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Everyone knows of Bruce Lee as a kickass martial artist. As a child I was mesmerised by his skill and dreamed of running away to the Shaolin Temple that Kwai Chang Caine waited outside in the TV series Kung Fu. Sadly my Mum wouldn’t give me the bus fare.

Despite that inauspicious start I still have a deep admiration for Lee’s dedication to his craft – and increasingly to the side of him that many know nothing of; his Philosophy. Bruce Lee thought extensively about the deeper aspects of his craft and, as a therapist, I see deep similarities between some of his key principles and those of Cognitive Hypnotherapy. Try these as examples:

Miss X arrives in my office complaining that she never meets nice men. Investigation uncovers her fear of being hurt. How is it that with this fear she keeps ending up in abusive relationships?

Mr Y finds himself increasingly isolated socially because he smokes, yet we establish that his unconscious motivation to smoke began when he was 14 and wanted to belong to the ‘in crowd’. Why does the unconscious cause a behaviour that brings the opposite of its intention?

I have found this paradoxical pattern in many of my clients. Research has suggested that 90% of our daily behaviour is produced unconsciously. If that is the case why would the unconscious produce behaviour which ends up with the opposite of what it desires, and keep on doing it?