ChoicePoints March 2004

"Telling ourselves the truth is an act of courage; telling our truth out loud to other people is an act of transformation."  _{Louise LeBrun}

This issue released: Monday March 8, 2004

Spotlight On - people, products and pronouncements
Today's Thought
Coming Attractions!
Quick Updates
Did you know? - arcane tidbits for fun & frolic
Thought Waves

Spotlight On — Client Discoveries from Igniting the Self

We love what we do and are always honored when our clients are not only willing but enthusiastic about sharing their experiences with us. Long after they leave Igniting the Self and the sacred space they've created in our Program Centre, they continue to include us in their on-going evolution. The following are extracts of some of the subsequent conversations we've had with folks once they've returned home. We share them with you so that you'll know what's possible when you decide "It's time!" - and you step into and ignite the potential that you know is just waiting…

" "ten times of what I ever thought it could be." I have learned things about myself, and how I think. I have also learned about what I think of other people, first impressions, etc.… I very much feel like I'm at a turning point in my life"

- Ross C., Toronto

"The experience was incredible! It resulted in experiences and insights that have helped me move from a fear-based to a life-engaging way of life. I feel centered and grounded… I have a strong sense of self and self-trust… does life get any better than that?!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

- Carolyn H-K, Kingston

"A release from many things that held me in the past, an invitation to know what I know, again, for the first time (that is, in a new way), and a peek at all that is possible for me!"

- Ray L., Sturgeon Falls

Our next Igniting the Self self-initiation and certification experience runs from April 17-23. If you'd like to learn more about the results that these and other clients have achieved, visit the web page Stories of Discovery. Remember, the Registration Deadline is March 29th!

For those of you who participated in our old NLP Practitioner program, you'll be interested to know that we still include all the same great NLP in our programs. However, now we've created a more expansive, intensive growth opportunity because that NLP is clearly wrapped and enfolded into a WEL-Systems context. Its rather like buying a new Porsche where WEL-Systems is the high performance vehicle and NLP is the tires! We invite you to visit the Portals Passages web site and explore the page Our Unique Approach to discover how our approach has shifted.

Today's Thought

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live"

Henry David Thoreau

Coming Attractions!

We are pleased to offer you the following seminars, workshops and programs. Each one designed to provide thought-provoking and life altering experiences for your on-going personal and professional development.

WEL-Systems Experiences: March to May

The listing above only shows the first scheduled date. For more details and the complete program schedule, see www.WEL-Systems.com/schedule.htm

Quick Updates

Portals Passages: Mystery and Mastery at the deep end of the pool…

We welcome you into a powerful way of looking at yourself through the lens of the self-initiation and certification programs of Portals Passages. Our new look and feel offers a prism through which to consider how else you might engage the search and just what else you might discover - about you, about your world and about your ability to engage that world. Take a few minutes and browse through www.PortalsPassages.com. You might surprise yourself by your ability to hear the call and your desire to step into it!

Feel free to send us your comments and your questions. You can contact us at Portals@WEL-Systems.com

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Body Mind Spirit Magazine - New Column

We're honored to be a regular part of the Body Mind Spirit Magazine under the creative hand of Jeni Meyer, of Saskatchewan. Louise will be writing four new short pieces for this e-zine over the coming year, with each offering following both the theme of the Magazine and reflecting each of the themes of the Portals Passages small group intensives. With thousands of readers around the world, we look forward to expanding awareness of a WEL-Systems perspective in a way that is both entertaining and meaningful. Visit the Portals Passages web site to view Louise's first column on Sacred Spaces - Inner Places

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"Fully Alive from 9 to 5" Goes to Indonesia!

We're pleased to add Indonesia to the growing list of countries that has purchased the rights to Fully Alive from 9 to 5, Louise's first book, for both translation and distribution. In addition to the existing translation into Mandarin and with distribution in Mainland China, both Fully Alive from 9 to 5 and Phoenix Rising continue to be reviewed by several countries for further opportunities for translation and distribution. We'll keep you posted as the contracts are finalized.

Did you know?

Its not only multi-nationals who are creating global impact

"If there is one dominant theme in what makes social entrepreneurs successful it is their creative use of human resources." says David Bornstein, author of the new book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, in a recent interview by David Creelman for HR.com

Bornstein initially was curious about an organization he'd heard of in Pakistan who made small loans to poor, rural women. What he discovered was a banking organization who's operating principles flew in the face of much conventional banking wisdom, yet which had the most enviable re-payment rate in the world and, through its unconventionality, had reshaped the world of international development.

