Over the last four or five years, with the number of people getting computers and getting on the Internet increasing massively, the volume of questions has increased in our client support services inbox. More and more, it has been getting deluged with comments of frustration and requests concerning our opinions of all the various self-help products and services out there.The reason for this is that over the last 10 years, self-help websites have proliferated and they all promise impossible changes and benefits to your emotional and physical and financial and social well-being.The claims on these hundreds of websites are just so incredible and promise automatic, effortless change that, when people finally get their product and see that just like most everything else they've bought in the past, they feel cheated. Because all they have is another book, CD or DVD that provides little more than a lecture, or a giant set of manuals that there's no way in the world they are going to follow through on, because it's all beyond their comfort level (both the work involved and the promise of a different reality). It's beyond their ability to believe they can achieve or believe they deserve to achieve. Because it's just information.
I understand this all too clearly, because for about six years in my late teens and twenties, I tried very hard to be successful in life. I tried to dream big. I tried to achieve some modest yet challenging goals. And I couldn't.I read books. I listened to tapes. I watched videos. I took mountains of vitamin supplements. I took classes. Positive thinking. Motivation. Psychology. Techniquebased (college). I literally read constantly and listened to tapes constantly while I worked, while I drove from place to place, and even while I slept. Didn't work. I ended up living in a van. What I learned was that, yes, it does help to know what to do...But you also need to change on the inside in order to make major outer changes in your life.You cannot get one without the other.You better face that truth now, if you've don't believe it. The promise of a "dream life" without inner change is so attractive to most people that they jump at it, and when the book/tape/seminar can't do what they've been promised, they say "it doesn't work." But it's them that didn't work. And it's really not their fault, frankly. Because expecting people to easily do things they've never done, is like asking a cat to bark like a dog. I mean, if I was selling a training class that promised to help you teach your cat to bark like a dog, you would fail. Because cats can't bark like a dog and they never will. And just getting information about how to achieve some big dream you have is also doomed to fail if you do not have the same core moment-by-moment mental patterns (thoughts,beliefs, attitudes, emotions) as the people who already easily and naturally do what you want to do. And "being positive" isn't what I mean. Because I know some incredibly happy, optimistic, positive people.But a few of these people are so out of shape physically,that it a wonder they are still alive.
They own the belief and thought patterns of happiness and optimism, but they don't have the same belief and thought patterns needed for good health. Those ARE different mental patterns altogether. Just like belief systems for very organized people are different than those of non-smokers. Yes, they are both desirable habits to have but they have nothing to do with each other... because there are organized smokers and there are disorganized smokers...Just as there are ORGANIZED healthy people and DISORGANIZED healthy people.Are you getting this? Being "positive" or "nice" or "enthusiastic" guarantees nothing.Sure, everyone should be positive and nice and enthusiastic about life. But it does not assure you that you'll get anything you want. And thinking that a book will ever be your ticket to a radically different life, especially if your life-long habits are the polar opposite to what is taught in the book, is uh, well, that is preposterous. Changing your brainwave patterns has value, and I heartily recommend using tools that can help that happen. Changing your body's energy flow has tremendous value to your health, and I recommend therapies that make that happen. Supplements and medicines that help improve health are a God send for so many people.Yet none of those things can help you to feel differently emotionally than the way you have been programmed to feel you whole life. None of those things will help you take goal achieving actions that can and will transport you to a different life. That is the domain of thought and behavior modification. Information can't change patterned thoughts and behaviors. Becasue information is usually just in one ear and out the other. Information and knowledge is ONLY power when in the possession of a person who has the ability to use it.
No comments:
Post a Comment