Lesson 22a: Defining Success

Here I am on Lesson 22--what happened to the last 18 lessons?

Alas, I have been distracted, and I haven't done my Beyond Freedom. I have nothing to say, just excuses, excuses, excuses.

If I were going through this for the first time, I would pick up where I left off and do Lesson 5. But since I have done it before, and I really want to stick with with my monthly schedule, I am picking up at Lesson 22. It's pretty amazing, actually--that's the lesson we discussed last night on Shannon's Beyond Freedom call.

Exercise: Charting Your Life

It's kind of tricky to do this life chart in the blog--I don't know how to draw pictures. But I'll just list out the important events and rate them.

Birth-5

Like most people, I don't remember the early part of my life well. Though I assume it was, for the most part, happy. No tragedies that I know of. +10.

Kindergarten

When I was in Kindergarten, my family was in a pretty serious car accident. Though I was so young, I was kind of oblivious--I'll rate it a -2.

My mother was hurt pretty badly, so my brother and I were sent to live with my Uncle. I'll rate that a -4.

We had a good time, though, and we developed independence at a very young age. +6

Grades 1-4

These were very good years for me. I was "popular"--had a lot of friends, boys liked me. I was very happy. +10

Grade 5

This is where it started to crumble. I was starting to change. I wasn't pretty anymore. Other girls were starting to get the boys' attention. I struggled with my self esteem. -6

Grades 6-11

These were really the worst years of my life--around 6th grade, life got really dramatic, as hormones kicked in, boys became important, and popularity cliques started forming. In high school, my dad started suffering from a mental illness that would dominate the next 10 years of all of our lives. -9

Summer Before Senior Year

I had a brief respite the summer before my senior year. I spent the summer in San Diego working at Sea World. I had a chance to recreate myself with people I didn't know--people I hadn't grown up with. This summer changed the course of my life. +8

Grade 12

I was so stressed out from everything going on--school, lack of popularity, my dad's illness, my parent's crumbling marriage--that I ended up home in bed for a couple months. I missed so much school that I had to drop out of some classes and rearrange my schedule to catch up. As soon as I graduated, I moved out (in with my Grandma) and then went away to college as soon as I could. -8

First 2 Years of College

These were the best years of my life. I made incredible friends, had a BLAST, enjoyed my freedom, joined the church. +10

The Next 4 Years

The next four years were spent trying to recreate the magic from the first two. We all moved away, I transferred schools and hated it, I took a year off, I came back. I wasn't so concerned about popularity anymore, but I was itching to get out in the real world and live my dreams. +5

The First Year after Graduation

This was a tough year. I had fulfulled a dream and moved to the East, but I couldn't find a job. I was just about to give up. +2

The SoftMed Years

I finally found a job, and I LOVED it. I loved every moment of it. I couldn't wait to go to work. Life was awesome. +10

Theatre and Dan

I started doing theatre and got great reviews. One of the best moments of my entire life was being in the parade. I won an award. I met Dan. We fell in love and got married. +10

The Kids

The kids came quickly and were a joy. They continue to be. +10

The Businesses

Life started getting stressful when I started my businesses. The first was my own creation, built from scratch. I was SO excited--it was going to make me a millionaire. Then I started doing network marketing and found that I loved it. Then I started a website to help others with their network marketing business. +6

The Businesses Cont.

Life started getting really really stressful. So much time and effort and nothing to show for it. It lands me in the hospital with a suspected heart attach. -6

Enter Beyond Freedom

I join the Beyond Freedom community, and I'm really excited about it. But I'm not doing as well as I had hoped--what's wrong? +2

E-Squared

I never did know why I had joined the community. I felt like the Universe/God wanted me here and I was just blindly following. I hadn't plugged into my passion. I come up with an idea for a live theatre experience--Empowering Entertainment ("e" squared)--and I can NOT stop thinking about it. I start taking steps to realize the dream and business takes off. +10