PART I
AN ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING
Life is an ever-evolving experience. You cannot truly be a part of that experience if you do not know “you.” The understanding of self begins in the reflections of your childhood. As a child, you receive countless messages of who you are or who you will become. As an adult, you come to recognize that those messages may not truly represent your real self, but the messages still lie deep within, reinforcing your innermost thoughts and feelings, limiting the quality of your life.
In order to make positive changes in your life, you must identify your limiting core beliefs. These are the beliefs that you know to be true; that stop you from taking risks in order to grow and change. With awareness of these beliefs, you can learn to let go of that which no longer fits and create new realities and beliefs.
This is an ever-changing process that requires your continuous involvement. However, you are not alone in the process. Your relationships are vital and are affected by and contribute to your growth. If those relationships are promoting, nurturing, and reinforcing they will broaden, and not narrow your life.
The balance in a person’s life is the key to increased quality. An integration of your internal and the external . . . the self; the self’s rejuvenation which is leisure. However, remember, it is all about personal growth, which is only possible, when you choose to take paths and cross your bridges. We have all stood on the path of life staring at a bridge asking, “Who am I? Who do I pretend to be? What is life?”
THE JOURNEY WITHIN
The journey within is the scariest trip to plan and
to embark upon because you don’t know where to begin or
the destination you seek or where it will end.
What will you find? What myths and misconceptions will
you throw on the wayside. This is uncomfortable because
at least now, you know what you think you know.
How comfortable is it for anyone to risk going
forth to discover what and who they really are?
What will you find on your inward journey?
© Dr. Pearlie M. Jones, Spring 08
Jacksonville, NC
If you are reading this book, then you must feel that you need to know how to start this journey; at least you know that it is time to do something different. Anytime you embark upon a new adventure, there must be a starting place and an inward journey is no different. How did you come to this place in your life? What forces directed you to this juncture in your life? If you do not like it, how can you do something different? To answer these questions, we must go back to the very beginning to understand the development of your attitudes, actions and resulting personality.
There are four major socialization agents: family, peers, mass media and school. I will cover the basic ones discussed in this chapter.
In addition to the family unit, churches, educational systems, politics, our cultural/racial and ethnic groups work together to socialize both men and women to believe specific things about their roles. The above are referred to as socialization agents and they influence all the norms, taboos, mores, values, and even our sense of morality. These concepts form our belief system that affects what we feel; these feelings are translated into actions and actions translate into habits and habits form the basis of our personalities. Even though we are ultimately responsible for our actions, some of the actions and choices that are available to us are contingent upon the social milieu in which we grow and learn.
If you become unemployed and cannot find a job, you may become homeless or get divorced because of the inability to find a job that will meet your financial responsibilities. When people meet you, some will treat you as if it is your fault and you may buy into this belief. If you believe this, you will start to act the way you think a poor person should act, and consequently people will continue to treat you as such. It becomes a vicious cycle. If we look further into this situation, we may find that the type of work that you do is no longer available in your locality, and there are many other people in your same predicament. Is it your fault?
This is now a social problem. When a large number of people experience the same issues(s), politicians and social workers join forces to make things better or try to come up with a solution. This message may never filter down to the individual in the predicament because they are too bogged down to see the total picture; so they continue to struggle and believe that their failure is theirs when it is actually a societal issue. This impacts the individual’s self-esteem and self-concept and when this happens, it is very difficult to move from that ‘bad place in life.’ We see later on how this affects goals, dreams, and all of your choices.
One of the solutions to this dilemma is to question the beliefs, values and habits ingrained in us because of our own ‘stuff’ and the ‘stuff of society.’ The only way to do this is to understand where it all came from and commence with a systematic program of changing the way you think about yourself arming yourself with information and analyzing events surrounding your life. Unfortunately, if you continue faulty thinking for an extended period, it erodes your spiritual core.
Challenges and constraints. Sociologists purport that one must recognize the constraints that our culture and society impose, and how they interplay into our lives to be able to alter controllable circumstances. Constraints such as economic forces, popular culture, family, and politics influence every one of us on an individual level.
Economic Forces: As the U.S. economy changes, it affects the replacement of higher paying jobs to low-paying service oriented jobs, and this poses economic hardships on single mothers and under educated single fathers. Even the higher paying jobs have created barriers and constraints. To get one of them, one has to have a college education or be skilled in a particular area. This also affects young married couples, who are struggling to make ends meet. Many relationships face difficulties over finances and many fall apart. The growing divorce rate contributes to poverty, high crime rates, domestic violence and the list goes on and on. In addition, the listed social problems directly affect the lives of individuals; however, the individuals who are affected do not recognize the societal constraints that hold them captive.
