My Life as a Lifespring Trainer (Part I)

I came to work full time for Lifespring in the fall of 1988 upon graduating from New York University with a Master’s in philosophy. My dad and I both agreed to bring me in as a resident philosophical expert. I think I was called Curriculum Development Coordinator or something like that. I was twenty-three at the time and in a pretty awkward situation. The trainers as a whole were not overly interested in what I had to say. I don’t think it was personal; they just didn’t want their training approach to be meddled with.

At the time Lifespring was a few years into a contextual shift from basic personal growth thinking to more overtly existentialist thinking. I had studied Heidegger fairly significantly in school culminating in my master’s thesis. I loved it and believed it could help the trainers and other staff. I worked on writing papers that would make the philosophical concepts understandable and applicable for the staff.

My dad and I collaborated on one called “The Ontological Framework of the Lifespring Trainings,” which was required reading for all staff. I wrote a few others offering existentialist perspectives on topics like science, religion, and the meaning of the word “possibility.” The best one I ever wrote is probably “A Philosophical Guide for Lifespring Trainers,” which several trainers have been kind enough to tell me they read often to keep themselves grounded on what they teach.

On occasion I sat in on trainings in order to observe ways to make things clearer for our students. I also conducted one-on-one tutorials with each of the trainers, although it was difficult to track them all down on a regular basis. About nine months into all this, I began to wonder if I was doing what I should be doing. In fact I was excited about the goal of my current position, but it felt like walking uphill all the time. In retrospect maybe I should have persevered a while longer, but instead I chose to be yet another member of the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em Club.”

My first instinct was to work for the San Francisco center as an enrollment coordinator. This sounded like a good way to get into the belly of the beast and learn the business from the inside out. There appeared to be an opening for an Advanced Course assistant enrollment manager. I spoke with the center manager and the enrollment manager and they seemed to think it was a good idea.

I drove out there to South San Francisco to finalize the deal, only to find out upon arriving that the corporate officers decided the center couldn’t afford to have two enrollment people in the Advanced Course department.

My dad and I talked about it and agreed the next course of action was to become a Basic Trainer. I sat down with the Director of Training, Bettie Spruill, and she was willing to get behind the idea. We were all concerned about my age. Most trainers came on board in their mid-thirties. But there was some precedent for it. Doug Perasso and Jack Zwissig, a couple legendary Lifespring trainers, came on board soon after graduating from school. I would have preferred to have had a little more life experience, but I decided to go for it.

For whatever reason, Lifespring at the time was under the impression it needed lots more trained trainers ready to go. Within a month or so of my coming on board, they hired eight more trainer interns. The powers that be decided to get us started by putting us into a two-week trainer intensive program. This was a fourteen-day straight training meeting from nine or ten in the morning until nine or ten at night.

We were sworn to secrecy about the specifics of what happened in there, so I can’t be too forthcoming about what went on. It wasn’t anything too outlandish. They more or less put us through an elongated and expanded Advanced Course again.

For the next eight months I played the role of full-time apprentice. Two or three times a month I traveled around the country and sat in the back of the room of the Basic Training. Although I worked a bit with each of the Basic Trainers, the Basic manager, Jim Cook, eventually took me under his wing and brought me along to most of his trainings. In addition to learning the training as a practitioner, Jim and I collaborated on creating an updated version of the trainer guide. After a few months, Jim gave me more and more responsibility in the training, until eventually we were true co-trainers.

What I observed with myself and all subsequent trainers who came in during my time with the company is that there comes a point when the existing community of trainers just “gets” you as a trainer. About seven or eight months into my internship, I started to hear rumblings that I was close to ready. I think I closed the deal during a particular trainer meeting where the new people had to get up and deliver a section of the training to the rest of the trainers. I chose to do what we called a “wrap-up” of a big course-wide game we play called the Red/Black Game. This is usually a fairly heated talk where the trainer takes the participants to task for how they played the game and how their game play mirrored their participation in life.

I made a deal with myself before I went to the front of the room that I was going to go for it. I was going to treat the trainers as if they had, in fact, just played the game. I went after them with a good deal of bravado mixed in with a smidgeon of clarity. A couple of them tried to test my mettle and I gave right back. I knew when I was done, they were impressed. Before long my name was on the schedule as a lead trainer. I can’t recall where they were going to send me, but it was going to be a relatively small training, about seventy.

Good old Jack Zwissig would have none of that. He set it up so that I accompanied him to Washington, D.C., where they had a more established center and would likely have 125 or so participants. This was quite considerate of Jack. He’s like that. He had always looked out for my brother and me since we first knew him. He went out of his way years earlier to try and pull some strings to get me into his alma mater at Santa Clara University.

Jack enrolled me in taking the red eye night flight out east. We agreed I was to be the lead and he would back me up as necessary. Needless to say, I was excited about the opportunity. After months of watching and backing up others, it was fantastic to be able to put my own spin on the training. I enjoyed a couple firsts right at the beginning. It’s a dumb little thing, but it was an unwritten rule that whenever we were driven somewhere, the lead trainer got to sit in the front passenger seat. When the time came, I didn’t have to say anything. Jack took the back and I got the front! Ah, sweet joy.

The other thing was that I opened the training myself. I eventually led a lot of the training sections as an intern, but there were a few that were off limits. At the end of the day, the lead trainer was responsible for getting the job done and there were some pieces they simply refused to hand over to anyone else. One of those completely off limits sections was the hour or so introductory lecture we started the training with.

I spent considerable time at home prepping and practicing my approach. Finally the moment arrived. The clock struck six-thirty on a Wednesday night in early January 1990. I strode to the front of the room to look out at a vast sea of 125 vaguely interested faces. My heart pounded so fast it’s a wonder it didn’t jump out of my chest. It’s the most nervous I’ve ever been in a professional setting. Jack had to send me a note telling me to get on the stage. I guess I didn’t want to stand out that much. It took about fifteen minutes to calm down a little.

At the end of the night, I was on cloud nine. Actually the whole thing went great. Jack stepped in when he needed to and provided a little extra oomph (a “that’s bullshit!” here and there). I think I must have created a nice bond with the folks. I’ll always remember a spontaneous standing ovation they gave me near the end of Sunday, the one and only time that has ever happened to me as a trainer.

(To be continued...)