A motivational self-help hack that actually seems to work

I have stumbled upon a motivational hack that, as it seems, actually does the trick.

I encountered it on one of those (usually dreadful, I'm sad to say) TEDx talks. I don't find it in my history, so I can't share the link, but it's not so far out there.

I've only been practicing it for a few days now, so I'm not quite so sure yet, but anyway here it is.

It's the simple sentence "I have decided to do that."

I try to tell this myself every time when I realize I'm putting off some chore, or I'm afraid of some task. I tell this myself as if it was a legitimate reason for starting the chore. And of course, ultimately, it is... one could also say it's the ONLY legitimate reason for doing anything.

The fantastic thing about it, though, is that it is, of course, utterly true.

I mean, let's face it, all that positive thinking rubbish and NLP nonsense leads nowhere. Why? I've alsways felt that it is because you're trying to manipulate yourself, and your brain will instantly look through that and reject it. "Doing the dishes smells like the color of my shoes in my favourite dream." Sure dude. "After my inbox is sorted, I will be free to do what I want, which feels like the sound of the wings of the eagle." Yeah, dream on darling, I still don't want to do the dishes.

"I. Have. Decided. To. Sort. That. Frakkin. Inbox. Now." Yep. Totally logical!

It actually gets me off the couch and makes it easier to just start doing things. Funny how those things seem to work.

Again, it's only been a few days so far, so I might still be in for a surprise.

Let's Turn It Into An Art Form!

It just dawned on me... in all my attempts at dealing with my own emotions, all the personal-development stuff I've tried, with whatever success... one thing was missing all that time.

Just look at it. Picture me dealing with some "difficult emotion", whatever it is.

The buddhist doctrine will tell me that it just "is what it is", and then to focus on my breath and meditate.

The NLPers will say that I have to break it down into its various sensory qualities, then create a new feeling from scratch, anchor that, yadda yadda yadda.

Tony Robbins will tell me I have not yet succeeded in making "feeling better" a MUST, that I should shift my pose and focus on the right things. Father Barron will want me to rejoin the catholic *cough*cult*cough* church, and Steven Pylarinos will make another video.

The psychoanalyst will try to find the root cause for a few years, the christian will find my lack of faith disturbing and tell me to pray nonetheless, Marshall Rosenberg will offer four stages (not three! not five!), the advaitin will say that there's nothing to learn anyway...

And they all have exactly one thing in common: They offer me one (or maybe two or three) recipes, based on a few ideological premises that are to be accepted. When you cut to the chase, there is One True Way, and by necessity the others are false, or at least not the best way.

There is a certain... fearful timidity to that approach. As if my inner life was like an ancient chinese vase about to fall and break into a thousand pieces!

Do you, my dear reader, share my impression that the best things in life generally tend to make you feel free, spontaneous and creative?

If so, why don't we start being creative about our own emotional development? There is this troubling feeling. I can yell at it to go away. I can consciously choose to identify with it. I can name it, externalize it, picture it as a color. I can breathe into it. I can dance around the room, or at least visualize myself doing so. I can try and add warmth to it, or else push it away and make it appear smaller and in black-and-white. I can focus on my breath. I can come up with a few fun affirmations...

I have all those things to try, and then some.

Doesn't that feel tremendously more empowering than sticking to one method devised by some clever guru? Even if that guru be the christ, or the buddha himself...

Let's reclaim our own relationship with ourselves! Let's turn our self-appreciation into an art form, our self-love into an eternal dance, a fire of passion, creativity, unabashed recklessness. Some things will make us feel divine for a short time, some things will help us in the long term, and some attempts will blow up in our face like a big old jack-in-the-box. Let's learn from our experiences, mistakes and successes, and let's share our insights.

I'm not a broken vase. I am my own art project.

Why rant against self-help gurus?

What reason do I have to rant against self-help gurus and personal development systems such as NLP, etc.? After all, live and let live, as the saying goes.

Because I believe in change. Because I believe in personal development. I have seen it, in my own life, in many regards. I have also seen myself struggle and be frustrated, time and time again. And in some important areas of my life, I am not ashamed to say, I have still not managed to succeed.

