Help Me!

by Marianne Power

  ‘You want to be prime minister?’ Mum snorted.

  ‘No. That’s not the point, I’m just saying that I’m done with worrying about my looks. There are more important things in life.’

  ‘Fine! Let it all hang out! You’ll be burning your bra next!’ she said, laughing at her own joke. I forked more pasta into my mouth and said nothing.

  When she’d finished eating, Mum opened her handbag, looking for her lipstick, which she applied with a mirror. I never had a mirror or lipstick in my bag.

  ‘I just think it’s nice to take care of your appearance,’ she said. With perfect lips. ‘It always makes me feel better.’

  I didn’t know what to say. She was right. It was nice.

  We walked to Cos and she tried on a few things that all looked great on her Twiggy legs. I tried to suppress the uncomfortable feeling that my F**k It approach to eating was not doing me any favours as I tried on silky green palazzo pants which showed every dimple on my arse. Oh well, F**k It.

  For the rest of the month I continued to say F**k It to being nice to my friends, F**k It to my appearance, and an even bigger F**k It to work. My career had taken a back seat since I’d started my period of self-discovery, but now I had downed tools completely. After years of being a workaholic, I was no longer even pretending to be interested.

  ‘I don’t want to write about mascara and anti-cellulite cream or why I hate fake tan,’ I said to Rachel one evening, after a day spent watching squirrels do their thing.

  ‘We all have to do things we don’t want to do,’ said Rachel.

  ‘But why? Why do we all have to do things we don’t want to do? When we landed back in Gatwick, everyone looked just so miserable. All these grey faces on the Tube – but why do we do it?’

  ‘To pay the bills.’

  ‘There has to be more than just working and paying bills and buying crap we don’t need,’ I said.

  ‘So what? We all quit our jobs? Do nothing?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Why not? John says that our problem is that we fight the natural rhythms of life and that sometimes we need to rest. So, yeah, you might quit the job you hate, go to bed for a week – even a month – but then one day you’ll wake up and want to do something. And that something will lead to something else and then you’re off on a new path. A path you want to be on rather than a treadmill . . .’

  ‘And what about money?’

  ‘John says that we’re all too obsessed with money. When we don’t have it we think it will solve everything, when we do have it we worry we are going to lose it – but the reality is that most of us are not going to starve in this country. Even if we did lose everything we’d find a way to go on.’

  It was 10pm, she’d been working all day.

  ‘I’m going for a shower,’ she said.

  I could hear her walk up the stairs, her feet heavy and weary.

  I was pissing everyone off. I knew it. I didn’t care. For the first time in my whole life I didn’t care.

  Everyone around me seemed to be living a lie. A half life. I didn’t want that. I wanted something more, something different.

  Underneath all this F**k It stuff was the idea that we have to let go and surrender and trust that it’s all going to be OK, that there is some sort of force that will look after us – whether that’s God, or the Universe or something else.

  And I was starting to believe that. For the first time in my life I felt I could just let go, and it felt great.

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘You did naked yoga?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yoga with no clothes on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a room with other people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Helen looked at me with one of those ‘have you lost your actual mind?’ stares.

  ‘So just to get this straight – you were doing downward dogs with your head in someone’s bum?’

  ‘No, the teacher had arranged the mats in a way that meant you were never looking directly at anyone. And the lights were very dimmed, so I only saw half a willy.’

  ‘Gross.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t pervy,’ I said. Lying.

  It was the only yoga class I’d attended with more males than females. And there was a distinct frisson in the air. I got through the class by keeping my eyes closed for ninety per cent of it.

  I wasn’t going to tell Helen that though.

  ‘It was all about learning to love your body, and accept the way you are. . .’ I continued, feigning a ‘I’m now a free-spirited woman of the world’ tone.

  ‘I just don’t understand why you did it. You don’t even do yoga with your clothes on.’

  ‘I heard about it and I thought F**K It, I’d try it.’

  Helen finished her drink and reached for her coat: ‘I just think there’s a line and you’re crossing it. What next? Are you going to become a Scientologist? Join a cult?’

  But neither Helen, nor anyone else, could bring me down. I loved F**k It with all my heart and soul. And if my friends and family didn’t get that – then F**k It.

  Besides – I’d made new friends.

  By the end of my week in Italy, I’d decided that Daisy wasn’t so bad. At least she was open minded and thinking about the big things in life.

  She’d been texting since we’d come back, asking if I wanted to go to various talks on subjects such as ‘Embracing the Light Within’ and ‘Saying “Yes” to All There is’. I was amazed to find how many of these events existed, let alone the fact that hundreds of people went to them. It felt stimulating and exciting to sit in halls full of smiley-faced, hugging soul-searchers.

  By the end of June, I was seeing Daisy most days. From what I could make out she was taking a sabbatical from her job so she had time on her hands, which suited me. She was my gateway into a new world – a world of meditation groups and expressive dance classes where I pretended to be totally at ease with grown women crouching on the floor in foetal positions, and men running around flapping their arms like birds, squawking over the house beats.

