From Then to Now: Personal Experience Shifts Perspective

When I was in my 20 s I facilitated parent orientation for a college. I was not long out of a Masters program in Counseling. I focused quite a bit on the emotional aspect of sending your child off to college and the importance of letting go. I shared slogans my mother had framed on her wall to remind herself of my need for independence. I recall seeing some parents weeping, and yet they left encouraged. Thirty years later it was a different experience when I was the mother letting go of my first born. The empathy I thought I had was now three octaves deeper. I had anticipated what parents felt, but it was a different story feeling it. For years I facilitated and consulted with teams in organizations. I was blessed to see many of those teams draw closer to one another and become more functional. I also worked with those in conflict. I loved when they would leave a session smiling, able to work together again, or even hugging. I had always been in a good stable team myself, or one where my independence allowed enough distance to not be impacted by anything that may feel toxic. Years later I was on a team where the dynamics were different, painful. It was an awakening, as I experienced the sense of hopelessness that many of my clients must have felt when I came in to work with my optimism. Life fills in the rest of the picture for us. Is it needed or always better to have experienced what those we help have gone through? There is often an assumption of yes. It depends on what we do with the experience. A touch of ignorance helps us lift others to believe what they may not have the faith to sustain. While it lacks the genuine ability to empathize, so there may be some missed targets in efforts to serve others. As we age, we migrate to youthful energy, maybe because we feel it slipping just a bit in us, at times. Positive energy, and optimism may take some hits from experience. We may need to avoid bias or even quiet cynicism. However, what can come through is gratitude, and a deeper sense of purpose. With that comes a desire to make a difference that matters. What I may have taken for granted years ago, or even entered into somewhat cavalier, I now recognize as much more important work. I am grateful to have done the work effectively. Yet, I now use my deeper awareness to inform my coaching of leaders, and mentoring of coaches. We all can use both: renewed hope through optimistic possibilities, and genuine understanding of how challenging the road to those possibilities might actually be.