Affordable Leadership Training

Have you investigated toastmasters? They have chapters everywhere, and are an effective way of practicing not only speechmaking, but also your, listening, organizing and leadership skills.

I've joined a group recently, and I can tell you that it has been very helpful to have a community of peers to practice with. Not only that, but I'm having a great time too!

Public speaking is one of the most feared activities by many people, if you can get comfortable talking to large groups, you will find that many other leadership roles will be easy by comparison.

The importance of practice.

A famous NLP statement is:

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got".

No matter how much you understand something intellectually by reading books or listening or viewing materials. Nothing will happen until you practice! Even if it is only 10 minutes a day, get in the habit of practicing whatever you are trying to learn. Practice is how you build new pathways to new behaviors.

QiGong and Tai-chi both leverage self Hypnosis

I've taken a qigong course with Arnold Tayam (Highly Recommended) recently. And I've been studying Tai-chi for many years. One of the primary precepts of both is that:

"The Imagination leads the mind, and the mind leads the Qi".

That makes imagination the root skill of both!
Both also encourage a kind of "trance state" where you remove the mental noise of the day and focus on just what you are doing now.

After continued practice you will be able to "feel" the Qi flowing along the same path where you only "imagined" it earlier.

In self hypnosis, it is also common to "imagine" or "visualize" a positive outcome while in a trance state. This trains your subconscious and "retrains" your brain accordingly. By repeating this visualization with belief and intensity, you prepare yourself to allow the desireable outcome to occur.

Very similar underneath, don't you think? I guess it's not too suprising, since our brains seem to be hard-wired for it internally.

My first blog posting

I thought I'd try blogging and see if it takes.

I intend to write about self development in the context of computer gaming, NLP, hypnosis, and taoist principles (like qi gong, tai-chi and chinese medicine).

I am a professional game developer with an interest in self development.

I'm ultimately interested in leveraging my knowlege of virtual environments and online games to create places to practice self development, and to create communities of interested people who share an interest in improving themselves.