How long did it take to break your New Year’s resolution this year? You haven’t yet? You are one of the rare few. Why so rare? Because many resolutions are made as a cultural custom—it’s what we “do” every year at this time. And for the majority, the custom of breaking a resolution is as strong a part of the tradition as making it. In their hearts, most people expect it to happen. As a hypnotherapist, the post-New Year’s crowds are already breaking down my doors. But must we behave the same way every new year? No. How to prevent it or repair it? Read on. Mistakes We Make The reasons we often fail at keeping our resolution—though we’re experts at making them!—are the following. Notice which of these common reasons are yours, and then choose to make a positive change in the resolutions you select, how you construct them, and how you share them. Here’s the scoop on what can go wrong and how to avoid it. Mistake 1: The Resolution Is Too Complicated or Severe “I’ll never eat another candy bar again, never-ever!” is too severe (unless you’ve been strongly advised by your doctor). Here’s what too-complicated sounds like: “I’ll work out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, unless Monday is a holiday, or I walk to work three times or more that week, or I go out drinking and can’t get up early enough.” The logic may be sound, but rather than including all those ifs, ands, and buts in creating the resolution, go with the flow as life happens. Figure you’ll work out three times a week. If you wake up late one morning, get up early another day and work out then instead. It’s common sense, but many people miss it. Overall learning: if the resolution isn’t working, re-think it. Mistake 2: It’s All About What You Won’t Do—Nothing About What You Will Do People need a good mixture of do’s and don’ts, will’s and won’ts to get the job done right. Instead of just a list of what you won’t eat so as to lose weight, also include your new preferred menu. For some of us the preferred items alone will do the job. But knowing only what you’re cutting out, and nothing about what you’re including in, makes Jane a sad, confused girl. So if you want to lose that extra weight, say something: “I will emphasize fruit, vegetables and sugar-free drinks as snacks, and move away from sugary, fatty snacks.” If you’re like many of my clients, thinking only of the first half (what you CHOOSE to eat) is sufficient. That way you need not concentrate on what you’re “losing out on.” Know yourself and experiment. Side note: Just declaring what you will do isn’t sufficient; you’ll also need to make that trip down the fruit and veggie aisle. Overall learning: Turn a ‘won’t do’ resolution into something that will give you direction—a ‘will do’ resolution! Mistake 3: You’re Denying An Important Need or Desire If you overeat, over-drink, or have sex with people you don’t really want to be having sex with, there’s probably something you’re missing. A need that is going unfulfilled. Have an honest talk with yourself, a smart and loyal friend, or a counselor, therapist or hypnotist, and find that thing, and get it fulfilled in some healthy way. You may need time to work through it, but that’s okay; the rewards will be great. Ignore it and that undesirable behavior will keep returning, sometimes more fiercely. Overall learning: Figure out what’s been left unfulfilled and work on getting it satisfied or restructured positively. Mistake 4: You Expect to Fail An old friend of mine used to make a resolution every new year to lose 15 pounds and keep them off. Sometimes she lost them, and sometimes she didn’t, but the new body never lasted. Now that I’ve been a hypnotist for around 10 years, the reason is obvious. She always said something like this: “I’m going to lose that 15 pounds this year, I hope” or “I’m going to try to lose those 15 pounds” or ”I’m going to take off the 15 pounds—at least for a while.” Notice how she built failure into every one of those resolutions. Frankly, resolutions are the closest thing to hypnotic suggestions. Build in failure and you’ve practically hypnotized yourself to fail. Overall learning: Ask yourself what kind of support, help, or learning you need to succeed; then proceed to get them. Mistake 5: You’re Not Getting Support – Or You’re Getting Negative Support Whether your quest this year is to lose weight, run a triathalon, get a great new job, or find a life partner, tell only people who will support you. If the friend or relative is unsupportive, envious, or spiteful regarding your endeavor, don’t use him or her as a sounding board. In fact, don’t even tell him/her about your goal or decision until it’s a done deal. It’s really okay to share only with supporters or cheerleaders and avoid the naysayers who don’t have helpful, valid objections. If you have close relatives you “should” tell but are afraid they’ll disrupt your momentum, disclose only when you’re so in-the-flow that you’re bulletproof. Overall learning: Your best defense is to watch and listen, and then do what you need to do to protect your goal. For more on this, read Part 2, “Notes From A Hypnotist: Creating A New Year That’s Way Better Than Last Year.” ©2008 by Wendy Lapidus-Saltz. All rights reserved.

