Precision Change

If you’ve ever attended a Tony Robbins event, or ever read a personal development book or blog, you’ve probably heard variations of “happiness/passion/confidence/enthusiasm/willpower/etc. is like a muscle.”
Whenever a personal development guru talks about passion, enthusiasm, or even happiness, there is usually a clear directive that if you aren’t feeling these emotions, you can build them [...]

Life Coaching–my beloved profession–is part of a larger trend of alienation in our culture. Every coach wants deeply to help others while making a right livelihood for themselves. But inadvertently, we in the healing professions accelerate the larger problems of meaninglessness, empty relationships, alienation, and the commodification of everything in our very attempts to solve [...]

(This is part 1 of a series where I take the classic personal development book Think and Grow Richand deconstruct it’s philosophical and pragmatic foundations. As Think and Grow Rich is a iconic text in the personal development literature, a thorough philosophical deconstruction will allow for a new paradigm of personal development to emerge. In [...]

I don’t recommend just anybody take up the path of deep personal, spiritual, and cultural transformation. Many people have died (usually through suicide or drug overdose), become homeless, gone crazy, lost jobs, lost marriages, lost friendships, been exiled from their communities (spiritual and otherwise), and overall suffered immensely by undertaking a life path of conscious [...]

We interrupt this flow of thought-provoking articles on personal development to let you know that I’m currently offering Core Transformation Coaching sessions on a donation basis.
I figure the best way for us all to get through these tough times is to help each other, so I’m kicking it off by offering my help to you [...]

According to the dictionary on my Macbook, religion is “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.” Religion is also defined as “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.”
I think of a religion as a set of answers to the great philosophical questions of [...]

I remember when I first learned about personal motivation. I thought to myself, “What if I could use the power of advertising to convince myself to do things that I wanted, rather than what advertisers wanted me to do?”
Advertising and marketing are very powerful cultural influences. New understandings of human psychology are continually being applied [...]

Tony Robbins called it “passion.” Many people call it “purpose.” What we are all seeking in our lives is inspiration–to feel alive, energized, engaged in meaningful creative activity. What is inspiration, and where does it come from?
Many of us seek inspiration in inspiring quotes, motivational audio programs, passionate self-development books, and enthusiastic “breakthrough” weekend workshops. [...]

Foundational to personal development is the idea of constant and never-ending improvement. “What isn’t growing is dying.”
Tell me, what in nature grows constantly and never-endingly without regard for its relationships with others?
Trees reach a certain height and stop, and eventually die. All animals grow for a time, mature, reproduce, and die.
Here are some things that [...]

The subtitle of Tony Robbins’ book Awaken the Giant Within–which sold over 1 million copies and influenced a generation of personal developers–is “How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Financial Destiny!”
The big fat problem is that you cannot ultimately control any of these things.
The recession is teaching many people who thought [...]