The Road Less Traveled - Daring to Test Your Boundaries

Wow!  This is a little, scary.  OK, maybe more than just a little.  After 23 years working in community mental health, and practicing as a licensed clinician for over 15 years, I’ve finally decided to go my own path and chase my dream of creating and running my own practice.  Almost three weeks ago I decided to resign my position at the local  community mental health agency.  It was there that I managed nearly a dozen clinical professionals from therapists to case managers.  Now, I’m going it on my own.  It wasn’t easy getting to this point but sometimes we need a little push from an unexpected source to move us in the direction of our goals.  Simply stated, I wasn’t happy working in community mental health anymore; always trying to do more with less, and not being able to live up to my own standards of what I believed a good clinician should be. There always seemed to be not enough of me, no time to plan and work through solutions,  not enough hours in the day to meet my own expectations of what I needed to accomplish on a daily basis.  I wasn’t the kind of supervisor and clinician I wanted to be in the face of ever increasing demands.  More importantly, work became so taxing I felt I wasn’t being the kind of father and husband to my family that I could be.  Every night coming home I felt mentally drained.  I wasn’t spending the amount of quality time with my family that I wanted, or that they deserved.  There was comfort in knowing that I would be paid on a regular basis, every two weeks, yet I began to question if that was enough.  I began to realize that financial security, while certainly very important, doesn’t always equate to personal meaning and self-fulfillment in life.   So rather than continue down this road, I made one of the boldest moves of my life. I resigned and started to plan growing my own practice.   


Don’t misunderstand me.   There are amazing and wonderful professionals who work in community mental health agencies across the country who do very important things  and help others in countless ways.  They work for modest compensation and work long hours to provide services to the ever growing population of individuals who suffer from mental illness and emotional difficulties.  I have always respected and enjoyed working and collaborating with these professionals. They are an extremely talented and creative bunch of individuals fulfilling a great need in our society.  Hopefully some of them are reading this now.  If you are, let me express my sincere gratitude for all that you do and how much of a pleasure it has been to work with you.  For me, all I can say is that it was time to channel my strengths and abilities in a way that I believe I could be more effective.  I simply wanted to be in a position where I could offer help to others on my own terms and according to my own values and beliefs.  I’ve always enjoyed building and creating things.  While this is an ambitious venture, it is exciting to think about creating and building something that can provide value and meaning to others in the community in which I live.  


I’ve worn many hats.   I’ve been a residential manager in a group home for individuals with mental illness.  I’ve been a case manager, a therapist, an administrator, a clinical supervisor, an assessment specialist,  a managed care professional, a parent educator, a group facilitator, a trainer, a public speaker, and a director.   What I’ve come to appreciate is that regardless of my role, what gave me purpose and meaning in all of these  positions is the notion of being able to counsel others to be successful in their lives; be it as a therapist, or as a supervisor,  helping another professional in their growth and development as a clinician in meeting the needs of the clients they serve.  We all need purpose and meaning in our lives.  Sometimes its easy to see what provides us that meanings, other times its more elusive. I’m fortunate enough to know what that is for me.  What is also exciting is helping others discover this for themselves.  I hope to be able to continue to do this in a very new way and one that will test my own boundaries as a professional, and as a person.  Part of growing as a person means testing where you think your limitations and abilities lie, and then pushing beyond them.  This is where growth and new potential are discovered.  


Sometimes we need to venture outside our comfort zones to realize our potential   Well, here I am, in a place far from my comfort zone.  Its at the  intersection of Opportunity Drive and Potential Boulevard in the big state of Unknown Possibility.  (I think its the “unknown” part that prevented me to actually commit to action the plans I had contemplated for so long.)  I imagine its like that for many others as well, afraid of failure.  Its not easy running your own business or making any big change in your life for that matter.   Fear of success.  What if I get in over my head?  Where are my limitations anyway?  What might I have to sacrifice?  How will it impact my relationship with my family?  How well will I adjust to this new role?  How stressful will it be and will I be able to manage it?  When you think about it, fear of success is really still fear of failure.  For me, it means the possibility of getting in over my head and not being able to live up to my own or others’ expectations.  However, my family, friends and colleagues have been immensely supportive.  Their encouraging words have contributed greatly to my confidence and provided the affirmation I needed to know that this journey will be a successful one. I feel assured that I have all the tools I need to make this dream a reality.  It wasn’t easy getting to this point.  I’ve been here before.  But I’ve never made the commitment to follow my dream as I have this time.  At times I’ve been dubious and even afraid.   But  I’m here now.  Now I have a new office, one I can truly call my own; tastefully decorated thanks to my wife of 11 years who also happens to be an interior designer.  I’m ready to move forward with the next chapter in my life.  I’m ready to start seeing individuals, families, couples, adults and children, and find ways that allow them, and myself, to Keep Moving Forward.  


