Occasionally, after giving talks on stage, people have asked me if I’ve ever done the Landmark Forum. I had not. My dear friend, Lucy Heavens from Juicy Lucy, had previously recommended the seminar to me as had a couple of other friends.
I’d made a load of excuses to avoid taking the plunge: I didn’t need to do it because people were kind of already telling me I’d done it. I was above it all. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t want to open stuff up and disrupt my life. It seemed like it might be some kind of cult. They must want something from me. It could be a pyramid scheme. They take advantage of you in some way. I could be damaged by the experience. The list goes on.
What Is The Forum?
If you have any loss of power in a relationship or any aspect of your life or if you simply feel like things aren’t working then it can be transformational (and yet it won’t change you). It can open up new possibilities and it’s not new, different or better information. It’s an experience and it’s not the same for everybody who does it.
Nobody who recommends the Landmark Forum is paid to recommend it, it’s not a cult nor is it a religion. There is no scam and it’s not a pyramid scheme. You don’t have to change anything about yourself. You don’t even have to stand up at and talk. In fact, you don’t ‘need’ to do it at all. It isn’t going to ‘tell you’ anything.
Put simply it’s a three and a half day seminar that is essentially an authentic ontological discussion about the nature of being. Of participants surveyed, 94% report that The Landmark Forum made a profound and lasting difference in their lives.
A Brief History
Landmark Worldwide that runs the Landmark Forum grew out of the Erhard Seminars Training (EST) developed by Werner Erhard in 1971. Rooted in the Human Potential Movement and the work of philosopher Heidegger, Erhard was also influenced by his studies on Zen Buddhism with Alan Watts. The original seminars were said to be physically and emotionally challenging and lasted 60 hours over two weekends. EST gave way to a gentler, shorter, more accessible course now known as The Forum.
The Forum
They say the Forum starts the moment you sign up for it. After I paid my £580, I decided I wanted to start offering business coaching services and, without saying anything to anyone, someone messaged me asking if I could consult for them. The magic had begun.
The seminars are held near Euston Station in London and our particular training was conducted by a fiery, passionate American woman named Kathy Bosco. I took a deep breath after hearing her accent, decided not to let my preconceptions dictate my experience and set myself the intention to have fun for the three days.
Boy did I. I laughed, I cried, it was challenging, exhilarating and eye opening. There are a good number of distinctions that I learned doing it. Here are four of them:
1. Stories
We all have stories about everyone and everything in our lives. We do this because we are meaning making machines. ‘He or she did such and such to me and ruined my life’ is an example of a story. Stories are not the problem, living like they are the truth is the problem.
The distinction is that there are things that actually happened and then there are the stories that we make up about what happened. I realised that I had lots of stories about different people in my life and even about myself. These stories resulted in me pretending with people, when in fact I really felt a different way. The stories were inauthentic and had an impact on the way I behaved in those relationships. They meant that I missed out on seeing people as they really are.
As an example, I had story about my mum being judgemental. This led to me not feeling good enough and always trying to please her and others in my life. In turn, this meant that I didn’t always pay attention to how I personally felt as I was too focussed on others’ happiness.
During the workshop you are set tasks to call people and write letters dealing with these stories. After calling my mum and others, it was quite profound how quickly I dropped stories I’d been carrying for years and then created new possibilities going forward. I had some of the most authentic conversations I’ve had in my life. The result is that my relationships with everyone have been radically transformed and exciting things have been happening ever since.
2. Change
We spend a lot of our lives trying to change by doing more of the thing we want to change, less of it or something different to it. The trouble with this is when you say you are not going to be X, you are still X because you are living a ‘not X’ life. The two are tied to one another. I’m not going to smoke anymore means I am still a smoker because I am living a non-smoking life.
In other words, your future is always being coloured by the sun glasses of your past. This means you never really escape it and you can end up trapped in your stories, even though you may be aware of them and the fact that they are unwanted. The more you try to change the harder it is to change. Most of us aren’t aware that we are wearing these sunglasses. We think that what we are seeing is reality rather than a perspective. The Forum gives you the opportunity to remove the glasses, to reset completely and open up a new possibility.
After my dad died in 2000, I decided that I didn’t want to be a poor and struggling film maker, so I pushed hard to grow Blue Eyed Sun to become wealthy i.e. ‘not-poor.’ This has kept me in a paranoid state running the business ever since, because I live in constant fear of becoming poor. The glasses of my past cloud the way I see my future.
3. Rackets
The things that are unwanted in our lives that persist are distinguished as ‘rackets’ in the Forum. We all have them, but most of us don’t notice them for what they are. Mine are to do with being right or wrong, not being good enough and feeling judged by others.
They clouded my conversations with people, as I unwittingly looked for these rackets all the time. In effect, I wasn’t really listening to anyone as I was always seeking out evidence to support my rackets. We often don’t listen to one another properly, we judge and assess what others say, and the voice in our heads dominates and prevents us from being truly present with each another.
4. Creating Reality
Many of us are living in a world of constant assessment rather than actual experience. In effect we are missing out on our lives, because they are governed by our reasons and considerations instead of what we really want.
Your word, and your relationship with your word, creates your reality. Declaration is the form of language that creates. It’s the foundation of your integrity. Who I am is my word. Both to myself and to others around me. By saying what you want and sticking to your word you create a powerful relationship with yourself and those around you.
The seminar shows you how to get authentic with yourself and with others. It reminds you to honour the promises and agreements that you make. To honour your word, not your reasons. To honour what you say, not what you think. The power of this integrity is incredible and as the weekend evolves you find yourself creating a new level of being in the world.
This part has been most interesting for me, because I used to say ‘yes’ to everything so that I didn’t let anyone down and didn’t miss out on anything. All part of my little ‘people-pleasing’ thing. As obvious as it may sound to you, I’m coming to realise that I can’t do everything. I need to cut back on my promises and only to commit to what I personally want to be involved with and what I am able to realistically fit into my schedule that doesn’t conflict with my higher priorities.
Life After
After doing the Landmark Forum I found myself taking full responsibility for my life and no longer blaming anyone else. I began to really listen to others, without adding anything and accepting that things are just they way they are and just the way they aren’t.
Within Blue Eyed Sun, my experience of our team has been transforming and I’ve had very real, authentic and powerful conversations with them that have created exciting new possibilities.
In The Forum I created a possibility for myself of ‘love and creative abundance.’ This has created a completely new space for everything I now do. So, I’m no longer looking forward through the glasses of ‘not being poor.’ Well, I say no longer, it still comes back from time to time, and now I’m more quick to spot what’s happening for me and steer my attention to the possibility I have created for myself and any new ones I choose to create.
As line with my possibility of love and creative abundance, I’ve developed exciting new ranges of Spring designs with three different new artists that we’re launching at Home & Gift and Autumn Fair. I’ve designed two of my own small card ranges called Poet’s Corner and Gold Standard. My #PlasticFreeJuly project on social media became fun and carefree, as I no longer pandered to my rackets of not being good enough or getting it right or wrong. I’m also currently enrolling customers into my bigger vision of reducing single-use coffee cup waste from 2.5 billion cups a year to 1 billion over the next two years, instead of just focussing on my own interests of boosting BambooCup sales. Finally, I’ve started charging for my business coaching services. After 16 years of helping start-ups at the Ladder Club for free, I think I’ve earned it. I feel transformed. I’d recommend Landmark to anyone searching for new possibilities.
