So today is the last in the series of “All of us can” … and I want to focus on the why we won’t or more importantly why we can’t.

All of us can do something, we can all lose weight, we can all exercise, we can all develop and grow or learn something new but most of the time we don’t. And while I am pointing out some of the more obvious things, and most of them physical, I don’t want to be limited to only those but would rather focus on the spiritual and emotional development. So, bear with me if you will.

When I set out to write a book, I wanted to write something that was worthwhile, really helpful and very challenging. You see I like words like “Maverick” and “Beyond Radical” which are two books that I have read before, and they were exactly that – beyond radical and written by two Mavericks. The book I wanted to write fell into the self-help category, or so I thought, because after a lot of reflection I realized that if self-help was so good why do they not work, is it because the content is rubbish or are the readers to blame? The answer is not simple but realistically the content of most of these books is good, so the obvious choice is the reader.

This is an explanation of why trying to better ourselves, not only physically, but also spiritually and/or emotionally, often does not work.

Daniel Goleman wrote a very interesting book called Emotional Intelligence (which I suggest you read) and in this book, he meticulously sets out to explain the concept of EQ. For me, there were things missing and I hope to add to what he already mentioned and so I have “developed” the concept of Emotional Wholeness or EW.

As an intro to EW, let me use the analogy of a professional athlete whose sole purpose is to win the London marathon. Let’s call this athlete Adam, he spends the whole year with the right team of coaches preparing for this marathon. He does everything to focus on achieving this very lofty goal. Adam has at his disposal the best conditioning coach, the best nutritional expert, the best physiotherapist, and the best running coach. He spends every day meticulously preparing for the race, so much of this type of exercise and so much of that nutrition, this amount of fluids and that amount of supplementation … and so the list goes on. His intermediate goals are being met and Adam is on track to achieve the milestone he has worked so hard to achieve. So, the days and weeks and months go by.

The night before the big race, Adam has to go downstairs to have his last carbohydrate drink with the prescribed supplement and on the way down he missteps and twists his ankle, not broken but bad enough. The team of medical professionals work their magic and do the right things to treat the damage and Adam gets the sleep he requires. The next morning, Adam is on the start line, ready to go. The ankle is strapped and everything has been managed very professionally to get Adam to this point … the gun goes and Adam is off, everything is okay for the first few hundred meters and then the ankle is no longer able to support him and Adam is forced to abandon the race.

Adam has been physically very intelligent in his approach to this event, he has appointed the most prominent team he could afford and has been very diligent in his preparation. He has done everything he should have, to have won the race … but he did not. Why?

The answer is very simple – Adam was physically not capable of racing on the day, despite having spent an entire year preparing to do so, in other words, being physically very intelligent.

In the same light, let me ask again, why don’t these self-help books and packages that we try work?

The answer, I believe, could lie, in part, in the fact that while we do everything possible and everything intelligently, we are not emotionally whole enough to achieve the desired outcome.

So even if we want to, sometimes we can’t, because we are not whole. Think of it as a computer that has a faulty CPU or damaged hard drive and we try to get it to work the way it should. It won’t for obvious reasons and in the same way I believe we try and do things, seemingly intelligent, but fail because we are emotionally damaged.

In parting, let me leave you with a thought. They say knowledge is power, but I simply disagree because if knowledge was power then most of us would be better off than we are now.

It is in the application of knowledge of the power is realized.

Be driven by love and fueled by desire

Shalom