I Promise....

I have been helping people for all of my life.  I started babysitting at 11 years of age, teaching dance to the littles at 12, and then teaching CCD at 16.  As I was getting older I began to work with the elderly as a CNA and Activities Assistant, I worked in several group homes, HBTS/Pass worker and now a Teacher, Special Olympic Coach and Trainer.  Each facet of my life lasted for more than a decade and often one job, like now, overlaps the other. 

So why share all this?  Because once you start on a journey of helping other you can’t stop caring about them.  Each one of my students, Special Olympians or training clients, I think about constantly. “How can I make them better?”  “Which level can I take them to next?”  It is there that I worry, if I am doing enough, especially when it comes to those I work with succumbing to failure. 

Now I know that failing is the only way of true learning.  It is in failure that we learn to dig down deep inside of ourselves and overcome all the obstacles we meet.   Without failure, we will never learn to better ourselves.  As an athlete myself I know this, but as a trainer and teacher, I too feel the brunt of my "people’s" failures.  When a student cries, a race is lost, or a lift is missed, I feel it too.  I reflect upon what I could have done differently to prevent such failures.  Only thing is, if I can’t prevent them within myself, I can’t possibly hold myself to such standards of preventing them with others.  But yet I do. 

What I can do is teach the people that I work with how to handle failure.  I can give them coping strategies that can work in several situations, not just one.  Finally, I can teach others to take responsibility for their own failure and not turn it onto others.  '

I think the latter is the hardest to do.  It is so easy to come up with a million in one reasons why something went as it did.  For example, If you come home and binge a bag of chips, cookies and ice cream…you can’t blame it on anyone but you, no one put the bag in your hand.  You can’t blame your boss for being a dick, or the kids sucking the life out of you.  You can take a big breath in, suck up the failure, and move on.  We all have bad days, weeks and even years.  We are not perfect.  We need to learn to fail together.

 As a professionally helper, my commitment is help you, help yourself. 

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