Saturday, January 23, 2010

From Alison: A lesson in making up beliefs from Jordan

Jordan is my teacher, I learn so much from him. This weeks lesson was about my level of belief in what is possible.
We have a recruitment campaign for some new volunteers for our Son Rise program going on at the moment, We are down to one volunteer and so want to find some new people. So I created a poster and printed off 100 copies. I planned to take it into the university in Ipswich, which is near where we live and so I wrote a letter to go with it explaining to the tutors how useful it would be for students to know about this so that they could volunteer. Jordan has done so well on his Son Rise program that he is now wanting some new friends and so he offered to help me collate the letter with the poster and fix them together with a paper clip. While he was doing this he was counting the number of posters, then he looked at me and said "Jordan is going to have lots of new friends now because we are sending out lots of invitations" He was imagining how each of these posters would land in the hands of someone who would be his friend. I however had printed off 100 because I thought that some would end up in the bin, some would be ignored, some lost and a few would get through. Out of 100 my belief was that about 5 people would respond. Even though neither of us had any evidence to support our belief I had chosen to limit my belief in what was possible. Out of Jordan and me, Jordan had the better experience of recruiting because he was excitedly expecting 100 new friends. So I started to imagine getting 100 e mails from people offering to help us with our program - how wonderful that would be. But until we get a response, our experience is going to be determined by our make up about what is possible and I am now going with Jordan's view. I am so grateful to Jordan for this weeks lesson.

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