Reviewed by Peter Roe -  November 2006

"In recent times a number of marketers who are active in the ‘internet marketing’ arena have moved their operations into the self development field. The marketing methods and sales pitches they use for for their ‘self help’ products are remarkably similar to those used for various web marketing products. They seem to have two things in common - a level of hype and unlikely claims that with only a few exceptions has not previously been seen in this industry, and a frenzy of promotion from fellow marketers.

So when I visited Michael Norman’s web site after following an email link and found some VERY strong claims for his ‘Your Instant Life Revolution’ product, I immediately assumed that Michael Norman (if he was actually a real person) must be one of these people.

In essence, what he was saying was that simply by listening to his audio recording, virtually any habit, unwanted personal trait or other behaviour pattern could be changed as desired. Not by listening a number of times over a period of time - but just by listening once!

As the producer and publisher of a number of entrainment/subliminal recordings that are among the most effective available (OK, end of ad!) it has always been my experience that a number of listening sessions and a variable period of time are required to implant suggestions for change and achieve definite results. Yet here was someone claiming that just one listening session could produce powerful results, albeit for just one selected aspect of behaviour (subliminal suggestions and hypnosis tend to address a number of issues simultaneously).

Obviously this had to be investigated, so I ordered a copy straight away. The PDF version of the ‘user manual’ is made available for immediate download, while the physical copy of the manual and the audio CD are mailed from the US. This takes from 8-12 days for the UK where I am based, so of course I only had the manual to go on initially.

I also did a bit of research on Michael Norman, and it became clear quite quickly that he was not a web marketer turned self help guru, but an established personal development practitioner with a reputation extending well beyond his native Australia.

So while I was waiting for my package in the post, I made a start on the downloaded manual. This is a 70-page document divided into 11 chapters. A twelfth chapter on using YILR for weight control also arrived via email, so I printed everything off and put the pages in a temporary binder.

From the outset, what I was reading made a lot of sense to me. Without giving away any proprietary information, the author talks about the absolute importance of feelings in relation to behaviour, describing these as the key to change. I am in absolute agreement with this idea - manipulation of emotions - feelings - is the way the subconscious mind controls the conscious mind, and the nature of this control is determined by the current belief system stored by the subconscious.

The manual goes on to show how it is possible to consciously change these subconscious prompts at will, by using a simple technique the author describes in detail for a specific purpose - an immediate increase in confidence. As it happens, I recognised this procedure as a modification of a neurolinguistic programming (NLP) technique. NLP works immediately for many people, but it does require a level of introspection and imagination that some people cannot easily manage, so I hoped that this was not going to be the only thing I got from the package. Nevertheless I tried the suggested technique out, and was pleasantly surprised when I found it definitely had an effect right away.

I read on a little and found that this exercise was just a little ‘demo’ of the potential of this simple mental trick, and that chapter 3 onwards dealt with how to use the trick plus the CD to achieve the amazing claims made at the web site. At this stage I just had to wait to find out if there was anything in this stuff.

Arrival of the main package

The package arrived exactly 10 days after I ordered it. I guess this will be much the same time as for anywhere in Europe or Australasia, but obviously it will arrive much quicker if you live in continental America. The manual was of course exactly the same as the downloaded version, in this case a fairly weighty spiral-bound copy with clear plastic cover sheets. But what I was really interested in was the CD.

I had an hour spare so I sat down in my office with the door closed and a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the outside, put it in my CD player and settled back to listen through headphones. I have to say that listening to this CD was a VERY strange experience.

The track, which is getting on for an hour long, starts with some ambient background music and a spoken introduction. Michael Norman’s delivery is stilted and decidedly odd-sounding, with an accent that might be described as ‘mid Pacific’ - somewhere between Australia and the southwestern US! The introduction quickly shifts into a ‘stereo confusion’ (multitracking) mode, and I also noticed a number of NLP-type techniques being applied.

Pretty well the next thing I remember is becoming aware of my surroundings again just as the recording was finishing!

Now this is pretty much the same experience you can expect when listening to one of our own Core Change ‘Activation’ programs. When you listen to one of these programs, the binaural beat and isochronic entrainment components quickly induce a deep ‘alpha’ mind state in which suggestions can be implanted, so I wondered what listening to the YILR CD was doing (from the effects, I guessed some similar entrainment process might be embedded in the YILR CD, but I have no way of knowing this for sure).

I went back to the manual at the point I had left off, and realised that there is more to using the CD than just listening to it. What I had missed was that when you listen to the CD, it is crucial that you have an ‘intent’ in mind - a particular feeling, behaviour or habit that you want to change. Without this component the CD cannot do what it is designed to do.

Instant change?

It was several days before I got around to actually following the instructions for using the CD properly. In the meantime, during spare moments I read the rest of the manual, which shows how to use the CD in conjunction with the mental trick mentioned earlier to change your life in a number of vital areas.

Rather than one of the ‘major’ areas suggested, I decided to find something relatively trivial, which would nevertheless provide some indication of whether or not the system works. I settled on what you might call ‘compulsive email disorder’ - my tendency to check my email at intervals of 30 or 40 minutes to see if there was anything that ‘urgently’ needed attending to. This can be a disruptive habit, and one I would quite like to change for this reason, but is otherwise not exactly important. So I found time to do the experiment (an undisturbed hour can actually be quite hard to find), did the preliminaries as suggested in the manual, and settled down to listen to the CD.

Once again I ‘zonked out’ after 10 minutes or so, but this time, instead of simply waking at the end, I partially ‘re-surfaced’ into a warm, pleasant and timeless state I recognised afterward as the hypnogogic/hypnopompic condition - the mind state you normally go through as you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. Only this time it lasted for almost the length of the recording, with shallower and deeper moments interspersed. A very interesting experience - but did it CHANGE anything?

The short answer is quite simply, yes. Since this session I have not felt any need to check my email more than twice a day or so (with a couple of exceptions, which it turns out are deliberately suggested within the recording as a part of the process!). A few weeks on and nothing has changed, so I’m pretty sure I’m ‘cured’ - in one session exactly as promised!

But this one experiment could be a fluke, or might simply be autosuggestion (the equivalent of the placebo effect) so I have since widened the field by getting a number of friends, relatives and colleagues to try the system out. The results of this rather unscientific experiment (11 tests) were: 1 no change, 1 small change, 9 claimed successes.

So an overwhelming majority of the ‘guinea pigs’ who tried YILR appear to have experienced ‘self directed’ changes of exactly the kind claimed. And on this basis I have to conclude that the claims made for Your Instant Life Revolution seem to be justified, and this product is indeed an extremely important addition to the armoury of anyone interested in changing any aspects of themselves. I have only just started exploring the possibilities offered by this remarkable tool - in particular I am looking forward to trying the potentially life-changing process described in Chapter 9.

I think the following quotation from the manual best summarises YILR:

“...sometimes it can feel as if we don’t have a choice about the way we feel, think and behave. That’s why I have created this course. So that you can have the choice to direct your mind and emotions in such a way that you become the kind of person you truly desire to be”.

If we has a ‘star’ system for the subjects of these reviews, I would award YILR the maximum number without hesitation.”

Peter Roe, Somerset, UK. 9-11-2006

MindWaves Review:

IMPORTANT NOTE: You can currently get hold of a full copy of YILR for just the cost of postage (flat rate $14.95 US, wherever you live). You only pay for the course IF you are completely satisfied after a 30 day evaluation period, that it ‘does what it says on the tin’. I’m not sure how long this offer will hold, but it is still available as I write this note, through the link below. PR