An Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from a forthcoming book for Financial Advisors co-authored by myself and Dr. John Stolk. Look for more information in the weeks to come, but if you found this valuable, imagine what an entire day with the co-authors could do for your business. If you were to find this valuable and wanted to invest in yourself for a radically improved 2017, I might suggest going to https://unique-minds.com/products-page/seminars/ and checking out the full day Brain Train session.
It’s a Trap!
Yes, you read that in Admiral Akbar’s voice. And if we did not re-direct you now, your head would be filling with internet memes of Akbar declaring “It’s a trap!” layered over pictures of decaf coffee or cute fluffy kittens with machine guns. Go ahead, try to purge them from your mind. Try to not think of a STOP sign.
You thought of a STOP sign, didn’t you? Of course you probably did, because the vast majority of people would because we set you up to do so. The question is, are you setting up STOP signs and traps for yourself? Probably, because of some bad programming in your wetworks between the ears.
Would you like to override some of that programming?
Would you like to recognize some of the patterns that lead to failure and negativity, before you go too far down that neural pathway and get caught?
If you were to think about it for a moment, the answer would probably be YES. And partially because we are using the ideas behind the traps you’ve set for yourself to give you the illusion of choice in the matter of breaking the patterns of failure. We are tricking you into succeeding mentally even as you read this sentence. And it will be all the more powerful because you think it is your idea. You might want to re-read the previous couple of sentences and think about that, and how to apply it in your business.
We recognize that traps of a physical nature are not nearly as dangerous for you as they would be for say Dr. Stolk in his old line of work that included going into bad places after bad people that want to do bad things. We doubt you have to deal with trip wires or incoming fire. You do not face bodily harm and death regularly in your financial services career as it is rare for someone to even threaten to physically throw you out. But the psychological dangers are very real and insidious. If you absorb what we present in this chapter, your awareness of these threats will dramatically increase.
Once again we decided to present this section in a vignette style so that once you read it once, you can pick and choose which parts are most relevant to you at any given time in your Decision.
Laing’s Model: A Psychotic World
One thing about psychiatrists is that they are not immune to mental illness, and a shining example of this was Scottish shrink R. D. Laing whose son declared “My father solved other people’s problems, but not his own.” We are not perfect and have our own issues, but we can objectively look at external situations and help you assess and understand them. Like how the world is really a giant psychotic episode.
To give you a quick overview one needs to understand what Laing (and we) refer to as the Two Selves.
There is the public presentation of whom we are, which is full of illusion and some bluster. We try to put on our best appearance (ever hear “fake it ‘til you make it” in training?). It is the Doctor (or financial adviser) in debt up to their eyeballs yet driving the new flashy car. It is the soccer mom with the perfect Christmas picture that is at all the recitals and drinking a bottle of wine a night after the kids are in bed. Cobbler’s kid with no shoes, or attorney without a will and estate plan. It is the forced white shirt and boring tie in the office so as to fit in with the culture. In financial services it is the illusion of success because “successful people want to work with other successful people.” It is the pretty surface that once scratched reveals a not so pretty situation beneath.
As an engineer will tell you, if the foundation to the building is not strong and crack free, you will have issues later. If you think for a moment, psychologically this is the same situation. People build big flashy houses adorned with trappings of success on shifting sands. Not super stable.
Think about how often you’ve been told “fit in”, “don’t make waves”, “polish yourself”. There are hundreds of phrases that you have heard thousands of time telling you to be something other than who you really are “because it’s better for you”. To be like all the sheeple that have the face they show the public and a very different one known only to them and maybe those closest to them. This public face is what Laing calls the “False Self”. It is a cocoon of half truths and lies of various shades of white and grey that covers the true being within.
Hidden within this False Self is the True Self. This is what we admit to ourselves and those closest to us. This is where we admit that we like watching Spongebob Squarepants, or that we hate doing Thanksgiving with the inlaws. This is where our edge is, the things that are not fully socially acceptable yet invigorate us. This is the kernel of terror of being poor again like when we grew up and were embarrassed, or that fear of celery that one of Joe’s close friends has and only a few know about. The constant need to prove ourselves because we have doubt. It is all the weird things outside of the “normal” distribution that when aggregated really make us unique and stick out instead of blending in the way our educational system is designed to do. If you know anyone that is absolutely world class in something, they are probably “a little off”. It is partially why they are so good.
Note we are not talking being a weirdo for the sake of being a weirdo, nor are we talking about trying to be different (like all the people you know with similar tattoos that are meant to show how individualistic they are) for the sake of getting attention. Not a hipsteresque embracing of something like artisanal pickles. One of those things that when you discover it about a friend you say “OK, that’s weird. I don’t get it, tell me more.” It is a core that is out of sync with the accepted mores of family and our Society, and remains even as the world and trappings change. It is the reason why little kids tell the truth even when it can be embarrassing to the big people around. It is why the grumpy old lady says what she thinks without giving a damn what you or the rest of the people think. It is partially why Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, because even the ardent Democrats KNEW and admitted she was untrustworthy. Trump was like the drunk uncle: you didn’t agree with everything but you knew for the most part what was believable and what wasn’t.
There is the old saying “In wine there is truth” because alcohol can strip away some of the False Self. It reveals some of the “don’t give a fu(<” and resonates, making people want to say “Hell yeah!” and “Amen!”. In an insane world, crazy is truth.