Preface

Presuppositions

This book was written for those who want to live fully and achieve greatly. If you’d like to be better at what you do and live a more fulfilling life, you’re in the right place. In order to do that we must consider possibilities; find new ways of thinking. For starters, we can model the thought patterns of remarkable people who live passionately and achieve extraordinarily. Below are examples of some of those thoughts, called presuppositions. A presupposition is a useful belief that helps achieve desired outcomes.

  • Every thought and image in your mind has a consequence.

  • The mind and body are intimately connected; each affects the other.

  • Development of the whole person (mind, body, and spirit) is the most powerful way to create the best employee, manager, teacher, or athlete.

  • We live simultaneously in two worlds:  the tangible world we can see, touch, taste, etc. and the unseen world that controls the tangible world. 

  • When you learn how these unseen forces shape your life, you can
    - consistently change your life and those of others for the better.

  • There is no failure, only feedback.
    - The outcome of your actions becomes a failure the moment you label it as one. Your judgment determines that label.

  • The unconscious mind runs our lives, constantly working to maintain homeostasis - attracting circumstances and people compatible to what we unconsciously believe. These beliefs can be changed.

  • Underlying every behavior is a positive need or intention.
    - Human behavior is not random. There is a purpose behind every behavior, and it is always done in some way to try and fill a need for something positive.

  • People make the best choices available to them.
    - Any behavior, no matter how strange or screwed up, was the best choice they felt was available to them at that moment in time. (Given their life history, knowledge, beliefs, and resources, and viewed from their frame of reference.)

  • We all have a naturally biased, self-focused frame of reference from which we view the world. 

  • Our self-focused frame of reference leads to self-consciousness, one of the biggest challenges we face.

  • You cannot not communicate.
    - Everything you do or don’t do sends a message.

  • The meaning of your communication is how the receiver takes it.
    - No matter how well-intentioned your communication is, however the receiver understood or took your communication is the meaning.

  • The person with the most behavioral flexibility has the greatest ability to influence others and achieve their goals.

As you go through the book, keep these presuppositions in mind, especially in the first two chapters as we analyze the challenging obstacles that we all encounter. As you do you’ll begin to notice how some of these beliefs will help you gain mastery over your greatest challenges. This will set the foundation for the tools and skills you’ll learn throughout the rest of the book.  

Note: Whether these presuppositions are always true is irrelevant, the important thing is that they are beliefs held by extraordinarily successful people and modeling them will help you achieve your goals and dreams. Many of these presuppositions are similar to or derive from Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the founders of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).