But there are times when the gloomy days seem to roll on without end. My wife first encountered this when I moved our family to Columbus, Ohio, for my first stint as a college professor. Although locals will tell you, with authority, that the “snow line” is still sixty miles north of the city, the October-to-April gray skies were too much for a southern girl. Halfway through our second winter there, she begged me to find a job closer to the place she grew up.

There are seasons of life that feel like those Ohio skies. The change in our circumstances we’ve been hoping for often doesn’t come as quickly as our hearts desire. An improvement in your health, the email about a job offer, better days in your marriage, a loving attitude from an estranged child, or an upturn in your own mood can elude you for far too long. How do you go on when the “sunshine” of a positive turn in your life seems like it will never appear?

I’ve found it helps to live “as-if” the better day is coming. Although it sounds like a simple mind trick or one of those syrupy lines in a self-help video, living as-if isn’t just repeatedly telling yourself, “The better day will come.” It’s the practice of living the life you will have when the better day has arrived.

One reason to live as though the new day has already arrived is that positive actions can and do change the way we experience our circumstances. It’s a principal psychologists discovered years ago—emotions often follow actions. Most people assume the relationship between feelings and behavior is one-way: emotions shape behavior. You love someone, so you smile at them, hug them, or kiss them. You hate someone, so you speak harshly or even strike them. But this isn’t the case; in fact, it’s often backwards. Much of the time, behavior actually shapes emotion.

Research by clinical psychologists has found that the fastest way to change your emotions is to change your behaviors. In the 1970s, they came to understand that depression was indirectly a result of inactivity. People who had experienced disappointment or failure withdrew from the world in an attempt to protect themselves from similar feelings. In the short run, they were rewarded by eliminating the “causes” of their discomfort, but in the long run, these actions worsened their mood and prevented them from experiencing positive things.

The correct reaction to life’s disappointments and our personal failures is not to give up and shut ourselves away, but to introduce and practice life skills that bring positive experiences into our lives. Behavioral treatment for depression often involves changing behaviors in order to experience a change in mood, something therapists call behavioral activation. In other words, if you want to change your mood, do positive things.

But there’s another reason to live as-if the better day has come, and that’s because it’s already been promised. I first discovered this in some confusing language in my Bible. The authors would sometimes use words that sounded as though a turning point had already occurred and reality had changed, yet we are still waiting for it to fully arrive. This is sometimes referred to as “living in the already, but not yet.”

My walk the other day offered a practical example of “living in the already, but not yet.” While out, I passed a neighbor who had the same idea. “We never had sunny days like these in January when I lived in Chicago,” she exclaimed. Like a typical Knoxvillian, I responded, “Just wait fifteen minutes, it will change.” Spring is certain to come but, for now, we were enjoying the pleasures of a spring-like day in mid-winter.

The principle of “already, but not yet” is based on the biblical idea that God keeps his promises; therefore, anything he promises is certain to occur—either in this life or the one to come. That gives us an opportunity to live as-if lives. If we know what God has promised, then we can live as-if it’s already come true.

This isn’t just airy-fairy thinking. Some dear friends of mine lost a child last fall. Although their grief was (and is) excruciating, they are buoyed by the biblical promise that they will be reunited with their son, who is already whole and happy. In the meantime, they live in an “already, but not yet” reality, waiting for the promise to come completely true.

Years ago, when I was battling a depression of my own, I discovered that passively waiting for a change only made my life worse. Taking action steps and living as if my circumstances had already changed was a key to my return to health, but I could only do that if I had some certainty that a better day would come. What are the certainties that you use to live as-if?

“Life as a Battle” is a radical idea in America. Author Gary Barkalow says we’ve all bought into the idea that life should be like we’re on a cruise ship. If the weather is cold and rainy with rolling seas that make us ill, and we’re served bland, lukewarm food, then we feel like we got a raw deal. But if we understand life as a war, and we’re living on a battleship, then it changes our perspective on these things.

You start by changing your thinking about life. Most people view life as something to survive. A few view it as a game or competition with winners and losers, with the ultimate goal of accruing more wins. I believe life is a battle for our identities, for the sum and substance of who we are, for what the bible calls our souls.

Years ago, I studied the book of Job in the bible. Job has lots of important ideas for living a life that’s a battle for yourself. When the story opens Satan enters God’s throne room and God starts expressing his love for Job and his delight in who Job is. That’s Idea One: Your Life has Value.

To survive the battle for your life you need to know, in your core, that your life has a value that’s not based on what you do or bring to the world, but based on who you are. I saw this truth when Parkinson’s Disease stripped away my father’s abilities – a smart, athletic, personable, and loving guy who excelled at sales and friendship. Although he retained the core of his personality to the end, the disease took much of what he’d come to think of as himself. Still, he never lost the cornerstone of his identity: that he was deeply loved and important to the one(s) that mattered most.

Idea Two: There are forces at work that don’t want you to survive the battle. The name Satan means “accuser” in the original Hebrew, and from the beginning of Job’s story this character levels accusations at Job. Whether we believe in the story, or even the bible, each of us has experienced accusing thoughts and misgivings about whether we can survive the battles of life.

Often these are doubts and fears we harbor about our abilities or the significance of our lives in the world. Psychologist Albert Ellis went so far as to say most people live their lives to prevent these doubts and fears from being proved true – living on defense, as it were. Fear is big business. The Media and Marketers count on our fears to keep us engaged (to sell ads) and to buy their products to protect us from what we fear.

The only way to fight fear is with truth and certainty. Not the so-called “your truth” that’s based on individual beliefs that come and go, but the kind of truth that based on experienced fact. This is truth we learn by testing what we fear is true to see if it’s real or just imagined.

That takes us to Idea Three: We learn what’s really true by living through battles that test our courage and character. Some battles we enter voluntarily – we run a marathon, camp in the wilderness, choose to become parents, etc. – but many come on us without warning or our willingness. Job’s fear was that God loved him because he was religiously observant (Job 3:25), so he struggled when bad things happened to him despite his righteous living. But God used Job’s trials to reveal Job’s fear and the truth that Job’s circumstances had nothing to do with God’s love for him but everything with who Job was supposed to become.

That’s Idea Four: Our battles are necessary for us to become who we were designed to be. Humility, compassion, gratitude, selflessness – characteristics like these aren’t in us without going through battles. Character that can withstand battles and storms can’t be taught, it must be formed within us. Job’s friends were full of hypothetical knowledge “about God”, but Job’s battles brought him into a personal relationship with God so he truly “knew God”.

Our battles teach us, as only life in the trenches can, who we really are and what is verifiably true. It’s crazy to go looking for them, but when they come (as they will) we can be assured there is something worthwhile to be gained by living through them – they give us our best chance to become who we were meant to be. Our battles are our opportunities to become our best selves.

I think it’s the loss of aspiration that sucks the Capacity for Living out of many of us. Instead of envisioning and making plans toward a future that gives us hope of good things to come, we find ourselves awash in a sea of concerns and worries about what might be. A share characteristic in the young people with whom I work is their general anxiety about their future. My clients often see storm clouds on every horizon of their lives, but it’s not their fault.

