The Decade Year is a practical leadership formation program that helps to strengthen the core habits of a complete leader – inside and out – as to lead with a greater power of meaning.
The Decade Year Program, is a year long group-counselling journey for IT leaders, as to strengthen the seven most important habits required to lead with fulness of meaning.
That is, to develop the essential habits that congruently embody the mission, values and vision of your organization, which form a meaningful leader.
In the same way that a gym works to strengthen one’s physical muscles, the Decade Year Program is a gym where we strengthen our power to lead with meaning. It supports leaders to develop a congruent voice, as practicing the seven great habits (or virtues).
Dear Friend,
Have you been frustrated why you aren’t being who in your heart you know you can be, and why you’re going around in circles with the same limitations year after year?
Have you read and listened to all kinds of books, inspirational speeches, conventions, workshops and so on – and nothing seems to be working… (or at best it works v-e-e-e-ry slowly)
Have you been wondering why you don’t have in your life all that you feel you deserve?
Then this could be the most important message you’ll read this year.
Here’s why:
YOU DON’T NEED MORE INFORMATION!
This is a contradiction to be making right at the start of this article isn’t it?
But let’s be brutally honest, you really do not need ‘more’ information, whether it’s about wisdom, health, leadership, relationships, wealth… etc. I’m willing to make a prediction here:
You’re already drowning in it! You probably have tons of books, eBooks, and articles around the home and on your computer – with 1{c15f7d03240e150d3fccde581681162988e3d189efe19e3d9e710186fe6d5828} of it only skimmed through.
You visit the internet regularly search out for information like this, only to amass more things that you ‘should’ read and watch. You may have everything from health to wealth, from motivation to inspiration, from meditation to self-actualization…
You’ve got a small library going already, and many more to come.
While this is really commendable and absolutely right to do – for leaders are readers, the only question is, ‘How is it working so far?’
What measurable difference are all these new books, courses and audios making in your life?
(And by that I mean real and concrete changes in your actions, in your attitude, in your finances, in your health, in your relationships and in your career.)
If your answer is not that much, then this is your wake-up call:
The information age is over!
It has been said that a week’s worth of information on a site like New York Times, has now more information in it, than a person living in the 18th century would have come across in their entire lifetime. And this is just one old time media site…
Inventor Buckminster Fuller once noted that in 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every 100 years, by 1945 the rate increased to 25 years, by 1982 it was every 13 months … and now with the emergence of A.I., we coming to a point where information will double every 12 hours!
To put this in perspective, if we take a relatively obscure topic like on the material ‘graphene’, since 2005 there have been well over 70,000 articles on the subject.
If we take 1 hour to read one article, and do this for 8 hours a day as our full time work, it will take 33 years to finish them! (And you would have to ignore the deluge of even newer articles coming in.)
So with all this influx of info, why is it then that most feel like we’re living in the ‘age of stupid’?
We have developed an unhealthy addiction around collecting information, and forgotten to differentiate across what is most meaningful.
And when we become stuck in this, we fail to implement all the knowledge that you have amassed already.
And so, like musician John Lennon observed, “Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.”
We need to master the fundamentals we already know. We need a practical plan and a system, as to make measurable and self-reinforcing progress. You need the support structure to implement this expansive body of knowledge.
How do I know all this?
I’ve been there too, and I hear it all the time from others. In working for a decade as an executive-coach and helping people to make changes in their personal and business life, they all inevitably have been keen readers and personal development enthusiasts.
They come in for executive-coaching, to make the leap from theory, to reality.
I’ll paraphrase some of the more recent comments:
*
“In pursuing my dreams, I’ve been having trouble meeting my finances. I have always believed in seizing the opportunity and taking the risk to do what is in my heart, but now I’m stuck in debt. How do I take care of these financial bills and obligations that seem to be closing in on me all the time? I’ve read the financial books and attended the seminars, but it seems like I’m trying to pick up water with a bucket that has a large hole at the bottom. Instead of making me money, they cost me money.”
*
“I continue to struggle in managing my health and meeting my goals. I often feel disappointed in myself for missing the mark. I keep slipping back into my old ways of exercising very little and feeling unmotivated. I start exercising, then after a few sessions stop. I decide to quit the habit of smoking, but then I keep coming back to it within weeks.”
*
“I don’t understand how ‘spiritual development’ quite fits into my life. I get a sense of its direction and how it is ultimately of the highest value, but I live in a real world which doesn’t exactly reward this, nor is it something that I can quite understand. How do I practically live a spiritual life and how do I balance it with the real world?”
*
These are difficult questions and they undoubtedly cannot be fixed with a quick, offhand remark. When they come in for coaching, I can hear their frustration in their voices. They represent so many of us.
