What I'm about to discuss is so simple, yet profoundly important for achieving success in just about every endeavor one can pursue.  Perhaps the simplicity of it is what makes it easy to overlook.  In any case, if you take this blog post to heart, and truly raise your awareness afterward, it could save you thousands of dollars and countless wasted hours.  It could propel your achievement in your personal health, wealth, and happiness.

I was recently participating in an online forum, where a user asked why self-hypnosis wasn't working when she attempted to use if for sleep improvement.  My answer was short and direct: because you're doing it wrong.

Several years ago I was speaking at a national convention for hypnotists.  My topic was marketing.  At one point in the presentation, I was talking about how even though I mostly use social media and content marketing for my business, I still occasionally use press releases and direct mail, which would be considered by many to be "old school" in today's landscape.  A gentleman in the audience raised his hand, and when I called on him, said, "You seriously still use press releases?  I have never had a single press release work."

"That's because you're doing it wrong" I replied.  He made a face as if somebody had just passed gas in front of him.

I wasn't insulting the guy, and I wasn't insulting the woman in the online forum; I was making a simple statement.  If you do something with a certain intention, and the action you commit doesn't produce the desired outcome, then either you chose the wrong action in the first place, or you chose the right action, but you did it wrong.

Why do we struggle so much with admitting that we're wrong?  Failing, making mistakes, and doing things the wrong way are all part of the learning process.  It's normal to make mistakes.  It's human to fail.  If you can't put your ego aside and accept that, you're going to struggle unnecessarily.  Why make it harder on yourself?

Whether you're an aspiring stage hypnotist, consulting hypnotist, or a lay person learning self-hypnosis for your own personal enrichment, as you explore various techniques, avoid the rush to judgement that if you try something and it doesn't work, then IT must just not work.  Instead, adopt the practice of first assuming that perhaps you didn't do it the right way in that particular instance, and review the experience to see if there's an adjustment you can make.  Talk with other practitioners who have done the same technique, and get into the deeper details of how they did it.  When you break down a skill into smaller component parts, and examine each part carefully, you're engaging in what is called "deep practice." That's how you build true mastery and get truly effective results.

Patience is a virtue not often practiced these days.  Too often, when something doesn't work the first time, we move right on to something else because we don't like the feeling of failure.  When it comes to hypnotism training, I've seen it many times.  People hop from trainer to trainer, class to class, because sitting there learning feels good, but when it comes time to practice, that good feeling isn't as easy to attain, and so folks give up pretty quickly and move on to a new training.  Some hypnotists have a whole wall of their office covered in certificates from trainings they have done, yet they're not particularly successful hypnotists.  Education, or knowing something, isn't the same as mastery.