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LIFESPRING / John Hanley Sr.

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Ursus:
A thread for including reference items amongst other material, at least starting out... :wink:

First up, a brief description and bio, from the man himself.  Do note:  the veracity of info stated as fact is unknown.  Some time ago,  I came across his MySpace page and he had somehow shaved ten years off his stated age.  Whilst that might be construed as a relatively benign and perhaps expected prevarication, one might also be a bit more inclined to then take the rest of it with a little more salt too...

Emphasis (bolding, etc.) as per the original.

======================================

John Hanley, Sr., Ph. D.



To say that the impact John Hanley has had on the lives of hundreds of thousands has been significant would be an understatement. Perhaps there is no other figure in human development and experiential education who has had such a profound, pioneering, and long-lasting effect on the field.

Dr. John Hanley graduated from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 1971 and quickly became involved with the field of public awareness trainings. He was soon spearheading a new experiential breed of training which developed quickly and became hugely successful.

Lifespring was founded in 1974 by John Hanley and four others, though by 1978 he was the president and sole remaining founder, essentially leading the work himself with the support of his wife, Candace, who worked with him throughout the many years of Lifespring's extensive work. Presently, his son, John Hanley, Jr., is working together with John Hanley Sr. to pioneer the field of experiential education in Corporate America through their company, Leadership Training and Development Group (LTDG).

LTDG'S web site can be found at http://www.leadertrain.com.

Check out our new website! Lifespringnow.com

Ursus:
John Hanley, Sr. Background



John P. Hanley, born in 1945, founder of Lifespring, Inc. and Senior Partner for LTDG, has dedicated his professional life to creating innovative educational programs for adults. His vision is to design learning environments where people can increase their effectiveness, improve the quality of their lives, and take responsibility for the difference they make in the world.

In January of 1974, Hanley presented the Lifespring training to 25 students. Through the course of the next twenty years, hundreds of thousands of participants took part in the Lifespring Basic Training and Lifespring spread to cities all across the United States.

A member of the American Society of Training and Development, Hanley has also served on the Resource Board for the Young Presidents' Organization. He is the author of "Lifespring: Getting Yourself from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" published April 1989, by Simon and Schuster.

Hanley is a nationally ranked Cutting Horse competitor with a 400 acre working ranch in California. He has achieved championship rankings in numerous categories of competitions, both in the Pacific Coast Cutting Horse Association, which includes the eleven Western States, and in the National Cutting Horse Association, which includes all fifty states. He continues to compete regularly in major Cutting Horse events.

Born in South Carolina and raised in Wisconsin, Hanley received his Bachelor of Science degree in Social Science at the University of Wisconsin. He and his wife Candace have been happily married for 25 years and have three children.

Ursus:
The Founding of Lifespring, A History by John Hanley

Most people attend their first growth seminar to make their life work better. I joined mine in 1971 to help me remember economic formulas. I was a senior at the University of Wisconsin then. Another student suggested that techniques in the course "Mind Dynamics" might improve my memory. So, I invested $200 and then sat in the back row with my eyes open for five days, resisting and criticizing everything the instructor and students said and did. On the last day, the leader asked me to participate in an exercise in which I was to close my eyes and try to describe the wife of the person sitting next to me without my ever having seen her. It was a game for me until my partner showed me his written card. I had described a total stranger in perfect detail.

I knew then that there had to be something to this awareness business, but I remained skeptical. I couldn't figure why those weird people kept jumping up and sharing that their lives were changing as a result of participating in the course. I just couldn't see it.

Shortly after graduation, one of the seminar trainers called from California to invite me to join Mind Dynamics' instructor training program. I was to cover all expenses until after my training. Then, if they decided they wanted me, I would earn $1,000 a month. There was no better offer at the time, so I charged my ticket on one of those credit cards you get while in college and headed for California.

I was pretty convinced I could get the job. But, halfway through the training, the Chairman of the Board, who was teaching the class, grabbed me and said, "Hanley, you can go home now. You are never going to make it here, and I just don't want you to do the class." What he really meant was that I lacked sufficient sensitivity for people and had absolutely no personal presentation. In those days I couldn't have led a group in silent prayer.

