mind movies?!???

I’ve been recently reading Judy Reese’s blog.  I met Julie a couple of years back, first online and then face to face during a presentation I was giving on using Mandalas as a coaching tool.  She was, up until a few months ago, co-director of the Clean Change Company, a post she held for 10 years.  A couple of things intrigued me:  What made her decide to leave what seemed like a thriving business?  And second, I was interested to find out how an expert in transformational change handled change.

I haven’t had the chance to ask Judy about her decision to leave yet.  But from her blog I have been able to follow her thoughts and emotions as she wrestles with personal change.  What I have learnt is that even us change professionals suffer.  I guess we can never really see past the limits of our own boundaries, however enlightened we may be, without the help or guidance of someone external to us.

Anyway, Judy had a link to a website called mind movies, which she mentioned as being a project she is interested in pursing.  I clicked on the link.  It took me to a site I vaguely remembered seeing before.  Basically, in my opinion, it’s just two more people bullshitting people into believing that they (the owners of the site) have unlocked the secret to some miracle change formula.  What a mind movie basically amounts to is a slideshow of inspirational images and words set to music – something anyone can do with iPhoto or Windows Movie Maker.  But these folks are charging $49 for what they are calling the Mind Movie Creation Kit.  Give me a break!  While I am a fan of visualization as a success tool, I am against folks who take a simple and beautiful concept like visualization, dress it up in a fancy package, and then slap a price tag on it.

All is not negative.  In searching through the hundreds of mind movies on YouTube, I came across an interview of Will Smith in which he talks about the virtues of visualization.  What he does that I haven’t seen the Mind Movie folks do, is tell the truth.  And that truth is that visualization is a great tool, but it is nothing without the focus and determination to work harder than the next person in order achieve the success you want.  Whereas the disciples of the mind movie product say things like:  “In terms of money. When I made this video I was earning pretty much nothing. Now I have multiple streams of income…” It is as if all you have to do is watch the video 300 times, as this person claims to have done, and things just magically fall into place.

Give me good old fashioned focus, determination, and hard work any day.

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