Young people today have been inundated with messages of fear much of their lives. Talk of climate change, the global pandemic, social discord, threats of rejection and unacceptance, and images of anger and violence are the stew they’ve swam in since birth. Chronic disappointment in our real lives chokes our ability to find joy in what we have and tells us future possibilities are few.

I think that’s why so many students loved Jeremiah 29:11 when I led a campus ministry. That verse speaks of God’s plans to give us a future and a hope. When you believe you can’t or shouldn’t make plans about your future, and failures or disappointments strangle your ability to hope, then your capacity for living atrophies. Your capacity for living requires care and feeding – nurturing.

Making time for beauty and nature, pausing and being in quiet long enough for the urgencies in your head and heart to quiet down, and limiting screen time are good starts, but the restoration of your capacity for living may require a total restructuring your inner life.

For years I’ve remodeled our home and yard, relying on the insights of architectural masters of form and function. These people speak about shaping the spaces of our lives for the way we really live or want to live. As a result, I’ve rebuilt the interior (and exterior) spaces of our home to allow people to gather comfortably, starting in our kitchen (the heart of any home) and spilling out into the adjoining spaces for meals and conversation. The greatest change I’ve made often goes unnoticed – “light to move toward”.

Architect Suzanne Susanka taught me this guiding principle for human spaces – people are drawn to light. Over time I’ve built in sightlines toward light from every entrance, exit, and location in the house. I’ve blurred the distinction between rooms, indoor and outdoor spaces, and even put a mirror on the door to the garage to give the impression of light coming from the space beyond.

We were created to move toward light, literally and figuratively. Our capacity for living is connected to our ability to aspire for good things – “light” – to plan for them, work toward them, take hold of them, and to enjoy them. Then begin the process all over again. If you find your capacity for living isn’t what it once was or never has been what it needs to be, then maybe it’s time to build in some light to move toward.

First, take stock of what is. Note the “good bones” of your life (the structural strengths, and possibilities) that you only notice when you take time to be grateful for what you have. Gratitude changes how we perceive our present circumstances and reorients us to our future possibilities.

Second, think deeply about what you really want. Yesterday I heard the story of a man who bought a sports car amid going through a divorce. On reflection, he realized what he was really seeking was distraction from his pain, a sense of control and power over his circumstances, and acceptance and admiration from his friends. The things to which we aspire are always driven by a deeper, more meaningful “why”. It’s often important to dive below “what” we want to understand “why” we want it.

Third, make a plan to get you to the things aspire, then work the plan. Envisioning a future or establishing a step-by-step plan may not be a part of your gifting or strengths, so you may need to seek the help of a guide – someone better equipped and less emotionally invested – is often your best first step. Seeking help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s evidence of wisdom.

Your capacity for living is something that requires attention to grow and sustain. Start by finding, and moving toward, a point of light that’s meaningful for you.

Spring mulching is one of those hard tasks that gives a yard guy like me a great “bang for my buck” because the yard looks great for weeks, maybe months, before I’ll need to do it again. It helps to focus on the immediate results rather than the fact that the sun, rain, and biodegrading will inevitably lead to next spring’s “mulch day”. If I focused on the irony of how many years I’ve mulched my yard and how many more years I’m likely to repeat the process, I might just be tempted to cover the whole thing in kudzu.

Work (and Life) can feel like spreading mulch. There’s a lot of hard work, the occasional sense of satisfaction or reward, then the knowledge that you’ll end up repeating the entire process again. The average American spends forty-two years working before they retire – some more and some less. That’s a long time to spend doing something, so it’s good to know what you should reasonably expect from your work-life.

Many of my clients have unrealistic expectations for their work-life. Yes, many of them are young, but having unrealistic expectations for the big things of life seems to be a growth industry. Truthfully, many people’s expectations for their work-life are like their hopes and expectations for their love-life. They hope to find that one job (or person) by which (or whom) they can experience a life of joyful bliss and fulfillment with minimal problems. Establishing realistic expectations for your work (and love life) is an essential key to maximizing the return you’ll gain from it (or them).

On occasion, I’ve voluntarily provided pre-marital coaching to engaged couples using tools that are similar to my career coaching tools – personal histories, personality profiles, values and expectations assessments, and aspiration and goal exercises. I begin by telling them that a good marriage is one of the most rewarding things a person can experience, but it takes the most work and hardest work you’ll ever do in your life. Failing to understand this sets you up to experience disappointment, disillusionment, and other painful emotions. Understanding the nature of work (and marriage) enables you to get the most from it (them).

I like to share a story with my clients to illustrate this idea. It came from a conversation I had with my grandfather when I was about twelve years old. Daddy Jim (yes, my namesake) raised appaloosa horses and let me help him on the farm. One day, as we were doing the hard, smelly work of cleaning horse manure out of the stables, he turned to me and said, “Jimmy, there’s always manure to shovel”. My grandfather loved raising, grooming, riding and showing his horses, but he understood manure was an inescapable part of horse work.

For those of us with some life experience (it’s the mileage - not the years - that age us) it’s commonsense that the best things in life are often the ones that require the hardest work. Yet, our culture still works hard to convince us that a great life can just fall in our laps. If you read the stories of the people who’ve made positive impacts on the world, hard work is a unifying theme, along with persistence in the face of adversity.

Just as our relationships are easier when we’re well-matched to the people in them, our work is easier when we’re doing tasks and working in environments that are a better fit to who we are. Aligning the things we do, and those with whom we do them, to “who we are” reduces the number of hard things in our work-lives, but it never eliminates them. Realistic living means we expect to work hard for the things that are worthwhile, but we also benefit from working smarter.

Late in the day on Saturday, Andrew, a linebacker on his high school football team, was grunting and working hard to get shovel-fulls of mulch from the pile into his wheelbarrow. I handed him a pitchfork and said, “Here, this is a better tool for that job” and took the square-edged shovel he’d been using from his hand. Shoveling mulch was going to be hard work, there was no escaping that reality, but matching the tool to the job sure made it a lot easier, and the end results made it all worthwhile.

First, we must know our own priorities. Take time to determine what you want your life to be about, then write those things down so you can see them. I have each of my clients fill out a Life Priorities assessment and some who complete a Personal Mission and Life Vision exercise. (My own life priorities are on a page I keep on my office desk to remind me what’s most important to me.)

Second, avoid acting impulsively. When situations feel urgent our first impulse is to fix them fast. While we should do this for medical emergencies, many of the events we experience as “urgent” aren’t truly important. Acting impulsively removes the option of moving through your days thoughtfully and intentionally.

Urgent matters demand our attention through pain or fear, but important things are less insistent. Like all animals, we react to pain by moving away from the things or situations that cause it. If we’re not careful, we can react to unanticipated events as though they are potential catastrophes.

