Self-help is the act of improving yourself without reliance on others. It extends beyond motivation books and popular psychology to include other ways humans communicate. There’s forums, everyday conversations, seminars, webinars, and books.

The term “self-help junkie” was coined to describe someone who attends seminars and buys many books, DVDs, and CDs on the subject. Junkies fuel the $8 billion dollar industry in America alone.

Self-help addicts are sometimes like heroin addicts jumping between experts wanting their next fix. The educational sources become a source of comfort and security to avoid what really is going on as they intellectualize lessons and never build the learning only possible from action. This article reveals the harsh reality about this dangerous industry that some gurus wish you didn’t know.

The Two Dangers of Self-Help

Pennsylvania clinical psychologist Dr John Norcross says self-help can damage you in two ways. Both are costly, time-consuming, and energy-depleting.

The first general danger of self-help is the direct harm, which includes a misdiagnosis or ignorance of a declining condition. Think of it like a well-intended mother issuing aspirin to remove a headache when the cause is cancer. The dangers are real except with personal development the issues are not physical, but often mental and emotional. Selection of the right helpful material is tricky. A wrong decision can leave you worse off.

There’s a lot going in your mind and body unknown to you. You can know your body is sick because you have a headache and feel weak, but you could have one of hundreds of potential health problems originating from poor eating, harmful drinking, disease, and so forth. Similarly, we are unaware of the hidden operations in the mind. It takes a humble attitude of acceptance to respect a lack of mental and emotional control over your life.

The second general danger of self-help according to Dr Norcross is the indirect harm. You exhaust your physical, mental, and emotional efforts on something unsuccessful so you beat yourself up over an inability to change. Once you believe you cannot change, rarely do you change.

Think of self-help like a Do-It-Yourself job at home. You can probably do good landscaping, fix doors, place flooring, and paint. Books, television shows, and a few friends provide you with good advice. However, you wouldn’t remove the home’s foundations, redesign its shape, or relocate it by yourself. Attempts to solve unknown problems or create something entirely new leaves you frustrated believing it cannot be done. People try to redo their minds from the ground up then unfortunately fall short of what they want and believe failure is destiny.

I’ll further expand on these two general dangers in this article. Please note that I am not against self-help. I love it. I teach it! It empowers you to improve your relationships, move ahead in your career, make friends, and enjoy life more. Self-help teaches you to create your reality instead of feeling what is will always be. What you need to get the most from personal development is an awareness of the dangers and myths in self-help shared to you in this article; otherwise you risk wasting time, money, and effort – and ultimately believe something is inherently wrong with you.

Thoughts are Everything, the Truth About Emotions, and How Self-Help Almost Killed Me

The empowerment given through self-help usually originates from improving how you think. The motto is “think better, live better”.

Thoughts are powerful, yet they are not everything contrary to what is preached by advocates of the law of attraction. To think your universe can form from thoughts alone is absurd.

An overt focus on thoughts ignores the side therapists attend to: emotions. Our thoughts influence our emotions and vice-a-versa, yet the influence is limited. You cannot think your way to emotional healing. After all, thoughts and rationalizations are “safe”. It’s easy to intellectually process your problems and talk about them with complete emotional disconnect when you’re afraid of vulnerability and revealing your real self.

I’ll prove how intellectualizing and thinking stops emotional wealth. Dr Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), who I had the pleasure to work with for Big Talkers, has a nice technique I’ll share below. Give the label of “good” or “bad” to the follow emotions:

• Happiness
• Anger
• Guilt
• Joy
• Sadness
• Shame

Done? I’m guessing you labeled happiness and joy as “good” and anger, guilt, sadness, and shame as “bad”. Take a look at this, however. What if your mother died. Is sadness bad? What if you punched your child. Is guilt bad? When you put this into perspective, the thoughts you attach to “negative emotions” shifts.

How do you respond when something is bad? You avoid bad things because they represent pain. If you believe anger is bad, you avoid your anger, feel resentful, misunderstand people, and struggle to manage conflict. If you believe embarrassment is bad, you avoid embarrassing situations and never build the confident social life you want. You spend your life running from what you don’t want.

I almost killed myself because of emotional avoidance (as I share in this video that you MUST watch). I lived in depression trying to avoid things like anger, shame, and embarrassment because these were “bad feelings”. Not letting feelings flow and trying to manipulate them increased their strength.

Dr Hayes says we have a dangerous habit of problem solving with our mind. You need to stop critiquing the experiences in you and just let them flow. Observe them as they occur to you instead of worrying and trying to fix them. This is groundbreaking material I won’t go into further detail because it’s all covered in my Big Talk Training Course and Big Talkers, which I highly recommend you get if this article resonates with you.

Some self-help teachers encourage emotional expression. Students may practice poor expressions of anger and assertiveness, however, then kill themselves like Sydney resident Rebekah Lawrence. This is an extreme case, yet I want you to value the messages sent by your emotions and acknowledge thoughts are not everything.

Positive Thinking

Feeling down or thinking negatively? This self-help CD will cheer you up, but not in the way its creators intended.

Positive thinking is taught everywhere. Every mental health professional I’ve heard recommends positive thinking. I teach it as well. For example, in my Big Talk course I teach people when approaching others for conversation to assume friendship. This reduces anxiety, creates attractive body language, and makes talking easy. Positive thinking helps you better interact with people and them interact with you.

The danger with positive thinking that I see in many “pseudo-spiritual aka law of attraction” teachings is they take positive thinking beyond what psychologists believe is healthy. Dr Norcross says flamboyant claims are made.

Cancer, rape, and poor-wealth do not consistently originate from misaligned thoughts. Victims are made to feel they squandered their mind. They are blamed for environmental influences. Self-blame is unnecessary contrary to what self-help teaches because it perpetuates resistance and shame.

Your entire life is not a product of your thinking. With excessive positive thinking you risk building a life that excludes reality. You may go to exorbitant lengths to avoid a problem by looking for the easy way out. Positiveness becomes escapism.

Your comfort zone can stagnate along with the quality of your life through avoidance. Carl Jung says your dark-side (what you want to avoid) – not the light-side you probably love to focus on – contains the gold you seek. I look back on my life and see that the areas where I have taken a step of courage to breach my comfort zone, I have transformed. Look at your life and you will see the moments you acted in the face of fear created the greatest results. That is the core of transforming your social life with Big Talk and my coaching.

Self-Discipline Myth

Along similar lines as the exaggerated power of thoughts is the undue emphasis on self-discipline. Self-control and courage is important to help you confront what you prefer to avoid because it pushes you outside your comfort zone. However, it depends on the definition of discipline.

Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled says, “With total discipline we can solve all problems.” The more I think about the statement, the more I see its truth. Again, though, it depends on what is meant by “discipline”.

When self-discipline is understood as willpower, self-discipline is overrated – even dangerous. I’ve heard many people express discouragement over their lack of discipline when it’s understood as willpower. They think something is wrong with themselves because they cannot change a habit like wake up early or quit smoking. Eventually they believe change is impossible because they have insufficient “discipline”. We’re made to feel as low-value humans for our innate habitual patterns.

Humans are autonomous creatures, not creatures of willpower. Studies prove 90% or more of your behavior is habitual. We think we’re in conscious control of our lives, but we have behavioral and thought patterns repeating day-after-day. Your patterns simply vary in order.

This isn’t to say habits are permanent, yet to change they require focused effort and systems to assist change. How you use your limited willpower determines if you alter unwanted autonomy, remove a bad habit, and create the life you want.

Most people, unfortunately, waste their limited willpower on resisting people, thoughts, and feelings. Big Talk readers know the importance of acceptance in acknowledging the reality of a problem. Acceptance means you humbly acknowledge your limited willpower, the degree you influence the problem, and the time it takes to stop what you don’t want and get what you do want.

