Wizard Training Camp

I just finished another Peak Potentials course, entitled Wizard Training Camp. What a ride! Peak Potentials isn't keen about us giving out the details of the course, so I can't share the meaning of the two of us standing in front of a stack of bent rebar, but trust me when I say that there really is a lot of personal meaning in that stack!

The setting is the Glacier Valley Farm campground located in the beautiful Squamish Valley in British Columbia, Canada. The campground itself is quite lovely, and has chickens and pigs for onsite recycling of our table scraps. The campground personnel provided the cooking for the camp as well, and it was quite good, with a wide variety of different entrees for lunch and dinner.

By the way, did you know that it's cold in the Squamish Valley, even in August? Well, I can now confirm that it is. I brought a sleeping bag rated for 30 degrees and I was still freezing at night, so I wound up sleeping in my clothes and fleece jacket.

Darn that Weather Channel website! I need to stop trusting that thing! It said that the lows would be in the 50's. If their data was really accurate, then why was I seeing my breath every night between 9 pm and 9 am!?

Our group was the largest camp Peak Potentials has ever held, with about 450 attendees. Since the campground only has five showers, sinks and toilet stalls each for both the mens' and womens' facilities, that was a real challenge in personal hygiene. Many of us opted for only one or two showers during the 5 day camp experience to keep the bathroom lines down. For me, brushing teeth daily is a must, so the twice daily line up at the sinks for brushing was worth the wait. Luckily, Peaks did get in quite a few Port-a-Potties, so the wait time during breaks wasn't too bad.

Back to the reason for the camp: the training is a great way to learn how to manage your thinking in order to manifest your highest good more and more of the time. Since none of us is perfect, I can't say all of the time, but with practice it can be most of the time. The exercises were designed to get you to catch what you are thinking in the moment, evaluate it, and then change it if it isn't working for you. With all of that practice, you can't help but get better at catching yourself and manifesting something better instead.

The exercises were lots of fun, even as they were challenging. Some of them were challenging physically, but all of them were challenging mentally and emotionally. They are designed to make you examine how you look at the world around you, what thoughts empower or dis-empower you, what holds you back from expressing your gifts fully, and how to shift your thinking immediately when you catch yourself getting stuck in negative thinking.

Here are two great examples of how well that training worked from the journey back home. When I got to the airport, I couldn't find my passport. I kept thinking, it's got to be here somewhere, but as I started to exhaust the possibilities and was on my second round of looking in every nook and cranny of everything I brought with me, I began to panic. I caught myself doing that and said, "Okay, lesson learned - keep track of important documents. Now that I have that lesson, my passport will be waiting for me at the Lost and Found." Sure enough, it was.

Then, when I got up to the check-in counter, I was trying to get on the early flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles (via Phoenix). As I checked in at the kiosk, I noticed that I was upgraded to first class. Okay, that's very nice, but I'd still rather get on the early flight than fly first class. When I went to the counter, the gentleman informed me that I could indeed get on the early flight to Phoenix, but the early flight to L.A. was already overbooked, so I couldn't get on that segment.

Instead of getting angry that I didn't get what I asked for, I recognized that here is a valuable lesson in clarity - I had to admit that I was only thinking about the first leg as I was considering the switch. Instead of sulking about the lesson, I switched to being gratefully enthusiastic that I got to fly first class from Vancouver to L.A., despite it not being the early flight that I had wanted.

As a result of allowing myself to be enthusiastic with what happened, I was rewarded with a great couple of hours chatting with several other members of the group who were also on my later flight from Vancouver to Phoenix. I have to admit that previously I might have buried my head in a book ignoring them because I was upset about my circumstances and wallowing in my victimhood. This feels so much better! I am a Wizard! :-)

Presentations

Yesterday afternoon, I returned from Making the Stage with T. Harv Ecker, Blair Singer, Larry Gilman, and Zoltan.  If you are a professional speaker and haven't yet attended Train the Trainer and Making the Stage, you should check out these (and the other course offerings, as well) by Peak Potentials.  Most people start with the Millionaire Mind Intensive first (since it's free) and you can find out more by clicking the link.

