In 1989 I started to work as consultant. Being educated as a chemist I started with advising on chemical waste, waste in general and waste prevention. Gradually I focussed more and more on laws and regulations about this topic and started managing other people busy with observing the compliance of the waste regulations. And together as a team we created something new, I loved doing this!
I can still remember each time 1+1 summed up to three and this makes that I still can relive the joy in that episode of my life. Recalling I think of a project or training together with Han, Joost, Ronald, Koen and…..
2008 I was diagnosed with m. Parkinson. For me, this meant that working more then 40 hours a week and working under pressure was less easy than before. I worried about the future. Will I be able to do what I like most? A difficult question, one that kept me awake during the night…At that time I was in Veenendaal (a village in the Netherlands), where I had a conversation with Koen. He asked me: you have already worked so hard, why can’t you be satisfied with taking care of your children? I could not find a proper answer at that time.
In the same time I followed the master practitioner NLP. For those unfamiliar with this: to me NLP is about communication with others and how you communicate with yourself. One of the topics in this training was the module: What is important to you? Why are you behaving like you do, and what are your underlying principles (your foundation)?
Study shows that the time that relapses from childhood till maturity is most valuable period for the development the main beliefs/ values in life. Nurture and experiences attribute to ones beliefs.
Growing from a baby to a 7 years old child, the conscious mind plays a small roll in every day’s life. So observations and experiences by growing up create beliefs which will rather quickly be embedded in the subconscious. Young children are known to learn quickly because of this and in consequence they will absorb facts noticed as “true” and “normal”.
The conscious mind will get a bigger part in life while growing up from the age of 7 till 14. Any child looks for his/ her own experience. It is likely that they ask themselves the following questions: What is going on exactly? What do I think of this? How do I have to deal with this? How do others deal with major events? Who can be my guide? The child tends to copy behaviour from people, in which he puts his trust.
The adolescence is the period of becoming aware. The adolescent finds “his own way”, is exploring life and is looking for boundaries. Also known as puberty.
In this training I (re)discovered what I enjoyed most in my work: “influence”, “working together in a team”, working with other people and socially relevant / contributing to society.
Nowadays, I work less and on my own as a freelancer. And working solitary I recognize what I miss: working together or the feeling of companionship at work. The good thing is: I can find this in my work as volunteer for the Parkinsons’ association. And this is one example of how I still can live up to my beliefs, even/ while I had to give in on partially losing something important to me, being work. Should I have focussed on my loss, I would still be frustrated. But when I discovered that working enabled me to create me something new and valuable together with others, I realized that I could reach this in another way.
And this nice to discover.
Kind regards,
Kees