Ring the bell, to hear the bell ring
Posted on November 21, 2019 by Reva Banka, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, " Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product of a life well lived." Many believed in that, including me. Here is why..
In my coaching I often come across the clients, who have been living an extra- ordinary life and now they find even “ordinary” seemingly impossible.Like this 19 yr. old boy who always excelled in school, has many feathers in his cap, enjoyed great bunch of friends. Now all of a sudden, he finds himself lost…not interested in school, notices that he has no real friends anymore, feels that life is not happening, no matter what….
Question is what happened? Answer is in Mrs. Roosevelt’s quote. This child enjoyed happiness, but did not have a well balanced life. His parents set goals for him and pushed, dragged, supported, encouraged him to meet those goals. He enjoyed the success that came with accomplishing those goals and that made him happy. However he never learnt “how tos” of life. He did not have dreams/goals of his own. During his junior and senior years in high school, most of his classmates started to plan for college. Many of them had girlfriends/boyfriends by now. They started to form close knit groups because of common interests/goals. Among all these, life started to slip off of this child’s hands. He found himself left without goals, without friends. Unfortunately, he had no clue of “why”.
His parents were equally clueless and worried as if world was coming to an end. Believe it or not these parents needed more help than the child. When the parents learnt to let go and allow the child to fail, to try, to mess, they learnt to accept the consequences, so did the child.
The child found the balance of life. It took time. It was not easy, for sure. After trying hard to strike the balance and doing that everyday, doing that over and over again, he is enjoying happiness to the core.
Like somebody said," always remember to fall asleep with a dream and wake up with a purpose." That is life and you must do it everyday.