Hypnotherapy Blog

So it’s that time of year again when many people are making “New Year’s Resolutions”. And we all know what often happens to those resolutions. People start off with good intentions, to stop smoking, start dieting or exercising, work harder, or just be a “better person”. And yet within a few days or weeks their “resolution” has faded and they are right back where they started. Indeed, they’re often a little worse off, because they’ve chalked up yet another failure. Repeated failure tends to decrease our “self-efficacy”- that’s what psychologists call our sense of our own capabilities.

Of course, repeated failure need not make us feel useless. It can be a valuable learning experience. Soichiro Honda, founder of the Japanese Honda Motor Corporation, once said that “success is 99% failure”. If we look at the careers of successful business people and world leaders, we do not see an unbroken record of constant success. Winston Churchill was seen as a political failure throughout the 1920s. If he’d died in 1931- as he nearly did- few of us would now have heard of him.

The difference with successful people is that following each failure, they analyse the reasons for that failure. Where their own mistakes or failings have caused the failure, they face up to this reality and consider what they need to change, and how to change it. But there’s one thing they don’t do. They don’t accept that they themselves are a failure. If they put their attitude into words, they would say “I’ve just experienced a failure, but I am not a failure.” If their own actions have contributed to that failure (which they almost always have done), they consider how to put that right. And if other people have contributed, they consider how to neutralise their unhelpful influence.

In making any resolution, it’s much better to analyse the potential reasons for failure before they happen, rather than wait until we fail. Suppose you want to quit smoking, for example. You’ve probably tried before, and failed, so think back- how and where and when did you resume smoking? Was it during or following a stressful experience? Had you been drinking? Were you in the company of other smokers? Now consider whether those situations are likely to occur in the next month or so. How will you prepare for them? Consider also how other people will react to the changes you intend to make. Will they help you or hinder you? How can you prepare for this? Consider also why you wish to make this change. What positive benefits are you looking for, especially in the short term? In my next “News” post I’ll analyse this in more detail.