In recent years, there is a booming industry of self-proclaimed personal growth gurus, who claim to be able to unparalleled impart wisdom on the masses without leaving the comfort of their home, through the Internet or the telephone or maybe from the stage. To a certain extent, this works, because many more people get information and knowledge they could not afford or technically access otherwise.
But here’s the problem: much of what we need to discover in life is PERSONAL, and no matter how good a public program is, personal growth is, well, personal. So these programs do a great job of awakening people and giving them a taste of something good. You don’t know what you don’t know, right? So sampling some personal growth goodies, getting an overview of this, that and the other, and even spending some serious time following somebody’s program are all good things, but they are only the beginning.
To really get your life in gear, you have to deal with your own baggage and make sense of it - remove limiting beliefs, change focus, set goals, build relationship skills - based on who you are and what YOU want.
To do this, I highly recommend working with a life coach.
A life coach is a professional friend. It’s someone who cares for you and guides you with a method. It’s someone who has collected ideas and possible solutions from working with many people and can gently direct you towards finding your own best way forward.
I’ve personally been coached 3 times already. Each time, I grew tremendously as a person. Each time, I opened up and became happier than ever before. Each time, I learned new things and acquired new skills to handle my time, my business, my relationships and my emotions. It was brilliant!
The nicest thing for me about coaching was that it transferred the power in my life into my hands. I had not realized how powerful I was until I sat down and faced my mental blocks head on, took ownership of my feelings and let go of what other people felt and did. Many of the concepts were strange to me at first, but ultimately, I learned to focus on what works.
In the past, people wanted to be respected, to be wealthy, to be famous or to have “a good job”. Nowadays, most people just want to be happy. In essence, life coaching is an excellent way to work on a personal level with another human being and learn how to be happy YOUR WAY.
For more on life coaching, see this life coaching page.
Yesterday, I met a young man for the first time for a life coaching session. He told me a little bit about himself, and one of the things that stood out for me was that he was 21 years old and said he was going to have a baby soon. Throughout the session, I noticed he seemed to be worried, and whenever I mentioned his imminent parenthood, he sank in his chair and his face fell.
Now, my own 3 kids are a source of pure joy and pride for me and, being an experienced father and a parenting coach, I felt I needed to say something to make him feel easier.
So I traveled back in my head to one of my favorite moments in time, when the paediatrician finished examining my first born, wrapped her up snuggly in her first-ever clothes and handed her to me. There I was, dreading the huge responsibility for a totally helpless human being, worried sick about my best friend, who was being stitched up from her C-section operation, and exhausted from 30 hours of labor.
I reached out, held the little bundle in my arms and brought her close to my chest. Her warmth spread through my body and suddenly, everything was alright. Not knowing what the world is like, not being able to do even the simplest things, my new daughter has the amazing ability to make everything right just be being there.
I looked at her, tears welling up in my eyes, and said, “You know, I don’t know you yet, but already I love you so much” (here I go dropping a tear again as I write - sniff, sniff).
So I told the young man this, “Let me make parenting really simple for you. If something could be dangerous, don’t do it. Stop and ask someone. If it isn’t dangerous, go ahead and do it and then see what happens. More than anything, remember that your kid will need your love in order to grow. She (he is having a daughter too) will do the rest, so be guided by her responses”.
He relaxed and smiled.
In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of seminars, mainly around wealth creation, Internet marketing and personal growth. Various “gurus”, like Anthony Robbins, made this style of training for the masses popular and more and more people attend, in hope of becoming rich, successful and happy.
However, if you’ve attended any such seminar, you have probably come out of it wanting more and thinking “Gosh, this gives me so much, but I’m not much better off now than I was before. What’s going on here?”
What’s going on is that most of these seminars operate at the general level. They are tailored for a “standard person”, and, more often than not, are mainly a very elaborate method for selling additional products and services to a captive and thoroughly pre-qualified audience.
“So are you saying that personal growth seminars are worthless?”, you ask.
No, they most certainly aren’t. In fact, many of them are great, but they are only as good as your focus. You see, if you find yourself sitting in the big room and thinking about what the presenter is getting out of the seminar, you are forgetting about yourself at the same time. However, if you are constantly on the lookout for information you can use for your own benefit, you will find plenty of it.
What’s more, personal growth (and other) seminars are excellent networking opportunities, which you can use to build relationships with like-minded people, who share at least one meaningful experience with you. So when the presenter says “Walk around the room and introduce yourself”, make yourself known to as many people as you can, swap cards with them and get to know something about them. When the presenter says “Tell the person next to you they are great and give them a hug”, turn to the person next to you and do just that, because when you give, you receive. Hugs feel good even when the presenter wants to manipulate you. If you focus on yourself, you will enjoy the hug and maybe walk out of there with new friends.
I was talking to a friend of mine about a personal growth seminar I had attended, and he asked, “Isn’t all this stuff you already knew?” Technically, it was, but it was presented from a different angle, using new examples, and (and this is the most important) I was a different person. Sometimes, I hear or read something and it stays for a while, but I don’t implement it, until the knowledge fades away. Getting another exposure to it, especially in another context, awakens me to its potential again and reinforces my previous learning, which I would not have used if I didn’t bump into it again.
So I say focus on the value you are getting for yourself at personal growth seminars, participate with everything you’ve got, meet your neighbors and implement.
