I have just completed the Mindvalley’s Quest version of the standalone program called Lifebook offered by Jon and Missy Butcher. One of my key outcomes of the program was to commit to learning every day, and part of the learning process is summarising what I have learned and what better platform to do it on other than my own “on again off again” blog that is centered around my growth as a person over the years. So am pleased to return to these pages and hope to be of value to others looking for reviews of various courses and books I study and cover here.
The Lifebook quest was a 30-day journey of deep exploration of the key 12 areas of life as identified by Jon. Unlike a lot of other personal development programs that encourage a more focused approach, their theory is that all areas support each other and by simultaneously working on all of them life improves as a whole. Despite the many years of personal development under my belt, I can not recall another program that would cover all areas of life so comprehensively and I had many interesting realizations as I worked my way through the program. It is of great value for anyone looking to evaluate their life as a whole and, of course, improve it. I really enjoyed the exercises and got a lot out of them. And the bite-size daily learning and writing kept me immersed in the program for a whole month without feeling like I had to put my life on hold to participate.
I would have to admit that I personally did not resonate with the character and the tone of the program leader as I was listening to the audio presentations. And I really didn’t enjoy the live Q&A sessions where I felt he was just repeating his rehearsed audio speeches rather than add something new and different and directly address the callers’ questions. Still, ignoring this more personal dislike of mine, I think the program does stand in the league of its own and I am very happy I have taken it and plan to retake it either yearly or when I feel like I need to do a life review and refocus after periods of downtime or stagnation that invariably happen from time to time.
My most important a-ha moments were:
- The paradigm shift in the section about finances where he identified money as the physical representation of the highest good a person creates, the culmination of their talents and contribution to the world, the value they bring to others. In a world where money carries a lot of stigma, this was an excellent positive belief and I hope I can ingrain it in my mind and make it part of my reality.
- The biggest a-ha moment came at the very end of the program as I was doing the exercise of reviewing the main goals that I needed to achieve to make my new dream life vision a reality – the main goal that seems to enable all others is having a lot of free time. But despite various strategies I try – routines, alarms, timers, mindset changes – I continue to work and not have time for other things I want to do. So the realization came – I do not think I ever would be able to put down “work” to just play or do nothing. As long as there is work to do it is practically impossible not to do it. So Instead of striving to be a woman of leisure I decided to strive to be a woman of learning! Learning has always been my lifelong passion and one of the things I wish to do with my free time. And it is something I could convince my mind is actually a more noble pursuit than work and put down work when the time comes in the day and switch to learning. This felt like an epiphany that is going to change the entire trajectory and day to day flow of my life but since it happened just a couple of days ago it is yet early to say how effective it would be in changing my patterns.
Overall I am very pleased that I have taken this program and would recommend it to anyone to take a real deep look at their life and create a cohesive and detailed life vision to strive for.