Latest / The You Project / #1525 Does Manifestation Work? - Dr Lucas Dixon

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#1525 Does Manifestation Work? - Dr Lucas Dixon · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: I'll get a team. It's it's me, It's Quig Anthony
0:03
Speaker 1: harpert'z the you projected Tiffany and Cook over there at
0:06
Speaker 1: typ Central, Uh and Lucas. We're going to go with Andrew.
0:10
Speaker 1: We'll find out a minute. Lucas Andra Dixon, I made
0:12
Speaker 1: that up. It could be. I bet it starts with
0:15
Speaker 1: a vow. Not sure, TIV. Why are you wearing glasses?
0:20
Speaker 2: Because I wanted to fit in halps peer pressure? Really? Yeah,
0:24
Speaker 2: well secure Lucas looked really intelligent. You've got YOURWS and
0:27
Speaker 2: I was like.
0:29
Speaker 1: Let's call him doctor Lucas because he's a fresh doctor.
0:32
Speaker 1: He's like about six months a doctor, so we're going
0:35
Speaker 1: to call him that. And he's afreshy. And when you're
0:38
Speaker 1: a freshy, I mean, I don't know. I've never been one,
0:41
Speaker 1: but maybe one day, who knows. Tif How things over
0:45
Speaker 1: on planet tiff.
0:46
Speaker 2: Things are fabulous. Although I've got my hot lucky blanket
0:48
Speaker 2: on my legs and instead of roasting, and I don't
0:51
Speaker 2: know why I'm not turning it off, But you know,
0:53
Speaker 2: maybe one of you doctors can or almost doctors can.
0:57
Speaker 1: Well there's a real doctor. There's a real doctor and
0:59
Speaker 1: a not a close doctor, so just a bullshitter. So
1:03
Speaker 1: and I don't think he's that kind of doctor, although
1:05
Speaker 1: he might have some kind of psychological interpretation of what
1:08
Speaker 1: the fuck you're doing. Hey, Lucas, welcome to the show.
1:13
Speaker 3: Pleasure to be here, Craig, and thanks Tiffany.
1:16
Speaker 1: Wow, thanks for coming to playmatee. Now let me tell
1:19
Speaker 1: everyone how you and I. I was telling you before
1:22
Speaker 1: we went live. I typically don't invite guests on the show,
1:26
Speaker 1: it's not my job, but Melissa and Tiff tend to
1:29
Speaker 1: one do that and to be much better at that
1:31
Speaker 1: than me. And I was reading a paper when I
1:36
Speaker 1: should have been reading other papers. So I blame you
1:40
Speaker 1: for my lack of productivity with my own research.
1:43
Speaker 3: I'll take them.
1:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but you wrote a paper called the Secret
1:49
Speaker 1: to Success, the Psychology of belief in manifestation. Is that
1:53
Speaker 1: the oh no, no, no, this was the one. No,
1:57
Speaker 1: that was it. Yeah, that was the paper, and and
2:00
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this is so good. So I want
2:03
Speaker 1: to dive into that. But I just want to give you.
2:06
Speaker 3: You didn't say it, whether you didn't say it with
2:08
Speaker 3: the question mark tone in your voice. For those of
2:11
Speaker 3: the podcast, that's the Secrets.
2:14
Speaker 1: Success question mark Yeah, the psychology of belief in manifestation
2:20
Speaker 1: or perfect You know those people who went down the
2:22
Speaker 1: old secret rabbit hole about a decade ago. They're just
2:25
Speaker 1: going to sit on the couch and manifest fucking excellence.
2:28
Speaker 1: How's that going anyway? So here's a bit of a snapshot.
2:32
Speaker 1: Doctor Lucas Dixon, graduated with a PhD in Social and
2:35
Speaker 1: consumer psychology from the UQ Business School in twenty twenty three,
2:40
Speaker 1: investigates the psychology of the success industry. I fucking love this,
2:45
Speaker 1: including the marketing and consumption of small business and solo
2:50
Speaker 1: preneur business education. He also investigates psychological factors that contribute
2:55
Speaker 1: to participating in multi level marketing and get rich quick schemes.
3:01
Speaker 1: Having run his own small business, Lucas aims to reduce fraud,
3:04
Speaker 1: misleading marketing, and improve offerings in this space. Are people,
3:09
Speaker 1: let's start with, are people just as gullible now as
3:13
Speaker 1: they were ten years ago, twenty years ago? Are they
3:17
Speaker 1: more gullible? Or are we more discerning? Or don't you know, doc, Oh.
3:22
Speaker 3: That's a good question, Craig, But I couldn't answer that really,
3:27
Speaker 3: But I look, my sneaking suspicion, is we We're all
3:32
Speaker 3: gullible if people say the right things to us at
3:36
Speaker 3: the right time. Some perhaps more gullible than others. If
3:40
Speaker 3: we I mean, I guess as psychologists or whatever, we
3:43
Speaker 3: will break that down and think, well, what are the
3:45
Speaker 3: aspects of gullibility. So it's not just one thing that
3:49
Speaker 3: kind of makes us us gullible. But I do feel
3:52
Speaker 3: that we're in a unique time for this kind of
3:56
Speaker 3: being persuaded, being you know, being I guess hypnotizable in
4:02
Speaker 3: a way because of the factors that this new media
4:05
Speaker 3: landscape is not something we've experienced before. AI is going
4:08
Speaker 3: to be super interesting. They see what happens there. We're
4:11
Speaker 3: just not very great at times in making decisions with
4:17
Speaker 3: our heads or working out how to do that.
4:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. Also, like you know, to quote many people,
4:26
Speaker 1: we love the idea of two minute abs, right love.
4:30
Speaker 1: We love the idea of reward without work. We love
4:33
Speaker 1: the idea of the destination without the journey you know,
4:36
Speaker 1: fill in the blank. The instant gratification, the quick fix,
4:39
Speaker 1: the magic pill, the silver bullet, like, all that stuff
4:42
Speaker 1: is fucking attractive. And if you can get someone to
4:45
Speaker 1: believe that that might be real, which is not that
4:48
Speaker 1: hard for people who don't want to do the work.
4:50
Speaker 1: Then bibbity bobby boo ka ching you've got a sale.
4:55
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, exactly, No, I agree, And it's one of
4:59
Speaker 3: the it's you know, that's I guess something I can
5:02
Speaker 3: speak to that we've we have found that, you know,
5:04
Speaker 3: the more you believe that, the more you believe that
5:06
Speaker 3: there really are get rich quick schemes, the more you're
5:09
Speaker 3: likely to believe the next one. You know, And so
5:12
Speaker 3: I guess the more that you're around groups and people
5:16
Speaker 3: and consuming content that is kind of reinforcing that message.
5:22
Speaker 3: And it's easy to see why you might believe that
5:25
Speaker 3: when you can hear people's stories of a success that
5:28
Speaker 3: are kind of like got that hero's journey, or you know,
5:33
Speaker 3: they're sort of leaving out all the hard bits, or
5:36
Speaker 3: you know, they're just kind of doing their their best
5:38
Speaker 3: to sort of tell an appealing story about how we've
5:42
Speaker 3: triumphed over some adversity. But of course life's not that simple,
5:46
Speaker 3: and there's so much that maybe we don't even know
5:48
Speaker 3: that's contributed to our success. But those simplistic narratives are
5:53
Speaker 3: great for TikTok, great for YouTube, and great for and
5:56
Speaker 3: of course they can be really motivational, but also kind
5:59
Speaker 3: of leave us down this path of feeling like success
6:03
Speaker 3: should be a quick or easy or a linear process
6:10
Speaker 3: of just climbing a ladder, and it's I don't know
6:13
Speaker 3: about you, but it hasn't been my experience.
