-Introduction-

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. - Winston Churchill

I know what it's like... You're scanning the cover of the latest personal development, spirituality or business book as you turn it over in your hands, and you have The Hope. We've all had The Hope, and some of us have had it dozens or even hundreds of times. The Hope is a feeling, with a soundtrack that goes something like this... Maybe this is it, the answer, the thing that's really going to work. Maybe this is the solution I've been looking for all these years, the big one, the thing that finally going to get me there. Maybe, just maybe, if I read it all the way through, and do all the exercises, and somehow find the discipline to follow the plans it gives me - maybe if I do it right this time, then maybe, just maybe it's going to work... And why do we have The Hope? We have it because we're convinced that there's somewhere to get to, and that there is better than here. And there comes in a variety of tantalising flavours that look something like this: I'll be [happy / secure / fulfilled / peaceful / better / successful / ok] when I ... - get the money / the car / the yacht / the house - the there of stuff. - find the right work / hobby / exercise / pastime - the there of doing. - have the right partner / friends / children the there of people and relationships. - write the book / start the business / learn the language - the there of accomplishment.

- can take a year off / travel the world / eat at the best restaurants. The there of lifestyle. - achieve time-freedom / financial freedom / social freedom the there of freedom. - lose the weight / stop smoking / start going to the gym - the there of selfimprovement. - change my thinking / my limiting beliefs / do my affirmations - the there of psychology. - meditate properly / find the right practice / get enlightened - the there of spirituality. - accept myself / love myself / just let go the there of surrender. You may have tried none, some or all of the above. You may have made big changes and improved your life in a variety of ways. Or maybe not. At times, you may have felt like you're nearly there, like you're very close, like the pot of gold's just around the corner. And yet... No matter how close you get, doesn't it always seems like there's a little more you need to do? A little further to go? Just a little bit more to fix, change or heal? Or a LOT more? I know, because I've done it everything on this list and more. I got value from many of my efforts, but sooner or later, after a week or a month or a year, I'd find myself feeling like I was back where I started, feeling like there was something missing, something wrong, something I couldn't quite put my finger on... As it turns out, the story behind that sense of something missing doesn't just stop you from enjoying your life to the full it actually stands in the way of you living a life you really love. And it's not your fault. You see, as strange as it may sound, you've fallen into a trap. And it's a trap that's so subtle, you've probably never even noticed it. Subtle, powerful and all-pervasive. But I'm getting ahead of myself. These days, I spend a lot of my time living there, but I didn't get here in the way you might expect. In brief: I grew up in an alcoholic household and started drinking heavily when

I was 12 years old. At age 19 I was a scholarship engineering student and a full-blown alcoholic. The alcohol was like rocket fuel for my life I got jobs, was promoted rapidly, and started experiencing many of the trappings of success: expense accounts, foreign travel, luxurious surroundings. But on the inside, I was falling apart. Then, at the age of 30 I got married. A month later, her bags were packed so I decided to stop drinking in order to save my marriage. Oh yeah I missed one: I'll be happy when I get a cigarette / a drink / a line of coke the there of addiction. That was in 1996, and I haven't had a drink since. Today I live a happy, fulfilling life (except when I don't, as you'll discover later). It's beyond anything I ever dreamed was possible for me, but how I got here is a story of struggle, frustration and heartbreak (much of which I could have avoided if I'd known what you're going to be discovering in this book). Just to give you an idea, in the time-period from 1996 to 2008 I... - Felt like I was a fraud and worried constantly that I'd be found out - Moved to London - Attended my first personal development training - Quit my job and became a consultant - Began a spiritual journey - Read hundreds of personal development books - Started a business with a friend - Was terrified of having to get a job again - Overcame my fear of public speaking (mainly by doing lots of public speaking) - Lost weight, gained weight, lost weight, gained weight, lost weight, gained weight - Experienced depression, anxiety and obsession - Spent countless hours talking to a Freudian psychoanalyst - Participated in various addiction recovery programmes - Learned NLP, got certified as an NLP Trainer and started teaching others - Fathered two children (Matilda and Tallulah) - Went on dozens of personal development courses - Got dumped by my wife and almost fell apart - Struggled with worry, anxiety and suicidal thoughts - Went on a learning journey about women and relationships - Was paralysed by a combination of fear of failure and fear of success - Built a successful training and educational product company - Tried my hand at stand-up comedy - Learned Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art - Built a tribe of tens of thousands of people who follow my work - Had numerous false horizons, thinking I'd finally got it, only to find myself back where I started

