Would you go around sporting a pair of old, ill-fitting, or broken sunglasses that did nothing but distort your view? You’d probably just throw them in the trash. Yet you probably still walk around wearing a different kind of “sunglasses”—old, ill-fitting, broken ideas about yourself and the world—without realizing it.
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Not all sunglasses are good for you
You’ve probably absorbed negative subconscious beliefs from your childhood onward. Over time, you’ve incorporated them into your sense of self.
Perhaps 99 percent of our decisions are based on something we think of as “reality,” but that “reality” is sometimes nothing more than the set of our own inaccurate and unproductive beliefs. Chances are, these beliefs are holding you back from knowing your real self—the capable, effective, strong, and empathetic person you want to be.
It’s hard to see the sunglasses on your own nose
Even if some well-meaning person were to notice your problem, come up to you, and shout, “Hey, your green sunglasses are making everything look green to you!” you might not believe them at first. That’s because you’ve learned to just accept that everything in the world is green—you assume that’s just the way it is.
However, when you remove these old mental and emotional sunglasses, the world around you can reveal itself to you in all its true variety of colors, beauty, and possibilities.
Let’s be frank here: It’s extremely hard to even recognize the sunglasses that hide the world from us. It’s even harder to confront them and remove them for good.
Hard work, real change
Klemmer’s Personal Mastery and other experiential trainings are specifically designed to accomplish real, positive, long-lasting change. They stand in vivid contrast to the myriad of self-help philosophies and traditional trainings available. These courses aim to move people past feeling stuck, unlike programs that only offer theory.
Klemmer’s courses will ask a lot of you. They require you to take an honest look at the situation you’re in today. This includes confronting the negative voices from your past telling you that you’re no good or won’t amount to anything.
The courses address the cycles of helplessness, shame, and failure you may have experienced in school, at work, or in relationships.. The loudest negative voice might be your own. It may be echoing and reinforcing all the words of all the naysayers you’ve encountered in your life.
When you participate in a Klemmer training, you don’t just passively listen to presentations and jot down notes, leaving no different from when you walked in. Instead, be prepared to experience a sense of what founder Brian Klemmer called “a revelation.”
This revelation concerns the obstacles standing in the way of your path to success and happiness. Indeed, it’s a revelation that will allow you to notice the sunglasses you’ve been wearing all along. And it’s a revelation that will be your first step forward with an undistorted field of vision.
The importance of reaching the heart
As Brian Klemmer pointed out in his talks describing how sunglasses work, a revelation is the only way to reach people in their hearts. That’s where change begins.
If you read about something, or if someone lectures you, you gain some new information. However, that information has probably reached only your mind, not your heart, so you’re far less likely to act on it. It’s even less likely that the new information will inspire you to make substantial changes in your life, and to commit to those changes over the long run. You just haven’t connected with the information or incorporated it into who you are. Result? You probably won’t do anything different going forward.
You might know in your mind that there are things you need to do differently: stop procrastinating, build out your business, accept responsibility for your actions, work on growing your self-confidence, or develop true leadership skills.
You might read dozens of books or take dozens of trainings and wonder why you’re still stuck in the same rut. If you’ve never had the impetus or the support needed to open yourself up to honest self-examination, reflection, and character-building, your heart will remain untouched by all the new information in the world.
Finding the freedom to change
While your participation in one of Klemmer’s trainings asks much of you, you’ll find that it more than returns on your investment.
Graduates of these programs number in the tens of thousands. In reviewing their experience, many say that they’ve left their view-distorting sunglasses behind and accomplished major transformations in their lives. They’ve taken on new leadership roles or enhanced their ability to lead and inspire in their current jobs. They’ve repaired relationships and earned the trust of those around them. And they’ve achieved both outward success and inner contentment.
Facing up to and discarding distorted views of yourself is incredibly freeing, as is taking personal responsibility for how your actions have affected your life and others’. When you accept the responsibility of remaining accountable for your mistakes and how you made them, you are further freed to build a life based on character, principle, and purpose. You’ll become the person you were always meant to be.