6:16
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, my background, as I told you briefly,
6:19
Speaker 1: was working with thousands of people helping them change their body.
6:23
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the funny things is, or
6:27
Speaker 1: one of the common things I guess is somebody wakes
6:29
Speaker 1: up one day. Let's just pick someone who's forty and
6:31
Speaker 1: they've been in and out of shape for a lot
6:33
Speaker 1: of their life, which was my story for a long time,
6:36
Speaker 1: in and out of shape, fit, unfit, big, small, overweight,
6:40
Speaker 1: fucking you know, ripped and rock hard everything. And then
6:45
Speaker 1: you know, one day people wake up and they want
6:47
Speaker 1: to undo forty years of kind of shitty thinking and
6:51
Speaker 1: choosing and behaving in four weeks, you know, and to
6:55
Speaker 1: create a new operating system. And all of that is great,
6:59
Speaker 1: but ye know, for so like when we talk specifically
7:02
Speaker 1: about the idea of physical transformation, you know, it's a
7:06
Speaker 1: physical process, but it's also such a psychological, emotional, sociological
7:12
Speaker 1: journey and like, you know, being able to step up
7:16
Speaker 1: and own up and say, well, I really do want
7:18
Speaker 1: to be successful. I do want to create that outcome,
7:22
Speaker 1: but I also need to acknowledge that it might not
7:24
Speaker 1: be fun or quick or easy or painless, you know,
7:28
Speaker 1: because that the two minute ads, the silver bullet, that
7:31
Speaker 1: stuff is hugely appealing, right, Yeah.
7:35
Speaker 3: I agree, And it's it's also you know, really appealing
7:40
Speaker 3: for us perfectionists out there, and when I'm sure you've
7:42
Speaker 3: spoken a lot about that in your fifteen hundred episodes,
7:45
Speaker 3: and it's one of those things that if you expect
7:48
Speaker 3: you're going to you want to have high expectations of yourself,
7:51
Speaker 3: but you know, to hold yourself to that that I
7:53
Speaker 3: guess to have some kind of degree of self esteem
7:58
Speaker 3: and self confidence and want to to really raise that bar,
8:03
Speaker 3: but at the same time kind of realize we're not
8:05
Speaker 3: always going to hit it and not let that be
8:07
Speaker 3: the thing that's advotages you just because you're not you're
8:09
Speaker 3: not winning at the degree or the rate that you
8:12
Speaker 3: thought you were going to to be doing. And sometimes, hey,
8:16
Speaker 3: I hope that sometimes we could surprise ourselves. I always
8:19
Speaker 3: say to my students, you know, I try to keep
8:22
Speaker 3: my expectations in check and then I'm just pleasantly surprised.
8:25
Speaker 3: I love being surprised when things go well. But maybe
8:27
Speaker 3: it's because I'm a natural pessimist. I don't know you.
8:31
Speaker 1: Are you truly a natural?
8:32
Speaker 3: Like?
8:32
Speaker 1: Is that how you're kind of wired? Look?
8:37
Speaker 4: I mean that's such a It's interesting, I think I
8:43
Speaker 4: when I become too optimistic, which I can do so
8:47
Speaker 4: I can be influenced and I can get.
8:49
Speaker 3: Caught up in imagination. My background was as a musician,
8:54
Speaker 3: that was my first career, and so I guess I
8:58
Speaker 3: have a creative, artistic mind and I've definitely had I've
9:02
Speaker 3: been through sort of the self help and personal development
9:08
Speaker 3: industry side of things as well as a consumer of that,
9:12
Speaker 3: from probably when I was maybe sixteen seventeen all the
9:15
Speaker 3: way up until sort of being a practitioner as a
9:17
Speaker 3: coach and as a hypnotherapist for as a transition from
9:21
Speaker 3: music to doing research. So I think that I've gone
9:28
Speaker 3: through phases of really digging my heels into the optimism
9:32
Speaker 3: space and going, yes, yes I have I'm going to
9:37
Speaker 3: think positively, but it never ultimately fit me. So I'm
9:41
Speaker 3: guessing that that means that I'm kind of on that
9:45
Speaker 3: pessimism scale somewhere below maybe I don't know, maybe just
9:51
Speaker 3: slightly somewhere in the neutral space. I feel really okay
9:55
Speaker 3: with that.
9:56
Speaker 1: Now, and I think, yeah, so that's self awareness. Maybe
10:01
Speaker 1: maybe I'm maybe you're kind of a realist, you know,
10:07
Speaker 1: maybe you're pragmatic.
10:09
Speaker 3: You know.
10:09
Speaker 1: Let's so, yeah, I wanted to I want to talk
10:13
Speaker 1: about the paper and then kind of we'll see where
10:16
Speaker 1: we go. But the paper is called the Secret to
10:18
Speaker 1: Success question mark the Psychology of Belief in manifestation. Give
10:25
Speaker 1: us a snapshot of that research and that paper and
10:30
Speaker 1: what you found if you would.
10:34
Speaker 3: Sure think well, me and my colleagues, my advisors were
10:39
Speaker 3: it was. It was something we were interested in looking at.
10:42
Speaker 3: I didn't know if I was going to get to it.
10:43
Speaker 3: During my PhD, we started by looking at we're looking
10:48
Speaker 3: at multi level marketing organizations, you know, so am My
10:52
Speaker 3: herbal Life, those kinds of companies, and looking at the
10:56
Speaker 3: personal development side of those businesses and thinking, wow, you know,
11:00
Speaker 3: there's a lot going on here as far as teaching
11:05
Speaker 3: people how to think about success or how to think
11:08
Speaker 3: about how to improve their business. And one of the
11:12
Speaker 3: things that came out of that was definitely this focus
11:16
Speaker 3: on manifestation and manifestation belief and even sort of going
11:20
Speaker 3: into the religious space of the prosperity gospel, believing if
11:24
Speaker 3: you invest a certain amount of money in your church
11:27
Speaker 3: or your group that it'll re return to you. And
11:29
Speaker 3: so we thought from that, I wanted to really, I know,
11:33
Speaker 3: it hadn't been looked at a lot in any kind
11:35
Speaker 3: of academic work. It hadn't really been looked at as
11:39
Speaker 3: kind of law of attraction manifestation. And of course that
11:44
Speaker 3: was what fifteen years ago, but it's been around for
11:46
Speaker 3: longer than that, longer than the Secret and in various forms.
11:51
Speaker 3: But I just thought, well, okay, how long has it been.
11:53
Speaker 3: It's fifteen sixteen years, it's the secret, and should we
11:58
Speaker 3: even look at the people still in to this. But
12:00
Speaker 3: then I realized, look, the secret, so what thirty million
12:03
Speaker 3: copies or something was huge, and maybe it would be
12:07
Speaker 3: good to look at what's going on in the space now.
12:10
Speaker 3: If you look at TikTok at the time, they've changed
12:12
Speaker 3: their statistics strangely, but it was like thirty billion view
12:17
Speaker 3: you know, views or swipes on how TikTok works, but
12:21
Speaker 3: on manifestation content. You know, and so it's right manifestation
12:25
Speaker 3: of you can you know, if you just put that
12:27
Speaker 3: thought out there and you believe strongly and you act
12:30
Speaker 3: like you're successful, that sends this energy out to the universe.