At first, the frustration came from the silly idea that I can never change, that I have to live with unacceptable and arbitrary limitations.

Later on, another form of frustration came from the idea that I bloody well can change, but I have no clue how. I learned all the concepts, and I had some promising initial results, but a lot of it didn't seem to stick. I repeatedly fell off the wagon, and the old habits came through again and again. At any given time, the system seemed flawless; or, well, at least that was what I was trying to believe. What I desperately needed to believe. The system was so logical, so obviously beneficial, and a lot of people swore by it.

If that sounds very religious to you, then I agree: It is indeed religious. It is what religions do, at their core. It is why I reject religion, among other things.

All those systems, be it NLP or the systemic approach, positive psychology, mindfulness-based therapy, nonviolent communication, buddhism, etc. etc. - they all have their merits. They all have some truth hidden within. But as a whole, the only thing they do is block your development.

You cannot have a one-size-fits-all system of personal development. Humans are just too disparate. Our genetics, our history, our personality vary so much that it is extremely hard to derive common general principles.

For example, almost every communication trainer will teach you that you should avoid the negative. The reasoning is that the brain cannot really process a no: "Don't think of a pink elephant." Yes we did think about a pink elephant...

Consider a support team in an IT business. They tell customers, among other things, "Please do not hesitate to call us when you encounter any additional problems." Every self-respecting communication trainer will bang their head against the next wall, and then replace this with "Please feel free to call us in the unlikely event of another challenge."

However, on the other hand, there is also the concept of an "away-from" motivation. The idea is that some people are motivated more by negatives than positives. Seems pretty obvious, given that humans are very, very good at anticipating danger and running away from it.

But... how can both ideas be true at the same time? If some people are motivated by "away-from", then it's pretty much possible that they are actually the majority, in which case it would be much better to keep the original phrasing. Assuming we actually want them to call, of course.

Now, if even this very basic cornerstone of communication is more like a guessing game than anything else, then what about the more intricate points? How on earth is a "six-step reframing" supposed to work for all clients? I can attest that it never worked for me. No, I did not do it wrong.

Why do I rant? Because I suspect that all those nifty methods and systems and strategies only create frustration in the majority of practitioners. And then they come back for more and lose more time and money to the guru. And then, at some point, they get frustrated or simply run out of money, and then they give up on their original dreams and goals. And that is such a big shame, such an awful and despicable loss of human potential and happiness.

Because, as I said above, I believe that change is indeed possible, if you set your mind to it. Not without putting in the hours, and your best creative effort, and probably some lengthy talks with people who did affect change in their own lives. Not to coach you. Not to run a few patterns on you. But to share their own personal experience, so that you can develop your very own coaching system.

But of course, this will rarely ever happen. The universal systems will thrive, and people will put their money there. Well, duh... it is all in the name of good intentions, religious freedom, and making money no matter what. So, all things considered, all is good, I guess.

"How To Change Your Beliefs And Identity"

Dear Stefan Pylarinos,

in our recent conversation on your youtube video about "How To Change Your Beliefs And Identity", you claimed that you can give me "hundreds of examples of people that have made amazing changes." From context, I infer that you are talking about people who have made changes following your own method which you detail in your videos and on your website.

Talking about your website, you claim there that you have a "7-Step Proven Method To Creating The Life Of Your Dreams" and that you know and can teach people "How To Change Any Negative Behaviour Or Emotion Instantly".

Regarding those claims, I have a challenge that I am sure you will enjoy to meet. After all, what's in it for you is nothing short of the best publicity you can ever hope to get: independently verified, irrefutable proof of your claims. You can find this challenge at the end of this blog posting, under the heading "The Challenge".

Before we start, I would like to make one thing abundantly clear: I do not doubt your sincerity. I am perfectly sure that you believe what you say, and that you are convinced that you're doing a tremendous amount of good for other people. The same goes for many other life coaches out there. To what degree that assessment is correct, of course, is an entirely different question.

