Letter #45: Are You Ready for a New Step?!
Coming to the world in 2025…
Dear Friend
A special Letter this week!
This week I’d like to ask your permission to talk about my venture—and a bit about myself being as I am an integral part of the venture’s mission—because I am finally ready to get my Academy up and running. That means three years of building work now about to roar into action. Can you hear the lion in Thailand…
Permission granted?
Marvelous, that’s very kind of you!
In this Letter I am also bringing you news of my first official transformational learning course I’m offering, and it’s at a very unique time, which sort of fits the way I do education and also the mission that I’m on. The idea came to me while walking along a new path by the river here in Chiang Mai. Walking and cycling in the beautiful countryside always triggers the creative side of my mind - nature is my soul food!
To that end, and more on this learning course down below, ask yourself if you are free—or can be—during the last two days of this year and the first two days of 2025. This is because I have a unique offering that will bring together one group of adults to take them out of one year and into another year in a very different manner to the norm.
Could it even be a world first, taking part in a course of education that straddles the changeover of years?! As one of my valued subscribers, this Letter gives you first opportunity to be on the course. You will find out more down below.
But first some background info to the course.
My test-run for teaching courses live online
Back in the summer I made mention of a three-session course on facilitation skills that I was invited to deliver online, to about 250 group leaders of a global spiritual organization that I’m a member of. They have a lot of leaders because there are over 100,000 members worldwide! I have been a member of the Thailand group for a while.
Facilitation at its core is about making something easy or easier to do. That means making change and transformation easy or easier.
Could there be any more important a skill to be mastering during these turbulent and tumultuous times of rapid transition in our human world?
But for this group it was very much about me facilitating them to raise awareness of, and improve, various skills that would enable them to facilitate others in making positive changes to their lives.
Me facilitating them to facilitate themselves to facilitate others!
In education and leadership, facilitating usually refers to helping and guiding others to improving skills and knowledge. However, in my view and experience you can’t facilitate/help others if you can’t facilitate/help yourself first. This is the fun part of making changes to our life, because the benefits are always shared around.
A month ago we all came back together again in a follow-up session, for the group leaders to compare and share their experiences of implementing what we did in the training sessions into their own groups of members.
As it is a voluntary organization I was not paid for my work, but it was a brilliant opportunity for me to test-run my usual classroom teaching style - but using the online platform instead, and with large numbers. They were split into three different groups, but still, I had to lead one group that was over 100 in number!
I also took the opportunity to push boundaries with some of my core topical content, to put out the messaging that underscores A Spiritual Revolution into the world, to see how so many leaders—who have put their hand up to be counted in making our world a better world—would respond to it. Along with the main focus on facilitation skills, I wanted us all to explore and understand the macro-problem we all face in our lives, and its root causes, and to then offer practical solutions for them to implement themselves.
For the truism is always the same: find and understand the root cause of our problems and there, right next door to the roots, lie the solutions. Understand and have the skill to solve the macro-problem, and that’s you skilled in dealing with all problems!
I have to say that I loved every minute of the training program, and you can get a sense of what the participants themselves thought about the sessions by heading over to the testimonials page of my website (link opens in a new tab on computers). You just need to scroll down to below the three video testimonials to get to this group’s feedback.
To give you a flavour:
“To facilitate to so many cultures is challenging and you did a fantastic job Philip. Thank you.”
“Thank you so much, Philip, your ‘classes’ are memorable and an absolute pleasure.”
“I feel like a better listener and leader for having been under your tutelage!”
What it has meant for my own evolution in delivering empowering, inspiring, insightful, cutting edge education (my purpose and passion in life ever since accidentally becoming a teacher in Bangkok in late 1991), is that I gained invaluable experience in teaching through the online medium by delivering 12 two-hour sessions to large numbers of students over about two months.
I had done a previous online course back in 2022, but in terms of scope, numbers and organization this was the real deal!
And so a few months later…
… I am now totally ready to rock and roll and get my venture up and running, right from the off in 2025!
Whether you like him or not, Trump’s will be the presidency of transformation and change, and since my educational offerings create an energy for ordinary human beings to do just that for themselves, it seems like auspicious timing for me to get my mission underway.
Those who are skilled in navigating, negotiating and proactively making change will flourish in today’s human world.
I was happily blown away with all the amazing feedback I got… not in an ego sense, rather that it confirms to me that my delivery and my content is seriously hitting the mark. I feel that if it’s going down a storm with leaders and spiritually-minded people, then it’s going to work with everybody. I’ve been really committed to making sure all my content works for any adult or adolescent, in any country or culture, who wishes to upgrade and revitalize/revolutionize their life.
