I'm in a period of mulling over what to do with the rest of my life.

The meager disability benefits I've collected since the diagnosis of congestive heart failure most likely are to end soon. In other words, I need to find a job.

My formal training is as a clinical counselor but there are major roadblocks to going back to that work, not the least of which is I'm not sure if I believe in the efficacy of most counseling.

Overall, I've liked what I've been doing with my life and as traditional as it currently is...I'm happy. I look back on the maelstrom that was my life prior to the heart failure and I don't want to go back to that. I won't go back.
I came very close to losing my life. I'm not going to work just to earn a paycheck.
But how do I find something meaningful? And how am I ever going to reign myself in enough to answer to a boss? And with all the medical shite that comes with hiring me (appts. w/ specialists, various tests throughout the year, side effects) why would anyone want me as part of their team?
It's a conundrum, and I'm allowing it to make me lose sleep and overeat and blow off my workouts--so it needs to be resolved.

In that spirit, I'm perusing information on how best to get ones act together. I suppose I'm looking for some help deciding where to start .
There are some valid points to Gordon Livingston's contentions in his new book, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now," though I do not agree with a statement late in the article that "only bad things happen quickly." I'm not sure I even understand that assertion, but it's been my life experience that bad things can be very long and drawn out, depending on the circumstance(s).

Overall, the review-type article is an interesting read.

I do wholeheartedly agree with the need for a "mute button" on our lives.
I often feel like I'm on sensory overload and it's all I can do to keep it all tamped down.

Also, is past behavior the best predictor of future behaviour, as the author asserts? I'm giving that one some thought as I'm considering a step back into the field of counseling. If ones future acts are predicated on what ones done in the past, then what is the point of counseling?

The heart of what the author argues is that the key to happiness is looking at your life not as it should be but as it is. Only then can you honestly plan your future.

I can see this point. It's not that we should accept our current life situation in a way that there's no movement towards change, but rather if we stay stuck in the wishful thinking mode of things will be different in the future, "if only I do "X," today is going to get short shrift.

....................................
Most of life's heartbreak comes from ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior, he says. Good intentions aren't a substitute for good acts. Sweet nothings mean nothing. Just do it.

Source

Psychiatrist spreads word: Look at people's actions

By Roxanne Roberts
The Washington Post January 10, 2005

Quit talking. Stop listening. We'd all be better off with a "mute" button on the soundtrack of our lives.

That, in a word or four, is the essential lesson of life, according to psychiatrist Gordon Livingston. After three decades of hearing people pour out their dreams, disappointments and fears, his single most valuable piece of advice is this:

"We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel. We are what we do. Conversely, in judging other people we need to pay attention not to what they promise but how they behave. ... We are drowning in words, many of which turn out to be the lies we tell ourselves or others."

Most of life's heartbreak comes from ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior, he says. Good intentions aren't a substitute for good acts. Sweet nothings mean nothing. Just do it.

This lesson is the second essay in Livingston's new book, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now." Actually, it's 30 things you needed to know when you were young but wouldn't have listened to -- but better late than never.

 

Livingston, 66, with a full-time psychiatric practice in suburban Washington, hadn't intended to toss yet another tome into the self-help maw. Then last spring, Blue Cross/Blue Shield announced it was closing the medical group he had worked with for 33 years, and he began the soul-searching that comes with reaching such a milestone in ones career.

"I think it's natural to wonder, `What's that been all about?"' he says. "`What have I learned over that period of time I didn't know beforehand?'"

Putting it on paper

He began jotting notes: the central issues that brought patients into his office, truths Livingston thought were self-evident but not so obvious to be cliches. He grafted those ideas onto his own life experiences, which included a tour of duty in Vietnam and the deaths of two sons. The result is 30 essays, with a foreword by Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Sen. John Edwards.

"What I like about the way Gordon writes is that he's really direct -- he's willing to be hard with you," Edwards said. "He's like a dentist who says, `You're not flossing.'"

