A couple of nights ago, when we thought a hurricane was headed our way, I went out around the house with a flashlight and a broom, knocking down wasp nests from the hurricane shutter frames.

And my mind went back to hurricane season a few years ago, before we had shutters, and we'd never boarded up before either.  And we didn't know if the way we were putting up the boards was right.  Didn't know if they'd hold.  And especially, didn't know if we'd finish in time, before the killing winds arrived.

The rain was already pouring down, and the storm was due in mere hours.  I was sweltering under a makeshift poncho, arms and shoulders aching, fingers sore from the vibration of the hammer drill as it drove into concrete.

At that point, only about half the windows were covered with plywood, so my wife -- the voice of rationality -- suggested that maybe we should leave and go to a shelter.

"No."  I shook my head, tears starting to form in my eyes.  "You go ahead, if you need to.  I'm going to stay here and finish this."  I paused a moment to let my throat clear before I continued.  "I'm tired of running away from things when they get too difficult.  I'm going to keep working, even if the storm comes and I get blown away holding a piece of plywood.

"I'm going to save our house or die trying."

I didn't know it at that moment, but I'd just changed my life forever.

Now, if I were one of the Guilt-trip Gurus of Uncertain Success, I would probably tell you that it's because I made a commitment, blah blah blah, and you should make commitments too.  But that's not at all the point of this story.

When I look at the stories of the gurus, the people who purport to tell us how we should live our lives better, I see three patterns:

1. the ones who have always been successful,
2. the ones who learned from another guru, and
3. the ones who had a "life changing" experience like mine.

There is not much we can learn from category 1; if you're not already successful, it doesn't help.  And category 2 isn't much better.  After all, Even if you go to the same guru as they did...

It Doesn't Guarantee The Same Experience!

Now at first, category 3 doesn't seem to help, either.  If we want to have the passion or enthusiasm of a Tony Robbins, for example, do we first have to be just as fat, broke, and alone as he was when he got his shift?  Should we wash dishes in the bathtub and listen to Neil Diamond?

Or is there something else that we can learn from these "inspiring" stories?

Now, common wisdom holds that when you have a near-death experience, or a major loss, this causes people to "value life more" or "see what they're missing."  But I know for a fact that this is not the case.

See, I had been through a major loss before, about 20 years ago.  And like Buckminster Fuller, who turned his life around on the brink of suicide, I'd even contemplated killing myself back then.

But Fuller and I stopped before the act for different reasons.  And the difference between those reasons, is why I didn't turn my life around 20 years ago...  and why I did, starting in 2004.

That difference is the reason why some people can "hit bottom" and bounce...

While Others Just Lie There!

Now, in many self-help books, you'll find the classic "burn the ships" story...  live free or die...  win or die trying, all that sort of thing.  The Hardassian gurus are particularly fond of these kinds of stories, because they want to illustrate the attitude they think you should have.

That's because when someone who's naturally successful reads that story, they see an example of something they know and understand.  They nod to themselves, "yes, of course!"

But when somebody who is naturally struggling reads that same story, they are much more likely to think, "I haven't got that kind of commitment!"

So what's the hidden meaning in these stories?  What is the true essence of these loss and redemption, do-or-die experiences?

The answer is simple.  At least, it is...

If You Already Understand It!

See, it all goes back to the pain brain vs. gain brain thing.  When our brain believes that failure -- or more precisely, loss -- is likely, it engages a resource-conservation mode that makes us act much more cautiously, to avoid investing effort or taking risks.

This mode acts as a damping override on our ambitions and desires, too, causing us to be less certain of what we want, more fearful, and less likely to commit to anything.  Our first response to thoughts of action will be to hesitate, to "wait and see" how things are going, or to keep looking for a "better" opportunity.

Now at first glance, this might seem at odds with the idea that people turn their lives around after a loss.  Shouldn't it make things worse?

Ah, but you see, here's the catch: the "pain brain" isn't engaged by actual loss or failure.

It's The Anticipation Of Loss Or Failure!

Do you see the difference?  Once you've actually lost or failed, it's positively a relief by comparison to the suffering you go through in anticipation of the event.

During that summer a few years ago, I coined a new phrase: "indecision is suffering".  See, my wife and I quickly learned from the repeated hurricanes that the pain of putting up shutters and maybe having them up too soon or too long, was much less than the pain of continually wondering whether it was time to put them up yet!

The arrival of a hurricane, the damage, the power outages, all that stuff, was usually a relief by comparison, to the suffering that anticipated it.  Once you've actually been through it, there's nowhere to go but up...  or so the conventional wisdom goes.

But if that were really the case, why doesn't everyone bounce back after "hitting rock bottom"?

Well, it's actually good that they don't, because it means it's not the act of "hitting bottom" that causes the change.  And that means we don't have to lose everything, just to become a winner!

The difference, you see, is in anticipation.  Buckminster Fuller turned back from suicide because, in effect, it occurred to him that, "well, hey, I'm not using my life anyway, so what if I tried to see how much good I could do for the world?"

Or in other words, he realized that if things couldn't possibly get any worse...

They could only get better!

In contrast, when I contemplated suicide 20 years ago, I turned back because I was afraid I'd botch the job and end up even worse off.  So clearly, it's not getting to the bottom that counts.

It's what you think when you get there!

And without that particular piece of information, it's all too easy to take my hurricane "commitment" story the wrong way, as a parable about being willing to "do or die", or something like that.

In fact, at first, I learned the wrong lesson from it myself!  And so, even though I call it the beginning of my turnaround...

It was far from being the end.

And I'm somewhat hesitant to repeat the tale, because when I alluded to it in the preview edition of  the new ebook I just released, some reviewers commented on it very negatively.

One said, "Oh, I thought you were different, but you're just doing the old 'buying this means you're a winner' scam."

Well, yes, I was.  Thing is, it's true...  and my realizing it was true, and buying the damn coaching already, was what really turned my life around.  Not the coaching itself, mind you...  not directly anyway.

The coaching helped me in my business, of course, and it still does so to this day.  But the thing that turned me around,  was the decision to bet on myself. 

Now back at the time, I didn't fully understand this.  I was angry at Matt Furey for having the gall to state such a stupidly obvious and transparent sales pitch as "buying makes you a winner."

But damned if he wasn't right!

Well, sort of.

See, it's not even really the act of buying or even deciding to buy that does it.  If you do it because you're afraid of losing, then it absolutely won't make you a winner!  And if you do it because the product or service is inexpensive enough that you don't feel like you're really risking something anyway, it also doesn't work.

What makes it work, when it works, is if you decide you're willing to take the risk anyway, because you want something badly enough.