By the end of 2008, I was unhappy, stressed-out and at the end of my tether. I felt like I'd been giving it everything I had for over a decade, and while some areas of my life were better than ever, in many ways I felt like I'd been running on the spot. It was do or die. I was on the verge of giving up. Then I was introduced to the understanding you're going to be discovering in this book. It's over three years later, and they've been the best three years of my life. I'm experiencing a sense of peace, security and aliveness unlike anything I've had before. And as my sense of wellbeing and clarity has continued to increase, my external circumstances have been improving too. The good news is, it can be replicated - the clients I work with are getting similar results. Here are a few examples... - Uncover your passions - Two clients (a couple) who had relocated to the UK didn't want to fall into the 9 to 5 grind, but anything else felt unobtainable. Nine months after discovering the understanding you're going to be reading about in this book, living a life they love has become their day-to-day reality. They've discovered new passions, and are moving to the South of France to live their dream of making organic soaps and skin care products. - Overcome fears and obstacles - I introduced one of my clients to this understanding over lunch one day. When I checked in with her a week later, she revealed that a lifelong fear of public speaking had disappeared, and that she'd given a presentation to her team at work. The amazing thing is that I didn't even know she had a fear of public speaking until she told me it had gone. Her fear vanished once she got an understanding of what you're going to be learning in this book. (It's been a similar story with clients suffering from a range of fears, worries and anxieties). - Beat stress and start living from wisdom - Another client, a successful businessman, has had the stress of running multiple businesses replaced with a sense of calm that allows him to make great decisions and enjoy his life more. For him, the understanding you're going to be discovering has translated into better business and big increases in revenue, but he says that the changes in his life are worth far more than money. - Live a life you love - A young entrepreneur has made his dreams of passive income and living his purpose a reality a reality that's translated into international travel and spending his days doing what he wants to do at just 27 years of age. The things you're going to be learning in this book have enabled him to shake off his limiting beliefs and start living a life he loves. - Make a difference - A coach who wanted to create a successful business helping others has done just that, attracting numerous clients within months of learning the understanding in this book. A year later, not only is his coaching

business thriving, but his family life is better than ever, and he has a sense of confidence and self-belief beyond anything he'd previously experienced. While the circumstances in these stories are great examples of the power of what you're going to be learning to make a real difference in people's lives, there's a deeper story that's both more subtle and more powerful. This deeper story relates to your experience of life. Again and again, my clients and the other people I know who are learning this understanding are reporting radical changes in their experience of life... - Security and wellbeing - You start to feel an increasing sense of wellbeing, security and peace of mind that comes from within. The very qualities that people have been trying to get from outside of them start to show up from the inside! - Richer relationships - You notice your relationships with family, friends and loved ones getting deeper and more connected. Even relationships with clients and colleagues start getting richer and more enjoyably real. - Innate wisdom - You start to get in touch with your innate guidance and natural wisdom, leading to better decisions. Your experience of life starts to take on an effortless quality. It's not that you don't ever work hard at anything, but it's with an increasing sense of engagement and enjoyment. - Increasing confidence - You start to notice self-doubt fading away, to be replaced by a sense of increasing confidence and willingness to take action. In fact, people often start taking inspired action on projects they'd been trying in vain to make progress on for years. (This book is one example of such a project). - Sense of purpose - You start to feel a sense of purpose, and really being part of life. Often there's a feeling of gratitude and happiness that seems to be for no reason at all, other than the enjoyment of being alive. - Helping others You start to notice that you're making a real difference in the lives of other people, able to help in situations that used to seem baffling (coaches, therapists and change-workers find themselves suddenly able to make quantum leaps in the impact they can have with their clients using the insights you're going to be getting throughout this book). These stories are echoed over and over again by my clients, and by colleagues who are working with the understanding you're going to be learning about. The discoveries you're going to be experiencing for yourself as you read this book have been used to transform people's lives in incredibly diverse areas: - Working with gang members in maximum security jail in the USA (I've sat and talked with convicts who say they've never felt so happy and peaceful in their lives since learning what you'll be reading about. In fact, some of them even had their sentences reduced when the parole board saw how much they'd

