Freedom of Mind: Coming Home
What if what you’re looking for isn’t somewhere out there?
Freedom of Mind: Coming Home is a live online programme designed to reconnect you with your innate wellbeing, inner wisdom and a much greater sense of possibility.
It is for people who are interested not simply in coping better with life, but in understanding themselves and the human mind at a deeper level.
The programme explores a radically simple idea:
What if greater freedom comes not from getting better at managing our experience, but from seeing more clearly where it comes from?
And when we begin to see that more clearly, life can start to look very different.
The practical details
- Eight live online sessions
- 90 minutes per session
- Sessions approximately two weeks apart
- A small group, limited to 12 people
- Space between sessions to reflect, notice and allow insights to develop
What is Freedom of Mind: Coming Home?
Most of us have grown up with a perfectly understandable assumption.
That how we feel is largely determined by what is happening to us.
When business is going well, relationships are good, our finances feel secure and the future looks promising, we feel good.
When circumstances become difficult, uncertain or unpredictable, we don’t.
So, we naturally spend a great deal of our lives attempting to get the outside world into the right shape.
We try to achieve more, control more, fix more, avoid what might go wrong and create enough certainty to finally feel secure.
Sometimes it works.
But never for very long.
Because life doesn’t stay still.
The economy changes. Businesses change. Relationships change. Our bodies change. Other people don’t behave as we’d like them to. The future stubbornly refuses to become completely predictable.
Freedom of Mind offers another possibility.
At the heart of the programme is an understanding known as the Three Principles.
Rather than giving you another set of techniques for controlling your thinking, changing your behaviour or managing your emotions, the Principles point towards something much more fundamental:
An understanding of how human experience is created in the first place.
This changes the operating platform.
Instead of continually trying to arrange life so that you can feel okay, you begin to recognise a source of wellbeing, clarity and wisdom that isn’t dependent upon life going according to plan.
That understanding can have very practical consequences. Just some of those are:
Less time caught up in unnecessary thinking.
Greater resilience when circumstances are difficult.
Clearer decisions.
Better relationships.
More creativity.
And a greater ability to meet life as it actually is.
Who is this programme for?
Freedom of Mind is particularly suited to thoughtful, curious people who are used to using their intellect to solve problems.
You may be a business owner, professional, leader, adviser or someone who simply wants to live and work with a clearer mind.
You may already be successful by conventional measures, yet sense that there is another dimension to life worth exploring.
Perhaps you:
- think too much about things you cannot control
- experience stress or pressure despite knowing intellectually that much of it is unnecessary
- find yourself continually looking towards the next achievement, change or circumstance to feel better
- want to perform well without being driven by anxiety or pressure
- want to bring more clarity, creativity and presence into your work
- are interested in bringing out the best in yourself and other people
- have begun to suspect there is more to life than continually striving to improve the circumstances of it
You don’t need to be interested in spirituality.
You don’t need to adopt a new belief system.
And you certainly don’t need to become a different person.
The invitation is simply to look in a new direction and see what makes sense to you.
A different direction
Much of personal development is based upon the idea of self-improvement.
How can I become more confident?
How can I stop worrying?
How can I become happier?
How can I perform better?
How can I control my thinking?
These are understandable questions, yet what is it we’re trying to improve?
What if improvement comes from a mistaken assumption?
What if there is nothing wrong with us so that we need improving?
What if our wellbeing, creativity and clarity are already present, but become temporarily obscured by the noise of our own thinking?
This programme explores that possibility.
Not as positive thinking.
Not as a technique.
And not as something you must convince yourself is true.
We will look together at how the mind actually seems to work and at what becomes possible when we understand it more deeply.
The outside world cannot give us what we really want
We often say we want things.
More money.
A successful business.
A particular relationship.
Recognition.
Good health.
Certainty about the future.
But underneath most of these desires is another desire.
We want the feeling we believe the thing will give us.
Security.
Freedom.
Peace.
Happiness.
Confidence.
Satisfaction.
There is nothing wrong with wanting things or enjoying what life has to offer.
The problem begins when we believe our psychological wellbeing depends upon getting them.
Because then our peace of mind becomes hostage to circumstances, we can never completely control.
One of the central explorations in Freedom of Mind is whether the qualities we have spent our lives searching for outside ourselves might originate somewhere else entirely.
What really constrains us?
Most people assume their limitations come from circumstances.
Their age.
Their personality.
Their past.
Their education.
Their business.
Their resources.
What other people think of them.
But often the most powerful limitation is something far less tangible:
The idea we carry around about who we are.
We create a mental picture of ourselves.
What we’re good at. What we’re bad at. What we’re capable of. What someone like us would or wouldn’t do. What is realistic.
Eventually we stop seeing these as thoughts.
And they begin to look like facts.
Freedom of Mind explores what happens when those apparently solid boundaries start to look less solid.
Not through affirmations or forcing yourself outside your comfort zone.
But by seeing more clearly what those limitations are made of.
The mind is a prediction machine
The human mind is extraordinarily useful.
It learns from experience, spots patterns, anticipates danger and attempts to keep us safe.
Without that ability we wouldn’t have survived very long as a species.
But there is a downside.
The mind doesn’t only predict physical danger. It predicts what it perceives as psychological danger too.
What if I fail?
What if they don’t like me?
What if the business slows down?
What if I make the wrong decision?
What if something happens to my money?
What if I’m not enough?
The mind imagines a possible future and, for a moment, we experience that future as though it were happening now.
Understanding this does not require us to silence the mind.
It allows us to take its predictions less seriously. And that creates space.
Space for perspective.
Space for fresh thinking.
