New Year or New Life
Many life events can cause this, some planned and some unplanned. It is the unplanned that seem to put us most adrift. Job losses are common, but so are illnesses and traumas. Illness and trauma prevent us from using all of our past to build a new future.
The path forward is not obvious when illness and traumas force the change. That is where a coach can be most helpful. In addition to finding what you can do and where they can be used, a coach will help you find yourself. Yet, in many cases our identity is tied up in our work and our bodies. I still think I am 20 or 30 on a bad day. Never mind that both my sons are over 30.
Facing a New life is almost like we are teenagers again. We don’t know what we want to do or what really we can do.  How did we make the decision the first-time? Did the advice we got really help? Now that I know what a Life Coach can do, I wish I had used one the first time.
If we go back to school we it seems we have missed a lot in the years we have been out. When I went to college I used punch cards to do things that my lap top does. Even phones have changed. Smart phones seem more like portable computers, than phones. Is a “blue tooth” something we should see a dentist about?
Is it realistic to embark on a whole new career at our age? Yet, how long does anyone work at one job? Can we trust our bodies to hold out for a new career? What other questions do we have? Or are they fears. We know how life plans can change. Did we do what we thought we were going to do in life so far? With the disability option we could just find a whole and curl up.
After a while curling up gets cramp. How do we go forward, and why? When our life plans get interrupted, we ask the basic questions again. Is there a purpose in life? How do we make our way forward? What did we do wrong?
Should we give up in despair or go blindly forward?
But what do we base our future upon? Our bodies are fragile; we have seen them fail us. The skills we had are not the skills that our world seems to want. And what they want are not the skills we think they need. How do we resolve these dilemmas? How did we resolve these dilemmas in college? We went with the crowd. We got jobs, married and raised families. We found joy in the little things in life. How much fun it is to watch a football game, especially when our team wins?
In our busy lives we neglected some things and emphasized others. Own we seek to restore balance to our lives. We seek to find the energy to go forward. We seek joy. How are we going to enjoy Life? Grand kids are one source. Sports are another. We all don’t have to play golf or travel.  We can still work and since that has been our identity, maybe that is what we should do.
 If these are some of the questions you ask yourself, let’s talk.
But, what about when we are sick 66% of the time? What kind of company would agree to hiring someone who is only on the A game 33% of the time and you aren’t sure when that 33% is going to happen as your illness is sporadic and severely debilitating.
I’d appreciate understanding and knowledge. Thanks for this resource. Do you ever get through the emotional storms? Acceptance, anger, depression,, bargaining, and denial. Is that the whole of my experience to be going forwards?
Jen,
life is a series of ups and downs. We learn both from our successes and our failures. Knowing that a joy filled abundance is possible makes me keep trying. We have learned ways to predict when we have energy and not. We can teach those to each other. As a coach I study these methods and seek to apply them.
I know that when I seek out joys in my life I find them. Others who have done this likewise have increased the amount of joy in their lives. If you read some other post on the site you can find more about that.
This week’s blog, “An Invitation” is the first in a series of blogs that will help me in preparing a book on this overall process. If you want to subscribe you will be notified each time I make a post. I am also looking for people to experience on what sort of things that help them in each phase of this journey or cycle with disability.
David Moseman recently posted..An Invitation to Journey Beyond Disability
The final stage of this process is acceptance. There you find peace, but things will come up that will put you back in the other stages. Now I am writing a series that should help you create a beter life than the one you lost. I hope you are still following.