A Few Remarks About Skepticism And Beliefs

Let's talk a bit about your latest contribution to our youtube conversation, and let me clarify a few things. Here is your text:

I have some feedback, if you're open to it. You have a very disempowering way of looking at things. You very much have a pessimistic or skeptical view of life coaches in my opinion, which is all fear based - it's a fear of being disappointed, or that change can't happen that fast. As long as you believe this, how is it going to help your life? How does believing what you just said going to empower you in any way? I can give you hundreds of examples of people that have made amazing changes.

First off, please stop calling this feedback. It violates pretty much every rule of feedback I ever learned in all the communication courses I took: It generalizes my remarks about self-help and life coaches to my overall worldview, it personalizes matters, it attempts to turn the factual problem I raised into my own personal issue, and most amusingly, it is an attempt at reading my mind. You don't know anything about my personal fears or disappointments, because I never talked to you about that. If you've taken any NLP course at all, you know that mind-reading is one of the main ways of distorting your internal representation of the world. It is also a good way of unnecessarily escalating a conflict, and in the case of a life coach, it is entirely unprofessional and unacceptable.

In short, I guess I might have struck a nerve there, ain't I?

Fast Change

Let's talk about "fast change" first, since it is a repeated topic here on my blog. (Probably even ad nauseam, sometimes, I'm afraid...) Do I believe that change can't happen "that fast"? (How fast is "that fast", anyway? Well, you claim instantaneous radical change on your webpage, so let's go with that.)

Well, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of very fast changes.

What I can say is that I have never witnessed any such change. What I can also say is that I probably should have witnessed at least a few, given that I have a sheet of paper in my drawer that says "NLP practitioner" in nice golden letters, that I have another certificate identifying me as a mediator, and I've looked into various "transformative" practices ranging from christianity to kabbalah to buddhism over the years. In my NLP class, there were about 30 peple, and we spent a lot of time with each other over the course of about 18 months. And yet, none of those 30 people ever reported any significant, mind-blowing, instant changes, even though NLP claims to be the most effective method ever, and the institute is probably the largest and most renowned NLP institute in my country. Are we to surmise that they all had those drastic mind-boggling revelations, but somehow all of them just kept their mouth shut about it? Perhaps they talked with each other and somehow kept me out of the loop? Possible. But not very convincing, if you ask me.

As I said, I don't even claim that instant, radical change can never ever happen. I'm sure it does. In fact, it happened to me, and I blogged about it here and here. I do think, however, that probably no-one has ever devised a fool-proof, 100% method of achieving it. If that were not so, how do you explain thousands upon thousands of self-help books and methods, all claiming total effectiveness, often contradicting each other? Don't start with "not everything is for everyone". The moment you admit that, you have essentially admitted that your specific method is not proven, not 100%.

In short, if anyone has a "100% proven method for achieving instant, radical and lasting change", where the heck do they hide their Nobel Prize, and why do they hide it in the first place? Looking around, this is the most sought-after knowledge since the goddarn frakkin' dawn of humanity. If you claim that you have a method like that, be prepared to back that up with evidence. This is a very, very, VERY extraordinary claim, almost as extraordinary as the claim of being able to walk on water or raise the dead. Evidence for this should be MASSIVE if you want it to be believable.

Change is chaotic and unpredictable, in my experience. We can learn how to ride the avalanche, how to steer it to a degree, and that's about all we can do.

Skepticism

You write that I have a "pessimistic or skeptical view of life coaches". You are spot on: In fact, I do, and it is backed by my own experience. Looking at the name of my blog, what else do you expect?

I don't claim that they're all completely bogus, and I do think that a lot of them actually have something useful to say. But I also think that most of them overgeneralize their own experience, have read a few books here and there, and create some brilliant positive, good-sounding, overly optimistic ideology from that, and then sell this as absolute truth. I also think that this is a devastatingly destructive way of going about things that ultimately hurts the customers way more than it benefits them.

But all that is just my own very personal rambling, and skepticism is not about that. Skepticism is about requiring evidence. You made a claim, you show us the evidence, we examine it. Simple, really, isn't it?

The Usefulness Of Beliefs

You asked me (rhetorically, I guess), "How does believing what you just said going to empower you in any way?"

I take from that that you have a very utilitarian view of beliefs. In fact, it is the view taught in NLP and next to all self-help and life coaching. I bought into that view myself, for a while.

