Three weeks in a dark room near the airport

Three weeks, and then some, crewing for Chris Howard seminars when I might have better served my time working on the new e-class I am putting together, writing and recording some of the CDs we have planned for this year, planning teleseminar, working on the curriculum for the Sanctuary retreat coming up in July … and a whole lot more.

So the question, “What do I have to learn here?”

• That, as Milton Erickson so famously said, “In the presence of rapport, anything is possible,” and in the absence of rapport things fall apart.
• That leadership isn't about being in charge of everything all the time.
• That when people are ready to really make personal change it is a magnificent and awesome sight.
• That I do know the NLP material really well, and that understanding, and my ability to use it, simply deepens with time
• That I have a lot more good friends than I realized
• That any group of 100+ people that spend intensive time together for three weeks begins to display some symptoms of group-think, and that this group, due to the amazing nature of the curriculum being taught, stayed about as far away from group-think as I can imagine.
• That what’s taught here in NLP Results, Master Results, and PPST (Performance and Platform Skills) is truly brilliant.
• That Johnnie Cass and Duane Alley are brilliant trainers.
• AND, I got to approach Mark Victor Hansen about a possible book project,
  and that I'm setting a goal that it should happen ..
  
  As the Rolling Stones sang, long ago and far away, "you don't always get what you want, you don't always get what you want, but you get what you need."
  
  Picture of Bonnie Bruderer, Mark Victor Hansen, Michele and myself.
  June 29, 2008
  

From paper clip to $34,000 in less than an hour, or how I learned to ask for what I want.

Maui. Billionaire Boot Camp. The last of six seminars I attended with Christopher Howard and his folks. I am now officially a graduate of The Fast Track to Success. Over the past few months I have also drawn deeply from the teaching of several people I might not have been open to a very short time ago.

What I have learned is that we each choose our lives. I say ‘learn’ as though such a thing was not already obvious. I mean REALLY learned on some deeper-than-before level. . . . that we can be a 'cause' in our life, or we can be an 'effect.' In other words, we can remain stuck in existing conditions or we can ask, at ANY MOMENT, 'what can I learn here?' I say 'choose' because although some might say that things happen to us that we would never choose, we can always choose is how we respond. Some people are crushed by the same challenge that causes others to thrive and soar.

It’s as if the lessons that really matter can be learned over and over again, each time penetrating deeper, each time corresponding to our ability to challenge our own assumptions more and more. We CAN effect change in our lives, we CAN live with sustained awareness, we CAN be happy, we CAN feel essentially safe in the world. Joy is a natural state. Nothing new here! What is new is the idea that learning and living by these things does not have to be a struggle. Life is essentially fluid. “We live in constantly changing quantum sea of pure potentiality” is a phrase I've heard a lot recently.

Does that invalidate the hard realities of life in these times? Of course not. Does it dull us to contradiction and complexity? Quite the opposite! What it does do, for myself, is to help me recognize that I have a choice. I can feel oppressed (personally, emotionally) by what happens in my life, or I can simply ask, “What can I learn here?” Meaning, what can I learn here for my benefit and for the benefit of the work I do, which I believe to be valuable not only for myself but also for those who are my clients, students, colleagues, and friends.

THERE'S MORE. How can you turn a paperclip into $34,000 in less than an hour. I had heard of the man in Canada who traded up from a paperclip to house. The game we played was based on that.

I’ve won games before - relied on charm and cheek. This was different because it was real. Me, my team, and my phone. Amazing. I called a friend in San Francisco who offered me a couple of hours of his time as a financial consultant, worth $2200. Another friend traded these two hours of consulting for a lifetime membership of her network marketing consulting and leads site. She assumed I’d be around for the next seventy years and so the value worked out to around $34,000. Amazing, in less than an hour.

The next thing is to apply the same sort of attitudes and strategies on a daily basis. To just go for it!