I know my teaching style, based on facilitating and enabling learning, works from all my years of teaching adult language students and teachers, and in fact this is the major reason why I know what kind of education works and doesn’t work. However, these were not language students. Any theory is great, but only if you put it to the test as soon as possible.
It worked, and now it’s going to work for the next few years.
To remind you, my big mission and challenge I have set myself is to heal humankind by transforming the way education is done, so that adults can—through investing in their own life by taking on a second, foundation-building, education—learn to educate and empower themselves, so that they will be transforming their life by their own endeavours, talents, skills and self-belief.
And the big bonus: in this way they will find they are automatically contributing to the vital and urgent work of healing humankind. What you learn with me, you will be able to facilitate others to learn in kind.
Now when parents, home educators and teachers take on this second education, the benefits they accrue will start positively impacting on the children in homes and schools. It’s like passing on a baton of learning goodness!
And when leaders, world helpers, activists and advocates for change learn to educate and empower themselves by mastering key learning and communication skills, now they can facilitate their fellow adults in their own transformation.
This is the whole point of true education: with the skills and knowledge you learn with somebody else, you can now encourage and facilitate others to learn and grow with you. Then they can pass on the baton of learning goodness too, and so it goes on.
This is how the healing of humankind will genuinely be able to take place.
99% of adults need this second education because our first one is so woeful and harmful. School systems suppress us from developing the skills, self-knowledge and self-belief we need to lead a healthy, fulfilling life, and this has led to all the conflict, division, distrust, hatred and a host of other negative consequences that are rife in human life.
Our psychological and spiritual landscapes are confused, chaotic and in almost perpetual conflict.
The whole purpose of undertaking A Spiritual Revolution is to liberate yourself by building a five-pillar foundation to your life, by cultivating your learning, communication and self-leadership skills, self-knowledge and self-confidence.
(I addressed the topic of our devastating school systems in my ebook An Education Charter and Framework for the Healing of Humankind, which I will assume you read?! If not, and you can’t find it, you can still download it for free by clicking here.)
By way of summary:
No more anti-education of telling, compelling, testing and enforcing; real education is the teacher or leader enabling, facilitating, encouraging, empowering others to love learning and living. When people learn with me real education is what they get, and what they can then give back out to others.
It’s the baton of learning goodness, and it’ll be the healing of humankind!
A unique course at a unique time
To officially get my Academy for A Spiritual Revolution up and running, I’m offering the same course on facilitation skills and self-growth that I did for the 250 spiritual leaders. You can complete it in four days, with a fifth follow-up session a month later.
I’m running this course at a unique time! Could be the worst time, could be the best possible time, but that’ll be for you to decide.
It’s unlikely anybody else in the world will be offering any learning courses on these dates. I think it’s an auspicious time for a course of this transformational nature, and the reason I think it’s a good idea is because lots of people will not be working.
And lest you be thinking of your learning experiences at school, learning with me will enhance your holiday, not subtract from it! It is an entirely different experience to the school version.
In true education the learning experience will induce joy and intrinsic motivation in the learner, and a sense of, ‘Has the lesson ended already?’
The course will take place on four successive days, 30-31 of December 2024 and 1-2 January 2025. You can see the New Year in with a group of fellow transformers!
The idea is to end 2024 with a bang, and start 2025 in real style, getting participants up and running for a truly self-empowering and transformational year in their life.
It means one can proactively end 2024 in just the manner they would like 2025 to go, and indeed, to be proactively starting 2025 this way.
There will then be a fifth follow-up session at the end of January or start of February, with a project task to be completed during January.
In this fifth session the goal is to present your work to a small group of your classmates, and to listen to their own presentations. You will get from, and give to, your peers invaluable feedback, and most likely you and they will want to ‘steal’ ideas from each other. This is the goal in collaborative communicative learning.
The project homework is super important as it will keep everybody accountable for the whole month, asking you to practically apply what you learn during the four sessions, and in a way that fits your own context of life. More importantly, what you do for the project becomes your own self-created guide for your life in 2025 and beyond.
In this way you build serious momentum to lead you through the whole year, keeping you keen, and, in all probability, by February you will be on an irreversible path towards leading the life you would like to be leading, one which makes full use of your own unique talents, character, nature, life experiences, preferences.
You are putting you in charge of you!