In the hurricane, I wanted the house (and certain of its contents) to survive the storm, and I was willing to take the risk to get that outcome.

You see, this is the loophole that lets you change without having to hit bottom first.  The people who bounce at the bottom, do so because they realize that -- like Buckminster Fuller or the soldiers whose ships were burned -- they have nothing left to lose.  And so, they become willing to take risks.

Conversely, when I turned back from suicide, it was because I feared something worse.  That is...

I still had something left to lose!

But this is where the loophole comes in.  See, you don't have to have "nothing left to lose", in order to be willing to risk.  You just have to either be okay with losing, or not expect to lose.

And how do you do that?

Well, I'll tell you.

Next time!

--PJ

Next time: What Makes A Person Naturally Successful?

P.S.  In the meantime, if you haven't already seen them, you might want to check out my new video and ebook, or the website for my upcoming "Thinking Things Done" book launch.  I'm really excited by how much the process of working on the videos and book has given me an even deeper understanding of the essential elements of success.

So far, of course, I've only shared a very tiny bit of that understanding with you in this article.  So stay tuned here and at ThinkingThingsDone.com for more!

I get a lot of emails from people who are struggling to change their lives in one way or another: losing weight, quitting smoking, getting fit, fighting procrastination, changing careers, and generally trying to live their dreams.

And I've been seeing a really common theme lately, that mirrors my personal decades of degradation as a self-help junkie.

You see, I've spent a lot of years guilt-tripping myself over my supposed inadequacies, and agonizing over things that really weren't my fault.

So I'm writing this, in the hopes that it will save someone else -- maybe you? -- an awful lot of grief.

However, be warned: if you are currently a self-help junkie, addicted to one or more of the (figurative) sacred cows I'm about to slaughter, you will probably find some portions of what you're about to read to be personally offensive.  So if someone whose teachings you follow, someone you look up to and admire gets ripped a new one in this article...  don't say I didn't warn you.

'Cause junkies never like it when you mess with their supplier.

Click here, if you think you can take it.

When I made the to-do list, I had no idea how big a mistake I was making.

It was Friday night, the end of a spectacular week in which I made more progress on more projects than I would have dreamed possible for me just a few years ago.  I hit all my critical targets for the week, and didn't have any planned for the weekend and coming week.

But then I made a stupid mistake: instead of continuing to do the things that produced that success, I got lazy.

It was late, and I was in a hurry, so I just dashed down a sloppy old to-do list, the way I used to, in no particular order, mixing high-level projects like "prepare this month's topics" with low-level odds and ends like "return library books" and "backup PC".

Now, I just recorded a CD a few weeks ago with a detailed explanation of how to plan things in a way that's actually motivating...  and that way was soooooooo not a to-do list!  So, it should have come as absolutely no surprise the next day, when I had absolutely no interest in doing a single damned thing off that list!

For some reason, though, this didn't even occur to me at the time.  I spent a frustrating Saturday in which only the little things on my list got done...  and damn few of those.  Meanwhile, I felt the old deadline pressure building, and felt like things were getting out of control.

Sadly, I'd made the oldest mistake in the motivation book: confusing the output of a process (some writing on paper) with the process itself (stuff that has to happen in your brain, in order to make a difference).

I deluded myself into thinking I could make a list that looked like the lists I'd made before, and still get the same great results... even though I hadn't gone through the same thought process I used for the earlier lists.

This is why some people can take a new time management or organizational method and have it work great for the first week or two... until suddenly it seems like just a bunch of work filling out forms, that's not really helping anything.

It's like being a little kid who thinks that turning the steering wheel of a car back and forth is what makes it go.  You might look like you're driving the car, but all you're doing is spinning your wheels!

This is also the big difference between thinking you "already know" how to get results in your life... and actually getting them.  Truth is, if you're not doing it, it doesn't matter what you think you know.

And nobody is immune.  I mean, I just recorded a damn CD about doing this motivation-based planning technique less than two weeks ago, for crying out loud.  I've actually been using the technique for a whole month, and getting phenomenal successes with it.  And still, I succumbed to "already-know-it" disease!

There is a phenomenal gap between knowing and doing, because the "knowing" and "doing" parts of the brain are barely on speaking terms.  But if you don't get both of those parts to work together, you will end up filling out the forms and going through the motions of whatever new "system" you pick to run your life...  without ever feeling the calm and confidence of really being in control.

Let's imagine that I made a video of myself working, using the method I now teach.  If all you could do was watch what I did on the outside, you would probably focus on the fact that I'm using index cards, writing a title at the top of each one, and breaking down further details on the cards.  You'd notice things about how I mark items to be done today or next, and how I track what things are in progress or completed, what things need to be or have been broken out onto other cards, and so on.

You would then conclude that you "already know" how my system works, because you could faithfully go through the motions of copying everything I do on the outside.  And you would, quite logically and correctly, conclude that it's nothing special at all.

And so you would never actually try it for yourself, and even if you did, you wouldn't get the same sense of control, motivation, and ease that it gives to me!

Because you'd have missed the real system, which lies entirely within my head.  The writing on the cards are merely a convenient record of what already took place in my mind.  A matter of mere style, rather than the real substance.

And unfortunately, this is what virtually all self-help material consists of: detailed sets of instructions for copying the visible side-effects of what successful people do differently in their minds!

This is why I've been building a second career around changing all that -- teaching people the real distinctions, the "differences that make a difference" to finding your focus and living your dreams.

So, being the big-shot professional guru that I am now, it only took me a freakin' day to realize my mistake, instead of weeks or months like it used to take me.  ;-)

And once I got done slapping myself upside the head for my stupidity, I went ahead and replaced my weekend "to-do" list with a motivation-based plan for having a great week.

And in a matter of minutes, I knew exactly where I stood on every important project, and was able to rapidly identify which things I needed to get done right away...  so I could take the evening off and take my wife out for dinner and a movie.

Without spending the entire date thinking I should be working!

So I had a great night out with my wife yesterday, and lo and behold, what do I find in my inbox this morning?  Why, this email from Jack, an associate member of my self-improvement group:

"I was a little skeptical at first about whether the last CD would really make a difference, but I gave the technique a try yesterday.  I felt like I have too much to do (or not enough time).  At the very least, it helped me relax and decide what not to do.  Plus, I've still got the notecards from yesterday for the things I didn't finish, and it feels like it's going to be easy to pick up where I left off.

Interesting that it reminds me of the "breadth first" tree searching algorithm.  Though really, I'm building a tree of action items, rather than searching.  But it seems to work better than the sort of A* search I'd been trying to do usually, because I'm more relaxed.

