At most shops, the sign says Open. Or Closed. At The Sacred Garden in Maui, the sign over the door said “Be open.” What a message!
I know the benefit of living a life that’s theme is “be open”. Open to the possibilities. Open to something new. Something different. Something amazing. Something awesome.
It’s a benefit my mother never had. Her orientation was “Don’t do it,” while mine was “Do it!” Her first thought was “No!” and mine was “Yes!”
So what did being open get me? Quite a bit, it turns out.
Doors opened, I peeked in and sometimes walked through them.
I had several different fulfilling careers, all different and all beneficial in different ways.
Many years in corporate life during Silicon Valley’s heyday gave me important credentials that I leveraged for the rest of my working life. My long tenure as a reputation management consultant and public involvement specialist challenged me and also reinforced that I knew what I was doing. My clients saw that and so I kept them and grew them. Which provided some measure of financial stability. It paid the bills, allowed me to buy real estate and save for retirement. If I’d made other decisions, I might have been rich, but I did ok. I don’t need to be rich.
I love teaching college and was lucky enough to do that part-time on and off throughout my life. It was a passion and my purpose for a very long time. As a writer, I’ve published modestly since the age of 16. It’s satisfying enough just to express myself but to have someone buy and publish is another level entirely. A lifelong passion.
I connected with my passion and purpose for the sheer love of them.
As far as work is concerned? I did just what I wanted to and each for different reasons. My planning process helped me understand that without a PhD, (which I didn’t finish) I wouldn’t be able to support myself and save money as a professor. So I taught as an adjunct, just for the love of it.
I didn’t want to write commercially, either. Everyone (and their brother) seems to want to write a book and so many self-published tomes are awful. I really had no driving urge to see my name on a book cover– I wanted to write personal essays and I was good at it. Still am. But there’s no money in that for most people. I write for the love of it.
Putting all that into an analytic framework showed me that I could be happy with the work I did to support myself, while still being able to teach and write, my twin passions.
This one’s fun: I had several different relationships. OK, HUSBANDS, too. No two were alike; each gave me something entirely different. I’m not bothered by the number and I’m not proud of it either. It just IS and I have always just taken it as that.
Is online dating horrible?
Recently I coached a woman of 60 into her first foray online dating. She’d resisted it for years and only decided to do it because her other avenues had not been productive. So many of her friends had horrible online dating experiences, so she’d avoided it. But she knew I’d had fun with mine. So we worked together on her profile, her photos and then, her approach. How to make it both safe and fun. And we also worked on some of her responses.
The upshot? She is having a GREAT TIME! As I knew she would. Because she approached it with the mantra “be open”.
There is absolutely a way to date online and a way not to. I happen to know how the odds of a good experience can be increased. And she is living proof that being open can work!
Interested? Set up a call and let’s talk. The easiest way to do that is to click the purple button here that says Schedule Call. It will ask you if you want to discuss regression or hypnotherapy but it doesn’t matter what you pick. What matters is that we have call and you start on the most fun dating experience you’ll ever have!
And then of course, I don’t want you to forget that candles for the holiday season are in progress. Want one? Take a look.
