I went to a personal development seminar
I went to a personal development seminar. It was the first I’ve been to in years, since before Covid. I’ve gone to enough to get a degree. I’ve worked at others enough for a dual degree. I’ve event managed them. I've gotten on stage at several, then coached for a few, then started my own. I realized, though I loved to teach and specifically these concepts of improving whatever about yourself and life, I didn’t want to own my own.
This was after I spent more than 6 months and money, creating the content, dealing with naming, llc, logo, website, the signage, rented places to host it, sent out all the marketing, bought clothes, and got worker help.
I even got 11 people to my very first one! I did a few more, met an actor from the Transformer series, got a coach on how to do packages, and I videotaped it all. After this, I decided I didn’t want to. I was already very active in the National Guard as a Linguist. That took up 1 weekend a month and a bunch of other time. This seminar was taking up a 2nd weekend every month. I wanted more free weekends, not less.
I decided I didn’t want to be on the seminar circuit as a lone seminar creator. I didn’t have a package or anything else for people to buy, so it was all my volunteer time. And, honestly, I felt very confident about the material, and not at all confident about my right to do seminars. I’m still not sure why it's a right, just reporting the conscious reasons why I stopped. I still coach for other people's seminars even today, so this seminar I was attending had the potential to be very interesting or completely boring.
Interestingly enough, I energetically fought the guy facilitating the seminar. I knew I was, but until he called me out, I didn’t know why. I wanted him to also be expert enough for me to get something out of me spending my time and effort to be here. I wanted him on his game so my time was valuably used as an experienced seminar goer.
Isn’t it interesting that wherever we go, whatever we do, it’s our internal dialogue that decides for us. It’s our evaluation of the circumstance that affects our mood, behaviors and continuation of whatever it is. What’s more, in the personal development realm it's all about improvements in that dialogue, and that is precisely what decided what I did next. It was based on whether improvements were being made by me or him.
Maybe all of life is like this. Teens stay in school if they see the value. People stay at a job longer because it improves their lives. We stay in a relationship because we see the value, we choose foods for the same reason. I wonder if we could evaluate people's choices from this way. What if we could look at what they do and know that inside they have a dialogue saying this does or does ot hold value for me?