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CCI BLOG

November 24th, 2016

11/24/2016

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A Pathway to Purpose

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Individuals enmeshed by uncertainty are often challenged cognitively by a sense of fear or the inability to regulate their pathway thinking. In this culture, self-management is promoted as a mechanism to circumvent the anxiety that perpetuates ambiguity. Yet, the fundamental challenge is to somehow bypass this impasse sufficiently for self-clarity to ensue.
 
However, the ubiquitous problem is that this process to reconcile our discontent doesn’t work. Individuals keep chasing a pathway to provide meaning and purpose. Yet, for many they pursue success, power or prestige. Sadly, it is never enough and their attitude never changes while their behavior remains the same.
 
What if individuals could engage in self-reflection to discover their true self, who they really are? What if they could strip away the layers that insulate them from seeing what they have become? What is they could find the clarity required to envision their future self, who they ultimately wish to become? We argue there is a  process that may achieve this self-clarity to elevate their cognitive perception to discern what pathway is required to attain intentional change, back to a life that has purpose.
 
Process
This process is hope-centered, an approach that inculcates attitudinal and behavioral needs that are foundationally derived from an innate drive to find meaning in life. It acknowledges this hope for self-understanding, that evokes a need to reconstruct plans to meet new goals and the capacity to adapt to life challenges. Owning a new sense of purpose elicits the capacity to believe in goal-oriented behavior that represents a cognitive attitude and desire to meet those expectations. Essentially, there is a dynamic symmetry between tapping into this need (agency thinking) and the hope that creates a cognitive platform for managing life challenges. Hope then creates the foundation for intentional change.
 
Hope manifests the belief that authentic goals inherently have purpose. This subjective understanding offers substantive behavioral motivation and an attitudinal understanding to one’s capability to derive pathways to those desired goals, and the motivation to use those pathways. This positive attitude incorporates three fundamental elements of hope: (1) innate motivation, (2) pathway thinking, and (3) goal orientation. Importantly, self-directed motivation is required as fundamental basis for authenticating goal-oriented strategies. 
 
Subjectivity
Self-reflection is a subjective inquiry into one’s attitudes, behavior, and capacity to manage one’s self. It is an actualization of their perceived capacity to understand their inherent strengths. As a support system, this tunes the mind to their innate competencies. It entails a validation of values that drive purpose and is compared to experiences that evoke benchmarks for positive behavior. This represents an identification process of the “true self,” the “future self,” and the “gap” or dynamic tension in between. Consequently, working through this process of self-reflection identifies distinctive needs that may be developed in order for clarity to be self-evident. 
 
If we are honest with ourselves, we will acknowledge that the environment (media, peer groups, etc.) attempts to shape much of who we are. As we mature, we soon lose a sense of who we where from the past and remodel our behavior to fit in and make adjustments in how we behave in order to adapt to life. Consequently, we stuff down those memories of what we truly were: our true self. Life becomes performance driven, beginning in school where we are measured by our rhetorical learning prowess. Further, our identities are modeled after others in order to find social acceptance.
 
Clarity
Self-clarity is required to offer the developmental insight derived from self-reflection. It reveals much of what we have subdued about our true nature. Behaviorally, the efficacy of this progression reveals who we were, how we deployed our inherent strengths during past challenges that serves as a basis for strength authentication. It tells us this is who we were before we felt the need to remodel our self. It serves as a mechanism to awaken and focus our attention on early role models that hold foundational memories of who we hoped to become and the values required to perfect that future self. This then offers as an attitudinal benchmark for new behavior that is worthy of being remodeled.
           
Objectivity
If subjective self-inquiry reveals an accurate self-portrait, then objectivity reveals our inherent competencies. We each yearn to know what we are good at. Standardized tests only measure a fraction of our multiple intelligences. Importantly, they miss dimensions of our abilities such as spatial, emotional and other specialized intelligences and how they influence cognitive reasoning. So, we are left unaware of our true potential and are therefore reliant upon what others perceive as our measurable talent.
 
What if we could grasp a deeper understanding of what we were born with and how this could be channeled in our work? If we were designed to flourish in different work settings, then understanding  our gifts offers opportunities to reflect upon our uniqueness. Formatively, the use of both objective and subjective assessments provide useful information in developing self-clarity for creating a hope-centered vision of our future.
 