When people say something hurtful or insulting, or the unfairness of a situation raises our indignation, we might react by saying or doing things to protect ourselves. We may anticipate (and worry about) negative events in our future, then react to prevent them. None of these actions serve our long-term interests and the larger goals we set for our lives.

Third, we must filter the things that demand our attention by whether they are urgent or important. When we react to pain or difficulties we fail to consider the long-term implications of our responses. What we often need most is perspective.

If you look up perspective, it generally falls into two categories: distance or elevation; and evaluation and understanding. Perspective implies that we remove ourselves, emotionally and/or physically, from a situation so we can see and understand what’s truly happening. People typically struggle with perspective for one of two reasons: they struggle to get distance from the emotions they feel in urgent situations; or they rush to problem solve every situation before fully understanding them.

Around sixty percent of people naturally struggle to get perspective on (distance from) emotionally-loaded situations. This isn’t because they’re intellectually less capable, it’s because the in-the-moment emotions of a situation override their ability to process things objectively. These folks usually make better decisions when they allow time for their emotions to settle. Then they can assess things with hindsight asking, “what were the thoughts that fed my reaction” and “what was I concerned might happen in the future?”

About forty percent of people are natural-born problem solvers. They reflexively determine the actions to take to solve a problem, often before they fully understand (get perspective on) everything involved. This tendency to “jump to the solution” can prevent problem solvers from first determining whether a situation is urgent or important because they don’t ask the questions that provide more perspective. Usually, natural problem solvers do better when they pause to ask, “what else could be at work here” and “what are the long-term implications of this solution?”

The fourth thing we need is wisdom. Wisdom isn’t just intellectual knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge applied with objectivity and perspective. Our understanding of a situation, especially in the heat of the moment, is often full of errors. Taking time, asking more questions, and reflecting can help us, but we often benefit from the perspective of someone who’s not directly involved in a situation, who can help us see the bigger picture.

In difficult times our impulse is to run to a friend or ally who will take our side. What we really need is someone we trust to be objective, honest, and think with our long-term interest in mind. Friends with those qualities are rare - if you have one, work to keep that friendship.

If you don’t have a friend like that, then seek the counsel of someone with the life wisdom (or training) to provide you with objective and sound input. You may also know an older, wiser person who can serve that role for you. (I personally think God also fits in that category.) The point is, we’re well-served in crises and big decisions by getting input from someone objective and wiser than us.

Do you know your own life priorities? Do you use these to guide your daily decisions and actions, especially when something seems urgent? Do have someone to help you get perspective? These are keys to living with purpose and intention.

You were created to live a purposeful, meaningful life. Discerning what's important, rather than urgent, is a key to the life and work you want.

Resolutions are not good or bad things in and of themselves. It’s good to have dreams, goals and aspirations that inspire, persuade, or goad us on toward a better state of being. Zig Ziglar was right when he said, “if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time” - human beings need higher aspirations, even ones driven by needs. Aspirations and resolutions become problematic when they become win/lose or achieve/fail situations with a short-term focus, that aren't supported by overarching principles that guide our lives.

What do I mean? Well, it’s a fair guess that many people have made resolutions that they will lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date or the end of the year. This kind of resolution fosters a daily win or lose scenario where we monitor our food consumption and our exercise with a constant pressure to eat less (or differently) and exercise more built into each day. At the end of (and maybe throughout) each day we then evaluate whether we’ve met the specific components (i.e., reducing calories, avoiding carbs, running more, etc.) of our resolution. With each evaluation either we win or we lose, and our sense of self gets elevated or smacked down accordingly.

But what if your goal was an aspiration that you will “become healthier” this year? While becoming healthier is a still a worthwhile goal, it’s a more vague than losing a specific number of pounds or clothing sizes. It’s also not something that’s necessarily confined by days, weeks or months, how much you eat or even what you eat, or the type and amount of physical activity you’re doing, although it’s understood that each of these is an essential part of becoming healthier.

The key difference between the two approaches is in the emphasis they place on short-term goals versus long-term aspirations. When we focus on short-term goals, we invariably drift into measuring our daily performance on a simplistic scale. Our daily self-evaluations take on an urgency that can lead us into an emotional roller coaster, as we are faced with the prospect of being either “good” or “bad”, a “winner” or a “loser”.

On the other hand, if your long-term aspiration is the more general “get healthier”, then you might look for more general markers of your progress, such as, “what ‘healthy foods’ did I add to my diet”, “what forms of physical activity did I introduce in my day or week”, “what strategies did I use to get restful sleep”, or “how did I add time spent in reflection, meditation, or prayer”? Each of these are important components of the larger goal of becoming healthier but none are an end in themselves.

Each day each of us is pressured to focus on short-term measures of our value and worth and runs the risk of obsessing on urgent things at the expense of the important things that make up a life. If you’d like to stay focused on important things in 2025 and beyond then it helps to mentally project yourself to the end of the year or the decade or your life, take a look backward and ask things like:

• How did I positively impact the lives of the people with whom I’m closest or for whom I care the most?

• Where did I accomplish things through my work that might have lasting meaning?

• Where did I help bring about meaningful changes in the world around me?

• How did I deepen and add meaning to my spiritual life?

• How did I become more physically and emotionally fit and unencumbered by health problems I can control so I could do the things listed above?

• How did I serve higher or larger goals than my own comfort, security, and happiness?

 Each of these things contains a sense of larger purpose and meaning that isn’t bound by a short-term perspective. They prioritize importance over urgency, character over persona, community over self-interest, flexibility over rigidity, and focus our energy on making positive changes rather than trying to eliminate negative aspects of our lives.

In the end, our lives (and perhaps our headstones) will be marked by these things, rather than how successful we were at losing ten pounds.

*This article was inspired by The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, a book about business, that has implications for daily living. Our lives are "infinite games" with long-term consequences to our short-term decisions and actions. 

The weekend was a gift - a well-timed and deeply appreciated something from someone who knows and cares about me because I, too, had been going through a seasonal change.

We don’t usually think about our lives consisting of seasons and rhythms, well not in a personal sense. We may look forward to the things the seasonal calendar will bring – fall football and pumpkin spice, Christmas in winter, flowers in springtime, and weddings and vacations in summer – but we seldom think of our lives having rhythms, chapters, or transitions. Not in present tense, at least.

Past tense is different. When we reflect on the past we tend to knit events and experiences by the threads that connect them, then suddenly, unintentionally, we perceive themes. We link events of our lives into “childhood”, “college”, “military service”, “love attained”, “love lost”, “adventures”, “tragedies”, “parenthood”, “empty-nesting”, “caregiving”, “achievements”, “loss and infirmity”, and more - giving names to the seasons and chapters of our lives. We tend to think of the past in seasons and chapters.

So, it’s surprising that we don’t usually think about our current circumstances and future lives this way. Though we intuitively understand the seasonality of life, we don’t ask friends and loved ones, “In what season (or chapter) of life do you find yourself right now”. Nor do we ask ourselves, while amid difficulties and hardships, “what’s the theme of this chapter in which I find myself?”

