Hi,
A HUGE Happy Holidays to everyone from me 
I hope you are all having an amazing holiday.
Even though I’ve been living everywhere
except in my home country for the last 5
years…I’ve managed to artfully dodge the
northern hemisphere winter Christmas…
…until now!
It’s my first white Christmas ever – well,
there’s no snow in Holland yet, but I hear
it’s on the way.
I want to kick off this email by admitting
that this was one of the toughest emails I’ve
ever had to write.
Over the last 6 months my thinking has
evolved significantly and I’m going to invite
you to join me in this leap forward.
I believe most of you will absolutely love
this evolution and…see it as the next generation
of personal development work.
However some may be resistant to change, and
that’s O.K. … I’m hoping the next few emails
will really hit home and explain why this change
is so important.
It all started when I stumbled onto some
research about exactly how and why placebos
worked.
It fascinated me and so I went on to
investigate other similar “errors of
judgement” that we as humans make.
It turns out there are a LOT of these habitual
errors…for example…
…we have pretty much proven
beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’re
generally good at accessing how we feel,
however…
…we are very, very, often wrong when we try
to figure out WHY we feel that way.
So we can accurately report on our feelings,
but we are completely inaccurate when trying to
explain why we feel that way.
I hope that scares you as much as it scared did me…
Confronted with a ton of water-tight evidence
about how often these “errors of judgement”
cloud us, I had to admit the undeniable
truth:
“In order to prove a technique or method CAUSES
a specific result we need a well designed,
double blind, randomized controlled study
(which is also the gold standard of proof in
the scientific community.)”
That was a BIG realization.
Now I want to stop for a second and say that
I am not discounting personal experience or
testimonial…it’s just that I’ve come to
realize and accept that as humans, our reporting
mechanisms make a LOT of mistakes…and in order
to find true causality, we need a controlled
experiment to control for those errors.
It took some time for me to accept this hard
truth, but I did eventually, and…
…armed with my nerdy academic background of
being an actuary…I tackled EVERY piece of
scientific literature, every journal paper I
could find that had anything to do with
success and happiness.
The reason I looked to those scientific pieces
of literature is of course because they are
very strict about only discussing results from
controlled studies…which, as we just learned,
is the only way to establish causality for sure.
Here’s what I found through all that research:
- Most of what we believe about success and
happiness is approximately correct BUT;
- there are a handful of absolutely crucial
concepts, strategies and tactics which are
completely missing from traditional personal
development or self help knowledge…yet we’ve
proven they have a ridiculously powerful
effect on our success and happiness;
- Also, thanks to these controlled studies we are
able to say with great certainty, what the most
important focal points are i.e. what 20% of
concepts, strategies and tactics produce 80% of
the results.
I’m going to cut this email right here, it’s
probably too long already…but I realy wanted to
drive home why this change is so badly needed.
In the next few emails I’m going to share with
you the specific concepts, strategies and
tactics that I uncovered through all that research…
…and how you can use it to create more success
and happiness in your life.
Till then, best wishes,
Rishan
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hmm, it seems very interesting to me what you have found, so you say that our “reporting mechanism” have errors? I think, that maybe for these “errors of judgement” it’s way we get the results we get from placebos.
Example, if someone who is telled to take a placebo pill that can cure an illness and he know that is just a placebo, then he will not have any “error of judgement” and the pill won’t work. In other words, he will not believe in the pill and the pill won’t work.
Well, these are just my thoughts. I don’t have the experience and the experimentation as you.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
It’s a great effort on your part to fine tune your methodology, my friend.
Just make sure NOT to mistake “acknowledging” a challenge for “focusing” on it.
Believe it or notl, you always manifest your strongest energy!
Happy New Year!
Tam
To be frank, I read backwards: the last email first. Your finding of focusing on obstacles and prepare for them resonates with my experience. Everytime I did some homework before an interview, I pass, although I did not get the job. What I usually do is I answer every possible question I might be confronted with. I always go well prepared. I don know why people deny the obvious.
Rishan, this is very interesting; but I am having trouble wrapping my head around it. I am excited to read your following emails about this topic to learn more.
It seems to have perfect timing because I have been questioning the effectiveness (for lack of a better word) of the LOA as of late. I found it comforting when you said that we are embarking on a new level of consciousnesses.
We all have at least *heard* of the LOA by now, many of us practice it. It is now time to evolve to the next step of this creative process we call life.
Thanks for the support guys…glad to see how excited everyone is about this new direction
Rishan
being aware of your obstacles and challenges: I call that know your enemies. Let’s take note of the wars in history….The wars are won be knowing who the enemies were, their characteristics, their strategies, and eliminating them through counter strategy…..onward to conquering!!(success). I don’t advocate violence but the strategy is the same. Extrapolating this over to goal setting: know what your obstacles are, strategise to minimise/eliminate them and then continue on with your goal setting strategy…