Graham from Australia had a breakthrough around his story about his parents:
My experience was particularly powerful and unique because I had the courage to raise my hand to share my personal story in front of the group of 150 workshop participants fairly early on the weekend. The gist of the story was the way in which the conflict, hostility and violence in my parents relationship had made me think that they didn’t love me, that I was unimportant, and that I was unworthy and inferior to other people. These were messages I had carried with me all of my adult life. But the forum leader wasn’t prepared to accept that my story was the truth about these events. There was a big distinction between what had happened, and the story that I had created about what that meant. What happened was that my parents fought a great deal. But the idea that I wasn’t loved or worthy was a meaning that I had created about that. In front of everyone, she grilled me until I “got it”. It was a bitter pill to swallow accepting that ultimately I was responsible for how I felt about myself and for the impact of the events in my life; not anyone else. It was the meaning I created about these events that hurt me, and kept me stuck in a viscious cycle which then attracted more events that validated the negative way I felt about myself.
Recognising this distinction left me able to create new possibilities for my life which weren’t available before and I chose to create the possibility of being inspiring, since that is a powerful image for me. What really blew my mind was that in doing this, I had indeed inspired virtually everyone else in the room; all of them could relate to some aspect of my story, and it had a truly profound impact on them. Over the rest of the weekend, countless people shared in front of everyone and came up to me to thank me for inspiring them to reconnect with their family or otherwise deal with the issues that were keeping them trapped in their own life. The possibility of being inspiring became self-fulfilling, and it was an incredibly affirming experience for me.
Go here to read all of Graham’s Landmark Forum experience.
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