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Last month I claimed that in pursuing a vocation based upon your passions, talents and interests, Your Life's Autopilot would likely kick in. This is quite desirable once you have gained some bearing on your life's purpose. There are however, dire circumstances when the autopilot must be disengaged to allow for manual override. For all its sophistication, no autopilot can yet act on intuition. The best it can do when sensing hazardous conditions, is to set off warning bells. Unable to comprehend that a miscalculation will result in complete destruction, the autopilot has no basis for self-preservation. Absent of emotion, or creativity, it cannot feel self-pride, esteem or fear.

Business and entrepreneurial magazines tend to focus the subject of growth on aspects of ‘increasing’ - such as increasing profits, market size or reach of business interests; increasing productivity or sales. As of late, professional development and personal growth have been getting some attention. Not without good reason.

Of all the catalysts for change currently redefining our societies, personal growth is the most prevalent. People in business tend to forget to turn their autopilots off with tragic results for loved ones, even themselves. As these fall away, all we seem left with is ourselves. With any designs on becoming fulfilled individuals, regaining emotional stability and control means confronting growth processes long ignored, or perhaps never truly attained in the first place. Without defining just who you are, or the kind of person you wish to be, your life’s purpose is not likely to be revealed - let alone fulfilled.

The sustainability of any business or organization depends partly on the emotional well-being of those individuals driving them. Might there be connections between the relatively low number of sustainable businesses existing today and the number of individuals who knowingly feel comfortable within themselves? I wonder. The sustainability of any personal long-term relationship, depends wholly on your emotional well-being. Need I ask if there exists direct connections between that and the vast number of failed marriages resulting in multi-blended families in today's societies?

In past C4C articles, I have mentioned the impending Breakpoint beyond which society at large will adhere to different rules and standards than those to which we are accustomed. As that Breakpoint draws ever closer, both personal and professional lives are entering into emotionally violent storm fronts. Danger bells are going off all over the place. Massive unemployment; shifting and collapsing economies; and short-term relationships are speeding up the unravelling of the moral fabrics upon which our parents and grandparents had hoped we would have based modern society. Given such multi-directional stress, it is hard not to give way to panic before attempting to take hold of the controls. Even as we begin to do so, we doubt that we ever really knew how to firmly take and maintain control in the first place. We had either given up our control to others, or had it taken outright from us.

After nearly 6 years of preparing for a self-directed vocation in societal change, my first opportunity to affect change at personal levels seems to be underway. As was the intent behind the DreamTEAMS acronym, I have been interchanging roles of Teacher, Expert, Associate, Mentor and Student with someone who asked for my help with a personal journey of significant proportion. Although enviably successful in the professional aspects of life, this individual had been on autopilot too long. When the danger bell sounded, the absence of personal growth became frighteningly apparent.

It is this aspect of growth I feel compelled to focus on.

For many individuals buried beneath the rubble of 20^th century societies, professional development has been a highly effective means of avoiding painful, unresolved childhood issues carried undetected into and through adulthood. As in the case of the woman I am working with, prior opportunities for becoming intimately acquainted with an inner being seemed unnecessary. Only good fortune had that it happened within a mutually loving relationship few ever experience. In having gained the whole world, her tender gentle soul was suddenly lost with the tragic passing of a nurturing husband. Then, the ill-fated collapse of a second marriage of some convenience changed everything.

Her once pleasurable and rewarding vocation turned into a stressful burden as life suddenly came full circle. Caught between the switchover from autopilot to manual, reflection, and a strive for understanding are being undertaken. The tragic human experience now shared between mother and her 6 year-old daughter cries out for final resolution. For the parent, internal scarring from a distant past ripped open with intense pain and gnawing fear. Her inner-7-year-old-child emotionally relives the sad life-defining experiences that followed on the heals of a father’s leaving. Compound those chaotic feelings with those of her adult self who had no intention, or desire of perpetuating the vicious circle. The final resolution rests with breaking out of that circle to insure that her daughter does not grow up to re-create it, and prevent mother’s inner-child from ruling heart and mind. Only by facing the source of our pain can we hope for healing to begin and thus avoid repeating emotional mistakes of the past.

