My most personal insights from Awesomeness Fest

Last week I attended an amazing event. Over 230 people from all around the world came to meet on a beautiful tropical island of Bali to discuss and exchange mind- and life-changing ideas. This even was Awesomeness Fest.

© All Is Amazing

Just as good as the beginning of this story is, every moment of it till the very end, was inspiring and challenging. And its effects are still strong and vivid in my mind and heart even today, days after it ended.

I got a chance to meet amazing people, from world renowned speakers like Lisa Nichols, co-founder of Science of Stillness and a promoter of meditation, Tom Cronin, Dr Clarence Tan, who’s an ambassador for Singularity University to such extraordinary people as Rodolfo, who spent a year in total silence not speaking a single word.

I got inspired by every single person I spoke to.

And today I want to share my main lessons from this event with you, adding a bit from myself as well.

This is not my usual blog post. This is very personal. Because I believe that this can make a difference in your life, like it did in mine.

Here are 7 main insights from Awesomeness Fest Bali 2013

1. Turn your limiting beliefs into positive mantras

Do you feel like you’re never good enough? Or that you never get appreciated for your work? Do you find yourself often thinking that nobody loves you or that you don’t deserve to be loved?
All of these (and it’s only a few examples), are our limiting beliefs. We all have them. We are all the victims of these negative thoughts.

What’s crazy about those beliefs is that they are not true!
Let’s be logical. Is it possible that really nobody, not a single person in the world loves you?
And that you’ve never ever heard a “thank-you” or “good-job” from another person?

But despite knowing on a conscious level that these beliefs are not true, we still believe them. We still listen to them. We’ve been telling ourselves the same old thing so long, that we truly deeply convinced ourselves that they are true.

Limiting beliefs are unfortunately what stops us from going for what we want. They paralyze us. They steal from us our talents and potential.

Changing them isn’t easy. It took many years for us to believe in them, it must take some time and practice to now believe the opposite.

Lisa Nichols on stage at Awesomeness Fest Bali 2013

A way to do it, as presented by amazing Lisa Nichols (I mean it, she is amazing! Just go to YouTube and search for any of her videos), is to turn your limiting belief into a positive mantra.
For example, if your limiting belief is Nobody loves me, you will change to: I am loved by others.

With Lisa Nichols, world renowned motivational speaker and coach

Take some time to think of your main limiting belief. What comes to your mind whenever you feel down or sad. What kind of thoughts occupy your mind most often?

Once you know what your main limiting belief is, turn it into a positive mantra. And then write it down and stick it anywhere where you will see it: door, mirror, wall, etc. And keep repeating it to yourself until you believe it.

Thank you Lisa for this amazing insight!

2. When asked ‘What do you do?’, pitch it

The second insight from Awesomeness Fest is more business-oriented.

This advice also comes from Lisa Nichols. And I loved that she shared it with us, because I came across this idea before, added it to my to do list, and honestly – never got to it.  So this time I actually sat down, and did it.

I want you to answer in your mind this question: What do you do in life?

Ok, done?
Great.

Some of the answers we heard at the event were: “I organize conferences”, “I am a coach”, “I started a healing school”.
But there is one main problem with these answers. These are emotionless, cold statements describing the process. You well know that every time you talk to your customers, you need to talk in terms of benefits, and not functions. The same rule should apply when you share with others what you do.

If you are a life coach, think what it is that you help people with? What problem or pain do you help them relieve? What joy do you bring to their lives?

So instead of saying” I am a life coach”, you should rather say: “I empower people to find the strength in themselves to achieve their deepest dreams through personal coaching”. Can you see the difference?

I want you to now change your initial pitch. To do so, simply answer this question: As a result of what i do….
And this is your unique value. This is your pitch. Keep it simple and short. Don’t be afraid to be bold.

3. To change your mind, change your environment

Do you know what is the best way to help a disorganized person get their thoughts and tasks in order? Get their environment in order!

If you find yourself thinking and working on more than one thing at a time, and getting lost what you should focus on first (that would make you similar to me by the way ;p), then take a look at your desk. Is it messy? How many things do you have there? How many papers and documents? Clean your desk, put everything in order, and you will see that you’ll get more order in your mind, too.

With Roger Hamilton, an educator and social entrepreneur

We are very sensitive to our environments. As humans we are very adjustable. We will fit almost any environment.
Think of the last time you attended an elegant dinner or gala. What did you wear? How did you move? What was your voice like?
And then of the last time you went for a beer with your best friend. How different was that?

Use this flexibility to your advantage. If you want be get more creative, go into a creative space (like a gallery). If you’re stressed and looking for relaxation, go to the beech or in the forest, close to nature where there are no other people. You will find yourself absorbing the traits of these places, adjusting to them. They will become your inspiration.
Whenever you feel stuck, just change the place, go somewhere else – anywhere!

I have personally experienced that many times in my life.
I’m Polish, and apart from Poland I lived in the US, UK, Italy, and now I’m in Malaysia.
Every time i change my place, I get new ideas, new inspiration. Change of my environment means changes in me.

Thanks for this insight goes to Roger Hamilton!

4. Get a coach

Life is a never-ending learning. You will never be smart enough. You will never know it all. You will never be an expert. But you will always progress.
Learning is crucial for anybody who wants to be successful in life, and it doesn’t only refer to your business and career.
Humans are great at one thing: inventing new things. We discover something new every year (I don’t know the statistics on that, but I believe I could even argue that we invent something new every day). If you ever stop learning, you will fall behind, There is no middle way, you either move forward or you move backwards. You can’t stay in the same place, because even if you stay still, everything around you moves.