It helps if you recognize You are Living a Story. This summer I watched a documentary on the film “Forrest Gump”; a metaphor for life-as-story if ever there was one. The feather seen flitting on the breeze at the beginning and end of the film, and the iconic line “Life is like a box of chocolates” can lead you to think the chapters of Forrest’s life are coincidental intersections of fate and circumstance. But the continuous positive impact of Forrest’s life on other’s reveals a larger theme or purpose to his seemingly random story.

Your life is a story and whether it’s a story worth telling or sharing is, in large part, up to you. If it stays alone, beginning and ending as only your story, then it can only be a small story, but if it intersects and joins a larger and grander story, then it also can be large and grand. (My heart breaks for people who are content to live small, uninteresting stories.)

If your life is like any of the great stories, it’s comprised of chapters where the hero (you) sets a goal, gets prepared for the challenges to come, faces - and hopefully overcomes - those challenges, and recovers from the challenges. Great stories always follow this arc and rarely have chapters of complete inactivity. Along the way the hero herself or himself is (subtly or dramatically) changed by the seasonal process, so that the person who returns home at the story’s end is different from the one who left home at its beginning. For better or for worse, stories are always about change.

While hiking that August weekend I met two girls and a guy, around twenty-years-old, sitting on a log in the woods and engaged in thoughtful conversation. I introduced myself and asked what they’d been discussing as I came up the trail. They said they were talking about their respective college majors and whether they had chosen “the right path” for themselves. What followed was a forty-five-minute conversation about how each of them is wired, what they want most in their lives, and what those things say about their vocational choices.

Although they didn’t know it, they’re heroes in a preparation chapter who happened to meet a white-haired and bearded old man walking in the woods who, in turn, gave them some insights for their journey. I, on the other hand, was in a recovery chapter and badly in need of some energy and hope - that three thoughtful kids sitting on a log in the woods gave me without knowing. Sometimes stories, and the needs of their heroes, intersect.

Regardless of where you find yourself right now, it’s probably helpful to think about your life as a story comprised of seasons and chapters. Maybe you’re in a chapter where you’re struggling to set a goal or perhaps one where you’re preparing to face a challenge. You may be in the middle of a challenge (or a battle) or trying to rest and recover from one. Don’t wait for hindsight. Discern the season or chapter you’re in right now, then determine what you most need to live this chapter well and have a story worth telling.

All of us work. If we’re lucky we get paid well to do that work but there are many important kinds of work (like parenting and parent-care) where there is no pay at all. For most of us our work will be the one thing, except for sleep, that consumes most of our focused time on the planet. We often have conflicting feelings about our work.

In recent years there’s been a quiet revolt against work, especially among those in their twenties and thirties, because some see work only as an evil or drudgery that’s required to have the necessary money to live and play. You see it in subtle signs, like the growing appeal of systems (government, unions, etc.) to ensure we get what used to be provided by working more or harder. In some ways I understand this, the dollars I earn don’t buy as much as the dollars my father earned, but I think it’s a symptom of a larger problem - We’ve lost a higher sense of meaning in our work.

Our work was never meant to be only a way to provide for ourselves, nor was it meant to be a form of self-expression. That’s why I avoid using the term “Occupation” - work shouldn’t just occupy your time - and I advise my friends to view their work as ways they apply who they are, and not the definition of who they are. Our work was meant to be a way we bring something good to the world.

Many times I’ve had “empty nest” clients who spent decades dedicated to the raising and care of their children who then said to me, “All I’ve done the majority of my adult life is be a mom or a housewife.” I’m simultaneously concerned and almost amused by this because I fully recognize what it takes to raise kids and run a home well. (I often have these lovely people make a list of everything involved in doing that job, just so they can see how many “jobs” they’re doing within that role.)

Even the least esteemed jobs have potential to benefit the world. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Whatever your life’s work is, do it well… If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper… sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.” We’ve lost that sense of higher purpose in our work.

Pastor Tony Evans said, “To live without a sense of divine appointment is to simply exist, to be detached from an eternal perspective (of your work) and, therefore, simply marking time.” This doesn’t mean each of us is supposed to “go into ministry”, but it does mean each of us has potential to minister - to bring good, to make a difference, to see higher purpose achieved - through our work. Seeing an “eternal perspective” or higher purpose in our work transforms it from Occupation - just marking time - into Vocation - a Calling.

You don’t have to experience a burning bush, a vision in the desert, or a lightning strike to gain insight into your Calling. Evidence of your calling can sometimes be right in front (or within) you. For example, your innate gifts and strengths (if you know them) are easy indicators of the kinds of work you’re naturally inclined (and designed) to do. Because human intelligence is very flexible and we can make ourselves do work for which we were not designed this can be tricky, but there are ways to distill what types of work tasks and roles naturally fit you.

Then there are the affections of your heart. Now before some of you logical, “just get it done” types dismiss this as silly emotional stuff, stop to consider the things to which you’re naturally attracted. Sure, it may be toward helping certain kinds of people, but it may also be solving certain types of problems or creating or building certain kinds of things. It may be a stretch (or even laughable) for you to consider that maybe there is something Divine about the things that make you feel “I could do this all day long” or “I was made for this”, but those are often the feelings that turn occupation into vocation.

We were made to have a higher sense of purpose in our work. It’s my hope that you find yours.

 After an eight-hour drive we arrived after check-in to find the condominium uncleaned and without air conditioning. I wasn’t happy. However, before I slipped into my “Crisis Intervention Super Suit” and took control I decided it might be better to let my wife and son handle it. They got things resolved, but the experience revealed some important ideas.

First, I became aware of my Belief that it was my personal responsibility that the vacation be wonderful for everyone in the family. Therefore, every problem that arose required me to rescue my family and become “vacation hero Dad”. Until the crisis arose, I hadn’t even realized I had that belief, and though it wasn’t easy to relinquish control, I decided that maybe my wife and son were perfectly capable of handling the problems. As it turned out, they were.

 I’m not going to get into the psychological stuff that drove my need to be the family hero but challenging my (erroneous) belief gave me the freedom to NOT take a role that would have added to my personal exhaustion.

 Challenging my Belief also brought the benefit of a changed point-of-view - my Perspective. My belief fed a Perspective that these minor delays were catastrophes with the power to elevate my heart rate and blood pressure and ruin my mood. Instead, I was able to be a calm supportive husband and father and give my wife and son an opportunity to (once again) show their own competencies and be the family heroes.

Finally, my challenged Belief and changed Perspective shifted my understanding of situations - my Perceptions. I no longer viewed the events as win-or-lose threats to the family vacation but, rather, unforeseen random challenges that didn’t deserve the power to determine my/our happiness.

 Each day our Beliefs inform our Perspectives, and our Perspectives influence our Perceptions of the events of our lives. Without thinking about it we perceive, interpret, and react to the events of our days based on a set of Beliefs about how our lives and the world work. My doctoral advisor once told me, “Jim, all human behavior is purposeful. Our challenge is to understand what is (what beliefs are) driving someone’s behavior.” That truth applies to our own behavior too.

