Landmark Forum - Genius Catalyst

I have a few friends that have been involved with landmark for a while now ... one of them ... whenever she talks about landmark ... she is frustrated about them ... because she feels they are pressuring her to recruit others ... but she doesn't want to recruit ... but she still doesn't want to leave ... others people say good things ... but I haven't seen very much congruency so far when the people say good things ... it seems to me like even the good things they had to say ... they were repeating a script or something ... and had a fake "on the surface" smile ... on the other hand ... when I see someone resonating with that deep inner and outer smile when they talk about something they are involved in ... then I know they are congruent ... or fully happy with what/who they are involved with ...

I actually got dragged along (I mean I chose to go) to a recruitment meeting about ten years ago (my mother and her boyfriend were involved in landmark for a while) ... I arrived ... and it was a room full of 100 or so people ... half of which were already enrolled ... and half of them were there to be "recruited" ... there was a presentation or speech by the facilitator then ... we all turned to the people sitting next to us (our friends or family who were already members) ... then our friends/family proceeded to ask us a set of questions ... it was very structured ... they were what I now know could be described as ... leading questions ... What value do you think you could get from joining this program? ... If you sign up today how good will you feel? ...etc etc.. stuff like that ...

I was hesitating about signing up ... I believe the leading questions were designed to get me to respond in a manner to make me believe it would be a good decision to sign up ... it seemed to make sense to my logical mind to join ... I answered all the carefully crafted questions the only way I could at the time ... and the answers I gave them probably made them think I was gonna join ... they even made me think I should join ... but I still didn't want to ...

"But I just don't want to" ... and ... "My intuition says no" is what I kept telling them ... and this seemed to just make them ask harder ... they would cycle through the questions again ... I had not yet learned to use logic as a way around the linguistic trickery that seemed so reasonable to them ... so I just had to rely on ... "I just don't want to" ... "it doesn't feel right for me now" etc etc ... I must admit ... it was an empowering feeling not to need any reason to say no ...

next we were all divided up into groups of about 12 ... separated from our family ... brought into smaller rooms ... there was a group leader presenting at the front of our room ... these group leaders I suspect were higher up in the ranking ... been involved for a while with landmark ...

most of the people had already decided to join ... there were only a few in our small group of 12 who hadn't yet decided to sign up (me and this one other guy sitting a few seats next to me) ... I kinda felt like we were the "troublemakers" in the room because we still didn't want to join ... the group leader told stories of success ... gave us opportunity to ask questions ... then I was paired up with a woman next to me ... and she was to cycle through the questions again ... in an attempt to get me to sign up ... she also tried to inspire me with stories of how her communication with her husband is so much better now ... I didn't believe her ... and she looked uneasy with the idea of just letting me say "NO" ... by this time I was a little defensive inside about their continual attempts to persuade me ...

... I then made an inner commitment to myself ... "whatever inspiring story she tells me about how good her life is because of Landmark in an attempt to try and get me to join ... I'm gonna tell her a story about my life that is twice as inspiring to show her I don't need this landmark " ... this was really funny to me because ... I actually began to think some of the things in my life I was unhappy about may have changed by joining ... but in those few minutes ... boy did I search ... and I found ... and maybe even made up a few stories ... and shared with her all the amazing breakthroughs I'd been having recently ... so as to get her to see that I was okay without signing up ...

she seemed frustrated or disappointed in herself for not convincing me to sign up ... eventually two of the group leaders ... (from our group and a leader from another group) came over to me and ... both of them standing over me ... as I sat ... and they cycled through a set of there own questions ... they had a bit more confidence to them

... by the end of the day ... I still ended up saying no ... the woman I was paired up with was assigned to phone me every week to try and inspire me to join ... every time she called, I had an inspiring story of my own prepared for her .... "moooah ha ha ha" ... she gave up after a few calls and stopped calling ....

I don't know how my life would have been different if I had signed up ... maybe I would have gotten clear on some goals that were important to me when I was younger or not ... but I do know that I had an amazing time watching listening and experiencing the dynamics of group influence ... and I learned a valuable lesson about following my own inner guidance ... even when my logical mind and 100 other people are telling me to do differently ... I will always be fascinated with groups like Landmark and highly recommend anyone to explore there curiosities with the knowledge that you ultimately know what's best for you ...

disclaimer - I have no intention of stereotyping landmark's recruitment techniques or policies ... my experience is based on my experience alone ... which was about 10 years ago ...

a recently heard a landmark person say, "we are not as harsh as we used to be with recruiting people as we were 10 years ago."

G