We are all somewhere between Doing and Being. let's see how to turn a crisis to an opportunity.
Mentoring is about bringing experience, guidance and advice to this great profession with tools from the world of coaching, and how to turn the profession into a solution for 50-plus-year-olds, who are opening the door to a new career. And suddenly something happened that changed everything. A new era has arrived thanks to the corona. Everything has changed, and so has this article about mentoring.
I asked myself if Corona is a crisis that will change the lives of us all, or an opportunity that will allow us to start anew, both on a personal level and on a global level, and I realized that it all depends on our perspectives.
As mentors we know that everything happens twice, once in the imagination and once in reality. We know we have the ability to choose thoughts and feelings, and to change our actions so that they are in line with what we want to see in our lives.
On a personal level, I was in China at the time the corona was evolving. Luckily, we did not know what was happening when I was there, and when I returned to Israel, they closed China. It would have seemed something local that would not reach us, like SARS and Ebola, but this time it was different. It became a global epidemic, and everything I built on a personal level changed - the mentorship courses stopped completely, I built a medical center in Mandarin and we had to stop the activity, and even the "you are the one" course I built awaits the end of the period and isolation. Everything stopped at once. so what are we doing?
The world is undergoing a restart, and we all, together with the world, must move from a state of - Doing - to a state of - Being. Everything changes, and we have the opportunity to invent ourselves, to understand what creates meaning for us, what our mission is and what our mission is.
It is clear to me personally that my mission is to inspire people to walk their true path. With this knowledge I was able to connect with inspired teachers and people, and broadcast every night from my home a live broadcast on Facebook. That way I could inspire and connect with people and help them connect with others. To be in giving.
For 15 years I have been working with mentors from Israel and around the world to transfer some of their activities to the Internet.
For many reasons, including the ability to influence more people simultaneously, as well as the idea of producing products with passive income as well. But for some reason most of the audience in the world and in Israel still preferred the physical events and the good old courses and conferences.
I managed to break through this barrier eight years ago with Deepak Chopra, in the great 21-day meditation project I conducted at a world-class level and built the technology that made it possible. It was the first time we were able to bring millions to online activities that brought in millions of dollars our mentors, but still most of the mentors' activity was off the Internet in 2019 , and we failed to get more than two percent of people purchasing an online course to complete it. Very frustrating.
Then came Corona, thanks to which there is no choice but to switch to online video conferencing. This is the only option to work, and digital courses have become the real solution. Even schools have switched to the Internet (and virtual schools will still become the leading schools) - a cultural change and a change in consumption habits, which will make the mentoring profession even more desirable and economical.
This period, for us as mentors and for the whole world, is a real opportunity to show flexibility, not necessarily to continue what was before.
Our inability to look ahead, the daily uncertainty, and to some extent the loss of personal freedom, to fly or travel or even leave the house, changing habits like moving from family meals on holidays to limited meals, moving from face-to-face meetings to face-to-face video sessions - all create opportunity True to creating more connections and more depth with ourselves, with our family, with our friends, and also with our customers.
It is also an opportunity to show giving for the sake of giving. Many mentors volunteer for many projects, collecting food and donations and supporting vulnerable populations. And there are so many of these during Corona: children at risk who are forced to return home to the inferno they have moved away from, distressed youth institutions have closed, and the welfare activities most in need during this period have gone into a state of emergency. And here for us mentors there is a real opportunity for meaning in this moment.
The trip I joined in June 2019 took us to the Himalayas, and we climbed up to an altitude of 5,000 meters. The belief of these heroes themselves has become a belief in other people, and in the opportunity of life itself, when we returned, we created an annual program that gives tools to dream big: choose a goal for the year, and fulfill it together with our course mentors.
We first created a 20-week course, which took place every Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. We knew it was hard for them to persevere, but we hoped that 60 percent would succeed, and to our surprise 95 percent of the injured came to all the meetings. It has become the anchor in their lives. The power of the group, the content so important and the tools they received, brought them week after week to learn perseverance.
We asked the mentors to come from time to time, to feel the heroes wounded and to understand the situation, and at the end of the 20 weeks, to take them on a personal journey where they will realize the plan and achieve the goals they set for themselves. To our great surprise, all the mentors came to all 20 sessions, and the bond formed between the mentors and the wounded was inspiring. When I asked the mentors what makes you come every week, they talked about giving, meaning and mission, and I look at this period of Corona as a great time for deep practice of realization through giving.
And who am I anyway?
This is a time that is also an extraordinary opportunity for us and our clients to focus on the most important question in the world in my opinion, who am I.
When I was born, my father enlisted in the Navy again, after a few years in citizenship. We moved to Eilat from Kfar Netter when I was a year old, and my mother and I were alone a lot, until my brother Ofir was born, because my father served in Sharm. But as a hobby he used to paint, and that was our quality time. He even wrote me, his eldest son, songs.
After six years we moved to Kiryat Haim, and after three years we returned to Kfar Netter. Dad was released in 1984, and did not find himself a citizen. Tried sales, tried entrepreneurship and failed. For him it was terrible, but for us, the children, it was heaven. After many years in the military, far from us, he cooked and was present in our lives.
