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Unleash the Power Within

This weekend I was fortune enough to be able to go to Tony Robbins seminar “Unleash the Power Within” in Chicago. We were 2900 attending the seminar. It was a fantastic course with a lot of real interesting tools and ideas for creating an outstanding life. It will defiantly go in to the history as one of my best weekends.

The 2900 attendees at UPW

The first night we had the firewalk, where we walked on hot coals. We had to get into out state and learn to focus our minds on the outcome. The experience was very intense and showed what was possible with focus. Walking on 650-1000 degrees (1200-2000F) hot wood does not sound like something you would like to do for fun. But it was not any problem once we got started with walking.

Just after the fire walk, checking for burns.

We learned a whole bunch of useful tools, than which can be applied to everyday life to be better. This was what I had expected. I had thought that we will learn many more and then try to use the tools to work on creating our goals.

It was some really long days we had. I cannot imagine how it was possible to have such long sessions, with tools without many breaks. There was only a 1 hour lunch break to get something to eat, so it was not like you had breaks every hour. Instead we got up and danced or massaged the persons on our sides every half hour. This was a good way to keep the focus and being much more able to learn. I hope it would be possible on other conferences.

There was a lot of dancing to music, lots of screaming, clapping. It was like a rock concert and it helped lift the voice in the room to extreme levels. Probably the high excitement levels were most different was all and made it easier to learn. Imagine if this was possible in the schools.

Some of the guided sessions were very strong emotionally. It is not every day that I cry of happiness and sadness with short periods between. Just because I’m thinking about will/can happen.

I’m really amazed by how much Tony Robbins is cable of doing on the stage. He was on for 15 hours on Saturday with full energy the whole time. Everyone else had to take breaks during the sessions but he just keep going. Tony was having some problems with his voice and could not run the show for the whole weekend any more. Instead Joseph McClendon III was presenting on two days. Joseph did an outstanding job and was really funny, but he was not as a intense as Tony.

The only thing that I did not like was the all the focus on selling. A lot of products was sold and marketed on the event and with the strong feelings it was difficult to say no. It was really compelling to continue the journey. I sign up for some extra courses, which I hope will be just as intense.

Now I just have to see if the principles we have learned sticks with med. That is the ultimate test that it works. I believe, I need to go thru all my notes and work books again to remember it all that will be one task in the coming week.

I’m really glad I did go to the event, and would strongly recommend others to go and check UPW out. I cannot say it will change my life yet, but it defiantly has the potential to do it. I hope to keep updating the blog with some of the changes that I have applied from the course that have worked.

 

 

 

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Confessions of a reboot virgin

This year was my first reboot. I have heard a great deal about the venue, but always too late to attend. This year thanks to twitter, I got the information about Reboot in time.

I have heard about reboot from Danish Radios Harddisken, from some of the previous conferences. They have made some great reports from the event. I got the impression that it was only IT people from Denmark, who came for the conference. That myth was blown away when I followed the twitter stream to the conference. There were quite a lot of foreigners and people from different industries.

The price was not an excuse compared to other conferences. The price was only €350 for two days compared to a standard SAP conference with a price of around €700 per day. And I did not have any consulting gig at the moment, so I did not have to take the days off.

My purpose with going to the conference this year was to get some inspiration for my startup, meet and learn from someone who have done a startup and get some inspiration for my life (Small issue). I have achieved all my goals for the conference. And what it even better, I had real fun in the process.

There were two days packed with all kind of talks. A large number of the talks were about something that I found interesting. It was difficult to pick the talks, because many of the talks, I wanted to hear, was at the same time. Luckily it was just to select one, and have fun with it.

The networking part of the conference was really easy. Everybody wanted to talk and learn from each others. I’m just starting to be a better networker, and be able to find the right people. But at this conference, it was really easy to start a conversation with other participants.

What did I learn on the conference? The reason for going to a conference is go meet new people, sell or learn something new. I did not sell anything, and it was not a goal. I have not processes my notes from Reboot yet, they are on my todo list. I don’t think I learned something, I can use on my job tomorrow. It has mostly some tools to help create, a vision for what I would like my future to be.

I think that the issue, with not learning something which can be used on the job tomorrow, can make it difficult to sell the idea of the conference to ones Boss. A way to justify the conference could be by seing this as a part of Stephen Covey’s 7.th habit. Habit 7 is about shaping the saw, get inspiration from outside. I see reboot as a way to step back from reality and get other inputs which will make life better.

I noticed some things which were different from my previous conferences.

  • The conference was ideological with the idea of Action. The Action was in many of the talks and thereby giving the word meaning.
  • Many presentations just had one word pr slide. This was a different way of presenting, than I have learned in my presentation courses. My previous experiences were just one slide pr 5 minutes, and then it should be a different way to paraphrase what was said or some graphics. The slides at reboot were more used to enhance the statement of the word. I have to learn more about this type of presenting, if it helps the learning experience.
  • People were working the whole time on their computers. But they were not doing work e-mails. It more looked like it was blogging or twitting. I was unable to follow the twitter stream and find interesting stories and blogs, hopefully I’ll find that information now.

The last part of the conference was probably the most interesting. The After party. It was held in “Kødbyen” and was a street party. In the beginning it did look really boring, just a few people sitting on chairs, but it turned out to be the coolest party. I did not know if it was possible to get 50+ people dancing in the street. The only bad thing about the party, was that it was shutdown because of noise regulations at 1am.

Then I want to say thanks to Thomas Mygdal-Madsen and all the other creators of the conference. Also the presenters did a great job, maybe a shame that they did not get evaluated. It was a blast to be a part of the conference and I hope that I’ll be able to be there next year also.

I did not bring my camera, but would have liked to have spiced up this post with some images. Instead try to look at flickr or Marias photos.