Master Facilitator Journal | Issue #0423, December 22, 2009
Dear Friends,

As we move into Christmastime and the New Year, many of us reflect on the year gone by and the spirit of celebration is in the air. The act of celebrating naturally inspires a sense of abundance, blessing, gratitude and acceptance. So the celebrating can put us into a very positive, life-affirming frame of mind. This week's article, Celebrate, explores the benefits and methods by which we can employ this mindset in the work we do with groups. I hope you all have wonderful celebrations over the holidays and into the new year!

Christmas Gift Discount on FacilitatorU Memberships. With Christmas coming quickly, I wanted to extend to you a 50% discount on memberships at FacilitatorU. Simply purchase the membership and enter this discount code: christmas at checkout. View and purchase our memberships here.

Blessings, Steve Founder, FacilitatorU.com

Advertisements

The Point

Celebrate Celebrate successes, challenges, wins and losses, friends, colleagues, children and bosses.

Group Process Skill

A personal coach I once had would always begin our sessions coaxing me into celebrating something for the week gone by. Now I'm not one to easily celebrate anything and I often struggle to find something that I think is worthy of celebration. But I've since learned that celebrating is simply a matter of choice. And for those of us with ultra-high standards or who are super critical, we could easily go through our entire lives finding nothing worthy of celebration. So why is celebration so important and why am I bringing this up in a journal about facilitation? First of all, I thought this would be an appropriate subject for a Holiday issue. This is a time of year when many of us reflect on the year gone by and the spirit of celebration is in the air. Second, the act of celebrating naturally inspires a sense of abundance, blessing, gratitude and acceptance. So the celebrating can put us into a very positive, life-affirming frame of mind. What better frame of mind could you have to start your day, your work, your problem-solving or team-building group? Now I know that most of us aren't into celebrating just for the heck of it. In fact, I can hear your group members now extolling you to cut out this celebration crap and get on with the work at hand. "We don't have time or reason to celebrate, we've got real problems here that need to be solved! So let's quite fooling around and get to work!" But personally, I think the celebratory frame of mind will create better solutions, stronger bonds, and broader perspectives that the stern, problem-focused point of view.

Application

So how does one go about celebrating just for the joy of it? And what do you do if you don't have anything to celebrate?  Well, to start with, celebration can be as simple as just acknowledging something you're happy with or grateful for. This can be a simple accomplishment like, "I'm celebrating the fact that when my associate snapped at me yesterday, I asked him what was upsetting him instead of falling into my usual pattern of reacting and snapping back at him. This act really made a difference in the work we accomplished!" If you accept that celebration is a matter of choice, then you always have something to celebrate. You can even celebrate your problems as growth opportunities. Many people would surely be grateful to have the problems many of us have. For example, half of us have the problem of eating too much, while more than half the planet has the problem of not having anything to eat at all. A huge number of us are under stress at our jobs, while a great number of our fellow earthlings have no hope of ever having jobs at all. Many of us get frustrated over all of the family obligations that we have, while so many whose families are gone, wish they could simply have another moment with them. I think you get the picture. So I close by wishing all of you, my dear readers, with a happy, joyous, and peaceful celebration this holiday season!

Action

Your assignment this week is to have fun, enjoy the holidays, and to embrace and celebrate everything and everyone who is in your life. I'd love to hear what happens for you. Please send us your questions and comments.

This Week's Offer

Christmas Month Special Offer

Check out these two popular self-guided, pre-recording teleclasses. Buy any two self-guided teleclasses for the price of one anytime during the month of December. Add items to your cart, enter "christmas" and the discount will be computed at checkout.

The Improvisational Facilitator It's easier than you think...your life is already an improv! Learn improv techniques to become a more effective facilitator, trainer, and group leader

A week after the course I have found myself talking about and actually using the techniques taught! The experiential based learning really worked for me and I learnt whilst having fun – always a good way to retain new learnings. The course has provided me with a toolkit of great techniques to improve my own facilitation, as well as some enjoyable exercises to use with delegates. I have nothing but praise for both Sue and Steve, who walked their talk with their own facilitation skills – they simply flowed through the course with grace and intelligence. The content, the materials and the facilitators is 5 star stuff and I highly recommend it to any facilitator.
--Amanda Alexander, Coach and Founder of CoachingMums.com--

Click here for details and registration

Secrets to Designing Dynamic Workshops from Scratch 5-day teleclass for facilitators, trainers, and coaches with Steve Davis and Marion Franklin

Secrets to Designing Dynamic Workshops from Scratch, 5-Day Teleclass

• Have you been talking about developing and offering your own workshop but don't know how to start?
• Are you unsure about how to choose a great topic and title that will attract an audience?
• Are you unsure about all the pieces that have to be in place to design and deliver a great workshop?
  
• Are you unconfident in dealing with the unexpected that might arise?

FacilitatorU.com Membership Option

Become a FacilitatorU.com Premium member and purchase for these teleclasses for 30% off the regular price in addition to a host of other items and benefits. An exceptional value. Click here for details.


About the satisfaction guarantee

If, for any reason, you are not satisfied with this package, simply email us with a request to refund/credit your credit card in the full amount and we will do so immediately. This policy completely removes the buying risk for you and keeps our customer-satisfaction rates extremely high.