The last few weeks have been a bit of an eye opener for me. When you have been in business for a while I think there must be a danger that you think you have seen just about anything that life, in normal circumstances, can throw at you. Then there are those times when you realise that for all your experience and expertise, you don’t actually know as much as you thought you did. And some of your preconceived notions are proven to be wrong.

I used to think that hypnosis was a bit of a gimmick. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know. Anyway, a couple of men I respect who themselves are immersed in quite different business sectors, have both said that they used hypnosis to cure their sweet tooth problem. One did say he dropped a dress size, but I think that was probably just figure of speech. I am not judging.

Both of them had gone to Sophia Hanson in Inverness and I think that both were quite surprised just how successful the treatment had been. Well, that’s something else I have learned and yet another correction in my thinking.

As I keep saying, every day is a school day, and so it is.

So, how are your new year resolutions? Are the goals that you set yourself sufficiently imprinted in your brain that nothing is going to stop you, or were they just aspirational and you’ll get back to them again sometime?

Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing when you stop for Christmas 2023? That was my question last week and it is not going away. Did you plan out the plot of your 2023 story? How does that book end and what are the twists and turns of the plot that lead to that final page on 23 December 2023.

I do not have new year resolutions. I think that just the name almost guarantees that you will not keep to them because that is what generally happens to everyone and that will have been in your mind from the outset. I do have goals for 2023 and I am working on them, and that will take some self-discipline and determination. The question is though, are those goals sufficiently burned into my mind that nothing will divert me from my course? Do I need something like hypnosis to help me?

When setting my goals for this year, I considered what I wanted to achieve and by when. I decided what actions I needed to take in order to steer my way to my goals and then I made changes to my daily routine so that every day there was something to remind me that things had changed. The changes to my daily routine remind me where I am going and why. By the way, I don’t need to share my goals. Some are business and others personal. You cannot have mine. Go and get your own!

Now, here’s a question for you. Do you post letters during a postal strike? I had a conversation this morning with someone who thought that we should not be posting anything during a postal strike. I suppose our view is that the strike should only delay the mail and there was no risk of anything going astray. But it’s an interesting point. With there being a strike, there will be a backlog of post to be cleared. I suppose that all through my life, the post was always reliable and safe. Is that still the case? I would like to think that it is but my conversation this morning made me think that some of you may not agree.

There was a time when we sent out everything in the post. These days we might send documents by password protected email or by uploading them to our secure client area, a cloud based facility which ultimately I think most people will want to use because it is the most secure means of communication. That’s progress, but it will mean that we will be sending fewer and fewer pieces of mail. Will that mean that eventually, employing postmen will be uneconomic. A scary thought.

I wonder if many of you already look into the future and see little use for a postman. How many of you have now stopped posting Christmas Cards? When I was at University I knew that every Christmas I could get a holiday job delivering mail. Is there enough extra Christmas mail these days to necessitate taking on hordes of students at Christmas?

They say that the only constant is change. The world around us is changing. I suppose we are very aware of the rapid change in technology as it is applied to bookkeeping, accounting and tax. Tax was certainly changing pretty dramatically a few months ago but thankfully the pace of change has slowed. Everything is evolving and we must evolve as well.

So when it comes to programming your head, is there a place for hypnosis? I think that for most of us who have been in business for a while, we are able to discipline ourselves. But, nonetheless, there may be a time and place for hypnosis and if so, give Sophia a call.

Alan E Long
The Long Partnership
07770 738770