Welcome to 2026! January is whizzing by and the year stretches out in front of you. All the stress and excess of the holiday season are behind you. But what kind of year are you hoping for and looking forward to? Did you make New Year’s Resolutions? Or did you decide not to because they’re so hard to stick to?
Most people find it difficult to change unwanted habits such as going to bed too late, biting their nails or eating too much processed food. Or they say they’ll definitely start exercising and get fit this time. Obviously, it’s really hard to stop doing the unwanted behaviour and it’s equally hard to start a new, desired behaviour. Otherwise, we’d all be doing what we want to do and not doing what we don’t want to do.
But it’s not as easy as just deciding to change our behaviour, otherwise it would be easy. We tell ourselves we don’t have enough willpower when we discover, yet again, that we didn’t manage to stick to our New Year’s Resolutions for very long. We can then feel deflated and bad about ourselves. The January Blues is a real thing, but we don’t want to let it affect us.
I’m reading a great book at the moment all about habits. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, talks in easy to understand terms about how habits are formed, how to create new, wanted habits and how to break unwanted habits, which you may find helpful. Spoiler alert – it’s not about willpower!
From a Solution Focused point of view, it’s important not to dwell on that negativity and start feeling depressed. Instead, we need to remind ourselves daily about the good things in our life. We need to practise the 3 Ps: Positive Actions, Positive Interactions and Positive Thoughts. Every. Single. Day.
Practising the 3 Ps is fundamental to remaining positive, or changing our thinking so we become a more positive person. We don’t want to get sucked into a downward spiral of negative thinking, which will only make us feel worse. The good news is that we can change the way our brain is wired. This means that we can actually become more of an optimist than a pessimist if we want to!
These are some of the things we talk about in our sessions together. Gradually, my clients find their outlook on life changes and they are able to cope so much better with day to day events. Just have a look at what some of them have said.
If you’re finding negative thinking is a problem for you, I encourage you to get in touch. Give me a call or fill in my Contact Form so we can have a chat. I can then explain more about how Solution Focused Hypnotherapy and I can help you too.