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| I've been in a number of
situations, having lived on logging roads where, at any moment, a 40 ton logging
truck would come around the corner and literally cause you to drive as if your life
depended on it. These were roads that were really only 1-1/2 lanes wide at
best, topped with loose gravel, and usually had 100-500 foot cliffs on either side.
There was little margin for error. You literally had to know how to put a car into a
controlled slide into a small piece of dirt covered ground and stop the vehicle within
inches of the edge of a road that had no guard rails. It rarely happened, but you always had to drive as if it would. Of course, it would be so long between occurances, you would slowly become less and less careful, and then all of a sudden, driving faster than was safe, a car would come around the corner at 70 miles an hour, sometimes with kids or adult passengers in it, and of course, everyone would do what was necessary to avoid an accident. So, as my father would say, always ask what if. Meaning, always consider the possibilities of everything you encounter, the good and the bad. Now, personally, I'm an "educated risk" taker, I love an adventure, I normally look at the world more like a playground than a dangerous place to hide from, and I'm one of those people who really believes that I can do anything I'm actually committed to accomplishing. Not because I am superior, but simply because I say I can. Inside the reasoning that would explain my commitments, the question is actually not whether I can, but whether I will. Ray Crock, the founder of McDonald's, said that persistence is more important to success than skill. So, I'll take chances, but I won't risk my body or life for cheap thrills, because, ultimately, that would mean I would give up alot of opportunities to have fun, and learn and inquire. And it hurts. For a better explanation, listen to the song "The Secret O' Life" by James Taylor. What I kept thinking about in regard to the cars on the logging road was "Why do people take such risks and endanger themselves and their loved ones with such irresponsibility. And what is the cause and effect relationship of that action?" There are some obvious answers. First, it's fun to go fast on a country road. Then, the driver may have been in a conversation or arguement, and wasn't paying attention. They've possibly lost control of the vehicle altogether. Or, they want to thrill or scare someone, because when people are in danger, or under an implied threat, they will comply with instructions or expectations with urgency and abandonment, and they will do nearly whatever is demanded of them. They will be vulnerable and reliant upon you. They will be dominated. It's a natural part of human and animal existence. This point could be argued ad infinitum, but I don't want to do that. I am not asking you to believe anything I say, I just ask you to consider it. On this web site, I give many opinions, but I also tell you to question everything I say. That is the message of this website. To cause people to look at what is actually occuring, and then examine it, and then seek whatever it is that makes what is occuring relevant to their own lives. You lose what you don't use, and you forget what you don't apply. Years ago, an experiment was done with jumping fleas. They took a large number of them, put them in a jar, and, within minutes, the fleas had all jumped out. They gathered the fleas together again, put them back in the jar, but this time, they put a lid on the jar. Now, the fleas had been in the jar, and they had been trained to believe there was no limit on how high they would be able to jump. So they jumped and jumped, and hit the lid above them, until after a very short time, not a single flea was jumping higher than the lid that limited their flight. The fleas had been trained, in a very short period of time, that they were only allowed to jump so high, had no choice or say in the matter, and they adapted in order to cope with this artificial limitation on their lives, which seemed real because the threat of danger by hitting the lid above them that was, in their subjective interpretation, real and unmalleable. There's nothing you can do about it. Then, they took the lid off again. The fleas still only jumped as high as they had been trained to jump. Some people did another experiment that I find very interesting. They took one of those bright lime-green tennis balls, marked the seams of it with a thick, black marker, and then asked for volunteers from an audience. The volunteers needed to not be able to catch the ball, and the only people who were allowed to volunteer were people who swore that they absolutely could not catch a ball if it was thrown to them. Their own perception of themselves caused their failure, because they accepted a limitation that didn't actually exist. They simply hadn't learned the skills necessary to do it. They had not revealed the distinctions and processes that allowed their bodies to respond to the stimulus. Or. maybe out of fear f embarrassment, they thought about it too much, which impeded their natural responses to catch a ball. Despite the fact that they volunteered to presumably prove themselves to be klutzes, there was a payoff for them, a self-interest. In this case, the self-interest was realized by being willing to do something foolish, but still be accepted by some very gracious people, to get their approval, and receive external validation for the fact that they weren't very coordinated, but they were still a good person, a good sport for being willing to expose their flaws and vulnerabilities. And, they're willing to try things, because that is their true nature, especially if they were free of the perceived limitations they placed on themselves. And they're interested, maybe desperate, to do something that will free them from their dismal view of themselves and their low self-esteem, at least in the area of being able to catch a ball. It's like dancing to a song on the stereo and acting like the singer, so long as no one finds out that you do that. So, the leader of the course said, try to catch the ball. And sure enough, time after time, the volunteer would drop the ball, each time, doing it in an even more awkward and funny looking way. It was a way to deflect their embarrassment, and showing themselves to be a good sport, and nearly begging the audience to anwer a prayer.. to love her even if she wasn't as good or talented as everyone else. So the facilitator thanked her for helping, had the audience give her a round of applause, and then asked them to listen to another story. The volunteer felt good and accepted, externally validated, and so she was mentally relieved of the burden of proving her worthiness of acceptance. So then, the facilitator said, "What I want you to do now is not worry about catching the ball, try to, but don't worry about it if you don't, because catching the ball is not the object of this test. What I want you to do now is watch the ball coming toward you, and just tell me which way the ball is spinning". The ball was thrown back and forth several times, she caught them everytime, and it was funny because she didn't even seem to notice. Until afterward. And then she was embarrassed, because she had sworn she couldn't catch a ball. I never heard her say she couldn't do anything again. I did hear her say there were things she wanted to do, but didn't know how when she was asking for instruction. And she was never embarrassed to ask. What she