Thinking back now, how many times have you heard the command: “Know Thyself”? Extraordinary command. Full of power. Sadly it’s rare when the true meaning of this command is clear.

Here is the common understanding: “I need to know myself, so let me search for who I am. Let me probe deeply, elicit my beliefs, my values, put together a complete picture of my identity and set it in a context of my spirituality.” Sounds good, eh?

*bzzz* Wrong. This process will keep you running from religion to psychology to spirituality, running in circles chasing after the elusive self feeling dissatisfied.

This line of thinking is based on an erroneous belief that self is a state. It’s not. It’s a process. A forever emerging spiral unfolding of your adaptive intelligences. A process where as you move up from one level of the spiral to the next, self changes dramatically.

There isn’t a single thing that’s fixed about it. Even your teeth will fall out

So don’t go looking for The One Self. The moment you fixate on the answer, it becomes tangential to who you really are.

The only thing that does work is keep the command: “Know Thyself” repeating in the back of your mind. Forever. Just not too incessantly. See the string of answers as a line with black and white photographs hung to dry, each photograph only a snapshot of an illusion.

I invested a couple of days this weekend into attending Chris Howard’s Breakthrough to Success (3 day no-cost training). My review:

Chris positions himself as the fifth generation of personal growth. As the one who will give you the skills that others can only talk about (his examples of “others” were Napoleon Hill, Norman Peale, NLP, Anthony Robbins). I wish he delivered on that promise.

Alas, he doesn’t. His material is basically a version of Tad James’ NLP & Timeline trainings. It is neither revolutionary, nor evolutionary. I would call much of it outdated. Not even in the same league as the work of innovators such as Robert Dilts, Richard Bandler or Joseph Riggio.

Chris is a fabulous speaker, with high energy and passion for his work. The training is fun, filled with games, dancing, video, music. Definitely a crowd pleaser.

But as a trainer !?! The fifteen hours that I invested there could’ve been condensed into three. A process he did (future imprinting) was missing an important step. Skills are difficult to learn because most of the time (thirteen hours) Chris is speaking at the audience, instead of the attendees practicing the skills.

A good chunk of the time, Chris is selling his products, overtly and covertly. I found his manipulation of the audience distasteful. He’s consistently anchoring himself as the messiah who will lead us to the salvation (guess where he’s anchoring all the negative emotions…). He’s using embedded commands, such as “when you pass b[u]y the CDs on your way out”.

But the biggest sore spot is this: I can understand a trainer who is using outdated models – maybe he isn’t aware of the cutting edge work. I can understand a trainer who is manipulating the audience to sell his products at a free 42 hour seminar – he’s got to keep his business afloat. But I cannot forgive a trainer who is violating his prime directive by teaching people helplessness (by anchoring their path to happiness through himself).

To summarize, IMHO, I would without a hesitation go to Chris to learn platform and presentation skills. But I would find a different trainer for personal growth.

P.S. I want to emphasize that the review above is based on Chris’ free training. I have no idea how different are his for-cost trainings.

We’re going multimedia at Holographic University. Enjoy our first masterpiece “Precious Time” flash movie.

I’ll do it later. I haven’t decided yet. Let me look around some more. I am waiting to feel right about making this decision. And waiting, and waiting…

As you evaluate alternatives to make that decision, did you also consider the ‘hesitation’ alternative? That’s the one when you decide to not do. That’s the one you better have in every set of alternatives for every decision you are going to make from now on.

That’s the one with the highest hidden cost, your lifeblood – time: What am I losing by continuing to hesitate?

A problem is only a problem as long as you interpret your experience as a problem. Here is a nice process to deal with your problem:

1. Imagineer a time in the future when your problem was gone, and you in live in the solution, now. Do it.
2. Think hard of everything you have had to have to support having the solution, now. Pause to think comprehensively.
3. If you hear any objections, set them aside for a moment in a special place.
4. As you remember why you wanted the solution in the first place, Decide if it was worth it. If not, you’re done, Enjoy the problem.
5. If yes, pull out only the VIP objections (if any) from the special place. Allow your mind to Understand how you will handle each one well.
6. Enjoy life. You now know what to do.

Adapted from Robert Johansson from Joseph Riggio.

The evolution of a man during her lifetime is characterized by discontinuity. A series of long plateaus where seemingly nothing happens, each followed by rapid measurable growth. In NLP this is called threshold effects, when the results are visible only after a threshold is passed. Think of pumping gas into a tank; you only know it’s full by the time it’s spilling outside.

Threshold effects are often frustrating in coaching, for coaches and clients alike. A coach might work with a client for months accumulating the effects for the jump. And then the client goes for a massage, and BANG, her chronic neck pain disappears. Try proving to the client then that it was your patient re-sorting of her limiting beliefs, bad habits, incongruencies that was the difference that made the difference. People are notoriously poor (data from psych research) at assigning effects to their proper causes.

Frustrating for clients too. They are getting coached without immediate measurable results. How to know you are getting your money’s worth? Pacing is ever so important.

… openness. Resistance is futile for Life is stronger. Any closure of your heart, tension in your gut, denial in your mind leads to misery. (Fear is but one example).

Any closure creates resistance creates friction when life flows through you on its inevitable course. And friction is heat, loss of energy and loss of joy. Only absolute conductor (0% resistance) is absolute happiness.

Openness to beauty, to pain, to ecstasy, to death. Openness to, on its way through to the unfolding of the bare essence. Delicious essence.

You want it unresolved. You want to stop oscillating between the two extremes and enlarge yourself to accept both simultaneously.

On the one hand you are told to open and accept life as it is. To let it flow through you unimpeded. Kosmos is perfect.

On the other, you want to grow and become more happy, joyful, wealthy, enlightened. Whatever rocks your boat. Improve yourself and Kosmos as well.

So which side is right?

Both simultaneously, – make yourself larger than the paradox. Timing is key:

Completely open to what IS right now: pain & pleasure, health & dis-ease, orgasm & shit. Why perpetuate delusion by denying what is already there?

AND imagineer a ferociously delightful life where you improve yourself to Infinity.

Stay with it. Stay with the duality even when your plans unrealize, and open yourself through the disappointment to acceptance.

Earlier on today, I am standing on a corner in Palo Alto waiting for a pedestrian light, when a large fire truck passes inches away from the tip of my nose.

“Watch out. Take a step back,” yells a man from the crowd on my left. I remain rooted where I was, swaying slightly in the whirlwind of the fire truck.

I turn to my left and silently thank the young man with a smile.

“You should’ve stepped back when I told you too,” he continues. This is growing a little strange, yet I continue to silently acknowledge his concern with a smile.

“Next time I tell you to step back, you STEP BACK,” he growls. “You better listen well to me, because I have this,” he pulls up his sweater to reveal a sheriff’s star.

I continue to smile, now more from the lack of another proper response.

“Stupid smiling people,” he mutters turning away, while I cross the street.

———————

I got to thinking about his intent in this brief interaction. He was with a group of people, he made his wish known, I ignored it, he tried to regain control, failed, felt threatened, attacked, and happily we parted before he had to force himself to stand by his threats.

Couldn’t have been pleasant for him. But a necessary lesson nonetheless. His rigidity in demanding control is like a malformed bone on his body that keeps bumping into life. It will take many more bumps for him to loosen up. But, I am glad to have been his Agent of Change for today.