  The crazy dancing was a bit much, actually. I kept trying to catch Daisy’s eye during the class, to share a smirk at the mad scene before us, but her eyes were closed. She was lost in the music. For a second, I wished that Sarah was here. She’d have squawked and flapped with the best of them while wetting herself with the ridiculousness of it all. Then we’d have gone to the pub to dissect just what was going on with the old guy in the teeny tiny shorts and the girl making monkey sounds. We’d have drunk too much and laughed till we cried.

  But Sarah was not here and these were my people now. Weren’t they?

  8

  Unleash the Power Within, with Tony Robbins

  ‘There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.’

  Nine o’clock on a Thursday night and seven thousand people are chanting ‘YES! YES! YES!’ in an East London car park. It’s pitch black and the ground is damp. Our bare feet are going numb on the cold, hard concrete.

  A drum pounds in the distance and we keep step with the beat. It feels as if we’re on our way to a ritual killing. Maybe our own. We’ve already signed waivers warning us about potential ‘serious injury, including burns or other physical or mental damage’ . . . and we’ve spent the past half-hour being told how to avoid hospitalization.

  The crowd keeps pushing me forwards until the drumming stops and a hush fills the air. Our fate glimmers grey and red in front of us: lanes of burning coals, which we are to walk over. I want to run away but I don’t. I have spent hours preparing to do this. To put my feet on those hot coals.

  Two men wearing bandanas tip a wheelbarrow of burning embers on top of the existing coals. Red sparks fly into the night sky. A figure appears out of the darkness and grabs my elbow, pulling me forwards.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he shouts in my ear.

 
; ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ shout the throng behind me. A crowd cheering at the gallows.

  No, No, No! shouts a voice inside my head.

  But ‘no’ is not an option.

  We’ve been told that once you overcome the fear of walking on thousand-degree coals, you can ‘conquer the other fires of your life with ease’.

  And that’s what I want. A life without fear. A life as the best me. The Outstanding Me.

  I take a deep breath and let out a roar – a primal, warrior sound. Then I take a step . . .

  My transition from naked-yoga hippie to potential cult-member came much more quickly than even Helen – or I – had expected when Daisy asked me to go with her to a Tony Robbins event.

  ‘When you walk over the fire, it’s like . . .’ She looked up to the heavens for the right words. ‘It’s like one of those moments that just changes everything.’

  She spoke with the fervour of someone who had discovered God and sex on the same day, which I soon found out was how all fans of Tony’s talked. Even the men. Perhaps especially the men.

  According to his website, Tony’s Unleash the Power Within seminar would help me ‘discover how to identify what it is you really want, permanently break through any barriers that might be holding you back, dramatically increase your energy and mental clarity, and infuse passion into your life’.

  Daisy had already gone to two of his events – one in Palm Springs and the other in London the year before.

  ‘Go on, get a ticket, he’s only in London once a year,’ she said.

  ‘How much is it?’

  ‘It’s totally worth it,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah but how much?’

  It turned out that tickets started at £500 and went up to £1,200 – but £500 for four days that promised to ‘Revolutionize your body, your emotions, your finances and your relationships’ was a bargain, surely. And given that Tony’s book Awaken the Giant Within was 500-odd pages, I figured this was the quicker way to get a Tony fix – and, let’s face it, time is money.

  The credit card came out again.

  I met Daisy at the entrance to the ExCeL Conference Centre in Docklands. The Tube had been packed and I was hungover and had a cold coming. I was not in the mood to be surrounded by perky women with perky hair and perky smiles, chatting to men who looked like they lived on protein shakes and sheer determination – but this seemed to be the demographic.

  ‘I need a coffee,’ I told Daisy.

  ‘You can get one after we register,’ she said, so excited she was literally bouncing. It was driving me crazy.

  As we queued to register, volunteers in black t-shirts marked ‘Crew’ tried to high-five us. Anyone new to the Tony Robbins experience looked embarrassed and confused, while the old-timers, including Daisy, high-fived back.

  ‘Can we get a coffee now?’ I asked, once we’d signed in and got our wristbands and workbooks.

  ‘Why don’t we get a good seat first and then you can go out and get one?’

  I rolled my eyes and followed Daisy towards the sound of booming electro-pop coming from the main arena. More high-fiving from strangers. The smiles were getting manic, the music louder and louder.

  We snaked past a bank of what looked like telephone kiosks. Each had a sign with a language: Russian, Chinese, Polish, Spanish, Hebrew . . .

  ‘That’s where the translators go,’ shouted Daisy. We were told later that Tony’s words were being translated into thirty-two different languages via headphones.

  Once we got into the main arena it was a scrum. People were running to get to seats as close to the stage as possible. Daisy grabbed my hand and pulled me forwards, darting towards the area marked Gold.

  ‘Is this OK?’ shouted Daisy over the music. She’d got two seats on the edge of a block. ‘This way we can dance in the aisles and we have a good view of the screens.’

