Extract from You Don't Need Therapy: 7 Steps to Sort Your Sh*t Out by Alan Lucas

Today I’m pleased to share an extract from You Don't Need Therapy: 7 Steps to Sort Your Sh*t Out by Alan Lucas. 

The SYSO System is a one-stop self-improvement system that can be applied wherever you are on your journey. You can change your life by following 7 simple steps and the book's 70 practical exercises help you DO the changing, rather than just read about it.

You'll learn how to expand your awareness, manage your mind, take charge of your emotions, meet your needs in healthy ways, have a crystal-clear philosophy for the purpose of your life, understand that everything is interconnected, and how to make your life more enjoyable by enhancing the lives of others. You'll light up and lighten up, leading more from your heart than your ego, being focused on feeling fulfilled by being useful. By following the steps, you will change the filter through which you experience life and by changing the filter, everything will look different.

Changing your life isn't that complicated when you know how, and when you know how, you don't need therapy.

In Western society, we’re generally encouraged to be achievers and achievement is seen as the high marker of success. We celebrate people who we identify as having made great achievements and this is commendable in many ways and has a huge part to play for society and for the individual, but ‘achievement’ and ‘fulfilment’ are very different. Most of us are striving for achievements in our life. We have goals for our career, our finances, and the possessions we want, and achievement in this sense is just a science. It follows certain steps and if we apply the steps, we’ll increase the probability of ‘achieving’. However, for all the achieving and all the progress we have made as human beings, we seem to be unhappier than ever. Statistics on depression and unhappiness show no precise link to money or material achievement, and we regularly hear about the high-flying career executive, business person or celebrity who seemingly has everything they wanted to achieve, but who is deeply unhappy and ‘depressed’. 

If you search the internet for famous people who have killed themselves, you may be surprised just how many people, who seemed to have so much, decided to check out of the living experience early. The lists show far too many people who had achieved what they had set out to achieve, financially and famously, but who were desperately unhappy. Instead of bringing them happiness and freedom, being sought-after, rich and at the top of their game lead to questioning their self-worth, and a realisation that achievement itself does not make you feel fulfilled. Whether it was Avicii, Marilyn Monroe, Robin Williams, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, L’Wren Scott, Jimi Hendrix or Alexander McQueen, or any number of other famous people, they all believed the pain of living was not worth carrying on. 

This is desperately sad and a tragic way to end any life, but of course these are just the famous people, and there are many, many, many more people not in the public eye who have killed themselves because they didn’t feel fulfilled. Most suicides don’t make the headlines, but each life ended is equally tragic. We’ve looked already at the statistics from the World Health Organisation which reveal that every 40 seconds someone takes their own life, and shockingly these numbers are predicted to get worse. There has never been a greater need for a system people can follow to sort themselves out. 

Our children are often programmed with a model of what success is like and then they either achieve it and realise that this alone doesn’t make them feel fulfilled, or they don’t achieve and feel they have failed. We urgently need to teach our children – and everyone else – that achievement without fulfilment is a failure in living. 

What you get will never make you sustainably happy and fulfilled. What you become will. Seeking deeper fulfilment in your life rather than short-term unsustainable pleasure boosts, having a purpose bigger than yourself, and focusing on growing and giving, will transform your experience.

Alan Lucas was born and raised in Belfast during the troubles and from a young age wondered why people would choose to kill others just because they had developed different beliefs.

After university, he worked as a ski instructor in the U.S, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe. He had a corporate career as a marketing boss at global sportswear brands Nike and Adidas and has founded various businesses.

An entrepreneur, coach and motivational speaker, Alan is passionate about self-improvement and helping people have more fun and fulfilling lives. He created the Sort Your Self Out system, and the EGO HERE® brand which donates its profits to the SYSO Foundation, providing personal development resources for young people to help them become the best versions of themselves.