Bornstein then began to discover other amazing organizations around the world who shared similar characteristics: against incredible odds, people of humble means, stepping up to huge challenges to make the world a better place. And he discovered that the keys to their success invariably included creative solutions, innovative use of people (who were often on the fringe of society), and a passion for social change.

As I read this article, I was reminded of how many conversations I have with people who say they want to make a difference but aren't certain how much one person can accomplish. It is clear from the many, many stories in How to Change the World that one person, even in a remote location, can do just that. Thank you David Bornstein for this brilliant reminder of the power of human creativity!

Thought Waves

The following is the second installment of a four-part article that chronicles one person's journey of discovery through the four program levels of Portals Passages - intensives for accelerated consciousness and generative change. Koreen Kimakowich is an experienced police officer, with a long career in working with others in often difficult and sometimes dangerous situations. A Certified WEL-Systems Catalyst and CODE Model Coach™, Koreen shares her evolution with you and invites you to consider the potential for your own. This month, Koreen shares her Resourcefulness In Action experience.

The Passage Way Back to Me - Part II

Resourcefulness In Action (RIA) - Staying in the tough conversations

Having completed ITS and finished the required material for the next step in this journey of accelerated evolution, I still could not know the degree to which my edges would be pressed and the 'bumping up against myself' that would occur. These insightful people at the WEL-Systems Institute knew that more would be required to continue to press for discovery in that journey back to me.

RIA was a moment that lasted nine very compelling days. Each day, I was reminded that the program and the people in it unfold exactly as they should; that there are no accidents and that each moment of fear is the one in which I choose to move forward in the living of my life or allow myself to slide back into what's familiar yet somehow, without life. Each day invited me to move further and deeper into trusting this even though I had not yet learned to trust it with my own fears. Each of us became the invitation to the other to trust, to engage, to experience, to become… and then to do it all again. Just like life, there was no stopping it.

With the patience of the finest of facilitators in Louise LeBrun and Gwen McCauley - both of whom stayed present until each of us was complete for the day - I discovered that I could no longer use language to hide from myself and the tough conversations. I liken it to a re-acquainting with language and engaging it in a resourceful way while your edges are undeniably being pressed. Offering extensive opportunities to work with and alongside each other, RIA not only invited but pressed for our individual evolutionary paths. Although each path was as different as the person on it, there was always more than enough space in the room to accommodate the growth and expansion that would result.

It was here that I met, for the first time, the vibrational me - the me that I did not recognize and had feared in ITS. That first experience of my own internal and 'self' energy was most certainly in ITS and even with life-altering events occurring out of that experience, where I got to claim the fear of it was in RIA. And claim it I did - and own it! From that experience was born the poem I Am the Source - The Source is Me. No fears and no longer mistaking the energy that is 'me'. I call that the Second Wave.

To attempt to describe it beyond the words above and those found in the poem, "I Am The Source", is simply not achievable. It is the most profoundly personal experience of my lifetime. As unique as mine is for me, an experience of this magnitude awaits you when you decide to choose to engage with yourself and your life. The 'seen' and 'real' matter we are considered to be is nothing compared to the unseen and energy that we already are and are much more capable of becoming!

So, as frightening as it was initially, I stayed in the tough conversations - and nobody got hurt. Beyond discovering the vibrational me, one of the other very significant moments occurred when through the patience of Louise, and the insightfulness of the other participants, I got to come into my own my way and in my own time, in a process unique to me and conducive to my own evolution. And everyone else did the same thing! Their way and in their own time. This is a magical, mystical tour of the world each of us creates around ourselves, and it is with WEL-Systems that all of this could be going on, and yet each of us is coming into our own, on our own, with the creation of the moments being each our own. Oh, the power of us all!

Throughout RIA, the space that each of us claimed for ourselves and created for each other became the platform for me to declare, out loud, the healing that occurred for me in ITS, without reservation and knowing full well that in that moment of sharing, my intellect was speaking aloud what my body - my 'self' - had processed, claimed and now owned as a profound learning time in my life. The learning was complete, I owned it and therefore the dis-ease became mine to release. After seventeen years of silence, I had found words to free myself from my own limitations.

I would come to learn in the next two programs that there was much more to claim and to own. In this moment however, I knew that learning could not have been without the re-claiming that had occurred in ITS. Of this, I am certain.

Koreen Kimakowich
December 2003

Part III - Influencing With Intention - will appear in the April issue of ChoicePoints

The WEL-Systems® Institute
260 Hearst Way, Suite 210
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada  K2L 3H1
Tel: (613) 254-7218
info@WEL-Systems.com