January 31, 2010

The Law of Attraction vs. Science

I like to think that people are becoming more intelligent in their approach to personal development, getting a better, deeper, more realistic understanding on human psychology and life. Then I see the exploding popularity of ideas such as the Law of Attraction, and it makes me wonder.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the Law of Attraction is a concept promoted by New Thought writers, widely spread through the release in 2006 of a film called “The Secret”, followed by a book with the same name. It states that you attract in your life what you think about, not just through motivation, but also through other means. In other words: thoughts become things.

So if you think about what you want and really focus on it, you will make it manifest in your life. On the other hand, if you think about what you don’t want, what you’re running way from, like a lot of people do, you will attract more of that in your life.

I think that if the formulation of this so called ‘law’ of attraction would have stopped at the first part, saying that your thoughts affect your motivation and thus your results, it would have been just fine. And this is something I can agree with whole-heartedly. What you think about has a great influence over your emotions, which has a great influence over your behaviors, which has a great influence over your results.

But nooooo, the Law of Attraction takes one giant leap further by stating that your thoughts directly alter the very fabric of reality. Thoughts are sending out magnetic signals which rearrange the reality and attract what you’re thinking about back to you. The supporters of the Law of Attraction say it is science and it is supported by what is now known in the field of quantum physics.

Well, let’s look at what science truly has to say about this and more specifically, let’s look at this through the thorough eyes of the Scientific American, one of the most credible science magazines:

The brain does produce electrical activity from the ion currents flowing among neurons during synaptic transmission, and in accordance with Maxwell’s equations any electric current produces a magnetic field. But as neuroscientist Russell A. Poldrack of the University of California, Los Angeles, explained to me, these fields are minuscule and can be measured only by using an extremely sensitive superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) in a room heavily shielded against outside magnetic sources. Plus, remember the inverse square law: the intensity of an energy wave radiating from a source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from that source. An object twice as far away from the source of energy as another object of the same size receives only one-fourth the energy that the closer object receives. The brain’s magnetic field of 10x15 tesla quickly dissipates from the skull and is promptly swamped by other magnetic sources, not to mention the earth’s magnetic field of 10x5 tesla, which overpowers it by 10 orders of magnitude!

In other words, as much as you would like to think, you’re thoughts are not powerful enough to directly change reality. If you want change, you actually have to get your butt off the couch and do something about it.

It doesn’t stop here. Supporters of the Law of Attraction also state that your thoughts can have radical influences over your own body. Here is one quote relating to this from the book called “The Secret”, by Rhonda Byrne:

The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.

Are you fucking kidding me? Any person with some decent knowledge of human physiology and psychology can tell you that it doesn’t work that way. This idea borderlines on insane: even if you can consciously influence some activities in your body through your thinking, you can’t directly control the process of gaining weight this way, just like you can’t directly control some of the muscles in your face.

I find it amusing that the Law of Attraction is even labeled as a law. Because when I think of a law, I think of something which has been tested and confirmed through serious scientific research, using scientific methods. In this case, it simply does not apply. The Law of Attraction is over-simplified and pumped-up personal development, made out to sound like science.

Nevertheless,  a lot of folks buy into it. I sometimes meet people who are eager to improve their lives with just one big self-improvement idea, and they talk to me about the realism of the law of attraction like it’s plain as day: “It’s been proven! Haven you seen ‘The Secret?” I did. But when I want stand-up comedy, I still prefer George Carlin.

Focusing on your goals is an important piece of the puzzle called getting the life you want; but it is still just one piece. Effective planning, action, perseverance and adaptation are also important pieces. Take these into account as well in your personal development, and then you’re talking.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Personal Development, Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , 49 Comments
January 26, 2010

Facing Your Fears the Right Way

Facing your fears is one of those ideas in the realm of personal development which is getting so wide spread I think it’s becoming dangerous. Why? Because I believe facing fears can be done in many ways, and some of the more popular ones have more negative consequences than positive ones.

The basic premise of this advice is that by facing your fears and doing what you know is right, not only that you get the desired results, but you also make the fear go away as you get used to the thing you’re afraid of. Sometimes, this truly happens, which is why in principle, getting out of your comfort zone and facing your fears is solid advice.

However, sometimes (more often than a lot of people would like to admit), facing your fears does nothing to lower your anxiety and actually reinforces them. Let’s dig into some human psychology and cognition, to find out why.

Imagine a person who is afraid of public speaking. So she decides as part of improving her people skills, to face this fear head on. So she forces herself to speak in front of 500 top managers, at an important business conference. She thinks this way she’ll get read of her fear once and for all.