In our sharing of poor choices made and lessons learned too late, I revealed to her my hurt adolescing child who shunned, teased and beaten down almost daily by my peers, wanted only to gain their love and respect. Following high school, my autopilot enabled me to learn what my schoolteachers could not - or would not - teach me. When my adult life unravelled a second time, the warning bell blared loudly. I suddenly realized how my future well-being, as well as my children's was threatened even further by the anticipated Breakpoint. Panic set in. I began to look earnestly at what my life-choices had wrought upon myself and loved ones.

Before I could move forward, I had to go back. Doing so, I had to look for and accept the responsibility of my life-choices, forgiving myself for them. My re-growth meant coming to terms with the little boy whose thoughts, feelings and perceptions never seemingly matured much beyond my early teens. Just what is a mature adult anyway?

• Do we mistake maturity with disassociating our heads from our hearts?
• Is the mantle of maturity automatically assumed along with the birth and responsibilities of child rearing?

Given the growing threat to personal and professional lives, our future societies are in desperate need of renewed creativity. The realization of Healing Fragmented Communities - my vision for DreamTEAMS International - hinges on socioeconomic invention. For that to happen as swiftly as the impending Breakpoint will demand, a child-like creativity must be nurtured and unleashed in adults, no less than preserved in our children. The sense of humanity needs to be re-established in adults as much as it needs to be nurtured and protected in our children.

Unfortunately, creativity is a childhood treasure most children have ripped from them along with their sense of self as they grow up within emotionally, physically and sexually toxic environments. Instead of becoming self-assured and self-directed individuals, much like them who went before, children grow up looking for, and becoming dependent on outside acceptance more readily than not. For some, insecure arrogant controllers suppress any hint of retained creativity. For others, what remnants of creativity are not directed towards enhancing life, or glorifying it, are often misdirected toward avoiding life, even destroying it.

Breaking out of vicious circles and tearing down the historical imprisonment of creativity will require reverse growth processes. Getting reacquainted with your inner-child’s creativity is unlikely to happen without bumping into your inner-child’s pain. Neither is about to happen with your autopilot on. I guess the burning question is, are you going to wait until the warning bell resounds, or for everyone’s sake, are you going to override it before panic sets in?

Bernie, autopilot is exactly where I have been for the last nine months or so. Only last week, I accidentally found a project that will get me off course. I need to act on it. Or I will soon forget it and remain on auto.

I find myself thinking about my former wife way too much. It has been well over two years and still I find myself in "anger lab" as I call the period when I was married to her.

Work is not engaging the brain. The hardest thing I have to do is manage my own emotions. I'm going to write a CV and change the way I talk about my life. I have always talked about it in terms of the jobs I have held rather than the person I really am. These days when I meet women, I have a sad story to tell. Not because I want sympathy, but rather because I have not written a different story. I am definitely not fun to be around.

This article did strike a chord with me. Thanks. David

Bernie, your essay points out the importance of reconnecting with our emotional lives if we wish to be whole, healthy and creative. Our mechanical worldview disconnected us from our spirits. We are entering an age where getting to know our inner selves will be of prime importance if we are to navigate the sea of change we are in and will be in for the rest of our lives. Each of us must come face to face with our pain and our fear if we are to live authentic lives.

Tom Heuerman
www.amorenaturalway.com

Bernie, your article is nice! A few questions for your readers:

• How do I change my negative beliefs?
• How do I become aware of my limiting beliefs?
• What makes me creative?

Bernie, with regards to "people in business tend to forget to turn their autopilots off with tragic results for loved ones, even themselves", I agree. But the problem is not so much with the autopilot, but rather the course we have set our autopilot to find. Being successful in business is all about making money. Successful business people are those who succeed at becoming rich people. Their autopilots are set to maximize making money. They force us into the service of our careers rather than our vocations. In careers making money is primary and our lives are a distant secondary. With vocations, our lives become primary and making money is reduced to secondary importance.

Then our autopilots can serve us well and help us to achieve personal growth.

Timothy Wilken of FuturePositive
twilken@mbay.net

http://www.for-legacies-sake.ca