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Why Use Super Coach and Who is Michael Neill?

Updated: Oct 20, 2022

  1. Super Coach's central understanding is impressive stuff with a 45 year long track record:

The heart of the material we will explore in Michael Neill’s book “SuperCoach” is, in many settings, called “Innate Health”. Innate Health got my attention in 2004 when I discovered that it had, starting in the late 1980s, transformed a number of poor and violent neighborhoods . (The first being Modello near Miami, FL in 1987) Since the mid 1970s it has been used in schools, correctional settings, mental health, healthcare (including the Mayo Clinic), Fortune 500 companies, life and career coaching, etc. Routinely it brings people to the place of receiving their lives is a gift. (A lot of folks have said that it actually delivers what advertisements for fabric softener, automobiles, certain medications, and the latest iPhone only promise. - Of course, by hanging out with this program, you will have an opportunity to see for yourself.)


2. Stress Reduction only takes us so far, looking toward Sustainable High-Performance is where the real adventure is:


For 15 years I have used Innate Health to help students with stress intense enough to make studying difficult and test taking impossible... but I couldn't get the attention of a lot of students who were significantly stressed, but who could tough it out re studying and taking tests. They felt awful a lot of the time, but thought it was the price of going to college, or studying in their particular subject. - They did not get that stress was actually getting in the way of them performing at an even higher level... and even enjoying the process! Indeed the usual assumptions about stress make it seem more real and powerful than it actually is.

Given the years it has taken me, it is evident that I can be a slow learner, but in the last few years it has gotten clear to me that the Innate Health that can transform awful neighborhoods can also radically lighten the burdens that most of us (and our students) associate with College and entering the competitive world of work/careers.

While still addressing those with crippling stress and even PTSD, it’s time to go beyond stress reduction and shine the light of this profound understanding directly on the concerns and goals shared by (almost) all of our students: How to be successful in college? How to decide on a career? How to study well and take tests when life is demanding – and the stakes are high? How to be the kind of person others really want to work with? How to be (as much as is in one’s power) the one who is chosen for the job? – How to work in life-giving ways even in careers that many would say were stressful “burnout” careers?

It’s clear to me that there is such a critter as Sustainable High-Performance and it would be a good thing for us to make its acquaintance, soon and in an ongoing way.


3. Michael Neill has explored the field of Success and High-Performance from multiple angles for 30 years and he asks questions:


For 20 years Michael Neill was a more or less normal (albeit enthusiastic and charismatic) success coach – working with CEO's, famous Actors, and Athletes, eventually earning 7 figures, etc. About 10 years ago (2008 or so) he found himself making effortless changes in his life when he was inadvertently introduced to “Innate Health”. He was a bit dumbfounded to find that an understanding that was being used in prisons and in poor and violent neighborhoods was actually better than what he had designed by studying and talking to other great coaches, psychologists, etc. over 20 years. In both phases of his career he has worked with thousands of people with regard to success and productivity. He has assiduously studied many of the traditional models regarding motivation, career development, etc. - Even before he came across Innate Health, he was noticing that some things that promised to increase productivity did not... and that a number of things that promised to increase life satisfaction did not correlate with that either.

Suffice it to say, out of his serious study and out of his experiences working with many people… one may well expect him to question a number of things that most of us (with smaller research samples) have taken for granted regarding productivity, success, and life satisfaction.

I have read the 4 books he wrote since he stumbled on Innate Health, and, while each of them has real value, the mixture of inspiration, depth, and practicality in this 2018 revision of "SuperCoach" this Spring, sparked the thought: Hey Buckaroo, it's really time to focus on Sustainable High Performance.


By the way: Since he came upon Innate Health, Michael Neill now regularly does service work alongside of other Innate Health facilitators in schools, prisons, homeless shelters, the UN, etc.

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