My father was an artist, not a businessman, but he did not believe it was possible to make a living from it, and for 20 years he tried to make a living from the service of the disabled, creativity and inventions. He had a hard time, but he did well and helped a lot of people.
Seven years ago he and my mother went to celebrate 45 years of marriage in Bucharest Romania, and the day before returning to the country he told my mother that it was the best meal, the best trip, the best day, and that he was happy. He went to bed, and did not wake up in the morning.
My mother called me under pressure: "What do you do, Dad does not wake up."
Paramedics arrived, and worked half an hour to wake him up, and all the time I'm on the line, and my mom begs him to wake up, and then they announced he passed away at night, and they were unable to save him.
In the evening my two brothers and two sisters flew to Romania to accompany my mother, and bring back my father. It was a significant moment in my life because I realized something that changed my life: for my dad, the last day of his life was the best day. And since then I strive to make every day one, because we will never know which day is our last day.
Everyone has a story, and everyone has a defining moment in life. Sometimes it's the hardest moment, and sometimes it's the best moment, like a wedding or the birth of your child. The answer to the question "Who am I?", Is the basis for our entire process in this journey. And the East thinks this is the most important question, so every guru will ask his students this question all the time.
"The law of minimal effort" says: Do less, achieve more. accomplish more Do less. When not running frantically, can be much more focused, and its sequel is the essence of Being: Do nothing accomplish everything. The goal is to find our way, our personal place, between doing and being.
Therefore our connection to the question of who I am, is a way of connecting to the part of us that knows. Personal energy is our essence, and from it we build the process that is a process of fulfillment, a process of connection to the soul, a connection between spirit and matter, between intentions and results.
And thanks for everything I have brought so far
My second recommendation to us as mentors and to our clients, is appreciation and gratitude.
I recommend saying thank you even before the event happened. Say thank you for what is happening on time. Say thank you for the hard things and the good things.
Instead of saying why it happened to me, say thank you that it happened to me.
An example from Byron Katie: "Everything happens to me, not to me." It is allowed to feel bad, especially after a miss, failure or any difficult event. But the "stoic" theory is to imagine the worst things, and then when those come, we will not fall. We let ourselves fall the lowest there is, then begin to see the points of light, and ascend. Familiarity with the Worse case scenario is actually enlightenment through suffering. 95 percent of our fears will not happen, but they run us.
And when to say thank you? I recommend doing a Thanksgiving session every morning, at least at 11:11, and possibly even the night before bed. Just write down the five things you are thankful for today. Our lesson is to live this moment, to be Being in my power, and to know what energy we are bringing with us.
Everyone has a significant event that happened to them in life, remember your story, in BEING, what energy do you bring there? In moments like these you discover your strengths.
Responsibly, it's worth it
The third point after who I am and GRATITUDE, is to take responsibility. I call the process I go through with my clients - you are the one because no one will do your growth process for you, and responsibility as we teach is a combination of two words in English: Response + Ability. Ability to respond.
Non-response is also a response, and we can respond to anything. I think responsibility is our solution to separation, because when I say about something that is not my responsibility, I put a buffer between me and him, and when I put a buffer between me and more and more people and more issues in my life, I just become a victim of circumstances - life is no longer my responsibility and I suffer, there I have tensions and pressures, and I always blame outsiders for that. It's my boss, or the bank manager, it's my wife or the kids, it's the noise or traffic jams, it's always something external to us so we do not take responsibility.
When do we realize that it is our responsibility? When we breathe consciously, meditate, run, or just be present. Each of the actions I mentioned reassures us, so the first action I recommend doing is to take responsibility for everything that happens in life, and recommend our clients to do the same. It will give them back control over life. True, there is weather, and diseases like corona and events, which we supposedly have no control over, but as we learned in the "Efrat" model, we have control over the interpretation given to these events, and the interpretation will get our emotion, and our reaction or action, hence the importance of responsibility .
And finally, responsibility connects me to leadership. Unfortunately, we learned during this period that the answers will not come from world leadership, because there is none. The US leader's response to Corona was shameful - Trump ignored, did not act on time and only reacted with contempt. The result, as of this moment, and this is just the beginning in the United States, is 350,000 sick and 10,000 dead.
Our expectation was that world leaders would unite and we would see global cooperation for the recovery of the planet and its inhabitants from the virus. It did not happen. Other leaders have behaved differently, but the leadership in Israel is stuttering. What we are seeing are wars between health professionals and economists that have created a state of uncertainty, and sharp and clear inaction, as was done in China and allowed the disease to be eradicated within two to three months.
And when there is no global leadership, and there is no national, and even regional, leadership, we have no choice but to discover within ourselves the personal leadership. Each of us leads himself, preserves his body, his consciousness, his personal growth, as Gandhi said: "You were the change you wanted to see in the world." Then, once we have found the leadership within us, we go out into the circle closest to us at home and in the environment, and our goal is to give and receive meaning. That is why we do things for others, volunteer, hold lectures and trainings, raise frequency and bring hope. And the last step of our leadership is to influence more and more people, and discover initiatives that will help the world cope with this change and turn the crisis into a real opportunity for a better world, a world of unity, a world of love