That was all I needed to get me working. Let someone discredit me or attempt to throw me out and my "prover" comes up. I get really clear on wanting to prove my worth, my value. So, I simply refused to go home. I told him I had paid my money and was going to stay and complete the instructors class. Then I was going to get a job with them. He told me there was just no way I would ever make it. I stayed anyway.

After the training, I talked the company into hiring me in Milwaukee. Since they had nothing there, I told them, the worst I could do was get their name known. They gave me the job. Reluctantly. Nine months later, on the basis of my results in Wisconsin, they promoted me to National Field Director. One year later, shortly before resigning to establish Lifespring, I was named Executive Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors.

I'd proven my worth all right, but in many ways I remained totally unconscious. In those days I had the awareness of a brick. Before joining the human potential movement, I had decided the last thing I wanted was to know more about John Hanley. I was afraid of what I'd find out about me. I was afraid I wasn't as good as everybody else. I thought people wouldn't like me, that I wouldn't like myself. I feared a lot of dreams I'd set for myself were unattainable. I think a lot of people feel that way.

I got hooked on self-awareness merely as a byproduct of my job. I witnessed some awesome results being created in the lives of the thousands of people who participated in the seminars. Where originally I became involved for business opportunity and money, by 1973 this totally reversed itself. Just before starting Lifespring, I was no longer motivated by money. I had created this feverish desire to produce seminars that worked and to grow in the knowledge of myself.

What I discovered, painfully at first, was that "I" was an illusion, fabricated by belief systems and perpetrated by presenting a fraudulent image of myself to myself and other people. Beliefs accompanied me from childhood. I had been taught that hard work is good. I considered myself a hard worker, but, in reality, I was an unproductive worker. Most of my time was spent pushing the throttle to the floorboard and getting nowhere. Beliefs also burdened me with guilt. To be a good father, I thought, you must spend every night at home with the kids. My dad did. But work kept me from it, so I condemned myself to thinking I was a bad father.

By separating myself from beliefs and image, I soon began seeing what was real for me. I learned that things I didn't know about, things that were scary or unclear to me, I would make wrong automatically. I would make good looking people wrong, for example. I would make rich people wrong, and intellectual people wrong. The fact was, I was afraid of them, so I'd work to find holes in them. The justify and invalidate game. It seems true for all of us: the things we are threatened by we make wrong in hopes they'll go away.

Next, I discovered that whether I liked it or not, all I had going for me was me, period. Nobody else in the world had the same feelings, the same brain, the same body. I was an individual, and that horrified me! Recognizing that you are one of a kind tends to make you feel like a loner. You see that only you have the right answers for you. Other people can't help you, they can only assist.

Before long, I began sensing the benefits. The more I got in touch with my uniqueness, the more power I had because I knew my resources and was able to draw on them. From this emerged a sense of pride, a sense of respect. Suddenly life became relatively pain free, which posed a tremendous conflict.

I no longer had that familiar space of pain to hang out in. I had to approach the world from a different perspective, which was, "John Hanley, you have everything you need in order to get and be all that you want to get and be." I saw then what is true for all of us: that I am 100 percent responsible for whatever happens in my life.

That was a heavy one, but, by accepting it-by allowing my individuality to surface-my life changed dramatically. Where before life was hard (because "life is supposed to be hard"), today life is easy. It's a coast. I have tons more joy in my life than ever before. The price I have paid to be in joy most of the time is self-awareness.

Just now, for the first time, I'm beginning to get really close to people. My relationship with my wife is the strongest, the closest, it's ever been. I have more money now than ever before. I get more results in an hour than I used to get in two weeks. Because life takes far less personal energy now, it leaves a vast reservoir for subjective work on myself, for recreation, lovemaking, for all kinds of things. I am able to be a more creative person, a more "there" person, with less effort. The experience of accepting my individuality has inspired within me a certain feeling of compassion, understanding, even empathy for myself.

Yes, and admiration too. I feel solid about myself. I like so much of who I am that I want to share it. And each time I do, I get a clearer picture of me. Everyone should feel so good, for everyone and I have the same things. I absolutely believe that God did not discriminate. All it takes is a willingness to set one's feet on the path of self-discovery and a persistence to keep going until you tap the joy!

Ursus:
On this page, from one of several interconnected Lifespring websites, Hanley mentions experiments of a sort conducted at the National Training Laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland back in the late 1940s. 

