Face to Face With A Storyteller

I just got back yesterday from my KL trip – it was short and sweet and inspiring. In fact, it happened so fast that I needed to catch my breath a bit.

Meeting personal development coach/trainer/speaker/author Robin Sharma was a dream. I’m usually quite all right and calm but I was nervous before going up to the man and asking him to sign his book “The Greatness Guide” which I had bought earlier. There I was in a line of people at the end of the full day “Lead Without Title” seminar cum workshop and thinking, wow, I’m so blessed to be here.

Beside a full day of learning and getting inspired at the “High Performance Leadership in Turbulent Times” seminar, I had met new friends too. I knew this was going to be a corporate thingy but little did I know how CORPORATE it was going to be! Everyone was either a vice-president or manager of some multinational company or listed company.

(Apparently, Tiara Jacquelina was there, so were a group of Datuk-datuk, Datin-datin and high profile CEOs. At RM3600 per ticket, I would assume only the top level people would be privy to such intimate coaching! Not that I saw Tiara. The hall was so packed with people anyway.)
But no matter what you are, you’re still human and it felt great to connect to people who enjoyed being inspired. In fact, I liked going alone to these type of events as it literally forces me to go and mingle with strangers and turn them into acquaintances and later into friends!
I always think, if you can, DO NOT go with colleagues or partners. You will stick to each other and not make new friends at all. What a waste of a prefect opportunity to truly engage with others in different fields and industries.
I liked Robin’s easygoing, modest and approachable style of communicating. He did not have a bunch of slides to show; he only showed 1 slide throughout the whole day and that was just a picture of Oseala McCarty. (Ya, you go find out who this woman is. I’m not telling you because it would spoil the surprise.)
But we did have a lot of partnering work – stand up, face your partner and ask or answer a bunch of questions. Or raise our hands if we agreed. Or clap if we felt we learnt something valuable.
So what did I learn from Robin Sharma?
A lot!
A lot of good stuff which helped me re-define what I want from life, for instance. How to cull the stuff from my life and say no ruthlessly to unnecessary stuff and focus (fiercely focus) on what I really want to do. How to be a personal CEO of my own life. How to shine as a human being. (Strangely, I was also reading the Lotus Sutra before this and it said the same thing although in Buddhist lingo.)

I’ll let you enjoy the photos while I write more on this tomorrow. (Ya, the only thing which annoyed me to no end was the guy who helped me snap a pic while I was with Robin. It turned out blur! I need some CSI level Photoshop version 20 to help me recover that beautiful moment. Dang!)
P/S: Robin has his own social networking site called Success Nation. Do check it out.