Faith: Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17;20

Wisdom hiding in plain sight

Faith – This blog is the beginning of a series looking at expressions, quotes and sayings used in every day language. The sayings contain inherited wisdom. These sayings come from life experience or from teachings from cultural as well as religious traditions. The fact that they exist, after all these years, proves their value, aptness and importance. These sayings are an invisible matrix of wisdom, which we all can tap into.

The purpose of this blog is to shine a spotlight on all that wisdom. It’s aim is to dust off any over familiarity and over use of the sayings, that may have affected their potency. I hope to revivify them and show how they are still relevant. In addition show how they support therapeutic work as well as personal development.

The first one I’m starting with is the quote about the mustard seed. This quote has always intrigued me, in that it claims mountain movement with only a small amount of faith. Who wouldn’t want some of that? And I also like the assertion “Nothing will be impossible for you”. Just imagine that!

Faith the size of a mustard seed – Defining the mountains

Now the quote can be taken literally or it could be taken as a metaphor. I’m choosing to see it metaphorically.

In the metaphorical interpretation the mountain is the challenges we face in every day life. Those challenges can be with mental health, physical health. The challenges can also be in our business as well as our personal lives.

Sometimes the mountain can appear too high to climb, resulting in overwhelm, anxiety and depression and even anger.

From a solution focused hypnotherapy ( SFH) perspective the mountain can be thought of as the thoughts patterns around events in our lives (See the presentation in the Free resources for more information). The thought patterns can make the mountains appear higher than they actually are.

“If you approach the mountain in fear, it will look bigger than it actually is.” – Tene Edwards

So it’s not the events in our lives that cause us difficulty, if it was, everyone who is experiencing the same events (e.g. those critical presentations, redundancies, illness, relationship etc.) would react in the same way. Since that is not the case then it has to be something specific to the individuals and that is their thoughts.

Mountains A and B

For some the mountain of thoughts is positive, an exciting adventure, a positive challenge, the place where our potential lies, where we grow – (Mountain type A)

For others its an avalanche of negative thoughts and feelings (Mountain type B) that hold us back and consume our days. Examples:

• Over focusing on what can go wrong.
• Unhelpful comparisons with others.
• Thoughts of unworthiness.
• Blame thoughts.
• Fear of other peoples’ opinions.
• Fear of failure / of success
• Self sacrifice thoughts, wanting to please too much.
• Believing that only we can do the job correctly. Lack of delegation.
• Wanting to do everything at the same time. Everything is of the same importance, i.e. lack of prioritising.
• Self doubt, the imposter syndrome.
• Reliving unpleasant memories of the past.

And many many more thoughts and feelings and behaviours, I’m sure you can think of your own.

Whilst that is a tall list, the list’s aim is to make us AWARE of when we are trapped in unhelpful thoughts and feelings. Once we have that awareness, we can do something about it. When we are unaware of those feelings and thought we engage with them unwittingly and suffer the effects. Awareness breaks that unconscious attachment.

To break free from those feelings and thoughts we need some awareness, a small amount of faith and a positive direction. But more about that in the following sections.

Faith the size of a mustard seed – Why a mustard seed?

The mustard seed is used in the quote, as it was recognised as one of the smallest seeds. The mustard seed also adds a flavour and a interest and a fiery taste to any dish. So why does the quote make the comparison of the smallest seed and a mountain and the importance of having a small amount of faith?

Here are some suggestions, you might have your own insights too:

Curiosity and Engagement

The comparison: Using the difference in size of a mustard seed and a mountain creates a level of intrigue, i.e. how can something so small influence something so big? Consequently we get curious about the quote’s meaning, we get engaged. As I said in the introduction this saying has always played on my mind.

