Day 23

Today's Lesson:

I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

Since everything I see starts with my thoughts, it would make sense that I will want to work with my thoughts to change the perception of the world.

As the lesson says, "if the cause of the world I see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want." There really is no point in wishing the world would be different. There really is no point in trying to change the world. The world as I see it is merely an effect of my thoughts. As I change the cause, I change the effects.

Today's lesson only asks us to realize that we are not trapped in the world we see. We just need to realize that our thoughts are the causing the way we see the world, and then let those thoughts go. The rest will take care of itself. It's also important to remember that we need to let go not only of our thoughts of attacking, but also of being attacked. When we learn that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, we will be ready to let the cause go.

Miracles I'm noticing:

I see so many parallels in the things I've been thinking and speaking about and today's lesson.

1) This quote comes to mind: "There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it." - Edith Wharton

2) Part of my current training program includes an opportunity for participants to take 30 seconds and listen to the voice in our heads. We probably don't even realize that we have 60,000 random thoughts going through our heads in any given day. And most of those thoughts are the same as the ones we had the day before. And, if we really think about it, we can probably trace most of those thoughts to two distinct voices: the victim and the villain. This is similar to the thoughts of being attacked (victim) and attacking (villain). Just noticing these different voices can be the start of recognizing them as the cause of the way we see the world.

3) My business, Bock's Office Transformational Consulting, is expanding and we're going to be focusing more intently on the movie/theater metaphor in our dialogue with clients. One way we've been talking about what we want to do as we create lasting training and development opportunities is to talk about training as the beginning of a process compared to training as an event. In one case it is like watching a movie where we are so focused on what is happening on the screen that we try to change the outcome by yelling at the people in the movie or even trying to redraw what we see on the screen. Yet sometimes that is what we do in our companies by just shooting from the hip with our training. We try to put a band-aid on the problems (the effects) but don't look at where we can really make a difference: by changing the movie in the projector. The projector simply projects whatever it has loaded into it. We can change the script and the movie that is our way of seeing the world, but we have to go to the root cause.

I'm doing a speech in February for our local chapter of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and just this morning I wrote a detailed description of the topic I'll be presenting. Here is some of what I wrote this morning (no coincidence):

“UNLEASHING YOUR GENIUS: Ideas for Planning Unique and Memorable Training Experiences”

“Genius” might be defined as that core essence, that guiding star, that drive that makes you you. When your genius is unleashed, you can be free to design and deliver training that sticks because you can look at training not as an event, but as an experience.

An essential step in planning and designing training and development opportunities that go beyond mere "events" is to know the desired outcomes of the audience.

One way to determine those outcomes is to ask: but a way to go beyond the mere asking is for the person or team doing the planning and design to know more about themselves.

In a way, I was writing about getting to the cause - our own perception of the training as trainers - and then rewriting the course based on our own strengths (which would imply getting rid of attack thoughts).

Waking up is really all we need to do to recognize the miracles around us every day!