Loveability - 3-Day Workshop by Lizzie Prior - my Experience.

I am privileged to be a member of the Happiness Project team - this means that I get to play my part in support of Robert Holden realising his vision for the public events that he presents. My main job is organising all the materials that we use on the events and a lovely part of my role in this team is that I get a sneaky peak of what we are going to be doing on the workshops as I design and prepare what we’ll all need to do the exercises.

On the 8/9/10 July 2011, we spent 3 days in a beautiful conversation about LOVE in the form of Robert's most recent creation: Loveability - How to Love and Be Loved. I can’t think of anything more interesting to spend 3 days doing and knowing the brilliance of every other event Robert has ever done, I knew we were in for a treat.

I am always deeply touched by our Happiness Team and how we gently support Robert and the group of delegates who have chosen to be with us on our events. We have done many events now and we have developed a seamless way of solving problems, being prepared, responding and working together to create truly loving environments on each of our programs. I am hugely grateful to be part of this team and to be meeting such lovely people who attend our courses.

One of my favourite exercises on the workshop was a repeating question – where you are invited to answer a question over and over again to inquire more deeply into your experience. The question we had to ask was: How do you know when you love someone ?

The answers started coming very easily to me, and as we were asking again and again, I discovered that it’s a two way thing. When I described the feeling of loving someone, referencing the people I am already in relationship with, I then identified what it means to be a loving person to everyone else in the world. For example, I said ‘I know I love someone when I look at them and don’t feel like I want to change them’. This had me see, at the end of the exercise, with a full list of how I know when I love someone, that I had come up with a recipe for being a loving person and one part of this recipe is that I can look at everyone in this world and the most loving thing I could do would be to accept everyone just as they are.

The freedom this brings to me when I am relaxed and gentle enough to allow it to land is wonderful!

The next Loveability 3-Day workshop with Robert is on 2/3/4 December this year. Click Here for more details.

Authentic Relationships by Ben Renshaw.

I’m sitting here in Sydney, overlooking the Harbour Bridge in glorious sunshine in-between visits to Singapore and Hong Kong running leadership programs for InterContinental Hotels. It’s rare for me to have a bit of time and space, as normally a Sunday morning is filled with my 3 gorgeous kiddies demanding pancakes and play. As I take a moment to reflect upon what has led me to this point in my life there is no doubt that the most significant factor has been relationships. My marriage to Veronica. My partnership with Robert Holden and The Happiness Project team. My family and friends. My clients. It’s simple really: great relationships = a great life. However, simple does not mean easy.

If I stripped away all the complexity surrounding relationships and distilled it down to the essence I would say, our ability to be ourselves in relationships is the single most important factor to develop great relationships. Authenticity gives our relationships the best chance to grow, strengthen and flourish.

In my forthcoming workshop on Authentic Relationships we’ll be taking a deep dive on some of the key elements of relationship success including gaining clarity about the real function of relationships, understanding the key barriers to growing relationships and tapping into the truth about relationship possibilities. In the meantime ask yourself, ‘What are the benefits of letting my relationships be even more authentic?’