Why Would Anyone Let Stress Hold Them Back, When Together We Can Easily Master It?
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Stress And Frustration Can Be Turned Into Passion And Excitement. The Question Is;
Will You Join Us And Make Life Easier On Yourself?
Some moments in life are decisive. They open up a whole new side of life to you, that once you taste you can never again return to ignorance. The moment you started school. The moment you first kissed a boy or girl. The moment you became a Parent.
Right now you face one of those critical moments. This is like the scene in the Matrix where Neo is offered the red or the blue pill. The blue pill will return him to ignorance. The red will open up a rabbit warren of conspiracies and the truth.
Now it’s your turn to choose. Will you carry on pass over this invitation and forget this moment ever happened and continue pretty much as before?
Or will you learn the little known art of stress alchemy?
Stress Alchemy is what I call the art of transforming stress and frustration into adventure and excitement.
Most people today are finding that life is increasingly becoming a stress-filled minefield. Yet every stressful incident has the potential to become a thrilling life experience. If you only develop the skill of alchemy.
Let’s me be blunt, neither of us has time to waste, so I’m going to come straight out and ask you a question that will determine whether it’s worth your time reading on.
If you knew there was a way to transform stress into an exciting adventure so that you could focus your energy on living more peacefully, meaningfully and enjoyably would you take the time to learn it?
I have to ask because many people just aren’t ready to invest any effort or time in their own well-being. They don’t really want a solution that takes any energy or effort. They just want to find pills, magical spells and imagined shortcuts such as subliminal cds, Guru’s who’ll tell them the secret steps so they don’t have to think anymore and can get back to their TV, video games and porn.
Now I don’t have any magical solution, but I do know how to take what you currently feel as stress and turn it into a source of excitement and joy.
It’s not always easy and it does take effort, but it is lasting and ultimately is the most fulfilling and exhilarating thing you can do because it puts you in control of your life.
So as long as a little effort doesn’t scare you off then it will be worth your while to read on…
Stress Is Inevitable. It’s How You Respond That Determines Your Fate.
It is natural in this world to reach a point where stress becomes unmanageable, because there are so many conflicting demands that eventually they clash irreconcilably. However when you reach that point you have to pick one of two choices.
You can either bury your head in the sand and avoid what’s causing the problem.
Or you can take a deep breath, gather up your courage and face up to what frightens you and deal with it.
Those that take the first option, languish in depression, frustration and bitterness until they eventually realise that they are stuck until, sooner or later, they go past their fear.
Those that take the second option find a whole new depth and strength inside themselves that takes them to a whole new level of meaning, capability and self-confidence. They learn that the secret to a happy and successful life is the skill of stress alchemy. Turning stress into adventure.
photo credit: jeremybarwick
Some people, at first, think this sounds ridiculous.
Yet if you really think about it, almost every hero in life and in fiction began his heroic path in response to a stressful incident. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Luke Skywalker would never have become heroes, but for some stressful incident. Of course, your stress may seem much more mundane, but still wrapped inside it is an opportunity for a mini-adventure.
How can something bad become good?
Well it’s because the more pain and discomfort you feel, the more emotional power there is behind the issue. In other words, deep down somewhere it means a lot to you. Because it means a lot to you and it isn’t going right, it is causing you pain or discomfort. The more it means to you, the more it hurts.
But when you remove the blocks, then you suddenly get a powerful flow of energy and enthusiasm to propel you towards your goal. Use that energy and emotion constructively and it’s like landing on a ladder in a game of snakes and ladders. You reach your goal quicker.
Perhaps you can remember a time when you resolved something that had been causing you a lot of emotional pain. Maybe a fight with your Partner, a worrying health issue for you or a loved one. A vital project or something similar.
For weeks it was on your mind, worrying you, causing sleepless nights. As you reached the critical moment, the tension became almost unbearable. Your mouth went dry, your heart raced and your knees almost gave way.
But then when it worked out perfectly there was a powerful wave of excitement. You felt an enormous sense of relief. A jolt of energy. Just throughout your body there was the sensation of pure love and joy. A sense of power as if you could do anything. As if the world was the most perfect place.
Well, no longer do you have to be reliant on luck as to whether this happens or not. This is the kind of transformation that you can learn to create in your life again and again once you understand the process of stress alchemy.
I’ve been learning, refining and helping other people to learn the art of transforming stress into something exciting for 16 years now. And it is a highly intricate, but ‘oh so’ rewarding skill.