What’s Really Going On?

Can you see the pattern of problems in most self-help? Thoughts are not everything, emotions are overlooked, positive thinking is taken too far, and self-discipline is overrated. There is a sinister amount of focus on intellectualizing, which drives the typical self-help junkie. Any self-help junkie will tell you they have a problem with “using what they know”.

Change can feel impossible by yourself. Years go by as you become a self-help junkie and question whether your dreams can become a reality. It’s okay to seek assistance from a therapist, counselor, or expert in your problematic area. Someone cannot drive you to change, but you cannot change without a drive to change.

How then do thousands of people around the globe change their life? Ad Bergsma in the Journal of Happiness Studies questioned whether self-help books help. Bergsma says hope is often what makes self-improvement programs effective. The downside of hope is it leaves you vulnerable to exaggerated claims and an empty wallet.

This post is not intended to degrade anyone in particular or self-help. Many authors and bloggers do their best to help, yet intention is not all that’s needed to affect change.

Naming all self-help books bad or good is like saying all team leaders are bad or good. It’s stupidly narrow-minded. Great materials exist. You can work on yourself with great results.

Personal development is the key behind my continuing growth. Self-help is just one part of it. I encourage it to be yours as well. Be wise in your choices and be aware of the self-help dangers shared in this article.

I feel my subscribers and website visitors need an awareness of this reality. If you’ve read this to feel better about yourself, that wasn’t my intent. Be honest about what you are avoiding. See the little control you have over your autonomous behavior. Invest in courses for your personal growth. Accepting these lessons could be your first-step towards change – and yes, I am giving you hope.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Only “Cure” for Social Anxiety Disorder and Achieving Social Freedom
2. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change

I shook my head as I sat on my computer at home, sipping a coffee. I felt sorry for him, but he didn’t need work – he needed a radical shift in reality with a series of self-probing questions, tips, skills, and advice to nail his desired job.

Whether you’re going for a retail, nursing, accounting, teacher, or government interview full-time or part-time over the phone, online, or in person, the following advice will help you ace any interview to get the job of your dreams.

Unemployment and Job-Misery Begins Before Interview Preparation

I could catapult many job interview tips at you because I’m a conversation skills coach and company owner, but I won’t because that’s not what you need. What will help you the most in getting the job you want is looking at how you approach job hunting and your interviews.

If you go into an interview wanting the job to solve your money worries – to help your life – you won’t get the job. Few employers hire out of pity. They suffer from their own problems and want to pay you to alleviate these dilemmas.

The guy at the start of this article who wanted a job didn’t care about me. He didn’t want to add value to my customers. He didn’t think about how he can increase my sales. He didn’t care about broken website code, business partnerships to be made, or traffic to be attracted. He didn’t want to relive my itches. He was focused on himself.

Most self-absorbed communication harms you. You don’t make friends by bragging about yourself, listing your accomplishments, and ignoring another’s needs. Job seekers, unfortunately, do exactly this at interviews. Narcissistic-like individuals talk about themselves, their skills, their past, and why they want the job.

The first and most important leap to take to nail the job interview you want or move ahead in your career is to solve the employer’s problems. Talk about your skills, past, and why you want the job by relating it to the employer’s wants and needs. Without that relation, your abilities are open to misinterpretation and ignorance. Forget your needs for the moment – once you provide value to others, they become determined to reciprocate your efforts and keep you.

Empathize with the interviewer by placing yourself in his or her shoes. Constantly ask yourself, “What is their need at the moment?” If you can answer this question in any communication, you’re in the top five percent of communicators in the world.

No one cares about your bachelor degree or your intelligence. It’s what your degree or intelligence does that gets you hired.

I speak for many companies by saying that what’s on paper gets you hired, but what happens between you and people gets you fired. Poor human resource managers deny or accept a job candidate merely on experiences and qualities (what’s seen on a resume), while great HR managers go beyond shallow resumes and cognitive tests and really see if the candidate is a determined winner. I recommend you get Topgrading, which was written for company owners, because it helps craft you into an A-player companies want.

Good Communication, Great Person

In a fierce economy, today is more important than ever to master your communication skills. We will always need to talk, listen, and connect with one another.

Start developing your communication right now in everyday life. How you socialize shows in how you interact with customers and coworkers. I have a saying, “How you do something is how you do anything.”

Skills you think take time to see are apparent to good interviewers. Seemingly minor signals of unconscious skill show in your body language. If you’re not immediately friendly to strangers in everyday life, you won’t immediately befriend the interviewer who will then project that feeling into the future and assume you cannot quickly befriend customers.

The most attractive employees are good communicators and good communicators develop themselves in their own time. This is something I’ve never heard anywhere else that I believe makes or breaks critical moments in a career. Attractive skills, such as your honesty in being unable to answer a question or your calmness when someone is agitated, must be developed outside of the workplace. Unemployment and job-misery begins before the interview.

Little-Known Conversation Techniques to Seduce the Interviewer and Get the Job

All principles of good conversation apply to the interview (from the introduction, small talk, humor, self-disclosure, interest, and open body language). Any time you feel lost or confused, think what an enjoyable conversation entails. After all, interviews are a conversation between the candidate and interviewer.

Start by standing and introducing yourself to the interviewer instead of waiting for an introduction. Lean forward to give a solid, slow web-to-web handshake.

Next, initiate conversation. Talk about the person’s lovely office, a plant, or photo. Drop a comment about a worker you spotted or a sign you read on your way in. The conversation builds rapport and relaxes each of you – the interviewer can be nervous as well! My Big Talk course offers a complete training on how to effortlessly talk and make friends with strangers.

Show interest in the business. Study its history before the interview. If it’s a smaller business and you’re being interviewed by its owner, be curious behind the owner’s motives for starting the business. The person will become animated and talk about the business’ foundations! He or she will walk away from your interview thinking you were a great person.

A good conversation skill that is also a way to show interest in the business is to ask questions during the interview. Walk into the interview with at least three solid questions planned, which gives you backup questions if the interviewer asks one or two before you.

Before I taught communication skills, I had a group interview for the position of a night-fill worker at a supermarket. The human resources manager running the interview talked for 10 minutes then asked, “Does anyone have any questions?” The room was silent. You could see the twinge in her lips that indicated her disappointment in our non-responsiveness.

Just before she was about to move on, I asked how she got into her managerial position because I wanted to understand to her and what it takes to be promoted. She smiled and talked for five minutes about the company’s internal way of promoting employees. I think I easily got the job because of my question and display of interest.

Good questions to ask in the interview include:

• “What happened to the previous person in this position?”
• “What results do you expect from the successful candidate’s first year?”
• “How does the company lead its teams? Like, are workers given independence to make their own decisions or is it highly determined by upper management?”
• “How would you describe the company’s culture?”
• “In your opinion, what’s the most important thing someone new to the company should know so they and the company benefit?”

There are three real subtle benefits of asking questions. Firstly, questions show curiosity and interest. Secondly, you look better than other interviewees. Most candidates are too busy talking about themselves, not curious or concerned about solving the company’s problems. Thirdly, you subtly qualify the company to match your own needs. A subtle seduction technique is to make the other party work for you. Humans value what they earn. Employers will value you more if you have job opportunities elsewhere and are a little picky over how they can fulfill your needs. How very counter-intuitive!

Once a question is answered or you learn an important point about the business, write a note for yourself even if you have good memory. The power in this technique comes from how it makes the other person feel. You’ll look well-prepared and trustworthy. It’s amazing how much your credibility increases by writing down what someone tells you.

How to Appear Confident in an Interview

Believe your words. If you don’t have confidence in yourself, others won’t have confidence in you.

One of the best ways to show others confidence is through your voice. Speak at a good volume with relaxation. A louder voice is physiological confidence that boosts your psychological confidence.

