Self-Mastery, Transformation, and Rehab for the Rest of Us
“Where’s my damn rehab?” transformational coach Libby Adams remembers asking on the third day of her husband’s stint in an inpatient substance abuse program, “Why do you have to be a drug addict or alcoholic to get a good 28-day program?”
Beginnings
Growing up in California in the 1960s, Libby wanted to help people. She was interested in and began studying psychology, but didn’t care for the subjects of mental illness and abnormal psychology. After earning degrees in education and educational psychology, she became a middle school Spanish teacher.
Basic Training
Libby stopped teaching at public schools in 1980. Some of her moments of greatest challenge came thereafter while raising three children and living through her husband Richard’s substance abuse problems. Richard went through a drug and alcohol program and the family through divorce. Eventually, Libby, Richard, and the kids were all right, but Libby remembered her question: “Where’s my damn rehab?”
Rapid Transformation Is Possible
Libby found a new home for her interests in psychology and education – the personal development industry. In search for…something…Libby took est training in 1974. She moved on to attend numerous transformational psychology conferences throughout the decade, and to work with some the top names in the field.
Libby came to understand that rapid transformation is possible at the weekend immersive Date with Destiny conference. Libby next did the Anthony Robbins’ Firewalk. Robbins also helped her on the spot with neurolinguistic programming (NLP) exercises to help to eliminate fear of asking people for money. That very day, she raised over $7,000 for her employer, a company helping hearing impaired children.
Inspired, Libby obtained a certification as a Master Practitioner of NLP from Tad James. She also studied with Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins’ mentor. At different times throughout the coming years, she worked as volunteer staff in the Robbins, Deepak Chopra, and the NLP Organization.
Through the work in NLP, Libby met Dr. Van Tharp (a trading coach with a strong interest in how to use NLP to help traders overcome psychological issues in the market). Not unlike alcoholics or gamblers, traders often struggle with addictive impulses. Many blow up their entire financial account or portfolio. As Libby and Van continued on separate paths seeking to help themselves and others, their professional association developed slowly over the next decade.
Going into Business with IASK
Working for Anthony Robbins and Deepak Chopra helping clients with personal development was all very well but at some point, Libby decided: “I can do this myself!”
In 1994, she started the International Academy for Self-Knowledge (IASK). IASK provided personal development training or coaching sessions for her early clients, many of whom came through the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.
During IASK’s beginnings, both Libby Adams and Van Tharp used a therapeutic coaching method they called “parts negotiation.” The idea is that our personalities are made up of multiple parts operating at a subconscious level. Thus, a “successful professional” may also be saddled with a “child” part or a “father” part that sabotages his trading (or other goal-oriented activity). The facilitator works with the client to release the non-useful beliefs of hidden or shadow parts. Or, to negotiate between useful parts with conflicting objectives (such as the “trader” and the “husband”) to ensure improved performance and work-life balance.
The Spiritual Connection with TfM
However, Libby felt that parts negotiation was not getting her clients the best results. She felt that a spiritual component to coaching and self-healing was essential. What if – like participants in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) – participants could accelerate their results by turning to a “higher power” for help?
Libby took the idea of parts negotiation – in which the client visualizes one part in each hand and brokers an internal discussion with the parts – and replaced it with her own unique Transformational MeditationTM (TfM) process involving the client’s higher power (aka God, Universal Mind, Infinite Intelligence, depending on the client’s preference or beliefs).
With TfM, Libby discovered that by invoking higher levels of consciousness we can quickly – almost miraculously – resolve our most intense inner conflicts. And according to Michael Hall’s NLP book “Meta-States: Mastering the Higher Levels of Your Mind” (1995), we can experience our most powerful feelings of love, gratitude, wonder, and awe when we reach a “systemic” or “spiritual” level of consciousness.
Hence the spiritual connection. Libby considers a spiritual belief to be one that concerns core questions of identity and the meaning of life: Who am I? Why am I here? Who or what is God and how do I connect? We answer these questions for ourselves with spiritual beliefs that can’t be proven or disproven. And it is more important that a belief is useful, or empowering, than that it is provably true. It is more important that we do get to a higher level of consciousness than how we get there.
Libby and her clients found TfM to be effective at dissolving internal conflicts and non-useful psychological parts to increase peace of mind and performance. I can personally attest to this from my own experience with TfM after taking the Peak Performance 202: The Trader Reinvention Workshop co-taught by Libby Adams and Van Tharp! Simply put, TfM changed my life.
The 28-Day Program for Substance Abuse
By the early 1990s, Libby’s clients were achieving life changing results through TfM. But, as Libby likes to say, “Parts are like clusters of grapes. There could be thousands of them. A “separated self” (or little i) is created every time we encounter a challenging experience and believe something about it or ourselves that isn’t true.”
Once the treatment is over and additional psychological issues get triggered down the road, how can clients take care of themselves? How can they sustain the benefits of their initial IASK results? It would take an uncomfortable visitation from the past, and a journey halfway around the world for Libby to find the answer.
In 2001, ex-husband Richard asked Libby to help him put together a program for drug and alcohol users so people wouldn’t have to go through 13 detoxes and rehabs like he had. Though Libby was initially reluctant, they developed the structure and curriculum for a substance abuse treatment program powered by TfM. The program got good results, enabling clients to resolve their issues and giving them skills and tools for the future.