And, of course, that whole "feeling relaxed" thing is just is side effect of creating the mindset that I'm going to "win" each of these "games", (i.e. the "gain brain"), which is available once I've gotten things broken down to a size where I can visualize/imagine the steps.

It'll be interesting to see how things go as I keep doing this.

Also, having the notecards reminds me of a technique called "parking downhill".  The analogy is to parking a car on a downhill slope, so that it's easy to get started next time.   The "parking downhill" technique is simply whenever you have to interrupt a task that you are working on, make a physical note of what you would do to get started on it again, while that context is fresh in your head.  Like pushing a context frame onto a stack, so you can pop it off later.  With the notecard, I usually already have that note as one of the steps in the list.  If not, I can just add it to the card.

Good stuff.  Looking forward to more,

  --Jack

Ah, Jack, you are truly wiser than I.  You actually did what I recorded on the CD, even while the big shot guru was getting lazy and ruining half his weekend.  Good on you, mate.

Jack's certainly also got it right about "feeling relaxed" being another side effect of the process.  And of course, some of this is basically straight out of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" philosophy, except that he leaves out some really important parts of this stuff...  parts he probably does automatically, and assumes everybody else does, too!

Unfortunately, it's precisely these small, seemingly trivial differences in thought process that make such a huge difference between the naturally successful David Allens and Tony Robbinses of the world, and "the rest of us".

And the traditional self-help field has utterly failed at teaching the rest of us to change our thinking processes.  Instead, we get fed the same old tired retreads of the output of successful people's thought processes.

We get told that successful people "aren't afraid of failure", for example, but not how they get that way.  We get told that they "see everything as an opportunity", "take risks", "write down goals", and ten thousand other stupid little things that you could spend a lifetime trying to force yourself to copy...  while never even remotely matching their levels of success -- or feeling any better about yourself in the process.

Because all those little things, from writing down goals to having a "positive attitude" aren't really what makes people successful.  Those things are just the output of a process -- the record of something that already happened inside them.

And if you try to copy those outputs, you'll just be going through the motions...  feeling hollow and empty inside.

The same way I did, for nearly 20 years of self-help junkiedom.

But earlier this year, I finally "cracked the code" -- the critical insight into the difference that makes ALL the difference, between the people who are "naturally successful," and those who are "naturally struggling".

But insight is still not enough.  You must actually become a different person -- the kind of person who does things differently.

And part of the path to becoming a different person, is being in an environment that supports that process.  Yes, you can learn some things just by reading or listening to them, but in order to become different, you ultimately have to interact with people who are either already different, or seeking to become so.

See, your brain doesn't give a flying fart what you think your life should be like.  Your body didn't go to all the trouble of growing you a brain just to get you whatever you want.

No, not at all.  It grew you that big brain so you could keep track of tribal politics.  There are actually studies that suggest that brain-to-body size ratio in primates is directly related to the number of  members in a typical band of that species...  and the human brain weighs in at just the right size for a 150-person tribe.

And so the reason you have a "self-image", as pop-psych and self-help have it, is not so you can become "self actualized", but so you can keep track of your public image -- your tribal PR, in other words.

That means your brain -- by default -- cares a whole heck of a lot more what other people think, than it does about what you think.

So, if you want to change your behavior, the fastest, strongest, and utterly easiest way to do it, is to change what tribe you're in!

I fought this for a long time, because I believed that I ought to be able to be strong enough to do it all by myself, without any help and regardless of my environment.  But as it turned out, that was just my tribal brain's PR spin.

See, if you've ever wondered why your brain plays tricks on you, making you do things you don't intend to, and making you not do the things you do intend to, here's the answer in a nutshell: your brain is a spin doctor.

It's job?  To make you look good, or more precisely, to make you NOT do things that will make you look bad and get voted off the island.  If you got kicked out of the tribe, you died... and more importantly, didn't reproduce.  And since by definition, all your ancestors were people who managed to stay in their tribe, you inherited their cowardly brains.

In my case, I grew up learning that "being good" (in the form of doing my schoolwork without assistance) brought rewards...  and that having to get help (especially from a teacher) resulted in humiliation and shame.

So, from my brain's perspective, it was more important for me to NOT seek help from people, than to actually get results!  As far as it was concerned, needing help was something that might get me "kicked out of the tribe".  (Because human societies use shame to teach children what is and isn't acceptable behavior in that society.)

And so, instead of getting coaching or participating in a group, I struggled for a ridiculous amount of time irrationally trying to prove I didn't need any help.

And boy, was I wrong.

Because just minutes of actual interaction with the right people taught me more about myself than I'd previously learned in decades of trying to figure it out on my own.

Now at first, all I noticed was how uncomfortable I felt around successful people.  How nervous and defensive I got, and the various twinges and flinches I got when they said certain things about their beliefs or what I should do.

And ultimately, that drove me to seek out ways to find the source of those inner conflicts, and remove them, before I began teaching other people how to do the same.

Of course, the other big thing that held me back was an addiction to knowledge -- and especially, showing other people that I had that knowledge.

I mean, it was literally an addiction.  I always had to be the smartest person in the room...  which usually made me avoid rooms with smarter people in them, or be somewhat obnoxious when I couldn't otherwise help it.  In recent years, I managed to tone it down a bit so I didn't always have to correct other people out loud, but after I was out of the room I'd still have to go tell somebody else about all the ways those other people were wrong.

But you don't grow, when you "already know".  An information addiction is not the same thing as a thirst for wisdom.  And it's definitely not the same thing as becoming a better person.

And that holds true, whether you define "better" in terms of improved moral qualities, greater practical effectiveness, or just enjoying your life more.

So if you want to become a different kind of person than the one you've been, look for ways you can change your environment.

Because your brain really doesn't care that much about what you think.  And without outside support, it's not just your to-do list that's going to fail.

Next time: Hardassians vs. Fairylanders...  FIGHT!

--PJE

P.S.  I've already helped hundreds of people change their lives through my work in the Circle.  And if you're finally ready to do the same...  you can be next.  Join me for my next workshop, "Small Steps, Giant Leaps", on Saturday, June 28th, by becoming an Associate or Full member of the Circle today.  (And then, among other things, you'll get the CD and newsletter that Jack got.  Plus the next ones, that will be on creating instant good habits and instant motivation.)

But look, life is not a game, and you don't get do-overs.  As much as I wish I could, I can NEVER get back all the years I wasted trying to prove I "didn't need any help" and "knew" more than anybody else.  So all I can say to you is, don't be like me.

If you value your life, then stop sitting on the sidelines of it!  Become the player in your life, instead of just being a spectator, watching it go by.  Do something different.  Now.

