Month: May 2012

Maybe They Can’t Be

This post was written on my phone on March 23rd as I was sitting in my car waiting to go to the Landmark Forum after buying a coffee. It is funny to look back on because the weekend had already started to transform me before I set foot in the building.

I’ve often wondered why a cashier seems to be really nice to the mean person in front of me in line, the one who snaps “adequate” to her smiling “hi, how are you?” berates her for not letting them pay with VISA and barks “whatever” when they say “have a great day.”

My smiling “hi” seems to evoke the same sort of response from her as hers did of the mean person before me. Historically it has been a really challenge for me not to wear responsibility for her replies, but today at Starbucks the beautiful barista demonstrated that it had nothing ever to do with me.

Mean guy was beating off her legendary customer service. She kept it coming at him with happiness, unphased by what he was putting out in an effort to infect the world we share with his dark past. As he slugged away, seemingly more pissed that her spirit didn’t accept his *gift* I though “what is about to happen here doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Me “hi! How are you?” with the pathologically happy smile that is becoming easier to start and harder to control lately.

Her “great! What can I get for you? How are you doing?” not reciprocating my smile but sharing the same smile she gave away to the mean guy.

This was not what buying coffee, groceries, clothes, etc… right after mean people usually is.

And it dawned on me. It is EXACTLY what is has always been like. It was never about me or them or mean guy personally. It’s about a baseline that is sometimes hard to muster, especially when someone is trying to paint you with their junk and their past.

The decaf coffee was delicious, as only it can be for someone who has just stopped smoking. The lesson was enjoyed more than the coffee!

On Instructing Well

It turns out that I have been teaching a good cycling class for a long time. I haven’t really been sure if I’ll be able to do it in the hours leading up to the start of class, but each week the right words seem to flow out of me; and for this I am grateful. I have taught for more than 5 years and been on stage for 500 or 600 times, spend 1000’s of hours practicing and am moving towards being an expert.

Something odd was happening though, I was getting better and better, participants were saying that they really enjoyed my classes, but it was never clear to me why they were. I always thought it was because I would work hard and deliver a high energy performance. This is part of it, but it isn’t the entire thing – and I’m not sure it is very much of it now. I posted the following to facebook this morning:

If you anchor the feelings of athletic performance, accomplishment, fun and success to your class participants they will fall in love with your classes, your performance and their Group Exercise enrollment. Get them to feel their heart beating faster, the pain in their muscles as they grow stronger. Have them hear their quickened breath and the sound of the room gasping for air. Ask them to look are their hands, arms, legs and the other members of the class to see the sweat and glow of extraordinary effort. Coach them to notice what their highest moment looks, sounds and feels like and start being their most powerful inner voice.

THAT is why I am getting better. My classes remind people of just how great their bodies can make them feel when they are training. I take them on a physical journey that connects many of the things that are what it means to be truly alive – hard work, passion, intensity, fun, crushing limitations, creating and being new possibilities, love of life and existence in the moment – and anchor these to the room, the bikes, and the experience that is a class.

Life gets clearer, a little bit each day!

60 Days Into Act 2

It has been about 60 days since I gave-up smoking, alcohol, sugar, compulsive eating, compulsive anxiety, compulsive exercise and compulsively blaming other people for the outcome of my decisions. I feel better than I have in a very long time. As well as I can tell, I haven’t felt this excited about the possibility of my future since right before we moved to Canada when I was 9. I feel more energized than I have in my adult life. I’m a 39 year old child! Joyful, passionate, fearless, authentic and with a well developed brain, well trained body and a spirit that is grounded in the essence of the universe.

I’m almost 4 decades old and now firmly entrenched in the possibilities of the future that will become my present. There is a growing sense of joy and gratitude for all that I have been through, the people who have come into my life, the experiences we have shared, the joy, the pain, the choices that makes life what it is now and the realization that just because I have been doing something doesn’t mean that I will continue to do it. My future is wide open, loaded with anything.

During a coaching session today, Sean got me to consider the areas in my life that haven’t been working out or for which breakthroughs have not occurred. The only area that hasn’t seemed to get positive traction is in the area of Love, Sex and Romance (SLR). I have noticed that while I do get closer and closer with each relationship, I’m still not getting it effectively; now this isn’t to say that I haven’t found, dated or been in a relationship with my future partner, it’s just to say that to date my track record has not demonstrated a clear breakthrough in-spite of the progress I’m making in other areas of my life.

