INSPIRATION & FUN, THAT’S THE ONE WORLD ETHOS

Presenting workshops at One World is inspirational and fun – thanks to the fantastic people who come here -

says Dave Robson, Holistic Life Coach and Author 

The One World Summer Festival is essentially a macrobiotic event, and even though I’m not macrobiotic I love the ethos of One World – that’s why I keep coming back every year to run workshops in Life Coaching.

I thought it might be interesting in this article to present a sort of insiders view, or to put it bluntly, to explain what I as a workshop facilitator get out of working here and what I try to give to the people who come to my workshops.

My work is about helping you discover how you can let go of your suffering, when you are ready, and fill your life instead with happiness, abundance, balance, achievement, fulfilment, meaning and purpose. If you think that sounds like a tall order, indeed it is, but why bother to get out of bed if you aren’t going to do something ambitious and exciting that can make a real difference to people’s lives, and to your own life at the same time, especially if you know it works?

Over the years I have accumulated and developed all sorts of methods, tools and practices for reducing the key elements to small steps that gradually build and reinforce each other. That’s what makes this work achievable, as you will discover for yourself if you come and join in. It’s in my nature to take a holistic approach and I love practical solutions individually tailored to each person I’m working with. Even in a group setting I try to present ideas that each participant can adapt to his or her particular situation.

Of course I don’t expect a person to completely transform their life after only a one and a half hour group session. What I aim for in the workshops is to give each person a taste for personal transformation so they will feel galvanised and supported to take that inner voyage. I try to give them at least one valuable, life-changing tool which they can use when they get home, hopefully some inspiration to use that tool and, most important, to help them feel they have made some progress on their life journey.

What does it take for you to benefit from the groups I run at One World?

Well first of all, curiosity and a belief that somehow your life can be better, even if you don’t know how. If you are going to follow through on what you learn it takes courage, intelligence and perseverance, for you are embarking on your very own journey of self discovery. That’s another reason I love coming to this festival. Most of the people who come here are keen to participate, learn and grow, and that’s what makes it fun.

The workshops and the people who come to them also provide me with an excellent opportunity to experiment with new material and try out new ideas, some of them spontaneous and others which have come to me during the time since the last festival, and that’s what helps to keep the work fresh. I also like to experiment with the format – one year I ran three workshops each pretty much the same, another year I ran a series of four workshops in which one led on to the next and the next and the next, and last year each workshop I ran was complete and unique in itself, so in effect it was three different workshops to three different groups of people all in one week.

This last way of doing it seems to work best and I’ll be doing it again this year (2009). It’s particularly gratifying because it gives me the chance to be intuitive about which way to go with each workshop. It never ceases to amaze me how a sort of group vibration develops within the first few minutes and this seems to point the way the workshop wants to go.

I hope by now you are feeling tempted to join in, so finally, if you haven’t already done so, allow me to invite you to try a little Life Coaching with me at the One World Summer Festival. You never know, it might just tip the balance for you in heading towards that happy life you always wanted.

(C) Dave Robson 2009

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For more information about me and the work I do, please visit www.daverobsoncoaching.co.uk


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Don’t shoot the messenger

(from the July 2009 issue of Namaste, my free monthly e-newsletter)

The June mid-morning sun is baking everything in sight. I’m sitting in a state of deep relaxation on a pavement terrace under a shady awning outside a café on a tiny square in La Roche Bernard, a beautifully restored, sleepy, half-timbered small town in Southern Brittany (North Western France), enjoying a cooling breeze while dunking my flaky croissant into an extremely large and strong café au lait (it sounds gross but actually it’s delicious when the croissant soaks up the coffee), and reflecting on how all is right with the world, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye the front page of France Oest, a local Brittany newspaper someone had left carelessly strewn across the table next to mine.

Suddenly I froze. A small headline in the bottom right hand corner announced: “Michael Jackson est mort” (Michael Jackson is dead).

Unsurprisingly, my initial reaction was denial. “It can’t be! I must have misunderstood! He’s too young! It must be a mistake! Come on, better read it again.”     “Michael Jackson est mort.” Just like that! So matter of fact. And then the reader is directed to the obscurity of an inside page – in fact the very last page – where there was a very short and perfunctory article with a picture.

I daresay it’s not really cool for someone of my age to admit to liking Michael Jackson’s music, but I have no hesitation in saying I love it. Not all of it, but a goodly proportion of the albums Off the Wall and Thriller.

I know the man’s alleged antics with young children have been widely reported and his fetish for extreme plastic surgery was pretty whacky, and many people have all sorts of judgements about his behaviour. While it’s true he certainly did not treat his body as a temple and some of his music has a slick and sugar-sweet commerciality about it, he was a man who was relentlessly in pursuit of excellence, and for that many people loved him and I certainly applauded him.

There is no doubt in my mind much of his music is at the very pinnacle of its genre and stands the test of time, especially the tracks he recorded way back in 1979 and 1982 for the two seminal albums mentioned above with arranger Quincy Jones, another great music genius. I do feel it’s a great shame when we judge a famous person harshly because of his behaviour and fail to acknowledge the gift he has left us. Fortunately, with the passage of time, behaviour is usually forgotten if the artistic creation is of sufficient quality to endure. That’s not to say I condone unacceptable behaviour. I’m simply saying, don’t let your judgements blind you to the man’s work.

Michelangelo, by all accounts, was bad tempered, egotistical and wanting in his attention to personal hygiene, but all that is forgotten now as tourists flock in their droves to the Vatican City to view the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, and quite rightly so. Vincent Van Gogh hardly displayed the behaviour of someone who was happily balanced, yet he is one of the best-loved artists of all time because of what he gave to the world. Mozart was another tortured soul whose behaviour was so obsessive that hardly anyone turned up for his funeral. Such an occurrence would be unthinkable now. And Gaudy, the eccentric architect who left us the Sagrada Familia cathedral, and other amazing buildings in Barcelona was another disturbed eccentric who left a fantastic legacy.

History is littered with famous people displaying non-conformist behaviour who left later generations a rich and wonderful legacy and, like Michael Jackson, they all had one thing in common – they were suffering.

So to those people who will only remember the man’s alleged misdemeanours or worse, and who wish to burden themselves by hanging on to their judgements even after the person has passed away, might I suggest remembering the fantastic gift Michael Jackson has given us though his music (and dancing of course), which I am sure will live on for a very long time.

Try this – next time Billy Jean comes on the radio, say thank you for the music, be still and listen closely for a few moments while the funky riffs begin to be absorbed into your blood stream, and let yourself start dancing! You don’t have to do anything, the music will do it for you. That unique Michael Jackson rhythm is so infectious, so compelling, how can you not dance?