Once in a while as we live we get to be part of something that are bigger than we are. And sometimes we are privileged to see a master at work.
For many years in the Garment Business in NYC I was considered something of a Master Craftsman, and in my small corner of that world, I had the pleasure of owning a formidable reputation among my peers. It was always my pleasure to pass the benefit of my knowledge about the technical end of that business on to the people coming up behind me.
This past weekend the favor was returned many times over. I took a bit of a drive north of Long Island to spend some time with my dear friends Debbie and Marty Yaffee. As most of you know she was sponsoring a weekend of two workshops. The first was "The Secret Behind the Secret" a presentation being given by Tom Nicoli, and the second was called a joyful life and a peaceful death by Tulku Thondup who is a Buddhist monk. I have already waxed poetic about this on Deb's site so I am not going to gush about that again here. Go read it there. But what I want to say is this.
It is one thing to learn from books or attend seminars watch videos and teleconferences. It is quite something else to be there when the magic is happening. I'd like to illustrate a couple of cases in point,
On Saturday night after we had spend all day (sitting on the floor) absorbing all the insights of this incredible man Talk, we had the pleasure of socializing together. I was sitting back observing Tom. (I will grant you it may have been through a slightly alcohol induced haze. LOL) Three separate times, he went out of his way to compliment someone about something that nobody else would notice. I am talking about things like the sparkles on the bartender's shoes. What this did was immediately bring that person into his space and thereby all of our presences. She spent more time with us gave us better service and became truly a part of our fun. Why did this work? Because Tom engaged her at a level that subconsciously made her want to be with us. That was a lesson I learned then. Now, once he had her attention, for example we were all talking about our business and she was interested and involved. He went out of his way to steer business to Debbie. She and her son. I tell you I will be amazed if this woman is not on the phone with Debbie already. Tom was magnificent and magnanimous. That was lesson number 2.
Finally another tid bit of a lesson. As I said we were all sitting on the floor on Saturday, I am not particularly good at that and by the time we had a break my back was killing me. So I made absolutely sure that I had a chair set up for the second half. BTW there was only one left to be had. When the workshop was over I looked over at Tom who was sitting to the side of me on the floor. And later I mentioned something about my back. He agreed that it was difficult to do. But then he said it didn't matter because when ever he started to feel it he simply went into hypnosis and it was okay it didn't bother him any more. That was lesson 3..Why didn't I think of that?