Bodily stress and tension wrecks havoc on your vocals when you try to be perfect. Shift your focus from yourself to how you fill the company’s needs like I mentioned before. You will relax, communicate confidence through your voice, and show attractive warmth.

Another technique taken from my Big Talk that I recommend to quickly boost your confidence in an interview is to think the interviewer is an old friend. You can try more absurd visualizations that reframes the person interviewing you into a strange situation. Imagine the person nervously being interviewed by another manager or lazily lounging in front of the television.

Similar to what I said before, however, the most effective way to have confidence in an interview is to work on it in every day. What goes inside the interview often reflects how you live.

Insider’s Secret to Be Comfortable and Get Hired

Go to the company beforehand and introduce yourself to a few employees saying you’re interested in working for the company. Ask the employees for their thoughts on the company, tips for the interview, recommended dress, and any insider secrets that could give you an edge. Use these people to see if the company is worth working for before you waste further time in the screening process.

Mention the names of the people you talked to in the interview. You’ll subliminally make the hiring manager feel you already work for the company!

Also compliment those you talked to. We love people who love people. How do you think the hiring manager will feel hearing about the great workforce?

When the interview ends, reward yourself regardless of the outcome. Interviews can be scary so it helps to appreciate yourself. Job interviews can be tough enough without self-criticism.

If your interview is a success and you get the job, tell the person offering the good news that you want 24 hours to think it over. The company will value you more. Anyway, you’ll probably need the time to evaluate other offers once you follow the advice in this article to ace any interview.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. 4 Reasons Advice and Other Solutions Kill Relationships
2. Just Be Yourself – Why It’s Bad Advice: Being Yourself is the Problem
3. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated

You see, I’ve been asked many times how to achieve success and weird enough, it seems like nobody takes the advice seriously. Then I realized one thing – most people are ALREADY failing before they even got started!

The article I wrote below is slightly controversy compare to the normal goodie-type personal development advice because this is the TRUTH. If I want to keep everyone happy and write about the colorful rainbow, birds chirping, flowers blooming, etc., then I should just open up a nursery home and take care of children. I want to tell you the truth straight to your face because I’ve been there and heard the garbage lies thrown everywhere.

Avoid these and you’ll automatically be on the right track (provided you want to be successful):

1. Mixing With Losers

It’s a guaranteed way to fail in life with this. Whatever you like to do, losers will just tell you it won’t work and after some time, you will also become a loser. High five, welcome to the losers’ club. Something about losers you should know: they like to “recruit” new people and are very comfortable in their shoes. They don’t welcome changes. So when you see someone with any of these two characteristics, you know what you should do.

2. Don’t Know What You Want

The most common goal I hear all of the time is, “I want to be rich”. I mean it’s fine with that generic goal but the problem is, how rich do you want to be? Or how rich is rich? Put it this way – the methods used to make a million and $3,000 are different. No wonder some people couldn’t experience breakthroughs in life because they are playing small for big goals. If you want to make a million, you better put in that level of commitment, bucko.

3. You Want Everything

It’s nice to have a lot of things but if you go chasing everything, you get nothing. Let me tell you why – you only have 24 hours a day and you’ve got to focus on your priorities. I know, I know, you can hire others and so on but the fact is, you’ve got to want “something” first to lead to another “something”, then to everything. Make sense?

4. Watching the “Secrets” Way Too Much

I’m not here to criticize Law Of Attractions (LOA) and don’t want to receive hate emails. As a matter of fact, I do believe in it and have friends who appeared in the Secrets. But it’s a surefire way to fail if you keep on watching the “Secrets” and doing attraction work by sitting down on your floor manifesting 3 hours a day. In my point of view, scientifically, the Law of Attraction runs on the concept of believing. When you believe your goal is achievable, you will take action to achieve it. If you don’t understand this basic element and think LOA is some sort of miracle remedy, oh boy, you’re in for a big surprise of failure.

5. You Don’t Truly Know Why You Want Success

Wanting everything is bad enough – but it gets worse if you don’t even know the reason why you’re trying to achieve your goal. What’s the deal? Without a solid reason, a compelling reason, where are you going to find the motivation and encouragement for you to overcome obstacles? You think it’s going to be fun ride to success? Then you haven’t been traveling – it’s a rocky road, my friend. Most people fail to achieve their goals because they never complete the journey – they give up halfway (or at the beginning) because they cannot see the worth of accomplishments.

6. You Don’t Remember Your Roots

The thing I get most irritated about is people who achieved success and never felt gratitude towards those who helped them. Is it very hard to say, “Thank you”? The law of reciprocity is simple – you return favors to those who helped you in the past. And maybe, they’ll help you again in the future. Remember this: it takes more than just you to achieve success. Don’t be a jerk.

7. You Think You’re Smart

The day you stop learning is the day you stop improving yourself. If you don’t want to fail in life, make sure you stop acting as though you already know everything. The fact is, all successful people are people who continuously learn to be even more successful. They don’t stop. Let me put it in this perspective: you don’t know what you don’t know, you know?

8. You Listen To The Wrong People

I watched this funny movie called, “He Is Just Not That Into You” and it reaffirmed what I’m about to tell you. At the beginning of the movie, it shows a clip of a boy pushing a girl in the playground because he somehow doesn’t like her. He thinks she smells like dog poo. She cried and asked her mum why did the boy do that to her. And her mum replied, “It’s because boys do that to girls when they like you.” Do yourself a favor, don’t get wrong advice. It’ll stick in your brain and lead you to make stupid interpretations in life.

9. You Think Short Term

You’ll often hear this happening in many “successful” people’s stories: they make a lot of money to lose it all. This is probably because they became too comfortable and the other thing is, once you achieve success, you should ride on the wave when the momentum is there. When you think short term, you’re only going after the instant pleasure. You must learn to delay gratification to enjoy today’s labor.

10. You’re Blinded With What Is Important In Life

I believe there are only two things that are important in your life – control of time and experiencing happiness. Money, love, big cars, diamonds, etc., are the things that contribute to these two benchmarks of success. For instance, if you have money, you don’t need to work so you can have more time to do the things you like. It’s not the money that you’re trying to get, but what the money CAN DO FOR YOU. I know this topic is bigger than one sentence explanation, but I guess you get the point. You’re a smart fella.

So now you know the 10 ways to fail in life. Question is, are you doing any of these? I’ll be BS’ng you if I said I don’t. I’m human dude, flesh and blood – I do mistakes too.

But I was fortunate to experience my fair share of success today because I learn powerful lessons from other successful people…

It’s okay to fail and you should fail as many times as you can. That is how you learn but more importantly, you should never give up – each time you get dirt kicked in your face, wash your face and ‘fight’ back. Don’t go crying like a sissy because Mum’s not going to come cleaning your face.

Are you ready? Go get your goals.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life by Brian Tracy
2. Ways to Resolve Conflict When Others Avoid It
3. 40 Ways to Make a Good First Impression
4. 14 Social Skills Resources for an Amazing Social Life
5. On Achieving Goals – Part 1: Defining What You Truly Want

NLP practitioners have a set of rules known as “NLP presuppositions” that form the foundations for the technology. They are beliefs that govern NLP. The presuppositions give you the foundation to understand how you perceive the world and presents you with the opportunity to change your reality. It is not that the presuppositions have been proven, but rather they give us opportunities and freedom to produce for effective living and better communication.

While few people agree on exact NLP presuppositions, the following presuppositions, in no particular order, are the ones I have frequently stumbled upon. They appear to be widely accepted. Though the presuppositions are simple, and hence can appear idealistic, think of how they can be applied to your life to change your reality:

1. The map is not the territory

This could be the most important presupposition to understand. “The map is not the territory” means we are separate from reality. The menu is not the food. The road map is not the city. The map of the world we have in our minds is not the real world.

