Some years ago, I was lucky enough to attend a workshop by Dan Millman – teacher and author of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Towards the end, he was asked a question by one of the participants:

‘Dan, I leave workshops like this so inspired and full of energy and with the best of intentions to living a better life. And for a few weeks, even sometimes for a few months, the uplift I received from being at the workshop sustains. But gradually over time it begins to subside, and I get distracted from my intentions by everyday things, and I lose the inspiration, and things eventually return to normal. And then I begin to question. Is it me? Is there something wrong with me? Or I doubt the workshop. Maybe it was not as good as I seemed to think it was at the time. Perhaps if it was a better workshop, they’d have done more to help me now. Maybe if it was truly any good, it should be sustaining me still. And so I look for the next workshop, the next teacher, hoping it will be better next time. So Dan, here’s my question: is there something wrong with me? Or is there something wrong with the workshops?’

I liked the answer he gave: ‘That the inspiration falls away is a sign that you are only human. That you are something more than only human is why you seek the next access to inspiration’.

The quandry of Dan Millman’s participant is felt also by many people who attend business workshops as part of their work. Some would struggle to accept Millman’s assertion that they have an innate inner drive for human and spiritual development that causes them to attend learning events. Many participants I meet seem so laissez faire about their personal freedom and power that are keen to convince me that they only came because their boss told them to. Nevertheless business people spend a significant amount of their work time in workshops of various types. And quite rightly they expect a return on that investment, not just during the event, but after.

Let’s look at the best of these experiences. They have a great time, learn loads, get inspired to set some amazing goals and make some powerful commitments. And often they are genuinely committed to change (not always but often). And then they get back to their life beyond the workshop and gradually the day-to-day creeps back in. The real world. The back-to-normal. The business-as-usual.

Is there anything that can be done about this? We’d worry less about the experience maybe if we brought to mind the first half of Millman’s answer. Everything fades, all falls. Let this substantial…

So we have to accept that part of life. Do we have the same buzz now as we did on the day we married our partner? No. Do we feel the same things now as we did when we first held our first born child. No.

So perhaps we should expect the high we experience on a great course to fade. It is entirely natural, inevitable even.

But that the buzz I felt on the day I married Keri is not present now – except in the form of some very powerful sense-memories – does not mean that nothing is there. Everything fades, all falls, it is true, but only to be replaced by something else. It is not the same, but that does not mean that anything has been lost, or that anything went wrong. The day to day did not spoil our marriage; it’s where we live it. The day to day is the testing ground for commitments we made – just like those made at the end of a business workshop. This ‘day to day’ is not an excuse for avoiding them.