12:34
Speaker 3: The universe hears that message and then sends that back
12:39
Speaker 3: to you. And you've got to look for those opportunities
12:42
Speaker 3: and make the best of those opportunities. And I've always
12:44
Speaker 3: been interested in like the difference, like the fact that
12:47
Speaker 3: there's these gray areas here, there's like all of these
12:50
Speaker 3: elements of truth there. Yeah, you know, self fulfilling sort
12:54
Speaker 3: of prophecies. Looking at the positive things helps you to
12:57
Speaker 3: see more positive things in the future. And and of
13:00
Speaker 3: course those things are kind of true. But then on
13:04
Speaker 3: the other side, like could we be embracing a world
13:08
Speaker 3: view like that? There's actually like quite a strong if
13:10
Speaker 3: you really believed the book the Secret You've taken on
13:13
Speaker 3: a I would say, a pretty extreme view of how
13:17
Speaker 3: the world works. Every thought that you have is what
13:20
Speaker 3: creates every experience. So we created a scale that measured this.
13:28
Speaker 3: We work on basically in psychology, like scales that from
13:33
Speaker 3: one to seven. You know, how much do you agree
13:35
Speaker 3: with certain kinds of statements and we we thought, okay,
13:38
Speaker 3: so people's believes different in this than they believe certain
13:41
Speaker 3: types of things, whether you read The Secret or you've
13:43
Speaker 3: read another kind of book, Think and grow Rich Napoleon
13:46
Speaker 3: Hill if you you know. But we thought there's commonalities there.
13:51
Speaker 3: The two commonalities being cosmic collaboration. So the idea that
13:56
Speaker 3: you collaborate, I've got hard to is thelliteration. Yeah, hey,
14:01
Speaker 3: I was in the apiration and personal power, which you know, hey,
14:09
Speaker 3: we all know Anthi Robbins that kind of thing. So
14:12
Speaker 3: basically that you either use you can harness that power
14:16
Speaker 3: of cosmic collaboration by doing the visualization, doing the positive affirmations,
14:24
Speaker 3: and we've found a whole bunch of things. So we
14:26
Speaker 3: I mean, the first thing was that we were trying
14:29
Speaker 3: to validate this scale, so making sure that the scale
14:31
Speaker 3: action measure of what we thought it was going to
14:33
Speaker 3: measure so we could use it in the future. But
14:36
Speaker 3: then we started to look at so manifestors. People who
14:41
Speaker 3: are scoring higher on this scale were more likely to
14:45
Speaker 3: believe that they would be successful in the future, so
14:48
Speaker 3: have that self confidence and optimism about the future, which
14:51
Speaker 3: maybe we could say is could be a good thing.
14:54
Speaker 3: But what we also did was then sort of look at, well,
14:56
Speaker 3: where are people at in their lives as far as
15:00
Speaker 3: maybe things like income and education and attainment, and sort
15:05
Speaker 3: of using that as a bar of going okay, so
15:08
Speaker 3: if you should we do manifest as people who are
15:12
Speaker 3: stronger in manifestation, do they maintain that kind of positive
15:17
Speaker 3: expectation about the future regardless of what their level of
15:20
Speaker 3: kind of income or is and education, so regardless of
15:25
Speaker 3: where they're at in that kind of process of attaining success.
15:28
Speaker 3: So we ask them things about, you know, what's your
15:32
Speaker 3: goals in life, and manifestos were more likely to say
15:35
Speaker 3: they had goals for sort of being rich, being famous,
15:39
Speaker 3: having being popular, having this kind of appealing image, and
15:44
Speaker 3: so when we looked at that, they were more likely
15:47
Speaker 3: to believe that they would achieve those things regardless of
15:51
Speaker 3: when we control for income and things like that. So
15:53
Speaker 3: it's this kind of level of success that's beyond whatever
15:57
Speaker 3: restrictions that people have. So from that we thought, okay,
16:02
Speaker 3: so that could be good for people maintaining hope and
16:05
Speaker 3: all of that. But then on the other side, perhaps
16:08
Speaker 3: that's kind of an unrealistic bar to put on yourself,
16:12
Speaker 3: Like if you've got you're not you know, I don't know.
16:14
Speaker 3: So we looked we were interested in that, curious about that.
16:18
Speaker 3: We then looked at a particular type of We just
16:23
Speaker 3: gave them a scenario, a fairly simple scenario, asked them
16:26
Speaker 3: what do they think they're best at or what do
16:28
Speaker 3: they like in their life that they value, And basically
16:32
Speaker 3: then we said, okay, so imagine that you are doing
16:37
Speaker 3: that thing that you value and you could earn three
16:39
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars a year, have hundreds of thousands of fans,
16:44
Speaker 3: and have that respect and admiration, and like, first of all,
16:48
Speaker 3: we asked people, would would you how much would you
16:50
Speaker 3: like that to be the case. Of course, everyone, with
16:53
Speaker 3: most almost everyone in our samples said that they would
16:56
Speaker 3: like that, But manifestos were more likely to rate themselves
17:00
Speaker 3: as more likely to achieve that in their lifetime and
17:03
Speaker 3: also achieve it quicker. So we asked them how many
17:06
Speaker 3: years that we thought that, and so every every step
17:10
Speaker 3: higher on the scale, they were more likely to say
17:13
Speaker 3: that they would achieve that goal in less time. So,
17:16
Speaker 3: considering it's a fairly it's going to be an unattainable
17:21
Speaker 3: goal for most people, and we could kind of assume
17:25
Speaker 3: from that that manifestos kind of had more of an
17:27
Speaker 3: unrealistic expectation about achieving that kind of success. And then
17:31
Speaker 3: you know, we went on to look at some financial
17:34
Speaker 3: risk variables too, So we thought, well, if you have
17:37
Speaker 3: a kind of belief in this sort of secret source
17:41
Speaker 3: or extra power that you have be able to collaborate
17:44
Speaker 3: with this kind of cosmic law of attraction, you're probably
17:49
Speaker 3: more likely to feel that you could take more risks,
17:52
Speaker 3: that things will come more easily to you, especially if
17:55
Speaker 3: you're saying those kinds of informations to yourself. And so
17:58
Speaker 3: we looked at we looked at basically some other some
18:03
Speaker 3: risk variables, so manifests, people who scored higher on the scale,
18:07
Speaker 3: more likely to say that they would be okay with
18:12
Speaker 3: taking higher risks, more likely to endorse the idea that
18:16
Speaker 3: you can get rich quick, more likely to have investments
18:20
Speaker 3: in things like crypto rather than sort of standard stocks,
18:24
Speaker 3: so those more you know, volatile but you know, I guess,
18:28
Speaker 3: more gambling style investments. And then also the one that
18:32
Speaker 3: really got the news attention was they were also more
18:34
Speaker 3: likely to report that they'd been bankrupt in their in
18:38
Speaker 3: their in their life. So yeah, that was basically what
18:42
Speaker 3: we found in this first set of studies that we've
18:44
Speaker 3: looked at manifestation. So it's some pros and some concept
18:50
Speaker 3: could you.
18:50
Speaker 1: So just for people who are going, what the fuck
18:53
Speaker 1: is a manifesto? Could you you to me? Like, like
18:58
Speaker 1: you said before, there's a bit of that, let's focus
19:01
Speaker 1: on what we want. But I think if it ends there,
19:04
Speaker 1: well that's a problem. But if that leads to a
19:07
Speaker 1: decision and a plan and behavior and action and adaptation
19:12
Speaker 1: and like, if there's a whole kind of strategy and
19:15
Speaker 1: action plan that's that's executed, that's great. But it's more
19:20
Speaker 1: about the just focus on it and it will happen.
19:24
Speaker 1: Am I correct? So yes, to find what you're talking about.
19:29
Speaker 1: So somebody who is a manifestor what do you mean
19:32
Speaker 1: by that?
19:33
Speaker 3: Okay, well, let me just let me read some of
19:36
Speaker 3: the items that are in the scale. I feel that
19:37
Speaker 3: that's the easiest way to describe what I've got. The
19:41
Speaker 3: luxury of two screens here, so I can just read
19:44
Speaker 3: some of those items.
