If you run long distances slowly, your body adapts, making you better at running long distances at that speed. If you sit in an office chair all day, your body adapts to that too, making you better at sitting in office chairs all day (and worse at other things, like running long distances).

SAID also implies that running long distances slowly is not a good way to become better at running short distances quickly, nor lifting heavy weights a few times. There may be some positive carryover to sprinting (but not much), and there may be negative carryover to lifting heavy weights a few times, but primarily if you run long distances you’ll get better at running long distances.

One implication of SAID for personal development generally is that if you want to get better at something, practice that thing—not something else. To get better at soccer, play more soccer. You can of course also break the skills of soccer into small chunks, like passing and cutting and practice those micro skills too. But will lifting heavy weights make you a better soccer player? Probably not, unless being physically bigger would help your game. Lifting may even have negative carryover in adding new muscle skills that compete with the ones you need most, and in the potential for injury to joints, tendons, and ligaments.

The worst negative carryover tends to come about when you change the skill slightly, for example if you were to play soccer with a heavy medicine ball. This would make you much worse in terms of accurately judging where the ball would go, creating confusion in your motor skills. One should be especially wary of practicing the wrong things with the aim of getting prepared. I’ve done this a million times. I joke with my girlfriend that I like reading about exercise much more than actually exercising.

If you want to be better at business, reading business books isn’t necessarily the way to prepare—this will make you primarily better at reading business books! Better to open the equivalent of a lemonade stand—something with minimal overhead and thus low risk, but dealing with real customers in a business setting. Better yet would be to do a small version of the Big Thing you want to do. If you want to be a web designer, design something small—a 1-page website for yourself, or a simple site for a friend. Yes, books and web tutorials on web design can help, but the positive carryover is small unless you actually are designing things, improving the real skills that count for your goal. Meanwhile, getting a job as a secretary for a big name web design firm is the fastest way to have your skills atrophy.

The SAID principle also explains why achievers in one area are not always ethical or kind. Sitting and meditating for hours at a time does not necessarily have positive carryover to being kind and compassionate, nor avoiding power trips or corruption, unless perhaps you were meditating on compassion or how to behave ethically when tempted. Playing a consistently great round of golf isn’t good preparation for avoiding the temptations of sleeping with as many beautiful women as you can, as we found with Tiger Woods. There may even be some negative carryover between practicing something in an intensely disciplined way and ethical behavior outside of practice. Having spent all of one’s willpower in practice, little self-discipline remains for avoiding ethical temptation.

This principle also explains why for instance walking across burning hot coals barefoot is not good preparation for “facing your fears,” but really just for walking across hot coals. Fears are specific—facing your unique fears is the best preparation for facing your fears! If that’s too much, vividly imagining facing a specific fear of yours, seeing yourself with the resources you need is also good preparation (although it has less positive carryover), as is chunking down a frightening task into something so small it is easy to achieve.

SAID also implies that we become what we do—and don’t do. Or as Chogyam Trungpa put it, “the path is the goal.” To become a compassionate person, the path is to practice being compassionate. To become out of shape, sit around all day without getting your heart rate elevated or putting any stress on your muscles. And most importantly, to become great at reading blogs about becoming great, read lots of personal development blogs on greatness….

The [product name removed] is the belief system (or faith) that underpins an accomplished, virtuous, successful, and joyous life – a life free from the tyrannical oppression of independent thought and independent action.

Ah, finally some honesty in advertising. For what is the consumer of such a personal development product really wanting than a guaranteed blueprint to self-actualization, a life free from the oppressing existential dread of having to make decisions amidst a backdrop of groundlessness and meaninglessness!

Ordinarily we think of freedom as an unequivocally positive concept. … Yet freedom viewed from the perspective of ultimate ground is riveted to dread. In its existential sense “freedom” refers to the absence of external structure. …the individual is entirely responsible for…his or her own world, life design, choices, and actions. “Freedom” in this sense, has a terrifying implication: it means that beneath us there is no ground—nothing, a void, an abyss. A key existential dynamic, then, is the clash between our confrontation with groundlessness and our wish for ground and structure.
~from the introduction of Existential Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom

The ebooks, video courses, life coaching, blogs, and email newsletters of many a budding personal development guru largely aim to provide a pain-free “paint-by-numbers” structure for one’s existential condition—all the while promising liberation that can only come from a direct confrontation with that groundlessness and desire for stability.

