“The key to your problem is the key to your own soul. Find yourself, realize your oneness with all power, all love, all wisdom, and use your love and power and wisdom for the re-creation and regeneration of your world.--Elizabeth Jones Towne

According to Alexander Loyd author of Beyond Willpower: The Secret Principle to Achieving Success in Life, Love and Happiness, most self-help programs have a 97% failure rate. Why? Because the premise of most programs usually involve positive thinking and willpower, which Loyd believes is a fundamentally flawed paradigm.

The usual self-help program goes as follows. You choose a goal, make a plan to achieve the goal and then work the plan until you get what you want. The basic components are expectation and willpower, both of which Loyd sees as a problem.

“Expectations inherently cause chronic stress until the end result is achieved or not,” writes Loyd. “Depending on willpower also virtually guarantees failure, because willpower depends on the power of the conscious mind.” In the book Loyd asks readers to name their number one goal in life. Most people say they want things like money, marriage, fame, a trip around the world, etc. If you answer similarly Loyd says you’re setting yourself up not only for failure, but also for chronic stress and unhappiness.

“If the number one goal in your life is an external circumstance,” writes Loyd, “you will most likely not achieve it, because the stress it inherently causes sabotages your best efforts.” For example, you try to achieve an external goal and fail without having any idea what happened. It might be because something inside of you—a subconscious intention or motivation—was diametrically opposed to the goal. Yet you had no idea.

This is why Loyd suggests focusing first on “inner” success by seeking love, joy, peace, forgiveness, kindness, and belief.

Essentially we want the external stuff because we believe it will bring us peace of mind and happiness. “In fact,” writes Loyd, “we probably believe that achieving the external circumstance is the only way we can have the inward states of love, joy, and peace. But this is never true…The external is never capable of producing the internal. The internal is always what creates the external.”

After laying out this premise, Loyd spends a considerable amount of time explaining tools he says will help readers heal from within. One such technique is “Energy Medicine,” which Loyd believes channels healing energy back into the body.

“Using the Energy Medicine tool is like putting gas in the lawn mower, hooking the propane tank to your grill, or giving food and water to a starving person,” writes Loyd. “You’re giving your body the power to do what it needs to do…with this tool, it can do the extraordinary. It can heal…”