Results Exist Only On The Outside

Years ago, when it was not so fashionable, I was involved in the work of Werner Erhard.

We were the oddball characters of our time, lingering at the extreme fringe of “alternative” whilst believing we were at the centre of the universe. We were like the celebrated Vegan Activists of today. (My 14yo daughter has taken the lead in our household, so I’m proselytized most days.)

But our “thing” wasn’t food, or cruelty to animals; our “thing” was waking up, being your word, standing for something in a world confused and traumatized by the 60s and the Vietnam war. Most of my contemporaries will remember Werner, and his crazy EST workshop – where you’d have to start pissing on the floor before they’d let you out of the room for a toilet break because “you promised to stay.”

I travelled up Werner’s Scientology ladder (Werner pulled a lot of his stuff from Hubbard) and finally graduated into his 6 Day Course – a no-holds barred, intensive residential on the outskirts of San Francisco in the early 80’s.

One of our quaint early morning exercises was to run – at 100% capacity – around a steep hilly track. It was hell on earth.

The idea was not to pace yourself: “This is not about getting fit!” they screamed at me.

You had to produce a medical certificate to prove you wouldn’t have a coronary. Your morning run was about promising to your Self that you would be 100%: and then meeting the other “Self” that wasn’t having a bar of that crap.

I met that Self, and I didn’t like it.

I screamed blue murder at Werner, at his assistants, at my own stupidity for ever agreeing to this. I remember vividly a moment when I was about to say:

“Damn it. I am not going to continue this insane run!”

I was closer to the end than the beginning. And I was about to turn back…

Then I had my epiphany: This. Is. What. I. Always. Do.

I find an internal reason to turn back, to give up. It is justifiable, reasonable, fair. Hard to argue against wanting to continue something that even our workshop leader admitted was border edge “insane and unhealthy” in terms of fitness training.

Yet, didn’t I promise my Self to stay in? Didn’t that matter?

I see it in ATSuccess a lot. Just as members get close to producing real, tangible results… they find a reason to stop, to turn back, to tweak or adjust: to basically give up for awhile. Usually it is a reasonable, emotionally sound, not-to-be-argued with fait accompli when it is presented to me, the coach. Or there is radio silence.

Hey, what happened to “fill-the-gap”? Where did (s)he go?

I am thinking about this because this morning because I just read one of Peter Drucker’s holy mantras:

Results exist only on the outside.

That’s right folks. You can pat your Self on the back for being brave, for spending your precious money, for trying out new ideas and practises…

And overall it means very little if you don’t produce results.

In ATSuccess a result is a student who learns with you. And pays you for that privilege. A result is traffic to your website, and real people signing up to read your story by email. Results are on the outside: they are seen, measurable, indisputable.

And yet – so often we concentrate on the inside. Drucker has another shocking wisdom here:

Inside, there are only costs.

I saw for years that I looked for my results on the inside.

I told my Self: I have been brave. I have tried. I am doing new things. I congratulated myself on these achievements. I had pride in all the efforts I had made.

And yet… when the mortgage comes to be paid and you haven’t got money, the reality of Drucker’s wisdom slams into your belly. For me it was having two young girls and their mother to support. There was no hiding from that reality. I had to produce results – new students in my school paying me money - if I was going to fee and clothe my family.

Because results only exist on the outside, I finally realized it. I woke up to it.

In ATSuccess – or your Alexander training – “costs” include your tuition, your hours of learning, your struggle to understand, the challenge of learning many, many new things. It can feel like you are accomplishing something, and you are.

But these are costs, not results.

After my 6 Day Werner experience, I started to notice how often I was turning back just as I approached real, tangible results. My 100% committed 6 Day morning run taught me – there’s a moment of choice. In any great endeavour, there will be a moment of turning back, or moving on…

What do you tell your Self when you want to turn back?

I don’t really understand this phenonomen. However, I see it in me, I see it in ATSuccess and I see it in BodyChance too: after 2/3 years of training, many trainees want to leave. They get sick of it: the struggle, the confusion, the relationships. Just when they are close to finally being able to attract a student to teach (results) – they want to leave!!!

What is that?!

I don’t really know. I just know it is. Inside, there are only costs…

Results exist only on the outside.*

*From Drucker, Peter. The Essential Drucker. New York: Collins, 2005. Chapter 1, p.12;

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