How To Create Lasting Change in 2023 and Beyond
Hands up if your New Year’s resolutions are usually out of the window long before March rolls around?
You’re not alone. In fact, only 28% of Brits actually kept their New Year’s resolutions for the whole of 2022.
But that doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your goals. In this blog, I want to introduce you to another way of achieving them – one that sets you up for lasting change.
But first, let’s look at why New Year’s resolutions usually fail (spoiler: it’s not about what you’re doing wrong and that may surprise you).
Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
Most New Year’s resolutions fail because they’re dependent on willpower. In the beginning, willpower is strong but it can soon wane. Your motivation can fall by the wayside just as quickly as you struggle to make progress towards your goals.
Other factors that can lead to resolutions failing include:
- Not believing that you can achieve the goal(s)
- Not ready for change on a subconscious level
- Trying to work towards a goal that’s very large in scope
The brain isn’t wired to make huge changes. This is why smaller goals can be much easier to achieve than a large goal that feels impossible to achieve.
But even if you break your goals into manageable and achievable sub-goals, there’s a good chance you’ll fail to stay on track.
That’s because there are unhelpful thoughts, habits and behaviours in your subconscious that are lurking in the background. You may not even realise they exist but they’re silently sabotaging your best efforts to achieve your goals and create change.
The unconscious mind is incredibly powerful. It’s much stronger than the conscious mind, which is why even strong willpower can’t override it in the long-term.
Change is far more likely to occur if you’re addressing the root cause(s) of why it’s needed. Crucially, this is the most effective way to make sure that change lasts and isn’t a temporary shift.
Change Starts With Your Subconscious Mind
As you’ve no doubt found, optimism and willpower only get you so far.
But everything changes when you address the subconscious mind. This is where most people fall down when it comes to New Year’s resolutions as the subconscious mind is able to dictate whether you succeed or fail.
When limiting thoughts, beliefs, habits and behaviours are out of the equation, permanent change is much easier to achieve.
How Hypnotherapy Can Help You To Achieve Your Goals
Hypnotherapy is a very effective way to achieve your goals and create change that lasts. Why? Because it works on the subconscious mind and gets to the heart of why New Year’s resolutions are likely to fail.
Hypnotherapy can reprogram the unconscious mind and remove the limiting beliefs, behaviours and thoughts that have led you to fail with your New Year’s resolutions. The mind is much more open to embracing new alternatives.
Hypnotherapy can also use the power of visualisation to repeatedly ‘achieve’ your goals in your mind. The brain can’t tell the difference between reality (actually achieving your goals) and visualisation (playing your goals out in your mind). This means that visualising yourself making them happen fools the brain into believing that you’ve already succeeded and can do so again.
It all adds up to huge potential for making your goals stick. You’re working with your brain rather than fighting against it.
How My Client Finally Made Their Goals Stick
Let me tell you about Anna, who initially came to me for weight loss support. We quickly realised that she had several ingrained habits that were affecting her ability to lose weight and we made an action plan to tackle these slowly but surely.
We worked together for 10 weeks, with each week focusing on a different habit to start to change.
One of these goals involved swapping unhealthy snacks and eating habits for healthier alternatives. Instead of having a biscuit with her mid-morning coffee, we worked on drinking cordial instead of coffee and replacing the biscuit with grapes.
Another healthy habit we introduced was walking after work. Together, we carved out time in her schedule to walk one day per week and this became a habit that she enjoyed. By the end of our time together, she was going on three walks per week!
We also created habits around meal planning. She didn’t make a huge change to the content of her meals but she did swap out unhealthy snacks and bought healthier options.
Every week, we focused on making one small change so as not to create overwhelm. The small habits we built felt manageable and helped her to feel confident about her progress, which created a positive spiral of change.
Changing your habits in this way is very achievable and realistic, especially when you’re using hypnotherapy to resolve subconscious barriers.
Set Goals You Can Keep With The Power of Hypnotherapy
If you would like to have a chat about how to achieve your goals through hypnotherapy, you can contact me on the details below. I would love to support you to make lasting changes in your life and achieve your goals, just like Anna.
Caron Iley
Clinical Hypnotherapist & Solution Focused Practitioner
Havisham Hypnotherapy
T: 07580 041394
E: ci@havishamhypnotherapy.co.uk