Why Better Diagnosis Makes Coaching and Business Problems Easier to Solve

Back when I was teaching my BodyMAP courses to personal trainers and physical therapists, I used to demonstrate just how quickly the human body can change when you understand what’s ACTUALLY driving the problem.

People would come in hardly able to reach past their knees…

…and be touching their toes less than 10 seconds later.

Without stretching.

Without chanting.

Without sacrificing a goat to the flexibility gods.

People with painful lower backs and necks would suddenly struggle to even FIND the pain they’d arrived with.

Frozen shoulders would regain movement that had been missing for years.

Strength, power and agility would change in under a minute simply by altering breathing, eye position or one of a bunch of other neurological inputs.

It was ridiculously fun to teach and I loved every minute of the courses, even though they were full-on from start to finish.

For a lot of the people there, the course was genuinely life-changing and I'd almost gotten so used to the glowing testimonials and reviews of that when some students started calling me 'movement Jesus' I wasn't at all surprised. (Seriously, it happened).

I distinctly remember at the end of one course, a woman came over to tell me how powerful she’d found the whole thing.

She was excited.

She couldn’t wait to start using what she’d learned with her clients.

There was just one problem.

She was disappointed in my use of language.

Uh oh.

Now look, I’m ex-military.

So if she was about to complain that the occasional F-bomb had escaped captivity, I couldn’t exactly mount a robust defence.

It was a fair cop.

I'd DEFINITELY dropped a few... maybe even MORE than a few.

But that wasn’t it.

She said she was uncomfortable with the derogatory way I kept referring to people with certain medical conditions.

That got my attention.

Because whatever else I might be accused of…

…I REALLY don’t want it to be that I casually humiliate people I’m supposedly trying to help.

So I asked what I’d said.

She looked at me and said “You kept describing people as spastics.”

Honestly, I nearly pissed myself laughing.

Because I NEVER called anyone that at all.

Not even once.

I mean sure, I'd used the WORD 'spastic' but I’d been talking about a spastic arm.

As in spasticity.

A legitimate clinical term describing abnormal muscle tone that can occur after things like stroke or neurological injury.

See, she’d heard a word she THOUGHT she understood…

…attached her own definition to it…

…and then experienced the entire remainder of the conversation through that definition.

Same word.

Completely different meaning.

Completely different response.

And a completely unnecessary mini-crisis at the end of my course. :)

And that’s actually a much bigger problem than it first appears.

Because we do this ALL THE TIME.

We hear “My marketing isn’t working.”

“My offer isn’t selling.”

“I need more confidence.”

“I’m inconsistent.”

“I need more leads.”

“My audience is too small.”

And we immediately start solving the thing we THINK those words mean.

Except maybe we’re solving the wrong bloody problem!

Maybe “marketing isn’t working” actually means nobody understands what you do.

Maybe “I need more confidence” means your offer is vague and you know it.

Maybe “I’m inconsistent” means you’ve built a content plan you hate following so you duck it every opportunity you get.

Maybe “I need more leads” means you’re already posting enough content and talking to enough people but giving them absolutely zero reason to take the next step with you.

And then we do what people tend to do when results aren’t coming quickly enough…

…we try HARDER.

We throw up more content.

Deploy more tactics.

Commit to even MORE posting on MORE platforms.

Create more funnels with even MORE than the 47 steps we normally use.

Add more optimisation.

Expend more effort.

Because apparently if banging your head against the wall doesn’t work… the obvious next move is to bang it harder, right?

Yet most of the time the breakthrough we're seeking comes from something much less impressive than exerting more muscle.

As obvious as it sounds it comes from actually UNDERSTANDING the problem we're facing.

That was the entire point of BodyMAP.

Because the body can sometimes change incredibly quickly once you stop treating the symptom you can SEE…

…and identify the input that’s actually CAUSING it.

And yeah, I know that businesses aren’t identical to nervous systems.

(So please don’t start breathing through your left nostril and expect your PayPal account balance to improve.)

But the principle holds true.

And when the prescription matches the REAL problem…

…then results can happen much faster and with considerably less force.

So before you ask: “How do I fix this?”

Maybe try asking “What exactly do I mean by THIS?” instead.

Because sometimes you’re not REALLY struggling with the solution.

You’re struggling because you’ve misunderstood the problem.

Which is MUCH easier to fix than spending another six months becoming world-class at solving the wrong bloody thing.

Jussayin'