Week-Long Training Changed My Life
by Brittany Barton, Northside P.O.W.E.R. Organizer
One of the most significant times in my life was deciding to go through IIRON’s week-long leadership training without knowing what to expect. I didn’t even check for details about where the training was located. I simply hopped into the car and allowed my life to be transformed one day at a time.
I devoted a week of my life to training in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana, waiting to see what would happen. I still don’t have words for what happened, but I can say that it changed me. I was forced to look at myself and my behaviors in a new way. This affects not only my life, but the lives of others around me. This training helped me realize that leadership comes from me, from my battles within, and from facing those battles head on and moving forward. It’s not to say that those battles won’t reappear or that I’ve completed the long road to power, it just means that the beginning of something phenomenal is coming out of me.
The only way I can describe week-long training is to compare it to my recent trip to Africa where we visited the NGOs and slums of Kenya. Again, I was confronted with some pretty heavy topics about me and my life. I was forced to open my eyes and look. I was forced to have unwanted conversations that I had been avoiding for one reason or another, and attack them head on. I’ve noticed too often that with limited access to internet and a community of people coming together to listen to your story, powerful change happens. You’re able to reflect, to think, to open your mind to what is possible and to think about how you’ll create positive change. I experienced dealing with harsh reality in Africa, and I also experienced this in IIRON’s week-long leadership training.
When I think of leadership, I think of responsibility, of taking responsibility for my actions despite the consequences. I also think of power, of being able to act. And I also think of power as being organized people and organized money. Only now am I realizing how this power is playing out and how one loses without it. I have seen how people without power live, eat, and lose in life, and I figure I have a choice. I can either continue down this route of feeling helpless and hopeless, or I can take the opportunities that I have been given to become a powerful person and create a more just society with my gifts. This realization started with IIRON’s week-long training.
What are some of your hopes for a better world? How can being able to act get to what you want? What are some of your deepest fears and oppressions that keep you from reaching your goals?
If you’re struggling with these questions, or struggling with your path to power, I encourage you to try on leadership training for a week. The next training is August 12-17. It will inspire you, move you, create you, and awaken you. It will change your life.