She is up on stage, looking at the people and feeling scared like she’s in front of an execution squad. She feels the fear, she sees the audience, she’s thinking to herself: “Damn, I’m scared! This was a bad idea”. What happens in this situation is that mentally, the intense fear and the public speaking situation get linked one with the other, and the fear of public speaking only gets reinforced.

In my coaching activity, I have met a lot of people who go around facing their fears every day like this. And most of the time, they are still afraid of those same things they’re facing for a long time. They’re running around scared half the time. I don’t know about you, but I call this self-torture.

There are better ways to do it. Methods like CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), which I often use in my coaching practice, provide some solid, well documented ways for facing your fears effectively. Here are two essential traits they have:

1. Gradual exposure. You don’t face a stimulus which triggers fear at its highest intensity. You start with a low intensity one, and as you get used to it and your fear decreases significantly, you move on to one of a higher intensity. If for example, you are afraid of public speaking, you start by speaking in front of 10 people who seem friendly.

2. Combining the behavioral with the cognitive. As you face your fears, you also focus on addressing your automatic thinking and your limiting beliefs which fundament these fears. Your combine using the right external tools with using the right internal tools.

If you do it this way, over time, the fears you’re facing will actually drop and eventually disappear. It will take time and practice, but you will see it happen. This means you can start to enjoy the things you dreaded, that you experience more freedom. It’s what I like the most about personal development.

Filed Under: Attitude, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 25 Comments
January 13, 2010

Effective Personal Development Starts Here

I recently organized a public speaking training. While talking to the participants about their expectations from this training, one woman told me she was looking for a job and she wanted to learn skills which will help her get a good job. For a moment, I had to ask myself: “Wait! What training is this?” Cause I could only see a thin, anorexic link between public speaking and getting a job.

Did the training help her? Sure. Did it have a great impact on her ability to get a good job? Probably not. Because what she needed for that was mainly to develop interview skills, job hunting skills, networking people skills, skills to sell herself. Not skills to speak in front of an audience (unless she would have panel interviews with 50 interviewers at once).

This example reflects what in my experience is a common scenario for people who are interested in personal development. They usually know they want a better job, better relations, a better life, more money, more happiness, but their awareness stops here. They don’t have a clear and accurate image of the skills or attitudes they need to develop in order to achieve these objectives.

Mark Twain said: “Use the right word, not its second cousin”. Well, it also applies to personal development. We can also say, for instance: “Use the right training, not its second cousin”.

I think a lot of people embark in this process of personal development mostly by doing undocumented guessing about the skills and attitudes they need to develop. As a result, one of two things happens: either they choose to work on skills which in reality are not that relevant for getting what they want, or they define these skills in a very broad, general way, like; “I need to work on my people skills”. Which ones? Cause there are about a dozen of them I can think of right now.

The result is they waste a lot of time, energy and money by using them in the wrong area. They sabotage their personal development and don’t get the results they hoped for. Some people realize this mistake and refocus their personal development; some just give up and become bitter.

There is a very simple and important lesson here: start your personal development with the right foot, by getting a clear understanding of the skills and attitudes which will help you the most if you develop them.

Don’t overestimate how easy this will be. The preparation for personal development can involve just as much work as the personal development itself. Clearly understanding your self-improvement needs means doing some very intelligent detecting work. Here are some of the things you can do:

  • Observe your specific behaviors and results, look for the patterns;
  • Focus inward, on your feelings and automatic thoughts in various situations;
  • Get some quality, 360 degrees feedback;
  • Go to trainings and activities dedicated to improving self-awareness;
  • Study people who have the results you want;
  • Work with a competent coach;
  • Stopping and really thinking about what you have and what you need.

As you do these things, you will be able to define your personal development goals in a more clear and accurate way. As an immediate consequence, this will boost your motivation and at the same time will make you more selective in what you read, the training you go to and so on. In the end, it will make your growth a lot more effective and you’ll see some very impressive results.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , 12 Comments
January 8, 2010

Positive Thinking Won’t Help You Now

I’m not a big fan of positive thinking as a tool for self-help. I believe that used in the wrong place, at the wrong time, it can be just as dangerous as negative thinking. I’m rather a fan of what you might call strategic thinking in personal development: focusing on the positive or the negative, depending on what serves you best in the given context.

From my perspective, challenging economic times like the ones most of us are living right now, are just some of those contexts in which seeking help in positive thinking can cause some serious trouble.