Visioning about pathways, to becoming our ideal or future self, is manifest through this progression from self-reflection to self-clarity. It extrapolates the meaning from self-authentication revealing why goal pursuits have purpose. If goal determination (attaining future selfhood) allows for an expression of one’s uniqueness, then envisioning that pathway activates the motivation in order to enact strategies. When challenges present obstacles to goal achievement, the resiliency derived from hope offers the sustainable belief that adaptive behavior is attainable in order to achieve a positive outcomes.
 
GAP
Developmentally, if individuals reflect upon who they were and what they hope to become, then they may envision that gap to goal attainment, which lies before them. This gap represents the impasse that must be objectified in order to visualize the path to reconcile or remediate its influence in their lives. This process of traversing that gap requires intentional change. Through self-reflection, hope illuminates the meaning of maintaining that vision, which sustains goal-oriented behavior, leading to a life that holds new purpose.
 
Conclusion
The application of a Hope-Centered model offers counselors a unique construct that engages individuals in the subjective inquiry of self-reflection that has the propensity to detach cognitive barriers to positive goal-oriented outcomes. This awakening offers the capacity to recognize conflicts as originating from environment stressors and reconciled as faulty thinking. This enhances internal belief systems heightening the sense of self-management that is implicitly understood as authentic hope. This activates self-authenticated  purpose-oriented behavior. It creates the motivation to pursue goals, stay the course and use innate gifts in work that alters how they see themselves as living out life with new meaning.
 
Hope is fundamentally a cognitive attitude fostered by the belief in one’s capacity to achieve positive outcomes. It is the resilience that empowers adaptive behavior to meet goals in the face of life challenges. This perception of hope is manifest through subjective critical inquiry that unifies objective assessments into a dynamic process that illuminates why pursuits have meaning. This process allows individuals to own their pathway in life.  Developmentally, it creates a sense of adaptability to take on new roles required to bridge that gap and relinquish roles that are no longer relevant.
 
The application of this new way of living may be channeled into both personal and professional settings. Formatively, if frees individuals from living counterfeit lives that serve to meet the expectations of others and instead to live out lives that have purpose. It begins with self-authentication and crystalizes into identifying the person that they always hoped to become. That pathway lies before each individual and requires a process of both attitudinal and behavioral change to actualize their goals. Finally, this transformative process offers hope to individuals who yearn to identify their unique giftedness and a platform to express it in the world of work; one that becomes the basis for living out a life that is abundantly filled with purpose.

Blair Hollis M.A. GCDF BCCC
​Crossroads Consulting, Inc.


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November 06th, 2016

11/6/2016

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A Vocational Identity Crisis

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Gallup (2014) argues that approximately 68.5% of our workforce is disengaged. Forbes (2011) uses different language stating that nearly 70% hate their jobs. Why this disconnect? Part of this problem that creates a vocational identity crisis is that individuals are never asked to dig deep within themselves to understand how to navigate to something that resembles an avocation.
 
One of the most common questions when you meet someone is, “So, what do you do?” Whether we like it or not we are not defined by our passions or values but our job title. When you pause to reflect for a moment ask yourself this: “are you doing what is a reflection of who you are?” If not, then this presents a significant disconnect. To determine this, see if you can answer these three questions:
  1. Does your career path engage you interests, passion and abilities, or do you leave part of yourself at home when you go to the office?
  2. Do you have clarity as to who you really are and what makes you unique or is your identity just a distorted reflection of your job position?
  3. Do you see the need for something different, and if so, do you have the vision or capacity to make a change?   
In order to answer these questions many career development professional use inventories that are expedient, lack depth, and assess your responses based on what others have done. However, they never offer a glimpse into “why” people find meaning in what they do nor the values or abilities channeling in that endeavor.
 
Individuals want to tap into their uniqueness and discover the underlying purpose in what they do. This allows them to feel a sense of contentment in what they do. We argue that this requires something greater: both a subjective inquiry and an objective inventory.
 
