Steve's idea of institutionalizing his works

[eyerings]

Hi, I'm new, but of course like the others, have been following Steve since he started blogging. Just read on his interview with Serious.Life Magazine, and I am very excited about his idea of going global with local clubs, where workshops and gatherings can be made around the world, and not just in the U.S.

Yes I do agree with you, Steve. Our world could definitely use some holistic organization like what you are thinking of. Please do tell us more about what is coming in the future, and I'm sure most of us will be enthusiastically supportive about it!

[Dan.Linehan]

The health care and mental health care communities are certainly lacking in holistic options. There aren't too many wellness centers around, and there is not a standardized set of services available at the ones that do exist.

Scope is a serious consideration. Even the largest mental health centers have issues with scope. Would substance abuse treatment programs be offered? Detoxification? Methadone? Support groups?

How about dementia management? Family counseling? Case management? Hypnosis? Gestalt therapy? Rehabilitation? Religious counseling? There are literally thousands of human services that could be offered.

I'd say fitness would be the best jumping off point for a venture like this.

By signing up for a fitness based program clients have already implicitly agreed to make lifestyle changes. It's understood up front. People might not be very committed to making changes when joining a "club" or normal wellness center.

Indoor rock climbing gyms are probably the best currently existing example of a fitness + wellness center modality. Not only does rock climbing itself work out all sorts of muscles one would otherwise never develop, it helps with gains in flexibility, courage, hand and foot strength, coordination, balance. Rock gyms also usually offer yoga classes, weight rooms, and they are social, so you can go with friends.

After seeing a couple once, who were both in their eighties, scale a very difficult wall in only a few minutes, I felt like I had finally seen for the first time how older people were really supposed to look.. confident, quick, flexible, fit.

[ArthurHung]

Now that is truly some exciting stuff. I think since Steve's so hugely influenced by toastmasters, he's going to create a "toastmasters" for smart people (toastmasters hugely influencing the organizational aspect), except the focus will be centered on truth, love and power and conscious decision making.

I wonder how Steve will market such a unique and new enterprise, though.

[Savage]

Toastmasters International precisely the model I was thinking of. They have about 200,000 members spread throughout 10,000 individual clubs worldwide. There are about 50 clubs just in Las Vegas. Larger cities might have hundreds of clubs, so it's usually easy to find multiple clubs nearby. I currently belong to the largest club in Vegas with 40+ members, but a typical club might have 15-20 members.

Due are only about $60 per year for a typical club, and you get a discount for belonging to multiple clubs. The educational materials are inexpesnive and of reasonable quality. Toastmasters is a huge, huge bargain for what you get out of it.

You can also attend as many meetings as you'd like as a guest for free, so it's totally try-before-you-buy.

Some clubs also put on special events like free workshops. My club usually does that 4x per year, and all Las Vegas Toastmasters are invited. I've delivered two free workshops in the past 3 years.

Overall Toastmasters is a very robust non-profit organization and has been working well for decades. It certainly isn't perfect, but IMO it provides an awesome service.

Toastmasters' mission is to help its members improve their communication and leadership skills. I envision a similar organization that helps its members achieve their personal development goals. The goals would be set by the individual, but the organization could provide educational resources and project manuals for helping people improve their lives. The best value, however, would come from members coming together to help support each other on the path of conscious growth.

In Toastmasters, every club is unique, and some have a specific focus. For example, there are clubs for Republicans, clubs for Christians, clubs for debaters, clubs for casino employees, and clubs for people who love to compete in contests. And those are just some of the specialized clubs in Las Vegas. I belong to an advanced club for people who are interested in professional speaking, and many people in my club are pro speakers and/or comedians. We even have a special meeting segment to work on our humor skills that no other club in the city has.

Similarly, a PD-centric organization could have clubs focused on health, some on spiritual development, and others on financial success. All it takes is a few individuals to come together and sponsor a club.

This is a vision I've had for a few years now. In fact, the Local Groups forum here was a small step in that direction. It was intended as a way for people to meet other growth-oriented people who are local to them. I didn't expect that forum to be a huge success, but it has spawned a few in-person meetings that I know of.