Faith – The association of faith with the mustard seed

• The definition of faith: “complete trust or confidence in someone or something” (Oxford Languages).
• Faith is a kind of trust, belief, optimism that an action will produce a beneficial outcome.
• Faith can also be in our ability to learn from each experience, to recover (bounce back) from a set back. After all we all have had many challenging, fears and difficult situations in our lives and yet have survived them and have grown as a result. When we access that life taught resourcefulness, our level of faith is increased and we are emboldened to step out of our comfort zone.
• Faith can also support courage when stepping into the unknown.
• Faith in taking action is supported by the reframe: “People say that they will take action when they feel better and are more rested. The quote suggest that when we take action we will feel better”. It encourages taking control rather than buying into the limiting feelings contained in mountain B.
• Faith is an act of trust in the way life works.

Size – So why only a small seed of faith?

• So why a small seed of faith when our challenges seem so great, mountain B sized. You would think that a big act of faith would be required for such great challenges. Because we can’t muster those big levels of faith we start doubting our abilities to make a change and can go into overwhelm around those challenges. This leads to disheartenment, depression, anxiety and even anger. Consequently we might not even try to change for the better.
• The GOOD NEWS is that the assumption that big challenge needs a big level of faith is not correct. When we take action, no matter how small, we break our fixation on those negative thoughts and feelings. This results in more optimism and motivation. An analogy of this is a distraught child that is inconsolable until you dangle a favourite sweet in front of them. Another one is when we are dead beat tired and we couldn’t do another thing, when we get a invite to something fun, suddenly that fatigue vanishes.
• When we are overwhelmed we don’t have much capacity to take action or have faith in effecting change in our lives. That is where small steps and a little faith is perfect because they are within our scope of action.

In Summary

As a result of taking the small steps we discover that the fears and worries are either not real or are manageable and we gain access to resources which were unavailable when we were in mountain B mindset. We take back control.

So in any challenging situation, take a small action with faith that it puts you back in control and gains access to more motivation, resources and the next step.

Another quote that captures the spirit of the original quote is: “Fortune favours the brave”

Hypnotherapy and mustard seed sized faith

From a solution focused hypnotherapy (SFHT) perspective the quote fits in with the one brain two mind model (See the presentation in the Free Resources for more information).

The unhelpful thoughts, emotions and feelings are derived from the primitive mind (mountain B mindset). The primitive mind is the part of the brain that is responsible for our survival and is the fight, flight and freeze centre of the brain. It’s the part that generates anxiety, depression and anger and various associated behaviours and coping mechanisms.

When our attentions are fixated on the primitive mind and its reactions, we feel trapped, overwhelmed and can’t see the wood for the trees. We can’t think our way out. The reason for that is that the primitive mind can’t come up with solutions, it’s purpose is to keep us safe even if it means it keeps us stuck. The solutions to our challenges are outside of the primitive mind in the second mind, the intellectual mind. SFHT helps break our fixation on the primitive mind so that we get access to the intellectual mind and its solution finding capabilities.

Now the primitive mind (the Hippocampus, Amygdala, Hypothalamus) is only a very small part of our brain (the size of an almond). Consequently when we take back control by taking small steps with faith the primitive mind can be over-ridden. This results in what was a difficult and onerous challenge suddenly becoming do-able and maybe even a fun and interesting challenge (mountain A mindset).

In your life

You can find an example of the above in your own life. Think of a time when you was imagining the worse about something and after trying to avoid it, circumstances forced you to take action to address it. Remember the surprise of how easy the challenge was and the phrase “It was easier than I imagined” 😊.

In SFH we operationalise the wisdom in the quote by:

• The therapist holding faith in the client’s ability to change and take action.
• Encouraging small practical action steps. Actions that are within the capability of the client, so they get a sense of movement and control and hope.
• We focus on what our clients want rather than what they don’t want. This moves the client’s attention from the primitive mind to the intellectual mind, which can imagine new solutions.
• We have the 3P strategy of positive action, positive interaction and positive thoughts, or the three mustard seeds 😊.

Call to Action

So if you would like to know more about how hypnotherapy can help you, take advantage of a FREE one hour consultation. During the consultation you will learn how the mind works. You will learn how we create anxiety, anger and depression and unhelpful behaviours. But more importantly you will learn what we can do about them.

Accreditation:National Council of Hypnotherapy (NCH), Association of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy (AfSFH), Association of Neuro-linguistic Programmers (ANLP)