  On stage, crew members were dancing and clapping to ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by the Black Eyed Peas. They looked to be a cross between children’s television presenters and IT managers on an office night out. In the audience multiple Daisies were bouncing up and down like cheerleaders. This was too much.

  ‘I’m going to get a coffee.’

  When I got back Daisy was dancing with a man wearing a paisley cravat. I sat next to a woman who was sitting with folded arms. I smiled but she didn’t smile back. I looked at my phone and ate a chocolate muffin and thought about how ridiculous this all was and how much I hated it.

  Then Rihanna started playing and I got up to dance. I’m a sucker for Rihanna.

  A couple of songs later, the big moment – and the big man – arrived, bursting on stage dressed in black t-shirt and long black shorts, with a wireless microphone across his face. With his Hollywood tan, white teeth and lantern jaw, he looked like something that a Mills & Boon writer would dream up. And just to add to the effect, his chiselled face was blown up to God-like proportions on massive screens behind him.

  The audience exploded.

  It was like the Beatles and the Messiah had landed in Docklands on a Thursday lunch time.

  Seven and a half thousand people jumped up and down as music blared and lights flashed on and off. People were high-fiving each other. Daisy hit me so hard my palms stung. I turned to the woman on my other side.

  Her hands remained crossed on her chest.

  I had a choice – I could either sit with Mrs Misery for the next four days or go with the madness.

  ‘Are you ready?’ yelled Tony, with a voice so deep it sounded like it came from the centre of the earth.

  ‘YES!!’ I screamed back, along with everyone else.

  ‘Who wants an amazing, extraordinary quality of life? Life on YOUR terms? SAY AYE!!!!!!!”

  ‘AYE!’

  And then he was off . . . firing words like a sexy motivational machine gun from 1pm to 9pm. No tea breaks, no lunch, just one inspiring slogan after another: ‘Love is oxygen for the soul!’ ‘Energy is life!’ ‘Trade expectations for appreciation!’

  Tony’s message is that anything is possible if we just get our minds and bodies into the right state. He says we are all defined by our limiting beliefs and if we get rid of them, then ‘The Impossible just gets done’.

  To prove the point, he told the story of an eighty-four-year-old nun who ran triathlons: ‘It’s not your chronology that counts – it’s your psychology!’ he shouted and I found myself scribbling that down. It seemed important.

  Then he pulled out a woman from the audience who said she was depressed. He asked her if she was depressed while having sex and she smiled. Apparently not. And then, and before we knew it, the depressed woman was faking an orgasm in front of seven thousand people while Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ blasted from the stereo.

  She beamed! So did we! Her depression was gone!

  Tony explained why this woman was depressed – and it wasn’t because of her chemical make-up or her life experiences – it was because she liked being depressed! According to Tony – who was fast becoming the love of my life – there are six human needs that drive absolutely everything we do.

  The first need is for Certainty/Comfort – this is our need to feel in control and secure. The second is the opposite: our need for Variety and Uncertainty. The third need is Significance. We all need to feel important and unique. Tony explained that some of us get a feeling of significance from our work, some achieve it by having a flash car or by getting a thousand Twitter followers. Tony said that you can even get significance by committing crimes – sounds strange but if you hold a knife up to someone you are suddenly very important in their eyes. Need four is Love and Connection. Need five is Growth – ‘If you’re not growing, you’re dying,’ according to Tony – whether that’s growing your business, your relationships, your education, etc. And the final need is for Contribution – ‘Life’s not about me; it’s about we,’ says Tony.

  Any time we find ourselves in a seemingly undesirable situation it will be because it actually satisfies som
e of these needs. The depressed woman admitted that her condition allowed her comfort and security because it gave her a reason to stay in bed and not push herself. It also gave her significance because she became special when she talked about her illness. Finally, it gave her love and connection because it meant her family had to look after her.

  Wow! This made a lot of sense. Tony explained that we all prioritize these needs differently. For some of us, certainty will be key; for others, the desire to feel special and significant will be the most important.

  We were told to talk to somebody we didn’t know about the needs we prioritized.

  ‘For me it’s security and love!’ said a Norwegian accountant in the row behind me. ‘I have been in the same job since university. I married my girlfriend from school. It is very safe but very boring.’

  ‘We are opposites!’ I said, excited by this lightbulb moment with a stranger. ‘I value uncertainty and significance, which is why I am a freelance writer who never has savings or a plan and am constantly looking to feel good enough through my career!’

  We grinned at each other.

  The music changed and we all danced again.

  Daisy was air-guitaring in the aisles with a muscle-man who looked like he belonged on the cover of Men’s Health and I did the mashed potato with the Norwegian accountant.

  Then we were taught how to get into a ‘peak state’ by thinking of the best moments of our lives, the moments we felt strongest and most at peace.

  I thought of sunny beaches, getting my degree even though I’d been in and out of hospital because of the cancer scare – and the fact that I was an actual paid journalist.

  Each time we had these thoughts we were told to ‘make a move’, so every time we made that move in the future, these memories would come flooding back.

  I pumped my fist in the air, again and again and again.