3P Random Reflections Blog

As a corporate trainer for 17+ years, I would often be dismayed at the number of participants who would leave training with a positive view of the course, but would rarely put all the skills into practice back on the job (including myself).

I would often talk about this phenomenon at the beginning of a course... "Do you find that you usually learn new things in training, but rarely put them into action? Do you more often than not, stuff the workbook somewhere in your desk drawer, rarely to be seen or considered again?" The class usually unanimously agrees.

When I ask them why, I often get answers like the following:

• It gets too busy when I get back to the office
• Change is hard
• I just forget
• I don't have anything or anyone reminding me
• You can't teach an old dog new tricks
• It's easier to keep doing things the same way I've always done them
• I'm just not disciplined enough

I would then open a discussion about how to combat this issue so that they would increase their chances of getting more value out of their time away from the office.

The interesting thing however, in light of the Principles understanding, is that I now know exactly why the new skills don't get applied.

The simple truth is that the skills were never really learned. There is a commonly misunderstood "trick of the mind" that lets us think we know something, when we really don't. Intellectual understanding by itself NEVER translates to behaviour change, despite our expectations and beliefs otherwise. There is ALWAYS a requirement for a "personal insight", or an "ah hah" moment, or some level of paradigm shift... thinking AND feeling something in a completely new way.

Change happens ONLY when we learn something in the depths of our soul, so that the idea for change is no longer just a "good idea when I get a chance to try it out", but becomes something more obvious, and natural, and intuitive, and just common sense to do, without much effort.

You know it's funny, after having the experience of realizing "the total illusion of our thought created reality and the existence of the state of the impersonal and unconditional", I was perplexed that when explaining this for the first time, that the person found it no more ground breaking than the description of my latest vacation (they weren't jumping up and down, having discovered the truth of life as well). I then realized right away, "oh, ok, we just don't get it until we get it". They may have "known" what I was trying to explain, using their own personal thought to create their personal perspective of what I was saying, but they didn't yet "KNOW" it.

And how interesting that this KNOWING requirement not only applies to learning what the Three Principles point to, but ultimately to everything we learn in life, including all the concepts and skills in every corporate training course we take.

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