Subjective Inquiry
To learn this requires a subjective understanding they only you can construct for yourself. It requires careful guidance to draw out your inner strengths to become acutely aware of what drives you and why it is a vital part if you. This is what provides meaning.
 
Objective Inquiry
Individuals also want to know what abilities they were born with? What is it about their cognitive wiring that makes them unique? Schools and psychologists use quantitative and verbal reasoning and IQ tests to define academic capabilities but that doesn’t measure all that multiple intelligences you possess. What if these abilities could be isolated and create patterns that actually support certain professions? What if you could learn how you problem solve best and which job environment will allow you to thrive.
 
Insight

We each are blessed with talented minds. If the workforce is to truly re-connect with their work this requires taking the time to engage in a process that begins with a subjective discovery process to discern the meaning of your work. Additionally, this requires learning to develop your newfound inborn abilities that together will offer clarity of purpose. It elevates the perception that what you do truly matters and is an integral part your identity. Integrating these two creates a dynamic synergy that allows for the creation of a vocational identity. When this is fully understood, individuals will re-connect with what they do and find a pathway to discover what is less like work and more like their calling. In this process, they will find personal fulfillment once again.
 
Blair Hollis M.A. GCDF BCCC
Crossroads Consulting, Inc.
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11/6/2016

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Finding A Pathway to Re-connecting
​ with Your Work

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If we find ourselves disconnected in our work it may be triggering a subjective yearning to validate that “what” you are doing has some overall meaning? In order to find a sense of fulfillment individuals must reconcile two basic questions:

  1. Do I find meaning in "what" I do and is it a reflection of "who" I am?
  2. Do I understand my inborn abilities and am I deploying them in what I do at work?
 
This piece will examine the first question focusing on a subjective or inner understanding that what you do is somehow meaningful. To assess this for yourself consider this:
 
Is there an inner voice that keeps asking questions such as:

What are my strengths?
  • What are my virtues such as our beliefs, values, and interests?
  • Is what I do a reflection of this constellation that defines me?
  • Is there a pathway that allows me to express my uniqueness in what I do?
  • Or am I merely defined by my title and the company I work for?
  • What if I could understand what drives me and how to channel that in what I do?
 
To discover the answers to these probative questions requires digging deep. We are never asked these questions in school because school is all about developing skill sets and is primarily performance driven. We are rarely prepared to learn from our mistakes, just fine tuned to learn how to learn what must be done to earn good grades. Unfortunately, this does not tap into critical self-inquiry to know who we are.
 
Narratives
Narratives have the propensity to ask those questions that have depth. Self-knowledge requires asking the big questions that draw from our past experiences to identify our strengths. Self-reflection requires this inquiry to self-authenticate or become aware of something called our true self that is a mirror image of who we are. This process asks questions that causes us to go deep into the recesses of our minds asking:


  • What strengths did we use when we accomplished a particular task that we are proud of?
  • Who serves as role models that foster inner strengths that we have chosen to emulate?
  • How did they problem-solve and re-emerge from a crisis?
  • What character strengths did they use to find solutions or even restorative health/
  • How are we like them?
  • What is it about those strengths that we hope to develop for ourselves?
 
If narratives elevate an awareness of our strengths and capacity to succeed in our personal and professional lives, then these in many ways constitute our true self. Our future self is an amalgamation or combination of who we are (true self) and adopting those strengths our roles models possess. That gap in between represents what we need to strive for in order to structurally develop ourselves to bridge this disconnect.
 
Interests
In order to connect our strengths with what we do we need to ask ourselves does our work truly interest us or is it just a means to bringing home funds to support our lifestyle and pay bills? Interest inventories measure what other people have done and how they have done it. However, they can never assessment the meaning of that endeavor or what drives individuals to persevere in an endeavor. Self-authenticated interest themes (Holland codes) may be perfected from narratives themselves if it is done properly.
 
If you find that the attitude held by a mentor is contagious, then you will adopt that behavior. Why? Because it says this is how I want to live my life. So, if that individual is a “giver” and contributes as a teacher, a healer (counselor, nurse, physician etc.) to affect the lives of others that theme code evokes that you are Social.
 
