» Congratulations to our Certified Mentor Class of 2010!
Congratulations to our Certified Mentor Class of 2010!
Join us in congratulating our newest Option Process Mentor-Counselors®. These graduates have each mastered The Option Process Dialogue®, a proven, acclaimed technique that offers an unparalleled capacity to help individuals uncover and clarify limiting beliefs that cause undesired emotions and behaviors.
The process of becoming a Mentor-Counselor is a rigorous one but the rewards are great. Certified Mentors must master techniques that allow them to help others, and themselves, to overcome self-limiting beliefs that fuel discomfort and unhappiness.
Congratulations to each one of these incredible people! Please read on for words from the graduating class and photographs from the graduation ceremony. Enjoy!
Find out more about the Certification Program
Photographs of the Graduation Ceremony
Excerpts from Graduation Speech
composed by the team of graduates
It’s unbelievable that we are at the conclusion of this adventure, however, we are also going forth with an entirely new perspective, set of beliefs and experiences for the next part of our lives.
We are deeply grateful to each of you – the teachers (Bears, Sam, Ron, Beverly, Clyde, Stan) and the rest of the staff, Zoe, Kirin, the angels, and Kris and the volunteers for their willingness to share their thoughts and experiences with us so that we could learn the dialogue process. The huge love and unwavering support that we have felt from the moment we arrived has enabled us to float through this month.
We are also here to celebrate one another and the intention and conviction with which we established and remained 100% true to the team vision that we created. Our group bonded at the outset of this wonderful journey, created an authentic and cohesive group with a shared vision. We learned and grew together, while loving, supporting and challenging one another with playfulness and intensity. The team committed to our highest level of personal and interpersonal authenticity and lived that commitment throughout. As a result, we created a community that we will always remember, treasure and continue to deepen. This community is the end result of the vision and the underlying conviction that we rallied around.
The key elements of the team vision that we created were:
- that we would all be certified and transformed
- that we would be 100% authentic, 100% of the time
- that we would immediately drop all judgments of ourselves and each other
- that we would love and support each other 24/7
- that we would show the 3 Es – energy, excitement, and enthusiasm throughout the program
- that we would embrace a “yes, thank you” response to everything we were presented with
- that we would demonstrate excellence in studentship
- and that we would playfully challenge each other
Many teams create a vision and yet do not realize that vision. What were the keys to our success?....that we all embraced it and lived our vision to the utmost of our abilities – when one of us was uncertain, we immediately brought it to their attention and lovingly boosted that person up.
Personal Thoughts by Each Option Process Mentor
Bears you have often suggested that if we go for complete immersion, then dramatic change is possible. I took that advice and each and every one of the teachers respected, loved and cared for me in a way that I have never previously experienced. With enormous love, all of you challenged, provoked and pushed me to extend myself even when I was clueless, confused and scared. I arrived in January, dedicated to transforming the spiritual aspect of myself – to develop a more meaningful connection with God and with my soul. The universe aligned me with a harem of 6 female forces of nature – and I was given a glorious month that exceeded my wildest hopes – one amazing month and now a lifetime ahead of me to design the life that I want. This transformation has provided me with the ability to live a life of clarity, trust and celebration and leave behind the life of fear and judgment that I used to live before I found this wonderful slice of heaven called the Option Institute.
So now that I have learned to put my harshness, rigidity and my frown in the dumpster, I will use warmth and a smile and more than just a touch of passion to express how immensely grateful I am to have been blessed to have this experience with all of you.
~ Steve B.
