Last night was the final night of the leadership course I’ve been doing with Landmark Education.  It was magical.  Each of us spoke about what we’d accomplished, what we wanted to be acknowledged for, and whom we wanted to acknowledge.  The latter part took hours, as each of us took stock of how people had contributed to our lives over the last seven months.

As for the results, well, I didn’t succeed in doing what was required to become an Introduction Leader.  I got stopped by some old patterns of belief that I didn’t quite manage to break through.  For all of us — those who did manage to do what was required, and those who did not — the field of play was the same: being with our fear of other people.

It was Sartre who said, “Hell is other people.”  He got it slightly wrong.  What he should have said is “Hell is our fear of other people.”

*****

While I didn’t become an Introduction Leader, I produced some remarkable results from doing the course:

• “disappeared” something that had been in the background of my relations with men for over 25 years, all in a simple five-minute phone call
• got that leadership is about “causing others,” and as a result, have had one of the sweetest, most creative collaborations with a current client I’ve ever had
• took my writing to a whole new level, including being published in the first Australian anthology of blog writing
• won, just two days ago, the contract to write an entire online marketing campaign – from web content to emails, even text messages – something I’ve long wanted to have a shot at
• and, strangely and unexpectedly, discovered that Woody Allen was spot-on when he said, “Ninety per cent of life is just showing up.”

This last may sound a bit pedestrian, but it’s been quite a revelation to me.  Until this course, I thought that if I didn’t show up for things, as I’ve sometimes done in the past, it didn’t really matter.  What I didn’t see was that my absence has an impact on others.  And somewhere during this course, I finally saw this.

*****

Like many Landmark Education events, the words are what will stay with me from last night.  For Landmark, just like the 20th century Continental philosophy on which it’s based, testifies to the fact the world arises in language.  We bring the world into being through language.  What we say, what we declare, is.  Furthermore, there aint no other is; the is brought into being by language is the only is there is.

So you get the picture.  Words are mighty powerful things in Landmark.  And two words I heard last night summed up the experience.

The first came when G, our classroom leader of the last couple of months, talked about her struggle to transform her weight.  Once morbidly obese, she had lost over 50 kilos in the last year.  This was an immense personal achievement she said, but even more importantly, it was now a possibility for others.  And this, she said, is the real power of transforming ourselves.

Not the personal achievement, but what it makes available in the world.

The second word I’ll treasure came at the end of the evening when my colleague J came up to me, beaming.  J, like many people for whom English is a second language, is a connoisseur of the word.  He’d also, like all of us, been contemplating the meaning of the last seven months.  “I’ve been thinking of a word,” he announced.

I’ve been thinking of the word ‘refine’ … oh, how I love this word … and I’ve been thinking that that’s what we’ve been doing, we’ve been refining our selves.

So often in Landmark a single word will strike you as if you’ve never heard it before, and so it was for J in that moment.  And through J’s joy and excitement, I too experienced the wonder of the word.  Whatever the word.

*****

To all my brilliant, loving and courageous fellow participants, well-played!