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Oh boy, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me. I’ve been working on clarifying a lot of my personal beliefs and working through a lot of shifts in my thinking as a result of that. It’s crazy how changing just a few beliefs can have an impact on your entire world view.

Part of the challenge I’ve been having is becoming really clear on deciding exactly how I want to go about expressing my passion and purpose in life. The three words that drive my purpose when it comes to contributing to the world is “To Inspire” , “To Teach” and “To Create”. That’s something that I’ve been able to get clear on for a while now. However, HOW to do that is another story. There are many ways to “teach” and to “inspire” and it’s about finding ways to do it in a way where you love what you do.

One of the challenges of teaching is that you often encounter “students” who listen to what you teach and quite often even agree with what you’re saying, however they don’t implement what they have learned. As a teacher of anything, this can be frustrating if you take the responsibility on your shoulders to make sure people learn what you teach. As I’ve been realizing, it is important to realize that the responsibility to learn is that of the pupil, not the teacher. There is simply nothing you can do to teach someone anything if they don’t want to or aren’t ready to learn.

For example, I have a guitar that I purchased three or four months ago and a guitar course on DVD. I simply have not made any time to practice playing guitar since purchasing the guitar. I have been busy with other things, such as launching this site. I am simply not ready or willing to learn it at this moment in time. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with the person who wrote the guitar course or the person who sold me the guitar. It is my responsibility, as a student, to get value from the course when I am ready for it.

One of the challenges of being a teacher, then, is the ability to accept the fact that some or perhaps even all of your students may not be ready or willing to accept what you teach at any given moment. The challenge is further compounded by the fact that most of us feel a sense of duty to provide value when charging money for our services, and in the case of teaching or inspiring people it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling guilty for charging someone money for something they might not get a benefit from right away.

For example, I paid $200 for the DVD course for my guitar, but I haven’t used it yet. In fact, it is conceivable that I may decide to never use it. As such, one may argue that the creator of the course charged me $200 but didn’t really provide any value to me. This is, of course, not a very empowering way of thinking since it is MY responsibility to ensure that I get the $200 worth of value from the course, not the creators, but what happens when the “product” is not a DVD set? Let’s say that the “product” is a one hour coaching session. The coach provides value by coaching the client over the telephone, however the student is not ready or willing to do his part to grow so nothing really changes in his life. Should the coach offer a refund to the client since apparently the client didn’t get any value from the call? What if the coach provides the exact same advice to another client who does make changes in his life? Should authors of books get paid less for books that are purchased but not read? What if you purchase a DVD but never watch it?

I have been doing a lot of thinking and clarifying in this subject area, and I read something in a book called “The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent” by Esther and Jerry Hicks which really helped me to clarify the responsibility I have for providing value as a teacher. The book states:

“The greatest value that you could offer to others (and you can call it responsibility if you like) is to help them understand that they are the creator of their own experience, and that they are offering a vibration, and that the vibration that they offer is what is netting the results they are getting. Then teach through the clarity of your example.”

Those words had such an impact on me. It is such an empowering belief for me to realize that I can teach through the clarity of my example. It honors and acknowledges the power of everyone. It also clarifies the role of my responsibility to people; that I am here simply to teach through the clarity of my example, if and when they decide to allow it to provide value to them.