Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Personal Development Workshop

Carol convinced me to attend a personal development workshop last night. Christ, I don't even like the name of it.

I consider every day that I don't kill somebody, personal development. And the word workshop makes my intestines twist and rebel.

Our world is overrun with seminars and workshops and meetings and gatherings and info dissemination events. Most of them are a joke.

The work related ones, and I have been to many, really crack me up. Because your company is paying to send you to a seminar run by a self-important wind bag who cares only that the check clears. They are boring and long winded. There is always the hope, often realized, that the seminar will end early and you get to go home two hours before expected.

Which is magnificent, as long as you don't find your wife intermingled with Raoul the pool boy.

I have been to three wine tastings since I became Supreme Assistant Booze Emporium Manager. You end up tasting 32 wines in a couple of hours. Which is overwhelming. It becomes so ridiculous that if they poured a glass of Welch's grape juice in front of you, you would agree the taste is subtle yet bold, tending towards spicy, with hints of tobacco, chocolate, oak and papaya, with a hearty nose, a surprising impression and a clean finish.

The ruse is the wine distributors are educating you about wine so you can sell more, and that you are sophisticating your palate so you can talk intelligently to your wine snob customers. The truth is the distributors know you are learning nothing, and you know you are there to get out of work and for the free lunch.

And to get out early.

As far as self-help seminars go, I am supremely leery. 98% of the people in the world are genuinely unhappy and an entire industry has evolved to profit from that. Not to help people. To profit from their pain.

I didn't know what to expect from last night, but I am in the right head space to consider the potential benefits. Of course, Carol has been gently nudging me to go for weeks now. She was going with or without me but she was hoping for tandem personal development.

Any other woman on the planet would say by now "Die, dog, die - you are contemptible and deserve whatever low rent fate you attract."

But Carol continues to believe she can rehabilitate me and release my locked potential.

Thank God.

I was pleasantly surprised. The guy did not come across as a used car salesman. I am a gut feel kind of guy and my gut felt comfortable with this dude.

The first thing he did was ask, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being total love and 1 being self-loathing, how you feel about yourself. I immediately thought 3.

He asked for a show of hands as he worked his way backwards from 10, and when I realized my hand would be the only one up for three, I raised it at five.

I immedately found this amusing. I lied rather than admit my true feelings. Perhaps my psyche could use some personal development.

There were 12 or 13 people there, this guy talked, everybody had something to say, it was interesting. I was surprised that a lot of what he had to say resonated with thoughts I have wrestled with for decades. Thoughts about my hang ups and thoughts about how to deal with them.

He kept putting the emphasis on each of us. Taking responsibility. If you said "When you get angry" using the universal you, he would stop you and make you say "When I get angry". I liked that.

His point was that you are in charge. That you can change whatever evil torments you. This is nothing new but he did it in a way that forced you to think and felt genuine.

He talked about fact/meaning. There are facts and there is the meaning you attach to them. He said a snowstorm is a fact. Meaning is when you whine endlessly about having to deal with the snow and the cold and how inconvenient it is..........................

Carol enjoyed that example immensely. If you know me you will understand why.

Of course meaning could also be that a snowstorm is beautiful.

I only paused when he said something about how your income could triple once you get to the right place in your head.

I am looking for pure evolvement. Peace of mind and soul. Then again, I know if I can shatter my hang ups I will earn more money because I am the only idiot standing in my way.

So..............................

Anyway I was surprised at my reaction. I am pondering the next step. Last night was El Cheapo. If I/we commit to a four meeting course, the dollars kick in.

I have to decide if I can get anything from this dude. I am naturally skeptical. But if I consider my own self-analysis track record, I should find out where this guy lives and just move in with him.

My clothes have changed, my jobs have changed, my kids have grown and fled, my cars have changed, friends have come and gone, my hair has changed (both in color and in length), but I stand firmly rooted in the same paralyzing stance I have maintained for decades.

What have I got to lose?

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