Growth Is Something You Say Yes To 🌱

Growth is not something that happens to you, there. Growth is something you say YES to. And the moment you stop saying yes, the story stops moving, regardless of the year you were born in.

Our 86-year-old retreat participant Ruth has spent the last several days saying yes. Here is a small sample of what that looked like this week:

Ruth stepped into a cold plunge. Let me tell you a little about the plunge, because it is one of the practices I've been building into my own life for years, and one we now bring into the Retreat. It is two minutes in an ice bath, at a temperature the mind does not want to negotiate with. 🥶

What happens next is not just discomfort training. It is a genuine physiological reset (i.e. a real drop in stress hormones, a real spike in dopamine, a real strengthening of the nervous system's ability to hold pressure without collapsing under it). It is also, and this is the piece that matters most, a rehearsal. Every plunge is a rehearsal for the next time real resistance shows up in your life, there, and your body knows, from the inside, that it has met resistance and outlasted it before. It is not required of anyone at the Retreat. It is offered. Those who want to be brave with themselves that week step in.

Ruth stepped in 🧊🛁

She also learned to eat with chopsticks for the first time in her life, at a Japanese restaurant we took the students to. And she said yes to something a lot more daring, which we’re not going to reveal here as it’s a surprise for the next Retreat participants 😉🤫

Ruth is what happens when the identity level, and not the biological one, is the level running the show. You have heard me say it before, and you will hear me say it again: identity comes before behaviour. Change the identity, and the behaviour follows. Ruth's identity, whether she would put it in these words or not, is not defined by her age. It is defined by a single, steady, non-negotiable practice: she keeps saying YES to Life with a capital ‘L’.

Let me bring this back to the room you are sitting in right now.

The ice bath does not care about your age. The chopsticks do not care about your age. And whatever "ice bath" happens to be in your own life this week (i.e. the specific thing your comfort zone has been loudly or quietly pointing away from), it does not care about your age either. What it cares about is whether the person walking towards it is being run by an identity that still says yes to possibility. Remember: Stress plus courage equals miracles. Stress plus resistance equals drama.

Everything I have just walked you through also recently landed on YouTube 🎞️

It is called How to Brainwash Yourself to Create Your Dream Life (in 6 Months). I do not use the word "brainwash" lightly, there. In it I walk through the five pillars of what an actual identity-level rewrite looks like: your operating system, your relationship with money and emotions, your authenticity, your direction, and your legacy. The material has historically been kept inside small circles of people who understood how to use it, and this week I put the whole blueprint on my public channel for you to benefit from.

Here is what I want you to hold as you press play, there. If you have been wondering whether it is too late for you, whether you have missed the window for a real identity-level shift, whether you are the wrong age, the wrong background, or the wrong version of yourself to do this work, I want you to look at Ruth. And then I want you to press play.

Watch it here → How to Brainwash Yourself to Create Your Dream Life (in 6 Months)

The Baton Is Moving 🔥

Every teacher who is honest with themselves is quietly building a room they will one day be able to leave.

The room I am building has been quietly filling for years now with our Elite Mentorship Trainers (i.e. graduates of EMF and the Retreats who have gone on to certify as trainers themselves, and now carry the material in an official capacity into their own countries, their own communities, their own gatherings, their own books, their own teachings, and their own local rooms). Watching that room begin to fill with people who no longer need me in it is one of the deepest joys of the work.

Let me remind you of something, there: we are not raising global consciousness in one grand movement. We are raising it one day, one decision, one local room at a time. And what one of our Senior Elite Mentorship Trainers, Ian Colpman, is holding space for later this month is exactly that example.

Ian has been part of this work for years and has held some of the most important rooms in it.

On Sunday 27 September, he is holding another one, this time entirely on his own initiative. It is a Community Day in England for EMF and Quantum Alignment community members at Wootton Park in Warwickshire, and it includes: round-table conversations on intentional living, a walk and a guided meditation by the lake, lunch and refreshments, and plenty of open time to reconnect with familiar faces and meet graduates from other cohorts. For anything Ian can help with directly, he is at ian@iancolpman.com.

If you have ever sat with us at a Retreat, walked through an Elite Mentorship Forum cohort, or taken the Quantum Foundation Course, this day is being held for you. Ian is holding the door.

→ Click here for details and registration