Cover story Paul McKenna A self-educated man In the past 20 years, Paul McKenna has been one
of the world's widest-reaching life-changers. With his groundbreaking book Change Your Life In 7 Days selling over 3 million copies worldwide, a
revolutionary weight-loss program and numerous tv shows revealing how easy it can be to change, it's difficult to underestimate his influence. So,
how did he get there? And what does he really care about? The Best You finds out.
Photographs by Steve Shaw I
If you could sum up what drives Paul McKenna, it's tempting to say "education". From the seminars he does with Richard Bandler (co-creator of the revolutionary methodology known as
NLP), through numerous books and tv shows, Paul offers people ways to learn whole new ways of living. Perhaps his own bad experience at school
made him seek out better ways to learn. "Basically I don’t approve of the factory-
style education system," he says, with feeling. "I think it was probably relevant at the time
of the Industrial Revolution. You had to take a human being with all its amazing creativity and squash it and break it to fit a very particular mould. Unfortunately, that's what our education system does to this day."
hope. "Changes are happening. (Education expert) Ken Robinson talks about how the exceptionally creative can really struggle in the education factory. If you look at the recent BBC documentary
on Michel Thomas, you'll see it's possible to learn a language in a week. At school it still takes years to learn things because we’re learning by one of the stupidest methods possible - which is learning by rote." So what would the result of a good school
education be? "How intelligent somebody is shouldn’t be the only mark of success in school. It should also be how well someone does both emotionally and psychologically. The system is the way it is because it’s
been that way for a long time. But it’s due for a change."
I think one of the most important things you
can have is emotional or psychological resilience. I can’t show you how to go and get a job but I can show you