Okay. This is where I go a little nuts. This is where I need to tell all "gurus", self-helpers, life coaches or whatever to shut the fuck up with their bullshit for a second.

A few years ago, back in 2011 I was sponsored by my boss to go for a "world renowned" conference. Let's just call it Intense Fest 101.

It sounded like a typical, motivational conference on entrepreneurship and shit. But it was far from it... far, far, from it. To this day, I've mixed feelings towards the conference.

It started out all fine and dandy. We had the motivational speaker. She had charisma. She gave us an overview of what was to come, saying there wouldn't be any "dorky, training games". I thought that was cool.

And then all the sad, NLP (neural linguistic programming) and whatever that tugged at your heartstrings in any MAJOR possible way came out. I was blown away in a weird way.

At one point the lights in the entire hall were dimmed. Soothing, nature music started playing in the background. Everyone was instructed to close their eyes. Then the speaker started narrating a bunch of stuff that was meant to arouse your emotions and shit.

"Look back in your life"

"Are you angry?"

"What are you sad about?"

"Think of your deepest, darkest fears."

And other shit.

A lot of people, and I do mean a lot of people, started crying even before it was over. I kept hearing a bunch of sobs and sniffles.

I was like, "Meh... anyone vulnerable in this environment would definitely be affected". I was stone cold, I guess.

After it was over, people were given the chance to speak. This lady beside me stood up, grabbed the mic and started saying how pissed she was with her husband. Her husband died of cancer. She was pissed at him for dying and she had been living with her anger all this while.

The speaker asked if she'd like to scream. And that she did.

She screamed fucking loud. I was like, "HOLY SHIT!". I woke up. I looked at her and she was bawling her eyes out. Good for her.

Another dude was asked to go on stage. He told his story about how he missed his late grandfather. And his favourite place was the beach.

The speaker asked him, "Okay. Imagine you're on a beach. You can hear the waves hitting the shore and sea gulls are flapping their wings. Then your grandfather comes walking up to you form the horizon. If you have only five minutes with him, what would you say?".

I was like, "Oh, COME ON!"

Apparently the dude replied, "What should we eat?", because they loved eating and stuff.

At one point, a 40 plus year-old dude went on stage and cried. He was raped by another dude when he was young. Whoa.

At another point, a young adult lady went on stage and, yes, she cried. She was sexually assaulted not once, but twice in her life. After her confession she was given a standing ovation.

On the last night, we all had to play a game. Each group had to take part in it. What happened was that we were given a bunch of building blocks, the kind little kids played with. Then we were given a bunch of scenarios to act out with the blocks. We were tested by past graduates of the conference on how well we acted, or so we thought.

It was annoying as fuck. We kept acting out a bunch of lame scenarios like, "Trust". So we did a Trust Fall holding the blocks. We tried many times because the testers kept failing us.

After the game was over, we were told that the blocks were actually... wait for it, "blocks" in your life. HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.

Apart from these extreme revelations, nothing else was really memorable about the conference. We had a bunch of group training games which turned out to be kind of dorky after all, what with imaginary money and all that shit.

We were all instructed afterwards to keep in touch with our designated teams via a Facebook Group. People were posting all sorts of shit inside, telling us of their exploits and evolutionary growth in life. That, too, was overwhelming. People were literally writing shit like, "I got to thank life and be happy blah blah blah".

That was when the term "Spaceship Earth" came about. Apparently, it was the birthday of some renowned speaker the conference looked up to, a lot. Call it worship if you want even. And then the moderator of the group wished him happy birthday and then started thanking the life she had on Spaceship Earth.

Holy shit. Cult much?

Like I said, I've had mixed feelings about the conference.

I guess it's good for people to express themselves, like finally. Those victims needed some serious help. I did wonder what took them so long to finally let it out.

But yet, I don't think all the extreme, environmental adjustments are necessary. You might as well go to a church (Oh!) then.

The only environmental adjustment you need in life is to simply make sure you're surrounded by positive people all the time. Stick with your good friends and stop hanging out with assholes. That includes your shitty boss or your mildly annoying friend. Fuck them. Dump the toxic relationships and move on. Hang out with people who can inspire and lift you up no matter what. That's how you fucking grow like a champ, into a champ.

Otherwise, you're going to be repressed your entire fucking life. And then you got to spend thousands on a conference for some soothing music to finally let it out. But hey, it's your life. Go ahead.

What happened next was my boss going ape shit crazy on me about what I supposedly learnt at the conference. One thing they taught was "synergy". Yeah. You needed synergy at the workplace. You needed to synergize with everything and everyone in the office for success.

Somehow, that meant I had to blindly follow whatever orders I was given. I had to wilfully take part in whatever activities. I had to give my all in any ventures despite my doubts, fears and confusions. Seriously, I was told straight in the face to have "synergy" and to "embrace the truth".

THE truth? You've got to be kidding me. When you subscribe to a fucking truth that's not your own, doesn't that effectively mean you're not living your life on your own? Doesn't that mean you believe in something else other than your heart, thus eliminating the importance of your life's experiences and memories? Doesn't that mean you're into religion?!

Fuck THE truth. There's only one truth and that's your own truth. Your life's experience and memories are always real, because you've lived them. They will always be there and can never be taken away from you. Don't be swayed by conferences, soothing music, jarring headlines, what others say and most of all, others' truths. They live their own fucking life. You live your own.

So stop with the synergy, the spaceships, the paradigm-shifting, the groundbreaking and the world-class whatever. You could just get off your lazy ass, stop being a pussy shit and start making shit happen in your life.

Oh, by the way, did the conference reinforce what I believed in life? It sure did. Like that silver lining,it came with good intentions after all. But yeah, like I said, you can waste thousands of dollars on it to be told what you already know deep down (I know you fucking do).

Life can be simple. Life is simple. Just fuck it all, have a beer and be happy, bitch.