One of the books I sometimes have my clients look at is - Alexander Everett's book "Inward Bound".

Everett was the guy who basically trained Werner Erhart - Erhart was the guy who started "EST" (Erhart Training Seminars) which was the foundation and became Landmark Education. Landmark is the program that a large percentage of Silicon Valley executives and many other high and mid level management executives take around the world (plus millions of other people). Everett also trained the guys who started Lifespring, PSI Seminars, Mindspring and others. . .The leaders of these other programs basically took over Everett's company at one point and spun it off into their own enterprises which became quite well known in their own right.

The interesting thing in Everett's book he says - that those types of "ra ra" big hype seminars. . .stuff like the big Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, PSI, Landmark "type" of events only really made a big difference for about 5-7% of the people who ever attend them. . .remember. . .this is coming from a person who trained some of the biggest names in the personal development movement in the 70s and 80s. . .and these programs became the model for so so much of personal development programs even to this day . . .which are basically "regurgitated", "re-marketed", and "repackaged" programs saying variations on the same thing.

Everett also hypothesized for the people who did get results that that was probably going to be on their path in life to achieve results regardless of what they did. . . This is not to say that people don't get value from them. . .it's just not what people think.

When people attend these seminars (and to a lesser extent - read personal development books), they get a "high" in the energy . . .but the "high" doesn't last and the overwhelming vast majority go right back to old habits. Just think about the last course or book you read . . .was there much profound change in your life afterwards??? I can say this because I've probably spent over $100k on seminars, books, courses over the years - and I'm not saying that I didn't find these valuable or worthwhile to do. If someone thinks they get value from them or has a sense to go do them - I say "go do it". . .and there's nothing wrong with doing them.

The reality is that most have a "sense" of what there is to do to produce results. . .they just don't do it or don't follow their "hunch" or "sense" because it might look too confronting to do.

I used to do accountability coaching and have been coached by an accountability coach. . .and while it has it's time and place, I find there's a more effective approach these days.

I can see that the reason is that when someone is confronted with a task that looks confronting - i.e. building a business, exposing oneself to the feelings that would come up with being or looking like a loser / failure, communicating more in a relationship / or asking for what one wants - these can all be scary things to do. . .but there's something else that's going on . . . .these confronting things will elicit a certain set of feelings and emotions that people have organized their whole lives around NOT having or not feeling.

They might want someone to hold them accountable to doing these things - but the real "heavy-lifting" work is all about them having the feelings and emotions. The basic human instinct for survival is to go towards that which feels good and go away from that which feels bad. The tendency I've noticed . . .and Everett talks about this in his book - people attend a seminar, get really "high", the "high" doesn't last, and then they're looking for the next seminar, or the next "hit". . .I used to be a "course junkie" for years and I think it's an appropriate name. So in a strange sort of way, the courses, seminars, books can also be a way of "non-confronting" having these feelings if we look at it more carefully.

The accountability stuff can be valuable but unless someone learns to have / go through / and feel the unpleasant feelings themselves (basically learning to do this "heavy-lifting feeling stuff for themselves, they'll always be dependent on someone else, will go back to the same habits, search out the next course, the next book, the next teacher / life coach. . .almost like a distraction to doing the work of sitting down and having all the unpleasant confronting feelings and emotions.

The very curious and interesting thing is - once feeling all what there is to feel - results seem to show up effortlessly without having to do a lot of work - something I've noticed. . .whereby, I used to have to have dozens of calls to pick up a client, now I can talk to several people and I'll have a client. . .and it's more like they just show up. I'm not suggesting this is an easy thing to do. . .but the good news is that there is a way of coaching and working with people to help them through this - which is more like helping someone become more adept at having the whole range of emotions that arise in them when confronted with whatever task is required to move to the next thing in life. . .and it's not something that can be marketed in the same way . . .someone has to really "want" to do this work (versus looking for a way out of doing this work / having someone or something else do it for them).