It’s been ages I didn’t touch this blog. Somewhere along the
line between 2017 and now has been lost, with so much things have happened, but
some things are still like they were.
In a quiet evening, I stumbled upon this blog – stumbled upon the younger me. I heard her spoke, I observe the way she picked her words, and it was comforting. I always like myself better in writing: sometimes she’s raw, sometimes she has digested herself well before expressing it, sometimes she’s cheesy or grammatically wrong – but her in that very moment has become eternal.
And as I was hearing my younger self speaking to me in that unproductive evening, I was also looking for ways to document some of the training materials I received a month before for my mentees’ future reference (or someone’s mentees who might be happy to receive extra mentorship on some awkward things you never talk about). The training was conducted in a place far from anywhere, but it was a five days full of self-discovery, in an environment that stimulated calmness, optimism, and compassion. It was experimental, and it was very difficult to write about because they actually made you do things and experience things and take your lessons from those experience instead of from hearing or reading. It was a leadership training with a cheesy name, but rather than teaching you how to manage your external situation, this training material take you to a journey within. It wasn’t cheesy at all. It was hard and honest. It felt like a Jedi academy, and I felt like Anakin Skywalker being saved from running away to the corporate world (oh well, sorry that it was cheesy).
Throughout those five days, we learned to rediscover our purpose, personally trying to figure out things that gives us joy and makes our lives worth living; and even did a tear-jerking ‘facing mortality meditation’ that gave me a vivid image of how I want to live my life if I only have a year before death. We also learned to deliver vision as well as giving and receive feedbacks. There are also some experiments on partnership, where we learned about presence, about active listening and really giving space to the person who speak.
There are some interesting experiments around personal power, too, that helped us identify unskillful behaviour – our tendencies – that we subconsciously chose to do when we feel like we’re losing the grips of things. From there, we invented a mantra (seriously, we were even assigned a long-year awkward practice with this mantra) to help us shift from out-of-power situation to be within our power. Does that sound odd enough already? I know it sounds very weird in writing (I still have some thrills reading the emails sent to me for daily practice), but it’s not that bad when you actually trying that out.
Another useful tool that really force you to dig within yourself – but I guess totally useful for any kind of human interaction – is resourcefulness, where we basically identify our triggers. Triggers are situations that drives us disproportionally mad when we’re confronted with it. To manage it, there’s a very uncomfortable practice to do – but again, it was honest and revealing.
Aside from personal training, there are also some practices around organizational performance, where we learned about models of decision-makings and some useful tools in organizing – well, basically – anything. We learned to apply one of the tool, with a weird name wheel of change, that’s basically not that weird. Looking back to the events when I was mad, these decision-making things definitely worth some discussion back in office. Oh and speaking about discussion, we also learned how to involve ourselves in courageous conversation, basically any potentially difficult conversation when you have to say to somebody a very honest truth they’ll never want to hear. In a way that will win them over.
We also learned about personal management, that includes personal ecology and performance. It was quite surprising to me that my ability to detach from work was awefully good, but then I remember that I was my office’s top holiday taker (and I innocently pick my signal-free holiday destination or activities and feeling no guilt even when I do so for 14 days). I could brag that I need to have that behaviour because I already perform too fast for an NGO pace. However, I cannot brag at all on the other points: innovation. I used to proud myself as a pioneer, but my innovation scored so bad and I saw myself silencing some innovation seeds and defended the status quo in a fun, but heartbreaking game.
All these learnings I want to eternalize; giving away to anyone who ever feel like they’re going to the Sith side and need to be saved. Each and every session is going to be written in this blog, one post every week. It took me six years to ever come across this materials, with no one ever mentored me around this things. So I want any mentee that might never come across me, to be able to access me and the learnings I took from this training, even from distance.
When I came back and told the curriculum to a friend, he said another friend of mine has been persuading him to take that kind of training, and that other friend said that the kind of training was built on psychoanalysis and self-hypnosis. It might. And I have no idea about psychoanalysis and self-hypnosis, and my writings might not do justice for all the sensation, emotion, experience that we went through those five days. I know I was really lucky to experience this training first hand, and to be exposed to the beautiful five days of ideal ecosystem that felt like a utopia. But my writing is all that I can bring: here and now. And it’s a personal narrative so I hope you feel like I’m speaking to you.
One last note: I owe this all to three amazing trainers – Robert Gass, Judith Ansara, and Yvonne Sum. Google them, they have a wiki page and website with awesome and free resource.
So that’s all – and wish me luck with my one piece a week discipline!
