A different way to approach your ITCH is this ‘poem’ I swiped from today’s Monday Morning Memo –>

It takes four people to make a world.

1. One person wants acceptance.
They hope to save the relationship.
Under pressure, they acquiesce.

2. One person wants accuracy.
They hope to save face.
Under pressure, they avoid.

3. One person wants applause.
They hope to save effort.
Under pressure, they attack.

4. One person wants accomplishment.
They hope to save time.
Under pressure, they become autocratic.

Most of you will recognize yourself… some won’t.

I am, no surprise for anyone who knows me, the socially awkward fourth person.

When my mom left me in the street because I was heavy and slow, I heard that part, instead of what the other three types would hear, that she didn’t love me, that she didn’t care, that I didn’t matter.

Truth be told: I did hear those… but the only think I acted and am acting now is what she actually said. I am faster and lighter, no one needs to carry me. It’s an obsession, it’s still an ITCH.

No one type is luckier than another in this regard: they all obsessively pursue what they want at the expense of other things: happiness, productivity, accomplishment, money, maybe even love.

They sacrifice everything for that one thing… Instead of being able to work all four… and be a whole person… myself included.

It hurts, even though I am getting better at playing the whole field, evening out the gaping holes in my personality. But it still hurts.

Everything has a price… If you want one thing, you have to let go of wanting the other things.

Your upsets are a window to your personality: what you get upset about tells me what you want. What you REALLY want.

It may look that you want accomplishment, workability, but what you may really want is to look good and gain applause. Your own behavior tells me what is important to you: acceptance, accuracy, applause or accomplishment.

Only one of my students wants accomplishment, the rest want applause, or acceptance.

And not surprisingly the only student who is successful in the world is the one with the want of accomplishment, both from himself and from others.

The rest are sidetracked and don’t produce much extrinsic value in the real world.

There are three levels of value:

1. The lowest is called systemic. it is the binary value: true/false, good/bad, liked/not liked, accepted/not accepted… the effort of the first 3 personality types operate on this level…
2. The middle level is called extrinsic value. It is the level where you produce tangible value, value people pay for, things you can sell. The first 3 personality types don’t have time or attention for this level, they are underachievers.
3. The top level is calls intrinsic value. People, life, have intrinsic value whether they want it or not. What people want is their intrinsic value acknowledged… In vain.

This level of value is inaccessible for 99% of humanity. Inaccessible as in not visible. Not real. Lip service only. 99% of people can’t see it in others, can’t see it in themselves… therefore they cannot honor it, cannot appreciate it, and cannot see it when another sees it in them. There is nothing there to see… for them.

I, interestingly, have a measure that is a good approximation of where a person is at: their active and accurate vocabulary.

Mine is 8,000, and still growing. The average number on the planet is 300, my students’: just under 400.

The biggest issue is living up to your own expectations in the area of the intrinsic value.

You want to be respected, applauded, but you don’t behave respectable, or celebratable… you behave needy, haughty, obnoxious, sullen, cocky, not like the person who could easily get what you want.

Even the fourth person can be totally off: be a slacker, or a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am person: neither doing complete nor thorough work, while expecting it from others.

As long as you don’t live up to your expectations of yourself, you’ll be poor and miserable to the degree that you fall short of your own expectations of yourself.

That, unfortunately, everyone now living on this blue planet… to one degree or another.

Was Steve Jobs miserable? Yeah.
Is Bill Gates miserable? Yeah.
Is Oprah Winfry miserable? Yeah.
Are you miserable? Yeah.

The cause of the misery is the same: falling short… NOT other people. Although it is so popular and so easy to blame it on others.

Your first ‘job’ is to identify your ITCH, i.e. what you want, your personality type inside those four. Are there more personality types? I’ll look, but so far I haven’t seen any.

Your second ‘job’ is to identify how you use it to get off the hook, to be the person who doesn’t have to measure up, and yet keep on wanting it.

Your third ‘job’ is to learn how to stop the machine… Oh, did I mention that it’s a machine with a trigger, a cycle, and an express purpose to keep you where you are?

Unless you get good at identifying the trigger and neutralizing it fast, or sidestepping it, your life will be the story of the machine, not of a human person. Nothing to write home about.

I teach recognizing the ITCH in the ITCH course. I am NOW adding an advanced ITCH workshop about finding the trigger, and neutralizing it, or the sidestepping method, so your life can be the story of victory over the machine, where you can have what you want and also money, love, and health.

You, obviously need to start with the recognizing…

If you hurry, you’ll finish it by the time I do the LIVE workshops, starting end of February/beginning of March… don’t have the date yet. All sessions will be on Saturday 4 pm New York time. That is Sunday morning in Australia, 9 pm in the British Isles, and 1 pm in California.

We’ll have as many sessions as needed, minimum 4.

You can email me for a payment link if you know your ITCH. For the rest, here is the link to do self-study with the ITCH workshop…

This article can give you a useful push… hint… or whatever you need to decide to handle your machine effectively. The ITCH is the fuel that animates the racket, it is underneath all your upsets, justified or not, all your drama, and all your ineffectiveness in your life, whether it is being disorganized, fat, sick, lonely, or poor.

Get the ITCH workshop. I priced it so low that everyone can afford it…

–>Go to step 2 –>PS: Of course a person with the 4th type of want, wanting accomplishment, would be attracted to this quote by New Zealand John Tapene:

‘Always we hear the cry from teenagers ‘what can we do, where can we go?’
‘My answer is this: go home, mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons, and after you’ve finished, read a book. Your town does not owe you recreational facilities and your parents do not owe you fun.

‘The world does not owe you a living, you owe the world something. You owe it your time, energy and talent so that no one will be at war, in sickness and lonely again. In other words, grow up, stop being a cry-baby, get out of your dream world, and develop a backbone not a wishbone. Start behaving like a responsible person. You are important, you are needed. It’s too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday. Someday is now and that somebody is you!’