That’s the name of my practice by the way, Keep Moving Forward Counseling & Consulting LLC.  While some may find the name unique and catchy, to me it means something quite more.  Its part of my vision not only for myself, but representing my approach to counseling others.   Often times in life I have found myself discouraged by a lack of success in one way or another.  I certainly have been discouraged by a lack of achieving what I wanted countless times over.   I imagine for many, not achieving one’s goals may lead to a sense of futility, of simply giving up.  I have been there.  Everyone has or will be at some point in time in their lives.  In the broadest sense, there are two ways that one can respond to failure.  The first is to simply give up.  It didn’t work.  There’s no point in trying again.  This is the kind of negative self talk that occurs in one’s mind that solidifies and guarantees that success will never be achieved.   The second is to take a lesson from that failure.  Don’t give up, but learn from what didn’t work and apply a different solution to the problem.  This may happen dozens of times until success is achieved.  Without perseverance, success often remains out of one’s reach.   Albert Einstein said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”  It's easy to get discouraged from failure.   Lacking an adequate support network makes it even more difficult.  Yet valuable lessons can be learned from a failed attempt at something great.  Those individuals that are most successful probably don’t consider the word “failure” in their lexicon.  They simply see efforts that don’t achieve their objective as lessons to apply to their next attempt.  And they Keep Moving Forward.  


Which brings me to how I came up with the name for my business.  Bear with me as ideas come from the strangest places.   Years ago, I was once watching a family movie with my toddler son.   Now I must embarrassingly reveal two things: one is that the movie was pretty outlandish, as modern children’s movies often are;  and two is that I enjoy children’s cartoons.  However, this one held my attention quite well and I drew an important lesson from the deeper meaning of the movie.  It was about a young orphan boy who was extremely bright and on his way to becoming a talented inventor.  However, he became discouraged by a rather significant failure in one of his inventions, which he hoped to use to help him remember and help locate the identity of his birth mother.  He felt so miserable after this failed attempt that meant so much to him that he decided to give up at making any other attempts at building things.   It would have ended there for the boy and his dream except for an unexpected encounter with a stranger that would lead him down a different path.  And through the magic of animation and a little bit of imagination of the producers, the boy was able to see into the future a new family, of which he was the center.   This was a family of inventors and innovators just like himself, with more failures than successes in their creative endeavors.  They were immensely supportive of each other in their efforts to build and create new and interesting things, and they never became discouraged when their attempts didn’t work.  They saw each failure as another step towards success.  The boy learned that what matters is that you never stop trying; that you learn just as much from your failures as you do your successes.  And he learned one more important thing.  He learned that he wasn’t as alone as he had felt he was and that there were meaningful relationships all around him if he just took the time and effort necessary to nurture those relationships.  


As a final thought, there was a quote at the end of the movie that tied it together for me very nicely.  “We keep moving forward, opening new doors and trying new things, because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”    - Walt Disney  


Post Script:  Here endeth my first attempt at a blog.   Funny word “blog”.  It sounds like some weird character from a 1950’s science fiction movie.   I hope that my future attempts at blogging are more practical and relate specifically to practical ways of maintaining good mental health.  But for all intents and purposes, I wanted the reader to learn a little about me and hopefully gain some insight as to the kind of therapist I am.  


Thanks for reading.  I’m open to your feedback.  But please be kind.  Critical and complimentary comments are fine but malicious ones are not welcome.  I hope to write at least weekly so look for my next blog sometime in the coming week.