 For example, if you believe that life is a win-or-lose game, then every daily event is an-opportunity-to-gain or risk-of-losing what is or could be yours; every challenge and interpersonal encounter is a chance to become more-or-less in the world. BUT, if you believe life (or a benevolent higher power) provides for you and guides and shapes the events of your life so that you can become more or better, then your challenges and encounters represent opportunities for personal growth and impact on the world. The two belief systems result in wholly different behaviors in individuals and societies (such as selfishness or benevolence) by changing the Perspectives, Perceptions, and actions of the people who hold them.

 What are the Beliefs that drive your perspectives, perceptions, and behaviors? How you react to the events of your day, the news you hear, and the words and actions of the people in your life reveals your underlying beliefs. If you want to change your reactions to a situation you must first understand the beliefs that feed your perspectives and perceptions, then work to change those beliefs.

 A word to the wise, most of us become very attached to our beliefs and the resulting perceptions, so it’s often easier/wiser to first work on yourself rather than trying to change someone else’s beliefs. That said, most people are quite unaware of the beliefs that fuel their perspectives, perceptions and actions, so self-awareness is also a key to changing yourself.

 A simple start may be to ask yourself, “what or whom do I perceive as a threat to my happiness, my dreams, my safety or security?” (By the way, a belief that something or someone is a threat to you will cause you to live a defensive life, with the higher stress levels and negative physical and emotional health effects that stress causes.) Then ask yourself, “are these beliefs based on truth or have I just accepted them as true?” Another great question to ask is, “do these beliefs help me have a better life or do they make my life more difficult?”

 In the end I know I had a better vacation because I challenged and began to change a belief, of which I was unaware, that had been unwittingly driving my behaviors. Changing that belief allowed me to be a freer, more relaxed me. I know my family appreciated that. Now I just have figure out what to do with my Crisis Intervention Super Suit.

Beliefs (and not just the religious kind) impact the quality of your work life and personal life. I'm always glad to have a conversation about how you can have a more satisfying and impactful work-life.

 This is especially true in the age of “Insta” communication and instant gratification. Human beings weren’t designed to handle mass exposure to the polished highlights of people beyond our immediate circles. Yet, our lives are constantly inundated with information about what we should do (or have) to make us better, more competent, attractive or complete.

 It's common for prospective clients to share that they have feelings of inadequacy, or even shame, because they haven’t yet attained the career clarity or “success” they see friends and others experiencing. Executives and managers declare their frustration that the newest business principles and ideas from podcasts and “how-to” books haven’t worked for them. And in everyday life I hear disillusioned people share that they, their lives, or their families aren’t what they’d expected or hoped.

 How do we evaluate (dare I say, “judge”?) our lives accurately? What are solid criteria to determine if you’re on-track to the life you want?

 I think the First Key is to realize that you, and the life you live, are supposed to be unique. That sounds simple, even stupid-simple, but ask yourself how often you compare yourself or your life to someone or someone else’s life. For most of us the answer is “pretty often”.

 Comparing ourselves and our lives to other’s starts young. I’ve heard dozens of clients declare that they wish they could “live up to” the lives of their parents, friends, or life heroes. Too many of them speak of themselves as failures because they haven’t attained the clarity or success that they see in the lives of the people they admire.

 However, you and I have been uniquely designed and given life experiences that differentiate us from everyone who ever lived before or after us, including our parents, friends, and life heroes. Your life isn’t supposed to be a virtual clone of someone else or their life. Your “wiring” and your unique life experiences (positive and negative) give you one-of-a-kind potential to make a positive impact on the world.

 The Second Key for evaluating your life accurately is to gain a clear understanding of the higher ideals that you want to characterize your life, then living by those ideals. The adage that “The man (or woman) who aims at nothing is sure to hit it” is full of powerful truth. When we don’t clearly understand the impact we want to have on the people and world around us, then we’re apt to flit from one transient (and often self-serving) goal to another.

 If you know exactly what you want your life to stand for, then you can reverse-engineer it to ensure you achieve those things. Of course, knowing what you want your life to stand for first requires a sober appraisal of your own priorities. What is most important and worthwhile to YOU? Once you’ve established your own life priorities, then you can ask what traits and actions you need to apply to each day and season of your life. It’s heeding Steven Covey’s wise advice that you, “Begin with the end in mind”1.

 The Third Key is to apply the right metric or standard for self-evaluation. Most students and employees know the frustration of being graded or evaluated based on someone else’s opinion rather than objective standards. In a world of “relative truth” where we’re told each of us can determine our own criteria for what’s right, we still need objective standards for evaluating ourselves and our lives, rather than the fleeting whims, demands, and moods we experience each day. Likewise, evaluating yourself accurately requires you to have objective standards that are accurate measures of your life priorities, so you can know whether you are, or aren’t, hitting the targets you’ve set for yourself.

 For example, my standard for evaluating my work cannot be whether my clients like me or think I’m doing a good job but rather whether I am doing the things needed to effectively guide my clients to work and life strategies that fit them and their goals. This requires me to evaluate my efforts humbly and objectively, with an understanding that I can (and should) always be striving to get better at what I do. If I don’t meet my own standards, then I can always learn ways to get better at meeting them.

 These same approaches can be applied to our relationships, our health, our spiritual life, just about any facet of our lives. Asking, “What are the standards for living the great life to which I aspire?”, then living to meet those standards gives us a consistent framework for attaining those things. No one lives a great life by accident, great lives happen intentionally.

 Would you like help identifying the unique gifting and experiences, higher ideals, and standards that will guide you toward an intentional and impactful life? Then click Contact Dr. Jim above. It's free and I'm always glad to talk.

 1 The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey

 Recently my wife and I have been having “retirement conversations” with each other. (I enjoy my work, and it’s quite likely that one day I may keel over dead in a career coaching conversation at Panera Bread, but aging steals your stamina - no matter what the supplement ads promise.) On a walk one day last week, Sloan said she’d been thinking about what she’d do with her time when she retires. Even if we had grandchildren, there are so many hours to fill in a workweek that retirement seems daunting.

 People often have misleading ideas about their work and their retirement. The first of these is the truth that our work is meant to be more than how we occupy our time (the distinction between Occupation and Vocation is huge). The second is that our retirement years aren’t simply about “spending our time”, like some weird spend-down-plan aimed at wringing out the last juice of life before our exit. The third is that our retirement years aren’t supposed to be a transition from toilsome work to a pleasurable, relaxed existence. (Toilsome work is why you go to a career coach.)

 I’ve also known quite a few men and women who are reluctant to retire because they secretly fear it will mean losing the thing they’ve used to define themselves. (At the risk of repeating my previous articles - our work is never a healthy basis for our sense-of-self.) I remember my grandfather reflecting on the number of his friends who died within a few years of their retirement because they felt they had no place in the world if they weren’t working. And gardening, woodworking, circle groups and bible studies, participation in civic organizations, physical activities, and the like are insufficient sources for the things that make life worthwhile.

