My journey began in the Summer of 2005. I had heard of Inner Compass through a friend who had told me “there’s this bloke called Andy Harrington whose got a bigger fire walk than Tony Robbins.” Not many people can claim to having anything bigger than Tony Robbins, after all, he’s a big guy, so intrigued, I looked him up on the internet and signed up for a free NLP event with his company Inner Compass.
I was impressed with the free event. Harrington used clean stage anchors and a lot of suggestive language when selling his product and I admired the certainty with which he did it. I wasn’t there though, to get roped into a “breakthough” weekend. I was there to sign up for NLP training. So at the end of the event I went up to him to ask him about it.
It seemed he’d over estimated his own sales skills. After 10 minutes of trying to convince me that I’d learn more about NLP after I’d signed up for his “breakthrough weekend,” I walked out.
I had a call from one of his sales guys within a couple of days. It took him a further 2 phone calls and around an hour and 15 minutes of discussion about why their NLP was better that the McKenna/ Bandler training to convince me to part with a couple of thousand pounds.
Was it well spent? Well I think that there are trainings that probably matched up to their standard of training for maybe a grand less, but with Inner Compass you wasn’t just buying the NLP knowledge, you were buying into the whole showbiz experience, the hugs with smelly strangers, to be part of “their family” and part of the magic.
And mostly it was a magical experience. I learnt a lot and felt comfortable and confident about what I had learned. I made many wonderful friends and even worked through some of my own bad stuff that I’d been holding onto. I had gone there with the intention of getting the qualifications so that I could expand my hypnotherapy business. I ended up deciding that my vocation was being up there on stage, teaching the stuff instead. Trust me, this wasn’t a whimsical decision, I used to love being on stage as a child and had for the past 4 years been taking exams in musical theatre. I am passionate about Hypnotherapy and NLP and I rather like money too. So it seemed like the right way forward.
Generally unconventional, I then didn’t follow the Master Practitioner, Trainers Training route due to a singing exam that fell at the same time as the next scheduled Master Practitioner training with Inner Compass. This meant that I would do Trainers Training first, followed by Master Practitioner and then The 8 hour exam to pass Trainers Training. And that’s exactly the way it happened. I surprised myself on Trainers Training by keeping up with the majority of other delegates who were already Master Practitioners, and I think I surprised some of them too.
Master Practitioner was less engaging, perhaps because some of the cracks in Inner Compass as a company, were beginning to show, or perhaps because Trainers Training had been so tough, that Master Practitioner at times verged on too easy. Still travelling into central London for 12 long days solid was exhausting in itself, and the very next day after it finished, was the 8 hour Trainers Training exam. Which I completed in 4 hours.
Overall I’m glad of the experience I had, I’m glad it was with Inner Compass. At the end of every course, there was always a sense of nostalgia as we all said goodbye to each other. Such a shame that now we are saying goodbye to an institution of such great love and magic forever.
