6.45am without alarm. Answered Mom’s email till 7.30am. Checked on Congestion Zone for Wren (doesn’t apply on weekends) and googled tfl.gov.uk for directions to the Ibis at Brompton Road where the WPI seminar is being held. Delays on the District Line due to insufficient trains. Something to do with the wheels being defective. Didn’t have time to see if V was back home yet from his Sovoso gig at the Unitarian Church in Oakland (but I don’t expect he was). Left home belatedly at 8.26am. Got a banana, apple, passion yoghurt drink, orange juice at the Costcutter. Jubilee to Westminster, Circle to South Kensington, Piccadilly to Earls Court, then a short walk to the Ibis hotel. Got there 10mins late, but they were just starting by recapping yesterday’s session, so I got a coffee outside in the lobby. Wren hadn’t arrived yet. / Bigger than Landmark. At least 500 people. And this weekend is just an intro session (like Landmark’s Wednesday evenings) – that everybody is attending for free except those who ‘upgraded’ to VIP seating at the front for GBP 90. Started with a guy warming us up with a ‘Fact or Crap’ game show give-away to music from Pulp Fiction. Then Johnnie Cass came on, an Australian in his 40’s probably (feels like he’s ‘my age’ for some reason); fit, energetic , whose job it is to help us feel motivated and inspired for 12hrs – to change our lives, and to sign up for the GBP 3,500 week-long seminars (that’s a special price for us; full price is GBP 4,999). ‘Is that Yes, or Yes?’ is a favorite rhetorical device, and he has us repeat the last word of his sentences as a way to keep us engaged. Today we’re doing a series of exercises drawn from the different seminars offered by the Academy of Wealth and Achievement, to give us a taste of (and for) Christopher Howard’s recipes for living our dreams, transforming our lives, and breaking through to success. / Spotted Wren in her red dress and red cowboy boots several rows behind me and to the left. She came over and gave me a kiss after the staring exercise. I went to sit with her and Carol (decked out in turquoise) after the first break. Wren looked tired to me, but she didn’t say anything about it. She told me about off-loading a bunch of stuff at Basia’s, to be donated to the Reservation – and still having to pay for a bag extra on the flight. She said she’d liked retracing our steps, driving west through Flagstaff to LA, revisiting our trip as she went. I have yet to ask what she got up to in LA. / Did the afternoon exercises with Wren and group – standing and ‘connecting’ with the group, without speaking, just looking, for 3 minutes; and making a 4min pitch to the group of investors. Everybody said they hadn’t prepared, yet everybody came across as passionate and surprisingly articulate about their projects. I pitched getting sponsored to be a Fellow with KIVA. / We cut out for lunch a little early (3.30pm) and had pizzas outside at Pizz@Home. It struck me that everything Carol said was a complaint. She would talk about the Universe giving her just what she needed, but had to mention that she’d been in a bad mood that day, or ill, or tired. And the mutual friends Wren mentioned, Carol complained they’d not returned her messages. Wren herself has not been to Middlesbury to visit Carol, even though Carol has been to Shrewsbury several times to visit Wren. Yet – she’s doing an MFA and has her work in the degree show catalogue, she has a house in Tuscany she’s planning to move to, she’s training to be a life coach… / The late afternoon session focused on getting clarity around our values and our vision, and realizing we needed to generate congruity between our vision and our mission (the path to the vision) if we are ever to achieve the vision. I stuttered through answering the questions about what I want to have-do-be, as well as the description of ‘my ideal day’ five years hence. / Held out till about 7pm, when Johnnie launched into some intensive marketing of the Wealth Acceleration I and II seminars. Got a drink (I got a Carpirinha, they got pints of London Pride) together at the bar opposite the West Brompton tube. Carol said some useful / helpful / ‘raak’ things to me about the valuable-ness of writing every day ‘just because’… I can see what comes of it later; there was someone who just kept a journal of the weather every day, for example, and it proved useful to historians in deducing when a particular battle must have taken place. ‘T is maar’ what your obsession is. I’m not going to make a clay pot every day… but I will (can) write for 30mins every day, and can (will) post a picture I’ve taken, every day. / I related that my ‘dream day’ involved a prop plane and taking aerial photos over Africa and being met by my lover on the runway as the sun set, handing off the camera with prize-winning photos to an assistant who’d get them off to the relevant prestigious magazines. Maybe squeeze the Mediterranean in there somehow. As well as the desert. And family and friends visiting for long-ish periods, staying in my comfortable multi-wing mansion. / Home around 9.30pm, and chatted with Susan -- about Landmark style seminars in general and this one in particular (she detests the concept; Sharine and her brother did Landmark about 10 years ago); about my difficulty responding to the question, ‘What’s brought you joy…in your career, in your personal life, etc’ (I’m either happy in which case I enjoy everything, or depressed and enjoying nothing; it’s not the thing that brings the enjoyment but the chemical state of mind); about the importance of good colleagues and good feedback to our satisfaction at work, and our desire (in part as a result of having bosses we don’t respect) to set up a business where we’ll be the ultimate decision makers. She massaged my back and I massaged hers. Agreed on the importance of being around people who appreciate things – from good food to fine art to virtues like kindness and compassion. / 11pm and I said I had to write, and Susan said she’d bathe and perhaps finish off her taxes (she decided not to, after the bath).
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