Resiliency is a journey. You will face different obstacles and conditions as you move through any quest. At times, it may take everything in you to keep edging forward. At other points along the way, you will have the energy and knowledge to reach out and help others who are navigating the same path.
You learn as you go. When you face a challenge similar to one you’ve already conquered, you take that knowledge and use it to make things a bit easier this time around. Your inner strength, flexibility, and ability to bounce back from defeats make you resilient. Those are skills that can be cultivated and strengthened over time.
As a professional hypnotist, you will work with your clients on their resiliency. But you also need to be resilient yourself to nurture your own well-being and grow your hypnotism practice. Here are a few things that you can do to maintain your resiliency.
Focus on What You Can Control
What falls under personal control and what can’t be controlled may be something you discuss with your clients. Focusing on internal locus of control aids them in reframing the narratives around their situation and helps them feel like they are guiding their outcomes.
As a hypnotist, keep sight of that concept for yourself. You may have a client so close to a breakthrough but not yet willing to take that final step to achieve true healing. You do everything you can with your skills, but the rest is up to them. Don’t let that bleed over into your own well-being. You can only control the things that are yours.
Similarly, you may face business setbacks. Perhaps one client has met their goals, and another moves out of the area. Suddenly your business’ finances don’t look quite as good. You can’t control the decisions of those clients, but you can focus on what you need to do to bring in more business.
Set Goals…
Decision-making is tough when you haven’t determined what you want to accomplish. This is where goals come in. Let’s look at one example of this. Let’s say you have some time in your work week to devote to building your hypnosis business. How should you spend it? Should you increase the number of hours you are open to seeing clients? Take an online hypnosis course to fine-tune your skills? Spend your time on marketing? All of these are perfectly valid decisions that can help your practice. So how do you choose?
If you’ve set a goal to increase your income without spending more time on work, you can rule out opening up additional appointment times. However, if you spend your time reaching out to local health-related businesses and trying to create partnerships, perhaps you can meet the terms of that goal: more income at the same time invested.
You can also aim to bring in higher-paying work assisting a local medical provider with anxious clients or offering anxiety-relieving sessions for a local employer in a high-stress field.
On the other hand, if you’ve set a goal to be better at what you do and earn a hypnosis training certification, the training program may be the better choice.
Your hypnosis training taught you to work with your clients to develop goals for their treatment. Remember to do the same thing for your business.
…But Allow Your Goals to Flex
Goals are important for giving us direction, but when driving to a destination, it’s OK to pull over for a snack if you get hungry or for gas when your fuel tank is running low. And if you notice a spectacular bit of scenery or are thrilled to see a sign announcing “Carhenge,” billed as “Nebraska’s answer to Stonehenge,” you gotta stop!
Your road trip goals shouldn’t stop you from addressing needs or creating pleasant memories; neither should your business goals.
Allow room in your goals for flexibility. Returning to our earlier example, imagine that your outreach pays off. A local dentist is thrilled to partner with you and so has a medical hospice service. They see a lot of compassion fatigue and are offering you a lucrative rate to work with their staff. Fantastic…except you find that you don’t enjoy that work as much as you do working with your clients who have experienced deep trauma. Sounds like it’s time to adjust your goals. Allow yourself to scale back from these contracting opportunities and take on a few more private clients.
This is not a failure. It is an adjustment as you find what works best for you and your changing interests/needs. The goals you set are simply a set of directions to get you moving in the right direction. Taking a brief detour or even changing the final destination is okay.
Ask for Help…
For most clients, seeking out hypnotherapy is a huge step. Even if they are skeptical about whether they can be helped or unsure if hypnosis is viable for their needs, they’ve chosen to come to you. They are asking for help because they’ve realized that whatever they were doing on their own wasn’t working. Remember that, and validate and acknowledge the bravery in that decision. Asking for help shows resiliency.
Apply that to your own life as well. If your hypnosis business is struggling to reach the levels you’d imagined, seeking out business coaching, particularly from someone familiar with hypnotism practices, is a logical next step. Relying on someone else’s expertise allows you to focus on what you do best.
…And Give Help as Well
You are fortunate that helping others is central to your chosen work. You receive the fulfillment and a deep sense of purpose of being in a caring profession. However, you should cultivate other ways of being part of a community and giving support when you can. That could mean being a supportive sounding board for friends and family. It can also be finding ways to give to your community, whether through volunteering, advocating for important causes, or simply engaging with your neighbors.
These choices help enrich your life and also create healthy, robust social support networks that you can rely on when you have more needs than you do the capacity to give. The rewards and positive connections from exercising your capacity to help others are incredible and contribute to your resiliency.
Whether you call it ‘inner strength,’ ‘flexibility,’ ‘toughness,’ or simply ‘resilience,’ the ability to adapt, overcome, recover, and thrive is an essential part of life. Focusing on ways you can be resilient as a professional hypnotist will strengthen you and your business. That will allow you to thrive both professionally and personally.
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Resilience demands adaptability and inner strength, marking an ongoing journey with various challenges and circumstances. As a professional hypnotist, you help clients enhance their resilience. To maintain your own resilience, prioritize personal well-being and the growth of your hypnotism practice. It’s a two-fold process that involves guiding others and nurturing your own capacity to bounce back from setbacks.
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