Landmark Liars
depro...@mailandnews.com
the rest of us liars, more often than not on matters of opinion,
conjecture, proposition, or interpretation. Pretty ironic in light of
the fact that theirs is a "philosophy" built on lies of the worst,
self-delusional sort.
Ellen
(Hey, Siam: D'ja miss this?)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-selfhelp1jan01,0,506247.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
>From the Los Angeles Times
HOW WE LIVE
Self-help's big lie
By Steve Salerno
Steve Salerno's latest book is "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made
America Helpless."
January 1, 2006
EVER SINCE the United States began weaning itself off the sociological
junk food of victimization and its culture of blame, the pop-psychology
menu increasingly has been flavored by an antithetical concept -
empowerment - that can be summarized as: Believe it, achieve it.
Nowadays, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft business plans with bullet
points drawn from Laker coach-cum-inspirational guru Phil Jackson's Zen
optimism. Couples write partnership covenants based on the utopian
blather of John Gray. Millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings
of "personal power" to erstwhile firewalker Tony Robbins, arguably the
father of today's mass-market empowerment. And there is Oprah, who is
seldom categorized as a guru in her own right but whose status as the
movement's eminence grise is beyond dispute: The road to self-help's
promised land, and a bite of its $10-billion fruit (as tracked by
Marketdata Enterprises), runs straight through Harpo Productions. The
nostrums delivered by these and other self-help celebrities form a
cultural given, an uncontested - and, we are led to believe,
incontestable - foundation for today's starry-eyed zeitgeist.
Lost in the adulation is the downside of being uplifted. In truth, the
overselling of personal empowerment - the hyping of hope - may be
the great unsung irony of modern American life, destined to disappoint
as surely as the pity party that it was meant to replace.
In U.S. schools, the crusade to imbue kids with that most slippery of
notions - self-esteem - has been unambiguously disastrous (and has
recently been disavowed by a number of its loudest early voices).
Self-esteem-based education presupposed that a healthy ego would help
students achieve greatness, even if the mechanisms necessary to instill
self-esteem undercut scholarship. Over time, it became clear that what
such policies promote is not academic greatness but a bizarre
disconnect between perceived self-worth and provable skill.
Over a 20-year span beginning in the early 1970s, the average SAT score
fell by 35 points. But in that same period, the contingent of
college-bound seniors who boasted an A or B average jumped from 28% to
an astonishing 83%, as teachers felt increasing pressure to adopt more
"supportive" grading policies. Tellingly, in a 1989 study of
comparative math skills among students in eight nations, Americans
ranked lowest in overall competence, Koreans highest - but when
researchers asked the students how good they thought they were at math,
the results were exactly opposite: Americans highest, Koreans lowest.
Meanwhile, data from 1999's omnibus Third International Mathematics and
Science Study, ranking 12th-graders from 23 nations, put U.S. students
in 20th place, besting only South Africa, Lithuania and Cyprus.
Still, the U.S. keeps dressing its young in their emperors' new egos,
passing them on to the next set of empowering curricula. If you teach
at the college level, as I do, at some point you will be confronted
with a student seeking redress over the grade you gave him because "I'm
pre-med!" Not until such students reach med school do they encounter
truly inelastic standards: a comeuppance for them but a reprieve for
those who otherwise might find ourselves anesthetized beneath their
second-rate scalpel.
The larger point is that society has embraced such concepts as
self-esteem and confidence despite scant evidence that they facilitate
positive outcomes. The work of psychologists Roy Baumeister and Martin
Seligman suggests that often, high self-worth is actually a marker for
negative behavior, as found in sociopaths and drug kingpins. Even in
its less extreme manifestations, confidence may easily be expressed in
the kind of braggadocio - "I'm fine just the way I am, thank you" -
that stunts growth, yielding chronic failure.
Then again, one never really fails in this brave new (euphemistic)
world. "There is no such thing as failure," posits a core maxim of
neuro-linguistic programming, the regimen from which Robbins drew much
of his patter. Among empowered thinkers, reality becomes an arbitrary
affair, with each individual deciding his or her personal truth.
Consider healthcare, where vague notions of personal empowerment are a
key factor in the startling American exodus from traditional medicine.
A comprehensive study reported in the medical journal JAMA pegged the
number of patient visits to alternative-medicine practitioners at 629
million a year, easily eclipsing the 386 million visits to conventional
MDs. In theory, these defections represent a desire for "self-empowered
healing" that will "put people in charge of their healthcare destiny,"
to quote one holistic health website. In practice, the trend puts
hordes of Americans at the mercy of quacks who shrewdly position
themselves at the nexus of mind and body. It behooves us to remember
that feeling better about a health problem is not the same as doing
better.
Nonetheless, with such highly visible exponents of latter-day
empowerment as Robbins, Winfrey and Winfrey's principal protege, Dr.
Phil McGraw, fanning the flames, a generation has come of age on the
belief that a positive mental attitude will carry the day. Far from
helping his disciples, the empowerment guru does them a disservice by
making them "think positive" about a situation in which the odds of
success are exceedingly low. As top management consultant Jay Kurtz
argues: "The most dangerous person in corporate America is the highly
enthusiastic incompetent. He's running faster in the wrong direction,
doing horribly counterproductive things with winning enthusiasm."
You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is
equally achievable to you - especially if that same message has been
sold indiscriminately to all comers. In the grand scheme of things,
knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's
talents.
Tex
<depro...@MailandNews.com> wrote in message
news:1136181927.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> The Landmark "fans" who populate this newsgroup love to repeatedly call
> the rest of us liars, more often than not on matters of opinion,
> conjecture, proposition, or interpretation.
If you are offering conjecture that's one thing. When you are simply making
things up as you often do the word for that is LYING.
You may simply not know what you don't know. This would be self-delusion.
. > Pretty ironic in light of the fact that theirs is a "philosophy" built
on lies of the worst,
> self-delusional sort.
Name one.
>
>
> Ellen
>
>
> (Hey, Siam: D'ja miss this?)
>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-selfhelp1jan01,0,506247.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
>>From the Los Angeles Times
>
> HOW WE LIVE
> Self-help's big lie
> By Steve Salerno
>
> Steve Salerno's latest book is "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made
> America Helpless."
>
> January 1, 2006
>
> EVER SINCE the United States began weaning itself off the sociological
> junk food of victimization and its culture of blame, the pop-psychology
> menu increasingly has been flavored by an antithetical concept -
> empowerment - that can be summarized as: Believe it, achieve it.
>
> Nowadays, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft business plans with bullet
> points drawn from Laker coach-cum-inspirational guru Phil Jackson's Zen
> optimism.
Is he talking about Phil Jackson, the coach that has won 9 NBA championships
as a coach? Along with Red Auerbach that puts him tied for the most ever!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Jackson
I've searched Zen and optimism and have not found a link. Zen is many things
but optimism is not much a part of it.
In the very first paragraph Steve Salerno is exposing himself as an idiot.
Does it get better?.
Maybe it's just a bad start.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen
Couples write partnership covenants based on the utopian
> blather of John Gray.
Utopian blather? Obviously he doesn't know much about John Gray either.
John Gray's approach is highly pragmatic. Men and women are distinct and
different and he suggests it is unreasonable to think that we can truly
understand each other. Co-existing as warring camps from "Venus" and "Mars"
is hardly a Utopian concept.
Perhaps Salerno thinks that men and women co-existing together is an
impractical ideal?
Take a look at this newsgroup, for instance! {:~D
Not for long, we usually fire people like this in my company, and others
I've worked for.
Results rule the day in corporate America.
>
> You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is
> equally achievable to you - especially if that same message has been
> sold indiscriminately to all comers. In the grand scheme of things,
> knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's
> talents.
On this last point, I agree.
The rest is a ramble by someone who sounds like he has an axe to grind.
>
Blueboy
pretty much everything he says, especially this: "...a generation has come
of age on the
> belief that a positive mental attitude will carry the day..."
I reckon that that's one of this society's biggest weaknesses.
<depro...@MailandNews.com> wrote in message
news:1136181927.1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Tex
> Great article Tex. I think Salerno must be a Forum graduate. I agree
> with pretty much everything he says, especially this: "...a generation has
> come of age on the
>> belief that a positive mental attitude will carry the day..."
>
> I reckon that that's one of this society's biggest weaknesses.
LOL
Here's a link to his article in the National Review.
