New Year’s Eve has always been the time of the year when people seem to make their resolutions concerning what they will do differently in the next year. However, I am very much a pro-activist and encourage people to think ahead of New Year’s Eve since many of those decisions are usually made very flippantly and on the spot where alcohol is also possibly involved.

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Naturally, most of us grow and make changes throughout the year. However, there is great satisfaction in making a resolution to create a change in our lives at the beginning of a new year.

I believe anytime we make decisions, we need to fully think through these decisions. First of all, if you made a resolution last year, did you keep that resolution? If you did, great! If you didn’t keep it, what happened?

Many people have a standing New Year’s resolution that they commit to every January, only to lose momentum somewhere along the way even though they sincerely wanted to attain that resolution. It is also not uncommon to see a person’s interest and motivation diminish a few months or even a few days or weeks after they have begun.

One of the most common mistakes most people make is they set a goal for themselves but they fail to set steps for attaining those goals. I don’t think any of us would get in our cars for a trip to Canada unless we had a map and a planned route to our destination. We would have our travel plan of our highway routes and of the stops we would make.

Unfortunately, some people set a New Year’s resolution without setting a plan of action as to how they are going to attain their goal.

On the other hand, I have had individuals who have set goals with a plan of action of what they were going to do, who continuously failed in their action plan. Does that sound familiar to you?

For example, a somewhat obese, beautiful single 26 year old female, I will call her Christine, came into my office seeking help with her weight. Every year she had set her goal to lose weight. She had her plan and she did well for about three months and then it failed. This had happened for about four years in a row and she was becoming very depressed. She knew I did hypnosis and requested help. We did the hypnosis and what she learned has changed her life. In the hypnosis, she regressed back to when she was 16 years of age when she was raped. At that time in her life, she was very slender and sexual. After the rape, she was so upset that she blamed herself and gave herself the message that if she hadn’t been so attractive and sexual this would not have happened to her. Thus, she blamed herself for the rape. To protect herself from future rapes, she accumulated the weight to make herself less attractive. After the hypnosis, she was able to give herself some new messages and affirmations and today is a very happily, slender, attractive, married mother of two young children.

So, what happened here? Christine consciously wanted to lose the weight over these years. She wanted to be slender and healthy; however, the subconscious mind was fighting her.

It can be very frustrating when you know what you want to do, but you end up not achieving your goal. It seems that your will power just isn’t enough. Just like Christine, people wonder what is wrong with them that they cannot attain their goal.

Hypnosis has proven to be an effective therapeutic tool to bring about these changes. PSYCH-K is also another therapeutic tool which, according to Robert M. William, M.A., originator of PSYCH-K, “is a user friendly way to rewrite the software of your mind in order to change the printout of your life.”

PSYCH-K also changes self-sabotaging beliefs that limit us in our beliefs.

Both hypnosis and PSYCH-K are two very powerful therapeutic tools for allowing the conscious mind to communicate with the subconscious mind in the same language which empowers change.

When the subconscious mind is programmed to oppose a conscious idea, function or goal, that situation cannot be obtained until the subconscious mind is reprogrammed to accept that situation. This can be achieved with hypnotherapy or PSYCH-K or both.

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Carolyn Katchmar is a member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, a certified addictions professional in Florida and a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors. Address questions to Ethics & Civility, Marco Eagle, P.O. Box 579, Marco Island, FL 34146. Katchmar also can be reached at ckharper@comcast.net.