As you may or may not know, I am recent graduate of the Landmark Forum and Landmark Advanced Course. Each course is a super intensive 13 hours a day 3 1/2 day marathon and sprint all at once.
Upon registering you are asked to identify at least one area or one thing that is not working in your life, so that you can have a focus to work on during the course.
Since completing both courses, I have come to some pretty fundamental realizations, that really shift my experience of life - in a positive way.
I walked in thinking there was some sort of fundamental block I was experiencing in my life which needed a little "psychological woo woo" (for lack of a better term) to open-up. That somehow there was something wrong with me and that's why these areas of my life weren't working. I mean come-on, honestly, you don't get to be 33 and single like the desert and walk away without thinking there must be something wrong with you.
So the truth is , there is no such thing as "psychological woo woo" - and there's nothing wrong with me. I'm human, and sometimes as humans we lock ourselves into ways of thinking and behaving that are not productive. We all do it, and to the extent that our rational is often not conscious, it's inescapable.
That being said, I was really challenged on many of the ways of being and thinking that I had embraced as true and right.
I walked out of the Forum at the end of June feeling super empowered, and sure that my life would be completely different moving forward. When the same issues, beliefs and struggles came-up - I never questioned the training, I started thinking that my experiences must be the TRUTH. and because they were true, it didn't matter how I framed them or thought about them. It was reasonable and logical to me that my situation kept reoccurring because it was reality. Which in turn validated me and my experiences.
I am attending a seminar series currently running on Tuesday nights, which is intended to help me take what I learned/experienced at the Forum, and put it into action in my life.
I had a really powerful realization this Tuesday.
I needed my situation to persist, because that made it truth. And if it was the truth, then I was not only validated, but justified in my complaints, etc... That was my payoff.
Here's the rub. My Advanced Course facilitator said this, but it had it's greatest impact on me as a statement as I replayed it in my memory on Tuesday evening.
"We don't really know the truth in our memory: at best we have an interpretation of the truth".
So there is no truth - sort of. And it really doesn't matter what the truth is...(I'm not talking about absolute or moral truth - breath out!) At the end of the day the best question to ask is - "is it working for me? Is this moving forward towards my goal(s)?" That matters more than
"Is this true?"
Maybe "matters more" is the wrong phasing, I think I mean "is more helpful".
So that's my revelation. I'm going to keep being me, and coming across/against the same issues and struggles from time to time. However, instead of asking is this true or saying this must be true, I'm going to ask "is this working for me?", "is this helping me to move forward towards my goal?".
I think eventually I'll stop coming across the same struggles, I'll start coming across new ones - and I think I'll be the better for it.