In fact, for all the talk of freedom, liberation, creativity, meaning, and purpose, few if any bloggers in our community seem to be wrestling with the existential dilemmas that give rise to such: the inevitability of death, the burdens of responsibility, one’s feeling of existential isolation from others, feelings of meaninglessness, existential anxiety, despair, and dread. While personal development and even lifestyle design promise solutions to existential problems, the cult of positivity prevents even the most superficial discussion of the underlying issues that might lead to their resolution. Indeed, considering existential questions is not something one does in polite company. It’s as if we fear that if one stares into the void too long they will be transfixed as if by Medusa’s gaze, unable to look away, trapped forever in overwhelming despair.

The title of this blog post was of course a joke. Years ago I remember reading about Albert Einstein and becoming inspired by his creativity. I remember clearly having the thought “I want to be creative—just like Einstein.” I laughed out loud at the absurdity! Clearly if I was creative in the same way as Einstein then I was a copycat and thus not creative at all. I hope more and more people will wake up to the absurdity of attempting to solve one’s existential dilemmas with a $47 ebook or the equivalent. Perhaps such products, failing to resolve the problems of the human condition, will also lead some of us to face our lives with resolute courage, allowing us to finally come to terms with the deepest struggles of being.

It is often said by many a personal development guru that the only thing stopping you from getting what you want in life is fear. Sometimes F.E.A.R. is turned into an acronym: False Evidence Appearing Real. But isn’t fear a useful response to genuinely threatening situations? Is the evidence always false?

When I’ve worked with clients with apparently irrational fear, there has always been some very good reason for their unconscious fear reactivity. The response may be less-than-useful, but is usually based in some important bit of reality. Once this information is integrated and the emotional experience fully accepted then the fear naturally dissipates.

Recent evidence also suggests that young children who do not easily register fear in their brains are more likely to become criminals:

Poor fear conditioning at age 3 predisposes to crime at age 23. Poor fear conditioning early in life implicates amygdala and ventral prefrontal cortex dysfunction and a lack of fear of socializing punishments in children who grow up to become criminals. These findings are consistent with a neurodevelopmental contribution to crime causation.

—Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:56-60

This finding is consistent with what we know about psychopaths and sociopaths. Fear plays an important role in pro-social behavior. If one is totally fearless, there is no fear of social punishment from breaking norms, such as in stealing or killing to get what one wants. We see this kind of callous behavior in psychopaths like James Arthur Ray and other personal development “leaders.” That said, fearing public speaking because you think you are going to die isn’t exactly helpful or rational either. And sometimes excessive fear of punishment can keep us from fessing up to our mistakes.

Usually what most people do when we feel fear is attempt to ignore our experience of fear or overpower it with willpower. Alternatively, we simply don’t go for challenging goals. These strategies sometimes work in a pinch, but don’t work very well in the long-term. Ignoring our experience, the fear typically grows more intense until it must be dealt with directly. Attempting to overpower our fear, we find that our conscious will isn’t nearly as powerful as the ocean of the unconscious mind, and we’re either tossed on the waves or refuse to risk sailing out of the safe harbor.

What are the alternatives to ignoring or denying one’s fear? Embracing and understanding it. Notice what physical and mental sensations make up your experience of fear or shame—what mental images, inner dialogue or sounds, and physical sensations create this experience? Notice these with a sense of curiosity. Perhaps you picture people laughing if you fail at your new project. How realistic is this? What if you make the picture smaller, and surround it by pictures of people who support you in your endeavor? And most importantly, what is the positive purpose of this fear for you and for society? You may even find that your original goal changes and feels less “forced” when you embrace and understand your fears. It seems to me that many extreme personal goals are counter-phobic reactions to fear that unnecessarily and irrationally increase risk.

By appreciating the positive purposes individually and socially of fear and other unpleasant emotions, we can avoid some of the simplistic views of personal development and promote a healthier society for all.

“BrainSystems Tech Support, this is Jeff. How can I help?”

“Hi Jeff, my name is Cindy. My computer is frozen. It’s been like this all day!”

Jeff: Sounds like you have yourself a hardware problem, Cindy.

Cindy: Really? It was running fine just yesterday.

Jeff: Yea, well, hardware can break at any time, unfortunately.

Cindy: How do you know it’s a hardware problem and not software?

Jeff: Easy. All computer problems exist within the physical computer, right?

Cindy: Yea…

Jeff: …therefore replacing or fixing hardware is the way to fix all computer problems. See?

Cindy: Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Can’t software cause the hardware to crash?

Jeff: That notion is based on a false understanding of computers. Think of it this way. All software is contained within the hardware. You couldn’t run software without hardware, right?

Cindy: I suppose…

Jeff: And where is this “software” really located, anyway? Software is really just circuits, just tiny on-off switches and positive and negative charges on magnetic tape. There isn’t really any software at all—it’s just an epiphenomenon.

Cindy: A what?

