EX-coachable

That’s how I’m going to describe myself to any Landmark person who knows I’m familiar with the work and thinks I’m being squirrely.

If anyone asks me the classic Landmark question, “Are you willing to be coachable?” a “yes” answer practically guarantees that I’ll be exposed once again to the relentless enrollment and registration machine.

Or else it will give my companion free rein to tell me I’m a controlling, manipulative bitch (an old Landmark friend’s exact words to me on a coaching call).

Now, I understand that being coached involves hearing things you don’t want to hear. But it’s the yelling…

…the yelling…

…the yelling I couldn’t stand, and the pointed judgments, when I was taking courses.

If I were an NCAA football player, I could deal with a yelling, judgmental coach.

If I were being absolutely belligerent and didn’t give a fuck, I would need a little private face-to-face to sort things out.

And if I were still participating in Landmark, I could take a yelling, judgmental coach better now than I did twelve years ago.

But I’m no longer participating in Landmark, and I never will again. I’m out of that conversation. I’m ex-coachable.

I can happily work with you and further any transformation we do together if we have a common interest, or you know beyond a doubt what my commitment is to my life. If you care more about my commitment to my life than your own commitment to the Landmark machine, I may accept a form of coaching. 

I don’t say that to be manipulative; I say that so I can protect myself and the people I love from manipulation.

Because I’ve seen where it can go.

But if you can’t work with me unless I submit to Landmark rhetoric, or let myself be judged a petulant, resistant “criminal” (actual word a leader used to describe a whole room of people in an LE course), or go so far as to put that name tag on again, then you obviously haven’t learned a damned thing in your courses about transformation.

Because what the hell kind of transformation do you have if you can’t work with everyday people who don’t (or won’t) wear the name tag? How are you transforming life if you only stand for people who will say “yes” to the machine? 

It’s been said that a person who resists coaching in an LE program is resisting their own life. What this syllogism reduces to is, Landmark is life.

Sorry. No, it isn’t.