SELF IMPROVEMENT
10 Ways To Transform Your Life and Relationships Forever
The most powerful experience I ever had
Over 20 years ago now, I took an intensive self-development course with the Landmark Forum. The event forever changed my thinking on many issues and many of the learnings I detail below came to me in a kind of ‘lightbulb’ moment. I was a 20-something, happy with life and no major issues (I thought) and then I stuck myself in a room for a long weekend with 200 others to take myself apart.
What I learnt that weekend that I NEVER forgot
1. Take responsibility for how you feel.
Don’t make it someone else’s fault. Telling someone ‘you made me unhappy, you made me angry’ puts the responsibility of your emotions with someone else. It also makes them the guilty party and puts them on the defensive, which won’t improve your chances of a fruitful outcome. Much better is ‘When you did this, I felt angry’, or ‘I felt sad when you acted in this way’.
Assuming you have control over yourself, you can choose to feel any way you like about any situation.
2. The story we tell others and ourselves about our life is just a story.
We were asked to write a story about our lives. Pick a topic, or a person, and write about it or them and the influence on your life. I wrote about my father. I’d had a difficult relationship with him, he was depressed during my childhood and I made his lack of emotional availability about me.
I wasn’t good enough. Surely if I were, he would be happy. Why wasn’t I enough to make him happy? This was before we all started talking about mental health and depression became a subject openly discussed.
The exercise we did involved writing the story, everything in your head, no holds barred, just write. Then, with a random partner in the room, you share your story. You tell it, over and repeatedly. You tell it until you are sick of hearing the same words come out of your mouth and until you hear the story differently and realize how ridiculous it all sounds.
You’ve attached so many meanings to it, understood it in just one way, but somehow putting it out there changes how it sounds. You can let go of it, it is a story exorcised. It no longer defines who you are. Transformational. Then your partner does the same.
YOU are the only one responsible for how your life story goes.
3. The past only exists in our mind.
We explain memories and events with a story because we are hard-wired to make sense of stuff.
When the past is a story we tell ourselves, we often drag it into our present to help make sense of our lives. What if the story you tell does not empower you or leave you feeling good? Maybe it is best in the past. You can look at what happened in your life, the different events, and with fresh eyes try to create a new story. Like a character in a fiction novel, what are all the different possibilities?
Our future is something we load up with dreams and plans and aspirations, but sometimes it stays in the future because something has to happen first for us to move forward. The thought of that future keeps us happy but change can be hard so sometimes that ‘future’ stays right where it is…in our imagination. Plus we cannot live in our future alone, we don’t know what might happen tomorrow.
3. The only thing that exists, in reality, is right now.
So much has been written on this, but it is so true. We have to live in the present because it is all we have. We can look back, we can dream and plan, but in the real world, we are here, and now. So be content with where you are and take steps, albeit baby steps, to move toward the future you desire.
The temptation to see a dream or objective as a huge task can disable us, but thinking about the baby steps that could help us get there really helps. It keeps us focused, and it is rewarding because we are, but the present should not be ignored.
If we live in stress and anxiety about future goals, we cannot just ‘be’ in the present and our health and well-being can be compromised.
4. Don’t leave things unfinished with people.
Clear your stuff up. It’s hard to move forward while still carrying baggage along from before. Closure may be what you need, but don’t expect others to be as willing to take part. If you are doing a little soul searching and see where something is unresolved for you, just know that for someone else it might be best left untouched. If you know you need to apologize, do it, but don’t expect one back. Just right your wrong and move on. Be the bigger person. Drop your pride. It’s just more baggage, after all. Humility just feels lighter to carry.
5. Are you a bad listener? You may not think so, but consider this — if you are truly present in your conversations, actively listening and engaged, not with half your mind on the meeting you have next, you shouldn’t struggle to later recall.
I will never forget the example of the guy who stood up and explained how he had realised he needed to be more present with his fiancee and her family. He felt blessed to have them in his life but had a lot of work and was distracted by that at family events and didn’t get present.
After noticing that he had a poor recollection of special times they had shared, he acknowledged his need to get present to the wonderful new family he had.
He cried as he told the story. Such is the power of a lightbulb moment realisation and standing up to share it with 200 sympathetic listeners.
In that moment, I too saw that I was guilty of often listening but at the same time planning my response, or thinking about an urgent issue I had going on, not really focusing on what is being said. It’s not that I didn’t want to listen, it’s just I get distracted easily, I take on way too much, and find it hard to organize my time. Hence being distracted during a conversation. Another person can tell. If they know you, they see when you are not really there.
If you don’t listen to someone, really listen, then you aren’t present and it’s hard to later remember being there because you WEREN’T.
6. As we grow through life, we become limited by our identity if we let it. Don’t let it.
We like certain things, we don’t like others. People know us and our traits, our partners, and our families. If we started off with a blank page, now we’re like a notebook where the sketches have their style, recognizable, repeated over and over. We are known for being who we are. What if we are much more than that? Do we stop evolving as we get older? Run out of time to stretch ourselves? We often stay in a comfort zone as we know it makes us happy although we suspect something else might too, it’s new and change is hard.
7. Don’t judge a book by its cover
We had to do an exercise around intimacy. It was to sit in a chair and stare into a stranger’s eyes for five minutes. Five looooong minutes. It was uncomfortable; I was super nervous to do it. We would each work with two different strangers and we could see who they would be.
So my first guy was pretty hot, I thought it seemed a great thing to get to do, but on sitting down opposite, I saw nothing; I felt nothing. His eyes gave nothing away and his beauty dissipated. To me he was a pretty face, that was all.
The next guy made me nervous from afar, he looked like an aggressive type, large guy, strong face, something about him intimidated me. The moment I looked into his eyes, I saw such depth; he was a gentle person, I just knew it. From afar, I so misjudged him. How often had I done that before, I wondered?
9. Say what you have to say and don’t be afraid. Others could benefit from your words.
Over the years, I’ve talked about this experience and been met with the response of ‘I could never stand and talk in front of so many people’. It’s understandable. Public speaking can be nerve-wracking for some and many on the course were terrified to talk. Some had decided they would just sit and listen.
But when you sit and listen to others get up and share, one by one, many of them nervous too, you realize that more important than the fear is what you have to say.
If you are benefiting from the words of others and the experiences they have had, why would they not benefit from yours?
Many felt compelled to speak up, who had sworn they would not. And they were met with applause and warmth and love.
In that room, it was easy to see that so many of our issues and conditions come from the same basic places: lack of love, difficult relationships, emotions not expressed, feelings that are never dealt with, misunderstanding, anger at past events. You are not alone in your suffering, whatever it is. You realise that when you spend an intensive long weekend sat in a room with hundreds of others.
10. Give up being right
Even when you are sure you are.
“Being right” is not a win, because when one person needs to be right, the other person needs to be wrong. It’s an argument. Nothing productive happens in an argument. Remember the famous words of Deepak Chopra.
“Give up being right. Instead radiate peace, harmony, love, and laughter from your heart.”