The coaching in this area is fairly straight forward because if I keep doing the same thing and, until I know what I’m looking for, I cannot authentically make a call on what I want for the rest of my life. My future will be better served if I take a more active role in uncovering what I am actually looking for in terms of SLR. The advice seems accurate because in almost every other area of my life I have tried out a lot of different experiences, fine-tuning each one in an effort to create the possibility of the career, body, friendships, spirituality that will touch, move and inspire me each day of my life.

To this end, I love my friends, I love the jobs that I am doing, I’m extremely happy with my body and health and proud of the spirit that is taking root in my identity. I know with certainty that my least enlightened actions have already occurred and I have learned a lot of lessons from all that I have done. It’s the lessons that I have yet to learn from the things I have NOT yet done that remain, and the goal of the session was to help me see and accept that my breakthroughs are waiting my new and different actions.

It is with a sense of anticipated trepidation that I consider the next moves in terms of SLR. The thoughts themselves don’t cause anxiety, I’m actually excited about the possibility of being more spontaneous and doing things very differently than before. What is perplexing is the unknown – I have no idea what these things will be, and that is part of what act 2 is all about – being the unknown.

My LandMark Forum Part 9 – The 6 Weeks Following

On the weekend of March 23, 24, 25 I attended the LandMark Forum in Toronto. It changed my life in a very profound way. I cannot credit all of the transformation I have and am undergoing on the weekend but it played a big role and remains a new starting point for my new being. I was more than 3 weeks into complete sobriety and the end of my compulsive behaviors and stopping as much as I stopped will change a human being very dramatically. I’ll just say that I was ready for the experience and the timing of the things couldn’t have been better.

My focus has been outstanding! I have a much cleared head that I ever remember and my thinking seems to be more effective. There are fewer open loops in my life because I am being integrity – whenever I realize that I’m drifting off course, I correct it as soon as I can.

My energy has never been better! When I am on purpose and just being, the energy of the universe just channels through me. Gravity seems to decrease and I almost float around. I know I’m off course when my energy level nose dives – time in the car is a lot more challenging than any other moments I live now – this is the opposite to what I was experiencing a few months ago when I would feel more alive when I was by myself driving.

My dreams are wild and anything but normal. This is what I have been expecting. I am not the same person I was before the LandMark Forum weekend. This is a battle going on in my brain to assimilate the world and universe into my antiquated world view. This takes time and each day I am faced with something new and many things that I find scary. I acknowledge that fear that exists, I accept that there is a survival benefit to trying to keep things as they are but that the universe does not remain static even for an instant. Emotions and dreams are the key ways – and are likely the fastest ways – to uncover what is going on in the unconscious mind. When I’m dreaming or feeling, something is matching or resonating with past memories. The nature of the match may not be clear, but there is information being given to my consciousness and it is irresponsible of me to ignore it.

I’m seeing where and why my life hasn’t turned out as I had hoped and as I am being integrity, my future actions become clearer. And some of the possibilities that fantastic – a sustainable relationship with a girl that adds value and enjoyment to both of our lives, being in a partnership that helps cause greatness in both of us – and the path to those possibilities is scary – my path to this moment, while a very real creation of myself, a product of my will for a specific future needs to change because my relationships are not working for me or the girls I date.

Life is scary, dangerous and when I embrace this, I become bold, fearless and indestructible. I speak frankly about this fear now, be it sitting in front of a new performance coaching client, a new or old girl friend, in front of a cycling class, my family, my friends, a stranger. I believe that life is lived fully when we acknowledge this fear and allow it to tune our performance up vs. shutting it down. I’m aware that I’m going to get rejected, have breakdowns, have things not go the way I want, but none of these things matter because they are always there and have always been a possibility. I may not want them to happen, but I grow more when things don’t go the way I had hoped they would. And I live more when I take the chance and start being the possibility of the life I am here to live.

My LandMark Forum Part 8 – Day Three, Part Two

I need to say the following though. Some people were destroyed by the weekend and not in the way I was destroyed. I died, I killed myself off because I am the possibility of a new being. That didn’t happen to some people. Some people were damaged by what they found out about themselves and this is part of why I am very reluctant to outright recommend EVERYONE take part in the Landmark Forum weekend.