I really feel for them. They have big hearts and start on the journey of personal development in the hope of bettering themselves, their families, their business, their community… i.e. in the hope of making the world a better place.
They start this journey, yet they never really get anywhere. Year after year things stay the same, they compound their stress and debt – yet keep clinging to ‘the hope’.
Worst still is when they become discouraged and loose all hope. To deal with their disappointment, they become cynical of ‘positivity and optimism’ and build a thick wall to keep themselves away from further hurt, – as well as from life and love
For inside every cynic, there’s usually a broken-hearted idealist.
If you can identify with their frustration, let this be a ‘warning sign’. You can’t do what you’ve done over and over again in the past and expect different results. Albert Einstein said this is the very definition of insanity.
So if you’re willing to stick with me and read the following letter, I will share with you a critical insight that will solve this greatest of problems facing personal development.
It will give you more clarity than many seminars or courses that cost thousands.
I’m serious here. I’ve been there too. I too have experienced the same frustration.
It hasn’t been a sudden insight, but a distinction that grew through my years in the coaching profession, which is undeniably, at the heart all fundamental personal, social and spiritual transformations…
BEYOND LAME SELF-HELP… BEYOND LAME TECHNIQUES…
BEYOND LAME PHILOSOPHY… BEYOND LAME RELIGION…
As we explained in the video above, real transformation is not found in the pop spirituality and self-help, nor in the quick fix solutions of pragmatic teaching, nor in the commonplace religious practices or philosophical systems…
For despite their good intentions, the problem always remains…
How do we get ourselves to actually perform the good that we know that we should do?
This is the great ‘pink elephant’ in the living room that almost everyone fails to acknowledge!
Here’s a concrete example. Dr. Edward Miller, CEO of John Hopkins University hospital, noted that what has been studied over and over and over again, is that in 90{c15f7d03240e150d3fccde581681162988e3d189efe19e3d9e710186fe6d5828}of cases where people are presented with the actual option – CHANGE or DIE – in 90{c15f7d03240e150d3fccde581681162988e3d189efe19e3d9e710186fe6d5828} of cases, people do NOT change!
What specifically Dr. Miller was referring to, is that when patients come in after a heart attack incident and undergo a major surgery of a ‘coronary-artery bypass graft’, they are given all the right education afterwards …
They are then told specifically what aspects of the lifestyle clogged up their arteries – whether it was their poor diet, alcohol, smoking or not enough exercise.
And they are then given an exact plan for exactly what they need to change, in order to not have their arteries blocked once more – and to take advantage of their last chance at life!
What happens is that in just a few months, most people are back to their old habits – and 90{c15f7d03240e150d3fccde581681162988e3d189efe19e3d9e710186fe6d5828} do exactly as before, within two years! “Even though they know they have a very bad disease”, as Dr. Miller says, “and they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can’t!”
So if 9 in 10 people can’t make a relatively simple behavioral change like a change in diet – when literally death is the consequence – what are the odds of an average person, to make the much bigger leap, of living out a life heroic?
Despite our present intentions of where we would like to be, the likelihood that in two or three years we will be pretty much doing the same old things we do now – in pretty much the same manner – is statistically at least 90{c15f7d03240e150d3fccde581681162988e3d189efe19e3d9e710186fe6d5828}} to 95{c15f7d03240e150d3fccde581681162988e3d189efe19e3d9e710186fe6d5828}!
Do you have any negative behaviors that you wish that you would change?
Do you have a hope about some form of positive change that will come to be sometimes in your future – like being healthier, wealthier, wiser?
Here is a ‘red pill’ moment: The odds are heavily stacked against you my friend!
Don’t believe me?
Then ask yourself, what were you doing 2 or 3 years ago – in 2018 and 2017?
What was your life like?
What were your habits like?
Who were your friends?
What was your physical health like?
What was your wealth like?
What was your wisdom like?
Got a picture in mind?
Now, how much different is your life and who you are from who you were back then? How much have things changed?
Unless you happen to have been blessed with some remarkable education, inspiration or a change in fortune – can I predict that you were pretty much the same as now. (Or perhaps if Lady Fortune has had her way, that you may also perhaps be worse off?)
This is reality and it’s what happens to all of us…
Why?
Because it’s written in the very laws of physics!
⇒ The first law of motion states:
An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and direction unless acted upon. This law of physics is also known as the law of inertia.
Meaning that unless something substantial intercedes, our lives shall continue to go much in the same way as before.
⇒ And the second law of thermodynamics states:
In a closed system, unconstrained energy spontaneously tends to disperse – meaning, all things naturally and gradually decline into disorder. This law of physics is also known as the law of entropy.
