The Return: A Weekend Seminar

Can you love like you’ve never been hurt?

No, fortunately, you can’t.

The only way you will ever love is as if you’ve been hurt in the past. You have. We all have. You can’t remove your past hurt anymore than you can one of your arms or legs – it’s a part of who you are. It’s played a vital role in shaping the person you have become.

Here’s the real question you have to answer: How has the pain you've experienced in the past affected your capacity to love in the present?

What does this expression mean to you?:

Live an original life, not the one you’ve inherited.

Are you living an original life – a life of your own making? Or are you reacting to the hurt that’s been inflicted on you by others and living this reaction over and over again, day after day?

When you were born, all you desired was love. This is still all you desire. When others did not give you the love you desired in the form you desired it in, you launched a process you still practice to this day. You designed this process to protect you from further pain, because the pain you experienced hurt too much. You grew up believing that you should flee from suffering, or even the possibility of suffering. This process has brought you to where you are today, a place where, if you are like most of the people you share this planet with, your perception of love prevents you from loving.

The Return is a weekend seminar with one simple goal: to enable you to return to your original nature, rediscover your core values and deepest life vision, and truly experience love and freedom – characterized by an expansive lightness of being, a renewed capacity to feel, and a revitalized connection with yourself and others – once again.

What Will The Return Do For Me?

By participating in The Return, you will learn how to

Stop projecting onto others based on your past hurt and start accepting them as they truly are
No longer exist in a state of fear that drives you to try to control others and instead live in a state of love in which you are constantly overwhelmed by the true beauty residing within you and others
See others through an unbiased, judgment-free lens that appreciates their uniqueness
Stop living in an unfulfilling, transactional state controlled by your mind and accentuated by your cell phone, text messages, email account and all the thoughts and preoccupations they generate that circumscribe your life; and instead enter a transformational state where you reconnect with your heart and how you genuinely feel about your life and the people in it
Step off the pendulum that swings between submissive and aggressive and learn how to express your authentic feelings, rooted in your intuitive understanding of truth and love
Forgive those who have committed the actions you are most resentful about in your life, and in so doing, free yourself from the emotional entanglement with them that continues to obstruct you from experiencing true love
Understand and integrate into your life the unexpected connection (explained in The Return) between a love for truth and true love
Develop an unprecedented gratitude for every event in your life – independent of whether it brings joy or pain – that you experience in your time on this planet
Rebrand your relationship with your past suffering. You will no longer allow it to convert itself into a venomous anger that paralyzes you and prevents you from being truly alive. Instead, you will learn one of the greatest lessons of this weekend seminar: how to use the suffering you have experienced in your life to crystallize your deepest values
Reengineer your relationship with your fear - and come to view it as necessary for your personal growth rather than something to run and hide from
Break the emotional chains that prevent you from truly living, and in so doing, learn how to experience true love and an infinite freedom that you will live every day
Dissipate the paralyzing tentacles of resentment and become ‘unstuck’ so you can love again and live the life you have always desired
Stop judging others for not being like you and start accepting them as they are
Eliminate the emotional barriers you have created in your life that prevent you from experiencing true love
Experience the present moment in all its unobserved splendor – full of love, limitless potential and interconnectedness with others
Stop feeling powerless and take charge of your life by discovering the tremendous power that surfaces once you recognize the immense love laying dormant within you

Why Is It Called The Return?

There are three stages in life: simplicity; complexity; and the simplicity beyond complexity. You were born in a state of simplicity: a natural, loving vulnerability and openness to the world. Then you entered the state of complexity: trying new things, new relationships, new experiences. You were hurt – first by the people closest to you, and then by others. You have been reacting to this hurt ever since. You are most likely still living in this state of complexity. That’s why so much about your life and this world does not make sense to you, and why you have been unable to return to the original state you were born in – simplicity – in which you were able to love purely, with a completely open heart.