Jeff: An epiphenomenon. A name we give to something that doesn’t really exist. What’s real is the physical hardware. What we call “software” is just a convenient fiction. If we start with fiction, we can only solve fictional problems, like trying to cure unicorn leprosy or something. We can only solve your real problem if we work with what is real. Don’t you agree?

Cindy: Um, I guess so. This has been a real problem.  I have not been able to get anything done, and I have so much to do today! So what do you suggest?

Jeff: Well, we’ll need to do some diagnostic tests first, but usually this kind of thing is solved with a regular monthly CPU cleaning. We’ll mail you out a kit and you just open up your system and swab the CPU with some special chemicals. This helps keep things running smoothly. Are you still under warranty?

Cindy: I think so…

Jeff: Ok, then it’s only $47/month for the CPU cleaning kit. Do you want to pay with Visa or Mastercard today?

Cindy: Um…I’ll need to give this some thought and call you back.

Scene 2—Tuesday, 1:45pm

“MindTech Customer Support, this is Nancy. How I can help you today?”

“Hi Nancy, this is Cindy. My computer’s been frozen all day. I can’t get any work done, and I’m really frustrated. I called BrainSystems and they said it was a hardware problem and tried to sell me a $50/month cleaning package, but I thought I’d get a second opinion.”

Nancy: I’m glad you did. BrainSystems is a terrible company.

Cindy: Really? The guy I spoke to seemed nice enough.

Nancy: They don’t understand computers at all. They think all software problems are caused by faulty hardware.

Cindy: Yea, the guy—Jeff was his name—he was saying that software is just an “epiphenomenon.”

Nancy: Well, I don’t know what that means, but I do know they don’t understand computers. Heads up their asses.

Cindy: Well, what would you recommend for me then?

Nancy: Well, first off, you’ll need to clear out all the viruses and malware from your system.

Cindy: W-What’s that?

Nancy: Every computer is filled with negative programs that slow down and can even crash your system. These programs come from the internet, often installed with other beneficial software without you even knowing about it, or even just when you’re browsing around.

Cindy: Oh wow, I had no idea…

Nancy: Some come from corporations that make pop-up ads appear on your screen, trying to get you to buy stuff all the time…

Cindy: Oh yea! I’ve seen those.

Nancy: …others are more nasty and hijack your system to send out spam email, or even search your memory to try and steal your identity. They turn your computer into what we call a “zombie,” totally controlled by someone else, to where it’s not really even your computer anymore.

Cindy: Oh man, that’s terrible. Who would make such awful programs?

Nancy: Hackers who are out to steal your computer and use it for their own evil purposes. The internet is one big battleground between Good and Evil. Sometimes I think of myself as a Jedi Knight. *laughs*

Cindy: Wow, I never thought of it that way.

Nancy: Most people don’t—at least those who don’t work in tech support. Yea, the first thing we always recommend is to clear your system of all these viruses and malware. That will liberate your system from the control of all the hackers and corporations. You’re computer will be fully autonomous and back in your control again. Then you make sure they can’t get back in by continuing to run the anti-malware programs and updating them every week, if not every day. You want to install a firewall too, to keep out all the Potentially Unwanted Programs, or PUPs. And make sure to install only the right programs from then on.

Cindy: PUPs! How cute. How do I know which programs are the right ones?

Nancy: Well, you’ll want to only install programs that are going to maximize the potential of your system, so that it will be as fast and productive as possible, programs that are going to make your computer run successfully. And you need to be constantly updating these programs or they stop working. The internet is getting more and more complex at an exponential rate, and you’ll need to update everything constantly just to keep up, let alone do the really cool leading-edge stuff.

Cindy: Oh…ok.

Nancy: We sell a customized Success Program Package here at MindTech for only $147/month. It will put your computer on the fast-track to successful operation for many years to come.

Cindy: Um, ok. That seems pretty expensive, but I guess it sounds right—or least better than BrainSystems’ solution. I have a question though: what happens if my hard drive crashes? Should I go to BrainSystems for that?

Nancy: No need. Our success programs will take care of all hardware failures automatically. As long as you have the right programs installed and updating constantly, you will never have any hardware problems again…

Cindy: Huh? How does that work?

Nancy: …well, I’ll let you in a secret, something that the hackers and corporations don’t want you to know…you see, BrainSystems has it all backwards…hardware doesn’t really exist—everything is software.

Cindy: What do you mean?!?

Nancy: I know it sounds strange, but it is the key to understanding everything about computers. Software is used to design new hardware. And software itself is designed by software. If you trace it all back, it’s all software.

Cindy: That doesn’t make sense though. I mean, I have a physical computer, don’t I?

