Lessons from a 40 hour personal development course!

When was the last time you went to a 3 day intensive personal development seminar for over 12 hours each day with a 4 hour grand finale?

This was my third time doing such an event and it was very inspiring and eye opening. 

I want to share with you some insights that I gained from the event that might be helpful for you in your life. 

Keep in mind that I am still processing and integrating the lessons I have experienced and new breakthroughs keep coming up. 

Discovering Breakthroughs 

The idea of discovering vs knowing is very powerful. We all know we should be moving our bodies more and eating healthier food, and still we often do not do what we know would help us get to our goal. 

Knowing does not equal DOING. 

Action does speak louder than words but words do have a major impact on our ability to take action. 

The best way that I discover a breakthrough is through seeing other people have a breakthrough. 

Watching people talk about their issues and then getting coached by an expert coach was really helpful. 

Seeing how people GOT IT, not KNEW IT but GOT IT and suddenly new possibilities were possible. 

This is why I did this type of seminar for the 3rd time and I would do it again in the future. 

Considerations

We all have reasons why we don't do things. I realized that I have so many considerations about WHY I am not where I want to be and noticing those considerations allows me to choose to be UNREASONABLE and take action even if it does not make sense. 

When I take unreasonable action, I get unreasonable results. 

Consideration is a non judgy way of saying excuses. 

Often we put OUR OWN considerations on other people and stop them from taking action. 

Write down all your reasons why you don't have the life that you want and see where you need to take unreasonable action. Commit to taking action and see how your life changes. 

Listening

A powerful way to listen is to really hear what the person is saying to you without coloring what is being said with your own agenda or response. 

Listening in order to respond is the default way that we listen. 

When we listen, we have lots of things going on in our head. 

Voices ask us questions like WHY, HOW, What's in it for me? Is this true or false, right or wrong, good or bad. 

We even ask ourselves how to Identify or SOLVE the problem or identify if we agree or disagree. 

We think about if we KNOW this information already or if this information is new. 

Our voice asks us if we trust this or we do not trust this information. 

We even try to create REASONS while we listen and we ask ourselves is this making us look good or making us look bad. 

We try to avoid looking bad and we try to look good at the cost of LISTENING. 

Very interesting idea to explore when you are in conversation with other people. 

How well do you listen?

Powerful Requests:

How often do you make a request from someone and they tell you no, and you let them off the hook right away?

How often do you NOT EVEN make the request because you are afraid of rejection or you just assume there is no way they will say yes. 

That happens all the time in sales, with friends and family and in our relationships. 

This stands directly in the way of getting what you want in life. 

What if you had the courage to make a powerful request and addressed the considerations of the people in your life?

Making a powerful request can be scary because we are concerned with looking good and not being too pushy or putting too much pressure. 

We often think that if we ask powerfully we will look bad, but really we are asking for what we want in life. 

Being considerate is important while at the same time sharing why it's important to you and how it will impact them in a powerful way. 

Where do you need to make more powerful requests in your life?

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the willingness to give up the desire to punish someone who wronged you. 

Resentment is the poison you take hoping the other person will die. 

This came from my therapist that I did a session with after finishing the course

What an apology is NOT:

• explaining/defending your actions - if the other person is activated and doesn’t feel safe, they don’t care about any explanation
• correcting the other person’s perceptions
• showing the other person why they shouldn’t be upset
• saying the right thing to get them to forgive and forget
• making people like you/think well of you
• talking about what you did wrong and how bad you feel about it
• admitting/confessing that you did something wrong
• agreeing that everything the other person said is factually true
• a debate about the facts
• losing/admitting defeat
• selling out your own truth
• cause for shame or humiliation
• a chance to accuse the other person

Elements of an effective apology:

• acknowledge what you did/didn’t do
• acknowledge the impact
• express sorrow/regret
• make amends/reduce impact
• plan to prevent it happening again

WOW, what insight. I have not been doing this correctly.

Can you forgive the people in your life?

Remember that even people who passed away can be forgiven, just write them a letter. 

Forgiveness is FOR YOU, not for anyone else. It's letting go. 

If you are ready to let go, then let go. 

Sharing

The more you share in the world of being, the more you are in the world. 

Share your ideas

Share your books

Share what you are up to in the world

Share what you are committed to in your life and in your business.

When we have considerations, we often stop sharing. 

If you want to touch and inspire the people in your life, share more. 

Share authentically and share from your heart. 

Think about what stops you from sharing and distinguish the stories you are telling yourself that are stopping you from expressing yourself freely. 

Integrity

What does the word integrity even mean?

Some people confuse integrity with morality. 

When we walk about integrity we refer to workability. 

When you do not keep your world, you do not have power with your word because your word lacks integrity and workability. 

Without integrity there is no power. 

Think about where you are out of integrity, where you lack integrity and where you have been justifying being out of integrity.

How do you restore integrity? 

Think about where you are free to be and where you are not free to be and express yourself. 

Conclusion

There are dozens of distinctions that I can go on and on about here and I even created an article about many of those in 2019 the second time I did this course. You can find the article here - Everything still applies years later. It's powerful to live life in the moment and be present with the people that you interact with each day. 

I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback and seeing what you experience when you read this article. 

Thank you for being in my life.