Boy, do I feel stupid.  All this time, I've been reading books about planning and organizing and just completely not getting it.

See, every single book says that to make a good plan, you need to break things down into smaller pieces.  But my trouble is, those pieces get really small, really quick, so it seems like less trouble just to start the damn thing already.

Of course, what  happens next is that I spend a ridiculous amount of time on preliminaries and fixing tiny details of things that aren't really very important...  especially if there aren't any other people involved in the project, or any looming deadlines to keep me on track.

Now, they say that this is an ADD trait, something called "hyperfocus".  It can be really handy in cases where you really do need to focus in on something and get it absolutely right, but it's also a perfect way to throw your project... or your life!...

Completely out of balance!

And in the last few days, I've been studying my own hyperfocus tendencies, trying to understand how they work and what could be done to mitigate them.  And along the way, I've discovered what seem to be a set of three general principles or processes that have to be in place for a person's life to be "organized", in terms of either space or time.

Well, "discovered" is maybe too strong of a word.  Thing is, these proceses are already implicitly expressed in many books, including the "Inside-Out" books by Julie Morgenstern. ("Organizing From The Inside Out", and "Time Management From The Inside Out".)  But, in order to use these three processes, you first have to be able to plan well.

And unfortunately, there is one absolutely critical piece that seems to get left out of all these books: namely how to think in a way that naturally leads to making good plans!  (Especially if you are blessed with -- and/or suffer from -- hyperfocus tendencies.)

Even "ADD-Friendly Ways To Organize Your Life" misses this piece entirely.  I almost threw that book across the room when I kept finding section after section that basically recommended people with ADD get their non-ADD friends and family -- or professional organizers -- to do their thinking for them.  (Jeez!  So what did we need the freakin' book for, then?)

But, it was really good for one thing: insight into all the ways in which this single "ADD" trait leads to all sorts of quality-of-life issues, through poor planning and prioritization.  So it got me thoroughly motivated to figure out precisely how my thinking worked differently from that of the "normals"...

And what I could do instead!

So here's what I figured out, about how to plan things in a "non-ADD" way:

Think in successive approximations by breadth-first traversals of the desired end-state.

Brilliant, isn't it?  Well, I guess I need to explain it first, so you'll know what I actually mean.  Otherwise, it won't be of any more use to you, than all those organizing and time management books were to me!

See, the problems I've had with planning are all about three things: the sequence of my thoughts, the content of those thoughts, and their level of detail.  When I start brainstorming a goal like "clean the house", I end up with a list that mixes very high-level and low-level items in the same list, like "take out the trash" and "clean the living room".  (Different levels of detail.)

Sometimes, I'll break down a few of the bigger pieces, but mostly what happens is that I pick only one, and dive into that one in great detail, until I get overwhelmed and don't want to do any of it.  Or, I don't go into any further detail, and end up just doing the smaller, well-defined items...

Leaving the big pieces to rot indefinitely!

But, on the rare occasions that I've done well with planning a major project, it's been when I've used processes that encourage the planning to occur in what programmers would call a "breadth-first" ordering.

In other words, instead of listing small pieces and big pieces together, it works much better if I first put all of the big pieces in one list, then make a pass back through the list to make more detailed sub-lists for each piece.  Then, when all of those sub-lists are made, only then do I make any sub-sub-lists.

And the key insight that I got about this today, is that it allows you considerably greater flexibility in the planning process, as well as preventing hyperfocus from occurring at the wrong times, because it ensures that the links in your mind run in the right directions.

See, if I drill down too quickly, I lose sight of the big picture.  I get caught up in solving the details of this one little thing, that might not be all that important overall.  That's because the sequence of my thoughts is going from a big chunk to successively smaller chunks of the same thing, instead of cutting back and forth over the big picture, seeing each part in relation to the whole.

Because, if I start immediately digging into "clean the living room", it's very easy to end up thinking about stuff like vacuuming or cleaning the carpet or re-organizing the bookshelves.  But if my goal is just to have the house neat enough to have the copier repairman over to do some maintenance, then some of those actions might be...

Serious overkill!

And that brings up the last issue: content.  By thinking this way, it's all too easy to end up making a list of tasks, instead of a list of goals.  Cleaning the living room is not really a goal; it's merely a logical subdivision of a task...  and a highly abstract one, at that!  (I mean, what does it really mean to "clean the living room", anyway?  No wonder I'd get bogged down in it!)

And so, this way of thinking is really not planning.  (Although I used to think it was!)

What we really need is not division at all, and certainly not of tasks!  We want to see pieces of the desired end state, not the tasks required to get to that state.  And, we need those pieces to be seen as a part of the overall goal.  So, if my goal is to have the place clean enough for the copier repair guy to come over, then I need to progressively increase the level of detail I see in my envisioned result, while focusing on individual parts.

This would then result in me listing items that describe chunks of my vision.  Like:

•  "the floors and carpets between the front door and the copier room are free of non-furniture items",
• "the tables and countertops visible on this side of the house are free of clutter and disarray", and
• "the floors and carpets on this side of the house are free of any readily visible dirt or large stains".

Then, when that list is finished, I can then break each subgoal into sub-subgoals like, "I've broken down all the Amazon shipping boxes and put the cardboard out for recycling."  And once these goals get small enough, they can be treated as if they were tasks instead...  nice, well-defined, easy-to-do tasks.  And, if I want to...

I can even do them in hyperfocus!

So, once again, the three keys of planning are to:

• Think in successive approximations,
• By breadth-first traversal,
• Of the desired end-state!

Successive approximation means you see things vaguely at first, then get more detailed.  Breadth-first means you see the whole thing at a given level of detail before you go to a finer level of detail, thus keeping all the parts connected to the "big picture".  And finally, end-state means that the picture you're making is of what you want, not what you have to do to get it.

Because if you leave out even one of these three things, you will get frustrated with both the planning and the execution of your goals.  For example, I've been planning to write another book for well over a year now, but I've been repeatedly focusing on the wrong things.

So, when I've tried to plan, it's always been ridiculous step-wise lists like "Step 1: write the outline...  Step 2: write the book!"

Of course, I've never gotten past step 1, because I have the same problem with the outlining.  My first book got finished only because I assembled it from already-written essays: if I'd tried to write it the way I've been trying to write my books since then...

I'd still be working on the outline!

See, when I've been trying to outline my book ideas, I've generally ended up drilling straight down into chapter 1 and then writing a chapter that really doesn't go anywhere, leaving me with no idea what to do for a chapter 2.  That's because I've been trying to envision chapters as complete units, without first envisioning the whole book as a complete unit.

