Community is the Key to Growth

This past week was epic. I mean, this past week was unlike any week I’d ever experienced in this profession before. We did something called the Solution Focused Brief Therapy 5 Day Challenge. And what we did was every single day for five days, we released a training video and asked the participants to go through some exercises. It was remarkable. It blew me away and left me with one really important idea that I wanna share with you here today. But, before I do, I gotta tell you why it was so epic.

My organization, we have been leading the industry in training people for about a decade now. And one of the things that’s important to us is doing trainings that are really easily accessible to everyone in the world. And that means removing costs. So, so many of our trainings, literally over about 90%, are free.

So this was a free event that we did. We’ve never done anything quite like this and it was by far the biggest thing we ever had. We, we had over 5,000 people sign up from all over the world. The engagement, the participation, what ended up happening was nothing short of amazing. But here’s what stood out to me the most, is…

If you wanna get good at something, and it doesn’t really matter what that thing is, if you wanna be a master chef, if you want to be a professional athlete, if you want to be a scientist, it doesn’t matter what it is. Community is actually the secret sauce to developing that skill as quickly as possible. Because if you wanna get good at something, surrounding yourself with other people that are on that same path, that are trying to get to where you’re going, and have a similar like mind and skillset, but push each other… that’s the key to being successful in just about anything.

So, during this week, I noticed this amazing community was forming, this amazing community was happening with people literally from all over the world, supporting each other, encouraging each other, giving each other feedback. That’s actually how you grow. It reminded me of the importance of the community that we have built that is all about growing and really getting confident in your Solution Focused Brief Therapy skills. We call it the Solution Focused Universe, that’s known throughout our field as the SFU.

And you know, when I started doing this, I had no idea I would one day be in the position I’m in. But, I do remember being at an event and I was sitting in the audience, I was in the back row, I was sitting back to the right and looking at all these great people who’ve written all these books and published all these articles and giving all these lectures speaking. And I thought, if I’m ever in that position, I wanna promise myself I’m gonna tell the truth and I’m gonna be really transparent with what people need to do in order to become the very best that they can with Solution Focused Brief Therapy. And the reason this is so important is because our clients need us to be at our best, our clients really need us in order for them to overcome the challenges in life.

That’s absolutely why we don’t just focus on technique and theory and skill. We want to go deeper. We want you to get everything you need to master this. And a sense of belonging is key. We’ve actually just opened registration. If you happen to be watching this video while registration’s open, I’ll put a link in and you can sign up for the Solution Focus Universe.

You’ll see it’s a community filled with amazing training resources, but it’s also a community filled with people and connection. And that’s actually what makes us great. Never forget connection is so important that we actually remove it as a punishment. We use the removal of community and connection as a punishment. Like if you’re in prison, that’s in isolation. We take you out of society and put you in this place. But if you go there and you break rules, they literally put you in an isolation place. They put you in segregation and remove connection and it’s torture. That’s how important connection is. So I want you guys to, to understand that.

Hopefully you’re watching this video while the registration’s open and you can click the link and you can sign up and join our community. But, even if you’re watching this later and registration has been closed, cause we’re only gonna leave it open for a few days, or even if you’re not even a solution focused professional, you’re watching this and this kind of thing does not interest you…

I want you to remember that community matters. Whatever it is you’re trying to get good at, find the community that is best at that thing. Join that community and you’re gonna watch your acceleration towards mastery in that thing grow.

So, for us, Solution Focused Brief Therapy is what we’re trying to master. And that’s why this community is so important to mental health professionals. So again, if you’re watching this video during that time period, sign up cuz our community would change your life. But if you are trying to get good at anything, I want you to join a community that’s related to that thing and watch your skills and watch your abilities grow.