Nancy: Not exactly. Everything that is on your computer can be transferred to another computer—the operating system, the programs, all the files, everything. Where the data is located is arbitrary. What really matters is the information itself, and your ability to choose that information. Information doesn’t have any location—it is unbounded and totally free from all constraints. Anything is possible with pure information. What your computer really is is this totally free, unbounded software. And you can do or have anything you want when you are free from hardware. The possibilities are unlimited.

Cindy: But Jeff said that all software is just circuits and magnets! I’m so confused.

Nancy: Jeff had it all backwards. You see, all our computer problems are caused by problems in information. I could transfer all of your data to another computer and it would just freeze up all over again. Until you change your programs, you will not change your reality. You have to get rid of all the negative programs and install positive ones, and continually run and update the positive programs. When you do, you will be totally free from all of your computer problems—forever.

Cindy: That sounds like a pretty exaggerated claim. I mean don’t all software programs have bugs?

Nancy: Many people believe that all software has bugs before coming to MindTech, so they don’t believe it is possible to work and live bug-free. But those bugs are actually all the negative programs you have installed that you don’t know about. You absolutely can have a 100% totally and completely bug-free computer.

Cindy: uhh…

Nancy: Cindy, we have people writing and calling in to us every day telling us how wonderful their computers are now that they’ve installed our customized Success Program Package. People are using their computers to make 5, 10, or even 50 thousand dollars more a month after the upgrade. After I upgraded, my life has never been the same. You, like me, want to be successful and live a bug-free life. I know you’re the kind of person who wants that kind of success, Cindy, or you wouldn’t have called MindTech today—isn’t that right? So would you like to pay for the package with Visa or Mastercard?

Cindy: Umm…I’ve gotta go.

*click*

The key to answering “how do I stay motivated?” is first to ask some more questions. If we simply take on some motivational strategy without getting more information, the solution will almost always make things worse. There are usually very good reasons for a lack of motivation that should be directly addressed if we want effective solutions to life’s problems.

I used to work in tech support in college. Some non-techie people were amazed at how I could figure out solutions to computer problems, and figured that I had some encyclopedic knowledge of all things technology. In fact, I had a terrible memory and little training, but I was willing to push buttons and try things until a solution emerged, or until I had spent quite a bit of time on it and it seemed unfixable (not unlike this hilarious comic from xkcd).

Similarly, people often tell me that coaching conversations with me are helpful, but I don’t necessarily have a robust theory of why people are broken or much official training, just some time pushing buttons and seeing what happens (as well as lots of independent study of methods of personal change). It would be hubris to say that I already know the answer to your motivation problem in advance, but in this article I’ll give you a bit of the heuristics that I use to solve such problems, using frameworks from the field of Neurolinguistic Programming (the Jedi side, not the Dark Side). That said, if these things aren’t of much help to you, then feel free to reject them!

What are you trying to do?

Motivation is not some abstract good. For example, if you aren’t feeling motivated to take on a big project when you are already overwhelmed, the last thing you need to do is to “get motivated.” When I did more traditional Life Coaching, one of the main obstacles my clients had to reaching their goals is that they already had too many goals. They had taken on too much and wanted me to help them take on more. This is a major reason I no longer do this type of work, as I’m not willing to help people deepen their neuroses!

If you’re overloaded, you might need to prioritize, have a difficult conversation, set a limit, take a vacation, work on improving your health, or clear your plate of a backlog before naturally feeling motivated again. In each of these solutions, no affirmations, visualizations, “power moves,” motivational CDs, or weekend workshops are needed–just clear thinking and simple actions. In fact, all those motivational techniques are similar to drinking coffee to get through the day–in the short-term they give you energy, but only by borrowing from your future.

I got really good at those types of short-term motivational techniques, only to become hooked on them and deeply exhaust my adrenals in the process. If you too have been suffering from low energy after years of doing too much or over-motivating yourself, I suggest checking out the wonderful book Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome.

Clarity of outcome is critical to knowing what might fit as a precise and effective solution for you. Get clear on what you are trying to do before applying a motivational solution.

What do you want through having your outcome that’s even deeper?

The outcomes we have are strategies for meeting deeper needs. Perhaps you’ve taken on a project to get more exercise, so you’ve begun running a few miles a day. The first week you found yourself excited, but now you feel sore and tired. You ask inside, “What do I want through running that’s even deeper?” and a picture of a healthy, happy you appears in your mind. Suddenly you realize that you have overdone it in the first week of running. Now you feel motivated to just do a brisk walk for 10 minutes today, or maybe even take the day off, knowing that it’s the long-term that counts, not getting fit fast.