You long to be vulnerable again, but you can’t. You yearn to once again feel closeness, intimacy, and uninhibited companionship with another human being. But you can’t. Why? Because the way back to simplicity is not by avoiding or running away from complexity. Your attempts to do so – to forget your past hurt and love again with reckless abandon are always – ALWAYS – derailed when the other person inevitably disappoints you and reinforces the drama you have come to know too well, in which you extend yourself to another human being, get hurt, and then dejectedly retreat into yourself again, reeling and licking your wounds from another failed connection.

While you can’t run from complexity, there is now a way to move through it – to the simplicity beyond complexity. This revolutionary, life-transforming state – which you will learn how to enter over an entire weekend – is called The Return. Why? Because it will enable you to return to your original nature that embraced love, freedom and a true, heartfelt connection with others.

Yet the simplicity you will return to will be different. The love you will experience after The Return will not be the innocent love you once knew. It will not be the idyllic love you have been unsuccessfully trying to integrate into your life alongside your career and the other competing demands on your time. It will be a radically different construction of love – entirely unique to you and rooted in the personal values you have strengthened over a lifetime. Your past suffering will shift emotionally within you from something you struggle to avoid to something you hold in your heart with sublime gratitude, with the awareness that it has enabled you to become the person you are today.

What Will My Life Be Like After The Return?

Over this weekend, you will have the opportunity to return to the natural state you were born into: a state of acceptance, non-judgment, wonder, curiosity, interconnectedness with the people around you, and love.

After completing The Return, you will be better equipped to:

Choose the right life partner
Get out of dead-end relationships that aren’t aligned with your values
Revitalize the love that is desperately missing from dysfunctional or barely functional family relationships
Build true friendships with the knowledge that friends are like priorities – if you have too many you end up with none
Make a landmark shift from interacting with everyone in your career and getting nowhere to interacting with fewer people and creating something powerful and impactful
Pay more attention to your heart from day to day and stop allowing your mind – and the thoughts it generates – from controlling your life
Reengineer your relationship with your digital devices so you add less unnecessary thoughts to your mind and allow space for the voice emanating from your heart

Dr. Anthony Silard has provided life and leadership coaching to thousands of individuals for almost two decades. His latest book is Screened In: The Art of Living Free in the Digital Age. While coaching the CEOs and senior leaders of Fortune 100 companies such as Disney, IBM and GE; small businesses; and the world’s largest nonprofits, such as CARE, Save the Children and the American Red Cross, Anthony has discovered that the most difficult challenges a person experiences in the way they interact with others – whether in the office or at home – can always be traced back to a person in their life they need to forgive. In Anthony’s words:

We make judgments about the people who have hurt us the most in our lives because these judgments provide a false security in the belief that we will not experience this pain any longer, and that we will walk a new path that does not attract similar hurt from others. The opposite always happens. Each judgment creates an emotional entanglement with another person. Our hopes for something better become dashed as these emotional chains harden and then replicate in every new relationship we attempt to develop. Many of us become bound for a lifetime.

The Return will enable you to break the emotional chains that bind you and return to your original state of curiosity, wonder, true freedom, and love.

What Are Participants in Anthony's Workshops Saying?

Tony’s facilitation for me was authentic, skilled, vulnerable, accessible. I believe he modeled compassionate, empathic listening. Specifically, I observed his sensitivity to participants’ needs and struggles and he was able to diffuse what I perceived to be potentially dangerous and painful exchanges. He did this with skill and grace.

— Andrea Gerson

I found Anthony to be very open and caring about our group of individuals. He was a very good listener and at the same time was able to keep us on target. I liked his openness and positive feedback.

— Norm Zelenko

I experienced Tony as a very sensitive, authentic, and experienced group facilitator. He was patient, non-critical or judgmental, inclusive, positive, picked up on participants’ positive actions and rewarded them, allowed less confident members to join in or not, and never missed a teaching point

— Judy Holden

Tony has a way of being that is authentic and welcoming. His passion and commitment was evident. The approach was powerfully and passionately delivered… PASSION and TRUTH are contagious! Tony is an example of a confident, compassionate, gentle person who has made a difference in this world. He is very special and a treasure.

— Sharon Gallagher, American Red Cross

Contact GLI if you would like us to help you customize
a leadership conference for your company or organization.