You see, the world can be a wonderful place or a nightmare. It depends on how you look at it and interact with it. It’s full of pitfalls and opportunities. Which you see and face is up to you.
The world is full of interesting places to see and things that you could be doing. Too many in fact.
And that’s part of the problem.
Too many possibilities without a defined criteria for deciding which to do and not to do is a recipe for stress, chaos and unfulfilled potential.
It’s Time To Leave The Orchestra And Become The Conductor
Give any average kid free rein in a candy store and what do you get?
A glucose overdose and one sick kid.
We can see for ourselves the same dynamic. Over the last 50 odd years, in the Western world, we have been able to pretty much eat anything and everything we want. The result is an epidemic of obesity. Look the diagrams below show the increasing obesity levels between 1985 and 2001.
Currently there’s about 1 billion overweight adults in the world. Given that there’s only 6 billion people in the world, once you take off children and the third world countries filled with starving people, that’s an incredible percentage.
The cause isn’t junk food. The real cause is an underdeveloped decision making process over what to eat. Instinctively we are driven to eat. Deciding on the basis of does it taste good, eventually always results in becoming overweight. It’s just that some people have a higher metabolism and so can delay the inevitable.
Looking at how obesity has spread can show us where we are likely to be heading with the new epidemic – stress. Right now, if you had a heatmap like the obesity slide we’d be in a similar stage to 1985. Over the next few years it’s going to explode and affect more and more people, more intensely. Life isn’t ever going to slow down, so we have to up our game to be ready to ride the waves.
What Causes Stress And How Can We Best Deal With It?
Stress is caused by trying to live up to too many roles from too many sources. The media pressurises us to live up to their glossy standards, so that we’ll buy from their advertisers. Your Parents have expectations. Your Employer or Clients demand certain things. Your Partner wants more from you. Your kids want you to be there for you. And your Friend’s are wondering why you don’t call them anymore. But you just can’t split yourself in enough parts to keep everyone satisfied.
There are more possible goals for you to reach in life, than you’ll ever achieve in ten lifetimes. Just as there are too many choices of where to eat dinner. So if you don’t really know who you are, what you are and where you’re going, life is just going to get more and more stressful. And eventually you will break.
Some people already are. In Japan, the phenomenon of Karoshi, death by overwork, has been about for over 20 years.
It’s just that, like those with high metabolisms can delay gaining weight for longer, some people can put up with stress for longer. However if you just keep trying to do more and more things indiscriminately, you just end up buried under a mountain of tasks, responsibilities and obligations that stifle and suffocate your energy and your natural zest for life. And you’ll die without ever achieving any of your dreams.
It might seem that your stress is caused by unreasonable people or situations. But the truth is you are trying to do too many things. Trying to juggle too many balls. Trying to please too many people.
The solution isn’t going to be found in a massage, affirmations or the latest secret method found by some self promoting Guru. It’s going to be found by you, deciding what you should be doing. And perhaps more importantly, what you are doing that, you really have no business doing.
You Do Too Much Because You Can’t See The Bullseye Clearly Enough
Stress isn’t really caused by what other people do or difficult situations. It’s about lacking the clarity to know what you are really about. What your sense of mission and meaning are in this world.
Because once that becomes clear to you, all the noise quietens and you just focus on what is important. Your clarity and sense of meaning become like a torch to shine out into the world and spot the minefields so that you can step around them without fuss and drama.
In order to do that though, you have to ‘know thyself‘.
And that’s where most people get stuck. It’s much easier to go out and read 15 different self help bestsellers. There is nothing wrong with reading books, but the solution doesn’t lie in the book. It lies in the shifts inside your thinking. And these only happen if you absorb the message.
Why Self Help Is Like Crack
Often people who want to grow and evolve themselves become like Crack Addicts. They get addicted to the high of ingesting a new idea. And so they devour book after book on a quest for ‘the missing piece‘. But real change happens not from 100 shallow thoughts, but from 1 idea that becomes imprinted through to your core.
There’s something deeply wrong with the Personal Development/Self Help business. It is a business and so in trying to sell it’s wares, it tries to promote it’s Authors and Speaker’s insights as if they held the key to your breakthrough.
The truth is that the power to breakthough your barriers, never comes from the book or the Guru. No matter how brilliant, how many books they have sold or accolades they have.