It is nearly the same article as the one from the LA Times below, but it was
written seven months ago.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/salerno200505120810.asp
This guy is obviously not creative enough to come up with anything new, so
he rehashes his old work.
I'm suprised that a "lefty" like Ellen would be quoting articles from the
National Review, a magazine founded by arch-conservative and staunch
anti-communist William F. Buckley.
It's a favorite magazine of those "soociopathic" CEOs she despises. {:~D
rex.b...@gmail.com
> The Landmark "fans" who populate this newsgroup love to repeatedly call
> the rest of us liars, more often than not on matters of opinion,
> conjecture, proposition, or interpretation. Pretty ironic in light of
> the fact that theirs is a "philosophy" built on lies of the worst,
> self-delusional sort.
>
> Ellen
>
> (Hey, Siam: D'ja miss this?)
>
>http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-selfhelp1jan01,0,506247.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
> >From the Los Angeles Times
>
> HOW WE LIVE
> Self-help's big lie
> By Steve Salerno
Sounds a bit like another book called "People of the Lie" - which
bashes modern psychiatry, psychology, and social worker professonals.
Still, beyond the "knee jerk reaction" there are some valid points that
are worth noting.
> Steve Salerno's latest book is "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made
> America Helpless."
>
> January 1, 2006
>
> EVER SINCE the United States began weaning itself off the sociological
> junk food of victimization and its culture of blame, the pop-psychology
> menu increasingly has been flavored by an antithetical concept -
> empowerment - that can be summarized as: Believe it, achieve it.
Many self-help programs do tend to make this a key element of their
"sales pitch".
However, there is a flip side, which is usually a critical part of the
course work and doesn't generally get discussed until after you
register. Believe it, Achieve it also requires a powerful relationship
with integrity, and a powerful relationship with "what's so".
Fred Smith of Federal Express used to regularly say "Anything is
possible - if you have enough resources and money". This from the man
who dropped package deliveries from "Allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery"
to "Tomorrow, by 10:30 AM or you don't pay the shipping". More
importantly, he really did run his company with that level of
integrity.
The little tracking tool keeps track of the time a package is
delivered, and if it's not delivered on time - the customer billing is
refunded or credited. Furthermore, the entire process and routing of
the package is reviewed to determine why the package was late and what
corrective actions need to be taken.
When Tom Peters of "In Search of Excellence" lectured on his book, he
would tell stories of how workers at Federal Express would pick up an
entire drop box and put it into the truck, so that none of the packages
inside would be late, or how a manager hired a helicoptor to get a
package to a customer after a blizzard had wiped out road access.
It's a culture that has now made overnight delivery a reality around
the world, and has made internet shopping a practical alternative to
shopping at the mall. The irony of course, is that Fred Smith almost
failed to get his master's degree because the United States Postal
service AND United Postal Service reviewed his plan and told him that
overnight delivery was impossible.
Federal Express started with a few planes flying in and out of Memphis
to some key market cities and has since grown to a fleet and several
hubs all over the world, and now delivers over 2 million overnight
packages A DAY.
> Nowadays, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft business plans with bullet
> points drawn from Laker coach-cum-inspirational guru Phil Jackson's Zen
> optimism. Couples write partnership covenants based on the utopian
> blather of John Gray. Millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings
> of "personal power" to erstwhile firewalker Tony Robbins, arguably the
> father of today's mass-market empowerment.
And yet if you actually attend the courses, or even listen to the tapes
with any effort at all, there is a context upon which these
achievements are based. This isn't just "wishcraft", it's a technology
for producing extraordinary results in a very short timeframe as a
result of properly focused effort and thinking.
Most people spend a huge percentage of their time worrying about things
they can't change, being upset over things that happened in the past,
focusing effort on retaliation, argument, and activities designed to
disempower others. Which in turn disempowers them.
Nearly all of these "Self Help" programs have some common threads:
The first is to "put the past in the past" - what happened happened.
Unless there is a clear and present danger that follows a very
predictable pattern - such as Alcoholism, Physical Abuse, or various
forms of "Addictive" behaviors, it's pointless to relive and resolve
dissappointments and wrongs of the past, that will probably never
happen again. If you go home every day and your husband gets drunk and
beats you, then it's time to choose another alternative. On the other
hand, if you were attacked 20 years ago by a "one night stand" who got
too drunk to behave properly - you don't need to spend the next 20
years assuming that any man you meet is a rapist.
The second principle is "stop worrying" - too many people focus way too
much energy on unjustified fears. They worry that the airline pilot
will crash the plane, or that there will be another "great depression"
or that the bank will be unable to cover the funds deposited in their
bank account. These are legitimate concerns, and there are people who
make a profession out of reducing the risks of such occurrances as much
as possible. On the other hand, if the ONLY thing you can or will do
is worry about it - and you have no desire or effort to take an active
role in reducing those risks, then you are spending time thinking about
something over which you have no control - when you could be spending
that time thinking about ways to do your own job better, how you can
manage your own finances as effectively as possible, or how you could
volunteer or raise funds for projects that WILL make a difference.
The third is to focus on possibilities, goals, or visions - things that
you are personally committed to impacting. People who do the Forum
aren't expected to take on "Ending world hunger" at the end of 3 days.
Creating a marriage where love is expressed and experienced - with the
spouse you have been married to for years - is probably much more
rewarding. Simply telling your spouse the things you love about them,
instead of all of the things you hate about them - can have a huge
impact on that marriage. Listening when that spouse expresses their
concerns - and looking for practical ways to resolve those issues
(including irritating habits) can also have a huge impact.
The fourth is to take actions consistent with those possibilities,
goals, or visions. It's not enough to just have a wonderful insight
and say "I'll be nicer to my spouse", that will be a "great idea" and
within a week, it will be just one more thing to be upset about. One
more failure. To really impact that relationship, you have to SHARE
the possibility you just created - call that spouse, tell them exactly
how you have been being a jerk, how much you love them, and how you
want to create this new possibility - and listening for their response,
both supportive and cynical, as ways to rebuild that relationship.
Beyond that, you can make the request that they support you in creating
this new possibility - by letting them know when they are "on it"
(being right at the cost of love and friendship).
Fifth - get some partners and coaches - have others in your community,
your family, and your workplace learn the technology you have learned -
so that they can support you in fulfilling your possibilities, and so
that you can support them in fulfilling theirs. When you start making
each other wrong - one of you will stop and say "wait - this isn't
helping me fulfill my possibility - I'll give up being right" -
suddenly there is an opening for both of you to get each other back
into the actions which WILL fulfill the possibilities you have created
together.
Another minor theme - "Step away from the television" - Rome had it's
"bread and circuses", the 20th Century had movies and television. But
even the movies were once a place where Judy Garland and Mickey Roony
would get the gang together and put on a show - often for some good
cause. The musicals were romances where the boy got the girl and love
was expressed in a hundred different ways.
Television became a "brain washing machine" - children watched the "one
eyed monster" and saw June Cleaver and Donna Reed walking around in
their Bob Mackie designer dresses, 3 inch heels, full makeup, lace
apron that never got dirty, and pull out fresh backed cookies and have
nice polite talks with her husband about how best to talk it out with
the children - who were never spanked. And these "baby boomers" would
turn around, see their own mom in a worn-out terrycloth robe,
chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes, drinking her miller beer streight
out of the bottle, and smacking him if he took to long getting the
refill. And when daddy came home, he was drunk and mom was well
loaded, and they'd have the fight right out in the open. Eventually,
the "winner" would start in on the kids, slapping them around, just to
deal with the rage stirred up in the earlier fight. These kids assumed
that they must have come from a "disfunctional family" because their
mother wasn't like June Cleaver, or Donna Reed, or Harriet Nelson.
Later - we had All in the Family, where Dad was a joke, a redneck, and
not to be taken seriously, except maybe on special occaisions. Edith
wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree either. Appearantly Michael was
the only one who had a clue as to what was so, and Gloria wore
miniskirts and tight clothes - while our boomer wives wore flannel
shirts and sweat pants or baggy blue jeans.
Then we had Married with Children - with Al Bundy being totally
clueless, but good for draining the wallet. Peg was always ready for
sex, and Al wasn't interested, and the daughter, played by Christina
Applegate - was usually in a skirt so short that even guys Al Bundy's
age would drool, and usually Kelly wore the designer shoes and tight
sexy tops as well. And Bud, again seemed to be the only member of the
family who seemed to have a clue as to what was going on. Then you'd
face the "real" family - where dad was working 60 hours/week and mom
was working 30, and both were so tired that all he wanted was sex,
which was the last thing she wanted. The young boy is a "gangsta" and
the girl is wearing big baggy everything, hiding every possible hint of
a curve, and wearing the ugly shoes that looked like the ones grandma
wore.
