What do you mean, self-awareness?

Self: The inner and outer behaviors that holistically make you, you: Your inner-chatter, feelings, wishes, prayers, and hurts. What you experience internally as you go through your day. The you that creates your life and that responds to your life. Your mind and body fully integrated. Your thoughts, feelings and emotions, and the more spiritual or unknowable part or parts; all together, your Self.

Awareness: Consciousness, recognition, insight, to grasp, a realization…going from Why? To Oh!! Awareness with Courage: Taking a new and better course of action. In this case, awareness means understanding the 5-patterns that run your life.

What creates self-awareness?

Self-awareness comes from understanding exactly why you are acting as you are acting in any given situation.

Self-awareness comes from a holistic understanding of your self.

We all have reasons for why we act as we do. Self-awareness goes far beyond the reasons we hear in our mind or typically feel as drivers of our behavior.

Depending on your level of self-awareness, your life is run, more or less, by genetically driven behaviors, the way your brain manages memories, and your brain’s relentless drive to keep you bound in a very tight range of behaviors…the way your brain manages the 5-patterns of behavior.

By understanding the 5-patterns of behavior that run your life, you can become self-aware. Our task is to help you become what we call ‘exquisitely conscious’: Aware of what you are doing in the moment and managing what you are doing to create success in the way you define it with peace of mind.

I know my brain must be important, but I’m controlling my brain by thinking, right?

Your brain’s job is to regulate and keep your physiological and psychological processes in homeostatic balance. It does that 24-7, with you asleep or awake. That’s why it is so difficult to change your behaviors.

Your wish to change is almost powerless to create change if the behaviors you are trying to change are central to your brain’s 24-7 regulatory processes.

Because we understood this from the result of over 20-years of research into ‘Why can’t people just be different when they decide to become different’ we’ve designed a technology for understanding and changing the 5 most essential patterns that your brain is managing in its effort to keep you the same, what it believes is safe…but may not be safe.

Your brain confuses sameness and homeostasis with safety…and you pay the price in your life if your brain is set in a way that reflects early life experiences that were emotionally unhealthy.

What difference will self-awareness make to me?

Self-awareness opens the opportunity for change.

If you want to change you have to become more self-aware. There is no other way. There is no pill or magic. There is learning, understanding and work.

Can I do this on my own?

Yes, but I don’t know why you would do so.

If you are doing it on your own, you will only learn through making mistakes and by becoming conscious enough about how you work to find the exact patterns of behavior you need to change and then figure out a change process that works.

That is, you can do what it took me my whole life to do and I was studying personality theories, conducting research and have been engaged in the practice of helping others change for about 50 years.

Truly, go for it. I’ll be your biggest fan and will marvel at your efforts…but I will tell you that your choice is to reinvent the wheel by doing it on your own, or find someone who can help you

Do your books and programs teach you things to do to be more successful, like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or Who Moved My Cheese, or The Alchemist, or Rich Dad, Poor Dad?

No. Self-awareness teaches you how to effectively solve the problems you face every day as you live your life in ways that are consistent with whom you are by understanding yourself holistically and fully.

Self-awareness is not a list of things to do. Self-awareness understands you as a whole person. The books you described teach you strategies and tactics for improving parts of your self. These approaches you listed are wonderful in their own ways. But they are most effective for you after you understand your self holistically.

Is this a motivational program like Anthony Robbins?

No. Though being more successful at the things you try does motivate you to try things you might not otherwise try.

Motivational programs are great, if you need to be motivated. And, truly, they are typically short term as they are working to change the way your brain is managing your life. Most of us have adequate motivation. What we need is more knowledge of how to manage ourselves, and others to get what we really need.

All through history, people have been trying to answer of why people act as they do. Is this some compilation of wisdom from the past?

No. The information in our books and programs is based on integrating research findings from the laboratories of brain, genetics and psychological researchers along with almost 50 years of experience in teaching working adults how understanding themselves can make themselves more successful.

Are these moral or religious programs?

No. They are not based on morality or religion. That said, spiritual and religious people have used the programs to gain self-awareness as self- knowledge, morality and religion are not at odds with each other.

Are these therapy programs?