As a pre-cursor to launching this organization, I realized we would need a strong set of guiding principles, so the group could have a growth-oriented foundation that would be culturally independent, allowing it to successfully unite people with different spiritual beliefs, different income levels, different health habits, etc. -- without suffering from undue bias and turning people away. This was one of the reasons I wrote Personal Development for Smart People. Since it's based on universal principles, I can adapt its ideas to serve the root-level guiding principles for the organization. All that's really required is for people to be attracted to just one of the principles, and that will be enough for them to derive benefit from the organization.

[supertom]

awesome, i wonder how far this is??

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by ArthurHung

I wonder how Steve will market such a unique and new enterprise, though.

I imagine word of mouth will take care of most of it.

I'm an established Toastmaster (since Feb 2008; President of one club, Secretary of another), so I believe it'd be pretty easy to work with Steve and anybody else he takes on board to help out to get a personal development club started in my local area. I'm sure many of my Toastmaster friends would be interested. In my eyes, it's not a replacement for Toastmasters, although I get the feeling I'd like the personal development club a bit more.

I know one other Australian Toastmaster friend who lives in a different area--a member of these forums--who would be as interested as I am in starting or being involved with a personal development club. I know many Toastmasters throughout the world--also members of these forums--who'd be interested in the same thing.

I think, at first, it'd start pretty small, but it wouldn't take long before they spread like wildfire. The type of people they would attract--much like these forums--and the strong focus on a holistic, principle centered approach... well, let's just say, "you had me at holistic." There's nothing I like more than holistic practices and approaches.

[Hyperchiller]

Originally Posted by Bruce Achterberg

In my eyes, it's not a replacement for Toastmasters, although I get the feeling I'd like the personal development club a bit more.

I know one other Australian Toastmaster friend who lives in a different area--a member of these forums--who would be as interested as I am in starting or being involved with a personal development club. I know many Toastmasters throughout the world--also members of these forums--who'd be interested in the same thing.

I would certainly be interested in starting one of these clubs! I would agree with you too about enjoying a PD club more than a generic Toastmasters one. It might work it we extended Toastmasters somehow and added a PD arm to the organisation.

[ArthurHung]

Actually, Steve, maybe you would consider a variation of that above suggestion:

Creating an organization within the organization that is Toastmasters. That may be able to jumpstart your organization faster.

The pro's are obvious however the negatives is that you might be limited somewhat by some unexpected restrictions. Also, if you ask, even with a solid business plan, you would have to wait until they give you the go-ahead (and you don't know how long that would be).

[WilliWibald]

I'm currently very fascinated with Muhammad Yunus idea of social businesses. His own - the Grameen Bank, operating in Bangladesh - got him the nobel peace price.
His thinking went sth. along those lines: Do everything very different than what conventional banks do:
-give credits to women (in Bangladesh normal banks give most of their credits to men)
-give credit only to poor people (again conventional banks like to give to those that already have some good amount of wealth)
-go the customers directly (conventional banks expect you to come to them)
-the bank convinces the customer to take a credit (conventional banks have to be convinced by the customer to give a credit)
-they don't employ lawyers (conventional banks do this I have heard :-) )
-they only go to rural areas (conventional banks operate in cities)

=> The bank gets over 95% of it's credits back. Way more than conventional banks. And these poor people need the financial help the most. Phenomenal changes happen in these villages.

How could this be applied to PD in Western societies?

-offering PD-help for very little cost (instead of coaching at high rates)

-trying to get to people who need it the most (instead of only waiting for the ones that are already convinced)

-being persistent in convincing people to try PD, who are resistent at first (instead of letting them in the dust of helpless believes)

While I write this, I just recognized, that this is eventually already what Steve does with his website:
-it's free (thus allowing poor people in)
-it's unconventional (thus drawing people in, that were not open for PD before)

In a PD club, I would guess, most people are already very good. But nonetheless their PD will be turbocharged by forming such groups - at least this is what I guess.
To incorporate the ideas from Yunus the group could try to recruit people that have really hit rock bottom - like being on welfare for a decade, being addicted to several substances and having no place to stay - and then try actively to convince them (against some initial resistance) - and then assisting them with their PD. So it would be a mixed group of mostly self-motivated people, that help themselves but additionally convince some rock-bottomers to join them.

That could be PD for the ones that need it the most.
Everybody would object, that it can't work, but again, that was what everybody was thinking about credit for the poor and Yunus just thought outside the box and got astonishing results.