.: Welcome to Optio - Optio Workshops :.

Chrysalid is the first of our two part workshop.

“He who knows others is wise,
but he who knows himself is wisest.” (from the great TAO).

And nothing can indeed be truer.

In the Chrysalid workshop you will come to understand why and how different situations and circumstances trigger your emotions and feelings. You will gain insights over how and why these affect your state of happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, depression, feeling useless or worthy, at times feeling acceptable whilst at others rejected, the times you feel loved and cared for whilst at other times just not good enough. This experiential workshop will equip you with both the tools and the “why” in order to breakthrough these emotional barriers and fears and shift to living a life free of such mental anxieties.

Day 1	As human beings we see ourselves as free thinkers, that our actions are the result of our free choices. If that is true, why then don’t we ensure we always enjoy happy, wonderful thoughts in every situation? In this session we look at how our thoughts are linked to past experiences, our culture and the environment we are raised in, and how these influence our values, ideals, opinions, beliefs and resultant behaviours. We look at how we live each new moment based on past memories and experiences, future hopes and ideals, and how these prevent us from seeing new things for what they really are. Perhaps we actually exercise no free choice in our decision making. That is what we are here to explore and shift from, that will enable us to experience each moment for what it really is.
Day 2	One of our biggest challenges in life is to gain recognition for who we really are as opposed to how others want us to be. Why is it a struggle? Because the environments we live in (work, home, social events) are only interested in making us conform to their sense of what is acceptable. And no matter what we do or how we fight to gain unconditional acceptance and recognition, it becomes an ongoing daily struggle. It is no wonder that our state of being, our self-confidence and our selfworth are negatively effected every moment of our lives. Childhood experiences leave imprinted in us many different types and degrees of deep emotional scars. In this section of the workshop we find out why we allow all this to happen to us and also have the opportunity of releasing ourselves of these.
Day 3	Living can be said to be a game of Life. And no matter what game we engage in, there is only one thing we are interested in and focus on and that is, naturally, to WIN. But what is winning and how do we win? How do you feel when someone wins at your emotional cost? What happens in a relationship when one partner “wins” at the emotional cost of the other? Can there be a happy union in the partnership? Clearly not. That being the case, has anyone really won? The answer is NO. In this section of the Optio workshop we look at why and how we play win/lose games instead of win/win games. Here we also learn how we can play the same games in a way that will ensure we always play a game of win/win to everyone’s benefit.
Day 4	Two or more persons reading the same book will invariably have different views, opinions and interpretations of its contents and will come away with their own, differing reality of the same work. What does this shows us? That because of our individual ideas, points of view and beliefs we create our own reality of events - which is likely to be different to anyone else’s. Our reality now triggers our emotions and feelings and we end up reacting. In the same event some else will react very differently. Why? Because of our different interpretations and therefore sense of reality. But what do differing views have to do with the factual reality of the situation? Nothing. On this day of the workshop we remove the “veil” between our own sense of reality versus the true reality of any given event. This allows us to deal with things for what they are instead of the emotional effect they trigger in us.
Day 5	There is probably no greater way to test to our state of well-being than getting into a relationship - or having a child. What people want in a relationship is to experience, intimacy, love, companionship, peace and contentment ... for ever. Instead, in the long term most people never get even close to attaining any of these. In the majority of cases couples have been conditioned to accept second best. And they justify this to themselves by saying things like, “well, it is not that bad,” or, “it could be a lot worse.” Why should things not be great? Why do we accept second best when we can have the best? On this day we learn about why relationships don’t work and what needs to take place to make them work. That way we can enjoy and experience meaningful and wonderful life-long relationships. This is done by building on everything that has been worked through in the preceding four days.

The Purcon workshop can be said to represent the next step of our journey of self-discovery. Having dealt with a large portion our emotional baggage in Chrysalid, we are now ready to further expose the core of our inner self. Many graduates refer to this as our “Spiritual Self”. It is a powerful journey and experience. One in which you have the opportunity of defining your purpose for your life (without any doubt). The fascinating thing about our life purpose is that we already know it, we just don’t know how to acknowledge it and shape our lives out of it.

Having exposed our true Inner Self and defined our purpose, we can now define our real definition of success for our life. This definition of success goes beyond, indeed transcends, all the limitations we generally create for ourselves when we talk about it in terms of our careers, financial stability, relationships, and other such things we measure our success against.

By the end of this workshop one will be very clear on who they are, what their life’s purpose is, and what they need to do to be a success.

The Purcon workshop can only be taken by those that have first completed Chrysalid.

YOU ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN HOW YOU
MIGHT SEE YOURSELF

At OPTIO you will have access to post-workshop support and/or counselling facilities aimed at supporting you unravel any unfamiliar “ups and down” thereby enabling you to live your life fully as quickly and effectively as possible.