We all feel a little off balance at times. Maybe we’re having difficulty sleeping or we’re stressed or getting emotionally sensitive and finding there is drama in some or all of our relationships. Often during these times our life is focused area too much in one or more areas. Dividing our attention between different activities and finding routines helps us to restore balance. Here are some tips that may help you to restore a feeling of balance: 1. Limit your online time (emails, forums, instant messaging) to two hours a day. 2. Leave the house every day in the morning, even if you don’t need to be somewhere. You can go to a coffee shop and read the paper, visit a library or a museum, or go for a long walk or bicycle ride. 3. Keep regular sleeping hours. If you are having difficulty sleeping, at least assign certain hours for sleeping, resting, reading, or quiet television (if that makes you drowsy). 4. Save the last hour of the day for quiet and reading books or television – no phone, no computer, no work. 5. Step away from people who are pulling you off balance with drama or their own negativity. Usually you only need to do this until you feel balanced again. 6. Occupy your thoughts and time mostly with positive ideas and activities. 7. Have an assortment of healthy friends in different niches of life. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” or all your social time into one friend or one group of friends. This way when there are problems, and there almost always are occasionally even in good relationships, you will be able to have some enjoyable time or get emotional support from other friends. 8. If you have been watching a lot of television, limit your television to no more than 3 hours a day, at least for a week. 9. Balance the time in your day between different activities and efforts, even at work or college. Too much of one type of activity can make you feel more stressed or dissatisfied. Pace yourself with deadlines so that you won’t have to do marathon sessions to catch up. 10. Don’t work on personal healing or self improvement too much. It gets too intense and ultimately does not help. 11. LIGHTEN UP! Don’t take things too seriously… practice laughter, and ESPECIALLY laughing at yourself!

I used to visit a support forum online for people recovering from various types of trauma. It felt like a wonderful place, and I know it does a lot of good for people. But after I was there for a while I started to wonder, “why don’t I see anyone getting well here?” Out of all the people there, you would see lots of people having “insights,” but the insights didn’t seem to translate into anything but small improvements in their actual lives. The more time you spent there, the more you saw people repeating the same patterns. Once in a while people would suddenly quit coming and I’d wonder, “what happened to them?” I really wanted people to get well and to feel better myself so I kept thinking what to do next, what was the next step? …and then suddenly one day it occurred to me: You can’t become happy and healthy without doing the things happy and healthy people do. And happy, healthy, people didn’t spend hours every day reliving the most tragic and painful moments of their lives! Instead they were out playing with their kids, taking a class, going to the movies, working, whatever. They were going on with life. It taught me that there is a subtle, but very important distinction between “healing” and “healed.” We need sometimes to reflect and discuss, but we should never lose sight of our goal. The goal is not the healing process, but rather to feel good again. Focusing on healing is akin to someone pointing to the moon but you stare at the end of their finger. Too often leads you into your pain and limitations and not to where you wish to be. Since then I often think of my personal growth as one big matching game. If, for example, my dream life includes being very healthy and feeling youthful, well then today I might try to match. A healthy person has healthy eating and exercise habits. Or, say I wish to be confident. Today I might try to speak better of myself and hesitate less. Self-help is like a middle step that sometimes we need and use, sometimes we don’t need but we worry ourselves into thinking we do, or sometimes we discuss the self help but fail to apply it. Anger is not a very enjoyable emotion and it can cause many problems. We often feel helpless in our anger, but there are some simple techniques we can learn to help us reduce or eliminate our anger and direct it in more healthy ways. Anger often is born out of a build up of stress, so the first thing you can do is learn relaxation techniques that you can use when you are feeling stressed. One technique is simply taking a break and breathing deeply and letting go of the tension held in your body. It is our exaggerated and dramatic way of thinking that makes our anger escalate, so it is important to start breaking the habit of this distorted way of thinking. When we are angry, we might be imagining that people are deliberately trying to hurt us or that we are powerless or that things beyond our control matters more than it actually does. Control issues especially come up with anger. We need to learn that we can’t control others but also that we don’t need to control others to be happy and safe. We only need to be able to direct our own thoughts and behavior, and more consciously choose to take positive things from situations and life. Blame is another issue that comes up frequently with anger. Blame is very dis-empowering, and it is sometimes sneaks its way into our psyche in disguise. Make a conscious decision to let go of blame just as you would let go of holding onto something that burns you. Expression is the last key to managing your anger. Trying to suppress anger you feel only makes it fester until it boils over or causes damage to you. Anger often can be unraveled by using the techniques just mentioned, but when it can’t, it is important to express it in ways that do not harm you or others. Sometimes it is enough to communicate to someone, “I am angry because I feel like…” At other times it is not helpful or possible to talk to the person with whom you are feeling anger. General anger can also be expressed in painting (even if you are not an artist), in poetry or music, in a journal, or some other safe manner. Just be careful that when you are expressing your anger, you are letting go of it and not increasing your anger. Managing anger should always make you feel more empowered.

