Did You Fail At Resolutions?

Written by: Debbie

Are you one of the New Year’s Resolutions failures? Life has settled back into routine now that the holidays are over, including the old habit you had resolved to change. After all the parties and celebrations came the traditional New Year’s Resolution. According to statistics only eight percent of those who made a resolution will be successful at keeping them. When one doesn’t keep the resolution, it can lead to feelings of failure. I shudder to think that 92 percent of us feel like failures, it brings up images of the walking dead.

I recently had a client tear up as she told me how she has repeatedly failed at her goal of weight loss. She has managed to go down on the scale in the past, only to bring the numbers back up and even surpass previous weights. This year was going to be her year, until she failed again! With that the tears poured down her face. While in trance she discovered that she was sabotaging herself due to old, unresolved family issues. We have worked on forgiveness and learning the lessons from those situations. We have worked on improved self-esteem. What we haven’t worked on is her weight.

Guess what? I am sure you already know; her weight magically has begun to go down. Yep, she is no longer stuffing her emotions or trying to protect herself with those extra layers.

Another woman called me about her desire to quit smoking. She has made it up to 3 months in the past and then always picks the cigarette up again. She told me, “I just can’t fail again, I NEED to quit.” I encouraged her to visit with me, to determine if she was ready to quit. Using ‘muscle testing’ we determined she really did want to stop. Now, we just needed to find the key.

As we chatted, she revealed that she had started smoking with her sister, sneaking cigarettes from their parents. It became a bonding experience for them, one that she continues ‘in memory’ of her sister. Stopping smoking meant she might abandon her sister’s memory. With that we were able to find a new way to memorialize her sister, reminding her that her sister would want her to be as healthy as possible. She stopped smoking in that moment.

A gentleman called me to ask about his son’s nail biting. He desperately wanted to stop biting his nails, made it a resolution regularly, but he would find himself mindless chewing away at his nails once again. The nail biting began during a particularly challenging time for the family, a bad medical diagnosis for mom right as Dad changed jobs due to downsizing. This poor kid felt like his whole world was topsy-turvy. We addressed what he could and could not control and worked on learning to utilize the coping skills he had and a few new ones learned that day. We didn’t mention the nail biting, however, it has stopped.

There are as many resolutions as there are people making them.

If you find a method that works for you, use it! However, if you are challenged with keeping your goals consider hypnosis. So whether you want to develop an unshakable self-confidence, quit smoking, lose weight or eliminate insomnia, with your amazing inner mind it can be accomplished. Hypnosis is a powerful tool for making lasting life changes. Your mind is very powerful, and you can harness its power for your betterment.

Forget New Year’s Resolutions!

Written by: Debbie

To quote my son who is a scientist, “A year is merely one (roughly) of earth’s revolutions around the Sun, as it has done billions of times. It is a fact of gravity; an inanimate concept that we use to visualize time, and as such cannot be ‘good’ nor ‘evil’.”

Still, many of us said good bye to 2016 with delight. It was a challenging year at so many levels. The hope for 2017 is to find our way to ‘happy’. In the attempt to find this possible bliss, many of us make new year’s resolutions to improve. Thus we have insured, at least a little bit, that the year will once again become a challenge.

New Year’s Resolutions are one more way to say we aren’t enough.

Not thin enough or rich enough or athletic enough according to the top resolutions people make. What’s more, after the initial exuberance wears off, often we give up. This reinforces our belief that we are broken and not enough.

What if instead of resolving to change, we embraced who we are? What if we began to play more instead of “work out”? Maybe we could experiment more with new healthy recipes instead of diet. We could make a challenge out of finding ways to spend less and save more. It is really a matter of perspective after all.

I was told a story of a woman who bought a lovely home, her dream home near the water. She loved that she could hear the sound of crashing waves from her windows. Until the first night in her new home, when she heard dogs barking. It sounded like lots of dogs and lots of barking. It kept her awake and her anger simmered.

After several nights of the constant barking, she decided to find this kennel and put an end to the noise somehow. She drove in the direction of the noise and found herself going quite a ways, finally to a road that ran right in front of the beach.

She found the source of the barking. On a big rock, out from the shore were dozens of seals, having a grand time, barking at each other and doing whatever it is that seals do in the middle of the night. They were a long way from where she lived, but the noise carried over the water. She stood and watched and thought she would never sleep again.

Funny thing, she did sleep. In fact she slept peacefully. Somehow knowing it was the sounds of joy and seals gave her comfort. She found the noise reassuring, just like the sounds of the waves on the shore or rain on her bedroom window.

I have found the same to be in my life. The young boys from up the street wake me often when they walk with their dog and their father. Yes, on my days off I like to steal a few extra moments of shut eye, but the pride with which they tell their father how high they can count makes it all so sweet.

What if you believed you have value the way you are? What if you started to act as if that was true? What changes might come about if instead of making new year’s resolutions to change you decided to celebrate who you are now? I can only wonder, but you my friend can find out for sure.

How To Keep Your Resolutions

Written by: Debbie

It’s a new year and time for a new start, or so we thought on New Year’s Eve. We were determined to put the holidays and the past behind us and become that person we believe we should be. So, break out the resolutions. This is the year I will lose weight! This is the year I will become more financially stable. This is the year I quit smoking. Now, half way into the first month, we are over eating, over spending and still smoking once again. If that is you, don’t fret, you are a part of the 40% of people who bothered to make a resolution and subsequently were unable to keep it. There is hope still to make those changes, don’t give up.

One of the reasons we tend to fail at resolutions is that we try to make too many changes at once, without really defining what they are. Unhealthy behaviors develop over the course of time. Thus, replacing unhealthy behaviors with healthy ones requires time. Don’t get overwhelmed and think that you have to reassess everything in your life. Instead, work toward changing one thing at a time. Break that goal down as well, into smaller more manageable actions. If, for example, your aim is to exercise more frequently, schedule three or four days a week at the gym instead of seven.

Be sure to notice the changes you have made. All too often we focus on what we haven’t done, instead of what we have. When I ask my clients how they have done since a previous session, often the response is all about what they haven’t done. I have to stop them and remind them, “what was the question?” It is then that they will begin to see all the changes that have occurred. Once aware of those changes, we can build upon that success with more successes. Reward yourself for each small step along the journey to success. Find a healthy way to feel good about those changes.