To Live an Extraordinary Life - Part I

Written by Lisa Frost
Absurdly Improbable

24th Jul 2007

www.absurdlyimprobable.com

I recently had a truly amazing life transformation that I wanted to share with you in the hope that it will inspire you to have one of your own.

It happened thanks to a course called the Landmark Forum that I did two weekends ago. Over the last year I've met quite a few people that have done it, said how fantastic it was and recommended that I do it, though I never really knew what it was all about so I took my time actually "getting around" to it. Now that I have I wish I'd done it 20 years ago! So I hope to shed a little light on it so you can choose whether to have your life transformed too.

I've been doing a fair bit of personal development stuff lately - going to seminars, reading books, watching DVDs etc - and while I've learnt a lot of very useful things I kept on feeling like there was something missing.

What I wanted was something to really help me be present in the moment. What I wanted was a way for my feelings and actions to no longer be dictated to by the circumstances around me.What I found at the Landmark Forum was all this and more.

It's difficult to put into plain language exactly what it's all about because much of the language used over the 3 1/2 day course is quite different to the norm, and until you learn the distinctions about the language it doesn't really make much sense.

So rather than try to explain the curriculum, which you can have a look at on their website or can have explained in greater depth on an introduction night, I thought I'd share an experience I've had since the Forum that was completely different to what I would have experienced prior to it, and so use myself as a bit of a case study.

If you look back to my article Live NOW! you'll remember my experience of finding the person I wanted to share my life with and telling him how I felt. You might also recall that it didn't go the way I would have liked.

One of the first distinctions they make in the Landmark Forum is about whether you live your life in the stands or on the court. In other words, are you a spectator and just let life pass you by because it's safe, or do you actually go out there and get your hands dirty and risk losing?

The point they make is that while it may be safe in the stands it isn't living. You can't lose in the stands but you also can't win. And as much as you might like to spout your opinions about what people should be doing in the actual game, your opinions have absolutely no influence on the outcome. If you live in the stands you may be safe but you have no control, and effectively may as well be dead.

What I realised when I heard this is that I'd fooled myself into thinking I live on the court because of a couple of tough conversations. In reality what I'd done is the equivalent to running onto a tennis court, hitting one ball, and then running back to sit in the stands and watch, expecting that one hit to win the match. It's a completely ludicrous notion, and yet that was how I'd lived my life.

I also came to this realisation thanks to another early distinction: that we are all essentially inauthentic. At first glance you may baulk at that statement - I for one have always considered myself to be an extremely honest person. However when you really examine yourself and your life, when you are truly honest with yourself, you'll recognise the absolute truth of it, because all too often we're hiding the truth even from ourselves.

So going back to my real life example, I'd been very proudly thinking how courageous and honest I'd been in my previous two conversations with my friend. However essentially they went like this:

Conversation #1: "I like you as more than a friend"

Conversation #2: "I love you"

I said a lot more words than just that of course, however that's what the final message of each conversation came down to. Never did I tell him he was the person I wanted to share my life with. Never did I talk about the vision I had of our wonderful relationship. Never did he know that I got scared every time I called him, that just dialling his number took a lot of courage. Never did he know that I felt worthless to him, so I kept on acting in stupid ways to try to prove my worth.

And worse than all that, after the 2nd conversation, after we'd decided to take a step in the direction of a relationship and then a week later he called it all off in much distress because he said he didn't love me, I went right back to pretending that I didn't love him. I went right back to pretending that what I wanted was to be friends. And in fact I'd never once let go of our friendship in order to make room for what I really wanted, even when I thought I was getting it.

In the end my inauthenticity didn't exactly produce a smooth and easy friendship. For myself it produced pain, confusion and a complete loss of faith in myself. For him I don't know what it caused, though I suspect it's been at least as painful for him as for me, maybe even more so.

That isn't to say there haven't been great things in our friendship, because there absolutely have been. I want to share my life with him simply because I love being in his presence. It has nothing to do with anything he specifically does or says, I just love being around him. We've had a lot of fun. We've had a lot of interesting discussions about life. We've shared some of our hurts. He's been there for me when I needed it. He's taught me a lot about myself, about love, about life.

There've been good things in the friendship, but it's been under a lie. I don't want to be friends, I want to share my life with him. And the disparity between what I really want and what I pretended to want caused a lot of hurt, and quite frankly caused me to act like a complete jerk at times.

On the first day of the Landmark Forum I decided to finally have a real, authentic conversation with him. I tried calling him a couple of times over the course of the Forum but he was studiously avoiding me (his intuition was obviously onto it!) So after the last day of the Forum, at 11:30pm, I went and did the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. I went over to his house, woke him up and told him how I really felt.


I've just noticed how long this article is getting so I've decided to add a "...to be continued". You'll find out how to Live an Extraordinary Life in Part II, so make sure you read it when it comes out. It's been a completely amazing experience, so I look forward to sharing the best part with you tomorrow!

Written by Lisa Frost
Absurdly Improbable
www.absurdlyimprobable.com