One of the things that most frustrates me about the self development industry, is the refusal of large parts of it to move with the times.

There are still people using coaching methods that were developed when smoking was cool, meditation was for weirdo’s and England had a good soccer team.

There are also so many myths about self development that are clung onto with almost evangelical fervor by some people who seem to wish science would just go away and stop annoying people with the pesky truth.

We have all had erroneous beliefs at times in our lives. In fact we all carry some of them with us now.

It’s not that we get things wrong that’s the problem, it’s the refusal to challenge our own ideas and beliefs and accept that we can be wrong.

The fervor with which we believe in something has no relationship to the likelihood of it being right.

I have made a number of volte faces in the 13 years since I got into self development.

Trust me, I got some things horribly and embarrassingly wrong and here’s the proof.

1) Follow Your Bliss

I think this is possibly one of the most damaging beliefs in self development – that everybody should follow their bliss and we can all have whatever we want just as long as we want it and believe in it badly enough.

I used to support this belief and in my early days encouraged both clients and blog readers to adopt this approach.

I now realize it’s folly.

Telling kids they can have whatever they want out of life can actually be harmful because unhappiness always springs from the world not being how we think it should be.

There aren’t any 5’ 2” NBA players. They’re aren’t any nuclear scientists with IQ’s of 95. And there aren’t any tone deaf opera singers.

I’m not very good at golf and my singing is truly atrocious.

It wouldn’t matter how much bliss either of those activities gave me, following them for anything other than pleasure would have meant financial ruin and turned me into a very unhappy bunny.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t follow your bliss, of course you should, if, and it’s a big if, you either have a certain amount of aptitude, or it’s just for fun.

2) The Law of Attraction

Oh Lordy! The way I have brutally attacked the Law of Attraction  I doubt many people realize that there was a point in time when I was on the bandwagon.

I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first read about it via Thomas Leonards book ‘The 28 Principles of Attraction” (later renamed ‘The 28 Laws of Attraction” to cash in on ‘The Secret’).

What can I say other than I obviously disengaged my brain for a period of time. Then I watched ‘The Secret’ and got all caught up in the hype.

Then I watched it again and something clicked.

I was about half way through when a voice in my head said, “this is total fucking bollocks you imbecile”.

And that was that.

3) Subliminal Recordings

About 3 years before training to become a Life Coach I was more stressed than a blind air traffic controller.

I bought a stress busting cd from the grand old lady of self development, Louise Hay.

There were two tracks on the cd, one subliminal and one with her narrating it normally.

It guaranteed a reduction in my stress levels if I listened to it every day for at least 30 days.

I literally listened to it almost every day all the way through for 2 fucking years every time I took my dog for a walk.

The net result was Louise Hay got a tad richer and I realized I’d been suckered into believing something that has actually been since proven to be completely and utterly worthless.

4) Positive Thinking

Around the same time as I was listening to Louise Hay witter on about me being safe and telling me my stress was simply melting away I started buying positive thinking cd’s to listen to in the car.

Positive thinking just makes so much sense at the surface level.

Think positive thoughts, have a positive outlook and positive things are bound to happen to you.

Well sadly for me, nothing happened and I was kind of relieved when a mountain of evidence started to stack up showing that positive thinking people were, statistically speaking, no happier than the rest of us.

Not only that, but in many cases there were less well equipped to deal with severe adversity and can be more prone to depression.

Weird eh?

5) Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer & Brian Tracy

I loved all of those guys at one time and truly believed they knew what they were talking about.

In fairness I think all 3 have written some good stuff, but equally all 3 have a tendency to talk out of their arse.

I lost faith in Wayne Dyer when he incorrectly cited research to support a story he was telling about the human belief system.

In his eagerness to inform his audience that a group of people who had a placebo operation to a damaged knee and low and behold could walk better afterward, he neglected to say that every person in the study relapsed within a week.

I think the human belief system is amazing and we have only scratched the surface of what it’s capable of, but we don’t need to invent shit or mislead people to demonstrate that.

Chopra lost me when he claimed Quantum Physicists had hijacked the term quantum physics in a lame attempt to explain the Law of Attraction to an incredulous Richard Dawkins.

Since that interview he seems to have spent most of his spare time sniping at Dawkins on Twitter – Very enlightened Deepak.

When Brain Tracy was told the Ivy League study on goal setting from the 1950’s that he recounted on a regular basis was an urban myth and never happened he replied, ‘Well it should have’ and continued to use it.

Nice one Brian – fuck science and the truth eh?

6) Fire Walks

To be fair I only believed there was anything remotely mystical about fire walks for about 10 minutes when I was doing my first NLP training.

Sadly the fire walk took place one evening when I couldn’t attend.

I was told the following day that one person burned themselves and it was obviously because they didn’t get in the right state and have enough belief.

Of course it was, and it’s equally obvious I make Bradley Cooper look like a Warthog licking piss off a nettle.

The only way anybody gets burned doing a fire walk is if they lie down to take a nap, or a hot coal flicks up and gets stuck between their toes.

The skin is so thick on the bottom of our feet that it can easily withstand the heat of hot coals for a short period.

It’s not mystical, it’s science.

7) 7 Plus Or Minus 2

Until very recently it was believed that the conscious mind could hold between 5 and 9 pieces of information at any one point in time.

Rather annoyingly I even refer to this in How To Be Rich and Happy.

Well recent research has proven that it’s wrong, and the true figure is closer to 4 pieces of data.

And even 4 is pushing it because degradation occurs when you try and pay attention to two things consciously at once.

I’d love to hear in the comments what you have changed your mind about over the years either through experience or being exposed to new information.

The more embarrassing the better, especially as I fessed up to the Law of Attraction!

Image Courtesy of Chris Fane