This week we had 3 former students of the IA presenting their lectures as (excellent) invited professionals: Edward Kinsella, Andrea Wicklund e Robin Eley, and making a long story short, it was impressive. I have, as they did, gone through deep changes in life and professionally, after attending the Academy, and the empathy with the paths these artists have followed was immediate.

Once again I’m experiencing transformations that will change my professional life.

Yesterday, during the English born and Australian raised, Robin Eley’s presentation another load of information hit me, and I learned a LOT about self promotion and attitude towards an international marketing. He also crossed continents to be here. It is never an easy experience for anyone, each person has their own reality, their problems, their lives, and breaking with it all is expensive, financially, emotionally and psicologically. It all depends on how bad a person want things to happen. How much energy one is willing to invest in his dreams, his life projects.

Expensive? yes. It will cost a part of your life.

Some people fall apart, others, as I did in each time I attended, feel exulting, and all have spent a serious amount of money to be here.

I had no coins to take a bus when I first knew about the Academy, but I set a goal ahead of me and nothing could get on my way to get there. Nothing.

I crushed myself working hard, and counted the hours during a whole year, until I finally was on a plane, landing in Kansas City. I put my marriage on the line 3 times to be here, and I understand that Monica may have feelings that are totally different than mine about this, but I also recognize and value her support in each of these trips.

It may be hard, expensive and emotionally abrasive, but it is all part of the cost involved in such a great personal investiment, and the benefits from being here are immense. It’s not all about money, the expenses here cannot be counted in currency only, and likewise, the achievements are far beyond money itself.

Looking back, this blind obsession is what allowed me to reach goals that were higher than my capabilities, and this is what fuels most of the personal conquests in my life. How bad I really want something, how much I am willing to fight for what I want, how much can I stand to carry on a dream until it comes true?

Earlier this year I experienced firewalking, which is walking barefoot over red embers, during a ritualistic training in Itu, a brazilian city not far from my home. In this same place, I had other major changes, after a 3 day course called Leader Training.

I dove head first in some deep feelings and learned how to deal with some powerful energies we carry inside, most of them are emotions we have, without knowing exactly what do do, and how do deal with them.

Fear, confidence x insecurity, focus, tension x relaxation, focus, serenity x fury, focus, a distant goal + an unbreakable sureness, and more focus.

I learned how to take control over some aspects of those feelings, and this, once again, made a lot of difference in my life.

One of the things I learned in these two occasions is to deal with personal power we carry within us, not really aware of what this means. It is a creative energy that can be foccused to realize things that seem impossible or unreachable, and we tumble on this energy every time we want something, obsessively.

All my major achievements happened on this state of enhanced awareness, and today I write this opening my heart about things that may not make any sense to others, or it may sound cheesy, but it is sincere to the bone.

One new goal I will take with me, from this year’s experience at the academy, is productivity. This magic touch we admire in our heroes, when we call them “drawing machines”, combined with focus, that I learned with a person I fondly nicknamed my “Xaman Master”, Tadashi Kadomoto, at the Leader Training in Itu.

The combination of these two trainings, the LT and the IA has granted me a feeling of power and certainty that I have so much ahead of me, so much to be done, that it is hard to describe, but then again, why would describing help me anyway? Future is not now, I must make it happen, and do whatever it takes for it to become true.

And I want it obsessively.

What a curious state of mind, I could be arrested if I have ingested some substance, but it’s all about focus, knowing where I want to get, and how much personal power I’m willing to burn to get there.