But now, I can easily see that what I need to do is to define successive approximations for the end state of my book.  Not by asking what chapters it will have, but rather, what will someone know after reading it?  How will they feel?

And most importantly, what will they do, and how will their lives be different as a result?  Because that is what will determine what has to go into the book, and in what order.

So once I've answered these questions at a more general level, I can progressively break down the answers into smaller and smaller pieces.  But, this will not be the outline of the book!  See, that's the problem I've been having up until now: trying to leap directly from this high-level definition down into a chapter-level outline.

What I need to do instead, is to break down the objectives into finer and finer pieces, then reassemble those pieces to build the outline back up again, from the bottom.  That way, I'll be able to sort out the best presentation order for the material as I arrange it, without getting into any blind spots of, "Oops, I probably should have covered this other bit first", or...

"What the heck am I going to say next?!"

What's crazy about all this, by the way, is that I've been digging through writing books for like the last two or three weeks, looking for stuff about how to outline a book, and nobody said a damn thing about this -- or at least not anything that let me see how the way I've been doing it was wrong!

Anyway, now that I've seen how my old approach was broken and how this approach can actually work, I can already see how I can apply it.  Not just to planning my books, but also to planning my time...  organizing my workspace and bookshelves...  heck, it even gives me some fresh ideas for improving my health!

Of course, I don't know all the details yet (since that will come with successive approximations!), but I do know I'll have a lot more to say about all this in the next Owners' Circle newsletter, and probably on the CD as well.

I was actually inspired to investigate all this by an article I read recently about how small steps can make huge differences in performance.  And it got me to wondering, what small steps could I change in my everyday life, that would have a similarly huge impact?

And I looked at a lot of different things, but they all ended up converging on this one point: lack of adequate planning and prioritization.  So, I think this "one small step" is going to be one giant leap  for me, not to mention for anyone else who has a similar problem!

Of course, you'll actually have to practice this and put it to use, which is why I'll be putting more detail and examples in the newsletter and CD.

Also, I should probably mention that the three keys I gave above for planning are not the same as the three processes I mentioned back at the beginning!  The three processes are actually about how you get organized and manifest the results in your life, not how you create the plan or vision of what you want those results to be.  There's a big difference between the two... and you need both to be successful!

So, in addition to expanding some more on this planning process, the newsletter and CD will have even more to say about the "getting results" part.  Sign up as a Friend or higher level Circle member here (if you're not a member already), and I'll send them to you as soon as they're ready.  (Probably late next week, or early the following week.)

Best wishes, and happy planning!

So, after my success with last night's post, I decided that today I would take the time to try and set down the essential principles of my work on a single page.  To do that, I had to leave out any attempt at justifying the principles, providing supporting evidence or examples, or anything like that.

It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, though.  I had expected to cover the page with a lot of brief references to complex ideas, but I ended up instead with just eight fairly basic principles:

1. Success does not require you to become someone else -- just you, with less baggage.

2. Indecision is the source and essence of all "effort" and "suffering" -- and indecision's sole source is the fear of loss.

3. Fear of loss is an emotional attachment to something you believe you have, and it should not be confused with the merely rational desire to trade as little as possible to get what you want!

4. The worst fears of loss are ego-based: fear of disrupting the image we project to others.  These fears are the worst because, unlike a legitimate crisis, they can never end.

5. Fears -- no matter how trivial -- tend to engage the brain's "crisis management" mode, causing us to conserve energy, avoid risk, be less intelligent and creative, and to shrink from pain instead of reaching towards pleasure.

6. Opposing fear through willpower is useless, since this does not eliminate the fear itself, and therefore keeps the brain in crisis-management mode.  To live a happy life, therefore, does not require courage: it rather requires the absence of spurious fear.

7. Likewise, any change which is produced by forced attention to one's actions, is not really a change at all!  It is nothing more than a split between one's previous attachments, and one's current intentions.  (A new inner conflict, in other words!)  Therefore, if your actions do not serve you, change the cause of those actions, rather than the actions themselves.

8. Our essential nature is fearless, pleasure seeking, and creative.  But these qualities are blunted and suppressed by our learned programming.  Thus, we cannot attain these qualities by adding more mental programming!  Instead, we must edit or delete the existing programs whose output is fear.  Otherwise, we are simply increasing our sources of inner conflict... and therefore, our suffering.

Not particularly poetic or eloquent, but not a bad synopsis.  These ideas essentially explain why trying to copy successful people doesn't help people who are stuck, why popular conceptions of change and self-improvement are so unhelpful, and so on.

On the flip side, these ideas say nothing at all about how to edit or delete the existing programs, but that's to be expected.  That stuff is technology, rather than science or philosophy.  And by its nature, technology is a complex beast.  The brain includes many different routes through which to arrive at fear: conditioned responses, social codes, personal judgments, perceived social rank, subconscious prediction...  just to name the first ones that come to mind, that I currently have methods for finding, editing, and deleting.

(And that's not even counting the fact that the brain loves to hide its fears under layers of rationalization.  Sometimes I have to drag a client kicking and screaming through a series of, "and what's bad about that?" questions until they get to an ego-fear like, "Well then I'd be a failure.")

But anyway, this is a start.  If we're really going to change human nature, one human at a time, we sure could do a lot worse than to begin with these ideas.

In the last few weeks I've been working off and on, trying to jump-start a book project.  I've brainstormed titles, written outlines, and written literally almost a dozen "chapter ones".

And the more I work on the damn thing, the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what to say, or who I'm saying it to.

Oh, sure, I know exactly what needs to be communicated.  I know what skills are needed to solve a huge host of problems that I've had, and that other people have.  I know what beliefs are necessary, and which ones get in the way.

What I'm not convinced of -- as yet -- is that I can actually say any of this stuff in a way that will get people to really  believe it, and take action.

At one level of detail, I could write it all very simply, just stating what I know and how it works.  But presented at that level, rather a lot of it would sound like any other self-help book: vague, over-optimistic, and lacking in tangible reasoning behind its recommendations.

And We Can't Have That, Can We?

At another level, I could write a scathing critique and expose' of the self-help industry and why most of what is recommended simply does not work for most people, most of the time.

But that likely wouldn't appeal to anyone besides skeptics...  who probably wouldn't like me pointing out the things that do work!

In a way, what I really want most is to write something that I could have read and benefited from, back when I was young and in pain and thought it was only me who was broken.

But it almost seems as if the body of knowledge I have now acquired is inextricably bound to the journey of learning through which I acquired it.  That the only way to learn it besides repeating that journey, is to accept it on faith.

And taking things on faith, I find myself thinking, is not something I would have done, back then, when I needed these understandings most.

