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Old 08-29-2008, 11:36 PM   #23 (permalink)
matt1968
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sentient View Post
Sure, I'll give you a quick rundown of the structure.

Tools overall philosophy is: Much of our behavior is a result of our ingrained thoughts and habits. Let's change those habitual thoughts and maybe that will free us up to make changes. Many attempts at change fail simply because our old habits suck us back down into our unsuccessful ways.

Consequently, the first 30 days is basically a cleaning house of negativity and building of self-respect and trust. You do simple things, like smile throughotu the day, brush your teeth, and drink water. And you do them often. Each one of those subtly communicates that you like yourself. Strangely enough, it actually seems to work really well. It turns out when you tell yourself 100 times per day that you love who you are you eventually get the message. In most cases, after 30 days, you find you rarely complain anymore, and it grates on your ears when others do so. You also find it exceedingly hard to fool yourself into believing your old excuses. You've just been conditioned out of it.

After the 30 days, they take advantage of your new, solid foundation. You keep drilling on all the old stuff, and they start adding in new techniques. They spend time talking about visualization, results vs goals, how to set goals and track them, motivation. Other topics are ushered into the mix like relationships, identity, To Do lists. It can seem like a haphazard mix, but what starts to emerge is a sense of "the successful individual." You start to see how really this stuff you do from one day to the next is just a natural extension of what a holistically happy, positive, driven, fulfilled individual looks and acts like. By slowly adopting all the pieces of that individual, and doing so on top of your solid foundation, you begin to emerge AS that individual by the end.

Of course the caveat is, as always: You do the work, you get the results. You read the chapters, watch the videos, but don't actually LIVE it in your daily life and you'll get some benefit for sure, but you won't be transformed.

It's funny, my mother is on Day 5 and now she's harassing my father to do it. I also signed up my sister and she's joined the fray too. So, what i wrote could all be true. That or it could be the most successful cult ever!!!

If you've got any ?'s just shoot. Hope that was helpful. Oh, and PS another friend of mine echoed your original comment. He went to the website and for the life of him coudln't figure out where to go next. He's also a CS major so that is saying something.

Finally, I'll make a comparison between Tools and Steve's work. I'll start off by saying that no comparison is really necessary, in the sense that the two very easily coexist within the same growth effort. I'd say the presentation of ideas by Steve is often more in depth than what you'll get in tools. He has a lot of original insights that are presented in unique ways. Tools touches on a lot of the same topics, and the material within it is good, although head to head Steve's writing is better. The value doesn't come from there though. It undoubtedly comes from the fact that it is an actionable plan for *living* the material day in day out. If I were designing a master course, I would probably put Tools first and then after people had reached proficiency I would sick them on Steve's work to get even greater insight. Also, because they were already solidly successful, they would be able to implement his ideas rather than just nodding along and then returning to their old ways, or trying to change and then failing.
Thanks for recommendation to the site Sentient, I'm currently on day 6 and I'm impressed. I was going to give a summary of my experience with the website but you've done such a good job of describing it above, I'll leave it to you!

I would just add that I am very impressed with the authenticity of Devlyn Steele and the website. I'm also very impressed with the quick and considered response to any feedback or problems they receive. Like you say, it is by no means perfect but the attitude, intention and spirit behind it are first class.
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