What makes us behave in the ways we do? Are we doomed to be who we are now or can we effectively change for the better? Can leadership be learnt by anyone or do we need to be born with the magic requirements? Why is education and knowledge alone not enough to produce lasting change in ourselves?
These and many other questions puzzle many of us. Typically our self doubts stop us most from becoming the true “leaders of life” that we are meant to be. We allow ourselves to be blocked by ever powerful self-doubt.
Low self esteem is the life-long legacy we carry forward impacting mostly on ourselves but also all of our relationships. It can be argued that low self-esteem is endemic in our society due to unrealistic and inauthentic expectations that we place on ourselves with or without encouragement from others. The pain reducing and coping behaviours we then adopt account for much of the mental illness in various forms and degrees that plague our society, from bullying and putting down others just to make us feel better right through to all forms of addictive behaviours that cause us more psychological and physical harm.
We would certainly need much a smaller healthcare system and budget if false low self esteem could be prevented or reversed as early as possible. Alcoholism and preventable behaviour-related trauma to self and others alone account for a huge part of healthcare. Mostly however it accounts for needlessly lost human potential, broken relationships and very damaged if not destroyed lives.
We all want success in whatever we do. We think we know what that looks like when achieved from the world around us. We learn to adopt the appearances, attitudes, behaviours and roles that we see in others who are apparently successful. Most of us know both the “image” and the behaviors we think others want from us, so we learn to “fake it until we make it” to ensure personal success.
My personal story illustrates these claims. While outwardly successful all of my late teenage and adult life, for most of my life until addressed by the Hoffman Process I lacked real authenticity and thus personal power. This was due to feelings of being a failure in my own and others’ eyes – an over-riding “not good enough” that I perceived from my early childhood, judging myself more harshly in retrospect than others or the reality. How did this occur?
Being the first male grandson of an internationally famous and well loved genius sportsman established the expectation in most others that I too would inherit the sporting genius genes. Both parents had sporting exceptional ability so surely I too would excel! It was subtle and never outwardly stated, however somehow I picked it up as the personal mantra to guide my life from my teenage years if not even earlier to the dark, desperate and in retrospect inauthentic lack of belief in me.
I can recall the painful and recurrent shame of not ever performing as expected with a ball or bat. Later I realized that the anxiety caused by the negative belief alone would cause poor performance. As a slim and sensitive kid, football was the last thing I wanted to do particularly at a private boarding school with my big, boisterous bruising thugs from cattle properties and the like. I recall the near paralysis of playing a football game comedy of errors at school, watched by the great man invisible in his car parked at the half-way line.
Nothing was said by the family; somehow I could sense and read it in their eyes or body language. My private primary school teachers had even greater expectations and were more at liberty it seems to demand that I lifted my game. I recall being publically ridiculed in grade 7 by a teacher for not wanting to attend a sports match. So failure as a sportsman equated to me from my earliest memories as being a failure as a person. I accepted my negative self-talk and wrote myself off as ever being able to be good at anything. By the time I reached grade 10, my father in one of our few remembered meaningful conversations said a few words of encouragement for me to try to do better at school. I now know he lacked any parental love due to his mother dying after a long illness when he was eight and his father being an absent at work all of his life. Raised by his step-sister, I now know that the poor man was riddled with self-doubt and low self-esteem due to his lack of effective parenting. He was unable to pass on any effective positive parenting behaviours, leading me to be relieved that I did not have children due to a belief at the time that I too just could not be an effective father.
However his few words about doing better at school created a glimmer of hope that pleasing him by better marks would result in him loving me – something I had longed for but never felt from him. He was guilty but not to blame as he knew no better way, lacking any role models.
So suddenly in my mind there was real hope for getting his love. If only I could perform better at school. My attitude and behaviour changed from accepting myself as an unfocused and bored “life failure” to a very focused and obsessional student. Nothing else in my life mattered. I got my kicks from memorizing whole poems knowing that somehow impressed examiners. Every spare minute (and more time created by the family in releasing me from washing up and other roles much to the annoyance of my siblings) was devoted to sitting alone and long hours at my desk, memorizing everything simply to be regurgitated at exams. Unfortunately that was the only known way then to excel, dreadful preparation for life and University learning (perhaps except for Medicine!).
In two years I transformed quietly from a very under-performing plodder to a memory machine that came from nowhere in the final home straight to surprise everyone (mostly me) to easily top an exceptionally intelligent final year of high school at the final “Senior” statewide examinations. I was offered a rare and coveted State Government Scholarship in Medicine that paid all fees and a generous living allowance. I chose Medicine simply because it was the “best buy” with my exceptional 40 out of 42 score.