 Regardless of your age, a person’s life needs to be infused with a sense of purpose and meaning, and your life in your later years is no exception.

 One of my often-quoted favorite thinkers, Victor Frankl, came to this realization while surviving five Nazi death camps in World War II. He concluded that, barring execution by their captors, the people who survived the longest in the camps were those who found a sense of purpose and meaning in their captivity. Later he proposed that purpose and meaning are so foundational to our emotional health that humans only pursue pleasure and entertainment when they lack purpose and meaning.

 So, how do we find or build purpose and meaning into our lives?

 In some ways aging is a gift to us. (Not the aches and pains, difficulties, and trials of course, though even those often bring their own epiphanies.) But aging does teach us that much we value and strive for in our youth will need repair or replacement and may not be the best investment of our time and resources. People, however, are places we can invest our time (and money) and know we will make a lasting impact.

 Based on Victor Frankl’s ideas, our retirement years have as much opportunity, if not more, for a purposeful and meaningful life. Rather than focusing on how to entertain ourselves, our latter years should be marked by intentional efforts to give away that which we have been given. It’s in being others-focused and giving ourselves away that we find purpose and meaning.

 Writer John Elderedge proposed that our later years should be marked by a pattern of sharing our accumulated wisdom and knowledge with younger people as mentors and “sages”. While our society shamelessly promotes the notion that only youth and beauty are valuable, my experience is that many (or most) young people appreciate the perspective of an older, wiser person who isn’t their parent, especially if that person also conveys unconditional love and acceptance.  

Practical skills and hands-on service are always welcome but perhaps not as valuable as the knowledge and life wisdom age provides. This means that even older persons with impairments that interfere with physically active volunteer service still have much to contribute by sharing things we may take for granted. In places like Knoxville and east Tennessee, with our abundance of non-profit organizations serving a broad diversity of needs, there are so many places and ways for a person to serve an underserved person.

 Each of us has been gifted with abilities, strengths, and unique life stories. The real challenge is to determine to-whom or to-what in your community would yours be an asset? When planning your retirement this might be the most important question to ask.

 She began by telling me she was uncertain whether she was doing the type of work she was made for but went further to explain that much of her life felt uncomfortable or unfamiliar. While most of the larger things she usually used to introduce herself to strangers were unchanged - happily married, two children, with the same company for several years - she still felt a bit “lost” in her own life.

 Feeling lost or disoriented is something every human being experiences, though most of us never sum up the courage to ask someone if she or he has felt that way. At some point everyone goes through a time where they feel lost or in-between. Because I like to hike in remote places, and have occasionally wandered off the well-marked trail, I refer to these times as “being in the wilderness”. It’s not that you’re fully lost, but you aren’t in a place that feels emotionally familiar or “safe” either.

 Some people experience being in the wilderness as disorienting, very uncomfortable or even frightening. Our lives are not what they once were, with all our familiar ways of thinking about things, nor are we at the “next” place, where the new ways and patterns of our lives are part of our daily routines. We are in-between and, being immersed in a world of instant gratification, we long for instant relief.

 An author once described being in the wilderness or in-between as being like a trapeze artist, where we have let go of the trapeze bar and are now in mid-air, and not yet been grasped by the “catcher” on the other side. We’re disconnected from one certainty but not yet connected with the next certainty, so we float, vulnerable, between the two places. We grasp, sometimes frantically, for the bar of certainty that floats just beyond our vision or reach.

But the tension we feel when we’re in the wilderness can provide something that’s essential for our personal growth and development - the impetus to ask the right questions. While all human beings seek security and comfort, being secure and comfortable isn’t a good formula for personal growth - just as unplowed soil isn’t likely to yield an abundant crop. Wilderness forces us to dig and ask deeper questions that often have life-changing answers.

 I sometimes have my clients who feel lost in the wilderness write down the more unsettling feelings and questions they’re experiencing. They often return with things like: “Why does my work feel pointless”; “Why are my relationships unfulfilling”; “What’s missing from my life” or “Am I who I want to be”. All are profound existential questions that every person might experience but would only seek to answer if their present situation is uncomfortable, unsettled, or painful.

 As a career coach I recognize that our careers, or more specifically, our vocations, are only one piece of a larger quilt that makes up our identities - who we are. And it’s who we are that should, to a great degree, determine what we choose to do with our lives.

 Being in the wilderness will probably never be comfortable for an average person. But our time in the wilderness offers us opportunities to explore and identify in better detail where we want to go, what we want to accomplish, and what are the essential qualities or characteristics we want in our lives when we “arrive” at our next place. Rushing through the wilderness phases of our lives places us at risk for missing out on the reflection and contemplation required to answer life’s most important questions.

 In many ways the wilderness is a gift given to the person who wants to be wise about taking the next steps in their career or life path.

 I’ve walked beside many clients and friends who are experiencing time in the wilderness. Having been there a few, (too many?) times myself, I’m familiar with the terrain and the trail markers that you must experience to recognize. (Someone who has been lost better understands the value of a guide.) If you find yourself in the wilderness reach out to a friend who’s been there or, if you’d like, give me a call. I’m always glad to help someone find their way. 

 It starts with the prophet Micah predicting that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, “small among the towns of Judah” (Micah 5:2). Isaiah goes further and predicts that Jesus himself will be utterly unremarkable in his appearance, held in low esteem, and eventually rejected by the people that were the focus of his life’s work (Isaiah 53:2-3). Jesus’ earthly father was a handyman, and his mother was just a teenage girl from a working class family in Nazareth - “What good ever came out of Nazareth?” says Nathaniel when a friend offers him an introduction to Jesus (John 1:46). He had a rag-tag group of misfits and social rejects for followers, and eventually he died the death of a common criminal.

 It’s not lost on me in my work as a career coach that most of us would prefer to avoid being small. No one aspires to be the runt of the litter, or to be easily dismissed or overlooked. The pain of being the last one chosen for sports, children’s games, for a date or a job is widely understood because so many have experienced the feeling of being regarded as “less-than” or “not-enough”. Most (or all) human beings long to be regarded as significant and valuable. 

I have a friend who started his own business. One day he earnestly prayed that God would make his business thrive and make him successful. He told me that to his surprise he heard God tell him, “Nope. I’m not going to do that.” He was dumbstruck. Eventually he asked God “Why not?”. He said he heard God say, “Success the way the world defines it would ruin you”. “But I tell you what”, God continued, “I will make your life fruitful”.

 It’s a principle I find everywhere in the bible, and especially in Jesus’ teaching: Small things that make big impacts. 

It takes real grit to be content with being small. Every day you must do battle with the insecurities that promote wanting your name in lights. It’s too easy to let a desire to be loved morph into a desire for security or praise or admiration or notoriety or power. To be content with being small you must first get those needs met somewhere else and then constantly remind yourself that your value isn’t defined by what most people say about you or by what you produce. Contentment with being small requires confidence in a larger plan and the one who dreamed it up, and some days it takes faith that the things promised will actually work out that way.

