The Landmark forum

My best friend joined something called the  Landmark Forum and invited me to be her 'guest' on her 'graduation day'. I had no idea why a forum would have a graduation ceremony but I still went knowing she would probably kill me if i didn't. The venue was a good 30 km away from my place so my friend had quite enough time to fill me on exactly what it was.
This 'forum' is actually a sort of a personal training and leadership program with motivational speakers helping you overcome your personal and professional issues through probably sharing and rationalizing.
It was a 16 hours a day course and lasted for about 3 days.
I confess I m quite a skeptic when it comes to 'sudden transformations thru a motivational speech/program' kinda story. And this was a 3 day course . What good could it possibly do?  Anyhow I kept my opinions to myself and went into the auditorium.
 Now why did my friend opt for this program in the first place?
 She is EXTREMELY (when I write that in Caps I mean it) shy and absolutely nothing could make her speak to a random stranger ( or even an acquaintance) unless she is lost in some dark alley way past midnight.
The graduation ceremony was a little slow but what was interesting was the different kind of people who attended it. There were big execs, college students, not-so-honest businessmen (yes they confessed that on stage), even tourists! And all of them were smiling all the time and at everybody! Now you don't really find that much in Delhi. :p
 Many of them spoke about their experiences and what they had learnt. And the best part was that they didn't say how their life was transformed after a 3 day wonder course and what an amazing course it was that rebuilt their careers and relationships in 16 hours,etc.  no- instead they spoke what they had learnt about themselves that hindered them from achieving what they wanted. It was nothing miraculous that they were doing. They just showed people how to introspect. Clarity of thoughts. Honesty. It was as simple as that.

I was pretty amazed with the simplicity of the whole thing. But what was really surprising was my friend. She actually raised her hand to speak about her experience. Up on stage. In front of 500 people. Now that truly took away the last remnants of skepticism left in me.

And the effect lasted. (At least till now - and it has been 4 months) . My friend went on a holiday to Nepal last month and actually made a  lot of friends from Bangladesh and China and goodness knows where. The very friend who wouldn't even protest or do anything when a guy kept throwing sharp edged compasses at her for 3 days ( don't worry I eventually took care of him. He still is very afraid to talk to me) actually exchanged phone numbers and sang Disney songs while on top of an elephant with people whom she had met less than an hour ago.

I don't know how much such courses help while dealing with more serious issues but they certainly instilled a new confidence in her that was so necessary . I also don't know what they did or how they did it. But it has certainly made an impact!