Why do New Year’s Resolutions fail?

Ah - this is the time of the year again, when everybody becomes melancholic. Another year past. Time for a new resolution. But stop! Do you remember those resolutions from last year? Did you succeed? If not, read on. May be there is a way to succeed and 2006 will be the year when you follow through on your resolutions.

Statements abound about this day, the 31st of December: “Another year has past.” “Now it is already 2006/” (no, another couple of hours to go!). “I am getting older, wiser, more matured.” “Nothing has changed.” “I will always be the same.” “Will something ever change?”
Does this sound familiar to you? How come we carry those beliefs? How come some things never change? Oh – this is wrong. This change, but are you a part of it? This sounds better!
Let’s see, where we can start?

Let’s start with January 1st, 2005. Have you taken a look back at the beginning of 2005? With what kind of goals did you set out to “conquer” this year? Stop smoking? Lose weight? Change job? Fall in love? Get married? Get divorced? Get a better life?

How much have you achieved? How long did the resolution last? Till the end of January? February? When did you give up and why?

Oh, so many questions!

There is however, a way to make those solutions last. Really, believe me! It is easy to just say the sentence “I want to …” (fill in the blanks with whatever your goal is). Things then change already – a tiny little bit. Because, you create awareness in your mind that you want to change, but oh, oh, oh, old habits die hard.

So more is needed. Writing down the goal is another possibility. You need to know that problems cannot be solved, if there is no outcome!

Ah – there it is - your goal. Nicely written. But hey – write it in positive words, since the mind doesn't understand negatively formulated statements.

Don’t write: “I want to lose weight” or “I want to stop smoking”. Write, for example: "I want to live a healthier and happy life.” This may sound funny, but is needed.

What else to do? Well, the easiest way to start is actually to start with the end in mind – sounds like Steven Covey and the 7 Habits, right?

And right he is. Start imagining, as vividly as possible, what will happen with your goal achieved. Really, as vividly as possible. Where do you want to be in the end of 2006, what you want to do, how you will look like with your goal in mind. In which environment do you operate, what behaviours will you exhibit. How you want to be like. See, what kind of capabilities you need to do so. Play a movie in your mind! What kind of person will you be, when you achieved the goal, what is the effect on you, your environment – yeah, think of this as well! If you want this promotion and you finally reached the goal, what will it do to your personal life, to your family? To you? Write it down, if you want. Your very own script!

Another very short example: You want to lose weight? See yourself in the slim body. Go into this body (associate with it – this is important!)! See yourself buying different type of clothes. Hear how people compliment you. Feel great inside. Wow, this can feel good, really.
Now, the harder part is coming. You need to work on the behaviour. Write down, what you need to do – going to the gym, eating lesser and so on. Write a program, month by month - milestones. Write a goal, for every month, how much you want to get your weight down. Don’t forget to celebrate yourself – the rewards. What will you get, when you achieved or exceeded your milestones. Be aware that you won’t always achieve them, because your body also need adjustment, your mind needs adjustment. That then is the time when you can get back to your script, to your written down goal as well - to reconfirm.

And while you write down those actionsteps, be as specific as possible. Yeah, I know, it is work, but hey – you want to change, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have read so far down already?
Now, a tougher part. Everything we currently do is a habit, a program, running in our mind. So we eat too much because somehow, we have conditioned us to do so. Like, for example, cigarette smoking. You smoke, because …. you believe it looks cool, makes you confident, makes it easier to approach the opposite sex. Like that. You need to work on this. What else can you do to become more confident, instead of smoking? How else can you approach this beautiful girl over there? These are the substituting capabilities that are needed in order break this habit of smoking, eating and so on. Ask your friends, to help you. Check with your family, as support.

You will need them anyway, because along the year, there will be a time when you want to give up, when nothing moves in the direction, so then you need support (you can also send an e-mail to me, by the way, and we work on it!). And, again, read your script.

Are you ready to go for it? Really? Tell me about it, I would be honoured. Or, otherwise, I see you in December 2006.

Happy and Prosperous New Year 2006

(NLP in Asia)
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Feeling uncomfortable

I realised this recently. If there is stress in my workplace - either too many e-mails demanding my attention immediately, my client constantly checking for report delivery, my boss coming in to ask something deemed important.