 Can you be content with your life being small? Or maybe I should rephrase the question: Can you be content with having a life that appears to be small, if living it will lead to being fruitful and impactful?

 The whole Christmas story was lived out by people who were content with being small and had faith that the improbable things that were promised regarding their lives would someday come true. And they did.

 So, some twenty-three-hundred years later it’s my sincere wish that you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and that you have a small, but fruitful, New Year!

 My “gift” to you this holiday season is a group of ideas given to me by my mentors that have had a profound impact on my life and work. In bible times when Jewish rabbis taught they referred to powerful or wise ideas as “pearls”, and if they happened to link these ideas to each other they were said to be “stringing pearls”. Thus, Jesus’ teaching that it’s unwise to “throw pearls to swine” is a caution against sharing wisdom with people who won’t understand or value it.

 Here are some “pearls” I was given that I want to give you:

 “All human behavior is purposeful. Our challenge is to understand the purpose beneath a person’s actions.”

 I received this pearl from my doctoral advisor and while it helps me in my everyday work and relationships, I find it especially helpful in family holiday gatherings. If I can keep it in mind, then I won’t react to people’s words or actions but will ask myself what purpose those things might serve for them. This pearl prevents me from becoming annoyed, angry, or hurt by someone else (then respond by saying something that makes the situation worse), by first asking, “Why did she or he say or do that?”.

 Taken with Albert Ellis’ hypothesis that most human behavior is intended to protect ourselves from something that we fear, this pearl helps me humanize people who offend or hurt me - especially if I’m willing to acknowledge that I sometimes use self-protecting words and actions. People are complex, and I may not get a satisfying answer to my question, but focusing on what drives someone’s behavior may bring some empathy and compassion to my thoughts about and actions toward them.

 “It takes something powerful to get out of the well-worn paths of behavior.”

 Again, this one is from my doctoral advisor and it’s a pearl I apply to myself, individuals, families, and institutions. There’s a lot of myth surrounding the idea of personal change, most of it having to do with “incremental change”, but people and institutions (families, organizations, businesses, governments) rarely change a little at a time. It takes something dramatic, traumatic, and often painful to bring about real, lasting change.

 Addicts, domestic violence victims, those who struggle with emotional or mental health issues, and even people who desire changing unwanted life habits, too often must experience an epiphany-bringing event before making a life-saving change. As a rule, families, organizations, businesses, and governments resist change once their daily patterns are well-established. Each will expend tremendous energy to maintain their patterns (however undesirable or unhealthy they are) and react harshly, even violently, against those who try to change their patterns. They can become metaphorical “Titanics” with too much momentum, and too small a rudder, to escape the dangers ahead… until the iceberg happens.

 Bringing real, lasting change takes something powerful, but that doesn’t mean it requires a crisis or calamity. That powerful thing might be a dramatic life change - relocating, starting (and maintaining) therapy, a relationship change or overhaul, a radical change of diet and exercise, attending a new meeting or church, a different kind of work. These powerful changes are all things within our control, but each requires planting a foot and changing our direction.

 “All of life is parallel process. Our relationships, our families, and even our work will only get as healthy as we are.”

 This pearl came from my sixty-eight-year-old boss. I was twenty-three when she shared it with me in the context of my personal life and of our child welfare caseworker team. Since that time, I’ve tried to apply it in every facet of my life and work.

 Human beings can only give out of themselves what they already possess. If you desire to be a source of love, health, acceptance, peace, wisdom, knowledge, or any good thing to the people in your life, you must first take steps to ensure you are filled with these things. This is especially true in our families and workplaces, where the quality of the interactions and overall culture will largely be determined by the things people bring to them. Because you only have control over what you can bring to a person, group, or place, you must first take steps to ensure you are functioning from a place of fullness.

These three ideas have had an immense impact on the way I think about and interact with the people in my life. They’ve changed the way I approach problems, and even my expectations about what’s possible in the lives of family, clients, friends, and organizations. I’m very grateful that they were given to me, and it’s my hope that they might also somehow help you.

 In our society it’s too easy to confuse doing with being. We get started down that path when we’re children and are asked, “what do you want to do when you grow up?” There are several things wrong with the idea of growing up.

 First, the best of us never “grow up”, we just grow older. I recently saw an interview with actor Brian Cox where he said he teaches all his acting students to never lose the sense of joy, wonder, and fun they had as child. The best of us old-er people still have that child’s heart - until we start moving in the morning and our body reminds us about the toll the mileage takes.

 The second thing that’s wrong with the idea of growing up is that it implies some “grand epiphany” where you have all of life’s questions answered and aren’t bothered by the nagging challenge of figuring out this thing called life. I interact with a lot of people in their 80s and each one of them would tell you their epiphany, if they had one, wasn’t getting the answer to all of life’s questions but accepting the fact that you never will. The grand epiphany is a myth that causes too many people to feel they’re flawed or somehow lacking.

 The biggest problem with the idea of growing up is that your focus is on what you should do. “Doing” is how we Americans define our identities. When we meet someone new, we generally ask the other person what they do. (This is especially true of men.) It’s as if we believe a person’s activities tell us who they are, and therein lies the problem. We wrongly believe that what a person does, what they produce in the world, is what constitutes their identity and value. When, in fact, it’s who you are that should dictate what you do.

 One of my most-used true stories is about my friend Adam (not his real name). Adam is a warm, outgoing, and likeable guy who’s spent most of his work life in sales. That is, until a few years ago when a cerebral hemorrhage (a brain bleed) nearly killed him. In the months during his treatment and recovery Adam was unable to do the relational networking that made him a great salesman. He confessed to a group of men I was in, “I don’t know who I am anymore. I was ‘Adam, the great salesguy’ but now I’m just a nobody.”

 “I’m just a nobody” is a sentiment I’ve heard from hundreds of people in a hundred different words. The fallacy at its root is that our work defines us. I told Adam, “You have it backwards, Adam. Sales doesn’t define who you are, sales is how you’ve chosen to apply who you are.”

 Like Adam, most people have it backwards. You and I were each given specific gifts, strengths, and stories to bring something unique to the world through our lives. It’s who we are that should be driving what we do, and not the other way around. 

People go through midlife crises (yes, it’s a real thing) when they realize they’ve pursued a life defined by doing without first understanding who they should be. They may have accumulated money, possessions, adventure and excitement, a family, security - any of the things that we’re told make up a great life - but have a nagging lack of fulfillment. Many of them simply turn to the pursuit of other things they hadn’t yet acquired in the hope that those will satiate the ache. But, until you are firmly grounded in who you are, you will never find the satisfaction of giving the world what you were intended to bring to it. 

The question we should ask our children is, “Who or What do you want to be when you’re older?” We should do because of who or what we are [who we be]. I help people define their career paths by first helping them understand some fundamental aspects of who they are (their wiring, their strengths, their challenge areas, their stories, and their aspirations) then help them determine how they want to apply that on a career path that fits them.