The problem with television is that it is DESIGNED to tear down
self-esteem, to maximize fear, and to make the audience as receptive as
possible to the products being advertized by the show's "sponsors".
You know you need 5 kinds of mouthwash, 4 kinds of deoderant, 3 kinds
of aftershave - and you need to go to Burger King - because mom's
cooking could be hazardous to your health - and dad's is even worse.
Nowdays, they put on shows about crimes where the perpetrator gets off,
reality shows where the "winner" is the second most ruthless and
contemptable contestant in the game. so that they can tell you about
Zoloft, Prozac, and other drugs for depression - and they tell you to
go get some from your doctor (the LEGAL drug dealer), right away. They
want to sell you viagra, cealis, hair transplants, and TrimSpa and
"Fitness Equipment" - so they show you images of women in really great
looking outfits, being as abusive and cruel as possible - so that you
will be filled with both desire and self-loathing - all at the same
time. Bring on the commercials.
Women get the flip side - diet pills, pep pills (antidepressants),
vitamins, and cheaply made clothes that can be sold for the maximum
profit with the minimum inventory. Show the abusive woman in the size
5 getting rich and famous while the size 8 in the baggy jeans and
stretchy sweater is happy and playful getting lots of compliments.
Let's face it, sweaters and baggy jeans or stretch-pants only need to
be stocked in small, medium, and large. Tight skirts, tight pants,
fitted shirts, and jackets need to be stocked in sizes
5,7,9,10,11,12,13,14,16 and each cut and color must be stocked in each
size. Worse, what works for size 14 and 16 will bomb for 5,7, & 9,
and what sells in size 5 or even size 10 won't sell in size 14 or 16.
And what you don't sell at retail in the beginning of the season - ends
up on the clearance rack, being sold at below cost - for the
write-offs.
> And there is Oprah, who is
> seldom categorized as a guru in her own right but whose status as the
> movement's eminence grise is beyond dispute: The road to self-help's
> promised land, and a bite of its $10-billion fruit (as tracked by
> Marketdata Enterprises), runs straight through Harpo Productions.
I've often wondered how many people at Harpo have done what programs.
There is certainly a structure for that very direct communication and
very clear focus on producing results that focus on fulfilling
possibilities. It's a refreshing alternative to the "reality TV" where
the goal is to out-manipulate your allies. It's a refreshing
alternative to the "Tabloid TV" that used to be the stock in trade of
shows like Oprah, Rikki Lake, and Jerry Springer.
I don't know what made Harpo switch from "Tobloid" to posibility
focused themes, but I really am glad that they made the switch.
> The nostrums delivered by these and other self-help celebrities form a
> cultural given, an uncontested - and, we are led to believe,
> incontestable - foundation for today's starry-eyed zeitgeist.
It's ironic, isn't it. Oprah and other "self-help celibrities" make up
less than 5% of the programming on their stations - typically 5 hours
out of over 160 per week. There's 60 channels - for 9600 hours of
cynicism, resignation, and dispair - punctuated by flashes of hope and
possibility (known as commercials).
Even the songs on MTV and VH1 are mostly set ups for the next
commercial - see the beautiful woman you can never afford or be? Now
try dentine ice - and she's yours.
> Lost in the adulation is the downside of being uplifted. In truth, the
> overselling of personal empowerment - the hyping of hope - may be
> the great unsung irony of modern American life, destined to disappoint
> as surely as the pity party that it was meant to replace.
There are those who believe hope is a bad thing. They are usually
those who are trying to keep wages low and keep prices high. They
remind me of the character in "Looney Toons Adventure" played by Steve
Martin. He wants to turn all people into monkeys so that they will
work for a few bananas. Then he wants to turn them into people so that
they will pay the highest possible price for his ACME products.
Of course, this isn't economically possible. If the monkeys only get
paid bananas, when they get turned back into people, they will have
nothing but banana peels available as currency.
There are almost every shade of the spectrum when it comes to
self-esteem and hope.
At one extreme, you have the people who have almost no self-esteem, no
hope, no possibility, and almost fatalistic belief that nothing will
ever get better. Many of these people turn to drugs, crime, and
eventually - suicide.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the arrogant, egotistical,
megalamaniac who believes that the world owes him, or her, whatever
they want.
And the irony is that most people tend to swing from one extreme to
another, almost like chameleons. With one group of people, they will
be fearful and hopeless, in a state of total dispair. With another
group of people, they will be the "princess" or "dictator" demanding
everything from everybody.
Most people, most healthy people, tend to swing far less between the
two. With one group, they will be shy and awkward, and with another
group, they expect to have a good time and expect to enjoy themselves.
What "empowerment" programs do is help us to be more confident in the
places where we would normally be shy and afraid, and be more
compassionate in those areas where we know how to win and know we will
have a good time.
> In U.S. schools, the crusade to imbue kids with that most slippery of
> notions - self-esteem - has been unambiguously disastrous (and has
> recently been disavowed by a number of its loudest early voices).
Most U.S. schools are not that well organized. Public Schools are
designed to organize as many children as possible under the supervision
of as few adults as possible, with the intent of providing a structure
where those who are willing and able can learn to read, write, and do
core math.
There are structures created to limit self expression, to limit
individuality, and to encourage conformity. This isn't necessarily
bad. At the same time, there are some teachers, some structures, and
some cultures which are designed to tear down self-esteem as much as
possible. In Gym class, the boys are put in short baggy shorts, and
loose thick crew-neck shirts, and structured in a manor similar to
military or prison structures. Within a matter of weeks, there are 100
boys being supervised by two adults, and most of them are as obedient
as most soldiers.
The President's Council on Physical Fitness - which designed the
structure of these gym classes - designed them with the intent of
reducing the amount of time required in basic training to prepare a
soldier for combat. The design of the program was to establish the
structures of military discipline, military order, and military
fitness.
The program actually worked very well. During the Vietnam War,
recruits could be made combat ready in as little as 2 months.
Specialists required more training, but even they could be trained much
more quickly because the entire "military disclipline" was already part
of their structure.
The Public school system does what it is designed to do. It
institutionalizes students so that they can be trained as efficiently
(in terms of students per teacher) as possible.
At the same time, there is a need for additional training. Values,
Self Esteem, Faith, Ethics, Integrity, and personal responsibility
cannot efficiently be taught in the public schools. There are programs
such as the Sports, Music, and Theater programs which provide some of
the training in integrity, teamwork, commitment, cooperation, and
personal responsibility, but this is typically available to only about
15% of the total student body, and even these are screened and must
"Make the Team" by demonstrating most of these traits PRIOR to entering
the secondary programs.
> Self-esteem-based education presupposed that a healthy ego would help
> students achieve greatness, even if the mechanisms necessary to instill
> self-esteem undercut scholarship. Over time, it became clear that what
> such policies promote is not academic greatness but a bizarre
> disconnect between perceived self-worth and provable skill.
The problem with the "Institutionalization" process, is that there are
those who lose ALL self esteem. The kid with an IQ of 180 who thinks
he's an idiot because the teacher ridicules him. The teacher wants the
student to stay focused on the materail, but the student is bored - he
had full comprehension of the material within the first 3 minutes, and
the remaining 30-40 minutes of trying to cater to the "lowest common
denominator" so that most of the class learns what they need to learn -
is just monotonous repetition. Eventually these students either find
more constructive ways to channel their intelligence, such as artwork,
engineering projects, or other "quiet paperwork" - or they find ways to
"lower" their intelligence - with drugs and alchohol. In some cases,
the school itself provides the drugs - to combad "Attention Deficit
Disorder", in other cases, the kid starts smoking dope before class -
which makes the teacher's repititions seem profound.
The flip side is the kid who is the kid with an IQ of 70 who really
can't grasp the material in the amout of time allotted to the task.
The teacher often attempts humiliation, but doesn't realize that about
90% of the hour is like listening to a television program in a language
you have never studied. The teacher doesn't have the time or resources
to help this slower learner, and the student doesn't have the self
esteem or the hope to motivate them to study and train themselves.