But then a deeper reflection tells me...  

That's probably not true.

Because the real reason, I think, that I hesitate to write, is that I also want the book to reflect well on me.

So it should do well in the market.  Be easy to get PR for.  Easy to condense to media soundbites when I'm interviewed.

And of course it should be unique and distinctive, while also being nothing less than the purest distillation of my knowledge and skills.  No simplification of the facts just to make it more "accessible".  And it must be immediately obvious from the book's positioning why it is absolutely nothing like any other self-help book ever written, so that even the most cynical of people won't hesitate to snatch up a copy in a bookstore feeding frenzy.

(Hm.  Inner conflicts, much?)

This, of course, is the exact same pattern that we all fall into.  We want to eat our cake, but still have it.  Indecision is suffering, and that is all that suffering is.

Suffering is a clash between mental control systems, the hot and cold flashes we would feel in a room with two thermostats set to different temperatures!  It's impossible to satisfy both settings at the same time, and so we suffer.

But this suffering doesn't come about because we desire things.  It comes about because...

We Won't Give Any Of Them Up!

See, people think that "non-attachment" means you don't want anything, or that you don't pursue what you want.  But they're wrong.  Attachment is not about whether you get what you want, it's about not losing what you think you have.

In my case, I fear that writing a simplified form of my learnings will somehow corrupt or cheapen them.  That not sufficiently communicating their uniqueness, or using too much emotion and not enough logic will make me "just like everyone else".  That I will, in some sense, "lose my soul".

And yet, when it really comes right down to it, I have already very nearly stated the heart and soul of my philosophy here in this post.  Indecision is suffering, and the fear of losing is the one thing that stands between feeling like a loser, and being naturally successful.  (As opposed to the pump-yourself-up, willpower-based variety of success that's never worked for me.)

Now sometimes, the way we stop being afraid of losing is by "hitting bottom" and feeling we have nothing else to lose.  And sometimes, we realize that what we're afraid of losing is...

Something we never had in the first place!

But other times, the path is not so desperate or dramatic.  Sometimes, we just systematically work to eradicate our fears.  Not by willpower or affirmation, but by understanding the nature of the mind.

And above all else, by knowing what to look for.  If you don't know that fears of loss and failure are perhaps the only difference between succeeding and failing (due to the differences in brain mode), then you won't spend the time needed to find them...  or eliminate them.

And if you don't know why it makes a difference, you won't be motivated to try.  You will think it's just the same old same old, that you've heard before...  and didn't do anything about.

In other words, it'll just be another "neat idea" to you.

Now I suppose I feel that in my live workshops and one-on-one sessions I have at least some small chance of figuratively grabbing my listener by the throat and making them see.  And after this last weekend's workshop, I got notes from a few of the participants saying that the exercise I put them through sparked a breakthrough for them, and telling me about the cool results they've achieved since then.

But still...

I worry about the ones who didn't send me notes!

Because I want everyone to have a breakthrough.  I want to be the Oprah of breakthroughs: "You get a breakthrough!  And you get a breakthrough!  And you, and you, and you..."

Now on an intellectual level, I realize this is purest ego on my part.  I'm sure that nobody, not even Jesus and the Buddha got 100% breakthroughs from every talk they gave!

And most people think ego is about self-aggrandizement, but in my case at least, it usually masquerades as an excess of altruism.  Among writers and speakers creating their first product, it usually manifests as a desire to make sure the product is of sufficiently "high quality" -- which is usually code for "the packaging reflects well on me", rather than "actually helps people".

(The same thing also applies to most of us computer programmers, by the way.  We don't like to release a program that hasn't been polished enough to stand up to the scrutiny of our peers... even if people are already willing to pay good money for it.  But I digress.)

And in truth, I must admit I do not have a perfect philosophy or method.  It must be applied in order to work, and it must be applied to each new area of life I come into contact with.  And although I will certainly be able to use my methods to banish the fears I just exposed by writing this, it will not foreclose the possibility that as I tackle bigger goals...

I'll find new fears.

My consolation, however, is that each time I get stuck, I can simply turn back to the basics of my method: examine what I want, find the conflicts, identify the fears of losing...  and eliminate them.

And as for the people who don't get a breakthrough from just one reading or talk, I suppose they will just have to wait for the next one.  Because I know that when I take away the belief that I have "failed" by not being the perfect guru, I will feel...  and not just think...  the message of the starfish story.

You know, that story about an adult who sees a boy throwing starfish back in the water after a storm, trying to save them from drying out and dying on the shore?   The adult says, "there are thousands of starfish washed up here, but only one of you -- so what makes you think you can make a difference?"

And the boy smiles as he throws one back in the water.  "It sure makes a difference to that one."

And who knows, maybe the tears welling up in my eyes right now, threatening to pour down my cheeks at any moment, could be some indication that I'm already beginning...

To feel that way, too.

For the longest time, I would hesitate before taking action -- any action.

Or so it seemed.

I mean, I didn't hesitate to turn on the TV or check my email or any other habitual action like that.  I didn't even hesitate that much before semi-routine but not-quite habitual actions, like taking out the trash.

It was only goal-directed actions that I hesitated before.  Like when I was about to start a new programming project, or take the next step in one that I'd already started.  Like when I was thinking about exercising, or thinking about cleaning up a bit around the house.

I noticed this yesterday while doing some programming.  I would think about the next test to be written, and get to a point of thinking, "Yes, I should do that next."

And then, nothing.

I would just sit there, quietly.  Thinking, "Yep, I should definitely do that."

Silence.

"Okay, this is getting silly now."

Nothing.

Finally, I just sort of seize control of my body and force my fingers to start typing something, anything.  And I get the test written.

Now, I'm making it sound like a big deal, but it's actually something I'm pretty used to.  Until I get into the "flow", it's always like that, or at least, it always has been for me.  And fortunately, I'm good enough at what I do that I'm still more productive than most, even after taking this little hesitation habit into consideration.

But it still bugged me. 

Because, in other areas of my life, I don't have that extra edge of skill (and determination to push through) that makes up for it.  When I flinch at exercise, I usually don't exercise.  When I flinch at cleaning or organizing, I usually don't clean or organize.  And when I flinch at my planning or writing, it doesn't get done, and the work piles up until I make an all-out-effort to do it at the last minute.

So today, I resolved to find out what the hell was up with this hesitation thing.

And what I discovered, surprised the heck out of me.

Because the cause of the hesitation wasn't anything like what I'd expected.

I thought that perhaps I was hesitating because there had been some historical consequence to taking action.  That maybe I'd boldly done something as a kid and gotten smacked for it, either by a sibling or schoolmate or parent.

