Kudos To Jack Zufelt

"Thanks a lot Jack, that three hours spent in your presence was very worthwhile. Although it had me rethinking about my goals and purposes in life, it had also, unfortunately, set me into a nihilistic mode once again."

On that onemonday evening, 22th of oct, my friend Latiff and I had attended a S$97 "DNA of Success" seminar. The event is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Jack Zufelt. Of course the main speaker is Jack too.

He is notorious for going against the personal development norms,such as goal-setting, visualization, etc. You see, in his mind, only one thing counts. The rest are as useful as using a toothbrush for cleaning the bathroom.

He is a strong advocate of the "Core Desire". Everything else are secondary. Without a core desire as the foundation, everything else will eventually fall apart. If our core desires are identified first, all our goals and targets will be more substantial.

He gave some simple examples to illustrate his points. The one that hits me the hardest is that of the taekwondo students:

- He was actually teacxhing taekwondo some years ago (he holds a black belt by the way), and a man in his forty approached him and request to be his student.

He told him that he had wanted to be a black belt in taekwondo for the last ten years and asked Jack what will it take to have a black belt. Jack said something like "2 hours everyday, for 2 year". The man started squealing and complained about it. And Jack rejected him.

His rationale was not solely based on the man's reaction, but also his level of desire. If he had wanted the black belt that strongly for the last ten years, the minimal thing he could do was to find out what it would take to do so. Apparently he had not.

Then another man requested the same of Jack, to be his student and achieve a blackbelt. He asked Jack the same question and jack replied, "4 hours everyday, for 3 years". If your maths is good enough, you will realise that Jack was asking him to put in 3 TIMES the effort of the previous man. The reason?

He was handicapped. The man had some muscular disability which reduces his sense of balance. The guy can barely stand on one leg!

To Jack's surprise, the guy said "No problem, when can I get started?". In the end, he did put in those effort and get his black belt. The difference, as put forth by Jack, is the level of desire each man had for the black belt. If you want something badly, no amount of effort put in is too much, no amount of sacrifice made is wasted.

On hindsight, I realized that he is right. Our forefathers had built Singapore based on a very strong desire for a better life. It is not easy for the immigrants to leave the homeland that they loved so much and bear the brunt of the journey and unknowns of a foreign land. Heck no! It is that strong desire that gave them the support to move out of their comfort zone.

For a ship to find new shore, it has to lose sight of the port first.

On a personal basis, I know I had endured numerous last-minute-revisions the night prior to some exams which I had put off studying for. On those particular night, I could suddenly endure the lure of sleep and complexity of my syllabus. A non-stop studying marathon that could make sense of every complexities in just one session of studying and kept me glued to the books for 7 hours straight! How can you explain it?

I did not set any goals on paper. I most definitely did not visualize myself doing any studying, unraveling and staying awake. I did not repeat affirmations.

And I did not pray.

It was just that my core desire then, was to pass the exam. That was why sleep and other activities that would not contribute to attaining my desire were the least of my concerns.

***

Does that mean those self-help tool which have serve millions of people so well are absolutely redundant? No, they are not redundant. When the core desire is clear, effective goal setting, affirmations, visualization will all come naturally. If you have a core desire, you will want it so badly that your mind is preoccupied only with it. You will always visualize what would it be like to possess it. You will subconsciously associate the sights and sounds around you

with it. Your mind will conjure up a hundred and one ways to possess it. Unknowingly, you have done goal setting, visualization, affirmation, and everything that a success coach avocates.

So how do you find your core desire? How do you know if your goal is your core desire? Well, the only tools used are two questions:

1) What is it that you want... that you are not having in your life right now?

2) If you can have what you wanted, what different would it make to your life now compared to when you do not have it?

The first question is pretty much referring to our goals. The second one asks what does attaining the goals brings you? During the seminar, it is also the killer question that had people tied at the tongues. Unknowingly, many people set goals to fulfill a temporal desire, after which, the goal made no sense at all.

YUP, this idiot of me took these two questions so far that it sapped him of his energy for a whole week (not counting in the week after when I took one week to catch up on my schoolwork). I still did not have a satisfactory answer, just some speculations and mixed feeling for the growth of humankind as a whole.

You see, I asked myself the second question over and over again for different possible answers. Then it gets to the point when everything in the world is pretty much nihilistic.

I started out thinking that man can seek for all sort of things: money, power, beauty, etc. But it will eventually boils down to wanting validation of their purpose of existence, primarily through companionship and the respect that comes from it. In a nutshell, man really wants to feel indispensable and most of the times, it is through loved ones' recognition.

Let's take a look at revolution and domination, they stem from the desire for companions to be able to respect them as authority figures; Invention/trail- blazing and destruction stem from the desire to draw attention of more companions; altruism stems from the desire to provide for their companions and earn their respect; beliefs in the afterlife and in a superior entity stem from the desire for eternal companionship and validation. Non-social people still desire the same validation, but not from human. They find their validation through any differences that they have made, be it beneficial or destructive. Think of the 'cat-lady' who devotes her life to providing for cats.

So ultimately, the greatest motivating factor that pushes you to greatness is the respect, admiration and expectations of other people.

***

But the question that evades my understanding is this:

The validation is hardly enough to convince me due to its subjective nature. Do we fit somewhere else in the great scheme of things?

Once our purposes are validated, is the ultimate aim of our existence in this world as trivial as the cycle of 'live', 'grow', 'propagate', 'die'?

Any guesses for the purpose of our existence other than a trivial "continuation of species" without bringing the supernatural and metaphysical is pretty feeble. No wonder there are people who are dedicated to understanding the worlds beyond this world (heaven and hell, the universe and beyond the smallest visible millimetre). The Mayan who believed and "travelled" in the existence of 9 dimensions and fundamental physicists are good examples.

I rather not ponder over this question any further, it is better left to the minds of those whose livelihood depends on it.

For now, ace-ing my NUS exams comes first.