If you've spent years calling yourself lazy for putting things off, this one's for you.
Procrastination isn't a time management problem, it's an emotional one. When a task stirs up discomfort, your brain does exactly what it's built to do: it moves you away from the bad feeling and towards relief. That's not a character flaw. It's wiring, and wiring can change.

In this episode of Moving Minds Forward, Gary Johannes, solution focused hypnotherapist and founder of Inspired to Change, unpacks what's really driving the avoidance, what's happening in the brain when you reach for your phone instead of the task, and why guilt and self-criticism keep the cycle spinning rather than breaking it.

You'll learn:

• Why a procrastinator cares too much, not too little
• The argument between the planner and the limbic system and who usually wins
• How shame acts as a brake, not a fuel
• What solution-focused hypnotherapy does to lower the dread around starting
• One simple five-minute technique you can use today

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Grief is one of the most human things we go through and one of the things our culture handles worst.

We're quietly expected to be "back to normal" far sooner than any of us actually are. So if you've ever wondered whether you're grieving wrong, taking too long, or not feeling the "right" things, this episode is for you.

In this one I look at what grief actually is, why it hits the body as hard as the mind, and why there's no set timeline and no single path through it. I talk about why the pressure to "move on" does so much harm, and what genuinely helps, from talking and remembering, to looking after your physical health, to the support that's there when you need it.

Grief isn't a problem to be fixed. It's love with nowhere to go. But healing is possible, at your own pace, in your own way, and you don't have to do it alone.

I'm Gary Johannes - solution-focused hypnotherapist and founder of Inspired to Change.

🎧 New episode every week. Subscribe wherever you're listening.
🔗 More about our work: www.inspiredtochange.biz

You already know the spider won't kill you.
You know the plane is one of the safest places you can be.
You know the needle will be fine.

And none of that knowing makes the slightest difference.

That gap between what you know and what you feel is the most frustrating part of living with a phobia. It's also the key to understanding what's actually going on and how to change it.

In this episode, Gary walks through what a phobia really is, what's happening in the brain when one fires, why it took hold in the first place, and what keeps it running long after the original event.

You'll hear why the fear lives in the amygdala rather than the rational part of your brain, why that's exactly why willpower doesn't work, and how avoidance quietly keeps the whole thing alive.

Then we get to what helps. Not white-knuckle exposure, but the rewind technique, a calmer, solution-focused approach that lets the brain refile a memory it filed in the wrong place to begin with.

In this episode:

• What separates a phobia from ordinary fear
• The difference between specific and complex phobias
• What the amygdala is doing, and why it doesn't wait for the rational brain
• How phobias develop, and why the origin matters less than you'd think
• Why avoidance and safety behaviours keep the fear intact
• How the rewind technique works, and why it doesn't re-traumatise
• One thing you can take away today

If you've been told you just have to live with it, or you've tried to push through on willpower and found it doesn't work, this one's for you. The brain that learned fear can learn something different.

One condition. The same lens. What's going on, what's keeping it going, and what actually helps.

Subscribe wherever you're listening. There's a lot more to come.