You may also be a spirited individual that wishes to collaborate with others to tap into your creative side and start a small enterprise someday. What you extrapolated or drew from your experiences with this mentor/role model allowed you to authenticate that this attitude and behavior is what you hope to become. This theme is called enterprising and reflects an entrepreneurial part of you.
 
Integrating Narrative Self-knowledge with Interests
​Integrating self-knowledge with authenticated interests creates confluence, a dynamic flow from your new self-understanding with an awareness of "what" truly interest you. This amplifies how, “What" I am doing reflects my character and projects a vocational identity.” When you can validate or confirm this for yourself, you will re-connect with your work on a different level with a new attitude that affects behavior and projects that "what" you do has greater meaning.

Blair Hollis M.A. GCDF BCCC
​Crossroads Consulting, Inc.



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11/1/2016

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Efficacy of Addiction & Recovery Vocational Workshops  

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​The goal of any treatment plan is to create a treatment alliance that awakens clients to the value in adopting action plans to affect change. Research argues this requires both a process of critical self-discovery and an actualization of inborn competencies that coalesce to form a hope-centered vocational identity. Individuals desire a method to reset their self-understanding and to grasp hold of a sense of their self-efficacy.
 
They also require a pathway to finding purpose in that journey. Emerging from treatment centers requires a plan where clients co-construct a cognitive bridge that will support them as they assimilate back into the world-at-large. Vocational development workshops offer treatment therapists with a unique approach that draws from clients a hope-centered self-understanding of both their character strengths and their inborn talent.
 
Narrative workbooks are composed by clients offering counselors a vital resource to strengthen their alliance and build strategic treatment goals to affect change. Positive experiences from the past serve as a platform to build upon, to reframe their present conflicts and construct a bridge emboldened by a new vocational identity. Workshops are designed to support the tremendous work that therapists engage in to achieve the treatment plan goals and objectives that offer their clients a restorative pathway back to sustainable health.
 
Workshops introduce pragmatic constructs such as:
 
Self-reflection
  • Self-reflection in a group workshop setting using a narrative workbook that draws out and validates inner strengths from prior positive experiences.
  • Sharing reflections in dyads normalizes a unity of purpose.
  • Transferring their workbook strengths entries on wall poster sheets reinforces their self-worth and begins framing their identity.
 
Self-clarity
  • Self-clarity emerges through self-authenticated interest themes that offer a vocational perspective and assists in delineating the purpose of a vocational identity.
  • Abilities are measured and discussed to actualize their inborn competencies to support vocational preferences.
  • Self-clarity integrates self-reflected strengths with vocational preferences to determine the meaning of endeavors as a basis for enacting an action plan for intentional change.
 
Visioning
  • Visioning allows clients to take ownership of this newfound vocational identity as a catalyst to change itself.
  • Visioning draws from inner strengths and the purpose of change
  • It manifests both an attitudinal and behavioral perception of life where change has a new purpose to establish well-being.
 
Action/Planning
  • Visioning requires clients to co-construct and own this pathway thinking as a structural bridge to connect treatment exit strategies with the world-at-large.
  • This action planning embraces a newfound attitude that requires focus to enact goals.
  • Intentional change planning instills purpose and the resiliency of this hope-centered attitude that stands in opposition to triggers.
 
Implementing and Adapting
  • Implementing and adapting inculcates abilities validation, visioning and planning through a pragmatic approach that manifests the meaning of action steps.
  • It elevates the principle that triggers need not impede their goals if they represent a false narrative.
  • Adapting is a purpose-driven decision to stay the course liberating clients from attractors
  • New behavior ultimately holds new meaning.
 
Our mission is to tune the hearts and minds of individuals to an understanding that they are not alone in their journey. They were endowed with gifts that may be developed through a process that guides them to an understanding of their uniqueness. This empowers attitudinal change that affects behavior.
 
This new way of living offers pathway thinking.  It elevates their inherent drive to learn more about their giftedness and its source. Ultimately, our goal is for individuals to own their new direction in relation to something greater than themselves, which leads to transformative change beginning from the inside out. In that quest, they find hope and the resilience to stay the course.

Blair Hollis M.A. GCDF BCCC

Crossroads Consulting, Inc.
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Founded by Blair Hollis M.A. GCDF BCCC ​​