Linda Rosso
GRADUATE PROFILE
When Linda Rosso decided to take the Lifespring Basic Training in New York City in 1982, her life was, to use her word, wonderful. “I didn't really have to do anything about it. I got into the right college, and had the right grades, and looked the right way,and lived in the right neighborhood, and all that. I always ‘looked' really good. I had prestigious jobs making the right amount of money, wore the right clothes, and so forth. But, I realized that I was making very passive choices. I was very conscious of what I didn't want, but I was probably less conscious of what I did want. I would postpone making choices. I found myself unconsciously drifting into commitments, turning provisional choices into commitments.
“I was 25 when I first heard about Lifespring through a friend. He was a very social, outgoing, gregarious person. We used to go out after work all the time-we'd go to these chic little bars on Madison Avenue. We'd be there with each other, but we'd be scoping the whole place out, checking out who's here,who's there.This one particular time we went out was wery different. He was talking about himself in a very different way. I wondered what was going on. He was so peaceful and attentive, and more sincere than I'd ever seen him before. I got a sense that the course was something very powerful."
About the Basic Training, Linda says: “It was time I took time for myself to observe firsthand how I behave in my life and, at the same time, start doing something about it. It's not like taking a seminar at work in effective time management. There's something special about the training in that while I was observing myself I was also doing something about myself. I got a chance to practice what I'd just noticed and correct it in a very nonthreatening arena. For instance, I had this realization that I didn't always communicate very clearly,and people didn't always understand what I said. Well,right then and there in the training I had an opportunity with a group of people to practice meaning what I said and saying what I meant.”
Out of what she observed in herself and experienced about how she was in the world, Linda began to participate more proactively in her life. "I realized that I have a vote in what I am committed to. Exercising that voting power has enabled me to make major life decisions affecting marriage, motherhood, home,and career that I probably wouldn't have made prior to the trainings."
One of Linda's discoveries had to do with her relationships with people and, in particular, with men. It began when her partner for one of the exercises on Saturday morning started flirting with her after the exercise was over. It bothered her so much that she started examining her reaction. "I started looking at the rules and games I made up about men who act this way with me. For example, if I was on a date with a guy and he'd ask me if I had ever been a model, I decided he wasn't worth going out with because he was just interested in what I looked like.I'm somewhat shy in social situations anyway,but I was being perceived as very aloof. So the combination of my reaction to being complimented on my appearance and my shyness, which came across as aloofness, was a deadly mixture.
"I realized that I wasn't being fair to other people because I was just assuming right away that they were judging the book by its cover. But I wasn't doing anything to invite them in. The analogy I'd use is this: It's Christmas morning and there are all these packages under the tree. I would be this really wonderfully wrapped package, with this great bow on it, and people would be drawn to it. It's a very understated package, mind you. Understated, but desirable.In the training I realized what I'd let people do; I'd let people pick up the package and shake it, but there was no way that bow was coming untied. I realized in the training that I had to take the ribbons off and loosen the edges of the paper. Since the training, I have applied this discovery in my life. Now that I take initiative, people respond to me like they never did before.
"I was taking more responsibility for my life. I had always been a big dawdler,mostly because I didn't see any real reason to get so excited about doing something. Before doing the trainings, I was in that sort of passive mode. Once I got into something, I'd get very passionate about it, but I never questioned what my aspirations were. I operated on the assumption that everything was just going to happen.Because it always did. After the trainings, and even now, six years later, I notice that I intervene instead of just sitting back. I get really involved in things rather than just spinning tops all around me. Since the training, things are happening faster.I am getting more done. I'll have ten things going at one time. Sometimes it causes stress, but it is a very positive stress.I feel that the more I am doing, the more I can do. I feel much more like a participant than an observer.
“Although I would have predicted that things were simpler before the trainings when I was just observing, actually it is simpler now that I'm involved in directing my life. I'm not constantly worrying about how things are going or what other people are going to think. I used to analyze things to death. Whenever the time came to make a choice about something major, I would go through excruciating analysis and I would ask everybody their advice. I probably didn't hear any of it, but I would just complicate things by not trusting my own instincts. I was always consulting other people about the right thing to do. That caused a lot more stress because it was a way of being even less involved in my life-I was sort of turning it over to other people. Being involved in my life and making my own decisions and sticking with them is much more relaxing.'
Linda, now thirty-two,is pregnant with her first child. She got married about two years ago and moved to California with her husband.“The first couple of months of my pregnancy, I couldn’t stand not being in charge of what was happening with my body. I felt like I had an alien living inside of me that was taking charge of my life. I really did not like it. Then something shifted. I don't know quite when it happened or what it was, but I realized, ‘Oh, what the hell. This is just going to happen. I might as well go along with it.' So now I'm just more relaxed about everything. It's a very different feeling than just unconsciously drifting through the experience. I have a lot more trust in myself about how things are going to turn out."
Linda's life has changed a lot since she did the Lifespring trainings, particularly in the last two years."I have a house in the suburbs and a Volvo station wagon, mind you. My life has dramatically changed in two years. Very dramatically. My life may have taken a very different path had I not done the trainings. I know that many of the people whom I was on a par with, keeping pace with-my friends in New York-their lives have evolved in a completely different way. A lot of the change for me has to do with being in the relationship I'm in now. Getting married and having a partner to do things with gives me a foundation. Had I not created this relationship, my life would probably still be very much career driven, working very hard, living in the city,being seen with the right people. Those would be the things that would be more important. If I hadn't done the training, I probably wouldn't have allowed a relationship like this to happen.
“The biggest effect the training had was on my self-concept. Without that the other things wouldn't have shifted. The training affected my sense of security with myself. I always knew I was doing the right thing. I would listen to all these other people, but I did what I wanted anyway. I just had to get other people's opinions and feedback, and I had to test out my thesis on a number of people. I don't do that anymore. I trust myself and I trust that my decisions are right for me. I don't just fall into provisional choices that may not be best for me. I trust myself to make choices and to participate fully in my life."