Yet the fact remained that it was only a minimal percentage of the population who had made such discoveries and utilized such tools in the area of their own personal development.
Then along came Stephen Covey with “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” – perhaps the best-selling personal development book of all time, followed by the work of Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins and countless others.
So I read, researched and wrote, trying to find the real keys in this plethora of advice. I suppose, at the time, as well as learning myself, I was looking for a way to put a lot of extremely useful information into a formula or format which would take the most important aspects of all of these wonderful pieces of personal advice and make them extremely user-friendly.
The more I read, the more I felt that something might be missing. And the more I read, the closer I came to identifying that missing link.
The key lies in the word “change”. Change is what everyone interested in personal development is trying to bring about. What are they trying to change? Well, we only have to think about the many millions of people who make New Year resolutions every year to realize that everyone would like to change habits and that habits drive virtually everything we do.
All of the books, seminars and lectures were all about attempting the same thing: bringing about change. How can we do this – change lifelong habits - with some reasonable chance of success?
Again, there is a pattern in much of the material available in that most of the authors advise the use of a type of self-dialogue. We all have a very active self dialogue going on all day long. It is estimated we have something like 60,000 thoughts each day and many of those are verbalized internally. Everyone has a voice in their head talking to them all day long.
Here is an example of a useful piece of self-dialogue recommended by Tom Hopkins in his 1982 effort entitled The Official Guide to Success. (The title reinforces Tom’s undoubted affinity for the field of sales - “Official” indeed!)
“I must do the most productive thing possible at any given moment”
This is a very sound piece of advice to give yourself, but…will you take the advice?
Such statements are called Affirmations and recommendations for their use recur in almost all of the well-known personal development literature. The idea is that, if you keep telling yourself something, it will eventually become true.
There is very little new in the world of developing the mind. Just as Aristotle was not the first to think logically and Edward De Bone was not the first to use lateral thinking (although both are famous in those areas), the first use of affirmations probably dates back to the cavemen ("I will not drop that heavy rock on my foot again!").
Yet changing habits, even with sefl-dialogue, is very difficult – remember all of those broken New Year resolutions. It would be nice if we could somehow ensure that our mind would actually absorb and accept an affirmation so that a bad habit could be definitely changed.
This was what I discovered and, to some extent, developed – a method of ensuring that the behavior covered by a properly constructed positive affirmation becomes a new habit. It is, naturally enough, a very powerful tool and we call it “The ChiLab Method”.
(Note that there are some very important rules for the construction and use of affirmations - they are known as the 5P rules in our work. Affirmations must contain certain elements to have a chance of working.).
Is this a brand-new discovery? In the same sense that Logic and Lateral Thinking are not brand new discoveries, neither is The ChiLab Method. Of course, other people have used similar techniques as an aid to change habits. The surprising thing was that the full keys to this technique are invariably not found in most of popular personal development work. Most seem to focus almost totally on what needs to be changed , rather than how to do it. There are hints in many of the works, especially the advice to use affirmations while in a relaxed state - but rarely did I find anyhitng remotely resembling a proper step-by-step description of what might be termed "best practice use of affirmations". The thousands of people to whom The ChiLab Method have been taught think it is very strange that, in their journey through life, they have never heard of such a technique before.
What is it all about? Habits are controlled by the Subconscious Mind. The Subconscious is the “driver” of everything we do. We are, in fact, creatures of habit – once a response has been ingrained by repetition, it is very difficult to change. So the person not doing “the most productive thing possible at any give time” has a task on his or her hands to make the change in behavior - especially to make it permanent.
Affirmations can be made to work, but they will only work when the subconscious is responsive. In bits and pieces, often from some very old material, I found some clues – in some cases more than clues – and realized the importance of properly preparing the subconscious to receive and accept the affirmation,
From that research and early work, The ChiLab Method was developed. It is basically a very effective means of “reprogramming the subconscious” so that new habits can be developed. Importantly it is easy to do and takes little time or effort. The difference in response, compared with simply reciting an affirmation, is the difference between walking and taking a plane.
The method is simple, valid (fully endorsed and confirmed by our Advisory Board psychologists) and provides the key to the “change” ChiLab training can achieve. Such change is clearly vital in any type of personal improvement, management or leadership training. It is quite fundamental and everyone who does a ChiLab Life Skills course learns this most important skill in the first session.
Bruce Stinson