19:47
Speaker 1: It's great.
19:49
Speaker 3: I don't well look, I mean, look, you look like
19:50
Speaker 3: you've got a lot of screens there. I have to say,
19:52
Speaker 3: there's a big screen behind you, so they're not as big.
19:57
Speaker 3: Mine's not big, but you know I know how to
19:59
Speaker 3: use them. Okay, So visualizing a successful outcome causes it
20:05
Speaker 3: to be drawn closer to me. I can speak success,
20:09
Speaker 3: success into existence through positive self talk, I'm more likely
20:13
Speaker 3: to attract Let me think, go down here, I attract
20:16
Speaker 3: success into my life with the help of the universe
20:19
Speaker 3: or a higher power. The universe or a high paths
20:21
Speaker 3: sends me. People are events to aid my success. To
20:25
Speaker 3: attract success, I align myself with cosmic forces or energy.
20:31
Speaker 3: If I think about success, achieving success, those thoughts alone
20:35
Speaker 3: make success more likely. So what we're talking about is
20:40
Speaker 3: if you really score high, we're very very high on
20:42
Speaker 3: this scale, say that you're really believing that that is
20:48
Speaker 3: the secret, right, that is the cause that's happening there.
20:53
Speaker 3: And so if you if you believe that it's the
20:56
Speaker 3: thing that causes success and you read something like this secret,
21:00
Speaker 3: which we also obviously looked at whether people who score
21:03
Speaker 3: high on the scale have read the secret, and obviously
21:05
Speaker 3: they have more likely to have done that. But yeah,
21:09
Speaker 3: you're going to believe that, you're more likely to be
21:13
Speaker 3: able to sort of sit back and let the universe
21:15
Speaker 3: do the work. Don't worry about the how it will
21:18
Speaker 3: come together. And of course there's something that's maybe positive
21:22
Speaker 3: about sometimes stepping back and just sort of saying, hey,
21:26
Speaker 3: I'm going to hand things over. But as you're saying,
21:31
Speaker 3: like if it sort of prevents you from taking certain
21:34
Speaker 3: actions but this, Yeah, so that's definitely one thing that
21:38
Speaker 3: we didn't focus. There's definitely more room for work in
21:42
Speaker 3: that area. So maybe you'll do that, Craig for me,
21:46
Speaker 3: that would be good. But yeah, I think that that's
21:49
Speaker 3: probably going to be the case. They're more likely to
21:51
Speaker 3: I've done a little bit of piloting of some studies
21:53
Speaker 3: with this, and it seems to be the case that
21:56
Speaker 3: they're going to be less likely to take those what
21:58
Speaker 3: I called like like those instrumental actions, which are those
22:03
Speaker 3: step by step, day by day, the effort you have
22:06
Speaker 3: to make, but more likely to spend time on symbolic actions,
22:10
Speaker 3: so the things that sort of are supposed to prove
22:13
Speaker 3: to the universe. So things like dressing as your rich
22:18
Speaker 3: self for you know, right, doing a vision board and
22:21
Speaker 3: again on their own, those things are kind of harmless,
22:24
Speaker 3: but if they're done, and it means that you're doing
22:26
Speaker 3: more of that and spending a lot of time and
22:28
Speaker 3: energy on that and less time on the sort of
22:31
Speaker 3: hard yards of taking those actions. That there's probably you know,
22:35
Speaker 3: that could sit to some extent explain what we found,
22:39
Speaker 3: or there's some other things that probably explain it to
22:41
Speaker 3: that I'm sure we'll get into.
22:43
Speaker 1: There's probably, I mean, there would be some groups and
22:45
Speaker 1: organizations that fucking hate your research. I hate to tell
22:48
Speaker 1: you that'd be like do you know what I mean?
22:52
Speaker 1: That's going to rub a few people the wrong way.
22:54
Speaker 1: But how when people who are strongly towards the high
23:01
Speaker 1: end of the manifesto scale, you know, they they tick
23:05
Speaker 1: all the boxes, no pun intended. Are they very are
23:10
Speaker 1: they open to this? Like when you say, look, I mean,
23:13
Speaker 1: bottom line is in a nutshell, it doesn't work. Like
23:19
Speaker 1: manifesting doesn't correlate with better outcomes, better income, better long
23:24
Speaker 1: term results, better health. There's no evidence at all to
23:28
Speaker 1: suggest that this strategy or this whatever ideology philosophy works.
23:33
Speaker 1: Have you had any feedback from people when you kind
23:38
Speaker 1: of present them with that.
23:40
Speaker 3: I think I haven't experienced a lot of it publicly
23:45
Speaker 3: or like directly to me, But I would say that
23:51
Speaker 3: I probably don't present it exactly that way, And maybe
23:53
Speaker 3: that's why I try to like, we're only this is
23:58
Speaker 3: one state, like one journal article in so I don't
24:01
Speaker 3: want to say that there's no advantages. And you know,
24:04
Speaker 3: obviously to really look at that, you probably have to
24:06
Speaker 3: look at over time, which we didn't do. We didn't
24:09
Speaker 3: look at people's success over time. But I think that,
24:14
Speaker 3: like what we were trying to do with this is
24:15
Speaker 3: set up some questions moving forward, and some of those
24:19
Speaker 3: questions are like what could be again, like what could
24:22
Speaker 3: be causing the perhaps poorer financial outcomes in this The
24:27
Speaker 3: fact that there is no sort of advantage necessarily except
24:32
Speaker 3: for the fact that maybe it we do know it
24:34
Speaker 3: makes people feel better. You make some more hopeful, and
24:37
Speaker 3: it makes them and that can be important. But I
24:39
Speaker 3: think just that it's not actually having the effect that
24:43
Speaker 3: maybe these books are promising. Is I think I could
24:45
Speaker 3: put my foot down and say that that it's not
24:48
Speaker 3: you're not going to get what the secret is telling
24:50
Speaker 3: you you're going to get. I'm happy to put my
24:53
Speaker 3: flagging them on that.
24:55
Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit like you and I have
24:58
Speaker 1: had like similar components to our background, which is opening
25:03
Speaker 1: the door on you know, self help and personal development,
25:07
Speaker 1: and you know which you ended up doing a PhD
25:09
Speaker 1: in psych the same as me and blah blah blah,
25:12
Speaker 1: and you It's interesting because I do a lot of
25:15
Speaker 1: like my main job is speaking, is corporate speaking, and
25:18
Speaker 1: working in the public sector doing workshops and stuff. And
25:22
Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody this morning and they literally
25:25
Speaker 1: asked me how, I how do you keep coming up
25:29
Speaker 1: with new stuff? Right? And like I said, I don't.
25:32
Speaker 1: And I said, like, they're pretty much there is no
25:36
Speaker 1: new stuff like the stuff that I talk about. You know,
25:39
Speaker 1: philosophers and stoics and theologians and psychologists and researchers have
25:45
Speaker 1: been talking about for hundreds and thousands of years. You know,
25:49
Speaker 1: it's like there's there's nothing. You know, there's new ways
25:53
Speaker 1: of sharing old ideas or old wisdom, you know, but
25:56
Speaker 1: it's like I'm just opening the door and pointing towards
26:00
Speaker 1: you know. It's like, make hard decisions, do hard things.
26:03
Speaker 1: You might get better results. Sitting on the couch crossing
26:05
Speaker 1: your fingers not a great strategy.
26:07
Speaker 3: You know.