In the past months, I have seen people loose a tone of money and bankrupt businesses by looking on the bright side and thinking positively. It can be quite shocking to see such a popular personal development tool have such negative consequences instead of providing the promised help.

Why do things like these happen? Because positive thinking means focusing on the good things and always expecting excellent results. In the face of big challenges, this is the equivalent of ignoring important parts of reality. It’s like blinding yourself while speed driving on a mountain road, during a storm, in a convertible. Why the hell would you wanna do that?

For the people I’m talking about here, positive thinking meant they ignored that the status quo has changed and doing what they did before will no longer get them the same results, or the same results where sometimes no longer possible. They blinded themselves to the fact they needed to adapt in a dramatic way. One man for instance, while being in a plummeting industry, convinced himself he can have the same sales numbers he had last year, if he just… tried harder. He called this “being positive”.

You cannot deny important facts and expect good results. Like it or not, we are in a global economic crisis, people have less money, they are spending less and there is more competition between businesses. No matter how good you are at what you do, this will have consequences over you.

Positive thinking is not a panacea, even if some trainers, coaches, speakers or authors promote it in this manner. It will not help you solve all of your problems and get everything you want, doing what you want, all the time. Being positive is a way of thinking which only has power to help you if you use it the right way.

There is a way of using positive thinking that can help you in challenging times. But it does not involve day-dreaming. It involves these two things:

  1. Realizing that even if some negative things may happen, even if you may not get your way now, it’s not a tragedy.
  2. Realizing that times change and in the long run, you will get your way and you can achieve your bold objectives.

That’s it. It’s strategic, realistic positive thinking. A more effective self improvement tool, that can help you handle the challenges of life both practically and emotionally.

Filed Under: Attitude, Career, Inspirational, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , 21 Comments
December 21, 2009

Change Your Life Today, Now, Forever

Apparently, these or some of the expressions which are searched on the Internet quite a lot: “Change your life today”, “Change your life now”, “Change your life forever”. A bunch load of people are not living the lives they want to live, and they’re looking for ways to change that.

And I think that’s great. Unfortunately, for a lot of them, the search process in itself is setup for failure. Because they’re looking for quick fixes; for magic solutions to improve their lives: “Do this twice every day for 7 days and your entire life will turn around.”

In this era when things happen at great speeds, there is a fascination with fast and easy solutions which create big, lasting changes. And this fascination fuels an entire industry trying to provide them. An industry which for the most part, doesn’t even come close to fulfilling the “change your life today, now, forever” promise.

Let’s take a look at two very common examples:

1. Diets. There are hundreds of diets out there, which promise miracle results. Yet what they really provide is a relatively fast weight loss which does not last and is often very unhealthy.

Any person who lost a lot of weight and kept it that way can tell you what the solution that works is: eat less and exercise more, eat right and exercise right. Not just a couple of weeks, but as a constant part of your lifestyle. This way, you will slowly but healthy loose weight and you will keep it off you. It seems to be too hard for most people.

2. Subliminal tapes. There is a multi-million dollar industry of self-help tapes with subliminal messages on them, tapes which promise to change you life, improve your confidence, attract wealth and so on, just by listening to them. Because, we are told, the subliminal messages which you cannot hear consciously go directly to your subconscious mind and create powerful changes.

It certainly sounds great. There is just one problem: it doesn’t work! Every independent study on the effectiveness of subliminal tapes has reached the same conclusion: they are a waste of money. They only sell with the help of powerful and deceptive marketing.

As a general rule, quick fixes do not work to change your life. So why are they so popular? I think is has to do with a couple of things:

  • People are educated into believing that there are special, secret tricks which if you discover, you can use to change your life today, now, forever.
  • People don’t want to put a lot of time and effort into changing their lives, they lack the patience or the will, so they need to believe that quick fixes work.
  • People have a generally shallow understanding of the principles that generate results, especially the connection between effort, persistence and success.

What does work? The effective solutions to change your life generally follow the same one fundamental pattern: they involve continuous personal development. They involve changing the outcome by improving your skills, attitudes, knowledge and behaviors in an active, gradual, constant and strategic way.

Continuous personal development promises to change your life, starting now but not in a moment. And there is one trait it has that quick fixes do not: it really, truly works.

Although the interest in changing one’s life is a wide spread one, the interest in continuous personal development is much narrower. So if you have this interest, and you don’t allow yourself to be tempted by the promise to change your life today, now, forever – my congratulations!

