JeanneLauree

I was an international corporate trainer for 15 years…I was a psychotherapist and was in therapy…I had read tons of self-help books…and was an active member of AA…I share all of this, to make the point that in three and a half days in the Landmark Forum, I created more direct action for shifting my life-focus, with velocity, than all of those other disciplines did.
The argument can be made for commulative effect, but that still doesn’t explain how over 100K participants a year, from diverse life styles and age groups, all over the world, report they have created similar results. As I write this, I realize just how boring all that sounds!
So, here’s the real life scoop: I was reviewing the Landmark Forum in Salt Lake City, Utah, this past weekend (Aug.4, 5,6)...the same weekend that Josh was participating in his first experience in Seattle. My daughter, jkuhl, told me she saw Josh’s posting about it. It was weird to have my daughter keep me in the loop about what Josh was posting and to contrast it to my roller-coaster ride in Utah.
I participated in the Landmark Forum, the first time, in Jan 2004. It was a huge gate-way to ramp up my personal and professional life, but the best part was reconnecting with my brothers and sisters with whom I had been distant. Last night, my sister and her husband joined me for the Sunday night graduate’s evening. They both have done the Landmark Forum. This gave me the common ground for deeper conversations with her than would have been possible if all we shared was our own slanted perspectives of growing up in the same family. Inviting the people I love to share this common ground may be perceived as a marketing ploy, but I relate to it the same as being invited to participate in 43 Things, by my daughter. The Robots are on their way to suit shopping because they have enrolled and registered 500,000 of us in 43 Things…and in the process, made a huge contributin: they’ve created an arena for sharing, inspiration and connection! If they make money in the process, what the hell!
I’ve been reading the comments about enrollment and all the interpretations around each person’s perception about what the word means. (Linguistics is a fascinating area of study.) In the Landmark context, I’m clear that I’m enrolling (influencing) people in my life all the time: when I gossip, I’m enrolling my friend in the story about my boss…when I recommend a book, I’m enrolling them in the ideas printed in it.
I get real clear that the way I do a weekend like the Forum is the way I do life!! So, if I am playful about bringing people I love together from out of town to celebrate my weekend, I’m likely to do the same for birthdays, graduations and arbor day!
It just confronts my cynicism, challenges my self-imposed limitations and busts-up the constraints that live like reality for me. This gave me total freedom to embrace the most outrageous opportunities life sends my way…like being a part of this amazing group on 43 Things…or bringing outrageous paradigms to my work as a hospice chaplain. Whether it’s helping people who are dying, contruct a context for living life full-out in the time left, or designing a dying that leaves memories of loveliness for a three year old left behind, the Landmark Cirrculum has fulfilled totally on the promise to leave me “living a live I love and living it powerfully”.
I reviewed the Landmark Forum because I am getting ready to be a leader in one of the courses: Self Expression & Leadership. The course lasts about 4 months, during which, participants create their own projects for making a difference in their community. During the course, they have personal coaches to assist in the design, implementation and fulfillment of each project. It’s worth taking the Landmark Forum (a prerequesite), just to get yourself into this environment. Imagine meeting every week or two with 50 other people committed to making a difference in the community you inhabit! Just the tools that are taught and the skills that are developed make a difference in the lives of the participants. Not to mention projects that feed the poor (a project created by one 16 year-old I know, enrolled her talented friends to perform in a concert last month that raised $400 for the Hunger Project), teach ballroom dancing to the blind (a project called: Dancing In The Dark), or provide mentors for unmarried mothers-to-be.
As humans, most of us just want to make a difference. The Landmark arena gives direction, tools, and access to our dreams so we can do more than just live as victims of “wishful thinking”.
You don’t need the Landmark Forum to live a life of power and creation. This whole web-site came out of this kind of mindset. It’s just that reading a book or listening to Tony Robbins’ tapes revs me up for a week, maybe, but sitting next to someone like Josh in the Landmark Forum can’t help but cross-pollinate my brain the way no tape can. Even if it’s just by ASS-mosis…the absorbtion of information by sitting my ass next to amazing people.
None of what I say will make a difference-to you-go take your own test drive. There are free 2-3 hour introductions at Landmark Center locations all over the world…you get to vote with your time and your ass.
I’d love to hear more about your own experiences, dreams and powerful lives…that’s what gets me up and on-line in the morning. That, and my daughter telling me the latest about where the ‘bots are going to lunch and what topics of discussion are hot for the day.

I was working in Hawaii and had a weekend for fun. I saw all the signs for a helicopter trip and decided to try it out. It was a very small helicopter and I had been in a small plane in a storm and was frightened. I thought this might be like that, but it wasn’t!! It was like my dreams when I dream I’m flying, but I always dream I’m flying without any machinery. This time, in the helicopter, it was beautiful. The trip took me out over the countryside. I saw lush tropical foilage and waterfalls where people would normally not get to unless they were willing to hike a long way. When we got to the volcano, the ground was black and burned and the lava had oozed out to cover roads and street signs were sticking up in the ooze. The lava had stopped just before it reached the small church. The pilot flew me out to the places where the magma was still runnig under the ground and there were “windows” where I could see down into the hot red flow from up on the top of the rock. The rock was hot but still not to hot to stand on. Then we flew to the ocean’s edge. There, the river emptied out into the water forming fireworks of spray and hot steam as the firey lava spilled into the cool ocean. Sometimes, I still dream that I can fly and it feels just like that day in Hilo.

I want to write a book about the patients I have served in Hospice. Their stories of courage in the face of a terminal diagnosis and how they have made the most of the remaining time is inspiring. It also provides and opportunity for others to make their own lives powerful expressions of being with life and death.