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| Owner's Manual | |||
| Introduction An Extraordinary Experience | 1 | (14) | |
| Discovery 1 Finding Yourself | 15 | (44) | |
| Discovery 2 Finding the Lessons to Be Learned, the Questions to Be Asked | 59 | (40) | |
| Discovery 3 Finding the Choices That Really Matter | 99 | (36) | |
| Discovery 4 Finding the Courage to Choose | 135 | (34) | |
| Discovery 5 Finding Joy, Serenity, and Fulfillment | 169 | (40) | |
| Field Guide for Getting Started | 209 | (8) | |
| Post Script New Insights for Paperback: Road Trip! | 217 | (17) | |
| Acknowledgments | 234 | (2) | |
| Endnotes & Stats | 236 | (3) | |
| Index | 239 | (9) | |
| About Bill Jensen | 248 |
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
"I want to reach inside myself through themuck and mire and live more with love and less with fear.I'm tired of waiting for that right person or companyto recognize the talent that I can offer."
"I'm a workaholic.I can't remember a time when I wasn't strivingfor full-throttle success.As it turns out, I failed in one critical area.I had turned my back on life."
"The opposite of play is not work --it's psychosis."
We've all been there. We've felt feelings like theseletter-writers have, and thought the same thoughts.
Most of us already know whatreally matters.We just let all the daily excuses andconflicting priorities cloud our judgment.I find this most everywhere I goas I research how we get stuff done.Yet the people who are truly focusedon what matters rarely have this problem.They know how to listen to themselves —how to quiet all the outside noiselong enough to hear their own heartbeatand their own wisdom.
No one gives you inner knowing,but here's a chance to discover it.
Hear what you think as you readthese letters. Allow each one to speakfor a portion of your own life.Risk seeing yourself.
Face what you fear; it's safe here.Get grounded; others are like you.Let go; nobody's watching.Suspend judgment;other people's Aha's can reveal a lot.Find your passion; write it down.Laugh at your own excuses; a sense of humorwill make Discoveries 2–5 a lot easier!Rewrite the script, because you can.
Let No One Tell You It Can't Be Done
Lisa Hesmondhalgh
Work: Helps and believes in society's rejects, where most of us would notLisa Hesmondhalgh has survived several lifetimes of renovating humanpsyches. As a police officer in Dade County, Florida, she learned theimportance of performing CPR on a corpse. During her years as a prisonguard, before she turned social worker, she discovered that shooting tostop and shooting to kill have more to do with luck than skill.
To all my children,
Before I was 25, my sons and daughters were rapists,car jackers, burglars and robbers. I watched the truebirth of my favorite child—on the day he turned 50-- from behind peeling beige paint and pockmarkedprison bars. He stood in the hallway with a cardboardbox ringed with twine. I opened the heavy metal doorand stepped in to meet him.
"I want you to take care of yourself and the lifeyou have left," I said. "There's nothing you're leavinghere that matters at all."
I put my hand out and he shook it gently. Hepicked up the box, turned to walk outside, and said,"And you. Promise me you'll leave before theychange you, before they get you, too."
Keith was being paroled after 28 years in prison,after 12 years on Death Row for murdering a storeclerk with a shotgun. He had earned his G.E.D. and an Associate's degree. He became a journeyman plumber. He would eventually marry, keep a goodblue-collar job, go to church twice each week, andprobably never think of me again.
Before I was 30, my sons and daughters werecrack addicts, embezzlers, child molesters, thieves andforgers. I went to their houses every week to makecertain they were behaving. I went to see theirteachers, their bosses, their lovers. They wouldtelephone me after midnight when their uncles beatthem with baseball bats and in the morning whenthey needed a ride to English-as-a-Second-Languageclass. They would come to see me when their lastpair of shoes melted at their day-labor roofing job.
And when I was 35, my sons and daughterschanged again. They were crumbled and torn andsplintered and lost. My children were burned, raped,rented to ex-boyfriends for the weekend, and fed oncockroach cereal with bloodied heroin spoons.
I would find my children new homes with newfamilies. And learn that their new families wereforcing my daughters to give nude massages and werepaying my sons to have sex with neighbors. I wouldfind other homes, and my children had nightmaresthat were too loud, daymares with explosivehoofbeats—tempests of memories. My childrenhad tears louder than their screams.
This letter is to those I have lived my life for.The convicted felons, the probationers and parolees,the ones who were called "clients" by my peers andtreated like sewage.
Every introduction speech from me began:"I will not call you a client. You are a criminal. But I promise that I will treat you as a person, as anindividual. From now on, you will not fail unlessyou want to."
Offenders are the people you see in the nextgrocery aisle. They stand in the church pew behindyou. And for ten years I was proud that I was neverthreatened, cursed, or assaulted by anyone on mycaseload ...
What is Your Life's Work?
Excerpted from What Is Your Life's Work?: Answer the Big Question about What Really Matters... and Reawaken the Passion for What You Do by Bill Jensen
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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