What started as a dream to master the Option Dialogue helped me transform my life by more soaring, graceful, leaps imaginable. This month was an opportunity to be authentic with myelf, wanting to look at self doubt and answer questions I had never considered before. I learned to love, accept and joyfully celebrate who I am, embrace my world in happiness, live completely free to create the life I want, and show up in it with an open heart. Mentoring is one of the most perfect gifts of love that I give myself and others, and I am thrilled for having experienced this truly wonderful journey – Bears and Samahria, I am deeply, lovingly grateful to you for passionately presenting to the world the purest form of the dialogue. I am delighted to have studied at the Institute, and be part of a growing community of friends. Marvin and Nell, the very dearest loves of my life, I share this moment with you. I nourish myself with our love, growing it endlessly
~ Roe Di Bona
I am amazed by the absolute love that I have experienced here not only by my fellow students but by the love our teachers gave to each and everyone of us. I was able to learn the most important lesson, that when I suspend judgment I give myself an opportunity to look at myself and change my beliefs and see that nothing is fixed. In our team vision we said that we would love and support each other 24/7 -- this team honored that vision when I was asked to do some late-night homework to change some beliefs that were not serving me, not only in mentor training, but in life. I dialogued until the wee hours of the morning with the support and love of the entire Mentor class. What an amazing evening that was -- once I decided that I was worthy, I realized I was comfortable in my own skin and decided that this was how I wanted to live my life. I took a walk with God that night and oh what an amazing night that was. Thank you Tim and Liam and all of you who loved and believed in me.
~ Kathleen Corelli Byrne
My goal in taking Mentor training was to transform myself into a loving, present, accepting person who can easily decide to be in the attitude in any environment and under any circumstance with friends, family, coworkers and even with strangers. I had already had a taste of this loving attitude last year during Power Dialogues and Advanced Power Dialogues, and decided to learn how to make it the foundation of my daily life. During this month of January with the loving guidance, support and feedback from my amazing teachers, and the playfully challenging support of my Team mates, I have gradually blossomed into accepting myself while still wanting to change, have observed myself with curiosity, and have witnessed my idiosyncrasies without judgment. Once I started loving myself more consistently, loving the stranger who sits across from me in the explorer’s chair has become an easy flow. Then something unexpectedly beautiful happened in a dialogue this week, as I was sitting in the explorer’s chair in front of a loving mentor. For a moment, I stepped out of the explorer’s role and saw myself from a mentor’s perspective. I felt such tenderness for Nico the explorer, seeing all the complicated mechanisms that I had set up to take care of myself. I observed myself without any judgment at all, just marveling at everything, as I would if I were listening to an explorer. It was so sweet to realize that I can create this experience for myself whenever I want, and in that moment I knew I had reached my goal.
~ Nico Panigutti
The part of the team vision that embodies how I have done this month is to love and support one another 24/7. My son-rise mom (AKA Rekha) says that's because I'm the best caretaker in the world, but I think it's just because as I've made my love bigger and more visible, the other parts of the team vision just seem to be a natural part of doing whatever I'm doing. You can't love and judge at the same time -- love naturally increases my energy, enthusiasm, and excitement. Love is a wonderful place to playfully challenge from, and everything feels like a Yes, Thank You! when you're coming from Love. If I could be granted one wish, it would be that my teammates, my family, and all those here today would decide to make their own love bigger, more visible, and more concrete in the world. Love isn't fluffy, it's amazingly practical in everyday life. Imagine how our world could look with Love as the first order of business.
~ Ronda Fitzsimmons
I decided to do this month in the way I want to do my life now onwards. Doing something I find challenging without pressure or any required outcome, so to do this my focus became having fun. What I noticed is that while I was having fun nothing else mattered and soon everyone else joined my games. Now I feel like I am ready to graduate from my playroom. The beauty of this model is that is completely transferable into my everyday life. I no longer need to use pressure as a motivator, just have fun doing what I want and the rest will happen around me! I am very grateful to Bryn and William for helping to start my journey.
~ Rekha Neilson
My goal in doing this training was to transform myself to become a person free of self judgment and judgment of others. I'm so excited that I accomplished both, first by getting in touch with the "me" that I love. Following a guided meditation with Samaria I took on the belief that I am loving, peaceful, beautiful, and perfect as I am. I also developed a belief that 'everything is perfect', by learning to say "yes, thank you" in situations judged in any way as bad. A fantastic aspect of this too was getting in touch with the playful side of me – a part that I stuffed for years. Through self-studentship, I also became aware of, acknowledged, accepted, sought to understand, and changed my belief that "I have to focus on all things serious in order to survive", to a belief "that life is fun and it's OK to enjoy it and be at peace with wherever I am in the world."
The most wonderful aspect of the month for me was learning that mentoring is truly a gift for me. I can help others understand how they think and feel, but each time I do this, it intensifies my love for myself. In this respect, I believe there's no such thing as altruism: "No man can sincerely help another without helping himself" (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
~ Cynthia Thompson
