PSI Seminars - Have you nothing better to do with your valuable time?

I took the basic course 12 years ago, then I decided to take PLD (Pacesetter Leadership Dynamics). Three months of *** for me as I chose to suffer. At times I referred to PLD as "Please let me die" or "Personal life destroyed", but in the end, I'm glad I did it. One of the purposes of that course was to take risks (not physically) and step out of your "comfort zone". Sometimes I succeeded, others times not so much. That said, the best way to step out, is to ask others to take the basic seminar.

Related: PSI Seminars - I was SUCKED into this!!!!!!

Please let me emphasize this: nobody made me do anything I wasn't perfectly willing to do, and I wouldn't say I was "brainwashed" at all. That's just plain silly, with all due respect to previous posters. I asked many people to enroll, and five did. Big deal.

Initially, I felt pressured to take PSI 7 when I was in PLD. But I had problems getting along with people my whole life (I was 31 at the time) and I wasn't willing to listen to what friends were telling me about my behavior. I had friends who had already gone to PSI 7, and I saw them applying some of the skills they learned while there. I wanted to learn them too, as they related to my desire to understand relationship dynamics better.

So I paid and I went. I really did learn how I was perceived by others, and I got some honest feedback on how my attitudes and behaviors affected the people I cared most about. That alone was worth the price of admission and has served me for almost 12 years.

In March 1998, I paid and went to Men's Leadership Seminar. There I learned how ineffectual my leadership skills were. In the name of all things that suck, hearing that certainly did. I could have "taken my marbles and gone home", but I chose to apply myself and "step up" in the eyes of others.

That was a valuable learning experience, but the most impactful courses for me were the Basic and PSI 7. To this day, I use what I learned in those courses to better enjoy and get more out of life than I did before. Would I have learned what I did had I not taken those courses? I don't know, but of this I am very sure: I would have had some real-life wreckage before I learned with out getting feedback from other students first.

If some people here took the Basic seminar and are now lashing out at it, consider this: all that course entails is a cohesive and coherent packaging of wisdom and insight learned by humans throughout our short history. Nothing more.

If you consider using visualization and goal setting "brainwashing", then literally everyone is brainwashed. If you consider learning how people interact with one another to gain insight on how to better interact with them, then everyone in the business world is brainwashed. If you consider utilizing forgiveness as a means to let go of things you've done or others have done to you brainwashing, then every kind soul who practices such divine behavior is brainwashed. If you consider striving to live with integrity brainwashing, then every person who seeks to better themselves legitimately in life is also brainwashed. If you consider recognizing programs that we have learned throughout our lives that have held us back from living life to the fullest brainwashing, then everyone who looks within themselves to discover who they are is also brainwashed.

In the end, it doesn't matter. If you invalidate the course because you felt it made you wrong or uncomfortable, I guess that's too bad. If you succeeded as a result, that's too bad as well. So complaining about it won't make you any better off than you were before, and will only serve to dissuade others who would otherwise benefit from the learning experience.

I took the course in Las Vegas, NV, and my facilitator was Tim O'Kelly. He was very effective, and I couldn't care less about his alleged peccadillos. I knew him to be with only one person for the 6 years I knew him, so I wouldn't know about anything more recent. George Sousa was my PSI 7 facilitator, and no matter what his alleged personal problems were, he was highly effective.

You're not supposed to look up to the men and women who teach these classes as role models or as perfect, they're merely people, just like everyone else here, who are trying to do their best to figure things out for themselves, nothing more.

Todd

Spring, TX