Hi all,
I have just returned from a 3 day seminar in London. It was titled Break through success or BTS for short. The event was from Friday to Sunday and about 11 hours per day with a hour lunch and a couple of fifteen minute coffee breaks.
The tickets for these events are free! So what you doing sittin’ on your butt? Go grab one!
This sounds quite intense and it was. However the structure of the event and the occasional shared shoulder massages, high fives and hugging that went on was surprisingly energetic when I got over the initial British reticence to this Americanism.
The format of the days was as follows, a couple of hours of talk, exercises and high-fives followed by a 10 minute sales pitch for one or other of the courses that Chris Howard offers. This was followed by a break and then the same process again.
I didn’t really mind the sales talk – partly because I expected it, but mostly because he (Chris) was right in that if you are committed to the goals then you should attend the courses no matter what the cost, and if you aren’t signing up for them that you have to question your commitment.
Even I had to admit at the end of the seminar – why am I not enrolling on the courses?
If you like, the whole event was a set of tasters for content that is deeply covered in the courses. I have to say though, it is worth going if nothing else for the fire-up that you get from being in the company of around 1000 people who want to make of themselves all that they can be.
One day later and I am still excited from the event – or is that due to the caffeine in my system? What ever it is attributed to I’m glad I went as it has renewed and refreshed my zeal for engaging that which it has been uncomfortable to grapple with of late.
As you will see from Chris Howard’s site, his take on personal development comes from the NLP arena. As I listened to him I found much of the material consisted of Tony Robbins like material. One might take this as a criticism – I do not however, since I myself take from him too – model the best isn’t that what both Chris and Tony eshew?
At the event one gets a workbook to work in and this provides a good method of keeping notes and logging any personal findings that one comes up with. For example, and surprisingly, there are several visualisations that are practiced on the event. These are used to discover and recover from blocks that exist in your psyche. Whether this be due to limiting decisions and thoughts or negative emotions. I actually found these (visualisations) to be quite effective and, interestingly brought up some surprising stuff for myself.
For example: one of my beliefs “was” that I am not good enough…In the meditation/visualisation I traversed the time stream and landed at an event that happened when I was at college many year ago. I recalled receiving my marks from a maths test and the teacher telling me that I would not amount to anything – wow! where in the world did that come out from?
As I said these Trans-derivational Searches where very revealing visualisations.
Here are some phrases that I noted during the three days:
- Paint the mosaic of the life you have chosen
- Reality is created by validation
- Fear is a feather that binds you to darkness
- Its all about Clarity
- I would rather have the whole world against me than my own soul
- Perception is projection
- Need a resource? be resource-ful
- FEAR - False Evidence Appearing Real
Here are some acronyms that came up – please be aware that some or all of these maybe Trade Marked by Chris Howard so don’t be abusing them…
CREATE = Concise, Realistic, Ecological, As if now, Timed, End step
Which sounds a bit like the SMART acronym (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Time bound)
Another one that is relevant to Chris’s work is the basis long term change:
Decide, Commit, Act, Focus, Supportive Environment, Ferocious Curiosity
Again those who know Tony’s work will recognise somethings here.
I was happy to note the conversations my friend Lorraine and I had on the journey to London and throughout the day were synchronistically covered in the topics that were mentioned on stage.
One particularly rare synchronistic event was where I was telling Lorraine about the tv character called MacGyver who in his adventures solved problems and escaped traps by utilisation materials at hand rather than take tool kits or gadgets around with him. Then some hours later Chris mentioned the same character on stage, noting that problems can be solved by using the resources we have at hand.
On the whole the event was (or can be used as) a BIG wake up call. Which is what I have used it as. Would I go again? Yes. Now all that remains to be seen is whether I remain committed to the goals, mindset and new BS (Belief System) – this blog will tell all!
Kal
Ps – An absolutely MASSIVE thank you to Lorraine who invited me along for this refreshing journey. You Rock!!! I owe ya big time!
Pps – There were a few books mentioned but I will put them in the book review section once I have read them.