I have come across NTL before, in connection with Warren Bennis's background (Bennis is one of the laudatory reviewers quoted in Malcolm and Laura Gauld's book The Biggest Job®, and also a close friend and apologist of Wernard Erhard of est renown). National Training Laboratories also had a "outpost" in Bethel, Maine, which I have read was the site for much of their work done with "T-groups" (groups/seminars/raps?). 

Hanley refers to a "process learning model"; perhaps this is the same thing or something very similar, or perhaps it is yet another concept derived from this same organization and time period.

=================================

Background

Lifespring's courses are designed for adults who are committed to maximizing their effectiveness, improving the quality of their lives and the lives of the people they interact with, and contributing to the world.

All of Lifespring's courses are based on an experiential, or participatory, learning model. The roots of the experiential learning model date back to 1947 and the National Training Laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland. There, researchers developed what they called the "process learning model" which implemented exercises (processes) enabling participants to learn from the whole of their experience rather than intellectual input alone. NTL provided programs for government, business, industry, and the public throughout the 1950's and 1960's. During the late 1960s and 70s, a rapid synthesis of education, technology, ethics, philosophy, and psychology took place and, by the early 1970s, commercial training or seminar companies such as Lifespring started to flourish.

Lifespring operates from the position that the issues that are the greatest sources of satisfaction and accomplishment in adult life--for example, love, relationships, fitness, giving and receiving feedback, making and keeping commitments, and communication--are not fully accessible intellectually; they also need to be experienced. Lifespring, therefore, has developed a curriculum based on experiential education.

In Lifespring courses, people participate in a structured series of exercises, conversations, and games that are metaphors for life. They come face-to-face with many of their unexamined practices and assumptions about life that invisibly shape their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

The Lifespring courses are also founded on the philosophical thinking of modern Western philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The premise of Lifespring courses is the idea that human beings are not static entities with fixed characteristics, but rather that, to a great extent, we have the capacity to design ourselves, our behavior, and our lives within certain limitations of history and physical circumstance. The objective of Lifespring courses is to give people a new sense of freedom about themselves and their lives such that they accomplish extraordinary results, achieve deeper personal satisfaction, and take responsibility for the difference they make in the world.

Lifespring was created in 1974 by John P. Hanley and four other co-founders with extensive educational and business backgrounds.

Anonymous:

--- Quote from: ""John Hanley Sr."" ---Before long, I began sensing the benefits. The more I got in touch with my uniqueness, the more power I had because I knew my resources and was able to draw on them. From this emerged a sense of pride, a sense of respect. Suddenly life became relatively pain free, which posed a tremendous conflict.

I no longer had that familiar space of pain to hang out in. I had to approach the world from a different perspective, which was, "John Hanley, you have everything you need in order to get and be all that you want to get and be." I saw then what is true for all of us: that I am 100 percent responsible for whatever happens in my life.

That was a heavy one, but, by accepting it-by allowing my individuality to surface-my life changed dramatically.  Where before life was hard (because "life is supposed to be hard"), today life is easy. It's a coast. I have tons more joy in my life than ever before. The price I have paid to be in joy most of the time is self-awareness.

Just now, for the first time, I'm beginning to get really close to people. My relationship with my wife is the strongest, the closest, it's ever been. I have more money now than ever before. I get more results in an hour than I used to get in two weeks. Because life takes far less personal energy now, it leaves a vast reservoir for subjective work on myself, for recreation, lovemaking, for all kinds of things. I am able to be a more creative person, a more "there" person, with less effort. The experience of accepting my individuality has inspired within me a certain feeling of compassion, understanding, even empathy for myself.

Yes, and admiration too. I feel solid about myself. I like so much of who I am that I want to share it. And each time I do, I get a clearer picture of me. Everyone should feel so good, for everyone and I have the same things. I absolutely believe that God did not discriminate. All it takes is a willingness to set one's feet on the path of self-discovery and a persistence to keep going until you tap the joy!
--- End quote ---


1.)  Story of pain and suffering to ensure audience empathy.
2.)  Requisite mumbo jumbo.
3.)  Reel them in with tales of riches and happiness, acquisition thereof being contingent upon swallowing the mumbo jumbo.

End result?  Snake Oil salesman does good.  The marks get poorer.  Classic "The Emperor's New Clothes."

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