How Much Progress Are You Making on Your Dream?

The older we get, the more time seems to get away from us.

If you remember when you were young, time went sooooo slowly. Summers were forever, getting to Christmas was such an unbearably long time and it seemed as if you would never grow up. We always wanted to be older than we were, sometimes even lying about it--remember sneaking into bars even though you weren't 21?

Now, time and our lives seem to whiz at nanospeed. We look up dreading Mondays and then wonder where the week went when Friday rolls around. We reach our birthday and wonder what we did with that year of our life that just passed and is behind us.

Are you just going to let those years roll by and then live with a litany of regrets? Are you going to be sitting in a rocking chair thinking about all the things you could have done and wonder why you didn't?

Think about this: Who are the people that you've admired in your life? It might be an ordinary person that you know--someone in your neighborhood or an acquaintance at church. It might be someone famous like Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandala--those historical giants that have left a great legacy with their work and efforts. Each and every one of those individuals was just like you AT SOME POINT. They were young and had big dreams of something, a passion, that they wanted to accomplish. They each could have allowed jobs, family, health, aging parents, setbacks, or money problems to derail the creation and development of their vision. But, they didn't.

What makes them different from you? They had the determination to accomplish something that was so important and so overriding to all their personal life issues that they persisted and as a result, were successful.

Each one of us is the same as these famous people. We all have the potential to be great. We all have the qualities deep within us to accomplish our most cherished dreams.

All it takes is the GAS of determination to propel us to that treasured destination.

Explaining the Importance of Early Memories in Career Counseling

I love exploring the Early Memory Construct in career counseling.
If we all asked ourselves, hmmmm, "What is my earliest memory?", focus on that memory and analyze it, we would learn a lot about ourselves, how we see ourselves and how we fit into the world.

One of my counseling heroes, Alfred Adler, believed that personalities or visions of how we "fit" into the world are established at a very early age. He also believed that children formed a definite "prototype" of themselves by age five.

This is a valid argument, because brain research indicates that humans normally develop explicit and semantic memory after the second birthday. That would indicate that most individuals would "store" certain significant memories between two and five. Why is your earliest memory significant? It is because that is your first memory of being a person, separate from your parents, separate from your environment, your first experience as an individual being

One would think that the significance of one's earliest memory might be diminished or changed after going through subsequent experiences later in childhood, but it does not. An individual will go through life in a series of attempts to prove or disprove their earliest memory.

An example of this was a 40 year old female client of mine who was desperately desiring to make a career change. Her career in social work was literally killing her. She was a wonderfully warm, caring person, who was selfless--not only in her work life, but with her family, her church and her community. Her early memory was this: One Christmas when she was four, she received an outdoor log cabin playhouse. Family finances were a problem that year because her father had been unemployed, but they were eager to give their four year old daughter the thing she wanted most. Instead of being overjoyed at her parents' generosity, she cried and cried and felt horrible. She felt that did not deserve such happiness at such a difficult time. She felt guilty.

This early memory was carried like baggage for the rest of her life--that she was undeserving and that others always came before self. She even chose a profession that perpetuated this "me last" feeling.

So what is your earliest memory? and what do you think this has to do with your feeling about yourself and your work?

My Wish for Independence Day

Even though we are the greatest country in the world, we can become better. We can be a more compassionate and welcoming nation.

My wish is that we would have less divisions between the rich and the poor: that the rich should be willing to lend a hand to those who have less and that the poor should be willing to have a life that involves more hope.

Every child that is born in America should have equal access to a good life--regardless where they are born, regardless of who their parents are or what they do.

The circumstances to which one is born should not dictate their future.

America ranks 6th in the world as having the greatest disparity between rich and poor. We can't afford to let this continue. If you remember Marie Antoinette's statement about cake, take heed!

People Watching

The lake and park across the street from my house provides great opportunities to "people watch". I love to people watch. Could I call it hobby? Perhaps. I enjoy observing what people wear, how they walk, their interactions with their pets, their walking companions, intricacies of body language....suddenly I had the thought that this could be a future subject for blogging. Each park walker has a story and it plays out in their walk everyday. Now if I could just dig in to their story by simple observation.

What a difference a YEAR makes....

Last year at this time, I was looking for a smaller, more efficient house. The huge house I had lived in for 26 years no longer suited my needs or life style.

With my son grown and out on his own, I no longer had "herds" of teenagers spending the night or parties on the patio. 3,000 SF was too big for a 50-something lady and a little dog.

I found a small townhome on a lake and a park in town, moved there, the big house was vacant for a year and a lot happened in the last year that made me grow, changed my way of thinking and all of those activities that assist in a transition.

This a lesson that I can pass on to my career counseling clients: when your working life no longer supports your desired lifestyle you need to make a change--yes, it is scary, yes, it is a hassle, yes, you will be frustrated at first, yes, you will realize that your "change" destination will not be as perfect as you had hoped....but when the dust settles and you can finally take a breath, you will realize you did the right thing.