January 10, 2021
Meditation Song for the week: Thought Museum (Liquid Mind) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPCNLX7ESCE
Question: What makes you who you are?
Answer: Another great question! There are a couple of things that stand out to me:
- Always having to prove to myself and to others that I’m good enough. Growing up, nothing I ever did was good enough for my father. In the workplace, I constantly had to deal with people stating that I got my job because of my color, not because of my qualification. And despite the success of the work I’m doing now, it’s still not enough. I’m still having to prove my value and worth after 30+ years in higher education.
- Although my personality type has me listed at 50% introvert/50% extrovert, I would error on the side of introvert. And during COVID-19, my introverted side has become VERY prominent. I spend a lot of time indoors, hanging out with our dog Laci. Once in a while I’ll take Laci for a walk and visit neighbors…but for most of the time, I spend my time reading or writing or surfing the web.
- If you’ve ever watched “Big Bang Theory,” the character I identify with the most is Sheldon Cooper. Maybe not to his extreme OCD personality disorder, but I can say that there are some definitely tendencies. For example, ALL of my clothes are neatly folded and ordered a certain way, which is why NO ONE has done my laundry since I left for college. I don’t even like people to remove my clothes from the washer or dryer. Yes, definite OCD tendencies.
- I’ve been OBSESSED with empowering college students (and now others) to get clear about who they want to be and what they want to do because I did not have anyone help me do that when I was a college student. In fact, I never had anyone talk to me about meaning, purpose, mission, and vision work in 5 years as an undergraduate, 2 years for my masters, and a year and a half into a doctoral program. And even when I started working as a full-time advisor in 1989, I still didn’t have anyone teach me this type of “personal development work.” I just knew that there was more to life than just telling students what to take for classes and how to create resumes and cover letters to get jobs. Now, I can’t see myself doing anything else; actually, I want to train other educators (and non-educators) to do this work with students.
- The workout obsession. For those who didn’t read my posting on values, I’m obsessed with working out. I’ve always values Fitness and Health since my college days; now, especially since my blood clot and pulmonary embolism in 2016, I’m even more diligent about exercise, and more specifically, movement. I’ve been keeping track of my steps for the most part for the past 3-4 years, but this year, I decided to give myself a yearly step goal (5.5 million steps today, average 15,000 steps per day) so that I keep focusing on moving my body.
I’m sure there are more things I could list, but at least this is a great start!
The Dream Dean 