I realized this weekend was how powerful my desire to grow is. My inner voice is saying "I WANT TO GROW!" I've had an
intellectual interest in personal growth for a long time, reading Steve's blog and deciding to attend the workshop, for example, and what's awoken is a serious desire.
There are aspects of my life where I was ahead of other people in the workshop, where they look at that part of my life and say "wow, that sounds pretty good, I'd like to get there myself". But just because I've gotten to point B doesn't mean that I want to stagnate, to stay stuck on point B forever! I want to keep going. What's really fun about the workshop is that we all share this common interest in growth.
A fun part of the workshop for me is that for people who are currently at a point A, it's often pretty easy for me to help show the way to point B in those areas of my life where I've gotten there myself. When someone has a question about whether to focus on money or not focus on money right now, or how to express a boundary clearly, or how to be more expressive in public, it often just takes me 20 seconds to make some useful suggestion.
I found the feedback exercises invaluable. For me my relationship area is the weakest (all kinds of relationships, from the personal to the professional), and it was amazing to get the feedback on how I was perceived, insight into how starving I actually was, how opaque I can be.
I've thinking a lot about how much people said I had a positive glow, even saying I reminded them of Eckhart Tolle! I'm not, like, super-happy or anything. I'm not
unhappy, I'm mildly happy. I think the calmness is authentic, I've done plenty of emotion work in my life. What I realized is due to my practice of lyrical interpretive dance hobby, it's really easy for me to
express what happiness I have. I might be feeling only a little bit happy in a particular moment, but that's still
happiness, and I can still open the gates and express it. Naturally, when I'm with other positive people, that can start a positive feedback loop which in turn helps me become happier.
There's a part of me that enjoys influencing other people, of causing some reaction such as a smile. That part of me doesn't care in what way. For example, if I were with a masochist who desired to be screaming in pain, I'd say, "sure, I can help you with that".
Like a kid who enjoys knocking down a tower of blocks for the fun of seeing them tumble down, I enjoy seeing someone smile (or scream in pain, as the case may be ^_^), in reaction to me.
I might think that the desire to be happy is universal, that everyone might like to be helped to smile or feel a little bit better. But I realize that's not true. There are plenty of people for whom some nudge from me would be unwelcome, intrusive, annoying. So just as it's important for me to only torture people who want that
, there's a similar consensuality aspect to cheering people up: I can learn to invite people to be cheered up if they want to be, without being overbearing.
I feel gratitude towards everyone involved in the workshop, from participants annoying and helpful
, Steve and the helpers. I even feel gratitude to towards people I met on the first day who left and didn't come back. I happy to have had a change to meet them and do some fun spins, even if I happen to never see them again.
I think I've made more progress than I've realized. Over the summer I did a lot of work with the Lefkoe method that released a lot of blocks in my life. I've been so used to feeling needy and unhappy it's taken me a while to fully realize that I don't actually feel that way any more. There was an underlying shift in the reality of my emotions, and it's taken a while for my self-perception to catch up.
Thank you everyone!
^_^