When is this happening? Mostly on Monday's - when there are an accummulated 300 new emails in my inbox when I arrive in the office at 8.00 AM. That is a lot, it feels like a huge tidal wave. On a normal day, there are "only" about 70 new e-mails in the in-box in the morning. And they keep coming in.

Usually, the only break without new e-mails is from about 12.00 noon to about 3.00 PM, when the flood of e-mails returns.

What is happening is that there is this growing feeling of discomfort in me.
Somewhere inside my stomach. It causes my work gringe to a hold. I want to run away, and most of the time, I do this by making a coffee. One more coffee on top of the many that I drink anyway, but this is a different story.

To give the feeling a name, you can call it panic, stress, distress and I believe that many of my readers are aware of this.

After the coffee has been done, the world comes back to normal and I work the work, run the treadmill, respond, write and be cool.

Recently, I was in this Indian foodstall close to The Curve. The place was packed with patrons, but the stall was undermanned. Shouts from everywhere for drinks, food, cleaning the table etc.

Some of the waiters working there looked stressed and acted stressful. No place to run there. Others were cool, just working the tables.

I saw the similarities - between them and me and realised that things don't change.
Wherever you are, whatever you do - there are situations that causes a feeling of discomfort, make your feel uncomfortable. Be it a waiter in a restaurant who is called on many duties at once, or the knowledge worker (yours Truly), whose attention is demanding from many different sources at once as well.

That is when I realised something.

I realised that every time our world is stretched, change is ongoing, we are growing into zones that are new to us, we are feeling this feeling. It is a scream to a world of "normality".
That easy. Something is pullinng you back to your own zone, the one you know, you can handle, no stress.

That was a great realisation because now, with this new learning, I can enjoy the stress better. And every time I feel stressed, and this feeling of discomfort comes, I know that my world is expanding, I am learning, I am growing mentally. In fact, it makes me feel alive.
Isn't this what counts?

And off I go, since I have to finish this report today, otherwise, my client is very angry, very worried, very stressed. What could be his learning?

(NLP in Asia)
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Hypnosis and weight loss

How many of us struggle with weight issues, for whatever reasons. How many times to we embark on a diet, succeed for a short while, to just fall back to the old levels after we stop dieting. How often do we look into the mirror and sigh with a longing for less weight.

Just read this:
"A year ago, Malcolm weighed 22 stone/140 Kilos and considered himself “obese.” Today, 12 months on from attending Richard Krijgsman’s Hypnotic Slimming Seminar in London, he is healthy, physically active and still maintaining his ideal weight. "

It is possible and hypnosis can help tremendously to keep weight down. However, please be aware that there are reasons why the subconscious mind reacts in certain ways. If you are overweight, your subconscious mind believed, at one point of time, that it is good to eat more, to put on weigth. It only didn't realise that this period is over, that this "protection" is no longer needed.

It is still possible that there is a gain in eating more or being overweight. This is what is called secondary gain in NLP. What are the gains in something that is perceived negatively. For example, when you smoke, it can be that you also feel more confident with the cigarettes around.

Only if there is a solution, a compensation to the secondary gain will it be possible to really solve the issue - once and for all.

(NLP in Asia)

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Business success with coaching

I just found these data:

"In a study by Manchester Consulting in 2002, year-long Executive Business Coaching had a 5.7 times Return on Investment (ROI). After receiving Executive Coaching, business executives, each were surveyed about the benefits they believe resulted from Coaching.

Executives reported increased satisfaction in the following areas:

Working relationships with direct reports (77%)

• Working relationships with immediate supervisors (71%)
• Teamwork (67%)
• Working relationships with peers (63%)
• Job satisfaction (61%)
• Conflict reduction (52%)
• Organizational commitment (44%)
• Working relationships with clients (37%)"

Do you believe that coaching works? At all levels? In every part of your life? If you don't believe in it, why is this so? And, why shouldn't it work? It works in sport, right? So it can work in companies and in personal life as well!

(NLP in Asia)

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coaching

Anchoring for better preparation for an interview

One of my colleagues is an Indian national. As part of his job, he is now going to the US to work in a different office of my employer.

In order to do so, he needs to have a visa for the US, and the visa is only granted after an interview with the US embassy. The objective of the interview is to see if he is a "suitable candidate" for the US, and to determine that he doesn't want to stay (he doesn't, but he needs to convey that message).

