Listening seems sometimes as if it is a rare happening among human beings. We can’t really listen to another person speaking if we’re preoccupied, or if we’re trying to decide what we’re going to say when the other stops talking, or if we’re debating about whether what is being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Listening, in other words, is being accessible and open to what is being said.
Listening gives life to what is being spoken. You might even say it is with the listener that both the speaker and what is spoken exist and come alive.
Speaking, meanwhile, can be something more than talking, more than the exchange of symbols or information, more than saying what you really think. In speaking we can share ourselves, we can evoke experience in others. Speaking is where our ideas become clear and possible. It is where others are expanded by our participation with them. It allows for the futures we create. Speaking lives in poetry, in the appreciation of another, in idle conversations that pass the time, in great theories and books that give rise to wonder and thought.
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Speaking allows for "who" and "how" we "are" in the world. It is what gives voice to all that is possible in being human.
True communication is creation. It has the power to shape, determine, and alter the course and quality of our lives. It moves people. It generates experience in others. It not only delivers information to others, it actually transforms their ability to hear. True communication transforms both the speaker and listener.
The Landmark Forum suggests that what it is to be human has its own domain and that domain is one of language—of communication, of conversation. Through communication —the realm of language, of conversation—each of us has complete access to ourselves, to others, to the very essence and possibility of what it means to be human.
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Landmark Education, an international training and development company, offers a wide range of programs that are designed to address specific interests including producing breakthrough results and new levels of personal fulfillment in career, relationships, home, and community. The ideas, insights, and distinctions on which Landmark Education's programs are based make Landmark Education a leader and innovator in the field of training and development. Landmark Education is headquartered in San Francisco and offers programs in 125 cities around the world. More than 160,000 people per year participate in Landmark’s programs.
The Landmark Forum, Landmark’s flagship program, is the world’s most widely acclaimed personal development program. The Landmark Forum is a powerful, accelerated learning experience specifically designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of your life — in just three days. These shifts make available a new and unique kind of freedom and power. More than a million people from six continents and all walks of life have participated in The Landmark Forum.
“One of life's most rewarding experiences.” That's how graduates describe the benefits of The Landmark Forum when surveyed. In fact, more than 90% of participants report that they received, “practical and enduring value.”
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