Here's the catch: It is not TRULY utilitarian. It consistently overlooks the fact that beliefs, ultimately, are tools for survival. And they can't well function as that if they are not in some way realistic. Yes, beliefs can be disempowering, and we can rephrase and reframe a good many of our beliefs in better ways so as to better empower ourselves and others. But I have also found that I can not make myself believe something that I know to be objectively false. Have you ever tried to make yourself believe that you ate ice cream for breakfast, when you really ate toast? Go on and do it, I challenge you. I predict that you will fail. Your brain will simply reject it as not consistent with your experience.

How will my belief about life coaches empower me? By avoiding to fall for bullshit claims that don't actually work in reality. By avoiding to invest time and money in methods that fail to deliver.

And yes, I did try that stunt with the ice-cream, thanks for asking.

The Challenge

Okay, here's your challenge. As an honest entrepeneur, a decent human being and a great life coach, I'm sure you'll be happy to meet the following criteria:

1. Hundreds of Examples

Regarding the hundreds of examples of people that have made amazing changes, I am looking forward to having all of those reply to this posting. Specifically, I require that the following criteria be met:

1. Every entry has to come from a different person.
2. Every single one of them has to be properly authenticated, so we can make sure that none of them are faked. I am flexible about the method of authentication; however, I'm sure our audience and your prospective customers will have a keen and skeptical eye on any method you come up with.
3. In order to reflect permanent change, the radical instantaneous experience has to have taken place more than 6 months ago.
4. The report has to be detailed and sufficiently void of vague language.
5. The person has to attest that the change they achieved was actually the change that they planned to achieve before the experience.
6. Your influence on and involvement with the change have to be obvious in the report.
7. The challenge is met if there are at least 200 ("hundreds") such entries within the next month. For starters, I'll be happy to provisionally declare the challenge met if we have 50 entries within one week.

2. 7-Step Proven Method

Regarding your "7-Step Proven Method To Creating The Life Of Your Dreams", kindly answer the following questions:

1. Without revealing any trade secrets, what is the main psychological method that you base your method on?
2. What renowned institution performed the scientific tests necessary to devise the proof you claim?
3. What methods of psychological and sociological measurement were employed?
4. Were the tests double-blind?
5. Were the tests quantitative or qualitative?
6. How many subjects were tested?
7. What measures were taken to avoid, or at least account for, confirmation and selection bias?

I am looking forward to literally hundreds of replies...

With kind regards,

Betlamed

Big Words

I am highly skeptical of Big Words. For example, the word "love".

"You only have to learn to love yourself". Well, duh, as if that were so easy!

Those Big Words are often so bloated with meaning, they cross the line twice and essentially become meaningless.

I say, if the Big Words fail you, how about toning it down. There is tremendous potential for mental blocks in focusing on the Big Words. It's just so demanding. It can end up putting more pressure on yourself, than it actually helps you. You don't manage to love thy insufferable sexist racist white trash neighbour, and next thing you know, you hit yourself with a large wooden stick for your own failure.

So, let's focus on ourselves first. Self-love. Sound excellent. The trouble is, you probably encounter the very same issue:  This time, you don't manage to love thy insufferable unsuccessful virginal shy not-the-life-of-the-party self, and then hit yourself for it.

Self-empathy, then? Self-appreciation? Boosting your self-esteem with mantras and affirmations?

Still too far-fetched. Still too complex. Too much technology, hype, marketing, NLP. Too little real results.

Don't get me wrong, I love me my affirmations and breathing techniques. I practice them almost daily. I just think that they're somewhat auxiliary. I think that there is no magic pill. I think that change takes time, and deep change takes a frakkin' lot of time. I have learned through many failures that being slow might actually be the fastest and most effective way to go.

Remember that one time when you DIDN'T hit yourself with a large wooden stick? When you just... forgot doing that?

There you have it. That is your first step. Learn how to repeat that. Instead of focusing on big steps and big changes, focus on the tiniest step possible. The quantum leap, in the real sense of the word. Focus on doing the smallest change that you can think of. Instead of talking at yourself in the mirror, "I'm so beautiful and successful and will make a million euros next month", just omit that one thought of how ugly you are. Nothing more. Every time you manage not to put yourself down, that is one big achievement. You can cherish that, and you should. Focus on that one achievement, and how to repeat it - and let all the empathy and esteem and love and sex and money develop naturally over time.