Technological changes have extended the life span of the average American and the decline in the birth rates. This sounds like a blessing, but look at the other end of the spectrum. Since people are living longer, wages are going down and health costs are steadily rising. Therefore, rising medical costs eat up savings and that could easily cast a borderline middle class family into financial distress or homelessness. In addition, with discoveries, there is a new pocket of poverty established because not everyone will be able to adapt to the steady rate of changes. If you are one of the unfortunate ones caught up in this transition, what is happening to you may not be totally your fault. This is why it is important to get as much information as you can to make decisions, establish long range, short range goals, and have a master survival plan.
These changes can certainly influence our personal development because of the tendency to self-blame when things do not go as planned. Some people may think that maybe they do not deserve their dreams and desires because of the inability to negotiate their environments. This can lead to anger against God and the angrier one becomes, the more alienated he/she becomes. Once this happens, it affects relationships, choices of jobs, and poor health and the over all stability of the family.
The political environment influences families and the definition of what makes up a family. In the last fifty years or so, how we see family has changed drastically. The traditional families consisted of man, woman and children. Now, because of the transitions in our cultural beliefs, values, and mass transportation, the family now consists of same sex marriages, friends living together, or any individual or group of individuals who consider themselves a family.
The mass media is another agent of socialization and changes; and the internet is becoming a power tool to disseminate data. It is both a blessing and a negative in our society. It provides a cost effective means of getting information out to a large audience and it provides a means of putting out harmful information. Many people have fallen victim to swindles perpetuated by Internet scammers, internet chat rooms, websites, and dating services that have made national news because of their negative effects on children, consumer relationships and the family. Experts worry about the destruction of personal relationships fostered by the use of computers by young people and it becomes a reality more and more every day.
How these advances impact you depends on the extent you rely on the information that you receive. Television shows, movies, pop music, magazines, radio, advertising, sports, hobbies, fads, and fashions pose constraints upon us by influencing our personalities, decision-making abilities, and subsequent family life. There are other constraints in our society, but the ones listed provide examples of how our choices may not be because we are unable to make good decisions. It is exacerbated because of the indoctrination of the printed, broadcast media, and the influences left in place. It is important to monitor the type of information that goes in the psyche. It is equally important to become aware of all the barriers imposed by your environment, your values, beliefs, educational and skill level, and your social class placement.
The vast changes in society have led to the change of women’s roles over a period of time, but the traditional role expectations are still there. Conservative religious leaders, educational institutions, politics, and the printed and broadcast media reinforce them. Therefore, when we start to think about change or taking our lives to another level, we must consider the social conditions under which we make decisions and the type of information we let into our minds. Both men and women are shaped by the social structure in which they live, the status of males and females, and how each play out their roles and role expectations.
Traditionally, women’s roles assigned to them the responsibility to give, to nurture and support to get love. If, at anytime they go off to seek their own destinies, they seem selfish. Traditional roles program women to give in order to receive. This is in direct contradiction to the socialization that men receive; to achieve their highest with women backing them. Women are now stepping outside of their traditional roles to pursue their own dreams and ambitions. This often will cause guilt because of past socialization, but efforts must be made by women and their partners to strive beyond it to rediscover lost dreams. If the environment that you created or the one you just inherited does not support this journey, make a special effort to align yourself with a group of personally and spiritually powerful women and men who do.
What constitutes womanhood? Many women make the mistake of believing that because they were born female they automatically know what makes a real woman. They perform the duties that go into making a home run smoothly, by raising the children, holding down full time jobs, and at the end of the day, many still have to find the time and energy to be a playmate to their partners. However, deep in their minds, they wonder, what does it really means to be a woman?
Females go through an identity search every decade of their lives. Based on age, life styles, and self-awareness many think they already have the answer. They look to their partners, their fathers, their brothers, and their friends in search of themselves as they try to reach some unidentifiable goal and silently wonder if they have the right or the liberty to ponder...what it really means to be a woman. Therefore, they just tuck their fears, insecurities, unclaimed dreams, and desires deep inside and go into the world pretending that all is well. Can anyone really see beneath the mask and see the real woman? Where is she? Who is this real woman?
Where are the real men? Men, throughout the annals of time, have devoted much time and contemplation defining womanhood, and it was not until recent times that women have started to address these same issues. All of the various institutions that form our socialization system (church, family, marriage, politics, etc.) help to define women’s roles and identities. The problem with this is that these definitions are incongruent with what many women feel and experience. This incongruence causes imbalance in the psyches of many women, creating all manner of dysfunctions within them that are naked to the visible eye. Armed with dreams and desires formed by their peers, parents, the media, and all the information that comes in through all of their senses, females form relationships with faulty belief systems that are based on these imbalances and life expectations.