The "scary part" is that they might send him back to India to apply with the embassy in his hometown. There is a huge waiting list in India for this interview and we are working on the premises that he goes to the US in early January.
So yeah, he is nervous, very nervous. And he wants to be calm and confident. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is very much made for this "kind of things" (or any other "state). It helps you to develop a great mindset, a State, that allows one to be calm and confident at the time when it is required.

I had a coaching session with him yesterday. Something very easy, and it only took 45 minutes. It is called resource anchoring in NLP, but whatever it is, the work is done by him. He needed to find the resources inside of him to know that he is confident and calm. All I have to do is leading the process, asking the questions and be there.

It is all inside of us, remember? It doesn't bring you much to hear a lecture from others on how they would do it!)

My boss, just before we went for the session, saw him and also talked to him - about being calm and confident. She said, there is nothing to worry about (already the wrong words), that he is calm and confident anyway (but well, that is in "normal situations") and all. It is easy to talk to people like this, but how many can hold onto this when it is required? That is the downside of motivational talks - it only holds for so long, until you are in the situation.

So yes - we went through the process. As said, it took 45 minutes. he anchored the feelings in his fiest, and now, repeats the feeling or state of confidence and calmness every now and then.
Today, we are going for the next session - to set the state even deeper into him - to enable him to carry the feeling with him, and get it, whenever he needs it. And tomorrow we have another session. And before he goes for the interview, I just use hypnosis to really get the state of confidence and calmness into his subconsciousness.

This is fun, and real beneficial for him as well.

(NLP in Asia)
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personal change

17 hour days and no slacking

Currently, I am probably working 17 hour days - of which about 13-14 hours are spend in the office. This is the hardest part of my current life in a new company and I am really proud of how I manage it.

Long streneous days and evenings. The longing to go home, when it gets dark out there, and the lights of the towers in Kuala Lumpur. To see the traffic on the road and know that there are people who are ready to go home.

Sighing and back to the computer in front of me. But, and that is great, I am not tired. We, my team and I battle deadlines.

Still, the concentration is there and the unbeatable confidence that all will be okay!

This is my current WoW factor. Nothing slacks at work, no reduction in the energy level - I am simply not tired. Going, going, on, on - the team and I need to finish a LOT before Christmas.
Coming home, I am still able to read my books, play with my kid (if he didn't fall asleep in the car or is asleep at home already) and even watch a movie every now and then.

Then I sleep like a stone, for a couple of hours, before the day starts again.

What is the great part?

It works - the energy is there, the power to make things happen, the concentration, the mood change to positive when I am down, tired and frustrated.

It is called state management in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). This simply is a process (learnt in my courses) to generate the resources needed whenever I need them. I am utilising this to the fullest. Powerful and fun, because I never knew that it is there!!

(NLP in Asia)
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Recognising hypnosis

Hypnosis is still seen, by many, with suspicion. Too much reporting about those who go around and tricking you of your ATM machine card or even used hypnosis for bank robberies.

Now, hypnosis gains new respect. In medicine and in psychological treatments.

The linked article is lengthy, but worthwhile a read:


At the snap of my fingers
December 3, 2005Page 1 of 2
The science - or art - of hypnosis is gaining new respect from scientists, writes Sandra Blakeslee.

Hypnosis, with its long and chequered history in medicine and entertainment, is receiving some respect from neuroscientists.

Recent brain studies of people who are susceptible to suggestion indicate that when they act on the suggestions their brains show profound changes in how they process information. The suggestions, researchers report, change what people see, hear, feel and believe to be true.

The experiments, which used brain imaging, found that people who were hypnotised "saw" colours where there were none. Others lost the ability to make simple decisions. Some people looked at common English words and thought they were gibberish.

"The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations" is fundamental to the study of cognition, said Michael Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregon and expert on attention. "But now we're really getting at the mechanisms."

Even with little understanding of how it works, hypnosis has been used in medicine since the 1950s to treat pain and, more recently, as a treatment for depression, trauma, irritable bowel syndrome and eating disorders.

There is, however, still disagreement about what exactly the hypnotic state is, or whether it is anything more than an effort to please the hypnotist or a natural form of extreme concentration where people become oblivious to surroundings.

