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Why are most self-help books, courses worthless?
Worthless other than being boring? lol…
They bore the heck out of me… but that is my problem, I guess.
The reason they are worthless because they talk about what to do, but they never teach about consolidation.
My teacher in creating courses taught that the first session needs to give people a quick big win… so they get excited and stay in the course.
He was right and he was wrong. Staying in the course is not enough. Excitement is not enough. Something is missing… And we have a humanity that remains a perpetual beginner thinking that they are experts.
Until I learned the distinction ‘consolidation’ I was like everyone else.
Consolidation has to relevant meanings:
1. bring the disparate looking elements together, so you solidify what you are intending to build on.
This requires one to have a relative good grasp on the big picture, so they can see the elements that cause results.
If you are mistaken here, you’ll consolidate unreality… ugh.
2. To do this frequently, so your results become permanent.
Unconsolidated growth is called cancer…
I was spinning my wheels, I was busy, I was always trying something new.
And I was miserable.
Because all my results were ‘flash in the pan’ results… They didn’t last. I wasn’t building anything.
In business, in my health, in my relationships.
F…-ing flash in the pan results.
What I didn’t have was what Tai calls ‘ratcheting it in’… which is actually a much more instructive picture: each rotation of the tool, the wrench, the screwdriver starts where the previous rotation ended. All without having to lift and then reposition the tool.
Ingenious invention. No wonder it took until 1863 for someone to get frustrated enough to invent it.
And for me to actually translate it for myself to become a growth tool.
When I look, it is not innate for me to continue.
I like starting… According to the conation lady, I am a quick start… I like starting. But I forced myself to learn to build on what I already had, and keep on gaining ground, so eventually I could say: I conquered something.
Self-discipline is my weakest capacity, only 30%, so I still struggle with this…
But 30% is a lot better than most people’s zero percent.
I hear from other entrepreneurs and business teachers is that many entrepreneurs start something, and take it to where it starts working. And then they abandon it and start something new.
They get bored. Or maybe they get distracted by something shiny.
Without balls to the wall persistence no business can succeed.
And without balls to the wall persistence people never get to grow.
So it is self-discipline, persistence, and maybe trust that will make one grow.
There is this book, Atomic Habits that seduces people with its declared benefit: if you grow something one percent a day, by the end of the year that thing will be 3.70 times bigger.
Yeah, yeah… But do you ratchet the one percent in… and can you even do that? I don’t think so. It is not even clear that it happened, I mean the growth.
On February 9, meaning three weeks ago, I started a healing crusade of a resistant client. She wasn’t allowing me to heal her. So for the first week all I could accomplish with four times more energy than I was until that point handle at any one time. all I could accomplish is to stabilize her.
And then she decided that she wanted to live… and surrendered.
It took a lot of energy to heal her, but she is now well. For how long? I don’t know. If she continues being the way she had been being, then I guess not long. It depends if she can CONSOLIDATE her learning about herself.
When her healing was complete, I decided that I wanted to ratchet in the gain in discipline… So since then I have been giving myself the energy at the same dose as I was doing for her.
15-20 minutes at a time.
The energy (The Big Bundle) is not a healing energy per se. The energy, instead, connects consciousness with the brain, and the brain does the healing.
It is always the brain that does the healing, by the way.
I’ve had several areas of my body that could have benefited from healing, my aching stomach, my clogged veins, and my hyper sensitive right hand that shows frostnip (chilblain)… Meaning frost nipped my fingers and killed tissues there… My right hand. At home. My mouse hand…
I took pictures of my hand after a day or two healing… Looking at it now, it is definitely healing.
My sleep has become deeper and I have been falling asleep faster… in minutes instead of hours.
My energy level, especially when it comes to walking is now six times higher…
But these results were produced only because I didn’t let up. I didn’t let the whole thing go to seed… so to say. I kept at it.
And I have a commitment to not stop, ever. Even if I decide that there is nothing more to heal.
Now, let’s contrast it with what is going on in the world:
I had a most educational experience yesterday…
I went to a webinar that was about a new lifestyle business model.
People whose testimonials the guy showed made back 10-20 times their money invested in just 12 days. Tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Out of the door.
I am certain that they didn’t lie. But…
What became evident in the offer, towards the end of the two hours long sales presentation is that those results were rigged.
He could post such figures of profit for clients only because he did 90% of all the work of the first six weeks…
So whose knowledge and skills make that money is not the client’s, but his and his team’s skill and knowledge.
The client learned nothing. Nothing to consolidate, nothing to ratchet in. They did nothing. They watched the experts do what experts do…
Can you watch an expert do what they do, like a magician, and do it just by watching?
But like with every offer I have ever looked at, without the guy doing everyone’s business for them to generate huge numbers and great testimonials, the normal numbers would be happening.
The normal numbers are: 90 out of a hundred would not even get started. Out of the 10 that do, maybe one would succeed, but as much as promised. But somewhat.
It takes time to build up a skill… no matter what skill.
And because only action produces results, consequently only skills produce results.
If people knew this, there would be no internet millionaires, who peddle training, coaching, courses as if it were a pill to take.
And people wouldn’t buy courses thinking that buying the course will miraculously, magically give them skills.
The Reality Challenge can be an invaluable tool at taming your delusional mind.
In the first phase of the program people notice and send me a list of their shoulds.
At some point I point out that all those shoulds are mostly for irrelevant things. I point out that all those shoulds just show me that they have no integrity whatsoever… because some of those shoulds are things they SHOULD actually do, not just complain about not doing.
At a later point they experiment with replacing the shoulds with coulds… and see what happens.
And an even later point they will ignore most of the shoulds, and if they are useful, commit to doing them by putting the should in their calendar, and INTEND to actually do it.
Schedule it.
But what if the should is about a result, not an action?
Then the person needs to look to see what the actions are needed for that should to be successful. What skill, what mindset, what context.
And either commit to the actions, or let go of the should, let go of the result.
The result-oriented shoulds are the most dangerous: the person has no bridge to the result, and probably no idea that they should. They are probably magical minded… like a young child.
So the job is to find the bridge, the actions, and not worry about the results, until the actions become good enough to cause a somewhat good result.
The tool for this is called ‘powerful debriefing’.
It is a simple dialog at the end of the day.
This is how it goes:
I said I would do X. I did/I didn’t do it.
In a client’s case who wants to take ownership of his podcast instead of just look good…
He could say: I intended to throw in a sideways view, a different way of looking at things. I did that.
And maybe add: the result wasn’t as good as I expected. It was kind of clunky. I can see that I could prepare more.
And prepare more is a new action she can add to his process of becoming the ‘owner’ of his podcast.
I practiced that, thanks to Landmark Education, for 26 years.
Each time I did powerful debriefing, I saw a little deeper, a little below the obvious… and grew myself and my life.
If you think you had enough of not having any results, you can enroll in the Reality Challenge… ongoing. If you don’t do at least five communications to me a week, I take you out of the program. Why? Because you didn’t intend to do it…
Enroll in the Reality Challenge