26:08
Speaker 1: Self awareness is a pretty good idea. Authenticity and humilistic humility,
26:12
Speaker 1: and like in this space of personal development and you know,
26:18
Speaker 1: self help, it's like for me, it's largely a regurgitation
26:22
Speaker 1: of things. And especially maybe it's just some of the
26:26
Speaker 1: people that I follow or connect with on social media platforms,
26:29
Speaker 1: but you know, people who seem to be on a
26:32
Speaker 1: level reinventing the metaphoric wheel and pretending that they invented
26:37
Speaker 1: the actual wheel. It's like, no, dude, this is this
26:40
Speaker 1: is just you're saying shit that has been said forever.
26:44
Speaker 1: And I talked to some really big audiences, but I
26:46
Speaker 1: don't say anything that hasn't been said. I might say
26:49
Speaker 1: it in my way, you know, and it's it's for
26:53
Speaker 1: me unless the and I know I'm digressing here, but
26:57
Speaker 1: for me, unless the message is empowering the individual, not me.
27:03
Speaker 3: You know.
27:03
Speaker 1: It's like I tell everybody constantly, I'm not the answer whatever.
27:06
Speaker 1: I'm just a resource and I may or may not
27:09
Speaker 1: be any value to you. That's more about you than me.
27:14
Speaker 1: But empowering people to maybe lose the wishful thinking. It's
27:20
Speaker 1: good to be positive, it's good to focus on what
27:22
Speaker 1: you want to do, be create, change, but also perhaps
27:27
Speaker 1: you know, going back to that pragmatic thing of going, well,
27:31
Speaker 1: what is it that I want to create and change?
27:33
Speaker 1: What do I want to learn and unlearn? And now
27:35
Speaker 1: what decisions do I need to make, an action do
27:38
Speaker 1: I need to take to truly manifest it myself. So
27:43
Speaker 1: the manifesting is a byproduct of my work and courage
27:46
Speaker 1: and choices, rather than sitting on a couch thinking happy
27:51
Speaker 1: or positive thoughts. No disrespect to anyone.
27:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's a few points there that I
27:58
Speaker 3: could grab and go on go on about too, I feel,
28:03
Speaker 3: but I want to I want to just say that
28:05
Speaker 3: I agree that like that there's so much regurgitation and
28:09
Speaker 3: and actually you find that fields like stagnate when there
28:16
Speaker 3: is that, right, you're not actually creating anything new, and
28:19
Speaker 3: people get very sort of sensitive about protecting their you know,
28:25
Speaker 3: trademarked kind of system of success or whatever it is.
28:30
Speaker 1: Let's call it. Let's call it pseudoscience.
28:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and it stagnates. And so it's strange, you know,
28:38
Speaker 3: because that's one of the things that pushed me into
28:41
Speaker 3: doing going to university. Actually because I I was training NLP,
28:47
Speaker 3: so I was training neurone risky programming training trainers, and
28:51
Speaker 3: and that that I was trying to I was creating
28:56
Speaker 3: content like I was creating the curriculum, and wanting to
29:00
Speaker 3: really understand where these ideas came from. And it was
29:04
Speaker 3: really frustrating to me because I had no way of
29:07
Speaker 3: really getting back to and tracing these things back to
29:10
Speaker 3: their roots. I read the books and then I read
29:14
Speaker 3: you know, the Founders books, and they're just squabbling with
29:17
Speaker 3: each other, and you know, the thing is that there
29:21
Speaker 3: was just no systematic way of being able to understand
29:25
Speaker 3: the roots of these ideas. And to me, that's why
29:29
Speaker 3: it's I don't know, like we're doing sort of talking
29:32
Speaker 3: shop here, but it's like it's hard to really be
29:36
Speaker 3: able to say, look, this is what NLP is, or
29:39
Speaker 3: this is what whatever modality it is that you do
29:43
Speaker 3: if you can't actually sort of agree on the philosophies
29:47
Speaker 3: behind this, or at least be able to talk to
29:50
Speaker 3: each other and challenge each other on what the roots
29:53
Speaker 3: of these things are and then be able to test those,
29:56
Speaker 3: hopefully scientifically or at least sort of empirically or observation.
30:01
Speaker 3: And so I think citing your sources is just a
30:04
Speaker 3: bloody good idea. You know, I think you can do
30:07
Speaker 3: it easily. You can just say I heard this from
30:09
Speaker 3: Blah blah or you know, Marcus Aureli has said, and
30:15
Speaker 3: it's done. You know, people can go do their own,
30:18
Speaker 3: like you said, their own kind of research. So that
30:21
Speaker 3: really piqued my interest when you said that, because that's
30:23
Speaker 3: what I found from going to university. And I try
30:25
Speaker 3: to tell my students too that, hey, like this is
30:28
Speaker 3: not just the boring thing that we try to get
30:30
Speaker 3: you to do, but like that is the way you learn,
30:32
Speaker 3: that's the way you grow. And part of how you
30:35
Speaker 3: do that is that you're held to a high standard
30:37
Speaker 3: when you're doing a PhD. Right to like not reproducing
30:41
Speaker 3: stuff that's been done before. The only way you know
30:43
Speaker 3: whether or not. And hey, we don't even really know.
30:46
Speaker 3: I'm sure someone's done some research or manifestation and called
30:49
Speaker 3: it something different that I didn't find, but I know
30:52
Speaker 3: that I'm at least one of the first that's just
30:56
Speaker 3: made this little contribution in my field because we can
31:00
Speaker 3: trace back, do you know what I mean? So I
31:03
Speaker 3: don't know. For me, that was really eye opening to
31:05
Speaker 3: go to university and understand that that's those books in
31:09
Speaker 3: the library and these millions of people writing things down.
31:13
Speaker 3: The only way we can have a sort of way
31:16
Speaker 3: of navigating that is to be able to understand how
31:18
Speaker 3: to to cite our sources and how you do that
31:23
Speaker 3: other links, you know.
31:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the that's actually fascinating. I want
31:28
Speaker 1: to talk to you about NLP in a moment. But
31:29
Speaker 1: one of the ever present realities too is when you
31:33
Speaker 1: are truly intertwined with an ideology or a philosophy, or
31:37
Speaker 1: a practice or a construct, then you get a sense
31:41
Speaker 1: of your identity from that. Right, So when people have
31:45
Speaker 1: certain strong beliefs, then logic and science goes out the
31:50
Speaker 1: window because now we've got a motion wrapped around this idea.
31:54
Speaker 1: And if you challenge my idea, you challenge my identity.
31:57
Speaker 1: So fuck you and your science, you know what I mean.
32:00
Speaker 1: And this is like one of the challenges. And I'm
32:03
Speaker 1: not a very good scientist, right, I'm not bad. You're
32:06
Speaker 1: way better than me, I'm sure. But one of the
32:09
Speaker 1: ever present realities for me is that every scientist has
32:14
Speaker 1: got bias. Like we all like to think where totally objective,
32:17
Speaker 1: none of us are. We're all subjective, every including me.
32:21
Speaker 1: Do I have bias? Of course? Am I emotional? Of course?
32:24
Speaker 1: Do I get defensive? Of course? Have I got an ego?
32:27
Speaker 3: Of course?
32:28
Speaker 1: Do I want to be that? No? I don't, right,
32:31
Speaker 1: But I think that acknowledging our humanity, not as a
32:35
Speaker 1: flaw or a weakness, but just an ever present reality
32:38
Speaker 1: and saying, look, you like you've just done this is
32:41
Speaker 1: what I think. This is what I did. Maybe someone
32:43
Speaker 1: else did some similar research called at something else. But
32:47
Speaker 1: when we've got an incentive to produce a certain outcome,
32:50
Speaker 1: which a lot of research has now because it's funded
32:53
Speaker 1: and the people who are funding it on a certain outcome,
32:55
Speaker 1: let's not open that door. But yeah, it's trying to
32:59
Speaker 1: find the absolute, unbiased truth at the bottom of all
33:04
Speaker 1: of this stuff, which can be you know, I mean
33:08
Speaker 1: that's a that's a minefield, you know, yeah, steps down
33:13
Speaker 1: our high horse.