 My question for each of us (including myself) is, “what should who you are tell you about what you should be bringing to the world, not just doing?"

 I’m passionate about helping people understand themselves and what that says about how to best apply who they are in the world. If you're curious about that I can meet with you face-to-face, by video chat, or a phone call to share how I might help you. I can be reached here.

 Depending on who you are, you might seek advice from a friend, a mentor or a family member. Or you might try to find instructions on how to solve your problem online or from a book at a bookstore or library. As a last resort, and if your pride doesn’t get in the way, you might seek the help of an expert or “guide”. 

In any of these scenarios you’re hoping that the person or source of your solution understands you as a unique individual, can empathize with your situation, and will give you solid direction or advice. But the reality is that each of us is taking a gamble when we try to get answers to important questions from our personal circle or a self-help source.

 People, books, or online articles always have their own biases. The people we go to for help will invariably have their own experiences, life history, and perspective that they will rely on for their answers. In some situations, such as with parents or family members, they may also have an agenda (such as our safety and security) and in others they may a personal agenda (such as their own aspirations or ego) that influences their answers.

It’s also worthwhile to understand that odds are that the people in your personal circle aren’t wired like you, so they won’t necessarily understand you, your problem, or approach problem solving and take action steps in ways that fit you. It’s no wonder that we get frustrated and disillusioned when our attempts to get answers and solve problems don’t work.

I can understand why you might think I just disqualified myself (and anyone else) from your consideration as a guide for your career or life questions or business problems, but there are advantages a qualified guide has over the people and resources to whom we often reflexively look for help.

First, they’re committed to your success. A qualified guide isn’t just in the work to make a living. They do what they do because they empathize with your situation and have a sense of calling and purpose to help you make your way through them to a better place. Their motivation is always your success.  

Second, they have an objective, informed, and wise view of your situation. What makes a guide “qualified” isn’t simply book knowledge or years of experience, it’s an understanding of how those things can be a framework to shed light on your unique situation and help you make your way through it. Wisdom is experience teaching us how best to use knowledge, and when you’re choosing a guide you want someone who knows exactly when to apply the right piece of knowledge custom fit to your life.

Third, a guide’s commitment is open-ended. Human beings are always “in-process” and evolving, so great guides maintain a commitment to your success regardless of the time it takes.  New challenges emerge, crises occur, life is always changing, and so must you if you want a great life. A great guide doesn’t wander off into the sunset after she or he helps you through a great challenge, they make themselves available for the new challenges and crises that are sure to come.

Why I am a Guide

I became a career and business coach because I experienced struggles, trials, and emotional challenges on my career path, and I didn’t want anyone else to needlessly go through the same painful experiences. I have more education that any person in their right mind should ever want, but I take pains to fully understand you, so that I can provide you with guidance that fits you and ensures your success. Although I take each client through a defined process with a distinct beginning and goals, I’ve maintained coaching relationships for years with clients and have helped them two, four, and even twelve or more years after our initial work together. A successful life isn’t time-limited.

I’m always willing to talk with folks about the challenges they’re facing and decisions they’re trying to make regarding their careers or their businesses. I meet with people (for free) face-to-face, by video chat, and through phone calls to see if there’s a way I can help. I can be reached here.

 The storm damage reminded me of two books I had read about building resilience into our lives and those of our children. The authors sighted research on prominent ideas in our culture and questioned whether they help us weather life’s storms. Thankfully, they also provide strategies to help us (and our kids) become more resilient.

 The first book is Antifragile and the author, Nassim Nicholas Talib, investigates problems of randomness and uncertainty. In Antifragile he notes that some systems (he includes human beings in the category) become better or stronger because of difficulties and crises. These systems may have fragile parts but they develop strategies for protecting themselves from random dramatic stresses that occur, becoming anti-fragile.

 Reading the book I thought of the beachside live oaks I’d seen on Hilton Head Island, SC. Unlike their inland cousins, these trees are shorter and bent away from the prevailing winds to better protect themselves from random storms. Biologists tell us these trees develop tighter, tougher wood fibers on their windward sides and broader root systems to better hold the soil. If they lose leaves, their most fragile parts, to high winds they regenerate new growth more quickly than other species. As they age and endure more storms, the stress and pressures make them better, not worse.

 In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff say that rather than helping us become Antifragile, our resilience is being undermined by three flawed ideas that are now widespread in our culture. The three are: 1) that we are (actually) fragile and, therefore, need protection from life’s difficulties; 2) that you can always trust your feelings to give you the right answer; and 3) that life is a battle between good or noble people and evil or despicable people. The authors conclude that embracing these ideas make us each more fragile, more susceptible to the pitfalls of emotional reasoning, and predisposed to using an “us versus them” defensive mindset that ignores the nuance and complexity of people and devalues their humanity.

 Our challenge is knowing when and how much to protect ourselves and our children from ideas, people, interactions and experiences that make us feel uncomfortable and how much to allow them (and us) to experience difficult situations and people. The authors of the two books convincingly argue that our cultural obsession with comfort has morphed into a mindset of self-protection that isolates us from situations and people who make us feel uncomfortable. It’s the next step, however, that causes real harm.

 Rather than viewing uncomfortable interactions and experiences as a normal part of life, we have come to a place where we don’t just seek to avoid these but mentally categorize them as abnormal and even evil. Our children also need to learn how to handle adversity and failure, and develop a self-image that withstands the difficult situations and people they’ll encounter.

 For example, both of my own children experienced being bullied in middle school – my daughter was on the receiving end of unkind statements of her female classmates (middle school girls can have wicked-sharp teeth) – and my son (a self-professed “band geek”) endured physical bullying by larger, stronger boys. In addition to helping them develop self-defense strategies (our son took tae-kwon-do to develop self-confidence), we taught them the fundamental truth that those same bullies weren’t evil but, rather, children struggling (albeit poorly) to figure out their own identities. We also taught them that we are never fully aware of the reasons people act as they do and that every person carries potential for beauty and horror within them.

 We need to be clear about what we want for our kids and ourselves.

 The truth is, we don’t simply want our kids and ourselves to be safe (ideologically, emotionally, and mentally). We want our children (and us) to be strong enough to handle life’s storms, and that’s different than being safe. Giving our kids opportunities to develop emotional strength, mental reasoning skills, and a shrewd-but-generous understanding of people equips them to handle life’s difficult situations and people. We want to foster emotional strength, endurance, understanding and the ability to make wise decisions in our children, rather than facilitating fragility and dependency. But we can’t give our children what we don’t personally possess.

 People don't set out to make themselves or their kids fragile, it happens because we don't understand what makes us better equipped to handle life. I'm always eager to help if you have questions about how you can do this in your own life. You can reach me here or at (865) 755-4543. 

I help people understand their hardwiring and desires and their implications for a meaningful work-life. I don't push my beliefs on people - it's just the framework I use to help people find what they're looking for. I'm always glad to meet with you, in person or virtually, to tell you more about how I can help. Reach me here or at (865) 755-4543.

My Best to You! 
Dr. Jim Bailey