Hypnosis had a false start in the 18th century when a German physician, Dr Franz Mesmer, devised a miraculous cure for people suffering unexplained medical problems. Amid dim lights and ethereal music played on a glass harmonica, he infused them with an invisible "magnetic fluid" that only he was able to muster. Thus mesmerised, clients were cured. Although Mesmer was eventually discredited, he was the first to show the mind could be manipulated by suggestion to affect the body, historians say. This central finding was resurrected by DrJames Braid, an English ophthalmologist who in 1842 coined the word "hypnosis" after the Greek word for sleep.

Braid reportedly put people into trances by staring at them intently, but he did not have a clue as to how it worked. In this vacuum, hypnosis was adopted by spiritualists and stage magicians who used dangling gold watches to induce hypnotic states in volunteers from the audience.
In medical hands, hypnosis was no laughing matter. In the 19th century, physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia, even for limb amputations. The practice fell from favour when ether was discovered.

Now, Posner and others say, research on hypnosis and suggestion is providing a new view into the cogs and wheels of normal brain function.

One area that it may have illuminated is the processing of sensory data. Information from the eyes, ears and body is carried to primary sensory regions in the brain. From there, it is carried to so-called higher regions where interpretation occurs.

For example, photons bouncing off a flower first reach the eye, where they are turned into a pattern that is sent to the primary visual cortex. There, the rough shape of the flower is recognised. The pattern is next sent to a higher - in terms of function - region, where colour is recognised, and then to a higher region, where the flower's identity is encoded along with other knowledge about the particular bloom.

The same processing stream, from lower to higher regions, exists for sounds, touch and other sensory information. Researchers call this direction of flow "feedforward". As raw sensory data is carried to a part of the brain that creates a comprehensible, conscious impression, the data is moving from bottom to top.

Bundles of nerve cells dedicated to each sense carry sensory information. The surprise is the amount of traffic the other way, from top to bottom. There are 10 times as many nerve fibres carrying information down as there are carrying it up. These extensive feedback circuits mean that consciousness, what people see, hear, feel and believe, is based on what neuroscientists call "top down processing."

What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information - as a flower or a hammer or a face.

The top-down structure explains a lot. If the construction of reality has so much top-down processing, that would make sense of the powers of placebos (a sugar pill will make you feel better), nocebos (a witch doctor will make you ill), talk therapy and meditation. If the top is convinced, the bottom level of data will be overruled. This brain structure would also explain hypnosis, which is all about creating such formidable top-down processing that suggestions overcome reality.

According to decades of research, 10 to 15 per cent of adults are highly hypnotisable, said Dr David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford who studies the clinical uses of hypnosis. Up to age 12, however, before top-down circuits mature, 80 to 85 per cent of children are highly hypnotisable. One adult in five is flat out resistant to hypnosis, Spiegel said. The rest are in between, he said.

A number of recent studies of brain imaging point to top-down brain mechanisms under the influence of suggestion. Highly hypnotisable people were able to "drain" colour from a colorful abstract drawing or "add" colour to the same drawing rendered in grey tones. In each case, the parts of their brains involved in colour perception were differently activated.

Brain scans show the control mechanisms for deciding what to do in the face of conflict become uncoupled when people are hypnotised.

Top-down processes override sensory, or bottom-up information, says Dr Stephen Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard. People think sights, sounds and touch from the outside world constitute reality. But the brain constructs what it perceives based on past experience, Kosslyn says.

Most of the time bottom-up information matches top-down expectation, Spiegel says. But hypnosis is interesting because it creates a mismatch. "We imagine something different, so it is different," he said.

(NLP in Asia)
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When values become too earthly

The linked article is actually quite sad.

A young guy defends his girlfriend and is slashed by two attackers. He dies in the hospital and late treatment of his wounds might have contributed a lot to his early death.

Hospitals in Malaysia frequently demand payments before treatment and this was the case here. Rules were followed, and only after intervention of the father was the youth treated. He died because this treatment came too late.

If values would have been in place, monetary considerations would have taken a backseat. It didn't happen and this is the sad part of the story. But then, I am judging from my side of the map. The side of the hospital has not yet been heard. The person who was in judge hasn't mention his or her opinion. Still, the feeling of sadness is nevertheless appropriate.

(NLP in Asia)
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