33:13
Speaker 3: Go oh, I'd say that that that's a really interesting
33:21
Speaker 3: point about truth and and you you, I think your
33:24
Speaker 3: research that you said you've been doing with your PhD
33:27
Speaker 3: s Thatt are touching on on that too, of being
33:29
Speaker 3: able to look at the accuracy of certain beliefs that
33:32
Speaker 3: we have. But I think it's some of us, you know.
33:37
Speaker 3: I guess you could call it like in academica or
33:40
Speaker 3: call it epistemology, right, but basically the idea that like,
33:44
Speaker 3: how how do we judge whether something is true? And
33:47
Speaker 3: we all do this in our own way, and some
33:52
Speaker 3: of the stuff that I've looked at in my research
33:54
Speaker 3: has been like that sometimes we have certain styles that
33:56
Speaker 3: we that we gravitate towards on a spect like from
34:00
Speaker 3: trusting our gut versus and being really quick and intuitive
34:05
Speaker 3: with our decisions versus thinking through things really sort of
34:09
Speaker 3: slowly and deeply. And it's not to say that one
34:12
Speaker 3: is always good or one is always bad, and it's
34:15
Speaker 3: not to say that we don't all naturally fluctuate and
34:18
Speaker 3: use our hearts so to speak, and our heads sometimes,
34:22
Speaker 3: but we tend to gravitate. It's almost like a personality
34:25
Speaker 3: trait that we have where some of us will kind
34:27
Speaker 3: of prefer to trust our gut and perhaps if we
34:31
Speaker 3: have a belief by manifestation, it's almost like you're supposed to,
34:35
Speaker 3: you know, and so you you really develop that that, yes,
34:38
Speaker 3: I do this, and those sort of trusting your gut
34:41
Speaker 3: versus preferring to think deeply about things. There's been a
34:47
Speaker 3: lot of research lately about how how that you know
34:51
Speaker 3: that that trusting your your your gut when it comes
34:55
Speaker 3: to complex issues is not always the greatest way to
35:02
Speaker 3: make decisions. So especially like if you think I'll just
35:04
Speaker 3: give you an obvious example. So if it's it's something
35:07
Speaker 3: like finances, you know what I mean, or how well
35:09
Speaker 3: your business is going, you know, at your at your
35:12
Speaker 3: three year mark or something like that. When you really yeah,
35:16
Speaker 3: like you said, you're motivated towards wanting to think good
35:19
Speaker 3: about this. It's not nice that to have the hard
35:22
Speaker 3: conversation with yourself. And so we're going to all naturally
35:27
Speaker 3: kind of go towards that intuitive sort of like, oh,
35:31
Speaker 3: this is how I want to feel about this, this
35:33
Speaker 3: is how I hope that things are going to go
35:35
Speaker 3: in the future. So I'm going to I'm just going
35:36
Speaker 3: to brush over, you know, I'm just going to brush
35:39
Speaker 3: over these these hard truths and prefer like and I
35:44
Speaker 3: think that you can find yourself in groups and in
35:48
Speaker 3: around people or gurus that will encourage that in you
35:52
Speaker 3: for And that's some of the recess I've looked at
35:55
Speaker 3: with multi level marketing, where it's kind of used as
35:58
Speaker 3: a tool to sort of stop you from thinking critically
36:01
Speaker 3: about Hold on a min, I haven't made any money
36:03
Speaker 3: in three years, and perhaps I've lost money, but you know,
36:06
Speaker 3: maybe there's something not quite right about this model, or
36:09
Speaker 3: you know, should I just keep listening to them telling
36:12
Speaker 3: me that it's my fault because I'm not manifesting this enough,
36:14
Speaker 3: you know. So, you know, I think it's important to
36:19
Speaker 3: to kind of understand that we can fall in this
36:23
Speaker 3: spectrum of I mean, we've got to try to find
36:26
Speaker 3: a way of integrating our heart and our head. And
36:29
Speaker 3: that's that, to me, is a really fascinating process moving
36:33
Speaker 3: through life. You don't want to be a stone, you know.
36:36
Speaker 3: But at the same time, you know, thinking sort of
36:38
Speaker 3: intuitively and quickly helps us to buy our coffees and
36:41
Speaker 3: do the automatic things every day, but not necessarily make
36:44
Speaker 3: those big life decisions that that might be it might
36:49
Speaker 3: be more helpful to really deliberate on and think about.
36:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I'm fascinated with cults, Lucas, And
36:57
Speaker 1: to me, and I've done lots of pseudo research into cults,
37:02
Speaker 1: and I listen to fucking countless podcasts on cults too
37:05
Speaker 1: many when I should be doing actual research. But to me,
37:09
Speaker 1: multi level marketing is like a cult of thought, a
37:12
Speaker 1: cult of behavior. It's like it's like we were going
37:15
Speaker 1: to tell you how to think. We don't want you
37:17
Speaker 1: to think for yourself, going to tell you how to
37:19
Speaker 1: think and what to think how to be, what to
37:21
Speaker 1: focus on, what to pay attention to, and if you
37:23
Speaker 1: have this thought, get rid of that thought because that's
37:26
Speaker 1: bad thought. And so literally it's a form of mind
37:29
Speaker 1: control and manipulation and coercion. And you know, like many
37:34
Speaker 1: actual what we would call religious cults or spiritual cults.
37:37
Speaker 1: I mean there are food cults, there are exercise cults,
37:40
Speaker 1: there are cultural cults where in order to belong in
37:44
Speaker 1: that group, you need to think and be an act
37:47
Speaker 1: and behave and align with that group. Otherwise, like if
37:51
Speaker 1: you can't disagree with anything, or you're out of the group.
37:55
Speaker 1: So the idea of critical thinking, as you that's truly
37:58
Speaker 1: discouraged because you know, they're neither you're a sinner or
38:02
Speaker 1: a backslider, or you're mistaken or you're a problem or
38:06
Speaker 1: you know you've slipped out of the light into the
38:08
Speaker 1: darkness or whatever metaphor you want to lose use. But
38:12
Speaker 1: like I don't care what kind of group it is,
38:14
Speaker 1: but if you are in any group and they don't
38:17
Speaker 1: want you to question anything or think for yourself or
38:23
Speaker 1: ever be critical of anything that is like a fundamental
38:28
Speaker 1: of that group, then you should get the fuck out
38:30
Speaker 1: of that group. Like for me, that's just that's a
38:34
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's alarm belts right there.
38:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I agree. Couldn't say it better. I mean,
38:40
Speaker 3: that's that's how that's the advice that I give people
38:43
Speaker 3: to like, even though my research isn't necessarily directly looking
38:47
Speaker 3: at cults, I think, you know, I always just try
38:50
Speaker 3: to say, look, if you're feeling like this real social
38:53
Speaker 3: pressure to to have to think a certain way and
38:56
Speaker 3: not think another way, and that that involves you not
38:59
Speaker 3: thinking critically, not questioning, then that's a red flag.