changed). - Consulting with large organisations, including blue-chip companies, advertising agencies, sales forces and even the US Army. They've harnessed the power of what you're going to be learning in this book, and the results they've seen in terms of employee engagement, results and profitability have confounded what people thought was possible. - Helping heal people with serious clinical diagnoses like clinical depression, paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis. The understanding you're going to be learning has been tried and tested with some of the most severe of mental problems and personality disorders. - Transforming inner-city housing projects that were labelled as police no go areas, with high levels of truancy, addiction and abuse. When they saw the same understanding you're going to be pointed towards, the people in those projects grew into a community with high levels of mental health, and associated changes in behaviour. - Healing alcoholism, drug addictions and eating disorders. The impact of what you're going to be learning about in this book is profound and lasting for human beings in all walks of life (even those who have been pronounced incurable). - Working with couples and mediating a wide variety of relationships (often in seemingly intractable positions). The understanding you're going to be learning has resulted in harmony, connection and shared perspective where it was thought there was none. The amazing thing is that all of the things you've read about above have been achieved without the things we're usually told we need... - without the use of techniques, tactics and interventions - without needing to stress, struggle or strive - without resorting to regimes, discipline or pressure - without having to remember, reframe or manage your thinking It may sound extreme, but Innate Thinking (the understanding you're going to be exposed to in this book) really has earned the label Effortless. Best of all, the changes that you can expect from your deepening understanding of Innate Thinking share three important qualities: - Your transformations will be natural. The insights and transformations you're going to experience are a perfect fit for you and your life. They're going to be a natural expression of who you are, rather than trying to fit yourself into someone else's model.

- Your transformations will be sustainable. Because the transformations take no effort to implement, and because they're such a natural fit for who you are, they're easily sustainable. It's time to wave goodbye to struggle and backsliding. - Your transformations will be generative. This means that the positive impact of what you'll be learning will show up in many different aspects of your life, without you having to make it happen. The reason I'm writing this book is to save you the decade or more of searching, struggling and unnecessary suffering that I went through. Because that's the good news you don't have to go through any of what I've done. You can cut to the chase, and take a shortcut that gets you to the same place in a fraction of the time. You don't have to wait. You can start living the life you deeply desire sooner than you think! But first, a question: Q: If you're caught in a trap, what's the one thing you have to do before you can escape? A: You have to realise that you've been caught in a trap.

Until you realise you've been caught in a trap, you're very unlikely to get out of it. But once you know about the trap, and you can see how it works, then escape is pretty straightforward. Especially if other people have escaped from the same trap, and can show you how they did it. In fact, once you escape from the trap, you may find yourself getting excited about sharing what you've discovered with others, and joining the community of people who are passionate about getting this understanding out to a world that desperately needs it. So in Chapter Two, I'm going to show you the trap, how it works, and why you've been caught in it until now. But before I do, I need to share something very important with you something you may never have thought about before...

Chapter 1 -An Unsuspected Power-

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves. - Galileo Galilei Piglet: How do you spell love? Pooh: You don't spell it. You feel it. - AA Milne

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not a very good listener... This sentence caught me by surprise. The person who was coaching me didn't know it, but I was renowned for my listening skills. I had been trained to notice fine distinctions in voice tone and body language, and could unpack the deep structures of what a person was saying, moment to moment. The idea that I wasn't a good listener seemed preposterous to me. But I was curious, so I asked him what he meant. The explanation he shared with me has turned out to be one of the most valuable distinctions I've ever learned, and is of crucial importance if you want to really get the most from this book. More importantly, this distinction is going to be an essential key for your escape from the I'll be happy when... trap you're going to be uncovering in Chapter Two. My coach explained to me very gently that when I was listening, it seemed like I had a lot on my mind. I was doing listening; it was something I was working at. He said that listening in this way was OK for getting an intellectual understanding of something, but it wasn't going to help me have the realisations and insights that could truly transform my life. As I reflected on it, I realised that this is how we've all been taught to listen. It's how we've been taught to read. It's how we've been taught to learn. But it used to be different.