We short-change ourselves of our full potential when we believe our mental map of the world is the territory we deal with everyday. If you take your assumptions of people’s behaviors, your position in the world, how people perceive you, or anything as reality – when it is merely your mental map painted from abstract understandings – you cheat yourself from what you can become.

Instead of interacting with the world, you interact with your map. How you treat people and yourself is dependent on the map you hold. Your map can be quickly, and more effortlessly, changed than the world it attempts to describe.

2. Every behavior has its appropriate context

You may get angry in sporadic outbursts because it gives you the space you need from people. You may be a passive person because of its benefits, such as the praise you receive from parents and teachers, which make you feel it is a good behavior. You may be scared of snakes because when you were little a snake-bite hospitalized you for two days.

Unfortunately, the behaviors, phobias, and ways to communicate we have learned from experience – that served us well then – limit our potential. We let the past dictate our future. Instead of using old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that served their purpose in old contexts, you need to adapt new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are most beneficial for the present moment and aligned with who you want to become.

3. People already have their needed resources

This is the weakest of the presuppositions. It is has been reinterpreted and misused from its original intention given by Milton Erikson when he said patients in therapy have the resources to handle their present problems, not all problems.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, you are human. While you may have the resources to solve personal problems, it does not mean you are capable of solving them right now. You need to know the resources you have and how to use them. You need to learn the skills, go through the experiences, discover a book, or whatever it may be, to awaken these resources within you.

You already have the ability to visualize, feel, hear sounds, communicate, and experience other sensations. These innate human abilities are the framework for personal change. In this article, and anything I share with you, I hope to give you the ability to use your resources better to create the reality you want in your everyday awakening life by showing you how to put your frameworks to more effective use.

4. Experience has a structure

You have five senses that give you an experience: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. These five senses hold the potential to change your identity and reality. Because your senses give birth to the experiences you live every moment of life, each habit or skill arises from your senses.

Pleasant-filled and pain-ridden experiences each have their own structures that use the five senses. Recurrent painful memories typically are large, bright, and up close. Painless memories of previously painful moments are typically seen in black-and-white, a single frame, and at an objective distance like in a photo – or even possibly combined with humorous music. Knowing the experience you want and understanding the structures that give off the experience, helps you establish an empowering pattern.

5. If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it

This presupposition is modeling, doing what someone else does. It forms the foundation of NLP where individuals observe successful persons then mimic what makes them successful. Someone who wants similar success to a person they admire are to learn and do what makes the person successful, which leads to their own success. Successful individuals for centuries have modeled successful predecessors.

6. Change what is not working

The old saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” is so true. This presupposition encourages people to stop doing what does not give them the results they want. If you want something new, you have to start doing something new.

It is sick to see parents use unhealthy ways of disciplining their children. Every action by the child gets a consequence placed around it. To the parent’s disbelief, the child continues to push those consequences. The parent thinks it’s the child’s problem, but the parent is too ignorant and stuck in habitual behavior to realize that what he or she is doing is not working.

7. A positive intention exists beneath every behavior

You might yell to be heard. Fight to establish justice. Smoke to feel relaxation. Retreat to feel comfortable. Remain in bed to avoid the pain of what awaits you. These are all positive intentions.

However, a positive intention does not mean the behavior is correct, healthy, or the best option. Rather, knowing a positive intention or fundamental human need exists behind behaviors and communication enables you to act resourcefully. When you see positive intentions, you are more able to separate the problem from the person and update your map.

8. You cannot not communicate

I have come across many people who think it is possible to not communicate. The idea that you cannot communicate is one of the top communication myths.

You always communicate and will always continue to communicate. Your nonverbal communication illustrates the thoughts and feelings inside of you. While your thoughts remain hidden, a snicker in your smile, a wink in your eye, or a sigh of relief communicates a message without you needing to verbalize a message.

9. The meaning of communication is the elicited response

You just gave a brilliant presentation to a board of directors about a new project. Or so you thought. They rejected your idea. Why? There could be many reasons, but the underlying concept I’m painting here is the message received differs to the message sent.

People’s responses show you their meaning of your communication. When you understand the difference between sending communication and receiving communication, you open yourself to intimately understand people. You become aware that people need to verify their understanding of your message, which allows you to adjust future communication with them.

This presupposition encapsulates another NLP presupposition: failure does not exist, only feedback exists. Every piece of feedback you receive is treated as an achievement because it takes you one step closer to what you want. If something does not get you the results you want, it only means you need to correct what you are doing. You need to change what is not working. You will eventually create the reality you want by having the effective flexibility to change.

10. The more choices, the better

The fewer options an individual has, the unhealthier the person. Individuals limited in behavior feel victimized by circumstances that “give no options”. You may consider yourself to be absent of any psychosomatic illness, but there will be unhealthy areas in your life where you feel limited and powerless.

People stuck in negotiations are limited by their constraining choice(s) because choice correlates to power, influence, and change. The more choices you have personally, socially, and professionally, the more control you have over your reality. The better map you develop, the more choices you give yourself to create your desired reality.

11. The mind and body are inseparable

It was previously believed the mind and body are separate entities. Today, researchers, medical experts, and philosophers discover evidence each day about the mind and body influencing one another. Your thoughts and emotions affect your body and vice-a-versa.

Do not underestimate the influence your mind has on your body and the influence your body has on your mind. There is endless amounts of research that proves the strength of the two-way communication between the mind and body. Fields of study now heavily integrate the two entities that once seemed separate.

Body psychotherapy deals with the subconscious mind and body. Your experiences show in parts of your body. One particular example is bottled emotions manifest themselves in pains throughout the body. Emotional pains arise in predictable places over the body. A sore left knee signifies a fear to move forward in life.

Last night, I purged my thoughts and emotions, which remained inside of me for years, to my parents. I woke up the following morning with my worst ever headache. 18 hours later as I write this, I still have a headache, something that has never lasted more than 30 minutes for me.

12. Action develops understanding

Regardless of the number of books you read, people you talk to, or universities you attend, you will not understand what you seek to learn until you do. It is only when you do can you fully comprehend what you intellectualized.

There you have 12 neuro-linguistic programming presuppositions. These presuppositions are given to you as frameworks. They are rules to change your reality. Live by them and soon you will be in a reality that once seemed a dream.

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She senses the executives are better than her. She feels below standard because the executives are dressed in suits while she wears a basic top and skirt. She does not know the executives very well and finds it hard to socialize with them, which makes her feel less as a person. Regardless of the superficial reason for her difference that makes her feel less than the executives, the real problem is her inferiority complex.

In 1912, a psychologist by the name of Alfred Alder wrote a book titled The Neurotic Character. His research in the book founded a popular area of psychology known as the inferiority complex, a term that describes a sense of inferiority an individual feels about oneself towards other people. It revolves around social status, power, ego, and dominance. You will have an inferiority complex when you feel less than people. You think other people are better than you.

Sally in our example feels inferior because she thinks the executives are better than her. Her inferiority has nothing to do with not knowing the executives, being dressed differently, or having a less prestigious job. Her interpretation of this situation that makes her feel below standard creates her inferiority.

An inferiority complex can arise when you experience an imagined or conditioned feeling of inferiority. As is the case for most people, it is a combination of imagination and subtle conditioning. You feel inferior when an event takes place, which makes you feel less than others (conditioning aspect), and your creative imagination (imagination aspect) would “blow out” your understanding of the event beyond what seems reasonable to another person.

The conditioning aspect in Sally’s example is her actual differences to the executives. She is wearing different clothes to the executives and she is not “a part of the group” based on her employment status. The imagination aspect for Sally is her clothes fall below standards, the executives are better than her, the executives want nothing to do with her because of her difference, plus many other irrationalities she thinks that makes her feel like a lesser human. The big difference between conditioning and imagination hold the answer to cure your inferiority complex.