I told my brother that he would gain from going there and he agree, but he also doesn’t need it. He’s emotionally intelligent, self-aware and everything that was covered in the weekend, he and I have talked about over pho during the last 15 years. His baseline is different than mine, he wasn’t lost and he had life understood early and had created the management skills well before the was 30. He would do what I did, engage other people and coach the heck out of them. He sees patterns faster than anything else and since he has no interest in doing what I do for a living, it would be a waste of a weekend.

I did attempt to directly enroll one person in the weekend and they didn’t want to talk to me. I understand why they don’t want to talk to me and I actually agree with them for this, but realize that the weekend would help them complete their past in a way that they haven’t been successful at up until we parted ways. There is nothing wrong with this person and, since we don’t connect very often and haven’t corrected our friendship, I wouldn’t directly suggest they attend. The stuff that comes out for some people requires a lot of therapy to manage and if there is a tendency towards avoidance or retreating, people shouldn’t attend. Once you see who you are, you cannot go back and MUST continue forward. Retreating back in to a past that you know is a lie causes serious damage.

A few of the people I recommend attend are in therapy so they are in a better place. I can say this with confidence, I am more value to the participants in the group than most of the people who volunteer their time; I have worked with people for more than a decade and am very effective. But I do part ways with some people and they are further along but damaged as a result of it. Months or years later we reconnect and the lessons are well received, but they needed to work stuff through. If you can afford therapy and have a good connection with your therapist this is a better option than a self help group.
Younger people would benefit from this because younger people have yet to be socialized ineffectively. The weekend is like a user guide for the mind and it is a solid foundation and those with a head start in this area will be much more successful simply because they’ll get to work much sooner.

Self-aware, emotionally intelligent and open minded people will benefit from the weekend because it will give you insight into your nature and offer up a lot of the skills needed to manage your mind, thoughts, complete the past and create the possibilities you need / want for your new being.

I will NEVER advocate strongly for someone to attend unless I am available to them in the evenings / mornings and during the day. I needed Des to coach me out of the thing I had on Saturday evening and while it isn’t his responsibility to help me with this, it saved me a lot of time and kept me on course. It was a tough hour before things fell into place again. I think Des knew what I would get out of the weekend before I went so he wasn’t surprised that I called. He is the most effective coach, teacher and mentor that I have and he did his thing with me so quickly on Saturday night that I’m still in awe of what he does.

My LandMark Forum Part 7 – Day Three, Part 1

I make something to eat and get a few fragments of sleep. My dreams are in overdrive yet am not more than just about asleep.

I wake-up laughing and can’t stop. Life is a big joke. Everything is a big joke. We’re $7 worth of carbon, big meats sacks blobbing our way around the earth as it spins around the sun, one of billions of stars in an enormous universe. Each of us is utterly worthless, existing only because we were born and life has a strong need to continue. I, like the walking dead guy, have manufactured the existence that I have been conditioned and then choose to believe I deserve. I can be anything and given my ability to manipulate I have been doing the jobs, participating the relationships and living the life that I am best suited for. Knowing that I created all of this closed the door on the past and opened the door to the possibilities of almost anything.

I’m 39 years old, unmarried, no children, limited dept, limited obligations, I ache when I am inauthentic, cruel or mean, I can read minds, strip people naked and control them, I am the most powerful person in the universe, one of a small group that float through time and space being of service to others while fearlessly acquiring little. I will die friendless and alone, and when I do, I will return to the earth to be broken down and reconstituted into something else. I am a general in the battle for human potential and I no longer ache when others do not achieve the freedom that is their possibility. I no longer seek to make people feel better and accept that in my wake will either be enlightened progressives or those highly committed to remaining stuck as they are blaming me instead of taking responsibility and walking through the door to a different future.