Let’s use an analogy to highlight this point.
If a Farmer wants to produce a bumper crop, does he care more about the quality of the seed or the fertility of the ground?
Of course, the seed is almost irrelevant. A poor quality seed will flourish in fertile soil. While the greatest seed will die on a concrete path.
It’s exactly the same with ideas and your receptivity to them. What determines your success in transforming your life is not what you read, but how receptive you are.
After writing hundreds of books, reports and articles I have noticed that very few people actually ‘get‘ the real message. Most discount it before really thinking about it or think they already ‘knew’ it. Yet their subsequent behaviour demonstrates that they never fully digested the idea.
You see, there’s one thing intellectually understanding something. But it’s an entirely different thing to be changed as a person by an idea or principle.
The difference isn’t in the writing, the clarity or the quality of the book. It’s about how you receive and act on the ideas in the book, tape or seminar.
That’s why so many people’s excitement after reading a book or taking a course wanes soon after. Because they have not grown the idea inside of them so that it evolves and develops beyond the original seed. So soon after it gets discarded like an abandoned dog when the excitement of Christmas has passed.
Not because it wasn’t great or useful. But because it didn’t fit into your current thought structure comfortably. And so you go on without it, doomed to repeat the same mistakes again.
So What’s The Solution?
The first step of the solution is to recognise that we can’t go about in this world, as we do, without feeling overwhelmed by it’s demands and conflicts.
We need to take time out from the pressures of the world. Time to regroup and work out who we are and what we’re all about. Then with this new found clarity comes energy, excitement and enthusiasm. And then we can go back into the world, refreshed, renewed and effective in our actions.
More importantly, we are not just at the whim of everyone else, we have a chance to dream what we want from life and create a plan to make it happen.
Now lots of people regularly read and work to develop themselves. But I have noticed almost no-one takes the time to get organised about their continued growth and evolution as an individual.
I have had an email course going for a couple of years that a few thousand people have been through. I noticed that about 95% of those who dropped out, did so because they were getting too many emails.
Some of their comments told me something interesting. I realised that many people had become slaves to their email. A message came and they felt compelled to drop everything and read it. As they got more and more emails they were able to give each message less and less attention. In other words they were in no frame of receptivity to absorb the ideas.
Now I know many other people found the same ideas hugely helpful. Some even life-changing. So the difference was not in the message, but in the receptivity to the message.
Society has trained us in the, purely man made, concept of time. Be here at 9am. We start at 3pm. The show begins at 9pm. And so on. So we have learned to adapt ourselves to fit in with other people’s schedules.
But today it’s just exploded. If you respond to every email, social networking update, text message and so on, you’ll never get anything worthwhile done ever. You have to set your own tone and schedule based on how you work best and what you decide your goal is.
You see, we’ve become so detached from our own sense of personal mission, meaning and adventure that we have sought to find it vicariously. So we’ve become a very voyeuristic society. We live on a diet of movies, news, sport, celebrity gossip, reality shows and so on. The media loves to feed us unsubstantial tidbits that titilate us, but never satisfy us. So people spend hours reading about who’s dating who. Who’s bitching about who. Watching films and tv shows or even playing out roles in video games.
But Not You. Not Now.
Life was never designed to be a spectator sport. You were supposed to be the Hero of your life story.
It’s time for you to step up and claim your prize. Claim the freedom and independence that is your birthright.
The truth is that we cannot live vicariously. The only way you are ever going to really live is by you getting out there and living heroically.
It’s enthralling to read a book that you just can’t put down. It’s thrilling to watch a movie where an underdog like Rocky comes from nowhere to reach the top of the world.
But it’s nothing compared to your life becoming the storyline that every day excites you to get started and every night you’re reluctant to pause for sleep.
To live your story, to set your own schedule, to master your weight and health, to live without stress and any meaningful achievement all depends on knowing yourself.
The very same insight that was inscribed at the temple of Apollo in ancient Greece. You see, there is no need for new ideas and methods. You just have to go deeper with the basics.
The trouble I have found with this, is that generally people don’t know how to do this, aren’t sure if they are doing it right or lack the discipline to be organised enough to do it.
That’s why I decided to create a place for like-minded people to train and develop the skills to take this basic idea of knowing thyself to an ever deeper level.