Despite this exceptional performance, my father’s response was simply a dismissive remark that I did not reach the top 25 in the State. Such was his pathology that he by then saw me as a competitor to be put down not celebrated. Mission impossible was indeed mission impossible with him.
In retrospect, this learnt ability to obsessionally focussed on any target and outcome set me up for a life of “project-driven” professional success – at huge personal relationships cost. It also created the awareness that high energy and activity could counter my latent chronic depression caused by my deep feelings of inadequacy. In my thirties my increasing but undiagnosed depression was effectively and accidently self-managed by the fortunate release of endorphins created by aerobic exercise that by necessity then became a regular part of my life.
As a result I was outwardly and professionally highly successful. In retrospect intelligent people can assume and play whatever behaviours and roles are needed for success. However maintaining this façade to hide and fight a strong belief of deep inadequacy is exhausting. I felt empty, unfulfilled and on the edge of depression held off by a bundle of learned mechanisms mostly exercise.
Then I received a pamphlet in the mail about the Hoffman Program, immediately related to the offered benefits and within a month I started the eight days that twelve years ago forever transformed my life for the better.
The Hoffman Process regained the personal and genuine authenticity that I now know I was born with and lost during my early life journey. For the first time in my life, I was empowered to understand then fully shed the negative self-beliefs that nearly ruined my life. After one week I experienced the greatest and most powerful state of being I had ever known – the real feeling of being the real me. Since then I have been deeply comfortable, powerful and effective in the majority of roles that I have taken and accepted in my life.
What Hoffman did was to enable me to identify then remove the false self-beliefs that I had acquired from my childhood through my simple mis-understanding of and too heavy regard for expectations I perceived from others about me. I was the only problem and the only solution.
The Hoffman Process enabled me to become truly authentic for the first time in my life, completely free of the negative self-talk and limitations that I had self-imposed and allowed to limit my potential for my first fifty years. While now and for ever far from perfect, I have since that week truly loved and totally accepted myself as I am without wanting to change anything major about me.
This transformation created contentment and confidence by removing the root cause “not good enough” belief system that I alone had imposed on myself. This resulted in inadequacy, anxiety and depression. Some treat these illnesses and sypmtons with medications, distraction by addictions or by rising above the pain with many other “temporary feel good” tricks like putting others down, distracting activity or holidays. However I now know that only treating the real root cause negative self-beliefs could liberate the real me.
Exactly midway through the Hoffman Process, without knowing why I hacked off my beard worn for twenty five years as a mask to hide the then inadequate me from the harsh judging world. My voice notably deepened, I think from the release of years of tension that had tightened my throat as if I was being strangled – which in fact I was being, by myself in so many ways. Every part of life has since been liberated.
I am now strong and quite fearless in my activities, comfortable in my judgements and ready to listen and trust the real and powerful inner me. Sometimes missing is wisdom to counter my power that can and has damaged those who get in my way when I think I am right; I am now working to deepen my wisdom and spirituality as needed fine-tuning mechanisms.
For the first time in my life within months of Hofman I started to sing, now a passion that has enriched my life beyond my imagination. FUN is effortless and common, a daily remedy for any irritations that still arise.
Since Hoffman I have been the strong leader I could only dream of being in many organizations, some family situations and most importantly of myself. This could only really happen with the genuine strength, conviction and consistency that came from being real and true to myself. Both my work and personal lives have benefited from really being comfortable and relaxed about who I really am – the authentic me free of past self imposed doubts and limitations, more able to instantly see and reject new ones as they arise and try to capture my life.
To me Hoffman was worth many hundreds of times more than what I paid for it, as the only known way to get back my real life. At any price it was cheap ransom paid to free me from my own imagined terrorist captors. Some might be able to do this without Hoffman; I never could have. No alternative could be so effective within ten days. It is no surprise that it is been evaluated as being equivalent to five years psychotherapy.
I have since met very many hundreds of Hoffman graduates, all reporting similar benefits of strength and comfort through becoming authentic – just by removing imposed self doubts. I like many had attended the more well-known three day educational event that aims to do the same thing by a simple mind control techniques to turn negative thoughts into positives. Without deep and through processing of our emotional-intellectual childhood past, we do not reach and treat the real root cause as Hoffman uniquely achieves.
I strongly believe everyone from mid-twenties age (some life experience needed) would benefit from attending the Hoffman Process as a powerful life maintenance activity, a turbo-charged “grease and oil” change to clean off the accumulated life baggage and barnacles to allow us to soar to the greatest heights we were destined to reach.
There can be no greater gift first to yourself and then all your many and varied relationships. What is your real life worth to you and yours?