You were born a learner and a listener. It's thanks to your natural ability to listen and learn that you can walk and talk today. You knew how to listen long before anyone ever taught you how to think, before you knew how to analyse and judge, before you were taught that analysis and judgement had any value. If you're anything like me, you were taught to read, listen and learn for an intellectual understanding, and that's fine as far as it goes. But if you want to awaken an unsuspected power to transform your life and the lives of others, it's time to remember a different way to read, listen and learn. Reading for insight... DISTINCTION: Reading for Confirmation VS Reading for Insight When most people read, they're trying to fit what they're reading into what they already know, seeing how the new information can fit into their existing cognitive structure. This is reading for confirmation; looking for confirmation of what you already know. But there's another way of reading. You can read in a way that creates a space for the innate knowledge that's already there within your consciousness to emerge more fully into your awareness. This is reading for insight. Reading for Confirmation Most of us have been taught to listen and read for confirmation. We think about what we're reading as we're reading it, and make decisions about... Whether or not we agree with it Where it fits into our existing cognitive structures If it doesn't fit, why not? Whether to accept or reject it etc

Just check - you may be doing this as you're reading this passage, saying That makes sense, That's nonsense or somewhere in between. That's OK. Reading for confirmation is useful for evaluating information, and making decisions about its validity, but it doesn't create great conditions for having an insight. A person who's reading for confirmation has something on their mind, so the mind isn't as free to do what it does best generate new thought. Reading for Insight Reading for insight is reading with nothing on your mind. When you read for an insight, you put your existing conceptual models to one side (to whatever extent that's possible) and allow yourself to be touched by what you're reading.

The Magic Eye Back in the 1990s, evolving technology led to the creation of magic eye images. At first glance, a magic-eye image looks like a repeating, twodimensional pattern, but if you look through the image, with a soft-eyed, relaxed gaze, something amazing happens. A 3-dimensional figure suddenly leaps into your awareness, a figure that was totally invisible when you first looked at the image. People often sat staring at the 2D images, trying hard to see the 3D image hidden within it, but nothing happened until they relaxed and allowed the image to emerge. Reading for an insight is sort of like looking at a magic eye picture. You don't really need to think about what you're reading you just need to relax and allow yourself to be impacted by the words. The insight that can leap into your awareness isn't in the words anyway; it's resides deep within your consciousness. Another example is poetry. When a person reads good poetry, they're not trying to decide whether they agree with it or not they're reading to be impacted. When you're reading for insight, you get a feel for what you're reading, seeing beyond the written word to what the author's really trying to convey. You allow the innate knowledge to come from deep within your consciousness and step more fully into your awareness. As you read this book, stay in touch with your feelings. Read when you feel inspired to read, and pause when you feel like pausing. The value you'll get from this book won't come from the information on the pages the value will come from deep inside you. So make the space for that to happen. Any understandings you already have will still be there when you get to the end of the book, so I invite you to put them to one side and allow yourself to be even more deeply impacted. The reality is that every person has wisdom. You have everything you need to transform your life already within you. No matter what's happened to you, or what you've been through, you can have a beautiful life. The power to transform your life is going to come from within your consciousness. As you continue reading this book for an insight, you may occasionally find yourself feeling particularly calm and peaceful. Those beautiful feelings can be one of the signs that you're being impacted, so enjoy them when they come and relax when they don't. And what's so great about insight? Insightful understanding doesn't come from the words on the page it comes from within you. It often arrives suddenly, but can continue serving and informing you for years to come. Insightful understanding is a natural function