Knowing yourself at a deeper level helps you to find out what your life is about. Tension dissolves once you gain certainty about the right path ahead for you. You understand that every situation is just a context to express what you are and therefore you start to take control of your life rather than being controlled.
No longer are you slave to a series of unrelenting demands. Instead you become Master of your destiny.
We aren’t born knowing ourselves. And no-one is ever going to pressurise you to work out what you’re really about. You are under constant pressure to live up to other people’s ideals. You must develop the ability to understand, nurture and protect your individuality. Without an authentic sense of self, you will cave in and crumble from the pressures of life.
So we must train and develop in the art of self-awareness and self-expression. But up to now this has sounded like something mystical. Something people treked the Himalayas to find. Or went to a Zen temple for 20 years to study. Now though, those same skills can be yours without selling all your possessions. And without abandoning your family and current life.
photo credit: h.koppdelaney
How exactly?
As I said, for the past 16 years I have been helping people get to the root of their problems and grow towards a happier life. I’ve seen a lot of the common dynamics play out in scene after scene.
For the last 5 or 6 years I’ve been sharing my insights online in websites, blogs, newsletters and email courses. And it’s been really rewarding to see Reader’s expand and evolve my ideas into something more refined and polished. However I wanted to be able to take this to a deeper level in structured courses that provides a structure and support to ingrain the ideas at a much deeper level.
I’m a Perfectionist though. Quite frankly, I’m afraid of developing something that doesn’t live up to it’s claims. So that’s why I have developed the Stress Alchemist’s Training Club.
It’s 100 people who I work with closely to personally help you get past your stress quicker and less painfully. It came from a thought I had one day.
If I could be there sitting with someone throughout their day, I know by helping them to analyse situations and clarify their thoughts that they would make much better decisions and get better results. But of course that’s impractical. However what if I were there every week pushing them on to greater levels of clarity? And at the end of the phone any time they got stuck or stressed to help them unravel the knots they would otherwise tie themselves up in. What greater heights could they reach? How much better and cleaner could their relationships be?
For you, the Stress Alchemist’s Training Club means you get intense personal coaching for a fraction of the price you’d normally pay.
For me, it’s like a Research and Development Lab where I have lot’s of real-life situations forcing me to find solutions and new ways of expressing ideas. So I get to create, test and develop ideas, and explanations that will later become full fledged and high priced courses.
Let me explain exactly what is in the Training Club so you get a sense of what it’s about.
The first part is the Library.
Stress Alchemist Training Library
It contains all my books, reports, articles, videos and conversations in one place in an e-booklike form to get you up to speed quickly in the grounding concepts and philosophies. Plus hours of other videos, books and reports to stimulate your thinking.
The Library will soon become a sold product. But for existing Subscribers, for a limited time, it’s free.
However as I said it’s not new information that you need. It’s the ability to digest that information more efficiently that is the real key to your growth. So the real value is from being able to see your situation from new perspectives. And for that, most of us need to interact with others. Here’s how you can get that support and insights from others in the Stress Alchemist’s Club.
What’s In The Stress Alchemist Club?
Q&A Sessions
To master a skill, you have to be able to grasp a general abstract concept and be able to apply that to specific situations.
That’s where most people struggle. They read about something that makes perfect sense. Inside they know that it feels that this is absolutely right. But they are never able to apply it in their life.
Every month we’ll get together for a Q & A and general discussion. Solely for the purposes of how to apply the general concepts to specific situations.
And if you can’t make it live, you can submit your questions before and listen to the recordings afterwards.
Mastermind Groups
Everyone in your life wants something from you. Sure they love you, but they have a picture of how you need to be, to be happy. As a result, we can rarely talk things over with someone who is independent, unbiased and on our wavelength. So an important part of the Club will be Mastermind Groups.
Imagine being able to get on the phone with people just like you and share problems, challenges and aspirations with people who care only for you to find and be who you are.
That’s exactly what you’ll get on the Mastermind groups. The chance to have other people who are on the same journey as you listen to your situation and give you new ideas and perspectives to transform problems into opportunities. Then you can listen to other people’s situations and share your insights and recommendations. This way you get to see how the same basic principles apply in many real life situations. So you’ll learn the concepts at a much deeper level.
They’re are calls at various different times so you’ll be sure to find one that fits in with your schedule.
Call In Times
Coaching is a powerful resource. Having someone who can help you to where you want to get quickly and effectively. But it’s so expensive. From $300 a month and up to the $million a year Tony Robbins allegedly charges.