Thus we have a course that is five sessions of 2.5 hours each, with short but focused homework tasks each day, and with the mini project to carry out during January.
The one major change my students said they wanted back in the summer was more time for all their class discussions as they were enjoying them so much. I did tell them that there’s never enough time in my courses! However, for this upcoming course I am expanding each session by half an hour, and adding an extra whole session.
Awareness-raising discussions in small groups form the heart of my approach to education.
Course details and how you can get on it
The course is called Facilitation Skills for Leadership and Self-Growth.
I am in the middle of getting all the blurb done that describes the content, learning objectives, benefits, and all the course details, times and so on. I anticipate sharing this through various channels on Monday 16 or Tuesday 17 next week. It will also form the basis of next week’s Letter.
But for now, as a valued member of my email list for the first year of my venture, you have first opportunity to get yourself onto the course.
I will be using the Zoom platform, and usually the limit is 25 faces on one computer screen (can be more, but we’re too small to see each other!). So, with me guaranteed to be one of those faces (!), I’m limiting the group to 24 participants.
If you know now that you want to be one of those participants, reply to this email and let me know before Monday next week, and I’ll reserve a spot for you.
Bear in mind that when the blurb is ready I’ll send it out in next week’s Letter and simultaneously start sharing it for others to enroll on the course.
In the spirit of Christmas and the New Year, the cost of the course is £220 for the five sessions. It’s a gift! I just want to make sure it doesn’t break anybody’s bank, and is doable if one feels it’s right for them. (Details of the course content and benefits coming below in a mo.)
Each session will take place each day at 8.30-11.00am UK time, which is 3.30-6.00pm Thailand time. In south-eastern Australia that will be 7.30-10pm. For residents of the Americas, sadly, the course will be in the middle of the night. But you’re still welcome to join if you can!
So, yes, that does mean that people in Britain will be having an early breakfast on New Year’s Day, and then studying for 2.5 hours! In Australia it will mean an interesting difference to your more usual New Year’s Eve! If a boozy New Year’s Eve is a priority, perhaps don’t join this course!
There will be roughly speaking a one-hour task for homework on the first three days, and then the project to work on in January. Then we all meet again a month later in our fifth session. So, all in all 12.5 hours of time together, plus some personal study time. And the project will rock!
The Course Content in Brief
Typical learning experience in the sessions
The learning environment will be heart-friendly, interactive and collaborative, empowering and inspiring. You need a good clear mind as it will be used a lot!
The learning experience is a mix of you working with classmates in small groups, discussing things together as a whole group, and my own input. A good half of each session is working in small groups. There will be reading texts and videos too.
And for the last 20-30 minutes of each class we’ll have a reflection task and/or a Q and A session, addressing any questions that participants would like to ask.
This is empowering education in action, because communicating, thinking and establishing relationships lies at the heart of the human experience.
Skills practised
In all five sessions you will continuously be practising a range of learning and communication skills, both in small groups and in the whole group together. This will include:
communicating: interactive listening, expressing yourself, articulating your understandings, storytelling, discussion and conversation, collaboratively exploring topics and issues
listening: how to master the learning skill by developing your listening skills and strategies using videos
reading: how to master the learning skill by developing your reading skills and strategies using written texts
reflective thinking through writing: how to master the learning skill by keeping a course learner log to develop your ability in observation, awareness and reflection
attention: without attention no learning takes place; you will find all the content motivating and therefore being attentive comes naturally.
Knowledge and Content
The Bigger Picture: Investigating the link between education, schooling, society and the human experience. Here we learn what the macro problem is in the human world, what the root causes are, and how to set about implementing the solution.
Developing Facilitative Leadership: External Authority vs Inner Authority: Looking into and understanding the nature of authority, hierarchy, and relationship in our human world; how manipulation works, and how to avoid it (doing it or being at the end of it).
The Art of Listening: How to develop interactive and compassionate listening skills (quite probably the single most important human skill to master).
A Facilitator’s Handbook: Insights and strategies relating to what makes for the effective facilitator (it’s my handbook!).
One Other Topic: To be decided by the group, according to the group’s needs and interests (time permitting).
The Project: This will be you using the framework of my own Handbook to create your own. This Handbook will then inspire you to make whatever changes you need to make, to make your world and the human world a better world.
And so there you have it. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: your sense of self-confidence and self-belief will be boosted, or dramatically boosted, depending on your current levels.
My next Letter will come at the point when I begin sharing the course details to the wider world early next week. So, if you know you want to be on the course, email me before the weekend is over to stake your place.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Philip
