Last weekend I graduated from my year long training to be effective in team, management and leadership. It was an amazing weekend. The warmth and love I received from everyone and the acknowledgement I was given for how I have taken on my life and done what needed to be done to leave a job I had no integrity with moved me to tears. In that moment I saw the beauty and value in being understood. Here were people who saw what this had cost me in terms of safety and security. It was so lovely to be there to see all the things that were being planned for the next quarter and not to be part of it. There was a great freedom and I found I was able to get more benefit because I was so relaxed. There was also fear and apprehension.
Before I started this training, I had done little with my life. I lived in a safe flat and worked in a safe job. This year started and suddenly what seemed more important than anything was to be in integrity with everything. I knew with a certainty that couldn't be doubted that the foundation for living a powerful life is integrity which is keeping my word and doing work the way that it should be done. The training gave me the courage to take the leap into the uncertainty of the unknown and I was afraid that when I no longer had this after I graduated that the little me who had played so small before this training would re-emerge and I would wake up on Monday in a severe sweat of panic, the reality of leaving a safe job and home hitting me for the very first time.
One thing that emerged from this year is that while it was a year of being in teams, creating teams, managing teams, communicating in teams, I am still an individual and do things alone. In my final feedback session before graduating this was again said to me. I have discovered my point of view which is 'I'm not included, I'm alone' and this is very much how I operate. But am I unhappy with this, not at all. I have so much going on in my head and insights that I get that I can seem to others to be on my own but I never feel alone myself. This is not to say that I shun or avoid the company of others. I don't not at all, but I don't seek it out. When someone comes to speak to me I will give them my full attention and listen and ensure that they see that I understand where they are coming from but then once the conversation is over, I am happy to be alone. This year has been an intense year of being constantly in communication, be it, conference calls, coaching calls, meetings which forced me to be social to be a master in the attributes of a new model of communication. On Sunday night I feared that the sudden ending of this intensity might not have a positive impact.
So it was that I woke up on Tuesday morning and my first thought was 'wow, I don't have to manage this morning to fit in two calls before going to college'. Words can't describe the joy and bliss that suddenly welled up from deep within. It had been my birthday the day before which was the Monday, my first day of no course and I had been upset. I didn't know if it was a combination of making my birthday mean something about the degree to which I was loved (so ironical after everything I have said about liking my own company) or if it was the withdrawal symptoms of the course and the training in general which I have been doing since 2005 but in the morning I was in quite a dark place. The people where I live knew that my birthday was coming up and when I was downstairs having breakfast the lady of the house came down and I told her. She gave me a huge hug and in that moment in the telling of it so that it was no longer running around my mind, I felt something big and dark lift and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the love, peace and ease I felt.
I had been given some beautiful writing books and I went upstairs and named one of them my promises book. Just because I am no longer formally in the training, it doesn't mean that I can't continue to build the foundations for power by writing down everything I am going to do in the day and hold myself lovingly to account for the actions I didn't do and recommit.
As this week has gone on I am amazed at the continued deep ease, peace and calm I feel as well as having the gift of time. I have been so focussed on my work for getting these exams in three weeks done and I have been amazed at how intentional I am now with it all. I have a new depth of concentration, one that I didn't have for the time on the course so far. It's like the training with Landmark took precedence and I entered into it fully doing everything I was committed to until the very end and now that it is over and I graduated powerfully - there is space created for what is now the most important thing for me, getting these exams. The joy and peace I feel I assert are the feelings that come when the spirit is in integrity. I can't think of what else gives this depth of ease and connection. Life flows and is in harmony and me in harmony with it in ways that I never thought possible.
I gave my word to write this blog once a week until the exams are over so this is the entry for this week. I could write lots more especially about events in the world but this would be out of integrity given how much study I have to do. Suffice to say that this first week without the training which I had feared I would go to pieces without has been a week where I have stepped into my power without attributing it to anything but myself and the skillls I have learned. To know that what I had considered was maybe a crutch and realise that it is a tool has been so liberating. I believe 100 percent in this training, not as a crutch but as a powerful training which gives anyone the tools and skills to be powerful in the face of any situation but also not be dependent on it. This is a balance that many training fails to achieve. I will always and ever be grateful for the forces that put me into contact with this training. I know what I and my life was like before I started it and I know what it is like now and the transformation is real, startling and exciting......
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