A few days ago I received an email from a friend to tell me to try out this new product he had been advised to get. I took one look at it and wrote him a long email explaining why he had just been duped into buying crap. The product in question was an audio CD designed to allow you to access very deep levels of relaxation very rapidly to be able to avoid stress.

There are so many products out there that promise so much and yet deliver so little and it’s something that really frustrates me, not only because I’ve fallen for some of them in the past but also because I don’t like watching it happen to others.

Below is the email response I sent him, I have disguised an offending well known strength coach’s name and also the offending product. In truth there are many people who could be "Person X" and many products that could be "Product X". Be careful folks, do your research.

 

Hey,

I’m fed up of shite products which promise so much and do nothing for you, except fill in that immediate emotional gratification. I’m even more pissed off that you, a friend, was fucked over so someone else could profit.

You may have noticed a pretty strong title to this email. I received your email about the Product X technology and I’m sorry to say you’ve been horribly had. I would stick it back in the post and ask for my money back. Person X may have his shit down when it comes to body building and strength training but he knows nothing about personal change techniques. What he is currently doing will probably end his reign of being an example to look up to when it comes to strength training. His mind is in the right place but his eyes are looking up his arse.

I have seen these before, there’s about a million of them out there on the internet, they are varied in content and their packaging comes in many forms but the basic principle is still the same. I’ll tell you why and let you make up your own mind.

First of all the concept that stress is a bad thing is a myth. Let me say that again because it’s very important. The concept that stress is a bad thing is a myth.

It took me a while to realise this, in the end I had read a book called "The Lucifer Principle" by Howard K Bloom which has a fascinating chapter dedicated to the topic. What exists today is a great misunderstanding of the concept. Stress is actually very healthy, it is one of the brain’s primal ways of generating movement in your life. Stress is biologically designed to make you move towards or away from something. Most people just see it as a bad feeling that needs to be eradicated. And so they create these "relaxation methods" to get you out of your stress response. However doing so is not only stupid, it can also be dangerous.

At work people suffer huge amounts of stress. Well did they ever consider the possibility that they weren’t entirely happy or fulfilled with what they were doing IN THE FIRST PLACE. By creating relaxation they give themselves an out, a way to ignore the real problem that’s going on with their life which is they can’t be arsed doing the work in order to get what they really wanted in life.

In relationships there is a lot of stress. Again this comes back to ignoring the basics. More often than not people will get into a relationship and then assume that that’s them. They create a life surrounding this relationship and it defines them. The only problem is, when things go wrong, the identity of their life is challenged, they are no longer fulfilled and are unwilling to do the work to right it. In some cases this means ending the relationship, which most aren’t willing to do because in the short term this involves pain, and in the long term it involves time and building up a relationship with someone else. Again relaxation is an out, to allow them to ignore the real problem.

These are just 2 examples. I could go on at great length but it ultimately boils down to the simple fact that people USE relaxation to COVER UP the shit in their life and make it liveable, this is a very biting argument, and basically everyone will deny it, but that’s because they rationalise these things out to be able to live with themselves. Sooner or later the good feeling chemicals in the brain that people get from being relaxed will be used up. This is when people have breakdowns and their lives turn to shit. They ran out of places to hide and no amount of relaxation will be able to help them. Now they turn to alcohol, drugs or eating, they go through a midlife crisis and beat up their spouse etc.

Let me give you another example. One very close to your heart. I want you to think about your breakdancing. I want you to take all the stress out of it, anything that leads into it and anything that leads out. Remember stress is a form of motivation (a push/pull brain response) so when you’re taking out the stress I want you to completely remove all the motivation you have to go out and dance, this also includes the stress that you feel to get better and better at what you do, the stress you feel to perfect/improve the moves you have, and the stress that comes from watching other people doing really well and wanting to do better than them. OK now done that? OK so now replace all of that with relaxation, after all this is what Product X and all the others want you to do. What just happened? Your days as a breakdancer just ended because you no longer have the basic emotional states that your body uses to get you off the couch and into the dance studios or clubs. Relaxation produces no movement, it is the very epitomy of lack of movement!

So I want you to think about what I said before again. The concept that stress is a bad thing is a myth. Where it becomes bad is when people ignore it and cover it up for as long as they can, then and only then does it lead to bad things.

OK so that scratches the surface on my feelings about stress. Now onto Product X.

The website is so full of crap I’m only going to touch on a few things.

First off:

The lazy man’s way to meditate

OK let me point out something here. No good thing ever came to/from a lazy person. There is nothing profound and good in this world that was created out of laziness. Lazy people die and are forgotten…. don’t believe me? Prove me wrong :] The lottery is the game of the lazy, if they win they are rewarded with a life devoid of friends without ulterior motive, possessions that other people aren’t constantly trying to steal, and lots of anxiety (ooooh there’s the ignored stress coming back) that everyone is out to get them. They never earn’t it so they have no idea what to do with it.

But what if I told you that you could meditate as deeply as a Zen monk, literally at the touch of a button

In all my years of experience with hypnosis (which is what Product X uses to achieve it’s goals) there is absolutely nothing magical that happens at a deeper state of trance. There is nothing that you can achieve in deep trance that you can’t achieve in a light trance. Deep trance however does get in the way during hypnosis. A practitioner’s (which includes the self in terms of self hypnosis) desire to get a deep trance will refocus them. It will become all about the level of trance and not about getting the results. Also look at something else going on here. What is it that Zen monks do exactly?…….. OK they are enlightened. But put them into OUR society and they have nothing of value to add. Noone will ever pay you for being enlightened…. prepare to lose your house and car.