By reconnecting with deeper desires, we can evaluate if what we are doing is working, if we are overdoing it or under-doing it. We can also find that natural motivation that comes from deep within. If we continue to ask this question with each deeper outcome, eventually we come to a state of Being like Peace, Oneness, Love, OKness, or Joy. From this place deep within, we can live with far greater ease, taking appropriate actions without need to force ourselves by getting pumped up. See the book Core Transformation for a specific procedure for reaching Core States of being. (Full disclosure: I work for the publisher and do Core Transformation with clients.)

Do you have any objections to pursuing this outcome?

Often a lack of motivation comes from part of us wanting to pursue the goal, and part of us not wanting to. Personal development literature tends to frame this second part as “resistance” and then create the context to “break through.” Sometimes this is appropriate, but often this is too forceful and lacks appreciation for the positive purpose of the objecting part. It’s usually best to assume that every part of your inner ecology has some useful purpose, and trying to remove it or destroy it could have some unintended consequence.

Ask inside “does any part of me object to my pursuing my outcome?” and wait and listen. Pay attention to any inner dialogue, sounds, pictures, or feelings. Let’s say again that you are wanting to take on a big new project. When you ask this question inside, you hear your inner dialogue saying “ugh, I’m so tired–I just want to rest.” Welcome that part of you as if it is a long-lost friend. Invite it to step into what it’s wanting in your imagination, just to see how that feels/sounds/looks.

Once you have fully accepted and empathized with this part of you, ask inside if there is way that you could have both, as in “what if I could take on this new project and have the rest I want?” Use your imagination to see/hear/feel a creative solution that attempts to include both, or at least is an acceptable compromise.

Most people don’t have much practice with discovering and integrating objections, so they fear that they won’t be able to integrate them and therefore don’t even entertain them. With practice, you will be able to integrate most objections in only a minute or two, but it will take some work at first to build a relationship of trust with all parts of your being. Sometimes you’ll have to make a decision that isn’t able to integrate objections, but at least you’ll do so consciously and with appreciation for all parts of yourself. In these cases, you can say to the objecting part of yourself, “Thank you for letting me know about this. I’m sorry I don’t currently have the time or resourcefulness to integrate this objection, but I will do my best to do so in the future.”

How will this outcome fit in with the rest of your life?

Perhaps you are being too rational, plan-full, or productivity-focused overall in your life and need to have more space and unstructured time in order to find the motivation to pursue this outcome. Life is generally best when we lead from our global intuition (otherwise known as your heart) and then plan from there. If our head leads, we can sometimes over-plan our lives, scheduling every moment and aiming for somewhat arbitrary goals.

Perhaps your outcome is doable by itself, but you have too many other things going on and so you’ll need to drop something. Many people in personal development culture do not recognize that we are limited human beings. It’s as if our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and we become “goal obese,” endlessly achievement-focused. Accept your limits as best you can. This can free up natural motivation to work on those things that are truly important.

How will this outcome affect others and the world?

If we only set our goals alone, we can forget that we are social and political animals, that we exist interdependent with everything else. Perhaps you hadn’t realized that if you go running an hour a day you won’t be spending as much time with your kids, and so you’ve lost motivation for running. How could you have both? Perhaps you only need 20 minutes of running a day, or you can do some vigorous playing with your kids instead of running.

A related question is “What would happen if everyone did this?” We often forget to universalize what we are individually seeking, which can lead to ecological, cultural, or economic problems.

In an interview with David Allen, author of the popular productivity book Getting Things Done, Allen mentions that setting goals with a group or with your partner often surfaces different outcomes than setting goals alone. Personal development rarely mentions this, as if we forget that our individual goals and desires impact others, and that our relationships have a kind of reality that transcends our selfish aims. Perhaps we’d be happier overall if we did most of our goal-setting with people we love rather than alone! For example, it is often easiest and most enjoyable to exercise with others than alone, as in playing with children, but we often forget to include others when we think of our problems of motivation and our individualistic goals. Ironically, positive psychology research shows again and again that we are happiest when we have fulfilling relationships, rich community, and lose ourselves totally in an activity we can be fully devoted to that is in service to something larger than ourselves.

Just Doing It

Sometimes the solution to a problem of motivation is to just get started. If you don’t have any objections, sometimes getting going is a problem of momentum than motivation. You don’t necessarily have to feel like doing something in order to start doing something for a few minutes.

Rather than forcing the initial action through pure willpower however, we can gently invite action, noticing any resistance and relaxing through it. Doing something for just a few minutes can be a good test to see if then you have the momentum to keep going.

I find that if I can do just 10 minutes of yoga, then I often start to enjoy it, and keep going for 10 or more additional minutes. I don’t force the first 10 minutes, but do it slowly and with great gentleness and awareness, compassionately and precisely noting pain and stiffness and allowing it to soften with the breath.

