🔏 Unchained Program The Unchained program is designed for individuals with lower mindset scores. Students in the Unchained program often have characteristics and personality attributes that strongly drive success, but are limited by competing beliefs or perspectives that prevent these attributes from flourishing. As the name implies, this program is designed to remove the restrictions for these students so that they can truly thrive. Of all the student types, those in the Unchained program tend to experience the greatest challenge, but also the most dramatic transformation. TYPICAL PROGRESS FOR UNCHAINED Unchained students are restricted by mindset. This can often be traced back to childhood experiences where grades or results were heavily prioritised. In some cases, self-worth or parental approval is linked to performance outcomes. The internalised pressure to “not fail” can create visceral fear avoidance, shying away from challenges, personal insecurity, and an unwillingness to experiment. As experimentation is necessary for growth, this means that until certain perspectives are unlocked, all new techniques will inevitably fail. Over years of working with students with limiting mindsets, we were surprised to learn that when these students are able to persevere through the early stages and learn to think in new ways, their results can sometimes surpass that of any other student. This “trial by fire” phenomenon seems to be unavoidable. Unchained Program Overview We now recognise that Unchained students have massive potential. They have often exerted more effort, suffered more stress, more uncertainty and more anxiety than other students. These create the fire. The missing component is a method of converting all of these experiences and emotions into fuel for growth and transformation. On review of the research, as well as our own extensive experience, we have identified the following components as critical for success: 1. Clear and explicit safety nets 2. Inclusive and empowering community (and engagement in this community) 3. Counterintuitively, early struggle and difficulty is correlated to higher success, while highly specific direction and instruction creates worse outcomes (making the early stages overly guided has been shown to create a higher risk of failure medium to long-term as students do not learn to manage the difficulties when it is relatively easy) 4. Accessible and reliable support Fortunately, we have found that when all of these guidelines are followed, the chance of success is very high. Characteristic Unchained Features AVERSION TO EXPERIMENTATION One of the core, unescapable requirements for success is to accept and expect failure. It is logically impossible to improve any meaningful skill without experiencing failure. When we are engaging in rapid growth, it is necessary to experiment at a high frequency (potentially multiple times per day), which means lots of failures, very often. Accepting that every experiment is more likely to fail than succeed is crucial to learning and growing. When failure is avoided, growth is avoided. This is an incredibly hard pill to swallow, emotionally and mentally. For this reason, we will do our best to support and guide you through this process, helping you transform your skills and free yourself from the never-ending spiral of “what if”. Remember, we’re right by your side. ADVANTAGES • Massive growth potential once mindsets are changed. • Dramatic improvements in mental health and learning skill (proportionately greater than any other student type, by far) DISADVANTAGES • Emotionally difficult to commit to change. • Time and energy consuming to create the change. Recommended Strategy Guidelines These guidelines have been developed to help you transition to our techniques as smoothly as possible, avoiding the common mistakes that similar students often face. Focus on the process Not every attempt will result in success. And almost every attempt The worst thing you can do is will feel rather uncomfortable! These are all normal parts of the not give something a go growth process. Even if you aren’t able to see yourself improving, because you’re afraid you you can rely on others (peers and experts) to give you feedback to won’t be able to do it right. In help you see how you can optimise your process. It might take 100 this situation, you won’t learn failures for your first win. After that, you might win 99% of the time, anything new (such as how but if you focus too much on each failure, instead of what you not to do it), nor will you have learned from it and how you can adapt your process to get 1% actually succeeded at it. No better each time, it will take longer and longer to tick off the 100 matter what happens, you’ll failures you need before you succeed. never know until you try! Celebrate the wins It’s easy to get bogged down in all the mistakes you’re making. But Some of our best students for anyone learning a new skill, there will always be more things were Unchained. They that were done wrong than were done right. Even the generation’s belittled their wins until they greatest genius will be nothing in their first month compared to a realised that they had long master. Everyone has their own journey and their own timeline. It’s surpassed their peers. important to stop and smell the roses, but you can’t enjoy the smell Celebrating your wins keeps if you’re too occupied comparing your roses to your neighbours! you motivated, and who doesn’t want that? Fail fast and fail often As we’ve mentioned, failing is going to be your new favourite This is a method called activity! Get used to failing often on things that don’t matter. This graduated exposure therapy helps retrain the psychological barrier to experimentation. It could which is a standard form of be as simple as being more decisive when looking at a menu, not brain retraining used by worrying so much about how to greet someone, or changing the clinical psychologists. way you write notes in a small way. Even if you don’t jump into the deep end of the fear zone, dip your toes every day.