I've taken quite a few of the Peak's courses at this point and I highly recommend their accelerated learning techniques as a way to keep your audience engaged and to help them retain more of what they learn.  Using these techniques kept the people who were listening to my final presentation on the last day of class on the edge of their seats.  The people listening gave me great feedback about how well I brought them along during my 30 minute presentation on getting past creative blocks.  I had also given them a minute to write down some notes about the process I led them on so that they could use it again at home and they shared what a great idea that was.  They told me that they planned to use the exercise going forward when they got stuck on a problem and how effective they thought the exercise was for anyone, not just creative folks.

Since I'm just getting started with the public speaking part of my creativity coaching business, I wanted to make sure that I would be putting my best possible foot forward as I began.  I've done teaching as a part of every phase of my 30+ year business career, ranging from introductory computer classes for department heads and their secretaries to creative projects for artists.  I've also done some public speaking, as well as appearing in print and on TV.

So obviously, I don't have many problems with the actual public speaking part of doing workshops going forward.  What I wanted to make sure of was that I would be delivering the information in a way that people who find it engaging and entertaining, while retaining more of the information I would be giving them.  The input from our instructors really helped to cement that in me in a way that I can now relax about it, since I know that I can construct the script for my workshops in a way that they'll be engaged in every part of the time we spend together.

I used to be a little nervous about doing a presentation to audiences in which I might not have too many of my target audience in attendance.  But now, I'm really excited because the people in my group weren't my target audience, but still felt that they got value out of my presentation.  Several people who heard even my early presentations were asking me where they could come to learn more about what I do.

Whoo Hoo!  What a win!  Next stop - Workshop Heaven!

Dreaming Boogie dreams...

SARK - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy - is conducting a teleclass again this summer and my stepmom asked me to sign up again.  We had both signed up for in the inaugural session of the class 2 months ago and not only participated in the class, but also got in the habit of calling one another after each week's class to chat.  Being that one of my intentions lately has been to reconnect with my family in ways that work for us, it seemed like a good thing to continue, so I decided to sign up again.  Besides, even if I didn't achieve my dreams from the last session of this class, I did very much enjoy it and the support of the community that SARK created around the class.

One of the things that I keep hearing over and over again - not just in this class, but also in other places lately - is that you need to name, define, and refine your dreams in order to attract them closer to you.  So, in that spirit, I thought I would put them out into the grand Universe by stating them again here on my blog.  So, without further ado, here they are:

My dreams are to make time to create every day, to find my perfect partner for play, and to decide what I most want to do for my 50th birthday coming up this September and make it happen.

While I can be incredibly creative when I actually take the time to sit down and make something, I have been in a dark place for a while now as I deal with some major problems that made themselves known back in the fall.  As a result, I haven't been sleeping well, I haven't been feeling creative, and I haven't been keeping up with my emails, my friends, or my blog on a regular basis.  I have time to create, but not much energy.  Since one of the things that makes me happy is creating, I want to use SARK's micromovements to make sure that I make at least a little time each day to do something creative to raise my happiness threshold as I deal with this ongoing mess.

It's been over ten years since my last relationship and I'd like someone in my life to play with, to take my mind off of my troubles, to travel with, to explore with, and to laugh with.  Sometimes dealing with this mess seems so much harder just because I feel as though I'm going through it alone.  That really isn't true, since I have good friends and family that I can lean on and talk to about everything, but that isn't the same as having a partner that's around all of the time.  So, I'm looking for ways to expand my love for myself and my service to others so that I can attract the perfect playmate for me.

And as for my birthday, I have a habit of not celebrating my birthday unless invited to do so by others, so I want to take the initiative this time to be sure to create something special for this milestone.  Right now, I have no idea what I want to create - whether I want to travel somewhere I've long been wanting to go, whether I want to take a class somewhere to learn a new creative technique,  if I want to be with family, or if I just want to throw a great party for everyone I know.  Or something else that I haven't even considered yet...  If anyone wants to leave comments giving me ideas, I'd welcome them!