of the human mind, and has the power to transform your life. Insight is the unsuspected power mentioned in the title of this chapter. When you read (or listen) for confirmation, the intellectual understanding you get is like a written instruction manual. It's good as far as it goes, but it takes effort to put it into practice. That's why people often say I understand that intellectually, but... Insightful understanding is more like a mobile phone app once it gets downloaded, it starts working immediately, because insightful understanding is powered up and ready to go! - When you have an insight, it comes with its own source of motivation. You don't need to get yourself to do it - You naturally find your behaviour changing in ways that serve you. - When you have an insight, it's perfectly tailored to you. You don't have to figure it out or try and adjust it to your needs it already fits perfectly. - Insightful understanding is context sensitive, and can adjust to your changing circumstances, even taking account of things you're not consciously aware of. - Intellectual understandings can get stale over time, but insightful understandings stay fresh, and can keep updating your system for years to come. When a person says I understand that intellectually but... what they're really saying is I've received information (from outside myself) and built intellectual structures relating to this, but I haven't had the deeper realisations and insights (from inside myself) that I need for it to make a difference in my life. But those situations where you just know what to do, and can't explain why... That's the polar opposite of the I understand that intellectually, but... phenomenon. When someone says I just know, but I don't know why what they're really saying is I've had some realisations and insights that are making a difference in my life (from inside myself) but I haven't yet built intellectual structures relating to it. The great news is that insights start making a difference to you whether they make sense intellectually or not! A Sudden Insight In the 1990s I was employed as a project manager. I wanted to leave my job and become a contractor. My friends told me I could do it easily, and while I understood that intellectually, I knew that I couldn't do it. Then in 1998 I attended my first personal development training, a two-day introductory programme. During the two days, I had an insight: I suddenly knew that I could leave my job and become a contractor, with all the freedom,

possibilities and rewards that entailed. I quit my job two weeks later, started working for myself and creating the time and money to follow my passions. I can trace the life I have today back to that insight, and can still feel the sense of freedom and possibility it carried with it. While the example above was massively transformative for me, insightful understanding is an everyday phenomenon. In fact, as you start to become more and more aware of it, you'll begin to find yourself relying on insights and your natural wisdom to guide you on a day-to-day basis. Everyone's had the experience of making a decision, having it turn out badly, then saying I knew I should have done it the other way, but I didn't listen to myself. Many people also have examples of just knowing the right thing to do, even though it doesn't seem logical at the time. The knowing they're referring to is an example of insightful understanding. People have many ways of referring to it: - The gut feeling that lets you know to take a certain decision. - The common sense that saves the day in a difficult situation. - The intuition that leads you to an unexpected success. - The sudden realisation that makes a big difference in your life. - The knowing that has you ask just the right question. - The insight that solves a problem that looked like it was impossible. - The creative leap that takes things in a whole new direction. - The moment of clarity that turns an addict's life around. - The inspiration that gives you fresh energy and inner motivation. - The wisdom that guides you in situations where your old maps and ideas no longer apply. Everyone has examples of insightful understanding, but most people don't realise how powerful it is when it comes to transforming your life. And while this book is full of ideas that you may find interesting and informative, its real power is in creating a context where the innate knowledge that's already there within you can emerge more fully into your awareness and make a real difference in your life. In fact, the essential difference between this and most other books is this: Its purpose is to act as a catalyst so that your own insights can transform your life. Insightful understanding comes from your innate ability to have fresh new thinking at any moment. When you stop and think about it, everything a person perceives as limiting them is a reflection of their intellectual understanding (what they already know), while the fresh, new perceptions that can transform your life can only ever emerge from what you don't yet know, through insightful understanding. Once again, insightful understanding comes from deep within your

consciousness, and shows up in a way that can transform your life in a heartbeat. And you put yourself in a great position to have one when you're reading for insight instead of reading for agreement. In the Introduction, I described the I'll be happy when... phenomenon, and explained that the first thing you have to do before you can escape from a trap is realise that you've been caught in it. So I invite you to read for an insight as I reveal the trap that's ensnared millions of people (including yours truly), a trap that I call...