Meaning that by laws of physics what most often changes motion from staying the same as before, is chaos.
And chaos is not fun! It is the source of Buddha’s first law, suffering!
Therefore by laws of physics, in life things will generally tend to continue to stay pretty much the same way as it is now, or they’ll get worse. In about 2 or 3 years from now this is the outcome – unless, you put into place another law that can overcome these foundational laws…
The reality is that habits and ways of life are difficult to change. Very difficult.
To make a successful change into a more positive direction, this requires the application of an intelligently channeled power – to overcome the force of both inertia and entropy.
This has to be done with as much intelligence and power, as it takes for a rocket to escape the pull of gravity. Lame efforts won’t do!
And yet, isn’t the “Kool-Aid” we’re supposed to drink, that change is easy…? That all you need is just some education and some desire to make change and all shall work out well?
Yet in reality, as it is with heart attack patients (or any other patient for that matter), for 9 out of 10 people, even when their own life is on the line – they cannot change!
WANT TO KNOW WHAT DO THE 1 in 10 DO DIFFERENT
TO MAKE LASTING LIFE CHANGES?
Well, the law they use to make their changes stick and that help them to grow from strength to strength is to…
Classical Wisdom Meets Cutting Edge Science
(an integrated method for a four dimensional leadership aim)
The Decade Year Program is here to make practical the wisdom of many of the greatest thinkers over the last 5000 years. That is, to have the philosophical insights and principles, be installed into our habits – via our pioneering methodology of Neuro-TetraDynamics.
Based on research into the “patterns of strength” that the most self-actualized people in history had, in the Decade Year Program we integrate these habits, into our mindset and action.
Because for us, ‘leadership theories’ are not enough. Here, like in a gym, we focus on how to practically integrate into our being, the habits that help us to fulfill our highest destiny or mission.
The Decade Year Program is a one-of-a-kind leadership journey to strengthen your highest qualities of being – so you can live out a fully meaningful life, a life heroic. That is:
– The Virtue of Wisdom (or Prudence)
– The Virtue of Self-Control (or Temperance)
– The Virtue of Courage (or Fortitude)
– The Virtue of Justice
– The Virtue of Hope (or Optimism)
– The Virtue of Faith (or Confidence/ Certainty)
– And the Virtue of Love (or Charity/ Agape)
So if you’re an IT leader who seeks to make a massive difference within the lives of the people you work with, (as well as those you live with) – we will equip you with the time-tested habits of greatness.
Let’s learn and practice the mental, physical and spiritual disciplines that lead to the greatest forms of leadership, today.
Make a booking with us to learn more, and get started with your free prospectus:
MASTERING THE SEVEN VIRTUES
The Year of Making Your Life a Masterpiece By Cultivating the Virtues of
Wisdom, Courage, Self-Control, Justice, Faith, Hope and Love
To Educators, Leaders and Parents who want To Become Mentally Stronger But Don’t Know Where to Start…
How to Become 7-Fold
Mentally Stronger in 315 Days.
Imagine yourself on the streets of a large metropolis city, back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.
Poverty is all around you. Most people are unemployed, dirty, and hungry, looking for any kind of menial job that can put some form of bread on the table.
You are a teenage boy, 12 years of age, and drop out of school to help your parents. You got a job of 10 hours each day, to pull a small wagon, loaded with fruits and veggies on these city streets.
But the streets are tough these days. You are a thin, wiry kid – barely 50 kilos (or 115 pounds) – and the neighborhood bullies see you an easy target.
The bullies run up to you, they push you around, taunt you with insults, and on occasions, shove you onto the unforgiving asphalt…
They steal your hard-earned money.
So you make the decision to make yourself stronger. You want to stand up for yourself and to fight back.
So you go to the local boys wrestling club, but the coach takes one quick glance at your scraggly frame and denies you entry.
‘Sorry kid’, he says, ‘but the other boys may hurt you’.
Desperate for a solution, you pick up an old magazine, and there you find what appears you as ‘The Solution’…
You can become stronger if you’d but regularly lift weights.
As there was no such thing as a ‘local gym’ back in the 1930s, you decide to make your own weights with which to train.
So you go to the locomotive scrapyard, where for a few coins, the owner sells you an old axle and a couple of flywheels.
You join these together and make yourself a makeshift ‘barbell’. And with this newly minted apparatus, you start your training.
You religiously lift this clumsy contraption, figuring out in what kind of positions you can stand in, and just what muscle groups these movements target.
And slowly, slowly – day-by-day, week-by-week – that skinny frame of yours begins to fill up with muscles.
