Want More Awareness? Notes from a Personal Development Seminar

• Enrollment is when you share a possibility or breakthrough with someone else that leaves them touched and inspired. 
• Registration is when someone takes action. The magic happens when you take unreasonable action.
• You are either taking action in your life, or you are watching life pass you by. Nothing really happens without action. 
• Michael Angelo was asked how he sculpted the statue of David and he said, “I just chipped away at everything that was not David.” Drop the facade and be you. 
• When you learn by asking questions, it's like discovering balance. Once you discover balance, it's yours forever. It's kind of hard to describe balance but it's easy to understand once you get it. 
• More, better, different is what change is about. If you really want something new, you need transformation because the more things change, the more they stay the same. 
• If you want greatness, you must ask yourself what you have at stake. If there is no risk, there will be no reward. Think about your own lid and what is stopping you from breaking through. 
• Ask yourself this question: “If you could create anything in your life, what would you want to create.” To often people stop wanting, stop dreaming, and stop having a vision.
• We all have blindspots that block our visions from being unleashed. You must create a space for your vision to come alive. 
• There is a very big difference between learning something that is interesting vs learning something that is valuable and you can actually apply. 
• You know what you know, and you know what you do not know. That is all the knowledge that is currently available to you. Most of the knowledge out there is in the category of “You do not know what you do not know you do not know.” No access.
• What you don’t know, you don’t know are the unexamined assumptions, beliefs and stories that you take for granted in life. Those stories drive you and control you.
• When you are free from the constraints of your blindspots and lack of awareness, you are free to be, you are free to act. Look into Johari’s Window.
• Most people in your life are not in the GAME, they are in the stands and the opinions of the fans in the stands will not impact the players in the game. Do not let the opinions, judgements, evaluations, and hopes of other people impact your performance in life. You are on the court and the talk from the stands have no impact on the game.
• Players and athletes are trained to ignore the booing from the fans because on the court the talk is action. “I’m open, I’m here..” Talk of the players impact the game because the talk is action on the court. 
• Consider that you are a spectator in the stand of your own life. Begin to inspect to what degree your assessments, judgements and self conversations that you dwell on are not leading you to action. 
• The shoulds and shouldn'ts are all conversations of someone who is not playing the game of life and is standing outside life observing. Begin to see what being a spectator in life has caused you from being alive. 
• There is nothing at stake when you are in the stands, it's safe with no risk. On the court, there is risk. Being in the stands does not allow you to take the risk necessary to win the game. 
• Too many people are boxing with a ghost called pressure, pressure is a story and you often see life through the lens of pressure. You even get evidence to support your story. Your body tightens up, your breathing changes and you are not able to distinguish what is happening from what you are making it mean. 
• We live our life as if the interpretation of life is actually fact and reality. You are trapped in the collapse of the story and what actually happened and you have no power, freedom or self expression.
• When you color your life with your stories, it's like eating the menu because the menu is actually the interpretation of the meal. Stop eating the menu! 
• Agree or disagree is not what happened, that is a story that you attached. You have ended relationships over things that never happened. We are at war over things that never happened. 
• Ask yourself this question: What from the past is running the show for you. What happened in the past that does not allow you to be totally free and self expressed? What you think happened to you is often not what happened.
• Everytime we describe a feeling we are telling a story about the feeling and what it means to us. You do not fall in love, you feel something and you tell a story. You did not fight, you said words and you told a story about it.
• To be present, you need to start to focus on what happened and not on what you made it mean. Start to abandon your story about being abandoned when you were younger. You might still be imprisoned by the story of a 14 year old.
• When you separate the story from what actually happened you have the opportunity to be free from the past. You can create a new future that is not tied to the past.
• Keep in mind that you have a lot invested in your stories. Keeping your stories makes you right and it helps you justify your situation and current state. It robs you of joy, freedom and self expression. 
• When people do not show up the way we think they “Should” in our story, we see them as messed up. Stories are our interpretation of reality. 