Men learn from socially assigned roles and many men never find out what it means to be a man because of the changes in society. When they interact with other men, they join them in the persecution of those men who openly admit or show that they do not have a clue about what it means to be a man, and those who accept the changes and redefine themselves.
Many men who try to hold down traditional definitions of manhood feel that they must prove their manhood by demonstrating control over their partners; sometimes this equates to violence, manipulation, and psychological imbalances in many men. Overall, society expects men to hold down a full-time job and take care of the financial and emotional needs of their families. Traditionally married women can work, if they choose, to but due to the economic situations in modern times, many women have to work in order to help support the needs of the family. Some men continue to believe that they must work and many base their masculinity on their ability to take care of their families.
This trend is changing, however, not as rapidly as for women; men are opting to stay at home while their wives work. Their peers question them because men are expected to be the breadwinner while simultaneously trying to find it within him to show kindness and sensitivity. Still, many wonder, is that what it means to be a man?
Many men, attempting to define their own selves, attempt to define the roles of women. We know that their socialization as a man depend on their ability to perform specific duties in cooperation with the woman being the submissive partner. It is understandable that some men strive to maintain the status quo whether it is the man or the woman who changes. The partners have to change with them, and this change is leading to the displacement of many men’s self-concept, and their views of manhood in modern times.
Many of the roles assigned to women do not fit all women and to try to push them on all women, regardless of their talents and interests, often spells disaster. Who accepts the blame when disaster strikes? I maintain that no one is to blame. Our society is changing and everyone has to seek his or her own place in the new realities. The travesty is to keep using an outdated and faulty reality.
Seeking the truth is the ultimate key to ascending to a higher level of consciousness because on each level there awaits a new truth and a new reality. With this truth comes new challenges and opportunities just waiting for the eyes to open. Many people from all lifestyles may be on the same journey and it has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, income, sexual orientation, etc. However, there must be a starting point within the self - where one can face their demons, deal with them and move on. If an individual is overly concerned about their roots, looks, life scripts formed during childhood, then healing will not begin until internal peace is reached; that is the essence of personal and spiritual growth.
An individual must rise above the surface level (his or her own issues), to seek the truth; this makes it easier to communicate with each other because there is no tendency to delve into the outer layers of reality, but to go within the self and meeting God. When we are able to shed the outer layers of reality, we can start to deal specifically with the true spirit.
The individual who is able to stand back and look at their life in perspective is able to recognize their own contributions to their own pain, as well as recognize the strengths gained from the experiences.
The individual, who is not allowed to speak of the challenges of their own, creates two dynamics; the speaker will not be able to process those experiences; and the receiver will not understand anything of that person’s journey. In addition, this affects the total society as well as prevents him/her from having empathy and compassion for the other person and this lack of sharing will impede the receiver’s own sense of his/her own. For example, men and women have different paths and both experience pain and disappointment. When one person cannot hear the other’s story, cannot see that their paths are parallel, just perceived differently, healing and growth is hampered.
You create your own reality. It is imperative that you not spend a lot of time thinking about what you do not have or complaining to others about your failures. Through a process of social construction of reality, you create your reality through social interactions. As you present yourself in terms that suit the setting, your purposes, and if others relate to you in this reality, your reality emerges. This makes it very important to be mindful about what you say about yourself and your dreams and to whom you tell. Even if what you say does not represent your true feelings, but you present them as real, they become real in their consequences. When an individual tries to downplay their contributions around friends and family that are not as accomplished, the family will believe what you say about yourself and will react to their beliefs and you wonder why they do not understand you.
IS IT TOO LATE?
I have wondered up and down life’s highways
Headed on a path that I did not chart. I thought that my
life is predestined, but now I learn that I have choices,
but is it too late for me? How do I, at this late stage, begin
to chart a new course? Where do I get the energy and
motivation to do the things? Necessary to embark
upon a new journey Is it too late?
© Dr. Pearlie M. Jones, Spring 08, Jacksonville, NC
Many middle-aged women are discovering for the first time that they do not have what they want and are deciding to take charge of their own lives. They wonder if the damages of their socializations can ever be undone. Therapy can help but it will take a long time. Praying helps but you still need information and an action plan, and prayer requires a commitment on your part and a belief that God will do what you asked. Do you even believe that you can do it? Be of good cheer, anyone can succeed at any part of his or her life and become a powerful and empowered human being because success is, as you perceive it, and not how someone else does.
People who made it despite incredible odds can usually trace their success back to someone(s) who encouraged them. The impetus of this section is to stress the importance of developing a positive, nurturing and supportive environment but this starts with you and the first step is to believe in yourself, trust yourself and believe that you can have what you want.