Personal Development - P3

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m reflecting on the year. The most powerful experience I had was bringing a personal development weekend called P3 - personal power and prosperity - from Orlando to Berlin. It’s a great opportunity for leaders of all kinds to work on their emotional literacy and agility aka Emotional Intelligence. This is what that’s all about ...

Next P3 in Berlin - March 6-8

We’ve brought P3 to Berlin in June and November, now we’re preparing the third and biggest time. Sign up here to join this special opportunity to improve your life:

Wounded by the Crowd - Healed by the Crowd

No one gets to go through life unscathed. Some context - our family of origin, our school, our neighbourhood - will present us with challenges we are not ready to face, leading to compromises and wounds. We can carry these around or let go of them and heal - and we need people to do that. Integration happens when normal people accept us as one of them - when our fundamental needs for appreciation and belonging are met. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. That’s why P3 is a large group exercise with many people taking care of you - usually the assistants, who have done the course before and help and support you - outnumber the students 2:1.

Emotional Literacy and Agility

What is this about? P3 teaches us to identify specific emotions and their purpose, and gives us opportunities to go into them, through them, and out the other side. Why would anyone want to do that?

Most of us have learned to numb down our emotions. We are rarely encouraged to feel, to investigate, to study what’s in our hearts. The consequence is that we rarely feel anything unless our emotions overwhelm us, and then we lose control. As leaders, we want to be using our emotions in order to fuel our energy and growth. This is exactly what P3 delivers, you increase your confidence, sense of identity and intention.

Connection, Comfort, Compassion

We are social beings. We need to be connected to others. We also need comfort to feel safe - and comfort - especially the comfortable level of connectedness to others - is an individual thing. Different people need and want different conditions to feel comfortable. That’s why diversity is key in P3 and your needs as a student always trump our habits, expectations and plans. We care for you. You will receive the comfort and connection you need with the compassion that enables healing.

Leverage physical comfort to be more emotionally uncomfortable

Facing your stuff is hard and uncomfortable work. We need to feel supported and comfortable in every physical way - food, drink, warmth, etc. - to dare to face what we usually don’t look at.

Get into the raw shit, make sense of it later

P3 is not much about talking. Yes, there will be some sharing in small groups, but most of the emotional work is fairly private as far as your story goes. The design of the course focuses on feeling the emotion rather than explaining it. When water happens to show up in your face, no one will ask you why. Rather, they will just be with you, supporting you to go on and to find out what’s behind the tears. We’re present with the emotions, we do not want to become addicted to the drama that might be attached to them.

For yourself, it can be helpful to reflect on what happened and to integrate that learning. That may happen later. And if you want to do that during the course, you’ll find open ears to listen to your story. It’s just not the main thing: Suffering is the story we make up about the pain. The emotion gets us to work on the pain faster, instead of wasting time on the suffering we made up on top of it.

Stick to the Schedule until something better shows up

P3 has a very clear structure, and it is extremely flexible. It’s agile in the sense that we are improving at every moment if we learn something new. The course attunes and adapts to the group and people’s needs. The exercises are meticulously designed and facilitated. Those two reasons compelled me to want to bring this to Berlin: the design of the course based on Adlerian psychology, and the awe-inspiring facilitation by Josh Magro. Join us in March to experience both for yourself!

Merry Christmas.