But that wasn't it at all.

As it turns out, the real cause of the hesitation -- and a bunch of other things as well -- was a rather innocent-sounding belief I'd had since childhood:

"Imagination isn't real."

Now, it's important to understand that the words of a belief are not the same thing as the belief itself.  If you look at "imagination isn't real", it sounds on the surface like a perfectly sane belief, that no-one in their right mind would want to tamper with.

However, like nearly all beliefs, platitudes and self-help sayings, the words themselves are merely a summary of a more complex process or map embedded in your brain.

In this case, the foundation experience for my "imagination isn't real" belief was actually an experience of trying to make something real by believing in it.  Specifically, at a certain age I thought that what I read in fiction could be made real by acting it out, as long as you believed in it.

And after trying to build the "weather machine" described in a story, and finding that it did not, in fact, change the weather, I decided that you couldn't make things real by believing in them.  And I have a vague recollection of a grownup saying something about things in books being imaginary and not real.

These and other experiences formed my "evidence file" for the belief.  The words "imagination isn't real" were merely a label that goes on the outside of this file, for reference and retrieval purposes, like a link to a web page.  So saying "imagination isn't real" would call up the experience as a prototype for my behavior.  And so did any attempt to...

Make something I imagined...  real.

Realizing this hit me like a ton of bricks.  I could suddenly see the common thread between this one kind of hesitation, and a whole host of other issues I've tended to have in my life.  If things in books aren't real, and imagining and believing won't make them so, then it stands to reason why I've rarely, if ever, sustained a change I've made based on something in a book.

And why, the more I wanted the change, the less likely it would be to become real.

Because the "evidence file" for my belief was full of disappointment at not being able to make real, things I desperately wanted to make real.

And as I skimmed forward and backward through the movie of my life, I saw the part of my teen years where I tried to build lots of things out of books, and tried various handicrafts, and mostly failed at them, before taking up computers.

Because, as it happens...

Computers weren't really "real", either!

I could "make" things inside of them, and I viewed it as being like just a direct extension of my imagination.  I mean, computers don't actually do anything -- they just show pictures or make sounds.  How can you call that "real"?

It's no wonder I dropped the handicrafts and wound up a programmer.  No wonder that so many things I've tried didn't work, and other things did.  If it came out of a book or I imagined it, my mental model implicitly included failure and disappointment as the ultimate result of any attempt to make it real. 

And even if I succeeded part-way, or for a time, I always found a way to bring things back around to disappointment, creating a life-long cycle of ups and downs.

Even though I've successfully helped other people get out of cycles like these, it always bothered me that I never seemed to be as successful at helping myself, as I was at helping others.  But talking to someone and helping them sort out their brain, wasn't quite the same thing as...

Making something I want, real.

The irony, of course, is that this "imagination barrier" I created for myself, is itself an imaginary creation, made real.

And in the moment I really see that, the belief disappears in a puff of logic.  After all, if it's imaginary, it can't be real!

And a moment later, I know what belief I want to replace it with.

The belief, that for the rest of the day so far, has propelled me -- without hesitation -- into everything I choose to do.

The belief that if I can imagine it...

I can make it real.

"I feel kind of angry", he confessed.

"Good!  That means you're improving."

I was doing a one-on-one, helping him to move from shyness to sociability.  And in the process, we were changing his feelings about certain kinds of actions.

"There is a spectrum of emotions.  Nobody quite agrees on the precise order, but nearly everybody agrees that being angry is better than being sad or afraid."

(After all, when books as diverse as a spiritual guide to the Law of Attraction and a salesperson's guide to practical leadership agree on something...

It's probably worth a closer look!)

"Oftentimes, negative feelings occur in stacks.  First, we get angry at something that's happened, that we want to change.  Then, if we get beaten down and stopped -- whether it's by parents, other kids, or other adults -- we begin to become afraid of what will happen if we take action.  Finally, we decide it's hopeless and become sad."

"And when we apply feeling elimination or other techniques to these feelings, there's a tendency for them to come out in the reverse order.  After getting rid of sadness, you may feel fear.  After the fear, you may get angry."

And this is good, because anger lies on the threshhold between the brain's success and failure modes.  It's the energy to choose a new direction and make a change.  The crossover point from moving away from one thing, and moving towards another.

In fact, there are certain types of change, where, if you haven't passed through the "angry point", there's a good chance that...

You're Not Going To Change At All

For example, before people make identity-level changes -- changes to who they are -- passing through the angry point is a critical step.  To become a different person, you have to be truly fed up with the person you were before...  which often means being angry, with yourself or with your results.

And if you listen to people who have successfully made changes like that...  people who've made extremely rapid, major shifts in their personality, behavior, or lifestyle, you will find that they have this one thing in common.  At some point, they decided that enough was enough, and enough was too much.

In NLP terminology, they "went over threshhold".  In essence, they got mad enough to be willing to do whatever it takes to make the change.

And I've been studying this stuff lately, because I'm developing a systematic set of principles and processes for doing rapid personality makeovers.  In the last month, I've made a few minor adjustments to my own personality, including making myself a lot neater, and a lot more decisive.

And the really great thing about this kind of change is that, once you do it, it's completely automatic.  I don't have to think or try to be neater or more decisive.  It just happens.

Even when I don't necessarily want it to!

Sometimes I find myself expecting to hesitate over a decision...  and then I notice that I've already made the right decision and am taking action.  For example, looking at a catalog that came in the mail, I might be thinking to myself, "Gosh I wonder if I should keep this..."  and then I notice that my hands have already gone and thrown the thing in the trash!

Sometimes it almost seems like my body has been possessed....  by a friendly and helpful demon.

And I've been helping my clients to make similar changes, too.  The one I mentioned earlier, who I was helping become more sociable, later described the sensation of finding himself acting more sociable in similar terms: like being literally possessed by the new self we'd spent an hour or so designing and installing.

Now don't get me wrong: this sensation of being repeatedly surprised by your own behavior in a positive way may be a teensy bit spooky at first, but...

It's absolutely not a bad thing!

And that's why I've decided to go ahead and share with the world some of my first steps towards developing this powerful change technology.  In the February issue of Change Without Pain, Life Without Struggle, I wrote extensively about some of the groundwork that's needed to make personality changes like these, including the importance of switching the mind from "failure mode" to "success mode".

And although the newsletter is normally made available only to Friend or higher-level members of the Owners' Circle, I'm making it available to you, for a limited time, as a free PDF download.

I'm doing this because I believe that some of the people reading my blog have reached a point in their lives where they're almost "fed up" enough to make a big change.

