Hal Williamson is a nationally known speaker and creator of the celebrated "Pathways to Greatness" seminar series. As a master storyteller, he has a talent for making complex material understandable. In his recent book, Liberating Greatness: The Whole Brain Guide to an Extraordinary Life--coauthored with partner, Sharon Eakes--he describes how he and others have attained exceptional results by integrating a deep understanding of brain function with basic systems principles and simple mental tools. In the following excerpt from the book, he explores how the practice of using affirmations creates new neural pathways in our brains to help us break through resistance to change:

I cannot count the times I have heard individuals announce, with great certainty, New Years resolutions by which they intend to change their behavior. To their own surprise, no matter how determined or resolute their initial intention to change, they often fail. Why this happens is readily explainable by examining the basic nature of the human brain.

Over your lifetime, neural circuits have become embedded with all of the behaviors that allow you to engage the world in a free-flowing manner, without any conscious mental effort on your part. These neural circuits are your autopilot.

For many years, I drove to work on the same route every day. My office was in the suburbs, just off a parkway that went on through to the center of the city. I was promoted, and my new office was in the center of the city. In the years that followed, there were a number of occasions when I found myself in my car, parked in my old parking space at my earlier job site. I had been driving to work, deep in thought, on autopilot. It was always slightly embarrassing to find myself backing out of my old parking space and waving at the company security guards as I exited the property only moments after having arrived. Knowing about neural circuits and the behaviors they produce, it is easy to explain my unintentional trips to my old place of work. At any given time, we have lots of neural circuits that were used in a previous stage of our lives but are not called upon in the present. Thankfully many new ones have been laid, allowing new behaviors, and because of their repeated use, they dominate our inward thoughts and outward behaviors. When that happens, we've reset our autopilot. But the process can take time--during which we often grow frustrated with the length of the change process and revert to old behaviors.

We are pleased to offer once again a special program (at no additional charge) to intact teams attending the conference. This unique learning opportunity builds on the conference content and experience, enabling your team to start applying new ideas even before you get back to the office.

What if you decided to use a Doberman Pinscher to guard your precious collection of antique teddy bears only to have the dog give in to its basic instincts and rip the bears to shreds when you weren't looking? Well, that's just what happened to a children's museum in England, and it's a vivid example of the law of unintended consequences. Often catastrophic, but sometimes very funny, the unexpected outcomes of fixes that fail are something that we've all experienced at one time or another.