The two met on a Web site for bereaved parents eight years ago, shortly after the death of Edward's 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car crash, when Edwards wasn't yet a household name. Livingston loved the way she wrote, and the two clicked online.

They had grief in common. In 1991, Livingston's oldest son, Andrew, committed suicide at 22 after a long battle with bipolar disorder. Six months later, his youngest son, Lucas, was diagnosed with leukemia. A few months later, he died. He was 6.

"The lesson, if there is a lesson to be learned from something like that, is that we endure what we must," he says. "I don't find anything more profound than that. Most of the lessons that people imagine bereaved parents learn are really lost on most bereaved parents: This idea that somehow you achieve some sort of `closure,' which is a word that is just hated by parents who have lost children, because there really is none to life's really profound losses. And then people say, `You're so strong. You got through this.' And the answer to that is, `What choice do you have?"'

Having survived tragedy twice, he guided Edwards through the process. "Gordon did not preach or judge," she writes in the foreword. "He illuminated where I stood so I could better see myself and the world around me, and then he took that light and held it out so I could see the footholds and ledges I would need to reclaim a productive life." Five years ago, Livingston wrote his first book, "Only Spring," about Lucas and the process of mourning.

They've met in person just once but have remained e-mail buddies over the years. "He just gets people," Edwards says.

He gets real life -- he's been married twice and has four adult children. He also gets reality, which is how things are, which is frequently not how we wish or hope they would be. His 30 truths begin with: "If the map doesn't agree with the ground, the map is wrong." He learned this as a soldier at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, trying to figure out why the hill on the map wasn't there. The map was wrong. It was a lesson he never forgot.

"The concept of people constructing a map in their head of how the world works, and then getting it to actually conform to the ground they operate on seemed like a good starting point for thinking about what we do," he says.

Making bad choices

What we do, more often than not, is make lousy choices, and Livingston points out the reasons why. Livingston is the sadder but wiser man. He is more Job than Dr. Phil, painfully aware of life's losses and limitations, trying to spare you a little hurt. He thinks in paragraphs, not in sound bites.

In the world according to Livingston, life is not fair. Bad things happen, often to the most innocent. A good life can fall apart in a split-second. It can be unbearably sad. Sometimes the best you can hope for is simply to survive. Patients told him about broken promises, unrealized expectations, people who said one thing but did another. He says the biggest lie people struggle with are the words, "I love you."

The key to happiness, he argues, is looking at your life not as it should be but as it is. Only then can you honestly plan your future. So many of the essay titles are stripped of excuses or platitudes:

- "The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas."

- "Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least."

- "Our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses."

- "Only bad things happen quickly."

- "The problems of the elderly are frequently serious but seldom interesting."

"We live in a culture in which the sense of being wronged is pervasive," he writes. "If every misfortune can be blamed on someone else, we are relieved of the difficult task of examining our own contributory behavior."

       

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Comments

[Cyn]

Thank you both for your helpful comments. :)

--Cyn

[PurpleCar]

Cyn, man, I was just going on about this over at the secret section of PurpleCar. I need to judge my Nasty Neighbors by what they do, not what I think they can be, or what they seemingly display in the small moments. And let me tell ya, I've overlooked much of their ridiculously RUDE actions for whatever reason. Now it's just the last straw and I am forced to see them as the judgmental and elitist and hermetic people that they are. Great post.

As for finding employment, man, that sucks. What about copy writing or editing or slush-pile reader, that kind of thing? Good luck.

[Dan]

Cyn - the first question you should ask yourself is "What do I love to do?" Think about what makes you happy. Don't think of a job as a job; instead, pursue it as "how can I make the world a better place while keeping myself interested and engaged."

There's a lot of practical advice on Monster you should check out. There's content geared toward career changers with lots of information on how to handle gaps on resumes, etc.

I think you're an excellent photographer and writer. Maybe look for ways to use those talents.

Whatever you decide to do, keep a positive spirit. You'll find something you love.

Dan