Leaderboard

Here are a few things I've learned in my 66 years. 1. Everybody has their strengths and everybody has their weaknesses. Everybody. Groups work best when people recognize their strengths and weaknesses and use the categories where they are strong to help others who might be weak in those categories. That way, the members of the group become mutually supportive rather than competitive. TWI did not promote an attitude of mutual support, as the Bible does. 2. Every person's strengths wane and wax over time. No one is consistently strong all of the time. There are times in life when we work on building our strengths. There are other times when our strengths decline for a variety of reasons in spite of how we work to keep them at peak level. That's just life... for everybody. I don't think the people who were involved with TWI outside of leadership positions were categorically weak OR categorically strong. I think TWI appealed to all sorts of people in all sorts of ways, but the primary way was to promise access to a power that would make our lives generally better. TWI's training and programs were intentionally designed to sap people's strength, specifically in the categories of critical thinking and exercising responsible judgment. Some people were so sapped of strength in those areas that they were NEVER able to leave. Those of us who DID leave did so at a variety of times under circumstances unique to each individual. I've spent decades (after having left TWI) helping deal with my own and other people's mental health problems. I am currently participating in a weekly group dedicated to healthy mood management. That's apart from my religious associations. I no longer find it useful to think of people as being categorically weak or strong. I know that I am neither, and I extend the same recognition to others. Love, Steve