Should hypnotists provide a guarantee of successful outcome?
Should a lawyer provide a guarantee that you’ll win the case?
Should a trainer provide a guarantee that you will lose weight?
Should a doctor provide a guarantee that your surgery will be a complete success or that you won’t have side effects to the medication prescribed?
Should a school district provide a guarantee that your child will learn everything in the syllabus? And then go off to an Ivy League school?
All interesting questions. What is a guarantee? How do you define it? Merriam – Webster’s Dictionary says that a guarantee is “an assurance for the fulfillment of a condition: such as:
a : an agreement by which one person undertakes to secure another in the possession or enjoyment of something
or —
b : an assurance of the quality of or of the length of use to be expected from a product offered for sale often with a promise of reimbursement”
It’s an interesting dilemma for hypnotists – to provide a guarantee of work done that relies half on the other party. How would one fashion a guarantee in such a manner?
One of our needs as humans is the need for certainty or safety. When we really look hard at this need, a question arises: what’s truly the only thing we can be certain of? Some would say, “my home,” or “my job,” or “my marriage” … but can we actually and really be certain of these things in life?
The only real thing we can be certain of is what we put our minds to – or, in other words, where we direct our focus. Ghandi, Ben Franklin, MLK, Albert Einstein…the world’s most successful people faced uncertainty with mental resolve and unshakable willpower. After all, our will is really all we can be certain of in life. Within that context, is the need for a guarantee even something that can be answered, especially when the client is 50% responsible for allowing themselves to be part of the process?
To be successful, you must guarantee your own results.