• When you do not forgive someone you are the one that is suffering. Resentment is like the poison you take hoping that the other person dies.
• Stop wasting your life living in stories that are not real. Stop wasting your life avoiding being loved. If you can be any way you want to be, what way would you want to be?
• Most of the time we are upset about things that never happened, most of the things that we think happened did not happen. When you say, “I'm upset because she didn't call me.” That is a story. Someone not doing something is based on your interpretation of what you think they should of done. 
• The world does not care about your reasons and justifications, if you do something because you have a good reason or avoid doing something because you do not have a good reason you are living a reasonable life. Being reasonable is being powerless.
• Being reasonable has no power, you justify being nasty to people. Ask yourself this: Are you someone in life where everyone around you wins? 
• Your life is run by your reasons, begin to see that you never tell it how it is. You have great reasons to be inconsiderate, you are justified and you end up not taking risks because you have justifications. 
• The more you reduce your risks in life, the more you limit your experience of life. Transcend being reasonable and take unreasonable action. 
• The plane took off, Delta does not care if you were in traffic. Stop with the reasons. What has it cost you to be reasonable and avoid taking risks?
• The reason why people punt in life to be reasonable is because they think there is a someday out there. If you knew there was no someday, what would you do today? Get that thing complete
• Too many people think your life is a practice life, this is not a dress rehearsal, you only get one chance to make this life the best life for yourself and the people you love.
• Are you a human doing or a human being? Most of use are so busy doing things and looking to have more things and we forget to just BE!
• Informative is about information in your head, transformative is about creating a transformation in your real life.  
• People often say they value integrity but the are confusing integrity with morality. Integrity is the state or condition of being whole, complete and unbroken. Integrity is what allows things to work. 
• Integrity is the condition of workability. If you are allergic to bread and you still each it, is that a bad thing? No, you just won't work. Without integrity nothing happens. 
• In every moment, your pathway to integrity is honoring your word but you first need to have a powerful relationship with your word.
• Realize that your life does not have power if your word does not have integrity because you must keep the rules if you want power. You can only really win the game if you play by the rules. 
• You might say that you do not know the rules. That is no valid excuse when you are playing the game. You still play the price if you do not know the rules in life. 
• People have an automatic resistance to rules, realize where you are rebelling against the rules automatically and what it is costing you in your life not to have integrity. 
• What are the unspoken rules that you need to be keeping and you are breaking. When it comes to work, coming late is an unspoken rule that so many people break. 
• In life you can either be right or you can be happy. You get to choose the path that you want to take with the people that you are with. 
• There are three types of rules, rules of workability, rules that make things better and recommended rules that are optional. Do you have rules and agreements in your life?
• In life there is not Trying, there is only doing or not doing. I will hand you a box of tissues and you TRY to take the box but don't really take it. Did anything happen? NO! 
• Whenever you say you want MORE, you are always tethering that desire for more to less. You want to invent something from nothing, think about what that would be for you.
• When someone rejects your possibility, you must keep being what you are committed to being and not allow rejection to affect your truth.
• Courage is not the absence of fear, if you have no fear, you do not need courage. Courage is action in spite of fear. 
• Here is a simple way to limit growth, do not share that you have a need. Instead pretend that everything is perfect in your life and do not ask anyone for support. 
• No matter how much you achieve in your life, if you are not fulfilled something is missing. You cannot really be successful without fulfillment. Having more accomplishments does not guarantee fulfillment. Have you ever gotten to a goal and not been satisfied?
• Whatever you are hiding in your life right now is running your life. The best state to be in is authenticity when you own up to your lack of authenticity that is causing a lack of power and freedom and taking away your self expression. 
• We never really listen to what other people say because we are listening through a filter of our experience and we are trying to make sense out of things instead of active listening we are looking for ways to respond. 
• Being present begins by being present to the degree that we are not really being present because of all the noise in our head right now. 
• Want to create a new possibility, you must distinguish your stories from what is being said and your listening is painting everything your experience with a story. 
