A YEAR OF TESTING VALUES

I spent the past year purposefully exploring action and opportunities. I wasn't merely seeking insights in the basic existential questions we all face —— am I doing what I need to do? am I doing it well? am on a track I want to and need to be on, or am accepting whatever comes along? —- although these are important, daily questions. More importantly, I wanted to test my choices and actions against my principals and values; I wanted to reflect on ...<< MORE >>

Send comments directly to this blog, or write to me at: RickFeldman@ActOnPurpose.Com ...<< MORE >>

© Rick Feldman 2007 PART 1: I’m on a journey here, to connect business and organization lessons, the newest opportunities on the web, social action values, and my general theme of thinking and acting purposefully. I don't want to be glib here... I want to consider the difference and connection between living with purpose and acting on purpose. PART 2: Living with purpose and acting on purpose, and the link to our own life-stages.<< MORE >>

• I came to a life-changing and challenging realization relatively late in my life: 
  all I'm doing and considering —- career, job, family, pursuits, fears, actions and 
  non-actions —— are, for the most part, the results of my own choices. And the 
  consequence is that I am living the life I've chosen. I may not like all of it; there 
  had been, at many times in my life, details I thoroughly disliked. There were more 
  than enough pains, results, disappointments, losses, struggles, and abysmal 
  circumstances. But they were almost all the results of my choices. Yes, there were 
  instances when some other person said or did something that did some harm to me, 
  or that created a difficult situation. Still, these were few, and even then I couldn't 
  really blame anyone for how I came to be in that situation in the first place.
           I've read that there are really only three options available in any situation: 
                 

• you can embrace it, 

• you can leave it, or 

• you can try and change it. 

Complaining, worrying, wishing, re-living the situation, considering all the what-ifs
and should-haves, and regretting: none of this has much impact. 
Again, every situation presents choice. 

         There is a large element of outside influence, those events beyond our own control. 
Imagine the most horrific  situations —- wars, hurricanes, being the victim of an attacker —- 
and you come to the conclusion that there's more than individual choice at play. I'd then 
have to ask: and what did I do inside that situation and what did you do afterward? 
"Luck" may deal me the cards, but only I can play them. I make the subsequent choices.

         With that realization comes thoughts about responsibility, and about outcomes. 
If I have even three options (to accept and embrace; to leave; or to change the situation),
then the outcomes necessarily include the effects of my choices. I live the life —— 
for better or for worse —- that I've chosen.

         This is the underlying theme of my site. Within my consulting work, and in all I write 
or do, is the theme of doing things, of acting or not acting, on purpose. 

            I had already lived out a fairly complicated and full life by the time of my little epiphany. 
I had lived in poverty in one of America's worst neighborhoods while attending elementary school. 
Yet earlier I had lived in Japan, when my parents were doing well, in the lap of luxury. I had studied 
and earned degrees in several fields, but before that I had run away from home to hop freight trains 
around the midwest. I've worked construction, I've managed businesses and organizations, I've 
driven a taxi, and I've taught in high school (literature and trigonometry) and in college 
(public policy analysis). During most of all that time, I felt that my life was being lived randomly, 
and "things happened" by accident. I went with the flow. Yet, in truth, I was making decisions 
and choices all the time.  

            Here's a blog, then, for those who want to engage in some critical thinking about being 
deliberate, about making choices, and about being purposeful.