The Power Within

Too much self-help can be a bad thing, especially at meal times, but a little now and again helps to keep the house in order. There is a line of course, nothing worse than someone so self-involved they address themselves in the third person. And Gurus of course, always draw the line at a Guru. A guru is always helping, but usually the only people they're helping are themselves. I once did something called the Landmark Forum. The Landmark is one of these companies that refer to their teachings as technologies and charge a fortune for it. Nowadays, anytime that someone charges money for wisdom, like it’s a commodity or something, alarm bells go off in my head. But that is now, and this was then. Using the Landmark technology can change your life, they said. And what is this technology? They shut you in a room for four days and spout philosophy at you. That’s not to say it’s all bad, on the contrary, it’s pretty good stuff, quite existentialist, lots of Nietzsche, much of an Übermensch kinda vibe, but life-changing in a super positive way if you embrace it. You’ll never be late again for a start. The organisation itself though is a little more questionable. They make the Scientologists look like the Church of England. Every night they prescribe three telephone calls, to a friend or a mother or an ex-lover, letting them know you’re doing the course and getting you to fess up to any long standing resentments. All very well, but the course runs from something like 9am to 11pm, so you ain’t gonna make those calls until midnight at the earliest. A friend of mine who ran a very successful company a few years ago went through a phase with his work where the Landmark course spread like wildfire. Every night he'd be woken up with a call from one of his employees telling him how much they disliked him, or how much they resented him, or how he made their lives hell and they just wanted to let him know they have forgiven him for it. A week of this and he didn’t feel very good about himself. Which of course made him the perfect candidate for the Landmark Forum.