The schools are also not designed to deal with self esteem problems
related to personal or family issues. The child whose family is
immigrants and don't speak english, the kid whose father is an
alcoholic and beats his kids when he drinks, the mother who is a
prostitute and often has boyfriends "warming up" with her teen
daughter. The kid whose walk from school to home is lined with street
gangs, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes, and the "wannabees" who
will beat the kid to a pulp for his lunch money. The school is not
structured to handle that. About the best they can do is try to
provide a safe environment in the school by using metal detectors to
reduce the risk that deadly weapons will be brought into the school
property. Many cities and towns now use school buses to bus kids as
little as 1/2 mile, to reduce their exposure to the "criminal element".
The public school system does what it was designed to do, but there is
still a "GAP".
Historically, this gap was filled in by the family, the church, the
community organizations, the grandparents.
> Over a 20-year span beginning in the early 1970s, the average SAT score
> fell by 35 points. But in that same period, the contingent of
> college-bound seniors who boasted an A or B average jumped from 28% to
> an astonishing 83%, as teachers felt increasing pressure to adopt more
> "supportive" grading policies.
The number of kids who grow up with the same two parents they were born
with, and have those same parents through their graduation from high
school is less than 25%. Most families will have at least one divorce
during that 18 year period. In those households where the parents do
stay together, one of the parents is likely to be working more than 40
hours/week, may be traveling, and will have very little time to
dedicate to his children. The other parent is also likely to be
working. In the 1960s, latch-key kids were the exception, there were
2-3 in a school grade, and they were usually encouraged to go to a
neighbor's house, where they could be properly supervised. Today,
latch-key kids are the norm, and most parents do not want their
children visiting the strangers who do "stay at home", since many of
them are more dangerous than no supervision at all.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, pedophilia - especially children being
molested by the boyfriends of a single mother, or a stepfather, became
much more common - because divorce was much more common.
During the 1970s and 1980s, recreational drug use was far more common,
and many parents continued these practices during their child-bearing
years. Mothers drank, smoke dope, crack, and shot heroin, many took
LSD, PCP, and other "designer drugs" before and during pregnancy. Many
smoked cigarrettes and drank alcohol before and during pregnancy. All
of these have been shown to adversely impact the development of the
babies, both in the womb, and as they grow up. Children who live in
houses with chain-smokers are more likely to have asthma, hay fever, or
persistent colds, and more likely to need medications such as
antihistimines, epphedrin, eppinephrine, codeine, and antibiotics - all
of which have long term consequences with prolonged use.
The grandparents have been taken out of the picture by Social Security
- those who must live on the modest income provided must often move to
"retirement communities" where housing and food prices are kept very
low - along with wages and salaries paid to those working and living in
the area.
> Tellingly, in a 1989 study of
> comparative math skills among students in eight nations, Americans
> ranked lowest in overall competence, Koreans highest - but when
> researchers asked the students how good they thought they were at math,
> the results were exactly opposite: Americans highest, Koreans lowest.
> Meanwhile, data from 1999's omnibus Third International Mathematics and
> Science Study, ranking 12th-graders from 23 nations, put U.S. students
> in 20th place, besting only South Africa, Lithuania and Cyprus.
In Japan, they have "Test Hell". After about 8th grade, students must
take achievement tests. To fail means that you will receive no further
schooling, and the test is graded on the curve. Those who score the
lowest in 8th grade will be menial laborers. Those who score highest
and continue through high school and make it to complete college - will
become office workers and professionals.
This "weeding out" process means that a student who is good at Calculus
in High School in the United States feels that he is very good -
because most of this graduating class is still struggling with Algebra
or Trigonometry. In Korea, if you are in High School, it is because
you passed all of the math tests, and EVERYONE in your graduating class
knows Calculus - some better than you. And you only hope that you
score high enough to be able to go on to College.
> Still, the U.S. keeps dressing its young in their emperors' new egos,
> passing them on to the next set of empowering curricula. If you teach
> at the college level, as I do, at some point you will be confronted
> with a student seeking redress over the grade you gave him because "I'm
> pre-med!".
The even bigger problem here is that students are often being pushed
into profession oriented majors for which they have neither aptitude
nor inclination. Mom - single mom - wants the kid to go to college -
because that extends child support for 2-3 more years. And once they
graduate, mom wants the kid to be making lots of money - to help
replace the lost child support. The problem is that if the father was
an Engineer, Doctor, Lawyer, or other highly trained professional, and
was only seeing the kids every 2 weeks - or even less because his
visitation "interefered with the relationship with the stepfather" -
the child has no clue how much disclipline it takes to enter such a
profession - and mother hasn't taught the personal discipline, the
social skills, the self esteem, the integrity, the responsibility, and
the self-sacrifice required to become a good professional.
Instead, the single mother, and her "boy toy" boyfriend turned
"stepfather" has created a very distorted view of reality. The child
is a hostage, to be used as a pawn to assure payment of support. The
mother may not work at all, or she has a low skill job, since making
too much will cut aid programs. The boyfriend may be on disability -
because he smoked too much crack, or had a "nervous breakdown". Mom
stays home, parties with her boyfriend or new husband, and collects
disability, welfare, child support, section 8 housing, WIC, and
possibly even medicaid. Dad works 60 hours/week, lives in a studio
apartment (a walk in closet with a toilet and shower), drives a car
that was a junkmobile when he bought it, and eats TV dinners (no time
to cook, no money for restaurants).
The kid doesn't take studies too seriously - why bother, dad did all
that work and he lives like a bum, mom and "new dad" don't work at all,
and we live in a nice house with a nice car, or two. "New Dad" drinks
like a fish and uses drugs, but we can't tell "old dad", or it's "the
belt" - or worse. Of course, when any of Mom's financial aid packages
starts to falter, she will rant to everyone she knows - about how she
"deserves" all of this money and assistance.
So now, the kid, having no idea what it takes to get an "A" in College
Anatomy and Physiology, having now idea how to maintain a schedule that
includes working 20-30 hours/week while also carrying an 18 hour load
and doing 20-25 hours of homework per week, can't possibly imagine how
anyone could work 60-80 hours/week. "Old Dad" has been doing it since
he was 15, but no one has ever bothered to show the child. He just
wants to be a doctor so that he can make lots of money and "take care
of mom".
It takes some really low self esteem to let a welfare leech guilt you
into becoming a doctor so that you can provide the "child support" that
dad no longer pays.
> Not until such students reach med school do they encounter
> truly inelastic standards: a comeuppance for them but a reprieve for
> those who otherwise might find ourselves anesthetized beneath their
> second-rate scalpel.
But what a waste of time, energy, money, and resources. Maybe that
horrible doctor would make a better business manager, or artist, or
musician, or something less "glamourous" and less "big paycheck" - but
more appropriate to the student's real aptitudes, interests, motives,
and desires. Something that's a real "possibility", something that
will really touch, move, and inspire them.
Do you want a doctor who hates being a doctor, but did it to "take care
of mom"?
Do you want your kids taught by a teacher who hates being a teacher but
wants summers off "to spend them with mom"?
Do you want your case settled by a lawyer who hates being a lawyer but
will use your contingincy to "take care of mom"?
> The larger point is that society has embraced such concepts as
> self-esteem and confidence despite scant evidence that they facilitate
> positive outcomes.
This whole statement is a bit like "all rapists are men, therefore all
men are rapists".
The irony is that this is the fundamental premise behind the current
"Uniform
Dissolution of Marriage" acts in most states. They were enacted in the
mid 1970s, when men would divorce their hard working and loyal wives to
marry a "trophy wife" and give mom alimony (tax deductable) and minimal
child support. If the loyal wife remarried, she lost her alimony -
even cohabitation was grounds to terminate alimony in most states.
The revised law presumed that the marriage was being desolved because
the man was selfish, abusive, negligent, or in some other way a
perpetrator. The burdon of proof for awarding custody to the mother
was that the judge had to be convinced that the mother was a clear and
immediate danger to the children (drug addict, child abuse previously
reported, convicted felon,...). The revised law also presumed that the
children should be supported "in the manner to which they had become
accustomed". In most cases, the child support was equal to 1/2 the
after-tax income. Failure to pay, falling behind for as little as 3
months could lead to arrest and detainment, without trial, without due
process, and often, without access to council. One woman had been held
without bail, without trial, without even a review hearing, for over 4
years in a county jail. What made the story newsworthy was not her
ordeal (which was commonplace) but that she was a woman.
