Minneapolis/St. Paul

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In which the author struggles to escape the psychological shackles of a self-help seminar

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ADAM LARSON

"Look around the circle and decide which four people you find most attractive."

It is mid-August, 1996. I'm in a conference room in the basement of the Regency Plaza Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Like everyone here, I'm doing as I'm told.

"Now narrow it down to three," the trainer says into the microphone.

I do.

"Two."

I do.

"Look around the circle again and decide on one person. When I say so, go stand in front of that person. Don't break eye contact. Don't say anything. If someone's already standing there, just get as close as you can." He demonstrates how this will work. Presumably, a very attractive person could wind up with a small congregation of spectators.

"Do we understand?" We do. Go.

James and I make a beeline for one another. We stare as instructed. I feel naked. Charged. James is wearing cook's pants and a military haircut. He seems gentle and sad. We have never spoken. In three months we will be engaged.

We are both here because someone we knew has promised that this weekend seminar would turn our lives around. I'm convinced it's working. In fact, I'm about to abandon my job hunt, lose my friends, alienate strangers, work for free, and go broke. If you had tapped me on the shoulder and told me so, I would have said you were crazy.

I would have had that backwards.

I graduated from Carleton in June 1995. I spent college preparing for a business career. The summer after junior year I had already started work on an M.B.A. Senior year I founded a Women in Business group on campus and had already interviewed for jobs in New York and Minneapolis. But as June approached, I began to lose confidence.

I have been a writer for most of my life. As a kid, I used to look for the spot on the library shelf where my work would someday sit. At Carleton, I majored in English and edited the newspaper, assuming that one day I would manage a two-career life--business from nine to five, writing at night. But all along, my creative-writing professor thought I should wait tables at night and write all day. And then an alum I called for career advice suggested I go to work in a laundry. One day, thinking about the thank-you notes I didn't want to write, the résumés I didn't want to send, I decided they were right: A business career would be a distraction. If I wanted to write, I should write.

After graduation I moved to Minneapolis and began working minimum-wage jobs: shelving bottles in a liquor store; serving coffee. I was working 60 hours a week to make ends meet, and before long I was jealous of the people I waited on, jealous of my career-oriented friends. I wasn't writing. I felt like a failure. A year passed. In April of 1996, my parents announced they were separating. In July, my boyfriend moved to Japan to teach English for two years. Disappointed, frustrated, bored, and lonely, I convinced myself that what my life lacked most was a full-time career.

Then I bumped into Alex.

I was having coffee with a book distributor when he appeared at the table. We had dated in college--briefly, turbulently--and he seemed very happy to see me. "We should catch up," he said. I gave him my number, and when he called I agreed to meet him that weekend. To my surprise, we talked for hours. I told him about my job search. I told him I wanted to work in magazines, then get my M.B.A. and become a publisher.

Alex seemed completely different to me. In college, I'd thought he was selfish, impulsive, and scattered--all good intentions and no follow-through. Now, he was a generous listener. Everything about him suggested a newfound discipline. He was professionally successful, financially stable, and had dozens of friends. When I mentioned the change, he credited a company called Vistar. He had watched it turn people's lives around. It had helped him identify and deal with the things that had been holding him back. He stopped smoking pot and addressed his attention deficit disorder.

A week later I went with Alex to hear a motivational speaker sponsored by Vistar. I was skeptical but intrigued. The speaker repeated an empty brand of corporatespeak I had heard before--clichés about the importance of mission and vision. And I found it odd when Alex hugged everyone there. Still, it was a relief to be around adults in business clothes again, people speaking the language of success. I hadn't realized how lost I felt, how unidentified.

My admission to the lecture included a free, one-hour coaching session the next day with Julie, a Vistar staff member. We talked about Vistar's three-course series--two weekend seminars followed by a seven-week immersion for $1,950. That night, as I did almost every night, I wrote in my journal.

"Today, I had a one-hour interview with Julie. Against my better judgment, I'm signing up for the Vistar seminar. What got me, actually, was her answer to one of the reasons I was resisting: I don't have the money now. Julie said that I was choosing to let the rest of the world decide when I would have something rather than deciding when I would have something."

As Julie explained it, Vistar was about identifying the life you wanted and then making it happen. I recognized the hype, but it still sounded nice. If it helps me get a full-time job, it will be worth it, I told myself.

That same night, Alex called me after midnight and begged me to sign up. "I'll pay for it," he said.

"It's all right," I told him. "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it myself."

