Landmark Wisdom Weekend 1
Welcome to the Wisdom Unlimited Course! This publication will follow each weekend of your course and will include contextual definitions and instructions for using the tools and practices introduced in each weekend.
Weekend One
The Context of Weekend One
Weekend One was about creating our participation in the Wisdom Unlimited Course and getting set up with the beginning support structures, tools and practices for living a fulfilling life.
The Tip
“What if the answer is always…Get into communication“
This tip is created for you to discover the possibility that anything can be resolved in communication. When we try to handle an upsetting situation on our own, in a monologue with ourselves, we tend to re-hash and recycle round and round with no resolution.
The Tip In Practice
Engaging in life from this tip, for example, communicating our inauthenticities, and making requests for support or clarification when we are not clear, we end up empowered in relationships with the very same people who we thought had turned against us.
The Recommended Investigation
We recommend you investigate: What past-based or familiar ways of participating will you give up, and what form of participation will you create so that you have the best chance of having the breakthroughs and miracles you want to accomplish in of this course?
The Contribution Display
The Contribution Display is a tool created prior to the course beginning in the pre-course session. It is designed to illustrate the contribution we already and naturally are in life. When we are being this contribution, we are fulfilled in life, naturally more effective, with great, potential joy.
Instructions To Complete Your Display
- Speak with others close to you about the following questions to clarify the ever-present contribution you are in the world. (This is meant to be a dialogue back and forth versus solely about you.)
For what do others acknowledge you?
What do you always contribute – naturally and without prompt?
What do others get developed in around you?
What are you good at (doing, or being or having, or recreating in others)?
The responses create a picture in language of the ever-present and many-faceted, contribution you are in the world. Now, create this visually in the form of a display that illustrates this contribution. This could be a collage or other form of display.
Share your display with others who know you well and others who know you less well, and, as necessary, revise your display based on their feedback. We recommend having this be a discovery or an experiment that reveals more of who you are to yourself.
The Contribution Display In Practice
In our day-to-day living and relationships, we sometimes forget who we are as a contribution and begin living from ‘not enough’ and say and do things that disempower ourselves and others.
The Contribution Display becomes a visible reminder for what’s actually possible, and when we be, think and act consistent with who we really are – life takes on new possibilities of connection, effectiveness, affinity and joy.
The contribution display can be used to remind you of your empowered self-expression. When you find yourself in a disempowered state, you can review the display and return to being THAT person, and discover alternate and workable ways of being and acting in those same circumstances.
The Autobiography
The Autobiography is a tool for completing unworkable familiar and repetitive experiences, including ways of being and acting, strategies and ways life’s situations occurs to us. These experiences have seemed like they will never change; it seems as if we have no choice but to be discouraged or disappointed when certain situations occur in life.
This is a tool to complete those experiences from where they started, allowing you to be whole and complete, operating with all of your current capacities today.
Instructions To Prepare Your Autobiography
Create a book or electronic document with a section or page for every year of your life to date.
To best capture or portray each year, you could include things such as a picture of yourself at that age, a list of the people who were most important to you, personal life events and world events, popular culture of the time (movies, music, etc.)
You may also choose to create pages for your future 5 to 10 years that can be filled in with what you are committing to complete in the future, and what completing that will make available to you.
The Autobiography In Practice
- Identify an aspect of life or a relationship that seems a particular way and it is not empowering, there is an experience of being constrained or a victim of the circumstances.
Example: it seems I am always getting bossed around, or it seems like they don’t appreciate me, it seems like x is too hard.
Identify and note how it all seems to you including the familiar ways of being and acting (your own as well as others), the mood or emotion, what “always” happens or has to happen, etc. …
Locate the earliest, similar occurrence of this happening, or of life being this way.
Identify the entire circumstance of that earliest occurrence – how old you were, who was there, what was said, or done – as best as you can look at the “facts” of it.
- Identify what exactly happened in that incident, how did you behave, and then what happened and what happened after that.
- Example: I was 9, Jon, Joe and Judy were there, Joe pushed me and I fell, Judy and Jon laughed. I curled up in a ball and cried. Judy called me a crybaby. After they walked away laughing, I went to my room and cried and then read a book. I avoided them after that.
- Allow yourself to be with and consider: that at that younger age, how you behaved was actually quite an intelligent way to deal with what was happening and what you made it mean. What you created, allowed you to make sense of something that you didn’t understand – it suddenly made no sense to you – it worked!
- Example: three against one – I’m weaker than they are, so I curled up in a ball and waited until they left. It was smart to separate myself and do something comforting. Smart to steer clear of them.
- Get clear for yourself in what ways this response was and continued to be a source of growth and development throughout your life.
Example: I became strong at comforting myself and mastered extricating myself from situations that seemed dangerous. I developed myself to sense when “something was going to go down”
Get for yourself – it was really smart and has been a contribution to who you are now and what you are now capable of, however, today, the earlier strategy and accompanying way of being (in the example, make myself weak and small) is totally unnecessary. In fact, it’s unworkable and causes you, your results, and sometimes the people around you, to suffer.
With your current capacities and abilities – what way would you like to be in those same circumstances now? Today, what you are now capable of?
Example: I could be someone who has a voice, a means of responding, someone who continues to communicate, instead of retreating.
Enter in your autobiography the year the incident happened, make some notes of what happened, who was around you at that time, maybe even things like the kinds of music, world events, or other key matters that were shaping both your and the world around you.
You can also make notes in the current year [today] what way(s) you are now capable of, in fact committed to being in regards to this type of experience.
The Fulfillment Display
The Fulfillment Display is a tool to give you all that you need to create living a fulfilling life and to experience performing at your highest ability in each area of your life. With this tool, you determine the areas of life most important to you and describe your access to being successful in each area.
Instructions To Create Your Fulfillment Display
- Start by listing the different areas of life that get your attention, including your available resources such as time and money. These are the areas of life where you have a commitment or promise or intention to be fulfilled.
Indicate which area or commitment gets the most and least of your attention.
- With each area or commitment, list the people you interact (communicate) with about the area, on a regular basis (~weekly).
Indicate which of the people you interact with most and least frequently about each commitment.
Consider the relationship with the people you interact with most frequently (top 3) in each commitment, and identify what outcome(s) or result(s) come from each relationship? When you are interacting with that person, what happens? What do you expect and/or rely on?
Consider each of the Areas you identified, and if it’s not already said, say what you are committed to or what is the commitment this area represents in your life?
Take all this (1-4 above) and create a visual display that shows in some fashion:
Your proportionally sized commitments, and
Next to each commitment, the people/relationships proportionally sized to the frequency of interaction of each relationship
The Fulfillment Display In Practice
As time goes on, and in the living of your life, update the display to more accurately indicate the actual state or condition of the commitments that make up your life.
If you want to alter the amount of your life that is lived in fulfilment of any commitment, increase or decrease your communication with those people.
If you want to bring something new into existence in your life, enroll someone in being in communication with you about that matter, and over time and as necessary, add more people.