• Here are some ways we listen: Is this true or false? Is this good or bad? Is this right or wrong? Do I trust this or do I not trust it? Why is this? How is this? In order to, What is the problem? What is the answer or solution to this? This should be, this should not be? What is in it for me? Do I agree with this or do I disagree with this?

• When you look at yourself and try to find your mind, you realize that your mind does not exist, it's a concept that we tell a story about. 
• Whatever goes undistinguished in your life is actually running your life. Understanding that you have a voice in your head is the first step to getting out of the control that your automatic ways of being are driving you towards. 
• We as humans are living like the voice in our head is us and you cannot really see or hear what is going on in reality because we live in an altered state of reality. 
• Realize that you are trapped in your sea of opinion and no matter how you try to get out, you will have more of the same thing. Trying to get out is part of the mechanics of it. Do not try to stop it, it will always just keep driving you. It's not good or bad, it's just how it is.
• We as human beings are driven to avoid looking bad or we are driving to look good in life. Being driven from there is not the most powerful way to live. No matter how good you look, it never lasts and you do not feel fulfilled when you serve your ego.
• Toddlers do not care if they are wearing their diapers straight, they are in full self expression and have a special innocence and wonder about them that we have lost as adults because of insecurities and fears.
• Realize that your identity was put together in a moment in time where your innocence was lost and it was a defining moment where something went wrong.
• Most of us are driven to a place where we will never reach. Because we are trying to solve a wound that does not exist anymore. We are trying to resolve an issue that an 8 year old created to survive that moment in time. 
• Three defining moments in our life, Early childhood, Something went wrong. Adolescence, Feeling like we do not below. Early adulthood realizing that you are on your own. 
• Your identity is always structured in language and who you decide to be is usually based on compensating who you decided you could never be. No matter how many results you produce it will remind you of who you could never be. 
• What happened in your life is never wrong, it's what you say about it that makes it wrong. When you stop telling stories, life becomes simple and uncomplicated.
• Rackets are survival strategies we used to survive and we use language to justify our rackets that we are running. 
• We are pretending, acting, making it seem as if, hiding, showing up as, convincing ourselves, making believe or appearing a certain way to protect ourselves.
• When in fact, in reality, the truth is, what you may not know is, what we show most people is, what I have been hiding is… This is how you own up to your inauthenticity. 
• The impact, effect, the cause, what it makes you do, the outcome is, it results in, certain things that are happening as a result of the inauthenticity and lack of realness. 
• What has been missing, what it has cost, what we have a lack of, what we long for, what I am robbing myself of, what I am preventing from having is, a sense of what you really want most in life. 
• I am inventing the possibility of being… Here you can create anything you want but only after you own up to the inauthenticity because now you are at ground zero.
• People that lack power resort to force, no need to force anyone to do anything they do not want to do, instead influence people with power. 
• When you are having a sales conversation with someone and you make a request, there are only three options. Yes, No or Considerations. If you want to not get stopped by NO, learn the considerations and how to deal with them in a powerful way. 
• To make a vision a reality, you need to have three things. Enrollment, Registration and Integrity. With those thee a vision will just be a dream. 
• If you want to have power, find out the other person’s vision and help them take action towards their vision. 
• There is only one thing that exists outside of reasons, considerations, justifications and excuses. Action that is all there is. 
• If you want to have a powerful life, you must learn to share and be vulnerable instead of making people think you are powerful, be powerful.  
• When someone says they will try their best, that is not good enough, find out what they need to get a yes or a no. Everyone has a consideration they need to deal with to get to a firm commitment of yes. 
• How do you honor your word? You have to own up to your lack of integrity and negotiate your word the moment you know that your word will not be able to be kept. 
• If you are afraid of looking like you are too pushy in life, you cannot really make an impact. If you want to make a difference in people's lives you need to take action. 
• Being into self improvement is not called being in the world. Living in the world is about sharing and connecting.