The old neighborhood bullies don’t bother you anymore. You’re starting to look ‘dangerous’, and there are many, much easier ‘pickings’…
At 17 you enter your first amateur weight lifting contest in your city. And you’re pleased to discover, you just lifted 30-kilograms more than the nearest competition in your class division.
You now realize you must be on to something.
So you start to document and test your methods – with yourself and with others.
In time, you would start up a school and publishing center for this new practice of ‘bodybuilding’, and in turn, you’ll turn this strange new idea of ‘sculpting muscles’, into a household name.
In time, you’ll also start the Mr. Olympia competition, from which an Austrian young man with a funny name, would also get his head start by winning it seven times… Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Who am I?
If you said, Mr. Joe Weider – the man called, ‘the father of modern-day bodybuilding’ – you are correct.
This is, in a nutshell, the short story of how he discovered his mission.
For prior to Joe Weider systematic analysis and program formation of what it takes to build muscles and strength – ‘bodybuilding’ was the concern of mostly of those in the circus.
But what’s even stranger than this?
It’s the fact that the science and practice of ‘virtue formation’ – or how do we can strengthen our most valuable psychological strengths for living our best life – that this is today, just as obscure and backward, as bodybuilding was in the 1930s.
And I say it’s strange because the want for a ‘virtue formation program’ was called out for by the wisest and most quoted people in history – since at least the axial age, of ancient days….
The most precious treasure is virtue.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
A virtue formation program was very famously called out by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the West around 400BC, as it was called out by Confucius, Lao-Tze, and Chuang Tze in the East, from around 500BC … to name just a very few.
The call began at least 2,500 years ago…
Shortly after the death of Jesus, in 65 AD, Paul the Apostle – the man who would be most influential in the development of Christianity – he would also call out for a virtue formation program.
In one of his letters, he vehemently advises that we ought to train onto ‘virtue’ – for while physical training is of some value to a human being, it is virtue formation that is of ultimate value in life…
Paul would counsel that training for virtue is the most important training we could ever engage in. And the reasoning for why he would say he would say that is self-evident… we just need to think briefly:
Reflect now on what we talked about in Secret Meanings, Volume 4 – and the seven virtues laid out in the characters of Lord of the Rings…
Imagine then, that you developed in your character,
-
the Wisdom of Gandalf, the Courage of Gimly, the Self-Control of Legolas, the Justice of Aragon…
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together with the Faith of Frodo, the Hope of Sam, and the Love of Elron, Arwen, and Galadriel…
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all these strengths, working in unison, as one.
What would become possible for you?
What could you accomplish?
What could stop you?
Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor;
it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us.
He who sows virtue reaps glory.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
And yet despite all this – despite all of the obvious benefits – throughout all of the modern era, we have made no meaningful and systematic attempts at training for virtue
… outside of general or mere academic philosophical inquiries.
While today we have hundreds and thousands of programs in bodybuilding, together with dozens of differing degrees in sports training, along with countless articles, blog posts, podcasts, and the like on the subject…
… there is a shocking lack of available systems for training in virtue!
Unlike in the ancient days where there were philosophical schools that attempted this form of training – today, there is a stunning lack of virtue formation programs anywhere to be found.
After all, what programs are out there to help you train for greater wisdom? Or how can you strengthen your ‘muscles of justice’? Or how do you build up your strength of hope?
Beyond cheap platitudes about their necessity, (or tedious moralizing that people don’t have these strengths anymore)
– what practical programs are out there for those who are willing to cultivate all these virtues?
Encourage all your virtuous dispositions,
and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises,
being assured that they will gain strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does,
and that exercise will make them habitual.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
‘Mastering the Seven Virtues’ is the world’s leading and pioneering program to systematically do just this.
Much in the same way that bodybuilding programs are methodically designed to get you from a state of physical weakness, to one of strength, ‘Mastering the Seven Virtues’ is Jonah’s Club cornerstone program that helps you cultivate the habits of wisdom, self-control, courage, justice, faith, hope and love.
In ‘Mastering the Seven Virtues’, we have set up the science and practices for how you can practically strengthen your seven mental strengths of total well-being.
If you have the will, we have the way.
Building on the principles as laid out in Essential Happiness Experience (which sets up the map, the blueprint), and ‘The Four Faculties of Fundamental Freedom’ (which sets up the mechanics, the processes) …
in ‘Mastering the Seven Virtues’ we boldly build the seven virtues.
If virtue promises good fortune and tranquility and happiness,
certainly also the progress towards virtue
is progress towards each of these things.
EPICTETUS
In short, in ‘Mastering the Seven Virtues’, we build the seven great mansions of the human soul.
