Your New Year's Resolutions will fail. It's the law and how to break it!
Most new year’s resolutions fail because we try too hard. This is the law of reverse effect which was observed by French hypnotherapist Émile Coué over 100 years ago. It states that the harder you try to achieve something the more likely it is you will fail and frequently achieve the opposite effect.
Will power alone is not enough!
Thinking about giving up chocolate, smoking or making yourself get in shape by will power alone are not going to work. I hope that in reading this you will take comfort that the reason new year’s resolutions fail are not because you are weak but because you are strong! If your mantra is “I’m not going to drink” at a sub-conscious level your brain will omit the negative and your subconscious monologue becomes “I’m going to drink”. You are hypnotising yourself to drink!
So, how do you maximise your chances for success?
Make your mantra something positive such as “I am a healthy person who enjoys….” then don’t try to achieve this just repeat it to yourself and allow your subconscious to help you. If you consciously try to achieve this you will be subconsciously focussing on the negative. Coué observed that the greatest achievements are when the conscious mind and subconscious mind are in harmony. Your sub-conscious will then hep you break your habit by creating new things for you to do. If you slip back into your old ways, accept it and move on. If you tell yourself frequently enough that you failed because you are weak you will start to believe it. You are hypnotising yourself. Instead tell yourself that you are instilling new beliefs and it takes time for these to take root.
So how do you deliberately hypnotise yourself?
It is easy when we understand that hypnosis is about focussing on an idea and allowing that to become part of our beliefs. The idea becomes part of our inner monologue. We hypnotise ourselves when we daydream or tell ourselves stories about how we are weak, need one piece of chocolate etc. There are lots of ways to hypnotise yourself. Repeat your mantra as you are starting to go to sleep, preferably out loud. Don’t analyse what you are saying, repeat it 20 or 30 times. Try repeating it when you are in the shower, running or having a coffee. You are aiming for that not quite paying attention feeling so that the words are just happening in the background/slightly remote. Again, don’t worry about how self-hypnotised you are. Sometimes you will be more relaxed than other and self-hypnosis is a skill that comes with practice.
The final piece of advice
The final piece of advice was from Emile Coué was to keep your desires as open as possible and let the sub-conscious do the work. His mantra was “Every day in every way I am getting better and better”.