> The work of psychologists Roy Baumeister and Martin
> Seligman suggests that often, high self-worth is actually a marker for
> negative behavior, as found in sociopaths and drug kingpins. Even in
> its less extreme manifestations, confidence may easily be expressed in
> the kind of braggadocio - "I'm fine just the way I am, thank you" -
> that stunts growth, yielding chronic failure.
Classic clinical psychiatry. When you study the extreme behaviors, you
see a particular pattern, and assume that this pattern will lead to
extreme behaviors. One study cited during the Meese Commission
hearings stated that when they studied the liturature found in the
homes of child molesters, there was frequently pornography. They
failed to mention that nearly ALL of these molesters had a copy of the
Bible, usually the King James version. The irony is that when the FBI
began running sting operations to identify meet, and arrest pedophiles
soliciting on the internet, a surprisingly high number of them were
spiritual leaders such as youth pastors, sunday school teachers, boy
scout leaders, and church camp councillors. In fact, it was their
sexual desires that motivated their professional choices. The Catholic
Priests were the tip of the iceberg.
> Then again, one never really fails in this brave new (euphemistic)
> world. "There is no such thing as failure," posits a core maxim of
> neuro-linguistic programming, the regimen from which Robbins drew much
> of his patter. Among empowered thinkers, reality becomes an arbitrary
> affair, with each individual deciding his or her personal truth.
Except that this is not the fundamental goal of the teaching. It's a
critical distinction.
In NLP, Robbins points out that Edison once said "I didn't fail 999
times, I just found 999 different ways NOT to make the light bulb".
He also points out the story of Hal Saunders who went to over 1000
restaurants who didn't want his chicken recipe. Then he found someone
who not only wanted the recipe, but wanted him as a spokesman for the
franchise.
The key element of this distinction is that most people are stopped by
failure. They try something, and it doesn't work.
The problem here is that people will often do one of two things that
DON'T work. Either they will keep trying to do the same thing, over
and over, expecting different results (true insanity), or they will
decide that THEY are a failure and shouldn't even bother to keep
trying).
In business, if 1 out of every 10 prospects makes a purchase, you have
a very successful business. If 2 out of 10 prospects purchases your
product, you are a business leader.
For most people first starting a business or a sales career, getting
only 1 out of 100 prospects to buy is not that unusual. You make
mistakes, you adjust, you begin to learn to listen more than you talk,
you learn to qualify the customer, first with broad open-ended
questions, then focus in on what products you have might best meet your
customer's needs, or on how your product can meet one of your
customer's needs.
More importantly, you learn to "fail successfully", you learn to
qualify prospects in such a way that you can quickly determine when it
is NOT appropriate to approach a customer, to waste both your time, and
the prospects, on a pitch for a product which will not meet his
immediate needs.
By learning to "fail successfully", each failure becomes an
opportunity. You might qualify a customer with some open ended
questions, and when you get to that point where you see there is not a
fit, you can often ask "do you know anyone who might be interested in
this?" and because you haven't alienated the prospect, not only will
they give you a referral, but they will often invite you back at a
later time to discuss other options.
Even engineers can learn to "fail successfully". Often there are
trade-offs, and often a particular set of trade-offs yields an
undesirable result (failure). But properly studying these failures can
often lead to a better set of trade-offs. I think it was Toyota who
would put their cars into the hands of cab drivers - with the hoods
bolted shut. The cab companies would put a new driver on for each
shift. The cab would be driven 24 hours/day for 30-60 miles/hour, as
much as 40,000 miles/month - with no form of "routine maintenance".
When the car failed - they would call the car company, who would bring
them a brand new cab, and take the burned out one back to the lab, and
dissassemble it, studying each part for wear and tear, looking for what
made the most reliable car.
Today, Honda and Toyota make some of the most reliable cars in the
world, using this technology.
> Consider healthcare, where vague notions of personal empowerment are a
> key factor in the startling American exodus from traditional medicine.
> A comprehensive study reported in the medical journal JAMA pegged the
> number of patient visits to alternative-medicine practitioners at 629
> million a year, easily eclipsing the 386 million visits to conventional
> MDs.
Just curious, were Osteopaths considered "alternative medicine
practitioners"?
What about "visiting nurses"?
What abotu "nurse practitioners"?
> In theory, these defections represent a desire for "self-empowered
> healing" that will "put people in charge of their healthcare destiny,"
> to quote one holistic health website.
There are a number of different reasons for these "alternative
providers".
Very often, the full-price services of an MD is not required. Routine
health checks can often be done by visiting nurses or nurse
practitioners. These nurses have special training and will be the
first to make a referral to an MD if their preliminary examination
calls for it.
In many cases, the people being treated have already seen the MD, and
the NP is simply doing status checks. These might be people with
teriminal deseases who need home-care or hospice care - rather than
expensive hospital care for a situation which will not be improved and
could be aggrevated by an extended hospital stay.
Many "Alternative Care" practitioners are also supplemental care, such
as nutritionists, physical therapists, chiropractors, and message
therapists. Again, the patient is probably safer in a familiar and
relatively stable environment than in a hospital where invections are
quite common and patients with reduced immunities are at greater risk
of becoming sicker in the hospital than they were when they went in.
Keep in mind that much of this is a byproduct of HMOs, PPOs, and other
managed care insurance plans. Managed care has meant that only the
most critical cases are hospitalized - which means that the diseases
people come into a hospital with are almost always contagious and
life-threatening, and those who are hospitalized for medical procedures
are moved AWAY from the high risk hospital environment as quickly as
possible.
Rather than have MDs and generalist RNs conducting daily care of a
known condition which may require only brief periods of treatment -
nurses can be trained to conduct specialised treatment and to be aware
of the most common complications and warning signs that indicate that
the attention of an MD is warranted.
Keep in mind that many MDs now bill out as high as $20 a MINUTE. A
nurse practitioner bills out at about $100/hour. A health care
specialist such as a massage therapist (for preventing bed sores in
home care patients) can bill out as low as $30/hour.
> In practice, the trend puts
> hordes of Americans at the mercy of quacks who shrewdly position
> themselves at the nexus of mind and body. It behooves us to remember
> that feeling better about a health problem is not the same as doing
> better.
There are also a substantial number of "Doctors", many of them licensed
MDs, who tend to practice medicine "outside the box". Many of these
doctors have been part of the "drug pusher's network" where the drug
companies patent a new drug, and start promoting it for everything from
leg cramps to belly aches to depression (valium for example in the
1970s). very often, these doctors have found that drugs were being
promoted for conditions which had not been put through FDA clinical
trials. Valium, for example, was FDA approved to treat a type of leg
cramp that would occurr during sleep. The Drug Company then did
"independent testing" to show that it was good for other things - like
depression. The irony is that patients taking the suggested dose of
valuim (10 mg tablets, 3x/day) would often experience severe depression
CAUSED by the valium. Many patents were committing suicide as a result
of Valium INDUCED depression - prescriptions written by MDs.
In the 1970s, Nixon opened diplomatic relations with China. Western
doctors began to study the chinese remedies, many of which were
thousands of years old and were being used daily by patients in a
country of over 1 billion people. There were many of these techniques
and remedies which were clearly known to be effective, even by chinese
doctors who practiced "Western" medicine.
The problem here in the United States was that you couldn't sell the
drug in the United States because there had been no FDA clinical
trials, and these trials were very expensive, often costing over $30
million to conduct. The only way to recoup the cost was to have a
patentable form of the drug or remedy. The problem was that the herbal
remedy which was thousands of years old, could not be patented in it's
natural form because it was "prior art".
Very recently, the patent laws were changed, allowing a new CLAIM, once
proven to be true, to be grounds for a patent. Since the only way one
can make a legal CLAIM of a drug's or remedy's effectiveness is to go
through FDA trials, it became possible to patent a 1000 year old remedy
based on successful completion of FDA clinical trials. Centrum began
using this new law to patent such remedies as Gingo Boloba, Genseng,
and many others.
The problem is that there are many doctors who begin making medical
claims without doing the FDA trials. In some cases, with dire
consequences. HerbalLife for example contained Ephedra. For most
people, this was a mild stimulant, which was similar to decongestent or
Primatine. It might make your heart beat a bit faster, but it wouldn't
have any significant consequences, and the stimulant effect raised
metabolism which resulted in significant weight loss without hitting
the "wall" of traditional diets. It had a side effect similar to
exercise, without the time in the gym.
The problem was that many people, about 1 in 1000, is allergic to
ephedra. And if the person who is allergic to it is also overweight
and suffering from high blood pressure, the consequences can be dire,
including stroke or death.
