It turns out that using the way we are shown to create success is almost as impossible to succeed with as flying to Mars by flapping your arms!
Andy Shaw creator of A Bug Free Mind
How can I say that, given that a few people succeed?
Because the people who do succeed saying they use this method, didn’t use that method. They succeeded because they already could!
The problem I’ve found after two decades of focusing on this is… There are 5 Elements that are actively working against people studying self-improvement which are preventing their progress.
These five elements are either not known about, or are known and not considered.
So to nutshell it…
There are 5 Elements to the main problem in today's world of ‘no progress with success and personal achievement’, and no amount of cramming in knowledge will overcome this!
Which means... Continuing to study this way will continue to be as effective as flapping your arms to fly to Mars.
So what are these 5 Elements?
Element 1:
The first two elements are closely connected... The first is that you are simply drowning in information today…
If you're typical… you've bought countless books on personal development. Your shelf is stacked full of them. And your reading list continues to grow with every Facebook post asking for more reading suggestions.
However, the truth is… If you're not living your dream life right now, then you're not applying what you’re learning.
Which begs the question… So what’s the point of learning it?
People forget to look at this, because if they did then they’d start to find the answer they are ‘actually’ looking for in all the books…
In today's world of people studying self-improvement, you are left with people who can talk about what they’re learning so much so that they could teach it to others…
...Yet they just can’t apply it themselves to their own lives. We’ve all seen life coaches who cannot practice nor achieve what they preach.
More truth is; you and everyone studying self-improvement are at the very best using less than 5% of whatever you learn to change and improve your life!
That can’t be true though right, as you’ve learned so much… As my regular students will know I often comment on knowledge without application actually being destructive, not constructive to people's development…
But why is that?
You see, we've all been conditioned by our education system, by our peers, by the personal achievement teachers, that the way to success is to read read read & study study study ... as much ... as possible!
There’s only one problem with this plan… It’s utter, utter, utter ...garbage!
If you've been out in the real world for any length of time… you already know that it doesn't really matter WHAT you know... It doesn’t matter how much you can memorise… The only thing that matters in the real world is what you can apply… What you can actually do!
… Everything else is just noise! Pleasant noise, but just noise UNTIL you can learn to apply it. Which is why I advise people to apply just in time learning, which is the second element.
Element 2:
Just in time learning...
Think about it… Why learn something before you need it?
Because learning something fools you into thinking you know something and that you don’t need to learn it later. When later is when you actually do need it, and can, therefore, implement it.
But our nature is to assume we have learned something when we haven’t.
The solution is to always consider, ‘am I living to this.’ If you are, then you have learnt it for now… But there is element 3 which causes a problem with that… But before we get to element 3 let’s consider if you are not living to what you learned…
Well, it means you haven’t learnt it properly. You merely have a weak and destructive intellectual understanding. That's all!
It’s destructive because you incorrectly assume you have learnt it, and know it. Way better to know you don't know something, than know you do, but do not.
And to confuse things even more… You are correct, you do know it. But you don’t know it to a high enough level…
Knowing something transforms into wisdom when you are living to it. So knowing something is useless and destructive if you are not living to it.
So your progress doesn’t happen because you are overwhelmed with new competing information and you are not applying what you’ve already learnt…
How could you possibly make real progress following this method?
Which is the exact method the 99% of people in the group of self-improvement students follow!
But it gets worse…
Element 3:
The 3rd and simply massive element which is not understood by virtually everyone on earth is….
Your mind is not static. The human mind is constantly changing and is therefore not static… Obvious right?
So why do we assume and believe we can learn something and know it if we are not living to it?
If we couldn’t live to it when we learnt it, how do we think we can possibly live to it later after years of changes in our thinking?
Because the whole world is following this very same false assumption.
The whole world believes they can learn something and then they have that information and that’s the end of it… They believe they now have it on call at a moment's notice.
If this were in any way true, then there would be a 99% reduction in stress, anxiety, and depression in the world… Can you imagine that…
- Almost no one stressed...
- Almost no one anxious...
- Almost no one depressed…
No, of course, you can’t imagine it as it’s not possible… Yet at least.
Instead, we are at epidemic levels of depression, anxiety, and stress...
So why is it not possible...
- To learn confidence once and have it forever?
- To learn to let go of worries once and not have relief from worries forever?
- To learn freedom from fears and not have that freedom forever?
Why is none of this possible?
Because your mind is not static…
Your mind changes from this hour to the next, it is changing shape all the time, because you are moving through life even if you are sitting still.
Your mind this year bears little resemblance to the mind you had when you were 18 years old… Your whole life has changed since then, therefore how you think has changed too.
Your consciousness has moved up in some areas of your life, and down in others… And the levels keep changing depending on your life situation… You keep changing, always!
Therefore something you learnt last year, last month, may not be something you can apply today. Because your mind is not static. So to think for a brief second that the accumulation of knowledge would be the solution to personal achievement is just dumb…
Even if the whole world does it that way.
Without a way to keep up with the changes your mind goes through, then almost everything you learnt goes out of date. Then you wonder why you can’t achieve what you know you are capable of…
If your mind was static then depression would not be possible. The fact that depression exists in the mind of someone who studies self-improvement is proof that your mind is not static.
It’s not because they are weak, and should just suck it up… It is because their mind is not processing thoughts in the way their mind is designed to work.
Change how thoughts are processed and the result is:
- Freedom from depression...
- Freedom from stress...
- Freedom from anxiety...
- Freedom from overwhelm...
- Freedom from worry...
- Freedom from fear...
...All of the nasties cannot help but fall away if you can continue to apply the right thought process over time…
But your mind is not static, and so being able to apply this process is key to continuous and never-ending improvement, and the attainment of personal achievement.
