Discovering My Act
This weekend I participated in The Landmark Advanced Course, during which I discovered my “Act” and had some big realizations about myself. Your Act is basically a decision that you made sometime when you were a child, and it has effected your life into adulthood. Most people live out their Act every minute of every day. Over the course of the weekend we did many exercises to help us discover our Act.
Through many of the exercises, I had it in my mind that my Act was something along the lines of “Hide from your problems”. That’s how I’ve dealt with a lot of things in my life, hiding under the blanket and hoping that my problems would disappear. When Sunday of my Landmark Advanced Course rolled around and we finally got to the exercise where we defined our Act, I was having trouble finding exactly what my Act is. After the initial exercise, I volunteered to go in front of the group and be coached to help discover my Act.
I told a story about when I was in the Boy Scouts and my patrol had decided to put in an extra effort to try and take first place at a conference-wide competition. I won’t bore you with all the details, but the gist of the story is that my patrol spent 2-3 months training for the event, and ended up in second place. In my mind it was a big failure. We put in all that work and we still couldn’t beat the repeat winners.
I was coached around this a bit, trying to figure out “what did I decide” as a result of coming in second place? Your Act is stated as a command, as something that you command yourself to do. When we came in second place after all our hard work, I decided that no matter how hard you work, someone is always going to beat you. I commanded to myself “Don’t Work Hard.”
My Act is “Don’t Work Hard” and when I realized that, my whole life made a lot more sense. I didn’t work hard at school. I don’t work hard in my career. I don’t work hard on my relationships. If something requires hard work, I’m likely to see it as useless.
As I’ve gone through these two days since my Landmark Advanced Course and discovering my Act, I’ve been seeing more and more ways that “Don’t Work Hard” has made its way into every aspect of my life. Now the challenge is to continue to recognize when I am commanding myself “Don’t Work Hard”, and to create a new future and possibility around that.
Tuesday night was the conclusion of my Landmark Advanced Course. I will share more about this in a later post. If you have something to add to the conversation, feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to respond.
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October 17th, 2007 at 2:00 am
thank you.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:25 am
mark - thanks for stopping by!
-Chris
October 29th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Thats interesting. I can see where I’m also one of those “don’t work hard” type people… but then, is that really a BAD thing that needs to be changed?
Aren’t there whole cultures that are focused on not working hard? Isn’t that some kind of puritanical notion that is specific to us Americans?
Maybe I’m just rationalizing… but wouldn’t you be happier if you just accepted the fact that you don’t work hard, and try not to get yourself in situations where you don’t have to work hard?
October 29th, 2007 at 9:07 am
John
It’s not that it’s a “bad” thing that I don’t work hard - but things aren’t exactly peachy keen in my life, so something does need to change, and when you see how much your Act runs your life, it can be a big target for change.
Would I be happier if I continue to not work hard - or would I be happier if I was able to pay my bills and go on vacation? I’m certainly not happy with my “Don’t work hard” act right now. I have a lot of debt and it isn’t getting any better at the moment. Something needs to shift.
I think the real point is that my Act (Don’t Work Hard) has thus far prevented me from obtaining things that I really want in my life. For some people their Act might have put them in a wonderful place, but through Landmark, most people will see what their Act has prevented them from accomplishing. Either I continue to “Not Work Hard” and keep living the same Probable Almost Certain Future that I am currently living, or I make a change and make things better.
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
-Chris
December 11th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Hi Chris,
I happened across your Landmark Forum comments; I completed the Forum in October, & the Advanced Course in Nov. I’m enrolled in SELP in Jan.
My experience has been that if I continue to ’share’ with other Landmark graduates I progress in ‘removing the layers’; otherwise old habits come back into play.
Just wanted to express how much I appreciate you sharing your experience with the Forum here, & if you’d like to communicate further I’d appreciate & enjoy any ’sharing’, etc, that might assist others, which of course assists ourselves.
Cheryl
December 15th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Cheryl -
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your comments. I’m glad you’re getting some positive things out of your experience. There is definitely an ongoing change. Being a weekly seminar really helps you stay aware of what you’re doing on a daily basis.
-Chris