The making of the new you

Human behaviouralist and self-help guru John Demartini is one of a handful of people who can describe himself as a citizen of the world and get away with it. When the Houston, Texas-born conference speaker, corporate consultant, educator and author of more than 40 books isn’t travelling the world “full time”, home is The World, billed as the world’s largest yacht and home to some of the world’s richest people – including occasional resident Gina Rinehart, whom Demartini counts as a friend.

Demartini’s “transformation events”, workshops and programs are “designed to assist the individual to empower and activate” their leadership, entrepreneurial and personal potential.

If gurus do it for you, especially ones with inspiring back stories, Demartini’s your life force.

A former high-school dropout, he left school at 14, functionally illiterate, beginning a life of “homelessness, panhandling to survive, drugs, alcohol and surfing”. Then, at 17, contemplating life as an itinerant surfboard maker in Hawaii, Demartini met a retired naturopath who awakened in him a desire to become a teacher.

“Not a teacher in a classroom,” he tells BRW during a recent visit to Australia, “but a teacher travelling the world. I wanted to make a difference in the world.” Demartini went on to qualify as a chiropractor but it’s his philosophy for achieving “a balanced and more empowered life” that has led to a remarkable career.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years. My dream and my passion, every day, is to maximise human potential and empower people to master their lives,” he says.

Australians have obviously taken a liking to Demartini’s message of self-help: he has been visiting out shores four times a year since 1994.

Here’s a taste of Demartini’s guide to personal success gleaned from his monthly newsletter:

1Fulfilling the values that are most meaningful and important to you

Everyone has one or more areas of their lives that they value and desire to have more fulfilment in. Everyone has voids to be filled. “Your fulfilment in life is directly proportionate to how well you fulfil your voids and values,” Demartini says.

2Be true to yourself

“Any time you minimise yourself and subordinate yourself to other people you will tend to inject their set of values into your life and take them on as if they were your own values,” Demartini says. “You will then in turn sacrifice what is truly important to you according to your own higher values and attempt to be somebody you are not.”

“When you have an expectation to fulfil an outcome that doesn’t match your true higher values you will end up with anger, aggression, blame, feelings of betrayal, criticism and challenge towards yourself.” Demartini explains that when somebody sets “unrealistic expectations” and goals are set that don’t match their “true higher values”, the effect is to “self-sabotage” those goals.

“You will most likely achieve your goals once you set goals that are congruent with your true higher values.”

3 Doing what you love and loving what you do

It’s what everyone aspires to, the very definition of the dream job or career: to do what you love doing and to be rewarded generously for doing it. It’s not a dream, Demartini insists: it’s “perfectly doable”.

“In order to do what you love you must first learn to love and appreciate what you do. If you don’t appreciate the job or daily duties you presently have you will certainly not function from your full potential,” he writes. “Until you put your heart and soul into everything you do don’t expect to create or attract greater opportunities to do what you love.”

The dream job is not about no longer doing what you’re doing now; it’s about embracing what you do.

“At first you may imagine that the present job duties are interfering with your goals, but a deeper look will help you see that they are helping you in many ways to develop valuable traits or special talents needed in your life for the fulfilment of your true values, mission, goals and objectives.”

4 You’ve got to have a plan

Dreams are important, but the first step to achieving a dream is making some down to earth decisions. “If you don’t decide what you would truly love to do, you will end up living out someone else’s vocational dreams. Your career dreams are up to you.”

But Demartini also has a word of caution. It is one thing to have a dream of the way you would like things to be, but in a nutshell: no plan, no dream. Masters of life, he says, have master plans, they focus on the “ever-finer details” of their master plan, and leave little to chance.

“If you don’t plant flowers in your mental garden you will forever pull weeds,” he declares, as only a self-help guru can.

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