The First Main Factor of Inferiority: Conditioning

I would be completely lying and doing everyone a disfavor if I said, “The inferiority complex is all in the mind. Just stop thinking you’re inferior because you’re not.” If it were so simple, billions of people would not experience feelings of inferiority sometime in their life. The inferiority complex is society’s psychological black plague that devours too many lives.

My main motivation in writing this article was to provide an accurate source of information to overcome the problem based on what works. The information in this article is a collection of the most useful advice on the inferiority complex I have synthesized over the years, along with specific lessons I have developed to overcome my own inferiority complex; unlike personal development teachers I know of who solely emphasize positiveness to overcome feelings of inferiority.

I did some brief browsing on the web to see what information was available on the inferiority complex, and most of the advice offered is harmful. “Experts” were telling people “things will get better”, “be more positive”, or “it’s not so bad”. If you have the inferiority complex and someone says similar things to you, you will understand the massive frustration caused from the misunderstanding when someone gives you such poor advice.

Positive thinking can be nicely understood through an analogy in a Bible verse. In Luke chapter five (NKJV), Jesus was talking to complaining Pharisees. Jesus replied to them in a parable so they would be more likely to understand:

“No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.”

The garment and the wineskins examples are what positive thinking does to our self-image. A new patch over the bad garment improves the garment a little bit, yet it is still its same old self. If new wine (positive thinking) is poured into old wineskins (your poor self-image of feeling inferior), then nothing good will result. It is a battle of willpower and what is known as creative imagination.

Positive thinking can slightly improve the situation, but in the end it usually results in frustration as your willpower becomes exhausted. Willpower results in an oscillation between the problem and an absence of the problem – failing to create a permanent solution. You cannot use self-determination to cure feelings of inferiority. Whenever willpower fights creative imagination, creative imagination is the victor. I repeat for emphasis: Your creative imagination, which consists of images and feelings, will always conquer your willpower.

From personal experience and coaching others, I know first hand that a better self-image where you do not feel inferior cannot be achieved through positive self-talk, affirmations, and the like. Unfortunately, thousands of people have taught, and continue to teach, that using positive self-talk will overcome your problems. Positive self-talk is often nothing more than an attempt to live deliriously from reality, ignoring what really takes place.

When Doing Becomes Being – Why Failure and Criticism Fuel Inferiority

The primary factors of conditioning that determine whether you become inferior or rise above the circumstance is your attitude towards criticism and failure. Do not forget about the creative imagination component – the stronger influence of feeling inferior – yet criticism and failure most powerfully influence the conditioning component.

Criticism and failure will always bang at your door to success – more so as you achieve your goals. I have noticed that as readers of my newsletter (ToP Tips) and articles increase, so does the criticism. I get excited with this because I know the criticism signals achievement. Any criticism and failure has nothing to do with me – in fact, it usually has more to do with the other person.

You and I will always have our critics if we avoid mediocrity. Anyone that has achieved anything notable, sooner or later receives harsh criticism. Find a dark corner where you can hide from the world if you want to avoid criticism (but then again, you will be criticized for hiding). The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”

People criticize you because they either want to improve your life, desire to release their frustration, or have their own problems. Failure and criticism say nothing about you; rather, let them signal personal growth. You can take criticism as a sign of progressing in life. If I had not experienced feelings of inferiority, I would not have worked on myself and personally grown. No way would I be writing this article today. I am certain I would not teach any communication skills.

You will never eliminate criticism or failure. The conditioning aspect of inferiority will never vanish. Therefore, to overcome the inferiority complex you cannot expect to avoid failure, dodge criticism, and achieve perfection. You must learn, move on, and maintain a goal-focused attitude to overcome an inferiority complex.

Criticism and failure will never stop as long as you pursue goals. Problems arise when you let the two burglars get a foot hold within your life. You come to feel inferior by associating criticism and failure with how you see yourself. The thieves steal valuable mental goods important to your success.

You will always do things in an inferior way to what other people can do – there is no ignoring that – but a secret to overcome your inferiority complex is to stop associating yourself with your actions. Stop letting failure and criticism form your identity. Inferiority arises when doing becomes being. When you associate what you do with yourself, actions of doing become actions of being.

A young guy gets poor results at school. He associates his grades with his intelligence – leading him to believe he is dumb. Is he really dumb because he was too lazy to study? No. A guy that gets poor results at school and does not feel inferior, dissociates himself with the result. He does not let his lack of study and effort over the school year make him feel that he is his outcome.

When you feel criticism is a signal of your unworthiness, only then does it stimulate inferiority, shame, and failure. Do not take criticism personally and think of yourself as a failure. Justly deserved criticism needs to be used as feedback to adjust your course of action back on the path of success.

The Three Factors of Criticism – Don’t Let These Get You Down

We all have been criticized. Some people suffer while others flourish and experience great levels of confidence, success, happiness, and intimate relationships. Why is this? What can you learn from this to overcome your inferiority complex?

The underlying reason some people feel inferior from criticism and failure, while other people flourish under such feedback, is how they react to the three components of criticism: the power of the sender, intensity, and frequency. You cannot control the three components of criticism – as is true for any conditioning aspect of inferiority – but you can control your reaction to them (the imagination component).

If you are passionate about boxing and Muhammad Ali said you are a hopeless boxer, his power and status intensifies the criticism. In addition, if his criticism was delivered in an intense outburst, the criticism would have a bigger impact on you feeling inferior as a boxer. If Ali also constantly reminded you how hopeless you are at boxing, this would stimulate further inferiority. The sender, intensity, and frequency of positive and negative messages impact how we feel about ourselves.

What matters, however, is your reaction. Think of a time when the power of the sender, intensity of the criticism, and the frequency of criticism made you feel inferior. If you can – and I suggest you do – make your selected memory one related to your current feelings of inferiority. If you are a shy person, perhaps think of a time when someone told you to stop talking because you have nothing good to say.

Once you have come up with one or several memories, ask yourself these questions:

• What were you thinking when the person made you feel inferior?
• What emotions did you experience?
• What self-talk followed the person’s negative feedback?
• How long did these feelings and thoughts last?
• How intense were these feelings and thoughts?

After answering these questions, if you reacted poorly to the negative feedback given to you in these situations, you should now be aware of how your feelings of inferiority develop. This is big. If you have the inferiority complex or know someone with it, I hope you’re getting excited about this insight.

The powerful lesson we can learn from this is that people’s criticism and other types of negative feedback has no power over you. It is not the events that make you inferior; it is your reaction to the events. It is the thoughts and feelings you experience after the event that determine whether your inferiority grows or dies. The conditioning aspect of inferiority partly manifests through the criticism of others – if you let it – yet your reaction to the event determines how you feel about yourself.

You condition yourself to feel inferior through self-criticism. You become your own worst enemy. The failed events and experiences shape your identity, making you appear a failure.

Harmful feelings trail behind harmful thoughts. You start to feel inferior. You use your creative imagination poorly and begin to evoke images of failure, misery, shame, unworthiness, and low self-esteem. All the negative messages you’ve accepted over time mold your self-image to make you feel inferior. You eventually believe you are inferior. That is essentially how an inferiority complex develops – through your creative imagination.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
2. How to Not Care What People Are Thinking About You – and Release Your People-Magnetic Self Into the Conversation
3. Setting SMART Achievable Personal Goals
4. On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated
5. 5 Truths About Fear: What Fear Doesn’t Want You To Know

Covey’s book has sold over 15 million copies for a reason: It ignores trends and popular psychology, and sticks with enduring principles of lasting change. His seven principles build a lasting foundation for truth, openness, and integrity. The principles are timeless – unchanging to events – which has made the book the personal development favorite of many self-help experts.