The problem was that these "isolated cases" were not properly
investigated because Metabolife was being distributed through a
multilevel marketing organization consisting mostly of housewives who
wanted to lose a bit of weight and make a little "pocket money".
Often, when one of their "customers"/"Distributors" did have an
incident, the Metabolife wasn't included in the drug record (since it
was an herbal supplement).
There are many other cases where medical remedies and procedures which
can be beneficial to many, can be deadly to a few. This is the whole
reason for the existance of the FDA and field trials. Even then, some
slip through. NutraSweet made it through clinical trials and after it
was mass-marketed, hundreds of children were having severe reactions,
including unconciousness, coma, and mental retardation. The company
who made NutraSweet financed the testing of all children under the age
of 12 at the time, and the testing of every infant born after the
reaction was discovered.
Recently, other side effects from prolonged use have surfaced,
including ringing of the ears, dry eye, and headaches or dizziness.
None of these are severe enough to warrant taking them off the market,
but have led to the exploration of alternatives such as Splenda and
Calcium Sacharine, as well as sugar. Ironically, it has reached a
point where the MD is probably going to need to decide which sweetener
is best for each patient.
Which brings us back full circle to the marketing pressures being
brought to bear on the traditional medical practitioner.
Ironically, there may come a day when the "big pharma" industry decides
to release something which will shorten the lives of "baby boomers"
significantly, and the FDA will let them "push" it - specifically
promoting that doctors prescribe it to people over a certain age, with
certain conditions - such as "high maintenance long duration" diseases
like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS-MD.
> Nonetheless, with such highly visible exponents of latter-day
> empowerment as Robbins, Winfrey and Winfrey's principal protege, Dr.
> Phil McGraw, fanning the flames, a generation has come of age on the
> belief that a positive mental attitude will carry the day. Far from
> helping his disciples, the empowerment guru does them a disservice by
> making them "think positive" about a situation in which the odds of
> success are exceedingly low.
Part of the problem with any "Call the expert" show, whether it's a
"call the lawyer", "call the doctor", or "call the financial advisor",
is that these are callers who are providing the "expert" with less than
30 seconds of background information, and the "expert" is now making a
reccomendation based on this short history. Kramer's "Mad Money" is
one of the worst. He is making buy and sell reccomendations to people
who call in, with absolutely no knowledge of their risk tolerance,
volitility tolerance, porfolio balance, or any other information which
could make his reccomendation completely inappropriate.
> As top management consultant Jay Kurtz
> argues: "The most dangerous person in corporate America is the highly
> enthusiastic incompetent. He's running faster in the wrong direction,
> doing horribly counterproductive things with winning enthusiasm."
On this, we absolutely agree. There are those in many of these
courses, including Landmark Courses, who seem to ignore that they
should create a possibility that is "Informed by the past" but not
"Limited by the Past". For example, an engineer who understands the
design of a car could create the possibility of a vehicle that ran on
renewable energy - and has the information from the past - to actually
make that possibility into a reality. In fact, an engineer inspired by
that possibility has created both a fuel and an engine configuration
that can run on an 85% ethanol 15% gasoline mix. It's widely used
throughout the midwestern united states by fleet cars.
The danger is when you have someone who is ignorant of engineering, who
shares his possibility with dozens of people, and eventually ends up
being introduced to the man who shows this "inspired idiot" how he can
take a pint of liquid made from sewage, and 10 gallons of water, and
use it to power up a 10 year old car in a manner that it can be driven
for about 200 miles.
The problem is that the liquid is acetone. It works, but about 2 hours
after the demonstration, the overheated engine cools down and seizes -
never to be started again.
The demonstration was first tried on Henry Ford - who had experimented
with a number of different possible fuels for his early
pre-production-line cars. And knew the side effects.
The problem with the "enthusiastic incompetent" is that there is no
integrity in his enrollment. It might be possible for him to enroll an
engineer he trusts, and to generate a team of highly skilled
professionals who could create such an alternative, and weed out the
scams from the practical options.
The 200 Mpg carburetor was real, but not terribly practical or safe -
but led to the modern fuel injection systems used on modern cars today,
which do get as much as 40 miles/gallon while still delivering very
high performance from a very low volume engine.
> You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is
> equally achievable to you - especially if that same message has been
> sold indiscriminately to all comers.
Most of the programs you have cited above, including NLP and Landmark,
don't even try to make such claims. Participants are encouraged to
create a future that is "informed by the past, but not limited by the
past". If a participant who is a high school drop-out gets in front of
100 people and says "I'm the possibility of health - being a doctor" -
and the leader notices that this is a 40 year old man who looks more
like a mechanic than a doctor, he is likely to get some coaching.
A future as possibility is supposed to call you into action "now" -
which is what makes it different from a "pipe dream". A forum leader
once explained a "pipe dream" as the kind of possibility you create
when you have been smoking too much of something that isn't tobacco
from that pipe filled with water.
A pipe dream would be "I could be a millionaire", but if your credit
cards are maxed out, your studio apartment is a month behind on rent,
your job pays minimum wage, and you really don't feel like changing
jobs any time soon - then it's a pipe dream. It was an interesting
possibility - but it doesn't call you into immediate action now.
A "future as possibility" would be "Abundance and Integrity". You then
get yourself a coach, who will help you sort out your finances, and
help you determine which career changes you should be exploring to
improve your income situation. The coach wouldn't be trying to "show
you his business" (MLM, Ponzi, chain letter...), he would be asking YOU
what YOU have done exceedingly well, that you enjoyed doing.
My father once told me "do what you love, and the money will follow".
He was right. When I looked at my talents, what I loved doing, and
what I did well, and began to seek to be the best at that that I could
be, and began taking more responsibility for my own success (the
Landmark portion), I found that I was not only very competitant, but
was able to create extraordinary results for myself and others. Today,
I make as much as I want to make. I could make more, but I wouldn't
want to give up doing what I love.
> In the grand scheme of things,
> knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's
> talents.
This is true as well. The problem is that there are some limitations
which aren't real. They are decisions made by a 3 year old, or a 5
year old, or a 11 year old, or a 20 year old. Mom takes me to the
hospital and I think there's something wrong with me - that I'm being
punished. My clothes don't fit right and I think "I'll never fit in".
I win the same argument, over and over - and piss off the same person
every time I win.
In NLP, you are encouraged to model someone who is successful at
something you want to learn or at acheiving something you want to
achieve. You need to identify the thinking, attitudes, emotions, AND
the physical activities of that successful model. If you get coached
by a master salesman, someone who is in that 5% of the team that makes
80% of the sales for the company, and you learn to think like he
thinks, to get excited at the prospect of calling the prospect, and to
dial the phone as quickly as he does, and to speak the world he does -
and to sustain all of that for an extended period of time, you WILL
become a better salesman than you were. You might be one of those 10%
that generates 50% of the revenue, and you might eventually make it
into the top 5%.
The point is that it will probably NEVER happen if you model yourself
after the guy who is in the bottom 5%, who tells great jokes and has
the latest gossip, and has nothing nice to say about anyone in the top
5%, and occaisionally accidentally gets a sale when he makes one of his
hourly calls.
In Landmark, the key distinction is Integrity, honoring your word as
yourself. You can speak a possibility, but your actions have to be
consistent with that possibility. You need to make requests and
promises consistent with that possibility. If you want to be a top
salesman, then you will need to find out what promises and requests the
top salesmen are making, and make similar promises that you can
consistently keep.
You don't promise $1 million in sales for the day if you've never sold
more than $1000 in a day. But if you know how to sell $1000 in a day,
you know how to call, how to pitch, how to qualify customers, and you
understand how to serve the customer.
If you want to be a great salesman, you will probably also take more
courses in sales and marketing. You might even get a successful sales
person to coach you. And if he agrees, and he requests that you make
10 calls an hour for the next 8 hours, you want to make at LEAST those
10 calls/hour. If he says "let me listen when you get a live one" -
then make sure he's there when you get a prospect who is willing to
talk.
Before long, you will be acting and thinking in a manner consistent
with being a great sales professional. You will know as much of the
product line as you can, because you want to offer the product that
best meets the needs of EACH prospect. You will make calls because you
LOVE talking to prospects - even when they aren't buying today. You
will get that busy signal or no answer - and eagerly go to the next
call - rather than going "thank god, they're not home".