Space for wisdom.
Space for life to surprise us.
Coming home
The phrase Coming Home is important.
Because this programme is not about adding something new to you.
It is about discovering what is already there when we are no longer completely absorbed in our own thinking.
A quieter mind.
A natural intelligence.
Creativity.
Resilience.
Connection.
A sense of being fundamentally okay.
These aren’t states we need to manufacture. They are closer to our default setting than we may realise.
The programme is an invitation to rediscover them.
What will we explore?
Across the eight sessions, we will explore questions including:
How do we create our experience from moment to moment?
Why can two people experience the same circumstances completely differently?
And why can the same person see the same situation differently from one day to the next?
Understanding this is one of the foundations of psychological freedom.
Where does wellbeing really come from?
If peace, security and happiness aren’t ultimately delivered by circumstances, where do they come from?
And what changes when we stop looking for them in the wrong place?
Who are you – really?
How much of what you call me is simply accumulated thinking, memory, conditioning and story?
And what remains when we hold that story more lightly?
What is getting in the way of possibility?
We will explore how our ideas about ourselves can quietly define the edges of our lives – and what happens when those ideas cease to look so convincing.
How can life feel fresh again?
As our thinking becomes familiar, life can begin to feel repetitive, predictable, and even dull.
Yet reality is never actually repeating itself.
We will explore what allows us to experience more freshness, curiosity and possibility.
What is the role of creativity?
Creativity isn’t just for artists.
Fresh thinking is one of our greatest resources for navigating business, relationships, uncertainty and life itself.
We’ll explore why creativity is less something you do and more something that naturally emerges when the mind has room.
How do we find genuine contentment?
Not the temporary satisfaction of finally getting what we wanted, but a quieter contentment that can coexist with ambition, challenge and change.
What becomes possible from a freer mind?
Perhaps the most interesting question of all.
As we become less constrained by our conditioned thinking, what new possibilities begin to appear?
What might you take away?
Freedom of Mind isn’t designed to give you another collection of ideas to remember.
The value comes from what you see for yourself.
That will be different for everyone.
But the programme is designed to open the possibility of:
- experiencing significantly less unnecessary stress and mental noise
- becoming less caught up in overthinking
- finding greater ease with uncertainty
- making decisions from a clearer mind
- becoming more creative and resourceful
- experiencing greater contentment without needing circumstances to be perfect
- seeing beyond some of the limitations you have placed upon yourself
- experiencing work, relationships and everyday life with greater freshness
- trusting your own wisdom more deeply
- discovering possibilities that aren’t visible when the mind is busy trying to keep everything under control
Ultimately, this isn’t about becoming a better version of yourself.
It is about becoming less constrained by everything you’ve innocently come to believe you need to be.
Why eight sessions?
Understanding something intellectually and seeing it for yourself are very different things.
Freedom of Mind is not a conventional training programme where you get new information, and you go away and try to apply it.
The sessions are spaced approximately two weeks apart deliberately.
The space matters.
It gives you time to live your life, notice what you notice, have insights, forget things, remember things and return with new questions.
There is nowhere you need to get to.
There is nothing you need to master.
The programme is an exploration.
And because the group is limited to 12 people, there will be plenty of opportunity for conversation, questions and exploring what comes up for you personally.
Who is this programme not for?
Freedom of Mind won’t be for everyone.
It is probably not for you if you’re primarily looking for:
- A set of techniques for managing stress or controlling your thoughts
- Productivity hacks or strategies for squeezing more into your day
- A step-by-step formula for becoming happier or more successful
- Someone to tell you what to think, believe or do
- A quick motivational boost before returning to business as usual
Nor is this programme about positive thinking, fixing yourself or trying to become a permanently calm and enlightened human being.
In fact, we’re going to explore something quite different.
What if you don’t need fixing in the first place?
Your hosts
Freedom of Mind: Coming Home is jointly hosted by Stef Cybichowski and John Dashfield
Stef and John will both be present for every session, creating and holding the space together throughout the programme.
Both are experienced coaches, have run their own businesses for many years, and have spent much of their working lives helping people experience greater clarity, possibility and freedom in their lives.
Interestingly, they each discovered the Three Principles independently around 2012/13.
But for both of them, this wasn’t simply another coaching approach to learn.
It was personal.
John Dashfield
Stef Cybichowski
Stef discovered the Three Principles during one of the most challenging periods of his life.
In 2013, following years of anxiety and depression and the breakdown of his marriage, he came across Michael Neill’s The Inside-Out Revolution.
Something in what he read resonated deeply and began a profound change in how he saw himself, his relationships and life.
Since then, Stef has shared this understanding with people from remarkably varied backgrounds, including business leaders around the world, schools, military veterans, mental health charities and private individuals.
What continues to inspire him is seeing what can change when people begin to see beyond the limitations they have innocently placed upon themselves.
Two people, one conversation
Stef and John bring different personalities, experiences and perspectives to Coming Home. Neither is interested in telling you how to live your life or giving you another set of techniques to practise.
Instead, they’ll invite you into a conversation and an exploration.
One that points towards something you may already sense: that the peace, clarity and wisdom we spend so much of our lives looking for may be much closer than we think.
An invitation
You can spend a lifetime rearranging the pieces of your life in the hope that eventually everything will fall into place and you’ll finally feel the way you want to feel.
Most of us have tried some version of that.
There is another direction to look.
Freedom of Mind: Coming Home is an invitation to explore it.
Eight live sessions.
A small group.
No techniques to master.
No new version of yourself to create.
Just an opportunity to see something fundamental about the mind, yourself and the extraordinary experience of being alive.