Moments of Inspiration
At the end of 2 years Libby had trained coaches to replace her in Richard’s program. She was able to bow out of it, but the idea of a 28-day therapeutic structure divided into 4 weeks using one on one mentoring stuck with her.
Remembering “Where’s my damn rehab?” she thought “This is it! I could adapt the drug and alcohol rehab program for the rest of us.”
After completing her work on the substance abuse rehab program, and in search of new ideas for IASK, Libby traveled to India. There, she stayed in Ashram for three weeks at a site near the Himalayas on the Ganges River made famous by the Beatles’ study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968. During this trip, Libby was able to deepen her knowledge of spirituality and meditation.
The pivotal moment came in a bookstore as the seller approached and handed her a copy of “Living with the Himalayan Masters” by Swami Rama, saying: “You will want this book.” She bought two copies!
The 28-Day Program for the Rest of Us
Swami Rama imparted many new personal development concepts including non-resistance, non-attachment, selflessness, cheerfulness, and fearlessness. With them, Libby found the content she needed to take IASK’s programs to the next level.
And so, the 28-day program for the rest of us was born. Each of Swami Rama’s concepts gets a day of its own in the program – concepts such as such as love, forgiveness, and gratitude. Libby came back from India, created the curriculum, and tried it with a pilot group and increasing numbers of clients.
Karen – another of Libby’s clients – provides a good testimonial. Paraphrasing from her video: “I was stuck and didn’t even know it. I didn’t know what I wanted. I was like “machete girl”, trying to hack through everything when there were easy well-trodden paths right beside me.
My biggest benefit from the 28-day program was finding my true self by peeling off whole layers of beliefs – which I visualized as a ‘posse of bandits’ – that led me into resistance. Once I did this, I discovered my purpose and felt much more peaceful. People noticed the change and started becoming more attracted to me – family, friends, in business – everywhere I go.
After many other self-development programs this was the most beneficial thing I’ve ever done and required the least amount of time.”
Traders – A Target Audience
One of Libby’s early 28-day program trial users was none other than Dr. Van Tharp, who had previously learned TfM from Libby. With that, a strong Van Tharp Institute + IASK partnership was born. As a trading coach, Van believed that psychology, or having a healthy mindset coupled with resourceful beliefs about money and the market, is the critical success factor for traders. And like Libby his spiritual journey took him to India where he discovered the Oneness movement.
Finding themselves on parallel tracks, Libby and the Van Tharp Institute (VTI) formed a partnership that has been running smoothly for 20 years. IASK and VTI market it as a “Psychology Rehab for Traders” mentorship program that helps clients improve performance by mapping true, fulfilling desires to specific goals; manage stress through self-mastery skills; and change any unconscious beliefs or attitudes that may be sabotaging their own efforts. The figure below describes these program concepts in terms of four pillars.
As a student with the Van Tharp Institute’s Supertrader program, I became eligible for Libby’s “Self-Mastery: 28-Day Intensive” program. I worked with Libby myself in November 2022 and went through the program. For each of 28 days, I watched one of Libby’s videos, related the day’s personal development or spiritual concept to my daily To Do list, talked to Libby for 45 minutes, and closed the day with a nightly reflection and Libby’s audio track on an MP3.
I found this to be a fantastic experience, which helped me grow and improve my results and personal fulfillment both in trading and in life. I’ve continued in Libby’s post-28-day graduate group coaching programs that help maintain the life skills and mindsets learned initially. As Libby says: “Once the dentist tells you ‘No cavities!’ you don’t want to stop brushing your teeth. There must be some spiritual law about maintenance that applies to mental as well as dental health!”
What’s Next?
Traders constitute about 75% of Libby’s clients with others being clients that predate the partnership with VTI, or are family members of trader clients. There is something about the trader audience – perhaps above average stress and above average net worth compared to other occupational groups – that make them willing and able to invest in psychological services. Libby also works with entrepreneurs, business executives, and other target audiences.
At the end of the day, however, I feel that Libby just wants to help people. At this point in her life, she is a woman with everything she needs in the material realm, could retire if she wanted, but just wants to keep on coaching!
“I got what I asked for, and love what I do,” Libby confirmed when we discussed the future. But when I asked what would happen next in her vision of perfection, she shared one more challenge:
How do I scale coaching?
Libby strongly believes that personal development coaching should be one-on-one. Libby has been able to expand the 28-day program by training and certifying more than 20 coaches, but even so, by her estimate IASK can only take on about forty five (45) 28-day clients at a time. “You have to have the focus (on the client) and the trust. None of us could handle more than 5 28-day clients at a time.”
“In my dream life,” Libby continued, “I would have 100,000 coaches out there getting this program to anyone who wanted it.”
Call to Action
You don’t have to be “Supertrader” to take – and benefit from – the 28-day Psychology Rehab Program. Most people have some “rehabbing” of the past to do, areas where things could be better or improved. Libby’s tag line is “We ALL need to rehab something…”
Libby and the IASK team offer a free Success Mindset Scorecard Assessment. After taking it, you get an offer for a free 30-minute call. The Assessment followed by an optional 2-hour introductory course is a great place to begin.