Hi,

First off I want to thank you for being a part of Empathy Gym. We are deeply committed to changing the world through our communication by getting NVC into the hands of as many people as possible and you are a huge part of that. Meets our needs for commitment, support, and learning. So thank you. 

With that said we are committed to making the Empathy Gym a great learning experience, and something that people continue to come back to, meeting people’s needs for connection, learning, and growth. The Empathy Gym hasn’t grown as much as we’d like it to and we’ve been reading your reviews and brainstorming how to improve it and meet those needs for us and you.

And we’ve decided to change up the structure of Empathy Gym, from a gym schedule, like a buffet, where members can pick and choose the time(s) they want to go each week to a more structured commitment where people choose a weekly practice group time they can commit to and they show up to that time slot each week.

Michael Hyatt said, “what gets scheduled gets done.” And Robin Sharma says “the things that get scheduled are the things that get done.” I truly believe that if you look at someone’s schedule or calendar you see what they are committed to. And we’ve seen that with our most consistent members.

We’re hoping this change will lead to greater change in all of our members by meeting the needs of consistency, predictability, and maybe some ease. Whether that be through seeing the same people each week and forming deeper relationships with them - which in turn we hope will lead to greater connection, trust, and willingness to dive into deeper topics. Or knowing that each week at a certain time members have a practice group to be a part of.

We will be changing some of the times moving forward so to make sure we create times that you are able to attend please fill out this form here to let us know of your weekly availability.

I know this can be a big change so hopefully, the questions and answers below give you some clarity and ease:

“Am I now only allowed to go to one session a week? And it has to be at the same time?”

For you no. We have decided that we sold you Empathy Gym on the premise of flexibility and that we want you to still maintain that. So you are “grandfathered in” to have the flexibility of going to whichever session you want to each week. 

We are grateful for you being an early adopter and trusting us and we want to give you that flexibility. However, anyone that enrolls in Empathy Gym from this point on will pick a Weekly Practice Group to join and will meet at that time each week with other members of the group.

“So what exactly is changing and what is staying the same for me?”

In terms of scheduling/class selection, just to be clear, as stated above, you will still be able to go to as many or as few sessions as you’d like.

However, how you get into them will be different. We’re merging both the Intro Training and Empathy Gym onto the same platform to hopefully eliminate confusion. We will add you back to this platform - the one you were using in the Intro Training - once we make this full switch in about a week or two. From there it will be the same Zoom link each week for each practice session, you won’t sign up for any. You will just show up via the Zoom link each week. We hope this eliminates some of the confusion and technical difficulties people have experienced in the past with signing up and accessing classes.

The badges and levels you’ve earned to this point will not change. Also, we have decided that our current badge and level system is confusing and some badges are a little too hard to obtain so we are currently changing that. As a bonus, you might have leveled up or received a badge and/or email recently and wondered why because you hadn’t done anything that you know of to earn it. That's a bonus for you as part of the new changes. You can check out the Facilitator Path pages to see the changes. I hope the badges and levels are easier to understand now.

And lastly, “When will this change occur?”

We do not have an exact date as of right now but it will be sometime in the next 2 weeks. We will make sure to let you know when we do have an exact date and when we switch everyone over.

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Please let us know if you have any questions,

Ryan