Sure, a whole lot of people -- the majority of people, in fact -- are going to just read it, nod and agree (or pat themselves on the back for "already knowing that"), and then go on to the next link in their web surfing.  But those people, I can't do anything about.

And so I'm doing this on the slim chance that you might be one of those few people who are "on the bubble" -- wavering between the person you've been, and the person you'd like to become.

Because if you are, then this material is going to be like rocket fuel for you.  Download the PDF, and get started now.  Get angry... and get ready to change.

When I was a kid, my first bicycle was a one-speed.  Instead of hand brakes, you stopped it by pedalling backwards.  Later on, I had some trouble adjusting to a 3-speed bicycle, because I kept trying to stop by pedalling backwards.

And I always wondered, why they bothered to have the pedals even able to turn backwards.  After all, it's not like pedalling backwards does anything.

And I used to wonder the same thing about a book I read when I was about 11 or 12 years old.

The book was called "Psycho-Cybernetics", and it claimed that our brains included both a "success mechanism" and a "failure mechanism".

Now, I could easily buy the idea that God or nature could have put a mechanism in our brains to help us succeed...

But why include a failure mechanism?

For nearly thirty years, that idea made absolutely no sense to me.  Indeed, the more I learned about evolution, the less sense it seemed to make.  The idea of having a "failure mechanism" seemed about as useful as pedalling backwards on a 10-speed bike.

But as it turns out, our brains are actually a lot more like my first bicycle.

Because pedalling backwards -- i.e., the "failure mechanism", is actually how you make it stop.

So it's really just the names of the two mechanisms that confused me.  If the book's author had called them the "acquisition mechanism" and "protection mechanism"...

• Or the "leader mechanism" and "follower mechanism"...
• Or the "offense mechanism" and "defense mechanism"...
• Or the "creation mechanism" and "preservation mechanism"...
• Or the "pursuit mechanism" and "escape mechanism"...
• Or the "pleasure mechanism" and "anti-pain mechanism"...
• Or the "opportunity mechanism" and "threat mechanism"...

I might have understood it a lot sooner!

You see, every animal in its natural state requires both of these systems, and their operation is governed by a simple, but iron-clad law:

In the presence of a perceived threat, the threat mechanism is AUTOMATICALLY activated.  In the presence of perceived safety, the opportunity mechanism MAY BE ALLOWED to activate.

So think about that for a second.  Suppose a tiger twice the size of your desk suddenly charged towards you right now, leaping towards your face.

Would you think about what to do next?

Or would you already be running or diving for cover before you even knew what was happening?

Yeah, I thought so.

So the reason Dr. Maltz (the author of Psycho-Cybernetics) called this subsystem the "failure" mechanism, is because in modern life...

Most threats are imaginary!

And as a result, we're always running and diving for cover...  even from our goals!

Because if you even imagine a threat, or remember pain, your defenses can automatically kick in.

And procrastination, lack of "motivation" or "willpower", fighting yourself, and inability to follow through, are all just symptoms of this defense system kicking in.

Worse, you can't stop these symptoms by trying to!

Why?

Because that would simply mean...

You see them as a threat!

And that, ironically enough, just locks your brain deeper into protection mode!

You see, the goal of protection mode can be phrased fairly simply: "make the best of a bad situation," or maybe "try not to lose too badly".  And its rules work roughly like this:

• If the threat is nearby and inbound, duck and cover, or run like hell  
• If the threat is still at a distance, freeze and try to look like a rock or tree or something
• If the threat is a human of my tribe, placate or threaten it according to its relative status in the pecking order

And if you look at those rules closely, you'll see where a lot of self-defeating behavior comes from...  like procrastination (freezing when the threat's at a distance).

And you can't switch this machinery off... which is a good thing.  After all, if a tiger really burst into the room right now, you'd need the "duck and cover or run like hell" part to kick in.

You can try to override it by sheer willpower, but that only works for a short time.  Think about it: willpower is something you use to override your evolved instincts.  That means that if there was some evolutionary benefit to doing that all the time...

You'd have evolved different instincts!

So willpower is implicitly designed to be temporary.  (And no, I'm not implying the existence of a designer or ascribing "goals" to evolution.)

And, as scientists have found in experiment after experiment, willpower is a very limited resource, that is depleted by almost any kind of stress.

Like the stress of using willpower, for example!

Now, there is some evidence to suggest that concentration and willpower can be trained and exercised by meditation, actually causing new brain growth to support the enhanced ability.  But there's not a lot known about that yet, and in any event, it takes time, just like any other form of exercise.

So, willpower is definitely not a quick fix for the backpedalling of the failure mechanism.  Luckily, however...

Nature Left Us A Loophole

You see, the threat-response system or "failure mechanism" is triggered by detection of a "threat".  However, the response system is not responsible for defining what consitutes a threat.

You are!

Well, not exactly.  It's your memories, beliefs, and imagination that define threats.  And this can include things you saw in the movies, heard in a story, picked up from parents and peers, had happen to you, etc.  So your "threat portfolio" can contain an awful lot of stuff that you never consciously decided to put there.

But you can clean that stuff up, as my work on myself and my clients has shown.  You can "declassify" things as threats, thereby ramping down fear and avoidance responses.  You can delete imagined negative futures, and shut down and reroute your pain-avoidance beliefs and behaviors.

You can, in other words, turn every threat you face...  into "no big deal". 

And if you want to live a fulfilling life, it's incredibly important that you do so.  Because the problem with the "failure mechanism" is that it's all about avoiding losing.

Which Is Not The Same As Winning!

You see, when you're trying to avoid loss, you don't take risks.  You don't invest as much.  You don't commit to taking action.

In short, you duck and cover, in the hopes of minimizing the pounding you're going to take.

But to actually win at anything, you have to put yourself out there.  Expose yourself to pain.  And be willing to pay the price.

And that will never happen while you're in "failure mode".

Unfortunately, most self-help material completely ignores this basic fact, choosing instead to focus entirely on the "success mechanism", and the best methods for exploiting it.  Even Psycho-Cybernetics (whose author at least acknowleged the existence of the failure mechanism, as few others do)  had very little to say about how to turn it around.

That's why I'm doing a workshop this weekend called "The Art Of The 'No Big Deal'", to share with you the wealth of things I've learned about the failure mechanism.  Including how it works, and how to circumvent it.

So you can stop backpedalling.

And start living.

--PJE

P.S. The workshop is a conference call that will be held on Saturday, February 16th, at 3pm Eastern time, and you must be an Associate or Full member of the Circle in order to participate.  If you bought my Procrastination Cure course in the last few weeks during one of my special promotions, then yes, your trial month of Associate membership qualifies you to participate.