I float into Toronto, the weather is perfect, the roads are perfect, this is the first day of my life and I am younger than I have ever been, older than I ever thought possible and the same person as many of the people I have admired, read about and fantasized about being. There is nothing going through my mind but a feeling of contentment, satisfaction and safety. Everything that I have thought about the world is true, and false. It is as meaningful and meaningless as I want to make it. My memories can be fun, joyful reflective things or they can be oppressive punishing stories that milk the joy from my very being. I select the life I want to live, starting last night when Des laughed and I realized that I wasn’t going to die from the knowledge I got that I am a compassionate, manipulative, analyzer. The wisdom is out there, the choice has been made and my possibilities are endless because it’s all meaningless anyway. My body is made-up of the same particles that have existed since the beginning of time, in this form they exist for an instant. It doesn’t matter at all. I can make whatever purpose I like and have been doing this all of my life.

The room is filled with the same people, a few are different, a few are broken very badly, I can see their past, some have been raped, others molested, beaten, abandoned, rejected, taught negative love, or are simply young and insecure. All of them are beautiful and I love each of them. I approach and smile at a few, they smile back, taking something from the softness and twinkle in my eyes, almost basking in the safety of my energy. Touching their arms as we speak, I’m trying to given them some of what I’ve tapped into – the energy of the universe that flows freely when the AAT and rackets disappear. Some receive the gift, others seem taken back, I glide to a seat and the session begins.

There is value at this point, but less and less for me and more for the other people. I am present, alive, vibrant and of service to everyone and anyone. There are move conversations about language, stories we tell and chatter about what is coming-up before dinner this evening. I know it doesn’t matter, my transformation has begun, and it actually began when my mom asked me to not change anything until after my dad died and I didn’t change anything. I realized that because of who I am and what my strong traits are, I COULDN’T change anything until after he was gone. It simply would have been selfish and unfair to the entire family and that is not how I operate.

As we break for lunch I notice someone new. Standing there, tall, alive, clean shaven, hat-less and wearing really nice clothes is the greatest person I have ever met. The walking dead guy has clearly started act two.

“Wow, you look amazing, you look alive.”

There’s a huge smile on his face as he says “I feel amazing, I am alive!” We hug and he tells me the following:

“I went home and told my wife that I loved her for the first time ever. She asked me what it meant and I told her that it didn’t matter, all that was important was that I did and that I finally realize it. We chatted, we had breakfast, we were a family for a few short moments before I had to come here.”

I can leave now, I’m certain that my Landmark Forum weekend has begun and will never end until I return to the earth. But I’m going to stay. I’m having a fun like I used to when I was training clients and completely focused on them, like when I was working on a project with Ranger with a clear mind, like I was playing the last spring in Ireland before we moved to Canada, like I was talking with Rachel or Leigh or my family or one of my mentor friends. The present moment is a peaceful place to be, free of depression about the past, free from anxiety for the future and filled with energy like I’m in love and on fire!

Right before dinner, the big reveal and I’m laughing because it is obvious that the entire weekend has been building towards it. Des and I have been talking about it for years, I have always tried to get my clients, friends, romantic partners, any and everyone to see and accept it. Some accept it easily, others fight back trying to convince me of how wrong it is. But the science is solid and there is no refuting it. So I laugh, and laugh and laugh, and my laughing is starting to get to people. Much like my happiness, smiling and compassion towards people, my being makes some other people feel insecure, scared or fearful. I get up and walk to the back of the room, laughing. I catch eyes with someone else who feels the humor, he too is at the back of the room. We share a moment, it doesn’t matter, we’re the same person for that second in time, we ARE the moment.

The arguing beings and I’m captivated by watching human beings acting like human beings. The leader owns each and every people who tries to convince the group that the reveal is not accurate. I keep laughing. It’s like wack a mole watching peoples body language change as the reveal opens them up to the possibilities. They get taller, brighter and start smiling and laughing. I laugh, we leave for dinner, return, and I head home early. The graduation isn’t for me. I will never graduate. I am not the same as most people. My purpose in life is service to the universe, so service to myself. This was the start of my life, not just a weekend course.

My LandMark Forum Part 6 – Day Two, Part Three

For a long time I haven’t felt like I belong. For the most part I have felt only at ease around my immediate family and a few good friends. I’ve often felt that people either don’t like me or that I make them scared. I have often felt like I can read peoples minds and that I know what they are feeling and thinking. Des called me a reflector and commented that I likely have a lot of mirror neurons that allow me to experience more of what people are feeling than other people do. I don’t recall the entire conversation about this, but it did make sense. I do get into peoples heads very quickly and people open-up to me a lot more than they would with other people.

