Personal Development Workshop Examples

Self-Talk:

Do you talk to yourself? During the course of the day and throughout our lives we all engage in self-talk. But how do you talk to yourself? Is it positive or negative? The way we talk to ourselves can have a huge impact on the quality of our lives. This video explores the power of using our own name and offers four concrete strategies on how to improve this self-talk.

Precommitment:

Did you know that people with gambling addictions can voluntarily add their names to a “lifetime ban” list at a casino? Precommitment is a tactic that helps keep promises by doing something right now that limits one’s options in the future. You may even being using precommitment strategies in your life without even realizing it! Watch this video to learn 5 strategies for precommitment and how to apply it to your life and help you keep your promises.

Stress Management:

How do you manage stress? Everyone has a moment, a person, a place, a situation. Something that burns us from the inside out. Something that sets us on fire until we’re ash, and we rise out different. For better or for worse, that’s always our choice. The life of promises is stressful. The more promises you make, the more work you need to do. The more you become a person of honor, the more stressed you will be because those promises mean something to you now. Here are five tips for stress management that will help you make and keep your promises.

History of New Year’s Resolutions: Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution?

Have you been unsuccessful at keeping your resolutions? You are not alone. Social Scientists have been investigating how successful Americans have been with their New Year’s resolutions since 1972. Learn the history of resolutions and what you can do to get better at making and keeping your promises.

How to Handle Broken Promises: An unfortunate inevitability

Breaking promises and lying are not only philosophically similar, they are biologically similar. What do you do after you break a promise? Or perhaps after someone breaks a promise to you?  No one has a perfect batting average on promise keeping, but it is incredibly important to remain accountable for your actions and reactions.  Learn six steps to handle broken promises.

Life Simplification: Making room for what matters mostIn today’s culture, we are always being told to buy more, do more, want more. We buy these items and schedule these commitments, but rarely stop and think, “Is this truly what we want to spend our time on?” When you simplify your life, you are able to focus on your goals and the things that are most meaningful to you. Whether it means de-cluttering your closet, giving up a bad habit or reevaluating your calendar, life simplification can make a big difference in reaching your goals.

Power of Artifacts: The impact of writing your promise

The physical act of writing goals and promises has an impact on achievement rates. Whether using a promise card or not, research shows that by simply writing your goals you can substantially improve your success rate at keeping your promises.  Learn why this has been so successful, and perhaps why over 8.4 million people have requested promise cards.

Code of Honor: Utilizing time and space to know yourself, check in with yourself, and live your life accordingly

Some research suggests we make 35,000 decisions per day. Sounds incredibly high, right? Well, we make 226.7 decisions each day on just food choices according to researchers at Cornell University.  The more responsibility we have, the greater number of choices we are faced with, and each choice carries certain consequences – both good and bad. This ability to choose can be liberating or perhaps lead to self-destruction. What if you had a tool that helped guide your decision making and behavior? Learn tactical steps to help create a code of honor that can help you make and keep your promises to yourself and others.

Character Education: Contemplating the most important values to teach the next generation

You do not have to dig deep to find stories of bullying or school violence and why good character is important.  Character education is as old as education itself. Throughout history, all over the world, education has had two goals: to help young people become smart, and to help them become good. But is character something that can be learned or do genetics play a much larger role? What does it actually take to become a person of good character? Delve into the current state of character education, what it actually is, and why there is still much about it up for debate.

Who Lives and Who Dies: Contemplating the unfortunate decision in humanitarianism

When a pandemic strikes, people are rapidly dying, and there are too few resources to save everyone; how do you choose who should live and who should die? Perhaps you save the youngest or the sickest. Maybe you just put all the names in a hat and pick at random. Above all, who should make these decisions? Contemplate which principles are most important in guiding decisions about how to allocate scarce healthcare resources during a crisis.

Dealing with Death: Best practices for communicating with a person who is grieving

As an organization, we have supporters from all walks of life and have seen many incredible promises made and kept after the death of a loved one, including our founder. A death is often one of the strongest origins for a promise.  The next time someone you know and love is grieving this information will help prepare you on the grieving process, how one grieves, things to avoid saying, a transformative process that may occur after someone grieves a person’s death, and contemplating one’s own inevitable last breath.

The Power of Checklists: How details make the difference

Death rates from heart surgery have decreased by 40%. The human heart is the most complex organ, so how have the numbers decreased so dramatically? Atul Gawande, author of Checklist Manifesto, believes it’s because of a simple tool: The Checklist. Surgeons are discovering what airline pilots learned decades ago: The human brain can’t remember everything, so it’s best to focus on the complicated challenges and leave the simple reminders to a cheat sheet. A well planned checklist can help you keep your promises.

Calendaring: Time Management Pro Tips

Making promises is easy. Keeping them is another story. One of the best tools to help maintain commitments is the calendar. Alex Sheen, founder of because I said I would, explains how he manages his calendar, gives five calendaring pro tips and talks about the benefits of the calendar.

Fallibility of human memory: How Promises are affected by forgetfulness

Many times people have the intention to do the right thing, but they simply forget. Among all of our responsibilities, a promise slips our mind accidentally. It is human nature. The fallibility of human memory has plagued promises around the world, but it doesn’t have to. What can we learn about human memory that can help us with commitment? Learn the perspective, research, and even test your own memory.

The Courage of No: Defending your honor

Committing to keep a promise can be hard. Saying no can be even harder. Whether it’s due to being too busy or too uncomfortable with something, sometimes the things we decide not to do define us more than the things we do decide to do. Learn about the famous Milgram Experiment that demonstrates how human beings’ fear of saying no to authority figures has led to some of the darkest times in history. We discuss ways to help you say no so that you can comfortably stand by your principles and promises.

How to get better with word choice: Bad word choice

Always. Never. Every time. Anytime. No matter what. Do we really mean what we say? Promise statements should be much more literal than they often are. People who are good with their promises are often very good with their word choice. How can we get better at meaning what we say? Bad word choice means bad promises. Learn more about how to sharpen your language.

Life of a promise: 5 phases in life of a promise

There are few who think about promises more than the because I said I would founder, Alex Sheen. He created five phases in the life of a promise. Learn the five phases and what perhaps may be the most important phase in whether or not a promise will be kept.

Being Nice: Brainstorming for acts of kindness

Being nice is the right thing to do. It may sound elementary, but often in life we meet people who are simply not nice, maybe even our own family members or coworkers. There are many good people in this world and there is power in modeling the way. Learn how, by simply being nice, you can keep your promises and help others too.

Point of No Return

You’ve made a promise. You have really good intentions. You carefully plan and then something unexpected happens. Good intentions are not enough. It is important to learn the point of no return, when you know the promise simply just cannot be kept and how to deal with that.