Do you have Clarity on what attracts you towards training?
How would you know if you are taking responsibility and respecting your time?
How to determine what if a training is hyped or is transformative?
If responses to one or more of these questions can add value to your decision making then this blog is for you.
If fire-walking attracts you, then every mother who has burnt her hands when cooking and handling hot utensils at home to feed her family is your first trainer. If it is not so and you still feel pumped by fire-walking gimmicks in training then you are falling for a motivation hype trap.
“The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.”
~ Jim Rohn
A grand hotel room, a huge stage with two big screens, loud music and a stylish speaker are good to attract people. However, if a participant has these aspects as the criteria to attend a transformational training, then this blog is going to challenge your critical thinking.
A lot of training is quite glamorised and that’s perfectly okay as long as the essence is still delivered. Attractive acts like arrow-bending and fire-walking, motivational talk to pump up your adrenaline, alluring sales - are all good for a weekend experience. A transformative training, though, is the one that conveys life principles that makes the participant strong enough to face the fire in life and come out shining from difficult situations.
If I ask you to visualise a patch of land with hot burning coal, most of you will not just be able to visualise it but possibly even feel the warmth it could emit. The mind soon starts adapting to what it could be like to feel this heat whilst walking on it. It takes a day or sometimes two for a team of motivational trainers to prepare your mind for a firewalk, through direct or indirect talk that strengthens your mind. A favourable and highly motivated environment is created for the participants. This is not the kind of environment we live in, in our daily lives.
A well travelled person would know that traditionally firewalking is a part of a ritual in quite a few communities whether it is the Naath community of India or the community linked with Akibasan temple in Japan. They too create an environment with prayers and chanting, and it takes not a day, not an hour but just a few seconds for people to walk on red hot burning coal. We are made to feel that it is a big deal when a mob cheers for us, and even more when the trainer put on the pedestal by us ,cheers too. Whereas, if seen from a neutral mind state there’s a lot of hype.
Honestly you could do it at home without much preparation. You mom has burnt her hand, may be forearm several times to serve you hot food – that act is far more genuine and worthy of gratitude as compared to a staged show.
I’m not in favour of berating such training though. That will not help us as participants. I am in favour of taking our own responsibility, questioning our own motives, looking into the reason for us getting attracted towards such a hype.
As participants, clarity on the purpose of going on a training is of primary importance. Why? … simply because our life is our responsibility, it is the only asset we really have. This life needs to be handled with utmost care and needs to be given utmost value. Every decision we make leads to use of time and energy of our precious life at the least, let alone the tendency a decision strengthens – a tendency of being genuine and grounded or that of being easily influenced. The former tendency leads to becoming powerful and the later leads to scattering of our energy purposelessly.
It is said that a sign of growing from childhood to adulthood is when we change our words from “it got lost” to “I lost it”. The remaining part of this blog is for everyone who is all for making his/her life valuable responsibly. Here are a few questions one should ask before spending their precious time on any training:
Finally, I’d like to share a powerful device to make the right choice every single time. Ages ago I had learnt a management lesson of decision making for a profit making organisation. This lesson suggests that every decision we take or every choice we make has to be on the basis of profit. In other words, every action should get directly translated to increase the profit. On the basis of this lesson, I happened to device a check for myself to choose training that is worth my time. I call this check “Live Implementation Check”. What profit is to organisation, Implementation of knowledge is to us when taking a training. So, ‘Live Implementation Check’ says:
If the topics of a training are implementable in your real life, then and there, during the training itself, then it is likely to be transformative. If the training is theory oriented or even if experiential if the environment in the training room is way too sweet or motivated compared to your real life then it is likely to fail being implemented in real life.
I have noticed that every time a training fails the “Live Implementation Test” the participants experience a fake sense of hope during the training which gets contrasted by hopelessness after a few days of the training. This phenomenon is called post-training depression. What goes up (motivation), comes down (deflation).
I wish you the best to have clarity of your intention, taking responsibility for it, value your precious time and keep an eye on the simple indicators that show you if a training is a hype or it is transformative.
To transformation!
Shoonyo.
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Shoonyo is a visionary and spiritual mentor. After 18 years of meditation and significant research into mind powers, NLP, martial arts practice with a black belt, healing practices, and deeper spiritual practices, he experienced the clarity of awakened space and began sharing with seekers.
Shoonyo worked as a business intelligence manager in London for 10 years. He abandoned an opulent international corporate career to guide people towards awakening space.
Shoonyo now runs 3 ventures in India; Corporate training and leadership, One:One mentoring, and a mental wellness NGO known as Shoonyo Foundation.
Other than business ventures, he has authored two books: " Looking for the obvious", an amazing work of spiritual fiction; and "Embodying Bhagavad Gita," a nine-month practical course on the Bhagavad Gita. He is Amazon's # 3 best-selling author and is cherished by elite readers.