For a total duration of 315 days, we take one virtue at a time, for a period of 40 days each – the optimal time to make permanent shifts in our psychology.
That is, we begin with the virtue of wisdom for 40 days, take one week break, then focus on the virtue of courage for 40 days, take one week break, and so on…
With each 40 day unit, we aim to stretch the mind as on to a new dimension, so that with each 40-day intensive, we shall never again return to the prior dimensions…
i.e. we seek to create an ‘irreversible stretch’
in our understanding, emotional connection and physical expression.
For if we may extend the metaphor of bodybuilding, think of these Seven virtues to be like the 7 ‘muscle groups’ of our mental dimension – so that within 315 days, we shall cover a complete 7-fold refurbishment of our highest strengths.
We stack each virtue on the one prior, so that with each 40-day building block, we advance the cohesiveness of our character.
‘Mastering the Seven Virtues’ is the culmination of our essential work here at Jonah’s Club, and with its successful completion, one becomes a lifetime member and alumni.
Virtue only is the true beauty.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
“Mastering the Seven Virtues” is grounded upon the objective order of a human being – in contrast to self-interested perspective that subjectively interprets the way to happiness. The seven virtues are mapped onto the reality of a human person, who seeks to realize the total good in their lives.
That is:
Wisdom corresponds to that highest quality of a mind that’s oriented towards the highest good. Wisdom is that strength of mind to not let oneself be determined by one’s own subjective preference, ideologies, or sentiments, but to truthfully discern reality as it objectively is. It is the strength of mind to conform one’s will according to the objective truth.
Courage and self-control corresponds to the highest strengths that an embodied being of flesh and blood can have – who has mastered the dual forces of pleasure and pain in their life.
The courageous and the strong person is able to withstand pain, hardship and suffering in pursuit of the highest good. The self-controlled and temperate person, is the one who is able to masterfully withstand their own desires for destructive pleasures, in pursuit of the good.
Justice is the highest quality of being in the actualization of one’s social dimension. It expresses the ethical realization that ‘no man is an island – each one of is is a part of the main’ and thereby the strength to give to another what is due to them.
Faith, hope and live correspond to the highest qualities of our spirit or will.
Faith is the strength to connect with the transcendental order and its values, beyond the temporal and profane. Hope is that positive affirmation strength that one shall eventually realize the highest orders of oneself for which he or she was created. And love is that strength that wills the good of another, for their own sake.
So within each of these seven 40 day modules, we shall look at:
WISDOM
In the module on wisdom (or as it’s also defined in it’s practical manifestation in day to day, prudence), we shall meditate on how to know what is the right thing to do, at the right time, for the right reason.Wisdom is the formal grounding of all other virtues. It gives form to the expression of our authentic, heroic life journey.
How can we habitually discern what are the most optimal choices to make, amidst the ever-shifting patterns of our lives? How can we make plans for our days, weeks and years to come, amidst a world that’s continually in a process of becoming, ever more?
COURAGE:
In the module on courage (or as it’s also know in its long-term habitual expression, the virtue of fortitude), we focus on the manner in which we encounter pain in life, and how we deal with our vulnerableness.
Courage is our soul strength with which we deal with the potential to be hurt in pursuit of the highest good – for ourselves, our family, our community, and humanity at large.
How do we manage our fears – the vulnerability to be hurt – that so often blocks our way towards the manifestation of our highest destiny? How do we not allow fear and suffering to rule our will, but to habitually advance towards that which wisdom directs, for its own sake? How do we discern when the risks are worth it and why?
JUSTICE:
In the module on justice, we focus on the strength to pursue just causes – the pursuit of giving to another, what belongs to another.
How do we habitually live by the imperative to treat another as we would like to be treated? What are we entitled to and how do we help others to find the goods that belong to them? How can we best help others to find the goods that belong to them?
How can we habitually better the conditions of others, and how does this strength play out in the various roles of our lives – whether as leaders of families, holders of corporate or governmental power, and so on? How can we justly lead, in whatever station we’ve been given in life?
SELF-CONTROL:
In the module on self-control (or as it’s also known when it has established itself as a habitual way of life, the virtue of temperance), here we explore the key physical strength that supports and empowers all other virtues. For it’s self-control that helps us channel our energies towards the pursuit of the highest good, by keeping our body, heart and mind, in proper order.
Self-control keeps our sensuality, passion and desire in the right direction, in the right proportion. So how can we have this strength increased, so rather than having these forces destroy our health and well-being – sensuality, passion and desire stimulate our growth towards greater things?
And so on with FAITH, HOPE and LOVE…
It’s upon these cultivated strengths of soul that happiness then, finds us.