I’m not convinced people need a set schedule of coaching. To me it’s power seems to be the ability to get unstuck when you’re stuck. So why not have it available as and when you need it. I’m setting aside a large amount of time every week so that you can just pick up the phone and I’ll help you get unstuck.
I’m not big on bragging and I don’t want to sound boastful. However this is what I do and what I believe I was built to do.
I have the aptitude, experience and the curiousity to get the root of almost any problem. I’m a little like someone with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder about understanding problems. I can’t rest without fully understanding it. I can’t think of an instance where someone has told me their situation and I haven’t got to the root of it, eventually.
They haven’t always wanted to believe me or acted on it, but I can analyse the reason why and tell it to you in as many different ways as it takes before you start to see it for yourself.
There are no time limits or restrictions on this. Obviously I have a responsibility to every Member, but I believe each case is unique. So if you need 2 or 3 hours to delve, uncover and resolve an issue, then we’ll take that time. If it only takes 5 minutes, then that’s all it takes. In other words, I care about you getting results so whatever it takes to keep you evolving and growing is what I’ll do.
Stress Alchemy Makeover
Once a month I’ll take one Member who has a pressing issue and record a complete Stress Makeover. Then we can have a discussion on what you can personally takeaway from the Makeover to avoid future problems.
Let’s not overcomplicate things. Basically I believe I have the experience and ability to help you overcome stress quicker and transform it into something that excites you. Now if that sounds good to you, then the Stress Alchemist’s Club will do whatever it takes to help you become more receptive to grow and develop your skills of turning stress into adventure.
What Will It Cost To Be A Stress Alchemist Club Member?
First of all you have to understand that living with stress is like runing a bath with the plug left out. Stress is the most expensive drain in your life. It’s expensive financially, emotionally and energetically.
Stress is like a brake on your productivity and effectiveness. So how much more could you achieve if you were clear, certain and determined?
Then you have to realise that stress is costing you money. That drink, that cake, the massages, gadgets, clothes and so on that you buy to relax or cheer yourself up are all part of the financial cost of stress. The lost days in illness due to a lowered immune system, the cost in medication and days below par from disrupted sleep are all more costs of stress.
Now there isn’t really any other effective solution to stress. At least not any I’ve come across. You can buy Massages, subliminal CD’s, get hypnosis and so on. But they only offer relief. They may take away today’s stress, but what about next month’s.
The books are basic. Often based on 50 year old research. And typically written in a sighing tone as if stress is one of those things that you have to live with, like balancing your books and paying your taxes. But that lacks the realisation that stress is just blocked energy. And once you clear the blockage, you get a powerful and postive flow of energy to propel you forwards.
The nearest solution you could get to the Alchemist’s Club is a Coach. That would cost you $300 a month, just for a beginner Coach. And it’s unlikely that they will really have an entire library worth of concepts and frameworks to structure your time together.
Certainly you won’t have access to the wisdom of a supportive group. Wisdom is not contained in any one person, or even a group of people. It is in the honest sharing interaction between people that creates wisdom. And that is what the Alchemist’s Club is all about.
To be honest I don’t know how to price this. Given the amount of interaction involved, the cost of membership is going to be upwards of $300 per month. Perhaps more because people judge the quality of something by it’s price and so to sell it too cheaply may make it look shoddy. So I’ll find out the final price by testing a few and finding which works best.
However you got here as a Subscriber. And I feel a sense of loyalty to you, who have inspired me with your questions and helped me to refine my raw ideas. Also I don’t have to pay advertising fees or commissions out. So I am cutting the membership fee to it’s lowest ever launch price of just $100 per month.
I will honour this for the first 50 people or when I start advertising. However given that this is going to take up a large part of my time, I cannot guarantee to honour this price forever.
As I said earlier, I’d hate to sell something that didn’t work for you. And I really don’t want any hassle in my life, so I don’t want to bring you any in yours. If you try out the club and for any reason it doesn’t live up to your expectations, then just let me know and I’ll refund anything you’ve paid. There’s a button inside your membership area to immediately cancel your membership.
I opened with the scene from the Matrix, where Morpheus said to Neo, “all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
That is all I can offer to you. The truth and wherever it leads us… If you choose to join us on this path, click the button below.
The Coaching Club Is Now Closed To New Members. To Go On The Waiting List For A Place Send Your Details Here