learned was that her concern for other people's approval was her greatest obstacle to her own success. That people have something to offer each other, that other people want other people to succeed. There was alot more to it than those simple things. Like, how it's more important to notice the trends of things, and deal with that, instead of getting mired down in the morasse of the details. It's why you have generals on the hill, watching the trends of a war. The soldiers could be in the middle of a battle, and winning that particular battle, and never know that they were surrounded and losing the war. The last example I'm going to share with you is one that really makes me laugh. After I completed a course at Landmark Education called The Forum, my life was very positively altered, and I started another course immediately, and the leader of that course asked me "Do you know you don't listen?" I looked at her, she looked at me, and I thought about my life, and I considered that I was there to take their course, so, finally I said to her "Well, I think I do, but I'll accept that I don't". She looked at me for a moment, gave me a little smile and said, "Here's what you've got to do." A few years back, there was a report about a trainer for the FAA who apparently got a little too creative with the curriculum for air traffic controllers, and upset a few people by using a very simple exercise to cause air traffic controllers to notice how they didn't listen to things, but interpreted what they heard and saw, and attempted to classify it all as if something was occuring, and respond to the interpretation instead of the actual occurrance. Put simply, if two planes are flying on a collision course, but you look very quickly at the radar and the formation you see seems like a familiar pattern, you may not notice a potential disaster. The exercise is called "stand up, sit down", and it can be very confronting for perfectionists, which, at that time, I was. By the way, perfectionism isn't really just about doing things well or being right or being highly disciplined, it's about control and managing people's perceptions of you. I call myself a reformed perfectionist now, aware of the tendency, and I vigialantly try to be aware that it could pop up at any time. And that if I understand it, I have a choice about whether to use it or consider it inappropriate. So the instruction is to stand up or sit down on the course leader's instruction, not before they say it, not after they say it, and without trying to anticipate what the next instruction will be.. like playing Simon says, without saying Simon says. Watch what your mind does with this, even in print. And remember, you're not listening. :} Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down.Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Sit down.. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. If you didn't notice the inconsistency of that little paragraph, re-read it again, over and over, as many times as it takes until you do. And then come to your own conclusions about what it could possibly mean. I've shared these few things with you, which do not at all begin to describe what Landmark, and many other fine organizations have to offer in terms of human potential development. Like everything else, there are many ways to come to conclusions that will empower you. Most good college communications courses contain the same information, but they present it as information, instead of as a way to inquire into one's compulsions, frustrations, seemingly uncontrollable personality traits that cause damage to your life as counter-productive behaviors. More importantly, it can expand your horizons so that you remove the limitations you place on yourself, giving you the ability decide how you want your life to be, instead of coping with what you tolerate. Some people consider this kind of experiential training cultish. There are cults, but most empowerment organizations are people, very often times educators and doctors, who have found a way that they believe more effectively empowers people than the normal modes in which we learn. That's why they call it transformational technology. It causes you to experience many defining moments. One of the reasons people have the "cultish" opinion of organizations is because they attract people who get so much benefit from it, that they want to be around it more. So the organizations design courses for volunteers to assist so they can have something to do, in a way that makes a difference, and furthers the individuals' development. And they require that the volunteers be responsible for making sure that they are getting benefit from their participation. If not, they are asked to communicate it to someone, so they can decide if that person could have an insight from another point of view, or determine that maybe they would get greater enefit by doing something else. One of the ways you can tell the difference between a cult and an organization committed to people is to ask someone what they get out of the courses. And this test won't always be true, but it's a good guide. If they answer with a whole lot of statements about their admiration for the founder of the organization, ask a few more people and see what they say. If that's the consistent answer, then question it. If the answer participants give is example after example after example of how it's benefitted their life, then there's probably something to what the company has to offer. But be fair, because many people also admire the founders because of the contributions they've made to so many peoples' lives. These are a few of the organizations and books and things that I've found interesting and useful. This list is in no way complete, nor am I taking time to give you all the details I can't remember off of the top of my head.. I haven't done courses in all of these, but after doing some reading, I tend to agree with their concepts. And there are many more resources I probably won't mention. Landmark Education - National Mind Spring, Outward Bound, Alcoholics Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics Disclaimers: The examples I've provided above are my interpretation of some concepts that "connected the dots" for me long ago. I do not claim to be a master of any of it. What I described above is what I got out of it. And everyone gets something different from it, because we all have different things we're working on as we evolve as individuals. To Landmark Education: I've done my best to be sure I have only disclosed material in courses that we were told we could share. If you believe I have gone over the line on copyrighted materials, please do not hesitate to inform me. Doug: still haven't made it to Oregon yet, but I'm getting closer. :} Hope you're well. To other organizations. I'd be glad to list your organizations here, too. Please just send me info about how to send people to a web site. Understand, I won't blindly send someone to your site. I will look at it first. Further, this is not the focus of my site and work. If I don't put yor material online, please understand that I just ran out of time, and when I do have time, I'll get to it. Sorry. And still other organizations: I understand the need for copyrights, and I understand some of the disagreements some organizations have with each other. Please do not involve me in that. I have nothing to do with it. I would hope that in this case, you would find that people seeking ways to empower themselves is simply a good thing.
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