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , 10 Comments
December 2, 2009

Personal Development Ideas I Can Do Without

I am going to hit the next person who gives one of the following ideas as personal development advice (this is bad, considering I’m an otherwise peaceful person):

  • Just be more confident;
  • Just be yourself;
  • Just be more positive;
  • Just be calmer.

Just, just, just. It just doesn’t work that way! There is a tone of self-improvement advice out there starting with the word “just” and then suggesting some pretty dramatic personal change, as if it’s simple as going to the supermarket.

With most of these ideas, we are addressing something which is more than just a behavior. We are addressing an attitude. Being confident is not just a way you act, talk and look. It’s a habitual way of thinking and reacting emotionally to various life situations, which is ingrained in your personality. To use some big and resonating words, it’s a complex psychological structure.

What does it take to change such psychological structures? Over time, I came to believe there is no magic pill. What works is consciously, gradually and systemically replacing old thinking patterns with new thinking patterns, old associations with new associations and thus, old emotions with new emotions. Plus, using the right tools and methods to do it. Then, you can act confident cause you can are confident.

The fact these personal development ideas do not work isn’t half as bad as the treatment some of the people who talk about them will give you. I’m starting to call them personal development assholes. They have at least one of two traits:

  1. They naturally have these ways of being they give advice on. So for them, “just be confident” seems like solid advice. Because already having the right internal setup, they can do it just like that.
  2. They have a superficial understanding of how human learning happens and the qualities self-improvement ideas require to be applied effectively.

When you try to put their advice into practice but you don’t seem to be able and you don’t get results, they just start accusing you using advanced personal development jargon: of not wanting it bad enough, of having secondary gains or of lacking willpower. So now, you don’t improve and you also feel guilty about it.

Trust me: when for example, every time you go to a party you feel miserable because you’re too shy to talk to anyone and have some fun, you want nothing more on the planet than to “just be more confident”. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I’m sure a lot of the people giving this advice mean well, but they often do more harm than good.

The answer is not out there. It’s within. Personal development ideas that work take into account not just the external, but also the internal, to create deep and lasting self growth.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , 33 Comments
November 19, 2009

Forget Achieving Life Balance and Try This Instead

Life balance is a weird idea for many, and especially those who want success or are into personal development will scratch their heads thinking about it. I just can’t imagine Bill Gates or Michael Jordan focusing on achieving life balance and still ending up where they are.

Yet, there seems to be something to this idea, as a lot of people with one-dimensional lives end up suffering from burnout or being unhappy. So, what’s the key to this riddle?

I think the whole concept of life balance is misguiding. It basically refers to splitting your time and your focus in a balanced way between o couple of major areas of you life: career, family and personal time usually. The premise is that ignoring one of these areas is dangerous and will end up making you feel miserable.

The big problem I have with this concept of life balance is that it treats these areas of life as ends in themselves. I see them as means to an end. And I see the end as… needs balance.

We humans, as evolved beings, have a couple of major needs. Here’s a way of splitting them up, of the top of my mind:

  • The basic needs for food, water, shelter, and adequate climate;
  • The need to be healthy and fit, psychically and mentally;
  • The need for learning and personal development;
  • The need for rest, relaxation and recreation;
  • The need to interact socially, to connect with others;
  • The need to achieve and to impact the world we live in.

The essence of a fulfilling life is in my perspective not balancing the areas of our life, but balancing taking care of these needs. And even this balance is a somewhat relative one, as the exact intensity of every one of those sets of needs will not be the same for a person.

The good news is that the world we life in offers many lifestyle options. We can create for ourselves all kinds of balanced or unbalanced combinations of activities related to career, family, hobbies, and end up achieving this relative needs balance. It’s really about fulfillment by finding those activities that allow you to make the most out of them and out of you.

Think of a person who is a book critic, and gets learning and personal development ideas by reading books, while also making money and impacting people by reviewing them. Two birds with one shot. Right now, I’m thinking of my salsa instructor whose job description involves a lot of going to salsa parties, dancing and socializing. Pretty cool, ha?

I believe you can even get needs balance without having a family, and you can get needs balance without having a job. At the same time, balancing the major life areas sometimes has a lot of chances of not creating needs balance.

This is why focusing on life balance can end up making you feel like there’s something missing in your life, and frustrated cause you don’t know why. Instead, focus on a personal needs balance rather then the development of life balance, and I think you’ll be just fine.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Personal Development, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , 19 Comments
November 8, 2009

Personal Development Readers vs. Personal Development Doers

How many people would you say are into personal development? Very few, right? Keep on reading, and you may realize they’re really fewer than you think.