The first three principles are: 1) be proactive, 2) begin with the end in mind, and 3) put first things first. These first three principles deal with dependence as the author moves the reader through new paradigms.

The first principle moves people from blame and victimization to responsibility. The second principle moves people from destructive centeredness and obsessions to a healthy focus and clear values. While the third principles deals with the “fourth generation” of time management where you will learn to do what matters most instead of following to-do lists and doing frivolous tasks that contribute little to your life and other people’s lives.

The second lot of three principles (four to six) deal with interdependency. The second triplet of principles are self-explanatory: 4) think win/win, 5) seek first to understand, then to be understood, and 6) synergize. These three principles are more like communication skills as the first three principles provide you with the foundation to use them.

It is sad to see many people ignore these principles. As a result, their relationships suffer and people resent them. Any success they get is short-term, unsatisfactory, and often lonely.

Covey emphasizes that effective people are interdependent on others. While they are independent and strong in their own right, when they use the three principles for interdependence, the sum of people’s work is more than the individual parts.

The last principle is called “sharpen the saw”. It deals with renewal in the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Just as a blunt saw becomes tiresome for a woodcutter, so does a failure to renew in these four dimensions result in unproductive – and sometimes destructive – living for the exasperated individual. When these four dimensions are renewed, the seventh principle of “sharpen the saw” is followed to encapsulate the other six principles. It is in such ways that all the principles feed off one another.

The last point I want to emphasize to encourage you to invest in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People if you have not already done so is the character ethic Covey focuses on. Most books these days focus on the personality ethic. A personality ethic deals with attitudes, behaviors, skills, and the techniques for human interaction. While the personality ethic is important, without the character ethic that offers courage, patience, and integrity, long-term success is inhibited. The establishment of a strong character ethic creates change from the inside-out.

Overall, you must get the book. I have heard so many personal development public speakers, authors, life coaches, and organizational trainers say the book is the best they have ever read. I highly encourage you to grab your copy of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People now from Amazon right now by clicking here today.

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3. Review of Winning with People by John Maxwell
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5. Review of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Sexual arousal contains several of the greatest lessons to teach yourself how to become self-motivated. Arousal begins by thinking about someone you find attractive. Thoughts create vivid images that lead to a growing intensity of feelings. As your feelings intensify, blood flow increases to certain body parts, breathing heightens, and your skin becomes sensitive. If you continue to immerse yourself in such imagery, eventually you need to act on those feelings.

The enduring desire and process to goal achievement is no different to arousal. Thoughts lead to vivid imagery, which creates intense feelings. Soon enough you must act on those feelings because it becomes too much for you to not chase your goal. You can create an equivalent – if not more intense – desire as physical arousal to achieve your personal development goals while the people around you quit by continuing to reading part two of this article.

2. Stimulating an Intense Emotional Craving to Get What You Want: How to Be Self-Motivated

“The starting point of all achievement is desire.” – Napoleon Hill

“You can have anything you want – if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emotions play a vital role in goal-attainment. Nelissen, Dijker, and de Vries in their 2007 study titled Emotions and Goals: Assessing Relations Between Values and Emotions emphasize the importance of emotions in achieving goals:

“An emotional state is characterized by a motivational tendency to the attainment or maintenance of a particular, emotion-specific end-state. Some [studies] have further proposed that the goal-directed nature of behavioral consequences of emotions is adaptive, thus portraying emotions as solutions to obstacles and opportunities of physical and social survival.”

As a basic example of the importance of emotions in goal-attainment, let’s say you are on holidays visiting beautiful landmarks and you’re driving up a steep mountain. You get to the top of the mountain and make your way to an eye-grabbing location that borders the mountain’s edge. There is no fences or boundaries placed that control where you can walk on top of the mountain. As you approach the mountain’s edge, you see the steep fall and quickly take a few steps back to feel safe.

The emotion in this example is fear. It is a fear of danger to ensure you achieve your goal of safety. If you had zero fear of falling off the cliff, the chances of you falling – and failing your goal of safety – increase because you are closer to danger than if you stepped away from the cliff. Your emotions help you obtain goals.

Behind each goal you have, there exists an emotional void you seek to fulfill. Aristotle said the desire for happiness is the void behind all actions. Happiness is the ultimate void every human being pursues. Nobody can be happy enough. Knowing you desire happiness, however, is not much help when motivating yourself. There is little benefit in knowing you want to make small talk with anyone to be happy. This is where the pain-pleasure theory of motivation comes in.

Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, made famous the pain-pleasure theory of motivation. The theory states that we either seek to gain pleasure or avoid pain with anything we do. Pleasure involves chasing something. Pain has you run away something. “The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you,” says Robbins. “If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

By understanding how to use pain and pleasure, instead of having pain and pleasure use you, I believe you give yourself unlimited opportunities to be self-motivated. When you learn to build as much pleasure in something as possible, while building pain in something you do not want, you become self-motivated. Manipulate pain and pleasure to build an intense emotional craving to achieve your desires.

We associate so much pleasure with physical arousal that it strongly drives our behavior to fulfill the emotional void whenever possible. Likewise, you can associate extreme amounts of pleasure with your goal, in becoming confident, for example, that you work towards better confidence under any circumstance. In fearful situations you normally avoid, extreme amounts of pleasure can be associated with fighting fear so it becomes exhilarating to be courageous and act in the face of fear. (This is a core secret of how you can become confident in social situations that I reveal in my conversation skills program Big Talk.)

Well-known motivational speaker Jim Rohn expands on the pain-pleasure theory. Rohn summarizes the primary emotions and desires that bring about change, like the pain-pleasure theory of motivation, into four categories:

1. Disgust – This is the pain component of the pain-pleasure theory. Disgust can occur when you have had enough. You’re sick of something from occurring, which motivates you to not let it occur again. Your pain leads to change.
2. Decision – There comes times in our lives that make or break us. These are fork roads where we need to choose the path on which to travel. The fork roads often arise from outside circumstances that force us to make a decision, such as a partner laying-down an ultimatum that sets the conditions if you’re to continue in a relationship. Make a decision and move forward in life. A wrong choice can be corrected at a later time.
3. Desire – We’re influenced by outside circumstances, but we must have an internal desire – a purpose that originates from within. You are shown throughout this article how to build a desire and increase pleasure with your desired pursuits.
4. Resolve – This state is defined by the decision to commit to a circumstance no matter what. “When confronted with such iron-will determination,” says Rohn, “I can see Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty conference and deciding, ‘We might as well let him have his dream. He’s said he’s going to get there or die trying.’” Nothing can replace commitment. When you know what it is you clearly want, resolve will make it happen.

Pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve – these are all powerful states you need to control or they will control you. The question remains: How do you control these mental and emotional states to become self-motivated? How do you build the emotional strength for endurance through the complete journey to attain your goals?

I believe an awareness of either pain, pleasure, disgust, decision, desire, and resolve is sometimes enough to create the respective emotion. Knowing about disgust, for example, can help you create disgust to change your behavior and achieve a goal. Nonetheless, I feel there is one technique I am about to share with you that’s amazing for building a burning desire to achieve your goals. With this technique you will remove any lack luster efforts and reluctancy to pursue what you want. It is one of the best goal-setting techniques you will ever use. The technique is simple, but very powerful.

On the piece of paper where we started the exercise earlier on, you are now going to fill in the second column. Label the second column as “Why I Want It”. In this column, you’re going to use the technique of listing 20 reasons why you want what you do to trigger, spark, and amplify your emotional desires to hunger for what you want. Come up with 20 or more reasons why you want what you listed in the first column.

Take your time in coming up with the list. 20 reasons or benefits is a lot of work, but the list created from the hours of work in this exercise will be your psychological fuel for achieving your communication and personal development goals in the weeks, months, and years to come. For me, it is my source of inspiration. If there is one method that I frequently depend upon for stimulating a hot passion so that I can pursue my goals with vigor, it is this technique. No other technique injects so much enthusiasm into me.

