns for decades and watch them shift in ways that used to seem impossible. I am at an age where I can say with genuine conviction that life is good, my health is good, and the work I do does not feel like work. That is not luck. That is what happens when your life and your purpose finally align.
And I want that for you. For every person who has ever wondered why they cannot seem to change, why the same problems keep appearing, why happiness always feels slightly out of reach.
The answer is not out there. It never was.
It is in the most powerful thing you have ever owned.
You simply needed to know how to use it.
Shirley McLean is a clinical hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, EFT tapping practitioner, and Reiki practitioner www.shirleymclean.com
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