39:03
Speaker 1: And yeah, well I think also, I mean, if you
39:07
Speaker 1: think for yourself too much, they can't control you. And
39:11
Speaker 1: the idea of any cult is control and manipulation and
39:14
Speaker 1: domination on the premise that you know, like think about
39:18
Speaker 1: a lot of religious cults. You know, it's all a
39:21
Speaker 1: matter of semantics, really, religion cults, some religions I would
39:25
Speaker 1: call cults. Some are maybe more mainstream and I don't know,
39:29
Speaker 1: but you know, think about like I grew up in
39:31
Speaker 1: a cult that said if I behave a certain way,
39:35
Speaker 1: not the way I should behave, I'm going to burn
39:37
Speaker 1: in an eternal lake of fire forever. And I learned
39:41
Speaker 1: that when I was six. Right now, when you're six
39:44
Speaker 1: years old and you get told if you do this thing,
39:47
Speaker 1: if you die in this state, and by the way,
39:50
Speaker 1: you could die at any stage. You don't know when
39:52
Speaker 1: you're going to die, Craig. And if you die with
39:54
Speaker 1: a mortal sin on your soul, this is what a
39:56
Speaker 1: mortal sin is. Right then you're going to burn for
39:59
Speaker 1: eternity in fire. Well, how fucking terrifying is that? And
40:05
Speaker 1: what a great way to control a mind. And it's like,
40:09
Speaker 1: this is not presented as an idea. This is presented
40:12
Speaker 1: as a truth. And so I grew up being terrified
40:17
Speaker 1: of dying, you know, with a sin. And it's like
40:22
Speaker 1: fucking hell. And this is being imprinted into children's minds
40:27
Speaker 1: by adults who don't go, oh, maybe this is not
40:31
Speaker 1: a good idea to do this, And you know, the
40:34
Speaker 1: few times where I would question things, and again, this
40:38
Speaker 1: is just my story. And really it's not just about
40:40
Speaker 1: religion everyone, it's just about thinking and programming. But it
40:44
Speaker 1: happens to be in a religious context here. Yeah, I mean, wow,
40:48
Speaker 1: talk about how to dominate somebody, make them terrified and
40:52
Speaker 1: make them think that only you know the escape route.
40:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's terrible. I mean is it's terrible. And
41:01
Speaker 3: the interesting thing as well when when you when you
41:05
Speaker 3: like because I guess one of the ways that then
41:07
Speaker 3: they'll just sort of come back is go, well, no,
41:09
Speaker 3: but God God loves you, you know, or you're whatever
41:12
Speaker 3: you're you know, and it's doing it because he loves you.
41:15
Speaker 3: And what a message. What a mixed message going on there.
41:18
Speaker 3: But the same with positivity, I think that can happen,
41:20
Speaker 3: and I guess with manifestation and things that happen in MLMs,
41:26
Speaker 3: if you plaster over that with oh, yeah, but we're
41:30
Speaker 3: giving you something to grab onto, so yeah, don't think negatively,
41:33
Speaker 3: but you know, don't be critical, but you know, we've
41:35
Speaker 3: got all these tools and techniques to help you to
41:38
Speaker 3: be positive. Then it almost feels like it's not why
41:42
Speaker 3: why would people just want the best for me? You know,
41:45
Speaker 3: they want me to succeed. They there's no, there's no,
41:48
Speaker 3: they just don't want me to be negative. So it's
41:51
Speaker 3: very hard to see through that veil and realize that
41:53
Speaker 3: it could be used as a form of especially when
41:55
Speaker 3: it comes to positive thinking, it could be used as
41:57
Speaker 3: a form of control, because it just feels like people
42:00
Speaker 3: have the best of intentions for you. They want you
42:02
Speaker 3: to succeed, they want you to think happy thoughts, they
42:05
Speaker 3: want you to you know, Whereas I think that it
42:08
Speaker 3: can be that they've mortgaged. In a case of MLM,
42:13
Speaker 3: they've they've remortgaged their you know, they mortgage themselves up
42:17
Speaker 3: to the hill or paying rent just so they can
42:20
Speaker 3: show you their expensive house and pretend that the MLM
42:25
Speaker 3: was the thing that got them there. You know. So
42:28
Speaker 3: I yeah, it's it's a I think when you when
42:32
Speaker 3: you see it's hard, but it's it's important to really think,
42:36
Speaker 3: you know, do these people have the best intentions for me?
42:40
Speaker 3: Or or what are they getting out of this? You know,
42:43
Speaker 3: what's the vested interests here?
42:46
Speaker 1: And MLM is multi level marketing? Everyone just that's cool?
42:51
Speaker 1: What's fucking MLM? Before we go, I want to ask
42:54
Speaker 1: you one thing. So I don't know what the answer
42:59
Speaker 1: to this is, but you know, ten years ago anyway,
43:02
Speaker 1: I think most people, most actual researchers and psychologists or
43:07
Speaker 1: people in the psychology space kind of thought that NLP
43:12
Speaker 1: New neurolinguistic programming was kind of bullshit, kind of a
43:18
Speaker 1: pseudo science, not real, not really respected or taught in
43:22
Speaker 1: universities or I don't know what what is it in
43:25
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, What regards is NLP held in these days.
43:31
Speaker 3: I don't think it's much changed, but I think that
43:34
Speaker 3: that's the same kind of There was a set of
43:36
Speaker 3: studies done and that's been the thing that people have
43:39
Speaker 3: grabbed on to, I think, and sort of that it
43:42
Speaker 3: sort of disproved an aspect of NLP, the eye accessing queues. Basically,
43:47
Speaker 3: when the idea that if you look in a certain direction,
43:50
Speaker 3: it means that you're visualizing or talking to yourself and
43:55
Speaker 3: you can kind of not really people's minds, but get
43:58
Speaker 3: a sense of what's going on behind what their words
44:00
Speaker 3: are saying. And it was sort of they did some
44:02
Speaker 3: studies on that and it sort of disproved it. But
44:05
Speaker 3: it does also show you there's a slight bias towards
44:09
Speaker 3: anything that's sort of not scientifically proven, and you find that,
44:12
Speaker 3: then people will grab those studies and make a big
44:15
Speaker 3: deal of them. But they weren't super high quality and
44:18
Speaker 3: they weren't able to no one's replicated it, so I
44:21
Speaker 3: don't take much of that. I just think that the
44:24
Speaker 3: two founders really pissed off a lot of psychiatrists and
44:28
Speaker 3: psychologists with their rhetoric for years and years, it's never
44:32
Speaker 3: going to be accepted. But of course, look, the NLP is.
44:38
Speaker 3: The thing with these things that are sort of sudo
44:40
Speaker 3: scientific is that there's grains of truth all over the place.
44:44
Speaker 3: There's great practitioners that are doing excellent work, and there's
44:48
Speaker 3: a lot that's helped me in my life, and I've
44:50
Speaker 3: had great, great experiences with helping people. But if you're
44:56
Speaker 3: a field that can't sort of define what it is
44:58
Speaker 3: that you do and and what like, can't agree on
45:03
Speaker 3: like what these techniques are or what these tools are,
45:05
Speaker 3: and and you know, if you haven't got a kind
45:07
Speaker 3: of real foundation therefore or be able to test your claims,
45:12
Speaker 3: then I don't know, you know, I can't. I can't
45:14
Speaker 3: point to one thing and say that's NLP, that's an
45:17
Speaker 3: NLP technique, or that's a I don't know, cognitive behavior
45:22
Speaker 3: therapy technique, or that's a you know, something from family therapy,
45:26
Speaker 3: because it's and it's not NLP. I don't know, you know,
45:30
Speaker 3: because we haven't really progressed much as a as a
45:33
Speaker 3: as a field and being able to sort of test
45:36
Speaker 3: these things and set ourselves apart and say, well, let's
45:38
Speaker 3: do I don't know, a randomized control trial. Well, we
45:41
Speaker 3: put out put our techniques to the test and be
45:44
Speaker 3: able to see whether or not there's we can do
45:48
Speaker 3: just as good or as better as the standard approaches
45:53
Speaker 3: that are out there that would give you some kind
45:55
Speaker 3: of sense of, like, you know, how things are. So
45:58
Speaker 3: I don't know. To me that it's hard to make
46:00
Speaker 3: a claim about whether it's great good or not. And
46:04
Speaker 3: that's kind of why I walked. I guess I walked away.
