Graduation

In September of this year, I am proud to say that, I graduated from the Landmark Forum.  What does that mean?

I took a train to London for an extended five day weekend.  I arrived on the morning of the first day of the Forum and went straight to Landmark Worldwide's offices.  I had a little expectation, mainly from the short videos I had watched introducing some of the sessions and concepts that were to take place over the first three days.  I have been interested in personal development for over ten years, but more focused over the last five years.

What is personal development and why would I be interested in it?  For me, through my initial reading of some of Anthony Robbins' work and the now late Dr. Stephen Covey - whose book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was my first introduction to this type of learning - it is about wanting something more from your life and of yourself.  Does that mean that my life isn't enough?

I have a family with my partner and two children, I have relationships with my family in the UK, and a more distant one with my family overseas.  I have friends.  I have a secure job with prospects that provides financially.  I have somewhere to live.  I can meet all my basic needs in life and I can enjoy much more than that.  I have reasonably good health, less good fitness, and I have mental health that has fluctuated over the last ten years, probably longer. Does this sound familiar?

If I never read a personal development book or attended the Landmark forum, my life most certainly would go on.  If I never learn to speak Spanish so when I next visit my family there and communicate with them in their own language, my life will go on.  If I never train my body so I can enjoy a better level of fitness and ensure that I can be active with my children as they grow up and enjoy the experience of a life of vitality, my life will go on.  If I never get round to writing any comedy and applying for the gong show at The Comedy Store to build on the experience I had when I performed in Kendal last year, having something creative and using my comedy to deliver a message as well as entertain, my life will go on.

I accept that things are OK and I also recognise that there are a lot of things that I am not OK with.

The way I have summarised, to those I have shared my experience of the Forum with and on the conversations had over the weekend with them is that the biggest irony for me was that they didn't really share anything I didn't already know.  There may have been some conversations framed in a certain way that I hadn't considered, but the message was not something alien to me.

We talked about meaning, our relationship with ourselves and others, the fixed ways of being we have around our constant complaints. We discussed sharing, creating possibilities, and ways of being.  We talked about creating in language, integrity and being your word.

People who volunteered to take the microphone and share openly with the entire group were addressed directly, as adults, and asked to confront themselves and their constructs of their ways of thinking and being.  They were pushed to 'get on the court' and bring to the group the detail of the share and make it real.    They were asked to be responsible for themselves and their lives.  It wasn't always comfortable, but mostly it was enlightening. 

The three days were thirteen hours in length.  To use a cliché, it was a rollercoaster of emotions.  We listened and we participated.  We shared with the person seated next to us and some shared publicly with the room  - numbering around one hundred and eighty people, if I recall correctly.

Landmark describe the Forum as transformative learning, ontological in nature,  informed in part by neuro-scientific research.  Landmark do not lay claim to have a magic wand for you and your life.  They do not even claim to have invented the conversations and concepts they share in the Forum.  They are very honest about their ambitions as an organisation, that their ability is in packaging information in a powerful way, and they are demanding in asking you to be coachable, to put in the work and continue to do so beyond the Forum - bringing it outside of their offices and into your life and to share with the people you have relationships with.

If you are constructing in your mind what I have written this far means, what it means about me or what it means about you, or what it means about what I did, or the people who do it, then the only thing I can be pretty sure of is that if I asked for ten readers to give me those meanings they would all differ.  There may be some similar themes - scepticism, intrigue, scorn, enrolment, confusion, but there would be nuances that set each opinion aside on its own.

What does that in itself tells us about meaning?  That there is none.  There is no meaning as the only meaning that there is, is the meaning you and I attach to anything and everything and everyone.  If we create our own meaning, which we base on our paradigms, experiences, and influences then we are actually truly free to create whatever meaning we want for ourselves.  If that is the case then do we want to create meaning that is empowering and freeing or meaning that disempowers us and is restraining?  We always have a choice.  It may not feel like we do, but feelings are not to be trusted.  We always have a choice, whether we make it consciously or not.

Returning to my opening sentence.  Most of us are our own worst critics and we often find it difficult to give ourselves praise or recognise our own achievements. I haven't always felt a sense of pride in having graduated. I have felt frustrated and disappointed. I have felt a sense of elation and of being powerful. I have felt like it was the best decision of my life and a waste of money. 

Now I am coming to the end of a ten session seminar where we have been discussing what excellence is as a possibility as opposed to as a concept.  In the same way that we create meaning in our lives, we also create what excellence is and we spend much of our lives striving to achieve it.  What if our concept of what excellence is has no basis in truth? What if the only truth in it is that we created the concept in the same way that we create meaning? What does that leave us with?

I am graduating from the program on the 17th December in London.  I invite you, if you want to come and find out first-hand what Landmark are about, to see for yourself and join me.  I can bring as many guests as I want and am excited to have any of you come along.  Please go get in touch even If you just want to talk more about what I have written here.  I am happy to pick up the phone, send a text, or whatever works for you.

Sharing this blog post with you and extending this invite makes me vulnerable to your opinion. Whatever you have made this mean, I ask you to consider that it doesn't mean that at all.  I hope I have shared with you in a way that inspires you to get in touch to discuss this more, or to come and join me.  If it doesn't, I hope it has at least posed you a question.

I will blog again shortly to tell you more of what I hoped to get out of the Forum before I went and what I am getting out of it now.