Some people have more willpower, heartier constitutions, and more energy than others and can get away with forcing themselves into action. This is fine if you’re one of these folks, but for the more sensitive among us, or for those who want to bring about more kindness in the world, it is worth exploring gentler and more sustainable ways of getting into action. We also project outward how we motivate ourselves inward, so being more kind to yourself you are likely to motivate others in more kind and gentle ways.

Finding Natural Motivation through Alignment

If you have a problem being motivated to pursue an outcome, getting clear on what you are doing, connecting with your deeper desires and sense of self, integrating any objections, and knowing how the outcome fits into the rest of your life and the world can help to get aligned and naturally motivated again. By learning to do these things, we can experience more ease with doing things with less need for techniques of motivation that lead to ego-inflation or forcing.

There are other ways as well to get motivated, including other techniques from NLP, but this is a place to start in terms of exploring the future of personal development and personal motivation. Please add your intelligent and thoughtful commentary in the comments below, and share this article if you feel moved.

“You really can enjoy total abundance financially, relationally, mentally, physically and spiritually…” ~James Arthur Ray, Master of Hyperbole

The total abundance James Arthur Ray is really enjoying is an abundance of total bullshit. Not surprisingly, Ray’s tagline is “As seen on Oprah, Larry King, and The Secret,” sources not exactly known for their journalistic integrity.

Nothing real exists in “total abundance.” Not atoms in the Universe (approximately 10⁸⁰), not the amount of money in circulation, and not even “abundance mentality”–which is sometimes present and sometimes not, no matter how often or intensely you visualize your goals. Perhaps Ray is referring to mathematical abstractions? “You really can enjoy counting a total abundance of integers. The possibilities of multiplication are unlimited!”

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies in Personal Development

The personal development world is full of such lies, exaggerations, and hype–what is remarkable is that we haven’t gotten angry about it, and that folks like James Arthur Ray continue to stay in business. Perhaps this is simply a reflection of “the ubiquitous matrix of lies” our consumerist culture exists within, as Charles Eisenstein eloquently called it. But the difference between “Coors rocks Harrisburg” and “You really can enjoy total abundance financially, relationally, mentally, physically and spiritually…” is that nobody believes the first is true. The Coors slogan is an “obvious and unremarkable lie, beneath the threshold of most people’s awareness,” but we want to and often do believe gurus like James Arthur Ray. We want to believe that we can indeed have a perfect life, free from pain and suffering, and full of wealth “in all areas of your life”–especially financially.

“Isn’t it remarkable that lies are still effective even when no one believes them?” says Eisenstein, and it is worth considering here. Even when we don’t believe the lies of the personal development gurus, we still spend more than $8.5 billion dollars (as of 2004) every year in the U.S. alone on “self-improvement books, CDs, audiocassettes, infomercials, motivational speakers, videos, multi-media packages, public seminars, workshops, holistic institutes, personal coaching, and more.” We clearly believe we can improve our lives dramatically–and perhaps even totally–or else why would we be spending so much on these products and services?

The Ultimate Aim of Life: Getting Stuff?

James Ray says that you can have it all, and this is a good thing. In other words, the ultimate aim of life is to have everything you want–including all the money and stuff you want.

This is a very different view from the current positive psychology paradigm. In The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky claims that getting what you want externally in life has little to no effect on happiness, and that indeed even our happiness–the ultimate aim of life in her view–is only 40% in our control.

Which is it? It can’t be both. Either external circumstances affect happiness or they don’t. I’m more likely to believe the research than the master of hyperbole on this one. So if getting everything that you want in life is not a critical factor at all with regards to happiness, then Ray and his followers value getting what you want more than happiness! In terms of classical economics, this pursuit would be defined as irrational, and indeed the pursuit of what we want despite our happiness is all too common in personal development culture.

Personal Development Junkies and their Drug Dealers

It is so common as to be an archetype for an individual to become “hooked” on personal development products, sometimes spending upwards of $2000-5000 a year on Life Coaching, live seminars, weekend workshops, special diets and supplements, books, CDs, “mastermind groups,” etc., never reaching the ever-receding horizon of total abundance. The initial offering is usually free or cheap–a free CD, an email newsletter, a $15 paperback. The free or cheap thing sells you on the intro seminar, often a few hundred dollars for a weekend, but still within reason. Then at the emotional peak of an incredibly intense workshop, the $18,000 “advanced” seminar (with all the same material as the $400 one you’ve just taken, but in Maui and for 7 days instead of 3) is pitched using psychological tactics as if designed by the CIA to interrogate prisoners of war.

