1-Dr. Wolf, you say a person creates a life based on how he feels about himself. What do you mean?

2-What's the difference between your programs and traditional therapy?

3-Which is more effective, your training programs or therapy?

4-You make the process of discovering and changing one's PBP sound so simple. Is it really that simple?

5-Are you guaranteeing I'll be different if I understand my PBP?

6-I saw on the website that satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back. Is that true? If I don't like my Personal BluePrint, then I can get a refund?

Dr. Wolf, you say a person creates a life based on how he feels about himself. What do you mean?

I'm describing something we've all seen over and over but have a hard time understanding. We've seen Presidents destroying their presidencies, greedy executives destroying their careers, sports stars performing like champions until they need to win the championship, friends throwing away good marriages because they fell in love with someone new, and middle-aged men taking chances with their money who end up losing everything. We see these things and wonder "Why?" What causes these people to do these things? In everyday scenarios, we see ourselves, spouses, or friends trying to please others and end up pleasing no one, or trying to control too much because they care so much, only to lose the relationships they valued because they created walls of resentment. We interact with people who are afraid to ask for what they want, so they never really get what they want. You could say that I'm describing the human condition, and you'd be right, but that "condition" is created by each person's Personal BluePrint.

Every case of self-defeating and self-destructive behavior I've just described occurs in a person's life because that is how they experience themselves. They experience their Self as not being good enough for the Comfort of Attachment, or admirable enough for the Validation of Competency, or integrated enough for the Experience of Wholeness. The self-defeating behaviors that keep them from achieving, or allow them to achieve, these three deeply longed-for experiential states are buried in the patterns of their Personal BluePrints.

The shamed presidents and executives likely experienced themselves as shameful, or not admirable, or not good enough from their "inner perspective" to deserve the successes they achieved. The fallen sports star probably never experienced his accomplishments internally, so he blindly destroyed them. The businessman who throws away a nest egg through bad financial decisions may have experienced himself as a survivor, so that life was and is and always will be a test of that survival. The middle-aged lover who throws away a 25-year marriage often ends up with a new relationship that turns out a lot like the old one. It's a case study in betrayal by a person whose Personal BluePrint includes patterns of betrayal that have been played out over a lifetime.

On the other hand, consider people who were never given a chance by the "experts" to be stars or to really succeed, who by pushing themselves to the limits and overcoming apparent deficits were able to achieve their dreams. These great success stories are also controlled by their PBP. When you hear true champions of life talk, or read about them, you always come away with a sense that they are comfortable with their efforts, and comfortable being themselves. You might wonder if they were born that way or if they earned it. If you ask them and listen to their stories, you will hear that their life has been a struggle to overcome the patterns of behavior that kept them from being where they were that day.

If your inner picture of yourself is that you are lovable enough for the Comfort of Attachment, admirable enough for the Validation of Competency, and integrated enough for the Experience of Wholeness, you will be a winner. You will enjoy the process of your life. Maybe not every minute of every day—life has far too many twists and turns for Nirvana. But, you will trust yourself, you will enjoy your relationships, you will be warmed by other's admiration of your efforts, and you will feel whole.

Most of us have a generally realistic picture of what we can achieve, but also struggle with some distorted Self-beliefs and Self-defeating patterns of behavior. So we'll do well in our personal or professional life until we shoot ourselves in the foot. Then we start over again and hopefully learn from our mistakes. Knowing your Personal BluePrint will help you see yourself realistically and help you understand what you do to create your life.

The power of knowing your PBP comes from understanding the game that life has chosen you to play, the rules of that game, and what you need to do to enjoy the process while working toward what you want from your life. That we each have a PBP is true. It is not a theory waiting to be proved.

What's the difference between your programs and traditional therapy?

I recently learned that there are 538 different types of psychotherapy, so I'm not sure I can tell you what "therapy" is. In most therapeutic approaches, the discussion is directed by the patient or client, not the therapist. People going into therapy may have severe emotional or developmental problems. The therapist takes responsibility for the patient. If the patient resists the therapeutic process, the therapist doesn't tell them to go away; they try to work through the "resistances." In the therapy process, there is typically the assumption that the therapist can't tell the patient who they really are, and how they really work in totality. Because of this, the therapeutic process is slow. The therapist mostly listens and typically does not offer direct advice on how to achieve a specific outcome. It's therapy, not coaching. It's not likely that a therapist would say, "Look, you're all wet. Do it this way. This will work."

