01/14/2024
RETREAT
APRIL 30 – MAY 4
BURLEY LAGOON, WASHINGTON
Imagination and courage, the cornerstones to uncovering what's on the other side.
Practical knowledge has validity. It is how we are taught in school and how we are trained to do our job. Knowledge is embedded within us, and programs us to behave in predefined ways, it even teaches us how to behave around others. In so many ways, embedded knowledge limits us. We are pre-programmed actors and institutional autoboots, yet somehow we believe we need this “knowledge,” methodology, and “steps.” In the meantime, we skip over the most compelling part of being a person; the elusive piece of discovering who you are, how you can best do a job, how you can best be a spouse, a friend, how you can best try your case to a jury.
The impulse to do different, creative, and the imaginary is sedated; however, imagination and courage are the cornerstones to uncovering what's on the other side.
We walk a delicate line. The yearning to be great, creative, and original, is limited by the risk of failure and rejection. My life is a series of humbling - even humiliating - events, spaced with exhilarating highs. Within the timeline of my life, nothing better exemplifies this up and down than raising my kids, and fighting for peoples’ lives in a court of law, and talking to a jury.
Everyone hates a fake. There is no respect and we do not follow someone who walks through life and trial with surface level knowledge, expression and feeling. To move others in the mysteries of life, we must be touched and inspired at an intimate level. Embedded knowledge without self-awareness suppresses spontaneity, instinct, and your edge. Your individual quirks and style get lost in the hustle. What we are taught must not mute what we are inspired to do. The result of this battle is the loss of heart, emotion, and our connection with one another.
Beyond inspiration and into the realm of practical application: it is not what you say but how you say it. Every aspect of you that can be seen, heard, felt, how you model emotion transmutes. In other words, the second you walk into a room with other people in it, you change the atmosphere, temperature, and feeling. The feeling, the parallel universe, “the moment,” that is what connects us most deeply. An unspoken understanding, a silent nod of acceptance, and the subtle gaze of respect and acknowledgment moves the heart.
Wrangling life and the skill of public speaking involves the spontaneous expression of who you are. Delivery requires confidence, preparation, practice, and experience. Your unique fingerprint is required in tandem with technical proficiency.
My wife Courtney and I welcome you to our home and property at the beautiful Burley Lagoon.
Explore practical applications of cutting-edge trial work and transform the mundane, technical practice of law with world renowned storyteller and author Michael Meade & the pioneer of theater and film application to trial advocacy, Joshua Karton.
The wisdom they hold must be carried on for future generations, they are that important.
More info: [email protected]