If you have troubles coming up with good reasons for your goals, expand on ideas and ask other people for ideas. You can also try to think in themes like: feelings you will experience, how others will see you, physical outcomes, reducing pain, and increasing resolve.

Let’s say your goal is to avoid destructively erupting in anger at family members during family conflict. Here are 10 starter points you could use in the “Why I Want It” column:

1. I want to be a good role model for my children.
2. I want my family to feel safe.
3. I want to ensure we have open communication and that no one is scared of talking about certain issues because of my anger. (Prevent other people being demotivated to talk to me because of the pain they will experience.)
4. I am sick of fighting with my family.
5. I want my family to love me as much as possible.
6. I want my family to be relaxed and calm when talking to me; instead of being provoked by my anger.
7. I hate feeling the shame when people in public see my anger.
8. I want to increase intimacy with my partner.
9. I want other parents to look up to me with how I manage my emotions towards my children.
10. I want my children to think back in 10 years time and be grateful with my emotional management towards their difficult behaviors.

The above is a great example of a list of reasons to achieve the goal of anger management. Once you have listed at least 20 reasons, I guarantee you’ll be filled with fiery emotions to help you achieve what you want. I encourage you to look at your list on a daily basis because of its emotional power in hooking you to achieve your communication and personal development goals. Look at the list frequently and you’ll remain focused and persistent with your goals.

The exercise works because you create a list that summarizes the sale points to make you “buy into” pursuing your goals. The list builds your pleasure, boosts your desire, and intensifies pain to make you persist until your goals arrive. The exercise builds the amount of pleasure you get by changing and builds the amount of pain you get by not changing.

I believe this one technique by itself is enough to create a burning desire. Regardless, I really want you to achieve your goals. I know what it is like to have a down-day where you don’t feel motivated (don’t fret, it’s natural). Here are some quick-fire pieces of advice to help you stimulate an emotional craving for your goals:

• Dress for Success – How often do you see yourself in a mirror or reflection, or look down at what you’re wearing that day? Let’s say 5 times a day. 5 times a day is 1825 times a year. That’s a lot of subtle mental programming. The power of clothing on your mood is amazing. Wear clothing that makes you feel confident and other areas of your life will improve accordingly.
• Be Aggressive – Having an important goal should stimulate aggression. Misdirect that aggression and it can become costly. Do not create another problem with your aggression. Channel your aggression towards a productive goal – what it is intended for – and watch the steam condense into hard results.
• Relive Past Success – Think back to your past successes and relive the experiences in your mind. Past successes are not only stored in your mind, but at the cellular level in your body. Linked to the successes are winning feelings you can tap into for success. On the contrary, think of past failures and you stimulate feelings of failure. The technique builds the pleasure of getting what you want. For a more in depth teaching of this method and other mental reprogramming techniques, I highly recommend Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics.
• Here and Now – Focus on what you can do in the present to allow your creative imagination the potential to develop solutions. When you are obsessed with the past and the future, anxiety rids you of your ability to achieve results in the present moment.
• Details – Defining what you want pulls you in the right direction with specific details. Visualize, feel, smell, taste, and hear the intrinsic details of your desired state to put yourself in that winning state. Just as it is with the process of arousal, you can become aroused by experiencing the details of your goals. This technique is similar to reliving your past successes except you’re free to create what you want with this technique. You’re not controlled by the past.
• Feed Your Mind – You’ll be surprised at how uplifted you get by reading about other people’s passions and successes. Consume at least 15 minutes a day of motivational material from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield, and Anthony Robbins. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last,” said Ziglar. “Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
• Create an Ultimatum – Use the desire of resolve that Rohn explains to create change in your life. Make an absolute condition that if something doesn’t happen, so-and-so consequences will occur. Tell others about this to hold yourself accountable. Sun Tzu in the Art of War knew soldiers fought their hardest when it was a matter of life or death. Soldiers given an escape route by the enemy had an option to winning or dying so they did not fight their hardest. Alternatives and exit strategies make it okay to fail. Do everything in your power to create an ultimatum such that you must succeed or suffer severe consequences. This technique increases the pain of not changing.
• Teamwork – Team up with someone who wants a similar goal as you. This technique is frequently used in exercising where trainers encourage newcomers to workout with a friend. When you make your goals known to others – and when they have the same goals – the two of you can work together towards a common cause. Each of you becomes more accountable for his or her own actions because you don’t want to let the other person down. It’s vital the person is supportive or they could demotivate you from setting and achieving your goal.

A word of warning though, as I have repeatedly mentioned, if you must rely on these techniques to provide you with motivation, question whether you want the goal. You can stimulate passion using the various techniques provided above, but I want you to remember that your goal must be what you defined in the first stage of the article. An intense desire to pursue your goal will come naturally if your goal is what you truly want.

Nonetheless, passion increases with the above techniques. You will pursue your goals with a passion by learning how to create a desire for what you have clearly defined. Once you are passionate and persistent towards a goal, zero events can stop you from achieving it. Outside circumstances may delay achievement, but passion with action guarantees your desires ultimately manifest into the results you want.

Be careful with what you wish for because you can get it by following the advice shared in this article. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how to stimulate a passion to get it. I believe this is mysterious state of success philosophers have tried to described for centuries. (If you haven’t done the exercise yet, you’re only cheating yourself. Go back and do it now.)

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2. Setting SMART Achievable Personal Goals
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4. Why Problem Solving Doesn’t Solve the Problem and the Real Solution to Permanent Change
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Straight off, you must follow Brain Tracy, bestselling author of Create Your Own Future. Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life needs to be in your personal library. It has been hailed by many people as one of Tracy’s top books (he has published over 30 books), if not his best book.

The basis of the book is about improving the way you think to get stronger relationships, become better at your career, increase your happiness, and generally achieve more success. From having role models, goals, dreams, and developing excellence in your chosen field, to listening, strategic thinking, time management, getting “the edge”, and earning more, it all stems from changing the way you think. This is all covered in the book.

One characteristic about this book that makes it better than Tracy’s other books are the references to several university studies and other types of research that back up the principles he provides and to explain his lessons. The research gives great insight and sets the book apart from the others he has written.

People with personal development experience will know most of the principles mentioned in this book. Nonetheless, if you know the principles and have not achieved the goals you want in life, then you don’t really “know” them because knowing is doing. Therefore, you need to read this book and follow it up with action. Reading and rereading this book yearly will remind you of the principles you may already know, but you have yet to implement.

Like his other books, this book is one with simple, easy to understand, and to-the-point lessons. You will find yourself constantly reading powerful lessons instead of stories that slightly relate to the lessons that many other authors provide in their books.

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life is the first personal development book I read after I picked up my father’s copy of it around the year 2000. I don’t know if the book hooked me into becoming more than I am, but it at least put me on the path where I now teach thousands of people worldwide. It is a significant book in my life because of its impact on me. Who knows the impact it could have on you? I highly recommend it. You can grab your copy from Amazon right now by clicking here.

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Brian Tracy is known for his simple, concise, easy to understand books based on self-help classics. Create Your Own Future is no exception. Tracy has included materials from his other works and the likes of Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie for one reason, it works. I know several people who have read this book and experienced a wonderful life-change.

There are five chapters of interest to people who want to improve their communication: chapter 1 (Success Is Predictable), chapter 5 (Attitude Is Everything), chapter 7 (Relationships Are Essential), and chapter 13 (Fortune Favors the Brave). This isn’t to say that these are the only relevant chapters to communication, but they are the most powerful.

In chapter 7, Tracy shares effective principles on how you can successfully network with the big players in your career and industry. He shares the secrets of how you can get influential people on your side to help you succeed in your chosen career path. If you don’t already know, networking is the key to most people’s success. Having the people and resources available to you at your request helps you overcome problems they have already solved.

