I scootered to the British Museum, found a parking space, and continued on foot. I walked through the streets of Bloomsbury, and skirted the buildings of University College London and found myself outside a pub called the College Arms where other Meetupers were congregating. I chatted to some of the delegates: no one had been to this group before.
Fifteen minutes later, we made our way to a brightly lit basement. Our leader, Sam, had set out comfy looking chairs in neat rows. I looked around. I guessed there were around twenty five to thirty people; it was an impressive showing for a Saturday morning, especially when the sun was shining.
It was one of those days where you wanted to head off to a park, perhaps Regent’s Park, have a nice pub lunch followed by a pint of frothy ale and nonsense chats with friends. Instead, I was going to an event that had the title, ‘rock solid inner confidence: full day workshop’. I was pretty confident that I wanted to be somewhere else.
Sam was in his very early thirties, was casually dressed, and was sporting a couple of days’ growth of designer stubble. He had very white teeth and a disconcerting habit of holding eye contact for an extraordinary amount of time. He was, it turned out, a life coach.
Sam began his introduction: ‘I love bringing the power that exists inside individuals. There’s limitless freedom in this room… It’s about clearing out what we have inside’. There was a suggestion that he had a mysterious personal story, but it was one that was never really explained. It was a story that had hints of past despair, of being in a bad place, and not wanting to live. It reminded me of the NLP event where our facilitator had also talked about being at her lowest ebb.
Our first activity was a round of introductions: ‘in groups of six or seven, just say your name and tell us why you’re here’.
Our small group was stifled by a common silence. To break the silence I said, ‘anyone going to go first?’ An inevitable response was: ‘why don’t you go first?’ I introduced myself: ‘My name is Chris, and I’m on this quest of visiting one hundred Meetups, and this event is number ninety seven’.
‘Get out of town!’ exclaimed a woman called Cheryl. ‘Ninety seven? So, what was the first one then?’ she said, challenging me. For a moment, I could barely remember; it felt like such a long time ago; so much had happened. I dredged through my memory and remembered was a walk around a park.
As well as Cheryl, I met Dave, who worked in IT, Lisa who worked in marketing, and Danielle who worked outside of London, and was currently between jobs. Dave and Lisa were both contracting: they wanted to get something out of the session to help them to find a permanent job. Cheryl just wanted to ‘get more confidence’.
Sam took over again. He told us that to be confident, we need to regularly seek to move outside of our comfort zone. He said that it was also about being vulnerable. I was happy to go with whatever he was going to suggest: I was happy to have my vulnerability explored and my bubble of comfort to be extended. I didn’t care. ‘It’s also about self-acceptance; loving every part of your being’ he proclaimed. ‘You are your own coach’.
It was time to learn about Sam’s ‘pillars of confidence’. The first pillar of confidence was, apparently, integrity. People who are externally referenced always look for validation from others. ‘We have a birth right of worthiness, but we get trapped into comparison’. He encouraged us to ask ourselves a question: ‘if you’re going to die in a year, would you change how you live?’ The point is: we should live that way right now.
Sam led a guided meditation activity. We were encouraged to find our ‘heart space’ and then to write our own ‘heart manifesto’ the moment the meditation came to an end. Mine was pretty simple: ‘to live, to explore and to love’. We had to do something else: to think about our ‘authentic expressions’ and our ‘toxic goals’. A toxic goal is something that we do that doesn’t do us any good. I had answers to these too: an authentic expression is writing about this nonsense quest. My toxic activity was ruminating about my failed marriage.
Sam had something else for us: ‘if you could fast-forward to your deathbed, what advice would you give your future self?’
After a bit of writing, we had to share these answers with a group. My answer to the deathbed question was simple. I would share an expression that I had seen tattooed in simplified Chinese on Michael’s arm: ‘don’t waste time’. Sam complemented this activity with another of his expressions: ‘the future is an illusion, the past is an illusion; we’ve only got to think about now’.
We were asked to consider another aspect of confidence: self-acceptance; accepting our flaws. It’s important to be compassionate to yourself, Sam argued, and accept that it’s okay to have these times where we feel lost, confused and vulnerable. The message was simple: ‘when you’re kinder to yourself, you’re kinder to others’. We then needed to consider whether we were honest with ourselves. The discussions briefly touched upon relationships: ‘you don’t need another person to heal you; you can do that yourself’.
The lunch break was interesting. I found myself in a Japanese themed fast food chain, sitting with a medical doctor called Mary, a carpet fitter called Neil from Oldham, and Lisa. We chatted about the event. Everyone liked it. Neil had been to a couple of Sam’s events before and had recently made a decision to do more things and to explore more of London. He was friendly, confident and open minded: ‘coming to London from Oldham is really weird; it’s like having a sex change.’
It was time to consider vulnerability and fear. We were given a challenge; to do something that gives us a bit of fear every day. ‘When can you take the more challenging route over the easy route?’ Another thought was to set a challenge every month. Failure, it was argued, is just a word; and it’s something that we learn from. Here lies a paradox: successful people seek failure. Failure is all about being judged. Sam offered a solution: ‘I do weird stuff deliberately, because then I don’t fear the judgements’. He told a story about a German psychotherapist who encouraged his clients to put a banana on a lead and take it for a ‘walk’; ‘Let’s all get judged on purpose’ he said.
Other themes were trust, conviction and the importance of following our instincts. Sam explained that there are two sides to us: a conscious self and an unconscious self; a self that just reacts and responds. We went into pairs and were given two improvisation tasks: the sharing of imaginary gifts, and then a conversation through two adopted characters: a member of the royal family, and a drunk Frenchman. This led to an animated discussion about Princess Diana conspiracy theories.
The final part of the workshop was a little unexpected. I volunteered to ‘be vulnerable’. This involved doing a short talk about ‘picture frames’. This was followed by group dancing. The grand finale reminded me of the Biodanza climax: making extensive eye contact and giving everyone generous hugs. The twist was that we had to say something appreciative. I learnt that my talk about picture frames had gone down quite well.
It had been a fun event. Sam ran his group to advertise his life coach and personal development business, but it was a very gentle sell; he spoke only briefly of his retreats where everyone is encouraged to ‘peel back their layers’. It was interesting that his approach was so eclectic; drawing on meditation, Yoga, NLP and something called Authentic Happiness. He has also had Meetup events about how to attract your soul mate, how to manage stress, and how Improv can help with confidence and social skills. One final phrase stuck in my mind: ‘When you’re aware of your own aliveness, happiness just comes. Celebrate the little things’.
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