...Why do you assume you can read something once and just have it available to your beck and call?
Because education does not take into account the fact that your mind is not static. And does not teach just in time learning. It is not in their interest to do so…
So someone taught it wrongly, and the whole world has copied them!
So your progress doesn’t happen because... You are overwhelmed with new competing information and you are not applying what you’ve already learnt... And your mind is not the same as when you learnt it...
How could you possibly make real progress following this method? ...Which is the exact method the 99% of people in the group of self-improvement students follow…
Can you see why you’ve made little to no progress… Or can you see why you made progress before, but can’t seem to get back to that?
But wait it gets worse…
Element 4:
The 4th element is simplicity...
We think and know we always want simpler, and it’s true we do. We have been trained to want and expect it.
So simplicity is served up to us, and then we don’t make progress…
This is because of what Albert Einstein discovered… Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler.
Our minds have to attain the right level of consciousness to be able to understand, learn to know, and then apply the wisdom.
If something is too simple, then our minds can switch off our recognition of it. We literally don’t see it. Our mind was given something too simple, and it effectively ignored it 100%...
Simplicity has to meet the mind of the student in exactly the right place for wisdom to be seen, learned, accepted and then finally transformed into living it as a way of life...
To prove this just spend 5 minutes talking to anyone of my readers. Anyone who has read or listened to A Bug Free Mind more than once will tell you they never saw certain parts of the process when they first read it.
They’d probably swear it wasn’t in there. However, most who have listened to it 20+ times are still discovering new things they never heard in it before.
This is because their consciousness is raising as they study and they can understand and apply the simplicity. Because I made the lesson simple enough, but not too simple… So that when their mind was ready, the plainly written lesson was absorbed and they were able to live to it easily.
People think they can go and get Cliff notes from books and that way get all the wisdom from a 250-page book in a 3-page read. No, they can’t, anyone who thinks that is dumb!
Sure you can stick more knowledge into your mind which you are not capable of applying.
- But you can’t get the wisdom from it.
- But your ego convinces you that you can…
- And the whole world agrees and does it that way…
But everyone doing it one way does not make it right. It just means that our embedded herd thinking is still going strong!
People think they must consume and get to the end of the book, the video, the course to have learned. Whereas the truth is to apply what you are learning.
If you never get to the end but achieve progress and your goals, then why do you need to get to the end?
You don’t…
The truth is... We want simplicity, but not simpler… Even if we don’t think we want it!
Understanding that there is a limit in our minds for simplicity because it is relevant to our current level of consciousness means the 4th Element ceases to hold you back.
So your progress doesn’t happen because you are overwhelmed with new competing information... And you are not applying what you’ve already learnt... And your mind is not the same as when you learnt it… And you are seeking it to be too simple which means you can’t actually learn to apply it...
How could you possibly make real progress following this method? ...Which is the exact method the 99% of people in the group of self-improvement students follow…
Can you see why you’ve made little to no progress? Or can you see why you made progress before, but can’t seem to get back to that?
But wait it gets worse…
There’s one more element I’ve found which is so obvious but is not convenient so is excluded from people’s considerations… But you need to be awake to avoid a problem with learning it…
So if you’re awake and I haven’t put you to sleep…
Element 5
The final element is your level of immersion in the material...
Right now your ego will probably be jumping about and rebutting what I’ve just said… But let me explain, as that line was too simple, for your current level of consciousness…
A while back a friend of mine who was studying my Success Made Simple course said to me, “You know this is the formula Ben Franklin wrote about in his autobiography, you’ve made what he said practical.”
I hadn’t noticed, but he was right.
The formula I had used to create my course was in that book. It’s the formula that Ben Franklin called his, 'personal success formula'.
200 years before the internet Ben Franklin had figured this stuff out himself. It was and is the simplest implementation system ever devised for creating a successful life.
But that’s where the problem lies… As it was so simple in fact… That for 200 years… Despite millions of the books being read, hardly anyone's ever tried it!
Let alone made it work!
The formula, in a nutshell, was this…
...Now before I tell you this, please don't be fooled by the simplicity of what I'm about to show you.
Yes, it really is simple but it is also the most powerful secret to getting everything you want in life.
Are you ready to hear it?
Here it is: What Ben Franklin did was pick one subject. And spend a week concentrating on that one thing
until its mastered and then he moved on to the next.
…It sounds so obvious, doesn’t it?
BUT…
...You with your massive intellect can’t do obvious stuff like that as you are dragged off with your need to learn new stuff at the moment you finish consuming the thing you’ve just learnt but can’t apply...
You have fallen into the habit of acquiring knowledge and moving on - virtually everyone has!
Now when you were a child you were in the habit of acquiring knowledge and then applying it, then moving on.
You see we have been trained the wrong way, we used to do it naturally, as success is natural to us… But success has been trained and educated out of us. Instead, we have been trained to thirst for knowledge.
So we get knowledge, we get and feel for a while anyway, that we’ve progressed because we learnt new stuff, but we don’t get success… And we don’t get personal achievement...
The way you did it as a child is called focusing, the way you do it as an adult is called confusing… And a confused person does not make progress. They do not succeed, and they then get no personal achievement…
Every time I have moved my life forward it has come about right after I’ve immersed myself in a subject and then persisted with my education in it…
Every time I talk to someone who's had success in an area, it immediately follows an immersive experience and then they persisted with their education and focus on it. - That’s everybody!
The personal achievement you seek cannot be attained without immersion in the area you wish achievement in.
Franklin knew it, I know it, and you know it now, at the moment… But can you live to it?
If you have had successes before, then just look at what led to your success. Right before achieving it you immersed yourself in that subject.
...Any lack of progress now is a result of either lack of immersion or one or more of the other four elements.