 

It’s easy, it’s inexpensive, it feels VERY good it’s 100% guaranteed.

 

Here is the promise. It feels very good it’s garaunteed. They are guaranteeing you feeling good, they are not guaranteeing anything else, no results, no improved life, nothing, just TEMPORARY good feelings. OK but there’s a bazillion other things in life you could do that make you feel that way. And they can also make you feel a sense of accomplisment/achievement, they can help you achieve your goals and they can give you a life worth living. Which brings me to another point. Feelings are temporary, it’s natural to go through cycles. They are there for a purpose, and if you never felt bad how would you know what it felt like to feel good. This is why druggies etc. always need more and more, to escape the bad feelings and the feelings that weren’t quite as good as the last one.

 

Stimulating your brain with Product X audio technology will:

» Safely and effortlessly take you to states of profoundly deep (and extremely pleasurable) meditation…

OK covered before, what does this achieve exactly? Other than nothing.

» Stimulate the creation of new neural pathways between the right and left hemispheres of your brain, balancing your brain and leading you to a high-performance state scientists call "whole brain functioning"…

This one confuses me. The brain is not supposed to be equal on both sides. There are different areas dedicated to different functions. Your brain already functions as a whole, it has done that very well since birth and will continue to do so for much longer still thank you very much. Also there are BILLIONS of neural pathways in your brain right at this very second. Thousands/Millions more are being created and destroyed everyday. In what way are "these" pathways different and amazing?

High performance comes from practice and dedication, not relaxation. Ask any athelete, any scientist, for that matter anyone who has ever been good at anything. Did these people become good because they lounged around and relaxed, or because they had "magical" neural connections installed in their brains…… please.

» Dramatically improve your learning ability, memory, intuition, creativity, and your ability to focus, concentrate and think more clearly…

More crap. This is getting horrible. Relaxation is one of many emotional states in the creative adaptive area of the brain. Relaxation is not the source of all these abilities it is but an emotion. When you relaxed at school did you learn.. no (well at least not BECAUSE of the relaxation), you learned when you interacted and took part, memory just like muscle is improved through use, and not by not using it…. I won’t go on.

» Create true quantum leaps in your personal self awareness…

What the fuck does that even mean? It has no definition therefore it can’t be used against them when they get sued for having a crap product.

» Significantly lower your stress levels and lower your levels of harmful brain chemicals related to stress…

Covered above. Also what on earth is a harmful brain chemical? There are NO harmful brain chemicals they don’t exist, why would the brain create a chemical that destroyed itself……

» Create remarkable improvements in your mental and emotional health—even in areas that have stubbornly resisted change with other approaches…

Improvements are made because of dedication to change and then by doing things differently. Improvements are made by tackling the underlying core emotional issues that create the problems in the first place. If you tackle the fundamental emotional problems you won’t get the the point where you have a problem in the first place you will become fluid and adaptable.

» Dramatically increase your production of vital (and very pleasurable) brain chemicals related to your longevity, well-being, and quality of life…

At this point the company that made Product X have just turned you into an AUDIO DRUG ABUSER….. Time to check into rehab. This is exactly what’s promised to drug users and exactly what drug users expect. The medium is different but the outcome remains the same.

With all this being said there are a couple of choice morsels from Person X’s email that do bear taking a look at. That of the mention of cortisol. Cortisol is a brain chemical and it does produce muscle breakdown, reducing it would be a good idea for the guy/gal looking to create some more muscle mass, however it has to be remembered that cortisol is also natural and serves more purposes than just being the stress hormone and breaking down muscle mass, without it you WILL die.

That’s it. I’ve had enough, this company has made me angry, and Person X has angered me more for publisizing it, he should have known better. He has many fans who depend on him for quality advice and he just fed them dog shit.

At this point it would be unfair if I just pointed out what was not right.

There is a model of the brain created by a Neuroscientist (named Dr. Ken Jafray) and a method of personal change, the 3D Mind (created by Tom Vizzini and Kim McFarland) based on that model which is worth paying attention to.

This model looks at the brain as being a very effective prediction machine. The mind is a very advanced filter mechanism.

Reality is fluid, everyone sees reality in a different way, and what creates this is the filtering mechanism of the mind. Filters are created by self beliefs which are in turn created by an association of emotional states. So for example if you had fear, anxiety and panic which created a belief of "I am weak" your mind would go through everything you experienced and filter out what did not agree with that belief.

Problems are a symptom and not the cause, the cause is the self belief with the emotions, the problem can be a number of different things for example smoking or drug abuse.

If you balance the problem emotions (rather than replace them with something else) the belief will never be created, the foundations were taken away, the mind will start filtering for something else, and the problem will never exist in the first place.

Let’s take a phobia as an example of this. Let’s say you had a belief the same as the above, I’m weak with fear, anxiety and panic this went on to cause your mind to filter for every aggressive action of a dog towards you (created originally because of a bad interaction with a dog at a very young age), which led to a phobia of dogs. Balance out the emotions, the belief disappears. If there is no belief you stop filter for the agressive emotions and start noticing that dogs are very friendly towards you, how can you be scared now?

I would like to conclude this email by saying that every emotion has a place in you life, at some point you need to be stressed (whether very or only slightly) and you also need to be relaxed (whether very or only slightly) but there is a inescapeable balance that should be followed otherwise you end up causing yourself all kinds of hurt.

 

 

So there you have it, if you are interested in actually creating some genuine change in your life take a look at the 3D Mind. It is the only technology that allows you to remove the underlying out of balance emotions that lead to the problems you go through in life.