Some people make me sick though, almost physically sick and these tend to be manipulative toxic and emotionally void individuals. This is different from people who don’t like me or I don’t like, it’s people that darken my experience, offer no joy or effectively violate social norms in terms of matching transactional strokes. Someone calling me a dick or worse doesn’t impact me as someone who gives me nothing to reflect or causes me to feel black and empty. I hate being manipulated, it leaves me feeling gamed and when I feel it happening I am usually close to puking or voiding my bowels.

The last 45 minutes of day two were worth at least $1000, likely more, although I wouldn’t have believed it as they were happening.

I was riding a high. I was getting everything that was coming at me, I was rolling with the punches, learning the lessons, seeing myself in everything that people were saying. This was my Landmark Forum weekend and the universe had finally presented me on my path again. Then we started talking about strong traits – our go to ways of acting that help us cope with things that we don’t have the ability to cope with. I was pretty confident that passion was one of mine, it always seemed like I was passionate about things and I always liked the way it sounded – there’s a positive romantic feeling to it so saying it, and having people agree that I was passionate was nice.

Now for reason of copyright I’m not getting into the how, why and what of strong traits, but the leader asked us to think about them and then walked around the room getting us to say one of them. When I said “passionate” and he repeated “passionate” back to me, I got that sick feeling I get when someone is running a game on me. He continued around the room, but he could have jumped out the window for all I knew and cared, I was stuck in the moment of him repeating it back to me. I hated this guy; well, I hated the way I felt when he spoke to me. My body was telling me something that I needed to be aware of and deal with. I’ve had few moments as compelling at this one so I wasn’t going to waste it. I got up and walked to one of the staff and told them that I needed to talk to them. We left the big room and I then said “privately.” Once inside one of the smaller rooms the following conversation took place:

“What’s going on Patrick?”

“When ___ repeat passionate, I thought I was going to puke. That’s information to me, and I need to figure it out.”

“Okay, who does ___ remind you of?”

I take a moment before saying “to say my dad would be too simple, plus I liked my dad, he didn’t make me sick.”

“Okay.” Long pause.

“Some sort of authority figure, but to be honest, he reminds me of myself.” Pause before “but I’m a manipulative little prick.”

“___ is a manipulative person too” slight smile.

“Okay, what does that mean?”

“I can’t tell you.”

There is a moment or two and we return to the big room. The homework is assigned and I am the first person out the door and I’m likely already on the highway by the time anyone in the front row has made it to the back door. I’m upset, I’m not certain going to this thing was a good idea. I don’t know why I’m so spinning, but I don’t feel good at all. Psychologically wounded. I call Kate, she doesn’t answer, I call Des, he does. I tell him what has happened and he sort of laughs.

“Good, you’re laughing, I’m not going to die.” He says something to the effect of “yeah you will, but not tonight or because of this.” We chat about my manipulation, how it has been there as long as he has known me, how my folks have had to deal with it for most of my life, how there have been very few people in my life who haven’t had me do it to them and how he’s immune to it, but only because he feels it and calls me on it.

“Maybe this is why I was doing all of the compulsive stuff, why I was getting sick so much towards the end of my last few relationships, why I was always trying to alter the way I looked.” His reply of “maybe, but stay with it for a while, you’re on to something and to consider the possibilities” was what I needed.

“But I’m not a dick, I tend to act in the best interests of people, particularly if they enroll me in helping them. I’m caring and compassionate.”

“Yes, you aren’t a bad guy. You feel shittie when you hurt people or do things that aren’t win:win. Stay with these things Pat, there’s a lot that’s coming out.”

We get off the phone and I swim in the possibilities. I end up talking with Kate and, by this point, it has hit me. Yes, I am a manipulative person, I’m extremely analytical and I have a lot of compassion. I feel like dirt when I am mean to people and my spontaneous actions are towards fairness, compassion and helping. But I am ruthlessly controlling and extremely effective at getting what I want. I always get what I want. I am hard pressed to remember a time when I didn’t get what I want. Even the things that I consciously don’t think I wanted, I unconsciously wanted. Even the things that I say I want and don’t get end-up make my life move forward. Be it the start of something, the end of something, the possibility of something or the end of the possibility of something, ALL of it moves my life forward and, if someone is with me, it will move them towards the things they say they want.