A great way to keep the learning practice is to choose a coach. You might not be able to afford to pay him. But with Internet nowadays, you have access to limitless free content.
Search online everything you can of that coach. You will for sure find reports, articles and videos with their talks and trainings. Watch and read all of it.
And if you can afford to get a coach, then do. You don’t have to worry about not living in the same place. It’s common for coaches to held their sessions via Skype.

5. Don’t listen to people who look up to you. Listen to the person you look up to.

I’m not saying ignore all the people who find inspiration in you. On the contrary. Remember you have a unique gift and talent and you are here to share this gift. Your whole purpose is to be somebody that others look up to, to inspire and teach others.

This is about something different. Let me explain it through a little test I want you to do.
Stand by the wall, and try to reach with your hand as high as possible. But don’t cheat, no standing on your toes or jumping! :)
Mark this spot with a pen (you can just put a little dot, no need to ruin your wall for that!).
Look at that dot (or line).
Now I want you to reach beyond it. Stand again by the way and reach with your hand so far that your fingers will be covering the dot.
Not so difficult, right? The reason why the second time you managed to stretch more is that you had a clear, challenging objective in front of you.

You want the same kind of clear and challenging goal in your life. And the best way to do it is to find somebody who is 10 steps ahead of you. Somebody who inspires you, who impresses you. This is the person you want to talk to you. Because this person won’t tell you how great you are doing, and how much better you are doing than others. This person will tell you that you can do better. That you need to work even harder and that you have all it takes to cover these 10 steps and be where they are. They will provide you that push you need to stretch yourself to always do more and always do better.
If you listen to those who look up to you, sooner or later you’ll rest on your laurels and stop progressing. And with time, you will fall behind, watching how those who used to look up to you, overtook you.

6. Embrace duality in your nature

To be successful at something, you need to be the best at it.
If you’re a singer, you need to be an expert in singing. If you’re a speaker, you need to be the best speaker ever.
No matter what you do, be brilliant, be courageous, be outstanding, be fast, be bold, know everything.
You need to be the best in what you do.

But, in spite of being the best, you need to stay humble. Be the best, but never assume you are the best. Be the best and be average at the same time. Be brilliant and be clueless. Be courageous and be scared.

It’s the duality that makes all the difference. Because even though we need to strive for the best, none of us is. There are always moments when we doubt ourselves, when we feel weak, when we are scared. Embrace these emotions, too, as there is a lot of potential and energy in them.

It also reminds you that there is always more that you can do, always more to learn, that there is always space for improvement.

7. Don’t be afraid to be outraged by things, you need it to change them

Dave Logan on the stage, Awesomeness Fest Bali 2013

I want you to imagine that you’re sitting in a restaurant with Martin Luther King Jr. You’re drinking tea, and you’re discussing racial issues in America. Imagine him telling you how he feels about it. What kind of emotions can you sense? Is he calm and relaxed? Or is he rather tense and angry?

We often talk about developing in us positive emotions as it’s a great source of energy we need to achieve our goals. But Dave Logan, the author of Tribal Leadership and a co-founder and Senior Partner of CultureSync, invites us to embrace the negative energy as well. See, if you are happy with things, you don’t feel the urge to change them. In order to make a big change you need that anger, you need to feel that outrage!

Whenever you fins yourself being very emotional about something, take it as a sign. Can you improve it? Can you make it work better? Your outrage is what you essentially need to change it.

And if you already have a project or business, try finding elements that annoy you, that trigger those emotions in you. That will help you stay focused and motivated to work till you make it better.

Extra tip

The first night of the event, I talked to a very interesting man. He shared with me his life story, the challenges he’s overcome and the goals he is working on achieving.
This person was one of the most inspiring people I met that weekend.
There was one thing he said he did, that really got me curious. He mentioned it more as a joke, not being aware of how huge of an impact that tiny little thing he did, had on his life.

The idea is this: change your computer password. Silly, right? How does changing a password have anything to do with your life?
On the surface, nothing. And that’s why he didn’t think much of it either. But there is so much more to it.

Imagine you change your computer password to I am making $30,000 a month or I deserve to be loved.
And then you write that on your computer like 20 times a day, every time you leave it for more than a few minutes. Every day, day after day…
Without realizing it, you just added to your life a powerful practice of positive mantra (or in psychology jargon: positive affirmations).

The way human brain works, is that the more it’s exposed to an idea, the truer it becomes.
The first time you type your new password, nothing will change. But after a week, two, three, and finally after a month, you will start noticing things and people in your life that will be helping you to get there. This is called a self-fulling prophecy. It basically means, that if we strongly expect a certain outcome, we will change our environment to make it happen (like selective attention, expectations, looking for new opportunities).

This is how such a small thing as changing your computer password can cause an avalanche of positive changes in your life. Worth trying!

Conclusions

Awesomeness Fest was an amazing event, from which I came back full of new insights and energy. And it reminded me the importance of exposing yourself to stimulating people and environments. If you can’t afford going away for a conference – don’t worry. You don’t need to. Just find people who stimulate you and make sure to spend time with them. Join clubs and organisations that inspire you to think differently. Read books. Go through courses. And have your mind-blowing insights happen to you every week!