The flip side of all of this, if you really take all of this on, and
find that you absolutely hate it, you can do something else. You can
be a really good customer service person, you can be a good market
research person. You can do something consistent with what YOU really
like doing, what YOU are really good at.
This is what the Forum and the Advanced course are really about -
helping you deterimine what it is you are really good at, that lights
you up, turns you on, has you touched, moved, and inspired - AND has
you taking actions, making requests and promises, consistent with that
possibility. Yes, you WILL fail, but instead of being a "Failure" you
have just produced an undesired result, or not produced the desired
result.
Remember, nearly all of these key distinctions are addressed in that
period between the point where you first register yourself into the
Forum, and the point where the leader gives you the option of either
making and keeping the promises of the course, or leaving the course.
When you first register - a key part of that decision is that you say
"This is how my life will go - for 3 days and 1 night". At the point
that you make that promise, you probably don't know how you are going
to work it all out. You might not know where you will get the rest of
the tuition, or how you will get the time off work on Friday, or how
you will make it back from work on Tuesday night. But this entire
process - making 3 days go the way YOU say they will go - is probably
more important than "Empty and Meaningless".
You will also understand that you can be "unreasonable", that you can
keep your promise, rather than letting really good "reasons" stop you
from keeping your promise. You learn that being on time for the plane
is the only option. Being 10 minutes late, with a really good REASON
why you are late will not get you to your destination at your
originally scheduled time. You may have to make a new promise, and a
new request, which might even involve purchasing a new ticket, and you
may need to make requests and promises to the person on the other end -
waiting at the destination.
You also begin to understand the power of your word, how your broken
promises make future promises you make less powerful, and how broken
promises, and the promises you allow others to break - diminishes the
power of your word, and theirs.
In the Integrity seminar, you will even begin to discover how your
broken promise transforms from a broken promise to shame and guilt,
then to making the OTHER person wrong, blaming them, for your broken
promise.
Once you know that you can say how 3 days will go, you can begin to say
how the next week will go, then the next month, and then the next year.
And when you are making and keeping unreasonable requests and
promises, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after
year - something really extraordinary is almost certain to happen.
Glam
rex.b...@gmail.com wrote:
> Most people spend a huge percentage of their time worrying about things
> they can't change, being upset over things that happened in the past,
> focusing effort on retaliation, argument, and activities designed to
> disempower others. Which in turn disempowers them.
Can you point us to the research on this? It sure sounds odd. A huge
percentage of their time?
Glam
Serena Nordstrup
rex.b...@gmail.com wrote:
> depro...@MailandNews.com wrote:
<snip>
You give an extended example of what I might recognize as "customer
service". How and by what steps does this relate to your claim that
'Believe it, Achieve it also requires a powerful relationship with
integrity, and a powerful relationship with "what's so".' ?
Simpatice
Serena
elle...@gmail.com
>Sounds a bit like another book called "People of the Lie" - which
>bashes modern psychiatry, psychology, and social worker professonals.
Rex,
Can you give an example? I don't recall any "bashing of modern
psychiatry, etc., etc."
>Nearly all of these "Self Help" programs have some common threads:
>The first is to "put the past in the past" - what happened happened.
>Unless there is a clear and present danger that follows a very
>predictable pattern - such as Alcoholism, Physical Abuse, or various
>forms of "Addictive" behaviors, it's pointless to relive and resolve
>dissappointments and wrongs of the past, that will probably never
>happen again. If you go home every day and your husband gets drunk and
>beats you, then it's time to choose another alternative. On the other
>hand, if you were attacked 20 years ago by a "one night stand" who got
>too drunk to behave properly - you don't need to spend the next 20
>years assuming that any man you meet is a rapist.
[I hope the "coaches" at Landmark aren't so breezily dismissive of
people's traumatic memories. This would constitute a form of
malpractice in the medical fields.]
>The second principle is "stop worrying" - too many people focus way too
>much energy on unjustified fears. They worry that the airline pilot
>will crash the plane, or that there will be another "great depression"
>or that the bank will be unable to cover the funds deposited in their
>bank account. These are legitimate concerns, and there are people who
>make a profession out of reducing the risks of such occurrances as much
>as possible. On the other hand, if the ONLY thing you can or will do
>is worry about it - and you have no desire or effort to take an active
>role in reducing those risks, then you are spending time thinking about
>something over which you have no control - when you could be spending
>that time thinking about ways to do your own job better, how you can
>manage your own finances as effectively as possible, or how you could
>volunteer or raise funds for projects that WILL make a difference.
[Oh oh.....do I catch the faint odor of a sneaky sales pitch? One
involving doing uncompensated labor for Landmark, for instance?]
>The third is to focus on possibilities, goals, or visions - things that
>you are personally committed to impacting. People who do the Forum
.aren't expected to take on "Ending world hunger" at the end of 3 days.
>Creating a marriage where love is expressed and experienced - with the
>spouse you have been married to for years - is probably much more
>rewarding. Simply telling your spouse the things you love about them,
>instead of all of the things you hate about them - can have a huge
>impact on that marriage. Listening when that spouse expresses their
>concerns - and looking for practical ways to resolve those issues
>(including irritating habits) can also have a huge impact.
[Sounds like a few visits to a real marriage counsellor would be a much
better choice than an uneducated "trainer" from Landmark.]
>The fourth is to take actions consistent with those possibilities,
>goals, or visions. It's not enough to just have a wonderful insight
>and say "I'll be nicer to my spouse", that will be a "great idea" and
>within a week, it will be just one more thing to be upset about. One
>more failure. To really impact that relationship, you have to SHARE
>the possibility you just created - call that spouse, tell them exactly
>how you have been being a jerk, how much you love them, and how you
>want to create this new possibility - and listening for their response,
>both supportive and cynical, as ways to rebuild that relationship.
>Beyond that, you can make the request that they support you in creating
>this new possibility - by letting them know when they are "on it"
>(being right at the cost of love and friendship).
[Hey Rex! If I ~requested~ that you inform me every time you are ~on
it,~ meaning using Landmark ~technology,~ do you think you could do it?
Or has Landmark become such an integral part of your own identity you
might not recognize where you end and it takes over?]
>There are those who believe hope is a bad thing. They are usually
>those who are trying to keep wages low and keep prices high. They
>remind me of the character in "Looney Toons Adventure" played by Steve
>Martin. He wants to turn all people into monkeys so that they will
>work for a few bananas. Then he wants to turn them into people so that
>they will pay the highest possible price for his ACME products.
[Cute. Kinda reminds me of Werner Erhard.]
>Of course, this isn't economically possible. If the monkeys only get
>paid bananas, when they get turned back into people, they will have
>nothing but banana peels available as currency.
[Yeah....most phoney "gurus" become contemptuous of their followers
after a while. Actually, they are comtemptuous of them from the
beginning, but probably just able to hide it better.]
Rex,
With all due respect, I can't read any more. You've worn me out.
You seem like a decent, caring kind of guy. Are you familiar with or
did you know Paul Gutfreund? Do you know what happened to him?
Ellen
rex.b...@gmail.com
elle...@gmail.com wrote:
> >Sounds a bit like another book called "People of the Lie" - which
> >bashes modern psychiatry, psychology, and social worker professonals.
>
>
>
>
> Rex,
>
> Can you give an example? I don't recall any "bashing of modern
> psychiatry, etc., etc."
>
>
>
>
>
> >Nearly all of these "Self Help" programs have some common threads:
> >The first is to "put the past in the past" - what happened happened.
> >Unless there is a clear and present danger that follows a very
> >predictable pattern - such as Alcoholism, Physical Abuse, or various
> >forms of "Addictive" behaviors, it's pointless to relive and resolve
> >dissappointments and wrongs of the past, that will probably never
> >happen again. If you go home every day and your husband gets drunk and
> >beats you, then it's time to choose another alternative. On the other
> >hand, if you were attacked 20 years ago by a "one night stand" who got
> >too drunk to behave properly - you don't need to spend the next 20
> >years assuming that any man you meet is a rapist.
>
> [I hope the "coaches" at Landmark aren't so breezily dismissive of
> people's traumatic memories. This would constitute a form of
> malpractice in the medical fields.]
>
likelihood that your current husband, boyfriend, or lover is going to
be physically or mentally abusive, then you shoud AT LEAST let him know
that the next incident will be his way of telling you that he needs to
leave, and that you will take the appropriate actions to remove him -
call the police, pack his things, change the locks...
