Personal growth rarely happens all at once. It usually unfolds in stages, one layer at a time.
Dr. Shu-Han Huang described her Mental Freedom® experience as peeling an onion—not in a painful or overwhelming way, but in a supportive, guided process that revealed deeper levels of freedom. This is also how I've experienced my own growth. Each challenge I encounter seems to reveal another layer of something I thought I already understood, first through Choice Theory® and now through Mental Freedom®.
Every Layer Reveals Another
I remember traveling to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1992 to earn my Choice Theory certification. At that point, I had been studying Glasser's work for five years, and I thought I knew just about everything there was to know. I was quite full of myself. After all, I had been using it in my work with foster kids, teaching it to foster and biological parents. What more could there be?
Then I started teaching Choice Theory.
I had heard the saying, "If you really want to learn something, teach it." I thought that was a bit backwards. Why would someone teach something they were still learning? It didn't make sense until participants began asking questions I couldn't answer. Initially, that was embarrassing. Eventually, I learned to say, "What a great question! I need to think about that and I'll get back to you." Then I would consult a mentor or return to Glasser's work to deepen my own understanding.
And life kept providing opportunities to peel away more layers. My husband and I discovered that knowing Choice Theory didn't automatically make co-parenting easy when we had very different parenting styles. Later, his five-year illness and death challenged me in ways no training ever could. Single parenting brought another set of lessons. So did working for a controlling boss, watching my youngest son serve two tours in Iraq, and breaking both legs in a hot air balloon accident and spending two months in a wheelchair.
Each experience asked something different from me. Some were heartbreaking. Some frustrating. Some scary and some merely inconvenient. But each showed me something more about myself, other people, and how I responded to circumstances I couldn't control.
I'm still learning. These days, some of my lessons are about aging, remaining relevant, and learning to age gracefully and gratefully. Neither comes easily all the time.
That's the thing about principles with depth. You don't learn them once and finish. You encounter them differently as your life changes and as you change. There's always another layer. That's not failure. That's growth.
Understanding a principle is one thing. Living it consistently is another. I explore that distinction further in "Why Simple Doesn't Mean Easy".
Safe Doesn't Mean Comfortable
One of my insights that emerged from my conversations with Dr. Marcella Finnerty and Dr. Shu-Han Huang is that feeling safe doesn't necessarily mean feeling comfortable. Mental Freedom® is designed to provide a safe environment, not a promise of comfort. You aren't judged. You aren't required to share deeply unless you choose to. You receive information and decide how, where, and even whether you want to apply it—an idea I explore further in Mental Freedom® Is an Invitation, Not a Prescription.
But if you choose to apply that information to something challenging in your life, it may be uncomfortable. Growth often is. You may be questioning something you've believed for years, changing a familiar response, looking at your own behavior differently, or practicing something outside your comfort zone. The safety comes from knowing the choice remains yours.
There Is No Graduation
When you complete a Mental Freedom® Experience, you'll receive a certificate of completion, but you won't be finished. If you become Mental Freedom® Certified, you still won't be finished. If you eventually become a trainer, you still won't be finished.
I believe a commitment to Mental Freedom® includes a lifetime commitment to continued learning and growth. Marcella and Shu-Han both described continuing to discover new layers after their Experiences ended. I'm still discovering them, too. That's one reason I've built an ecosystem around Mental Freedom® that provides opportunities for continuous learning, practice, and support.
The principles may remain the same. We don't.
Life changes. We change. New circumstances ask us to revisit familiar ideas from places we've never stood before, and another layer of the onion appears.
Reflection
What layer of your thinking might life be inviting you to look at right now?