The power of visualization in the law of attraction, or what is famously known now as The Secret, is not a new experiment. It is not something that is untried. For centuries, sages have been studying and utilizing the power of visualization to get what they wanted. It is a proven fact that whatever we visualize, we will most certainly get. We know it as the law of attraction and it works on magnetic energy. In order to attract what you are after, you have to visualize, visualize, and visualize with specific details. If it is a new Mercedes that you want, you need to be clear about the model, the color, the interior, etc and have that picture registered clearly in your mind. You also need to specify when you want it because the universe needs to know the time frame in which to deliver your request. But be sensible when you play with time. You cannot request it to be delivered tomorrow because your intellect would say that is impossible. You may wonder how the universe is going to deliver your new Mercedes with the current salary you are getting. But other factors come into play. You may suddenly earn a windfall, get promoted, or your business suddenly flourishes. Leave it to the law of attraction to work that out for you. All you need to do is to visualize the Mercedes parking in your driveway, or you driving it with the person you love sitting right next to you. To work the power of visualization, you need to hold the picture clearly in your mind with every detail. Get a scrap book and paste a picture of the car on the first page and look at it when you make your visualizations. To make the visualization more powerful, buy something for the new car however small it is, like an ornament, a car decal, that you would place in the car once you get it. Giving your visualization real feelings is a powerful way to send the message to the universe. Your thoughts and the words that you use in your visualizations is powerful, but the greatest pulling factor is feelings or emotions. Put all three into force and you will certainly attain what you desire with great clarity. Visualize at night before retiring as you lie in bed. Ensure that your body is aligned with the earth’s magnetic poles with the head of the bed pointing North, as this will magnetize your body and your thoughts. Be clear about the things that you want, or refer to your scrap book if you cannot picture it clearly. Ask the subconscious to deliver it to you and give it a timeline that is reasonable. Repeat this practice every night like a ritual. You have to repeat and repeat. Over the next few days or weeks, you may come across coincidences that would led you to believe your request is materializing. These are Alpha reflections, the universe’s way of affirming that what you had requested for, is being manifested. In time, you will notice that you are being guided to take a certain form of action to attain the Mercedes. You must not hesitate or become pessimistic. Follow the hints and take action. These are the logical line of events that will lead you to the attainment of your goal. And before you know it, the gleaming new Mercedes is right in front of you.

Here is a simple test to see if you’ve got a bad attitude. Do you see a lot more people in the world who have a better situation than the one you were born into? Does it seem unfair that all the bad things have happened to you and not to others? Do you feel like you got cheated somehow and that life isn’t really fair? If you answered “yes” to two or more of those questions then you probably have a “bad attitude”. The truth of the matter is, life is completely fair to everyone. This is not something that a lot of people like to hear. It puts the responsibility on you to act and make things better for yourself and responsibility is not something that a lot of people are interested in. In fact, if this is something that makes you angry to hear, you most certainly are suffering from a bad attitude yourself. Think of the fact that life is full of challenges and tragedies. Nobody has all the answers to life or understands the situations that others have gone through. Some people have been through worse than others and there is always someone who has been through worse than you. Still, you can never imagine the fact that these others who have been through worse, have somehow managed to keep their head up high and to maintain a positive attitude regardless of their fate. The difference between a good attitude and a bad attitude doesn’t come down to relative standards of who has been through worse than someone else. The difference depends on whether or not you can accept the things that have come your way and face them as though they were placed there for a reason. If you are ready to face them with a positive attitude no matter what and make the best of everything that comes your way, then a bad attitude will never be something that you will possess. If you refuse to accept what life has presented to you and refuse to overcome the negative emotions that oftentimes well up inside you, then “bad attitude” will soon become your middle name. It all comes down to the way you look at your own personal life. It’s impossible to really know what others have been through and therefore impossible to judge a bad attitude from the outside. The only attitude you can really judge is your own. So what is the verdict? Do you believe that everything has happened to you for a reason and that you want to face your life as if it were a special gift basket of problems made especially for you to overcome? Do you want to take on those problems with the sense that everything was purposefully placed there just for the reason of making you into the best person you could ever be? If you are willing to do this, you can certainly say that a bad attitude will be a thing of the past for you and there will never be another person who can judge you for who you are. You will certainly become a person with an attitude for success. A bad attitude is actually not so hard to overcome but the real problem comes at the beginning when a person is trying to decide if they really want to believe that life is fair or not. There doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to determine if life is truly fair, so we could determine people tend to stick with their bad attitude just because it is familiar to them and comfortable. The trick to starting to overcome a bad attitude is to recognize how much better a person’s life is when they constantly carry a “good attitude” everywhere they go. Almost instantly, life begins to improve around them and they begin to see rewards from the new attitude they have decided to take. There may be some challenges along the way but, the longer they keep their good attitude, the more the benefits start to pile up and the greater things start to become. If you have a bad attitude, try it out for a weekend and see what its like to have a good one. You might just be surprised at the changes that will come your way.