On the other hand, if you are living with a husband who loves you very
much, tries to be as nice as he knows how, and yet you are relating to
him like he was the guy who raped you 20 years ago, that's what
Landmark would call "Putting the past into the future".
This isn't Landmark - it's from a 12 step workshop I attended a few
year ago.
If you keep replaying memories of the past, that cause you to
experience strong feelings of anger, shame, and guilt, especially when
in the company of someone who is loving and caring - your subconcious
mind has a hard time telling the difference between these intense
memories and reality. This is why addicts and alcoholics are told that
they shouldn't try to "go to the nightclub and have a coke". Even
though they are drinking cola, their minds are experiencing the
memories of drinking, while they are drinking liquid. The new person
in recovery can easily drop their defenses and order something more
potent almost without realizing it - then let the shame and guilt of
the relapse keep them in addiction for days, or even months or years.
Ironically, many of the traumas that literally run our lives,
especially in terms of relationships, are far less traumatic. When I
was 11 years old, a popular girl asked me to the dance at school - but
she wanted a ring - even a gumball machine ring. When I showed up, I
gave her the ring, and she poured a cup of orange soda on my head.
Worse, there were about 50 people lined up on each side of the hallway
- who had been waiting to see the show and were laughing at my soaked
head.
For the next 30 years, I almost never dated, because I was more afraid
of "Yes" than no. I was afraid that if a woman acted like she was
interested that this would be WORSE than the rejection of a No.
Needless to say, I met my first wife in an arranged "blind date" and
when she told me that she was "saving herself" for her second husband -
I was "safe" enough to wait and marry her. 11 years later - he told me
she wanted to marry her boyfriend - and she moved out. I paid the
child support until the kids were adults.
When I did the Forum, I saw this little pattern, and within about 6
months, had met a woman who liked me but didn't want to marry me, and
we stayed together for 12 years.
Finally, about 18 months ago, I met someone who wanted the same things
I did, I was as honest as I could be, and she wanted me. We're getting
married in July.
> [Oh oh.....do I catch the faint odor of a sneaky sales pitch? One
> involving doing uncompensated labor for Landmark, for instance?]
If I didn't feel I was getting value - I wouldn't be sharing at all. I
"pitch" Linux, because I really like it. I "pitch" Landmark, because I
really like it.
But don't worry, I don't know you, I have no stake in whether or not
you do the Forum, and if you don't want to do hear any more from me, we
can end the conversation - just don't reply to my posting. I'll
respond to someone else's posting. :D
> [Sounds like a few visits to a real marriage counsellor would be a much
> better choice than an uneducated "trainer" from Landmark.]
I've got my own opinions about most marriage councellors. They seem to
be more vested in breaking up marriages that could be saved, than in
creating marriages where love is fully expressed.
Tony Robbins has a great story when he pitches his NLP. He points out
that most marriage councillors have the couple face each other, and
tell each other everything they hate about the other partner. It binds
the sight and sound of the partner with intensely negative feelings -
after a few months of this type of "councilling" - the councellor is
usually telling the wife to get a lawyer and the husband has walked
out. Or vice versa.
In my own experience, we had a platonic and slightly frustrating
marriage, but we worked out our differences in terms of money, time,
and friendship - we were doing pretty well. After about 6 months of
marriage councilling, she checked herself into a psychiatric ward, and
started having an affair with a guy she met in the lock-up ward.
Eventually, she married him.
I think if I had spent more time telling her what I LOVED about her,
and how wonderful she was, and how much I enjoyed our friendship - we
might have been a bit better off than we were after our "councilling".
Of course, I could be wrong. I hear that marriage councillors have
been changing their approaches to couples tharapy, and that this has
improved the effectiveness of these councillors - but I have know
experience with this newer approach.
> [Hey Rex! If I ~requested~ that you inform me every time you are ~on
> it,~ meaning using Landmark ~technology,~ do you think you could do it?
> Or has Landmark become such an integral part of your own identity you
> might not recognize where you end and it takes over?]
Actually, I have been pretty lucky. Even when I had a partner who
couldn't do the Forum, they had no problem telling me when I was being
a jerk. I gave them permission to do it, and when they would call me
on it, I would step back, take a few minutes to calm down, and thank
them for the support. Then I would try to find some possibility on
which we could both focus - something we would enjoy together.
I didn't have to use jargon - I just told her - "If I'm being a jerk,
tell me - and I'll stop being a jerk as quickly as I can". Sometimes I
would be a jerk for longer - and there were consequences - but usually
I would be more loving, gentle, and kind almost immediately. The more
practice I got, the quicker I "got off it" - got nice and gentle and
loving.
My boss, subordinates, and coworkers also have permission to call my
"stuff". And again, we can have a bit of fun with it, and get back to
constructive and productive work rather than have be stuck in "being
right" for some rediculous amount of time.
Again, most of these other people aren't Landmark graduates. They know
I do Landmark, and a few have ended up doing Landmark at the invitation
of some other friend or coworker. I've even had a few coworkers who
ended up doing the Forum who were pissed that I hadn't taken them to an
introduction earlier. Still, I'm a consultant, and usually don't have
the type of relationships on the road that allow for inviting lots of
people to meet me at a specific center on a specific day for a specific
introduction. I'll give them the web site, and sometimes they will
just show up - and register themselves. I don't find out about it
until Sunday night or Monday morning of their Forum.
> >There are those who believe hope is a bad thing. They are usually
> >those who are trying to keep wages low and keep prices high. They
> >remind me of the character in "Looney Toons Adventure" played by Steve
> >Martin. He wants to turn all people into monkeys so that they will
> >work for a few bananas. Then he wants to turn them into people so that
> >they will pay the highest possible price for his ACME products.
>
> [Cute. Kinda reminds me of Werner Erhard.]
Hate to admit it, but I've never met Werner. I've met his brother, and
his sister, but even they seem like pretty nice people. I think making
Landmark a Corporation owned by the employees has been a good thing for
Landmark. It makes it much harder for a single leader to dominate the
organization. There are about 50 forum leaders, about 50 center
managers, and most centers have about 2-3 additional staff members.
There is a great deal of give-and-take between all of these people.
I don't know what EST or WEA was like prior to Landmark Education
Corporation, but the things I hear from the "cultists" are things I
just haven't observed in the last 15 years. I did the Forum in 1991,
and have been participating and assisting since then. What I see is a
well run business with some interesting training programs, including
assisting, which have been sold to many satisfied customers. Figure
about 30 Forums/week world-wide, for 15 years - with 100 participants
each, say 50 weeks. That's about 22,000 forums, and about 2.2 million
satisfied customers.
About 85% go on to the next course after their free seminar, about 10%
drop out during their first seminar. Those would probably be the
dissatisfied customers. Even those, I know from personal experience,
are often dropping out because they have live changes, such as
relocation (got a better job, got married, decided to move where the
have always wanted to live - today...) or scheduling (better job means
more overtime, better marriage means more time with family, better
parenting means kids want to spend more time with you...).
Not everyone who does the Forum wants to be a community leader. Thank
goodness.
And many already ARE leaders - and just make LEC distinctions part of
their support structure.
It makes sense. If you've eaten a full meal, you don't need to stay at
the restaurant.
> >Of course, this isn't economically possible. If the monkeys only get
> >paid bananas, when they get turned back into people, they will have
> >nothing but banana peels available as currency.
> [Yeah....most phoney "gurus" become contemptuous of their followers
> after a while. Actually, they are comtemptuous of them from the
> beginning, but probably just able to hide it better.]
Maybe that's why the incorporated the company. To make sure that the
Forum Leaders were fully aware that their jobs depend on serving the
customer, not the other way around.
Even when you're "Leader Support" (leaders don't have time to cook
dinner or go to restauraunt during breaks and need to eat on 16-18
hours work-days, so an assistant makes sure that these details are
handled) - you have a very clear sense that you are getting trained and
getting value - and the leader wants YOU to have a breakthrough as much
as the participants.
> Rex,
>
> With all due respect, I can't read any more. You've worn me out.
>
> You seem like a decent, caring kind of guy.
I am. When I engage with you, I figure you'll probably never do the
Forum (again?), but that doesn't mean that I don't want you to have a
great life. Quite the opposite. Whether you do the Forum or not, I
certainly hope that you are and will be happy, healthy, and living a
great life.
> Are you familiar with or
> did you know Paul Gutfreund? Do you know what happened to him?
>
The name sounds familiar, but I really don't know him. Sorry.
>
> Ellen
Thank you for your time.
Rex