Benjamin Franklin spent his teens as a printer's apprentice. At age 15 he was writing a weekly column for The New England Courant.
David Farragut became a mid-shipman in the United States Navy at age 9. He fought in the war of 1812 and took command of a captured British warship before he was 12.
Jacques Lusseyran, led 600 people in an underground resistance against Germany's occupation of France in World War II. He later survived two years in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Lusseyran was completely blind and only 16.
A hundred years ago teenagers were managing farms, writing books, inventing new machines, starting families, building businesses, learning trades... while the average ADULTS today are trapped in a desperate cycle of performing jobs that zap their energy, watching TV shows that dull their minds, and buying stuff they don't need with money they don't have.
Why have we become a culture of people afraid to move forward in life? Afraid of committing to positively transform ourselves and our communities?
To be clear: I'm not criticizing us in any way.
In fact, I think criticism is what keeps us trapped in our self-created prisons. One of the key principles in my Liberate Your Life program is how we have been criticized into a state of childish paralysis.
The number one comment I receive from readers is that they have trouble getting started in any type of personal development program. Buying the programs is easy. But they can't remain focused and consistent when it comes to keeping a meditation routine, building loving relationships, growing a business, or improving their health...
Or if they do get started they become distracted or discouraged in a matter of hours or days.
The thing is...
It's not your fault.
Look at schooling for example...
Like me, you probably spent 12+ years of your life being isolated from the real world, cloistered together with other immature children, and forced to read and recite facts and figures.
New York State's official "Teacher of the Year," John Taylor Gatto (a public school teacher for 30 years) described the public education like this:
"I had more than enough reason to think of our schools – with their long-term, cell-block-style forced confinement of both students and teachers – AS VIRTUAL FACTORIES OF CHILDISHNESS.... Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said he would ‘leave no child behind'? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?"
In Liberate Your Life I teach that as young children we develop certain psychological traits necessary for survival, and they form within us an "Inner Critic." As a child we are dependent on others to take care of us, so we unconsciously believe that fitting in socially with our immediate family is necessary to ensure they will take care of us.
We sacrifice our own individuality, determination and willpower for the purpose of pleasing those around us.
As we get older, society has actually been designed to hijack this childish, self-sabotaging, critical nature and extend it way beyond puberty. One quick glance at modern education shows how most people leave school with no leadership skills, little ability to think critically or independently, no innovation, and no determination.
Our society is producing people who are afraid to "step out of line" and live life on their own empowered terms. Our society actually discourages the qualities necessary for each and every one of us live up to our greatest potential.
Does this happen by accident? I doubt it...
In 1918, Alexander Inglis wrote, in his book Principles of Secondary Education that the education system was designed to "produce a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor."
In 1924, H.L. Mencken wrote in the The American Mercury: "The aim [of compulsory schooling] is to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put out dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else."
Yes, there's been a long-fought psychological war against your mind... to make you feel that your purpose in life is to be employed and to buy stuff. If you DARE step outside of those parameters then your Inner Critic - intentionally inflated for you by society - will reprimand you severely for daring to think you are able or deserving to be anything more than what others say you can be.
You may have been subjected to ten, twenty, thirty or more years of this type of limiting conditioning.
And it can feel kind of hopeless at times...
But it's actually not. :)
See, in order for society to have this type of influence on you it all had to be done unconsciously and subliminally.
Never out in the open...
That's why I believe that if you are willing to spend even a little time in focused, strategic, conscious effort you can "reprogram" your mind. You can identify all the experiences, stories and memories inside your head that feed your limiting, critical beliefs about yourself - and rewrite them into empowerment, success, and happiness.
David Farragut became a mid-shipman in the United States Navy at age 9. He fought in the war of 1812 and took command of a captured British warship before he was 12.
Jacques Lusseyran, led 600 people in an underground resistance against Germany's occupation of France in World War II. He later survived two years in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Lusseyran was completely blind and only 16.
A hundred years ago teenagers were managing farms, writing books, inventing new machines, starting families, building businesses, learning trades... while the average ADULTS today are trapped in a desperate cycle of performing jobs that zap their energy, watching TV shows that dull their minds, and buying stuff they don't need with money they don't have.
Why have we become a culture of people afraid to move forward in life? Afraid of committing to positively transform ourselves and our communities?
To be clear: I'm not criticizing us in any way.
In fact, I think criticism is what keeps us trapped in our self-created prisons. One of the key principles in my Liberate Your Life program is how we have been criticized into a state of childish paralysis.
The number one comment I receive from readers is that they have trouble getting started in any type of personal development program. Buying the programs is easy. But they can't remain focused and consistent when it comes to keeping a meditation routine, building loving relationships, growing a business, or improving their health...
Or if they do get started they become distracted or discouraged in a matter of hours or days.
The thing is...
It's not your fault.
Look at schooling for example...
Like me, you probably spent 12+ years of your life being isolated from the real world, cloistered together with other immature children, and forced to read and recite facts and figures.
New York State's official "Teacher of the Year," John Taylor Gatto (a public school teacher for 30 years) described the public education like this:
"I had more than enough reason to think of our schools – with their long-term, cell-block-style forced confinement of both students and teachers – AS VIRTUAL FACTORIES OF CHILDISHNESS.... Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said he would ‘leave no child behind'? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?"
In Liberate Your Life I teach that as young children we develop certain psychological traits necessary for survival, and they form within us an "Inner Critic." As a child we are dependent on others to take care of us, so we unconsciously believe that fitting in socially with our immediate family is necessary to ensure they will take care of us.
We sacrifice our own individuality, determination and willpower for the purpose of pleasing those around us.
As we get older, society has actually been designed to hijack this childish, self-sabotaging, critical nature and extend it way beyond puberty. One quick glance at modern education shows how most people leave school with no leadership skills, little ability to think critically or independently, no innovation, and no determination.
Our society is producing people who are afraid to "step out of line" and live life on their own empowered terms. Our society actually discourages the qualities necessary for each and every one of us live up to our greatest potential.
Does this happen by accident? I doubt it...
In 1918, Alexander Inglis wrote, in his book Principles of Secondary Education that the education system was designed to "produce a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor."
In 1924, H.L. Mencken wrote in the The American Mercury: "The aim [of compulsory schooling] is to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put out dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else."
Yes, there's been a long-fought psychological war against your mind... to make you feel that your purpose in life is to be employed and to buy stuff. If you DARE step outside of those parameters then your Inner Critic - intentionally inflated for you by society - will reprimand you severely for daring to think you are able or deserving to be anything more than what others say you can be.
You may have been subjected to ten, twenty, thirty or more years of this type of limiting conditioning.
And it can feel kind of hopeless at times...
But it's actually not. :)
See, in order for society to have this type of influence on you it all had to be done unconsciously and subliminally.
Never out in the open...
That's why I believe that if you are willing to spend even a little time in focused, strategic, conscious effort you can "reprogram" your mind. You can identify all the experiences, stories and memories inside your head that feed your limiting, critical beliefs about yourself - and rewrite them into empowerment, success, and happiness.
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