46:07
Speaker 3: Let's be honest. I don't do it to be honest.
46:09
Speaker 1: Let's be honest. Look, but I kind of understand because
46:13
Speaker 1: my first, my first foray, my absolute for first foray
46:18
Speaker 1: into personal development was reading How to Win Friends and
46:22
Speaker 1: Influence People, which was written in nineteen thirty six by
46:25
Speaker 1: Dale Carnegie. But my first face to face live experience
46:29
Speaker 1: was Tony Robbins, and I reluctantly went along as a
46:33
Speaker 1: guest of some other people and fully expecting it to
46:38
Speaker 1: be bullshit and hate it. And honestly I got lots
46:43
Speaker 1: out of it, you know, like there was stuff that
46:45
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed, there was stuff that challenged my thinking.
46:49
Speaker 1: There was like I realized that like I was very
46:53
Speaker 1: closed minded for the first hour or two it was
46:55
Speaker 1: like a ten hour or twelve hour day. But half
47:00
Speaker 1: way through, I'm like, he actually is making lots of sense. Now,
47:03
Speaker 1: love him or hate him, it doesn't matter, Like if
47:06
Speaker 1: you can get past your bias and just tune into
47:08
Speaker 1: what's being said and try to have a level of
47:12
Speaker 1: objectivity and awareness. And you know, that was I then
47:16
Speaker 1: went on, I would say a ten year kind of
47:19
Speaker 1: journey of what people would typically call self help and
47:22
Speaker 1: personal development. And some of it was garbage, and some
47:25
Speaker 1: of it was gold, and some of it was somewhere
47:28
Speaker 1: in the middle. And it's like, yes, some of it's
47:30
Speaker 1: pseudo science. But I think for me, more than anything,
47:34
Speaker 1: it got me to question, It got me to try things.
47:38
Speaker 1: It got me curious, It got me excited, It got
47:42
Speaker 1: me inspired, It got me to make decisions and change behavior.
47:46
Speaker 3: You know.
47:47
Speaker 1: So whether or not it was the book, or whether
47:50
Speaker 1: or not it was me, or whether or not it
47:52
Speaker 1: was the workshop or a bit of everything, it.
47:54
Speaker 3: Kind of doesn't matter.
47:55
Speaker 1: Right, So, I think there are lots of tools that
47:58
Speaker 1: may not even be highlight regarded by science that can
48:02
Speaker 1: still be valuable, you know, in the right context for
48:05
Speaker 1: the right person.
48:07
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I kind of feel that you can
48:12
Speaker 3: usually use your common sense meter with it. You know
48:14
Speaker 3: that if you someone just can describe to you what
48:18
Speaker 3: it is that they're giving you this technique for and
48:22
Speaker 3: what it can what it can do, and then you
48:23
Speaker 3: try it and it works for you, then then it's great.
48:27
Speaker 3: And I, like you, have definitely spent my life with
48:31
Speaker 3: a kind of growth oriented approach and wanting to grow
48:34
Speaker 3: and learn. And I love learning and that includes learning
48:37
Speaker 3: about myself. I think the thing for me that I
48:42
Speaker 3: guess I'm coming at it more from a thinking that,
48:46
Speaker 3: like for consumers, you've got to do what works for
48:49
Speaker 3: you. You don't have all day to be spending rummaging through
48:54
Speaker 3: all the scientific literature on something. You just have to trust.
48:58
Speaker 3: I guess what you're so, you need to trust other
49:02
Speaker 3: people to help you to like I guess, that's what
49:07
Speaker 3: you do, That's what I do. We're trying to be
49:10
Speaker 3: the leaders in I guess, the thought leaders whatever. I
49:13
Speaker 3: don't like those terms and change makers, thought leaders there,
49:16
Speaker 3: you know, but you know you're trying to disseminate and
49:19
Speaker 3: put together all of this wisdom and knowledge and communicated
49:23
Speaker 3: in a way so that people can then take that
49:25
Speaker 3: and make it meaningful to them. So I guess when
49:29
Speaker 3: for the consumers of that, yeah, they need to be
49:33
Speaker 3: able to trust that the people at that other level
49:36
Speaker 3: where the communicators of that information are I guess doing
49:42
Speaker 3: a good job of thinking about this stuff. And so
49:45
Speaker 3: I guess I'm more critical of that the industry, And
49:48
Speaker 3: that's kind of where I'm you know, I'm not critical
49:51
Speaker 3: of anyone's individual journey, but I'm kind of critical of
49:54
Speaker 3: the industry for not for they Because if you're doing
49:58
Speaker 3: this professionally and it's your life's wor well that's what
50:00
Speaker 3: you want to do, and you're making these massive promises
50:03
Speaker 3: to people, then you should be being able to think
50:07
Speaker 3: about these things a bit deeper than and not you know,
50:10
Speaker 3: regurgitating the same sort of simplistic ideas about and so
50:16
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, I'm on a bit of a mission
50:18
Speaker 3: to try to wake people, wake practitioners up, I think
50:22
Speaker 3: and go, you don't have to go to university, you
50:24
Speaker 3: don't have to spend I have to spend eight years
50:26
Speaker 3: to get in my PhD. Like I know, not everyone
50:30
Speaker 3: has that time or inclination, And we don't have to
50:33
Speaker 3: do that, but I think we can all get better at,
50:36
Speaker 3: you know, being able to be a bit more nuanced
50:39
Speaker 3: and being able to help people to understand what's going
50:42
Speaker 3: to work best for them. I guess so awesome.
50:47
Speaker 1: Well, but it's been a pleasure meeting you, mate. I've
50:49
Speaker 1: got the name for you. Have you written a book yet?
50:53
Speaker 3: I'm halfway through a couple so they're just sitting there
50:57
Speaker 3: at the moment, in the middle of semester.
51:00
Speaker 1: I've got a title for you. You ready, Yes, the
51:03
Speaker 1: title is There is No Secret. But ah, and you
51:06
Speaker 1: had an exact same cover design and then you and
51:10
Speaker 1: you just put above in little words, there is no
51:14
Speaker 1: How do people find you? How do people find you
51:17
Speaker 1: and follow you and connect with you? Doc?
51:20
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, good question. You know I spend so much
51:23
Speaker 3: time online looking and lurking and but I'm so not active.
51:28
Speaker 3: But you could go to that horrible cesspool that is
51:32
Speaker 3: x and find me there mainly posting a little bit
51:37
Speaker 3: about my research and some ironic memes. That's about it.
51:40
Speaker 3: But that's doctor Lucas Dixon. So l U C A
51:43
Speaker 3: S D A x O N and LinkedIn And if
51:50
Speaker 3: you go to University of Queensland and pot my name
51:52
Speaker 3: in the search. You can find me there and get
51:55
Speaker 3: in contact. Love to talk to people. I've found that
51:58
Speaker 3: through this whole process that speaking to people who aren't
52:01
Speaker 3: academics has been probably the most rewarding part. I've got
52:05
Speaker 3: lots of insights and people's personal experiences with this, whether
52:08
Speaker 3: they're still into manifestation or into emilms or not, has
52:13
Speaker 3: been like super rewarding. And yeah, so happy to chat
52:18
Speaker 3: with people about anything.
52:20
Speaker 1: Really well, mate, we'll say goodbye fair but for the moment, Lucas,
52:24
Speaker 1: thanks for being on the new project. It was great.
52:26
Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
52:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, cheers, Crag, Thanks Tiffany, Thanks Deer, thank you