The New Year is a time when traditionally, New Year's resolutions are made and in many cases, broken, shortly afterwards. How often do you hear friends say 'I'm going to lose weight', or 'give up smoking'. The problem often is that, when willpower takes on the subconscious, it is the latter that invariably wins. When you think about the most common causes of failure, they revolve around subconscious thoughts that control our actions. Think about the following example. "I had a bad day at work and thought that a bar of chocolate wouldn't do any harm". Somewhere deep in our subconscious, our mind equates eating something that may have been a treat when we were young, to relaxation; hence the term 'comfort eating'. The sad thing is that the problem does not go away as a result and the core issue, e.g. weight, in this example, gets worse. It can become a downwards spiral.

Our Perception of reality is based around several factors including: our beliefs, values, experiences  and personality traits. That is why when you ask  several people to recall the same event, in great detail,  you will get several versions of the same thing, as information gets deleted distorted or generalised. Try this with a few friends. (A Greek philosopher once said that problems are created not by events, but by our perception of them.)

Take a real-life (and not uncommon) example of a woman who was abused as a child and believed that there must be something about her that made her a bad person. As a result, she became frightened by relationships with men and subsequently suffered three broken marriages. Comfort-eating ensured that she hit the wrong side of 20 stone. Depression and Agoraphobia inevitably set in, accompanied by low self-confidence and self-esteem.

The job of the Hypnotherapist is to use his ability to identify those factors that are perpetuating the problem in the mind of the client and help him/her to view them in a different way, so that the root cause(s) of the problem is eliminated. With the greatest respect to Doctors, tablets cover a psychological problem, but do not cure it. This is where Hypnotherapy comes into its own, since it allows the client to identify the situations that are allowing the perceived problems to exist and guide the client to provide his/her own solutions from within. Hypnosis is usually used to help facilitate this.

However, You can do a lot to help yourself with many of your own problems. Think of something that you would really like to do, or achieve, in the New year. Now think about what it is that really stops you doing it; without apportioning the blame to anyone else. Decide how you can overcome those negative thoughts that have stopped you, in the past. Now think about what has to happen for you to achieve your goal, including what is the one thing that will start the ball rolling. You may well surprise yourself.

For those of you that find this task too great to deal with alone, I would be delighted to treat you. My approach is informal, warm, caring and non-judgemental. All consultations are treated in the utmost confidence. Please see my website for further details. www.chrisjones.uk.com; or telephone 01252 711522.  I would also be happy to talk to small or large groups on specific aspects of my work.

Chris Jones  Dip.C.Hyp, HPD, MNCH(Lic), NLP Prac.