No. Therapies are typically either a self-directed search with feedback from the therapist, symptom reduction focused, or supportive in the belief that if you are supported adequately you will fix what you came into therapy to fix.

if it isn’t therapy, what is it?

This is a coaching program that teaches you how you work holistically, then coaches you in strategies of how to create what you want from your life.

I believe the key difference between the goals of therapy and our goal is that with our programs of self-awareness, the end goal is you understanding yourself as a whole integrated and genuine person. The goal of therapy is to reduce the symptoms that brought you to therapy.

Are these programs more or less effective than therapy?

The goals of therapy and of our programs of self-awareness are very different.

Our goal is to teach you how you work holistically and how to use that knowledge to improve every facet of your life. Our goal is your holistic understanding of yourself. We are very effective in teaching you this holistic approach.

The goal of therapy is to help you with the specific issues you want to manage better or with which you want to achieve a different outcome. Psychology as a profession and in its training programs is evolving into a system of ‘best practices’ that is symptom reduction based. Treating the person holistically is not considered in the best practices of Psychologists today.

So, the question really is: What type of help are you seeking, understanding yourself holistically, becoming exquisitely conscious, which will fix the issues for which you might otherwise enter psycho-therapy, or working to fix a more specific issue, as both our coaching and others’ therapy can be very effective.

Can I use my insurance to take part in these programs?

No. Insurance requires that you be diagnosed as having some form of mental disorder cataloged in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a reference book that describes all the mental disorders.

In taking part in our programs, you will never be diagnosed. You will never be a patient. You will be treated as a normal successful person who wants to know more about them selves in order to improve their life.

This is a coaching and educational process, similar in concept to you going to a coach to learn how to be better at playing a musical instrument, or a sport.

I get it your company does Coaching. How is what you teach different than what I will learn from a Life Style Coach?

There may be a life style coach that has developed a similar program, though I have never seen such a program. In my experience, most life style coaches work in a specific niche, with specific populations working on specific problems.

How do I know if these programs will help me?

If you are ‘in pain’…that is your life is not going the way you want and you realize that you are the biggest part of the problem, then you will be helped a great deal by our programs. You are searching, perhaps you’ve been in therapy and found it helpful but lacking is some way. These programs were designed for you. There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of you and we want to help you create the life you want.

If you are ‘suffering”…that is your life is not going the way you want, but you believe that others are the cause of your problems, then greater self- awareness may help you gain more clarity into why things are going the way they are. In our programs you will be helped to gain clarity in what you need to understand. There are likely billions of you of you and we want to help you, also.

If you are unconscious, just’ bouncing off walls’ or if things keep just going wrong and you really have no clue a program may help you begin to recognize you are the author of your life.

Who will the programs help the most?

You are in pain; you know you are the biggest part of the problem. You are not in a current crisis that is requiring all your emotional resources to keep yourself going. You are or have been successful in your job or profession. You have probably tried therapy and/or other programs of personal growth. While helpful, you recognized that there was much more to learn about yourself.

You feel a strong need to understand yourself as a whole person. You have the Courage to learn to see yourself as the author of your life and the Courage to work to become the person you know that is in there working so hard to come out.

This will cost money. I don’t think I can afford it.

Self-awareness is priceless.

The cost of ignorance is immense. It may cost you your life, certainly your quality of life.

I believe everyone should have the opportunity to become self-aware. We have scholarship programs and we are working on a group-based program and a media based program.

The program is an investment you make in yourself. The best investment you will ever make is an investment in your self…you create the life you endure.

You have one life. You will make of it what you can. We want to help you create success in the way you define it with peace of mind.

Do you guarantee I will be different?

You will see that many of the illustrations on the site are paths. We can help you get on a path that works for you and we can help you on that new path. How you apply the information and how diligently you apply the information and how much Courage you have are all up to you. We cannot supply you with perseverance, diligence, or Courage.

I can guarantee you that we will supply you with information about the 5-patterns that run your life. I guarantee we will do everything in our power to understand you, and to communicate with you in a way that works for you.

We will help you when you come to realize that what we are teaching is true, and that the chance of a really new and different you is real and is frightening.

But, even if you work closely with us in your program and we are doing our best to teach you how you work, you will have to be the one that walks down your path.

So, no, I or we cannot guarantee you will be different. That one is up to you.