The difference between excellent and ok, is the difference between, in athletic terms, the 1st place and the 4th. It pays a hundred fold to mentor with the best Teachers you can find.

That isn’t easy. There is so much mediocre noise in the self-help field, that identifying a Great Trainer and Coach in the ocean of marketing hype is a monumental task. Here is what I require of someone I will allow to mentor me:

1. She is a smooth egoless mirror in which I can see my own reflection(s).
2. He guides (and shoves if necessary) me to find my own vision of bliss.
3. She shows me how to uncover the resources I already embody to start following my bliss.

Want to make your life and this world a better place?

Then master the art of giving feedback. Everyone will love you for it. And you will be helping them to grow, because they will be able to accept your ”criticism”.

To make this easier, I created a Feedback Manifesto.

Print it out and post it in your office, - give it to your employees, your colleagues. Pin it to a wall at home, - give it to your kids, your parents, your friends. Keep it right in front of your eyes until it penetrates your mind and flows freely in your blood.

The world and your life will be a much better place for it.

I want to share a process I discovered recently while coaching a client (indeed, it is always the teacher who learns more than the student). It worked really well because it re-aligns your daily self-expression with your Being (that’s who you really are once all the crap drops away). A problem cannot remain a problem when you become someone who cannot possibly have that kind of problem, isn’t that so?

It starts with a picture your Being that you wish you could one day allow yourself to become. *take a few minutes to make it Technicolor now*. Get your list of oh-so-big problems out. Randomly pick the worst one, and see how would your Being have handled this problem? (I do hope you have got a vision of Being big enough to handle all problems in just a right way. If not, better start all over again). Now ask your Being: “What changes have I had to make in my mind and body to have handled this problem?” *wait for an answer*. Solve another problem.

P.S. Don’t confuse this process with timeline work, - you can do damage this way; it’s at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Body delights in a beautiful lover, Spirit delights in an ugly lover.

Let’s talk for a moment about how manifestation happens. There are some people who believe that manifestation is the immediate gratification of their desires: I want an apple, and it magically appears in my hand.

I don’t think it’s like that at all. I believe manifestation is a lot like reality shifting as described by Roger Zelazny in Chronicles of Amber:

If you think about a space of realities, then two realities are next to each other if they are very similar, e.g. a white wall in one appears as a touch of blue in another. But they are far apart if they are very different, e.g. a white wall in one and no wall in another.

Manifestation then is simply an ability to re-organize your experience in a way that moves you closer to the reality you want to be in, one small step at a time. But the path you take makes a difference:

Materializing an apple one atom at a time is stupid. But walking to an apple tree to pluck an apple from a branch is smart.

Three things make a difference:

1. How flexible you are in re-organizing your experience determines how many paths are open for you to get to where you’re going. It’s all about freedom.
2. How aware you are of the field of possibilities determines how many choices you see. This is THE key. Every tiny event CAN be used to move you towards wherever you’re going. A leaking faucet is an invitation to become more ecological and stop wasting water. A beautiful woman in a seat next to you is an invitation to learn confidence. A furious teenager screaming at you is an invitation to practice compassion. Life hands you an invitation to become alife every moment; how many do you accept?
3. How well you see where you are going determines how much random wandering will fall on your shoulders.

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.