When I was deeply hooked–spending all of my disposable income and time on audio programs, information products, and seminars–part of the justification for my spending habits was that I felt I was so close to “getting it,” and that once I did, I would be rich almost overnight, freed from debt and work–just like the stories of the other gurus. I thought maybe I was alone in this delusion until the personal development blogosphere, and now the Twitter-o-sphere exploded. I’ve now seen so many examples of self-proclaimed gurus of abundant living who consume and produce a deluge of personal development media as to almost suggest a DSM V category: Narcissistic Personality Disorder with Delusions of Grandeur and Cyclothymia, subtype “Personal Development and Social Media Marketing Guru-itis.” (I consider my writing here as part of my recovery program.) If your financial goals include making over a million dollars a year and you are currently middle or lower class, you might already have this disease, which by the way, is infectious!

Some of this $8.5+ billion market would surely exist even without the hype and lies in marketing, but how much? To what extent is the personal development and self-help market inflated due to the addiction to products and services promoting an impossible ideal?

The Necessity of Compromise

When you focus on one area of life, or when one area forces you to focus on it (as in illness, the birth of a child, or job loss), you necessarily must compromise focus on other areas of your life. While these challenges may draw out unseen resources, they also force difficult choices. Sometimes that means the other areas of your life run along just fine, but in many cases, you must make sacrifices. This is good news when you accept it, for it releases you from trying to conform to an impossible ideal of perfection.

If you have a newborn and think you should still be having wild sex every night with your wife, you will suffer needlessly. When you can let this unrealistic expectation go, you’ll still not be having any sex and you might be sad about that, but you can more easily accept that this situation is (hopefully) temporary, and focus back on your beautiful baby. Accepting current reality is a kind of abundance that can be experienced even in contexts when your power to get what you want is very limited.

The Logic of Addiction

Let’s continue with James Arthur Ray, as he is such a clear example of the excesses of personal development culture. If you click the pyramid marked “begin your journey” on Mr. Ray’s website, the headline on the next page asks…

“Are you 100% totally and completely happy with your life?”

The implication is twofold:

1) that Mr. Ray is the first person ever to answer this question “yes,” making him either a pathological liar or a narcissist (or both).

2) that Everyone on Earth needs to purchase his products, forever, until they too are as perfect as him.

The biggest irony is in the video clip on this “squeeze page” (a marketing website that aims solely to get your name and email address and then send you a series of autoresponder sales emails dragging you into the “sales funnel”). Ray begins by talking about the “large amount of stress and fear lately” due to the global recession. “Who could imagine that some of the largest banks in the United States could go belly up?” He then implies that we are not in a global recession but that this is merely media scaremongering, and then says “but stop, just suppose I could show you a way to use the Law of Attraction, as well as the six other Laws of the Universe, to rise above all external circumstances?” Uhhhh, say what?!?

The Secrets of the Universe Were Revealed to Me in this $47 Ebook that I Read In A Vision When Drinking Ayausaca with the Peruvian Shamans…

Ray goes on to explain that when you understand the secrets of the Universe (which elsewhere says he learned from Peruvian Shamans amongst other spiritual teachers and gurus), you can succeed no matter what external circumstances. Implied is that he too used to be a loser like you, until he discovered the Laws of the Universe. Now he’s a winner, his life is perfect, and your life can be perfect too…and best of all, the first hit of his happy drug is free (heh heh)–just provide your name and email and begin your journey into addiction….

James Arthur Ray is suggesting that to solve the problem of the global recession, we should do exactly what caused it. He’s recommending that we deny reality and inflate our expectations–exactly what happened with the housing bubble, the subprime mortage crisis, the crisis on Wall Street, the credit crunch, and all the other aspects of the U.S.-lead global recession we are now experiencing. How many people do you know were interested in buying homes, fixing them up, and flipping them to make a quick buck 5 or 10 years ago? I can list many–including myself, my best friend from my home town, his father, my brother-in-law, and many others. The late night infomercials and expensive seminars advertising getting-rich-quick in real estate had the same tone and exaggerated promises as James Arthur Ray or any of the personal development gurus. (In a future article I’ll discuss the entangled nature of get-rich-quick schemes and personal development culture.) The American tendency for ego-driven inflation is largely understood to be the cause of the global recession by Europeans, and the techniques of most personal development literature are literally the cultivation of inflation.

The Law of Saturn Trumps the Law of Attraction

Hung over with a hangover, the alcoholic reaches for a beer to get rid of the pain. The pain is soothed, but guilt arises, which is addressed with another beer. As the personal development gurus always quote, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.” The irony is that insanity and addiction define the primary tendency of most popular personal development literature.