The focus of Create Your Own Future appears to focus on succeeding in your career; though the principles like attitude, clarity, and knowledge are adapted to many situations. Tracy provides interesting insight into the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious mind and how you can use each mind to improve various areas of your life.

If you have read several of Brian Tracy’s books on personal development, you’ll find a lot of teachings in this book overlap with his other books. Nonetheless, you’re bound to learn a few life-changing principles from the many in this book.

With the many easy to understand and concise personal development principles in Create Your Own Future, it is a book worth reading to improve yourself. A simple principle like transforming your car into a mobile university by listening to CDs, instead of wasting hundreds of hours listening to the radio, is extremely valuable. You can grab your copy of Create Your Own Future from Amazon by
clicking here today.

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For centuries, mankind has explored this mysterious emotional state that gets him want he wants. This power is not the law of attraction; rather, it is a power within you. The power is your power. It is self-motivation. You control whether you are self-motivated. Self-motivation will give you anything you damn well want if you want it bad enough.

Think of something you once wanted so badly that nothing stopped you from getting it. This is the passionate desire you need to achieve what you want. Contrast this passion to something you thought “would be nice”. Maybe you wanted to learn the guitar because you thought it would be a nice skill. Maybe you wanted to learn a new language to explore cultures. Maybe you wanted to go scuba diving for an adventure. Whatever “nice thing” you wanted, you didn’t achieve it because your hunger for it was deficient.

When trying to motivate yourself to learn a new language, for example, perhaps you purchased some books and CDs, but you never progressed further because you lack the emotional desire (it happened to me when I tried to learn Spanish). We can take steps forward to achieve what we want, but we fall short of our desire without the self-motivation required to carry us through our full journey. Without self-motivation, we fail.

To achieve your communication and personal development desires, goals, and dreams, I believe two characteristics need emphasis. Both deal with passion and having a fire-in-the-belly attitude. Firstly, you need to define exactly what it is you want.

1. Defining What You Want

“You will suddenly realize that the reason you never changed before was because you didn’t want to.” – Robert H. Schuller

“When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.” – Jim Rohn

“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.” – Erich Fromm

The first step to achieve what you want in your personal development journey is to know exactly what you want. You probably already think you know what you want, but I am pretty confident you do not truthfully know. What you think you want could be what someone else wants; a facade to get another want; a vague desire which creates a slow, unenergized pursuit.

When you do not define what you want with pure precision, you wonder through life’s jungle waiting for signs that validate your success. You have no proof you’re moving forward because you don’t know what you’re moving towards. Eventually, you get devoured by obstacles that demotivate you from trying to reach your mysterious destination.

Let’s say you want to be good at making small talk with anyone because you would love to have the skill of being able to approach someone and start a conversation. Wanting to make small talk with anyone, however, is not what you really want. What you really want is a host of outcomes small talk fulfills. What I mean by this is that you don’t want the skill of being able to talk to anyone for the sake of being able to talk to anyone – your desire to talk with anyone has hidden motives. Successfully being able to approach someone and start a conversation fulfills that want.

One reason you could want to make small talk with anyone is to control your fears when you meet new people. Another reason is to network more effectively so you can grow your business. Another is to feel secure around people. All these are emotional motives that drive your desire to make small talk. When you define your wants in the correct light, you become self-motivated to pursue that goal because it holds importance to you.

Do you want to raise happy children? Do you want what is best for your family? If you want what is best for your family, you’re probably lying to yourself. I’m not saying you don’t want what is best for your family; what I’m saying is the underlying motives behind “I want what’s best for my family” deals with your desires.

Perhaps seeing your family safe and secure makes you feel happy and comforted. Knowing your children are happy validates your parenting skills. When other parents see your successful children, you feel proud. Maybe you want successful children to make up for the failures in your life or you do not want to be frowned upon and humiliated by other parents. These outcomes are probably what you really want when desiring the best for your family.

Only when you accurately define what you want can you get what you want. You will aim with precision when focusing on a target clear to you.

I want you to do an exercise now. This exercise forms the framework for this article so you will greatly benefit from doing it. The exercise is a mental and emotional catapult successful people use to define what they want, become self-motivated, and achieve their goals.

Get out a paper and pen, and draw two columns. You will want the second column to be twice the size of the first column. This exercise is large and will take several hours. You may want to do it in two sittings, but the process should be energizing so you might be able to get it done in a single sitting.

In the first column on the left, label it “What I Want”. Obviously, under this you will write down what you want. Some people would write down goals as the heading for this column, but I don’t like using the word “goals” in combination with words that signify a deep desire because you don’t need to set goals when you want something bad enough. Your desires automatically become something you want without you sitting down and writing them as goals.

To help you determine what you want, remove all constraints around your desires. Forget about what you know or have. Stop letting the past limit your future. Remove financial, intellectual, and relationship constraints. Success is not what you know or who you know; it is how you think. You can overcome any constraint if you know how to think in an empowering manner.

It is absolutely necessary you do not reason to yourself what you want. The analytical part of your mind can hurt the emotional part. The most common form of reasoning contains “buts”. For example, “I want to work as a public speaker. But I am not good at speaking. But I don’t know how to get started. But I won’t be able to make money.” All these stupid constraints trick you into avoiding your true desires.

When we reason with “buts”, we rarely have tried to find a solution. I’ve heard people who want to become public speakers say they are not good at public speaking, yet they have not looked into how they can speak better in public. These people reason they don’t know how to get started in public speaking, but they never once looked into how they can get started. We have limiting thoughts based on limiting knowledge. It is crazy how we remove ourselves from our desires through this silly rationalizing process.

In determining your ultimate career, ask yourself what you would do if money was not a consideration. Ask yourself what you would do if you had the necessary training. Ask yourself what you would do if you knew the right people. Remove all constraints and find what greatly turns you on.

Another thought to help you accurately define what you want is to not fall in the illusion of wanting what other people want. Society has norms and expectations that can mold your desires. I understand that everyone will not want to be married. Think deeply about what your goals really mean to you. Passion is more about caring than finding the right thing. You will be surprised at the many things you can be passionate about once you start caring.

As a verification step to knowing what you want, you can test to see if this is truly what you want by running a mental theater of what it will look, feel, smell, hear, and taste like when you achieve the goal. Rather than ask yourself, “What are my goals?” ask yourself, “What would excite me and why?” See what excites you by running through intense visualizations. The experiences that excite you (I am talking about a desire of 100 on a scale from 1 to 100 where 100 is the most intense) are what you want. They are your goal.

If you still struggle to determine your desires, remember to remove all constraints. Also, you can stop the exercise for a few hours to allow your subconscious to work and define what you want. Additionally, I recommend you get Jack Zufelt’s program How To Use The Conquering Force Within You to learn more about defining what you truly want. (I earn nothing from referring you to Jack’s program. I have two copies of it and encourage you to get your copy.)

Once you have defined what you want, write these desires down on the piece of paper under the heading “What I Want”. In the same column, and this optional, you can go one step further by using the SMART method. Having written down what you want, rephrase your want in a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible form. Write no more than five goals for now, unless you want to do extra work, because of the time it takes to complete the exercise.

If you’re finished, well done. You have defined what you want. That completes the first part of the exercise. Few people will ever do what you just did, which sets you apart from the masses.

The next step after defining what you want is to stimulate an intense hunger to get your desire. This second step could be unnecessary, because if you really want something you will have an intense hunger to consume it. Nonetheless, we experience demotivation from failure and have our down-days for everything so the second step boosts your self-motivation. If you did not hunger, you would hardly eat. Consume the advice in part two and you will successfully be devouring your passions.

This article is continued. Read part two: On Achieving Goals – Part 2: How to Be Self-Motivated.

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