Since we're talking about starting the journey to Alpha Centauri with one tiny step... Only yesterday, I picked up some self-help book, opened a random page. The first sentence I read was this: "It makes sense to start with little steps and first set some realistic and achievable goals." Oh yeah! Excellent strategy: Let's focus on the impossible a little bit later!

Personal Development Reductionism

The human brain (or to be mor precise, the mind it constructs) is an incredibly complex system. It is self-referential in a lot of ways, it is practically made up of interdependent feedback loops, and it allows for virtually unlimited flexibility with some regards, while at the same time remaining steadfastly, stubbornly conservative in other areas.

That is why a purely mechanistic, reductionist approach to Personal Development must fail. That is why moralizing tantrums about "evil thoughts" are exactly as unproductive as any attempt at "taking full responsibility for your emotions". That is why NLP fails miserably and consistently when it comes to Personal Development. On the other hand, it works wonderfully as a marketing sham: It plays on our idea of being able to control ourselves, our notorious overestimation of our own ability to control our circumstance. (There is a nice psychological word for that, but I forget.)

The idea that "change happens fast" is utterly ridiculous. With linear systems, yes sure, you can produce any desired outcome within the bounds of the system. Throw that rock against that window, and it will predictably break. Throw it against that police car, and see what happens.

For good or for bad, the mind is not like that. It's more like a stage play performed by 1000 underage agents of ImprovEverywhere, where each one of those has committed to a different mission and some are blindfolded while others carry active flamethrowers around.

You throw a huge beach ball in there, and it'll bounce around for awhile, and then fall to the side where it is forgotten. Or, they'll use it to go on a tangent, speak to it as if it were prince Hamlet of Denmark, and create a whole new piece of drama out of it. Or pray to it. Or throw it at each other until they all run out of breath.

Now, I am a huge fan of the Human Potential movement and Personal Development in general. I daresay that, over the past five years, I have improved drastically in several regards. I am more energetic, more daring, hopefully more attractive than five years ago. I made more money over the past two years than in the ten years before that. Well, back then I was a lump of misery, depression and self-loathing, so it kinda figures. But anyway...

Next to none of all those changes were achieved by fixing on a goal, devising a method and then sticking with it (except for when I quit smoking - that one worked like a charm, incidentally, right from the start). Instead, it was trial and error, trial and error again. Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over.

Note that I'm not endorsing any vague, esoteric, touchy-feely concept of "holism" here. Instead, I'm advocating strict rationality, combined with empathy. All I'm saying is that, in a complex self-referential system, change can only happen incrementally, driven by frequent feedback.

Yes, I'm a fan of Agile. Did I mention that I'm a Certified Scrum Master(TM)?

You anchor that good state to a snap of your fingers. And then you forget to snap them. You practice your cleverly designed mantras, and they feel flat and listless after a while. You check out qi gong, just to find that you can't seem to manage to practice it regularly. You learn zen meditation, and the next thing you know, you're bogged down by a fixed idea of "enlightenment".

Well, duh. Maybe I just haven't found the golden bullet one cure to open all doors yet. Or I'm just a failure. But somehow, seeing how others struggle in much the same way I do, I highly doubt that. I think, if most applicants of a certain methodology never actually manage to reach their goals, it's time to stop blaming those applicants for "misapplying the methods". Instead, it's time to go back to Square One and revisit that underlying model of yours. Yes, I'm looking at you, Mr.s Bandler, Grinder, Rosenberg, Jeffries, von Markovik, Erickson! I'm silently judging you.

Of course, I still advocate tantra, breathing, meditation. I do that, simply, out of my own personal experience. All of these things have proved tremendously beneficial to me. Your esperience  may be different - if so, don't practice what I do!  To some degree I even recommend NLP. But - and that is a huge "but" here - should you decide to give it a try, do yourself a favour: Don't expect it to "work as advertised", just by doing the "right thing".

It's a dance. It's a play. It's pure and utter chaos. It's life.