What we need now is not the Law of Attraction but the Law of Saturn, Saturn being the grumpy old god that reminds you of your mortality, the limits of things, your aching back, and the finite nature of manifest reality:

Astrologically Saturn is associated with the principles of limitation, restrictions, boundaries, practicality and reality, crystallizing and structures. ~Wikipedia

Our reality check bounced. Time to get practical, fess up to our previous irrationality, and accept our limitations. The Law of Saturn is the same as Buddha’s first noble truth–life is suffering. When we come to face our situation fully, there will be a time again for visions, dreams, and ideals, but this time more grounded and realistic. It’s time personal development embraced Saturn as well as Jupiter, god of “growth, expansion, prosperity and good fortune…and a person’s inner sense of justice and morality and their ideals and higher goals.”

The Good News of Our Limitations

I share Siddhartha’s view on this one: to live is to suffer. That’s the first noble truth, but not the last one. In particular, the acceptance of suffering tends to lessen “suffering about your suffering.” This noble truth is denied in the words and actions of personal development gurus that sell a life culminating in perfection. Since perfection is impossible, we become addicted. Nothing can fully satisfy. Nothing can make you “100% totally and completely happy with your life,” and in the moments when we fully surrender to this truth, we are free from the compulsion to anxiously develop ourselves. We also become free from anxiously purchasing personal development products from the sleazy salesmen that overpromise and underdeliver while claiming to do the opposite.

The news that we can’t have it all and be totally satisfied is good news, because it liberates us from the illusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with us that could be fixed with a new beer or a new seminar. We might still enjoy a beer or a seminar, but with a non-anxious presence, without any illusion that we will someday be totally rid of all suffering and pain.

And no need either to get anxious about the fact that you are anxious, to worry that you are not enlightened or perfectly accepting. Just STOP, imperfectly notice your experience as it is, and allow it to be. “I imperfectly accept my imperfections.”

How Do I Accept the Truth of Suffering?

Everyone’s path to acceptance is somewhat unique, even though acceptance is really pretty universally the same. I could not possibly answer this question adequately for all, nor do I have anything resembling a perfect realization of this truth. That said, I find the Core Transformation process very helpful, as well as Vipassana meditation, and a strange form of spontaneous movement called Shaking Medicine. (If you use Core Transformation, try searching for any parts of you that want you to develop yourself, that want to be enlightened, or that otherwise believe that life should be perfect.) But follow your own heart and find what fits for you.

Be wary of the anxious search for the perfect technique, guru, or community, as this too can be a manifestation of the desire for impossible perfection. Go with good enough. If something works pretty well for you–whether a formal practice or an informal exploration–I’d recommend just sticking with it and figuring out the subtleties of the technique or path you’ve found, allowing your understanding to deepen and evolve over time.

I also try to remind myself of the truth of suffering with the affirmation “I imperfectly accept my imperfections,” but feel free to write your own affirmations that make you smile and remind you of your humanness. A Christian might pray the serenity prayer, something I contemplate often: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” If you feel uncomfortable with the word “God,” try rephrasing it as “May I have the serenity…” or however else would suit your metaphysics.

If you’re a personal development junkie, try noticing the impulse to purchase a personal development product without acting on it, or take some time off from reading personal development blogs and listening to tapes and sit patiently with the feelings that arise. Or give up even trying to notice the feelings too–take a total break from improving your life in any way whatsoever. You can always come back to the elements of your former life that you want to keep. However is right for you, I encourage you to question and to challenge any compulsive desire to improve yourself so that you can find a non-anxious presence and an ever-deepening acceptance of your fundamental OK-ness, even as you grow and change.

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Please add your respectful and intelligent comments below to begin the community dialogue. Here are some potential questions to stimulate discussion: What did I miss or overemphasize? What would be an antithesis to my thesis? What other examples are needed? How else can we find balance and accept suffering? Are there contexts in which we can in fact have it all? Is James Ray not nearly as bad as I’ve portrayed him to be, or is he not a good example of personal development thought? Is this tendency for inflation actually worse than I’ve portrayed it? Does this inflationary tendency also extend to other areas, like popular American Buddhism, or nationalism? Does accepting reality sometimes or often lead to despair or passivity? If so, how can we account for this tendency? What is the relationship between consumerism and the having-it-all philosophy? Feel free also to ask your own questions related to this article.

The experiment takes place from August 3rd-7th and involves taking a short survey, watching some short YouTube clips, and doing some brief exercises based on positive psychology research.

While I have some questions about positive psychology methods (especially the self-reporting bias) and some philosophical problems with happiness-focused hedonism, I’m willing to give this experiment a try. I’ll post my results here in the comments, and I invite you to do the same.