I have the microphone now. I'm trying to speak, but the trainer keeps interrupting.

"You're coming from your head," he says. I'm supposed to come from my heart. I start over several times. By the time he lets me finish, my knees are shaking. I mutter something about how I limit myself in order to protect other people's feelings, then sit down.

"Who makes you feel that way?" he asks from the stage. I stand again.

"Um," I whisper into the microphone, "my parents?" I burst into tears. The trainer asks a series of questions about my family. When he's done, everyone applauds. I don't stop crying all day. I seem to have experienced some sort of psychological breakthrough. If this is what it takes to make me a better person, I want more.

Level I: The Stand lasts four days. Like all Vistar courses, it happens in a hotel conference room. Against one wall, there is a small stage with a microphone stand, a stool, and an easel. The trainer either paces the stage or perches expectantly on the stool. When he wants to illustrate something, he draws on the easel paper with a black marker. We sit uncomfortably close, in chairs that are hooked together at the sides.

My 34 fellow enrollees are mostly white, middle-class professionals. A psychologist from Reno, Nevada, is there because her husband's Vistar experience worked wonders for their marriage. A 73-year-old minister signed up because his son, who was in the midst of the Vistar training, got down on his knees and begged his father to do the same.

For two evenings followed by two full days, we are led through a series of games, lectures, and exercises. In between, we are encouraged to share personal epiphanies. Some exercises are uncomfortably intimate. During one, I sit across from someone, stare into his eyes, and complete sentences the trainer provides: "What I don't want you to know about me is..." "The way you can love me is..." In another, we split into pairs and take turns lying in each other's lap. One of us plays parent, the other child. There is a lot of nervous laughter, but in time the physical closeness begins to seem normal, even comforting.

The games explore themes that are amplified in the next lecture, and the exercises that follow encourage personal exploration, which lead us to our epiphanies. People participate enthusiastically, even when it gets difficult. Periodically, there are tense moments. On the first day, a participant refuses to attend a followup seminar and, after a brief confrontation, he is asked to leave. On the second day, a quartet of smokers is late getting back from a break. They are called to the front of the room.

"What was more important to you than being on time?" the trainer demands. The four hang their heads. "What was more important to you than being on time?" he asks again. When they don't answer, he mocks their behavior. He tells them this is a perfect example of why their lives have stalled. He calls their smoking self-indulgent. Resistant. Weak. He asks them to confess other ways they are self-indulgent, resistant, and weak. They do. "You want a better job?" he asks one woman. "Tell me why you deserve it. What do you have to offer? Indulgence?"

When the smokers sit down, they're sobbing. The same thing happens to other people who question the training or are uncooperative. Sometimes it happens for no reason. But I assume the pain has a purpose.

Early on, most epiphanies are weepy stories of failure and disappointment. But by the third day, the stories are self-congratulatory. We begin to pinpoint, in various exercises, the major stumbling blocks in our lives. In my case, it is arrogance. I sought success as a means of self-glorification, rather than serving the world and humanity. I failed to keep my commitments. So, I decide it is time to stop cutting myself slack and start, as Vistar put it, "holding myself to greatness."

By then, "commitment" is a crucial concept. The trainer mocks the wider world, where promises are rarely kept, calling it "the drift." He implies that we are in on a glorious secret: We understand, as few people do, that the success we are seeking will arrive as soon as we learn how to make commitments, and then "enroll" other people. Enrollment, we learn, is key. For one thing, we can't do everything alone. But more important, enrollment is the only true test of our commitment.

As the seminar ends, our trainer asks us if we want to practice enrollment. Of course we do. He tells us Vistar is sponsoring an evening lecture. We commit to enrolling a certain number of people, then discuss what resistance we might encounter.

"Not enough money," someone says. The lecture costs $10.

"Is it really about money?'' the trainer asks.

We laugh. We know better. Of course it isn't about money. Lack of money is a cover story--a lie you tell yourself to resist what you really want.

We list other possible excuses. Then someone says, "They might think it's a cult?" There is a tense silence as we brace for an attack. Then the trainer laughs and soon we are laughing along: Oh, the lies people tell themselves to avoid success. To me, the idea that Vistar could be a cult is absurd. These people want to help me reach my goals, not change them.

That night there is a graduation ceremony. We stand in a circle with our eyes closed while friends and family sneak into the room and stand in front of us. When I open my eyes, Alex is there. "I'm so happy for you," he says, hugging me.

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