The World of Self-Development: Does it really work?

As a coach in the area of behavioural science, People constantly ask me if Self-Development coaching is really working. Five years ago, I started asking this very same question from the perspective of a coach in this field. At the time it was difficult to have a concise answer to that question. I realised that the only way to get the correct answer was to observe coaches in the field as well as individuals who bought the books, workshops and seminars. For five long years I spent many hours observing and understanding the market place for this industry and came to the conclusion that the real answer is YES and NO.
Over the past twenty years, the market place has been flooded with books, seminars, online courses and private coaches springing up from all over the place, offering so many different techniques and ideas of how people can change their lives. During this time of observation, I too signed up for various seminars, online coaching and so on to get a better understanding of what is really happening out there. It was for this reason I chose not to market myself aggressively or to become well known. My aim here was not to see what the competition was doing but to have a better understanding on why so many people who buy the books and seminars struggle so much to achieve their highest potential.
So let’s start with the NO; why is self-development not working?
The truth of the matter is that there is only a 25% success rate in this field. There are many reasons why the success rate is so low. However before we go into a frantic frenzy and start casting blame, it is important that we look at this problem from various angles.
Over the past five years alone, you can now find over a hundred thousand books just on self-development and more than twenty thousand courses available online. The truth is that many of the coaches offering these books and courses are not offering anything new but a different perspective of the same thing. Another problem is that there is no depth in what many of them are teaching. Due to this, the industry gets a bad name and those genuine coaches are affected by this dilemma. From many of the courses that I signed up for, I found that they did not offer value for money; they were very weak and did not offer much in real transformation. However in the same breath I should add that most of the authors and teachers would not be writing or teaching what they do best if they did not really believe in what they wrote or are teaching.
Despite the fact that there are many coaches out there whose teachings are weak and without depth no matter how well known or famous they have become, there are just as many coaches out there who do offer value and are very powerful in their teachings and coaching. The one common and probably the most important thing that I have learned over the past five years is that no matter how weak or powerful a coach may be, they all had at least one powerful message to give that could make a difference in someone’s life.
I realised that in truth, there is no right or wrong technique.
Another aspect that has caused a problem in the industry is when self-development or life coaching suddenly brings in all the new age stuff or spiritual beliefs of the coach. Although there may be many people searching for spiritual or esoteric coaching, it is important that life and self-development coaching be kept separate from the esoteric and spiritual teachings. I am not trying to discourage anyone from searching or wanting to teach esoteric or spiritual curriculums, I am looking at it from the effect that combining the teachings causes on the subconscious level. Every human being faces subconscious resistance when taught something new in the area of transforming their lives. When the subconscious resistance occurs, it blocks the individual from achieving their goal in transformation. (I will write more on subconscious resistance in future articles.)
The biggest problem with self-development seminars and coaching is not in the techniques or what the coaches have developed, it does not matter how powerful or weak the teachings are, they all face the same problem.
The problem is that nearly every self-development teaching whether in books, seminars, workshops or private coaching, faces immediate subconscious resistance from 80% of its target audience. What I mean by this, is that coaches have to stop taking a one size fits all approach when developing their techniques and courses. It does not matter how great you are at motivating or how energetic you are in your presentation, it will not stop the subconscious resistance in the targeted audience as this resistance occurs within twenty four hours of learning something new.
People who are looking for self-development techniques or teachings that will help them transform their lives are not aware of this subconscious resistance. It is usually behavioural and causes self-sabotage without the individual realising it. It is for this reason many people ask the question on whether self-development coaching really works. People don’t need to be fixed but should only be guided gently to their own higher intelligence, by this I am referring to the high intelligence that everyone is born with but rarely have access to it due to their social influences, conditioning during their upbringing and internal programming in their internal dialogue.
During this five year personal study, I have learnt how to develop techniques that are created around an individual’s specific needs. The truth is that there is nothing new to teach anyone but creating techniques around what the individual already knows. Thereafter guiding them to enhance on what they already know in a way that reduces subconscious resistance and self-sabotage, allowing the individual to operate through their own subconscious levels that will help them achieve their goals in a faster and easier way.
The trick is to create techniques that operate around an individual’s core personality traits, while gaining an understanding on how the individual receives information through their visual and auditory cortex.
The next step is to understand how the person perceives these units of information and guiding them to identify how their level of perception causes the subconscious resistance, while helping them to be able to easily identify when they are in subconscious resistance.
The techniques are much more simple than imagined but it is putting it into practice that makes things seem difficult.
Therefore this answers the YES part of the question of whether self-development coaching works. In future articles we will look deeper into subconscious resistance and identifying self-sabotage, as well as look at areas of self-development coaching that actually do work.
Mo Khalpey is an Author, life coach, energy-exchange specialist, hypno-therapist, NLP practisioner, Graphologist and teacher residing in Cape Town, South Africa. Mo specialises in self-empowerment, defining and focusing on goals, creating your life plan, and developing confidence and self-expression in achieving your goals and dreams. He also provides Mind Coaching for sports performance, the performance arts, behaviour modification as well as therapeutic imagery and word-emotion therapy.
Come visit us at THE ACADEMY OF MIND POWER to learn more about how we can equip you with Conscious Self-Leadership skills and tools to have a transformed life, enhanced wellbeing + a successful business.
