Self help books seem like a good way to turn your life around. They offer plenty of great sounding advise about replacing bad habits with good, thinking differently etc, etc. Trouble is within a couple of days all those marvellous ideas seem too difficult and all those great intentions to change fade away. Before you know it you’re back to where you were and the book is slid into the book shelf amongst all the other previously purchased ones that seemed like a good idea at the time.
So why does this happen? Well, we all have an internal representation that has been built up with the help of years of experience. This is called our belief system or the critical part of us. Our belief system filters every suggestion we receive and compares it to past similar experiences. After analysing suggestions our belief system either accepts or rejects them depending if they match past experiences or not.
Let’s say you have spent most of your free time laying on a couch, watching TV and a suggestion comes in that exercising is a better way of spending your free time. Consciously you know how unhealthy you feel and that it would be much more beneficial to exercise but when that suggestion is compared to your internal representation it is rejected because it doesn’t match.
Most people in these situations report feeling an inner battle raging inside between what is familiar and what is different, even if that different is better for us. This is why diets seldom work and why smokers find it so hard to quit! ‘What is familiar’ is more powerful than ‘what is different’
The only way I know to to change the deeply ingrained negative programming that holds people back is to use hypnosis. Hypnosis allows the bypass of the critical part of the belief system so that positive suggestions can be imputed and accepted.
Now I know some of you will say that they have made changes to their lives and stuck to them but remember it was only because it seemed favourable to their belief system. Otherwise they would have been rejected…
Why self help books don't work!
