The third day of the workshop flew like a bird. I basically knew what to expect from the first two days, so the surprise element was out of the picture. To be honest, my focus shifted a little bit from the actual event to the people involved. During these 3 days I made a few friends and I did a lot of social interaction. At my normal social interaction speed, this event might easily count as 30-40 days, this is how intense it felt for me. So, during the third day my thoughts were much more into other people’s ideas or reactions than in the actual topics of the seminar.

On the stage though, the performance was smooth as usual, even smoother than in the second day. We talked about emotions, relationships and spirituality, all intangible stuff, but Steve did a great job in covering all those topics. I also realized that at this point I internalized a lot of the theoretical principles, Truth, Love and Power. I found it much easier to translate these principles into my own reality model (or what I call a life management framework) and I also completed the written exercises faster than usual.

There were a few highlights on the third day, but none of them really funny. It was a light and open day and we did enjoy a little bit of humor every now and then, but most of the time we were into serious stuff. Emotions, relationships and spirituality are sensitive areas. You may laugh a little bit but not too much.

What Was All This About

I won’t describe the actual structure of the third day, for the same reasons I already gave you in the second day coverage. But I will finish these short series about the conscious growth workshop with a little recap (Steve uses the word postmortem for those recaps, I will stick with mine: recap 😉 ):

• the workshop was really useful for me. It was a growing experience and by that I mean something that solved some real problems in my life, not just entertainment, fun and laughing. I didn’t expected it to be really useful, but it was.
• the biggest surprise was not the information, nor even Steve’s live performance, but the amazing audience. And I mean, I was totally surprised and touched by those people. We barely knew each other but after those 3 days it felt like we were already friends. Incredible energy. I’m a little bit on the skeptical side when it comes to things like this. I grew up in communism, a society which didn’t encourage an open manifestation of your emotions and I know this upbringing really marked my approach towards society. It’s easier to get over this in written, but in real life I can’t avoid it, I’m the shy guy in the back and I feel great there. This event really broke this pattern for me and left some serious tracks. I was on the stage, talking to those people. One year ago, sitting on a stage, near Steve Pavlina and talking to a 120+ audience was absolutely impossible to imagine. But it happened during this workshop and I “blame” this on the great positive energy I received from those people.
• I tend to think this workshop was at least as useful for Steve as it was for us (or for me). I did have the impression that he grew up with us. In a very deep sense, I think this was a sort of a healing experience for him. I was almost sensing the fears he had and the joy he manifested when he overcome them. I didn’t have the feeling of a professional delivering a service (although the speech and the whole structure of the workshop were professional) but more of a real person starting something completely new, being afraid of failure, learning from each day and connecting more and more each day. It was less teaching and more sharing.
• no one tried to challenge Steve on some of his controversial ideas (like polyamory). It just didn’t match the whole structure of this event. It was really out of sync with what happened there. I feel like there is a gap between the StevePavlina.com blog and Steve Pavlina the speaker. Those are different creatures. And, up to some point, they may even live different lives and promote different messages. Or, at least, partial messages.
• I realized I had to come to a personal development seminar in order to travel for the first time in the United Sates. There are things that I like here and things that I don’t like. There will be a separate post about the trip, as usual and I’ll try to cover more on that there. But maybe Vegas is not representative for the american way of life, anyway.
• the contrast between the city and the workshop was almost grotesque. I know that some people living in this town may have nothing to do with the “sinful” part of it, but hosting a personal development workshop just 30 meters away from a huge casino filled with slot machines and sucking money and hopes from hundreds of people through stupid and mathematically engineered games was just too oxymoronic for my taste. Maybe the lessons were much more powerful because of this contrast. Or maybe not.

Well, that was it. I cannot repress a very strange feeling of regret about this. I actually feel a little sorry because it’s over. And I really don’t know why. I’m not 100% into what was said here and I usually take all the new information with a little bit of salt. I don’t think it’s the theoretical information that gives me this feeling. But I also don’t know what exactly is it.

All I know is that I did have a growing experience out of it.

Now, it’s time to fly to New Zealand. 🙂