I open up the first pages of my moleskin notebook. Many would say it’s a monthly planner but I have used it only twice for that purpose. It was a few weeks after I bought it, just days before 2012. I was getting into monthly planners and the moleskin was the second one I bought. The first didn’t work the way I wanted it to. It was red, had a button, not enough space to write for each day, you know how that is.
There are only two entries where I actually planned something in my moleskin 2012 monthly planner and I believe both entries were written on the same day. The first entry was on page January 10th when I wrote, “leave for the airport. Flight to Amsterdam.” And on February 6th, “First day as a student at Knowmads.” The rest of the pages are filled with ideas, quotes, exercises, things to watch or read, and notes taken from my year (and extra half) at Knowmads.
I got a little nervous turning the first few pages of this notebook because I know that some of the first few pages aren’t so exciting. Since the new intention of kristin goes knowmadic is to write about what I wrote over a year ago during my time at Knowmads and reflect on my learnings from the perspective of starting a new adventure in the States. I believe (but I’m not going to look because I want to be surprised) there are meal ideas on the first couple of pages and I did not want that to be the first topic of my new challenge.
As to my surprise, right before the page of January 1st there are two pages and it just so happened that I wrote something quite important there. A couple of lines about Knowmads after I had graduated in February of this year.
It was an attempt to put what you get when you attend Knowmads in a nutshell. I wrote…
- Soft skills
- Personal leadership
- To trust yourself and your gut so much that you have the confidence to put what you want in the world
- Understanding feminine energy and how to use it to do business differently and how to put emotion back into business [to thrive]
Now I understand that we get so much more than that at Knowmads and everyone has a different experience based on what they want out of the program but I think I did a pretty good job of summing things up for the most part. There aren’t many schools where you can learn how to communicate in an effective manner with anyone (angry, frustrated, powerful, excited), how to ask for what you want, know what you stand for, deal with chaos or whatever comes your way, and how to lead people all by actually not teaching you any of it. Most of the learnings I’ve taken away from my Knowmads experience has come from the culture of the organization.
Realizing that I learned the most because of the culture at Knowmads is ironic because I’ve had lots of talks about how the culture needs to change but then changing the culture would be extremely hard. Looking back there were a lot of frustrating things about the culture that were hard to deal with like people not showing up, cleaning, and commitment level in projects just to name a few. However, learning how to respond to the processes and outcomes of these experiences shape the students of Knowmads so changing the culture to get rid of this could have the side-effect of not actually learning the things I wrote down on the first few pages of my moleskin.
Even though we did have some pretty good workshops, I believe the most important knowledge gained at Knowmads was done in between the workshops and projects. Sometimes the content is not the main event. The good stuff comes out of how you present, support, and perform the content. It’s really the shell, the stuff that fills the gaps of the content that provides the bulk of the experience. This is the culture and the culture is the most important.
I’ve believed for a long time that the culture of an organization is the most crucial part of a business (read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh). Now that I’m in the process of creating my business here in the States, this reminder about how I deliver my business to others is more important than the content. Because information is so accessible, my selling point has to be how to perform and give the content. This is a nice reminder of how I want to present myself to customers.
Another key take-away from this page is the friendly reminder to trust myself and my gut. I forget this important learning being away from the people and environment of Knowmads. Doubt and fear creep into my brain and it can paralyze me for hours or the day. But reminding myself that I know what I’m doing and my gut is leading me in the right direction brings me the energy that I need. One of my new proclamations:
Doubt kills everything. Tell it to go away when you sense it coming.
Those are just a few of my thoughts on what you get out of Knowmads and how I’m using my education to start a new adventurous journey here in the States. Stay tuned to see what else I’ve learned from my year at Knowmads as I go through my moleskin page by page. What will I find on January 1st?
kristin goes knowmadic 