Personal Development: Can you get an overdose?

Awareness Porn. Excuse my French. I heard these words in a talk by Azrya Becquer, and she was pointing out a phenomenon that I recognize: a pitfall for many modern spiritual and personal development seekers is to keep on joining programs, retreats, workshops, etc. without having the space or time in their daily life to actually integrate what they just invested their time and money in. 

In a society where we massively consume more food, information, experiences than our bodies, minds and emotions can handle, the personal development and spiritual realms don't escape from this overconsumerism either.

I sometimes call them workshop hoppers. Those who are endlessly seeking salvation in yet another amazing course.

And there is a lot of good stuff out there. That's not the point.

And it can be an incredible source to feed your soul.

BUT

How much of what you receive in training and workshops do you actually digest and implement in your daily life?

My first question, before entering any program or training, is always: How much space is there currently in my life to integrate new experiences, information, change? Or how much space am I willing to make to put whatever I learn into practice? 

This is something we highly investigate when people want to enter our programs: Are you committed enough to make the space and time in your daily calendar to actually transform what you pick up from our program into your new reality?

Change is energy that needs to move from old patterns towards new behavior.

To be able to move anything, there is space needed.

We all know that change is most of the time not easy and that we are all so wired for habitual behavior. Autopilot does not ask a lot of awareness or new space and time.

The reason why a personal development training or workshop is not the solution to being stuck in an area, is not because the training or workshop is not good enough (well some might be, but that's not my point). It is because we forget to make room for our changed awareness in our every day life.

And as with most things that we don't create enough room for in our lives, they slowly fade away.

Yes, your awareness can temporarily be expanded and you might go home all excited about your new future. The only way for that new future to actually take place is devotion to cultivating your new behaviors.

And of course, I'm not trying to add 'performance pressure' towards any personal development activities, as if we need to measure exactly how much we 'get out of it'. I am just trying to bring more awareness in the choices we make when it comes down to consuming a lot of experiences and information in that realm, without actually honoring the sacredness of that development by devoting our time to it each day.

Sometimes we don't need another course. We just need to sit with ourselves and fall deeper into the silence of our own awareness.