I say this because I think true personal development means a lot of doing, while a lot of the people in this segment are mostly just into reading/ listening/ viewing: books, blogs, articles, DVD’s, trainings & courses, you name it.

The way I see it, personal development is not essentially about acquiring new information, but about developing new skills and attitudes. However, developing skills and attitudes requires practice. I mean a whooole lot of practice! Massive, organized, ferocious and persistent action.

Most people I know who get into the reading part, considering how much they actually need to practice to turn the knowledge into skills and attitudes, just the most valuable knowledge, they barely scratch the surface.

They read a good book, find some very valuable and practical ideas, at best they start applying them for a few days, and then they move on to the next book, seeking some new “inspiration”. They are the “readers”.

I used to do exactly this; until I discovered I was just being a personal development literature enjoyer. Some people read love novels, I read “As a man thinketh” and the likes. I still enjoy the reading part a lot, but I’m very aware that this is not what real self-improvement is mainly about, so I also focus a lot on practicing what I read; on being a “doer”.

Besides the obvious difference in applying the theory between the readers and the doers, there are 3 more important differences I notice very often, which I think go hand in hand with this one:

  • Doers focus on selecting, remembering and organizing the most valuable personal development ideas from what they read, they put them into their growth plan.
  • Doers use strategies for doing, they set practice goals and daily practice tasks, they keep track of progress and find ways to keep themselves motivated.
  • Doers sometimes consciously cut down their reading, as they understand that new information can often interfere with their practicing and defocus them from their goals. Rather, they sometimes re-read the stuff they’re already applying, to keep themselves going.

The result is the actual growing process as a person. I think you can often separate the doers from the readers because the doers are the ones you see after 2-3 years and they seem strikingly changed, improved: maybe they’re more confident, happier, more expressive, more charming or simply… richer. I don’t know about you, but I for one have the pleasure of knowing only about a hand full of people such as these.

So, after finishing this article, are you gonna take a deep breath and move on to the next one, or are you gonna get up from that chair of yours? What do you usually do? Are you a personal development reader or a personal development doer?

Filed Under: Inspirational, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , 33 Comments
November 2, 2009

Enough with the Mind Reading: Get a 360 Feedback!

I find that a whole lot of people worry about how others perceive them. They worry, and that’s it. They don’t do anything to actually get a realistic view on the matter. At best, they just try to guess it, they try to mind read it and every once in a while, they ask a person they feel comfortable with what she thinks about them.

If what others think about you is something that’s on your mind, do yourself  a favor, and do something effective about it: get a proper 360 degrees feedback (aka 360).

A 360 is an assessment of your person, from multiple sources. It is usually given by supervisors, peers and subordinates. Clients, suppliers can also chip in, and even friends or family if you wanna get a perspective beyond you professional life.

I used a 360 degrees feedback for myself repeatedly and I often use it with clients. The fact that it is structured and rich in information makes the results very meaningful. You won’t find out perfectly how everybody sees you, but it’s certainty a lot more scientific than guessing.

I think there are 3 main things you can do with the information you gain from a 360 degrees feedback, other than just wondering why people think you’re selfish when you buy everybody Christmas presents:

  1. Discover the traits you project with ease in any situation and use this for personal branding.
  2. Discover the traits you repress, you hide from others, and use this for becoming more expressive.
  3. Discover your strengths and weaknesses you may not have been aware of, and use this for personal development.

Knowing about the tool is one thing. Using it effectively is another. Here are my top tips for making the most out of a 360:

  • Use a standardized questionnaire for everyone that gives you feedback;
  • Ask specific questions and use very clear phrasing;
  • Ask for feedback from people that know you and care about you;
  • Allow the option of anonymous feedback to help people be more honest;
  • Get feedback from at least 10 people to have representative results;
  • Remember that how others see you is not necessarily how you are.
  • Remember it’s just a feedback, not a flawless evaluation tool.

Getting a 360 degrees feedback takes some effort and most importantly, some courage. Most of us are not used to asking others for clear and specific feedback about ourselves. Asking for it is a statement that we are vulnerable to their perception and it’s a request for something some find risky to give: honest evaluations. Expect this to take you and them out of your comfort zones, and embrace it.

If you’re interested in a specific 360 degrees feedback tool, I recommend 360°Reach by William Arruda. It’s an online assessment that’s well designed, easy to use for personal development or branding, and you can try it free of charge for 15 days. So, enjoy it!

Filed Under: Career, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , , 29 Comments