Our coaches are that direct with you, therapist are not. Further, most therapists do not conduct a full personality assessment of the client in order to determine exactly what that client needs. A therapist may subscribe to a particular belief, such as "People will be better if they are in touch with how they feel." That therapist would then facilitate a process of helping the patient become more emotionally clear, whether or not such an outcome is related to the patient's particular problem.

As for our training and coaching programs, we deal with normal people who are generally successful in their lives. They are just shooting themselves in the foot in ways that are keeping them from getting all they want. We take responsibility for professionally and competently assessing their PBP and teaching them how they create their lives. We educate and coach; we don't do therapy in the Personal BluePrint Programs.

When you go through our programs, we conduct a complete assessment of the basic patterns of behavior that run your life. We will describe them for you, show you how those patterns keep you from achieving what you want to achieve, provide specific exercises for changing negative patterning, coach you through the process, and in some cases provide mid-course corrections. The programs have a specific beginning and end. They don't just go from session to session.

Which is more effective, your training programs or therapy?

I can't speak to the effectiveness of therapy in general. The therapeutic process, as practiced by well-trained and experienced practitioners, works for some people and some problems. Based on the research I've seen through the years, the most effective therapies are very directive, similar to coaching. In our programs, we use a highly developed form of coaching based on what we found to be shortcomings in traditional counseling and therapeutic approaches.

Let's say you go to a training program about how computers work. The trainer says, "X creates Y and you fix it with Z." You assume that the trainer is an expert. He or she understands more than you do about the subject, so you take their word that X, Y, and Z work the way it's being explained. In these situations, you spend your time trying to understand what is being taught, and then more time being coached in the application of those rules.

Now, if this were a therapeutic and not an educational/coaching process, the "trainer" would let his "clients" try to find out for themselves how whatever it is really works without being too directive. Such an approach isn't efficient or effective for busy normal people, especially for people who don't want to labor through the therapeutic learning curve, perhaps to find that they are not really helped. They want to understand why the problem is occurring and what they can and should do about it.

Neither is better in an absolute sense. The answer to which is better for you has more to do with what fits who you are and what you need to work on. If you work with us and we determine that you need therapy, we will refer you to a therapist we trust. We will not work with you within this organization. We are clear about our purpose.

We only work with those who want more from their lives, who can trust that we know more about this than they do, and who are willing to listen, learn, and practice. Of course, part of our clients' learning is asking hard questions about the process itself, how it works and whether it can be varied. That's great. We want people to be engaged, to translate what we're saying into their own frame of reference. And so, while the process is structured, the conversations aren't. We love working with bright, inquisitive people who push us.

As for effectiveness, our programs do exactly what we promise. We provide an education and then a coaching process designed to help clients discover the patterns that create their lives. We then teach how those patterns work and offer tools for changing those patterns that are self-defeating. In my memory of performing PBP assessments I can't remember a time that we weren't able to determine a person's PBP, or to provide the coaching needed.

You make the process of discovering and changing one's Personal BluePrint sound so simple. Is it really that simple?

It may sound simple in explanation because I'm trying to make it understandable, but it wasn't simple to figure out. In fact, it took much of my adult life to develop the theory of the PBP and how it explains the way that people create their life, and then to develop the coaching programs to help them master those processes. I could tell you many stories of how we got here. It wasn't simple or easy.

Still, nearly everyone nods their head affirmatively when I ask them "Does it make sense to you that every person creates a life that is consistent with how they feel about themselves at the deepest level?" At a gut level they understand. But understanding is one thing, and doing something about it is another. That's where the challenges are, when we try to be different and make those changes stick. Going through such a process isn't simple at all.

Are you guaranteeing that I'll be different if I understand my Personal BluePrint?

As much as I want you to have a fulfilling life, I can't guarantee what you'll do in the future no matter how much time I spend training you. I will guarantee that we'll show you exactly how you create your life, and that we'll coach you to perceive and act in very specific ways when the life you're creating isn't the one that's giving you what you want. It's up to you to practice, to apply what we teach you, and to take responsibility for how your life turns out.

I saw on the website that satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back. Is that true? What do you mean? If I don't like my Personal BluePrint, then I can get a refund?

Well, no one has ever asked for their money back because they didn't like their PBP, but we do want people to be satisfied with our work. If we don't do what we say we'll do, or if you're dissatisfied with how you are personally treated, we will try to resolve the problem. If we can't resolve the problem, then yes, we'll give you your money back. But more likely your training will be the most powerful personal experience of your life.