• When you create a clearing, a space for other people in your life, by being unreasonable, suddenly people have the ability to be different with you. 
• Having insights in life will not alter your life unless those insights lead you to take action. Recruit people into your life, into your vision so that you have the life you want to have. Do not wait for people to find you, be the leader in your life. 
• Stop overthinking everything that happens in your life, there is no cheese down that tunnel. Do not go down tunnels that have no cheese. 
• At the point that you have courage and take action, miracles start to happen in your life. When you step outside of reason, you can create new possibilities.
• An incident is a moment in time, a moment when you realized something was wrong. In the logic of a child, you saw something wrong and you made a decision on how to be. 
• You created your own winning formula from seeing someone else that was some way and because you believed that you would never be like that and you really wanted to be that way, you created your way of being that now drives you to get results. 
• We have two modes in life, we are either running rackets or using our winning formula. Realize the constrained way of being by just having those two modes in life. 
• You are whole complete and perfect the way you are right now and to create something new, you must be complete with who you are in life. 
• Are you willing to accept yourself as a whole, complete and perfect human being or are you trying to have or do something instead of being?
• Give up the need to change because the more you try to change, the more things will stay the same. 
• People who are desperate to get out of this trap of change end up getting more into the trap thinking that they have progress but are right back where they started.
• Get present to the machinery that is currently running your life. Listen to your own listening because it won't stop running. 
• We are constantly reacting to everything around us, someone says something or does something and we make it mean something and we respond. We are a response and stimulus machine. 
• Realize that if you want to create a clearing for anything, you have to come from a place where life is empty and meaningless. Void of any meaning or interpretation, clean for anything. 
• How does one create anything? Using language is what brings forth the possibility for us to create in life. 
• Declaration is the kind of language that creates its generative. I declare is a created action. But first declaration itself needs to be declared. By declaring the possibility of declaring, you can begin to have power with your words to create. 
• You can declare marriage but only if you have the power vested in you by an authority that we respect. You need be that authority in your own life. 
• There are three types of umpires that call scores. The novice calls a strike because it looks that way. The expert calls a strike because it is what it is. Yoda says that “It ain't nothing till I call it.”
• You create your mother, you do not describe your mother. Declaration creates the world and it's just an illusion that we can only use language to describe things. 
• You must have a foundation of integrity with your word for your word to have power and be able to create things with your word.
• When you declare “Who I am is my word” and you honor your word with integrity, you word starts to have massive power. 
• Most people live in the past because they are focused on the results they once got or did not get and as a result it dictates their current actions and future possibility. 
• Instead you must start with language and create a future that will pull the present into it and create new results in the past. Don't start with the past, instead create the future. 
• When you do not complete things, you get stuck in the past and it weighs you down. Get complete and start from nothing so that you can create without limitation. 
• Get complete with people so you can have a powerful relationship with them. Create a future and take action now. 
• Talk is cheap if you have no power with your words. Action speaks louder than words when your words have no power. 
• Every moment where you share a new possibility, you are no creating fear. When you share what you want to create you are displacing reasons and excuses and you are busy creating. 
• Either way, you will eventually die and people will be sad and then they will eat and move on with their life. Might as well honor your word and live a powerful life. 
• Instead of waiting to have something in life, so you can do things and eventually be happy. Start with Being which will lead you to doing and eventually you will HAVE everything you created by who you have become. 
• There is a difference between deciding and choosing. When you make a decision you are cutting off other options. You are basing your decision on reasons and considerations. Choosing can be unreasonable without the weight of reason. 
• Real freedom is to choose instead of decide. Void of any reasons or considerations you choose because you choose. 
• Choose the life that you have been given and you do not need a reason to choose it. That will create a clearing for the ultimate transformation.

Here are my 4000 words that I prepared so I can remember the things that I learned during this amazing 40 hours of transformation.

Let me know which one of these bullets rang for you in the comments below.

Joe Apfelbaum

Ajax Union