The Moment That Changed My Life

Each life has defining moments. The moment that changed my life happened in a home for alcoholic women in 1976. I was in a discussion with Lois, another alcoholic from Brooklyn, and she was talking about her life. Midway through her talk, I felt intense warmth toward her and compassion flowed through me. The miracle was that I had had a very sheltered life and she had had a very tough life, but in that moment we were sisters and kindred spirits.

When I got up and walked outside, everything was different—trees, cars, the street—I saw everything with new eyes. It took me much searching to find out what had happened to me. In a book by William James entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), I found that I had had a radical conversion.

Did I answer a calling? I don’t know what happened to me except I knew that God had given me that compassion and love that I felt that day. I know that someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument.

From that day until today, I have tried to accept the guidance that God gives me and it has been the most amazing journey. I don’t believe that God does more for me now than He did before that day. The difference is that I now can see the daily miracles. “Once I was blind and now I see.”

About the Changemaker Library

The Changemaker Library includes the following books. All of the books used are the choices of the author without solicitation from any author or publisher. We include the title of the book, the author, the ISBN number, and an Amazon link if you choose to order the books yourself.

For the Changemaker Library, we will be including the basic features of some books you may want to use. All of the books used are the choices of Changemaker without solicitation from any author or publisher. At the beginning of the post, we have listed the name of the book, the author, the ISBN number, and a link where you can order the book if you choose. The rest of the post includes actual content from that book for you to better be able to determine if this is a book for you.

I keep my special books together and use them frequently. I call them my textbooks as I seek direction time and time again from them. I will be reporting about each them on posts in order to help you to create your library of the books that will help you. The Changemaker Library presently has 50+ books we use for our sessions. This library can be acquired gradually either for your individual work or resources for the Changemaker Groups that you begin.

All the books are listed on Changemaker: Change Your Life and have an Amazon link to buy the book.

About Changemaker Test

Everyone has many personality labels yet most of us resist being labeled. Over a lifetime, we each will have hundreds of labels because we each have unique life experiences. The main way we learn our labels is from others. We generally resist these learnings as it feels that the labels have a negative connotation. Yet most of our labels are positive and negative at the same time.

We each love to learn about ourselves. But we pretend that we don’t want to know. It is the same maneuver we use to view a group picture that includes us. While oohing and aahing over all the other group members, we are secretly gazing at ourselves.

Personality labels are personality indicators. Labels can be positive and negative at the same time. Understanding ourselves and what motivates each of us can be a powerful tool towards meeting life’s challenges and personal dreams.

By learning our personality traits, we can determine the positives about ourselves and change the negative thoughts to positive ones. This test is meant to be the starting point for self-discovery. With the complete test, answers and explanations, anyone can test their friends and family. Also anyone who has compassion for others can use these materials to begin discussion groups of persons interested in self-discovery.

The Changemaker Test, which is meant as a vehicle for self-discovery, includes the labels used in NLP (neurolinguistic programming), birth order, family roles, emotional energies, and MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator).

The Changemaker Test includes:

• The test of 25 personality traits include the categories of NLP (neurolinguistic programming), birth order, family roles, emotional energy, and MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)

• From the 25 traits, each person will learn 10 of his/her personality traits

• Each of the 25 traits is explained in an individual description

• Included is the Big Five Test and enneagram information

• A bibliography for all the personality traits

• Also recommended websites for the included personality schools

By learning our personality traits, we can determine the positives about ourselves to enrich our self-image. The Changemaker Test is meant to be the starting point for self-discovery. Using the test anyone with compassion and interest in others can use these materials to begin groups to help others. You may begin your free group at Squidoo. First create a lens there about one of your interests and, then, after you have published your lens, you may start your own group.

Goals Are Dreams With a Deadline!

Goals are dreams with a deadline. Everything you want in life can be more quickly achieved with the use of goals. You maY want to write them down in a notebook and review them weekly. Your short-term goals should be connected to your long-term goals.

You may want to use an action board. This can be a large bulletin board (I use 22×34 and I have 4 of them). My bulletin boards also have copies of paintings, nature, and the ocean along with my goals.

You may use 3×5 cards on your bulletin board under 4-5 goal headings. Be sure to include the estimated deadline for each goal. You may use general headings: such as, goals-dreams-problems-solutions. You may choose to add post-it notes to your index cards. I use dressmakers’ pins which are long straight pins. I use these because they make smaller holes in my pictures and they work great on the bulletin. You may want to save the old index cards to watch your progress. By using multi-colored cards you can easily track your progress with a glance.

If you have the room, you may choose to cover the entire wall with corkboard to have a large area for your planning.

In a large office setting with meeting room capabilities for large groups, the walls may be lined with dry eraser boards to use for brain-storming sessions which may be a weekly event.

Remember to be specific with planned completion dates. Some sample goals may be:

• Personal development

Develop a support group of 3-5 people during the next month.

Join a volunteer group; for example. Teach someone to read by joining a literary group.

Sign up for computer class at a local college.

Arrange to take some tests that show your interests and/or abilities.

• Family development

Set aside one weekend per month to arrange special dates with your spouse.

Schedule separate quality time with each of your children.

• Spiritual growth

Set aside 15-20 minutes each day to practice meditation.

Choose a topic about spirituality and study everything about it.

Using a steno pad or similar notebook, find a topic for study in a concordance of the Bible or other spiritual literature and record the verses you find for the topic you’ve chosen.

On 3×5 index cards, record valuable quotations for spiritual qualitites you want to work on.

Marketing statement: in 25 words or less, define what you believe your work offers to the world.

Finish reading here.

Callings

Every day since 1976, I have tried to follow God’s help for my life. I believe that God will help anyone who opens his/her life/heart to Him. But following His will is sometimes difficult. The difficulty is in not letting your ego interfere with your soul.

I keep several books in my “textbooks for my life” group. I keep these separate and available and use them as textbooks. One of them is Callings: Finding and Following and Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy. Listening to callings for a life direction takes much patience and faith.

In Callings, Levoy relates: “Just as in monastic life, where there are periods of being a candidate and a novitiate before taking vows, so in life our calls are also tested. We are tempted away and distracted; we hear the siren song of old habits and addictions; we feel pure laziness and amnesia; we discover the cold necessities of life.”

“Joseph Campbell called this part of the heroic journey “the road of trials” which is between The Epiphany and The Grind, between the heart flushed with heroic song and the heart with its human frailties. On this road, we answer the elemental question of whether our commitments are real or imagined.

The ordeals on this endless road, the dragons that have to be slain over and over again, serve to test us, like the Sphinx who confronted Oedipus before he could continue his journey. They teach us humility and a sense of proper perspective, and they help reveal our hidden powers.”

One of my issues after years of practice in listening to the God of my understanding has been accepting larger gifts than I “deserve”. Who decides what I “deserve”? What if I may receive the desires of my heart?

According to Brian Mahan in his book, Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition, “vocation speaks of a gracious discovery of a kind of interior consonance between our deepest desires and hopes and our unique gifts, as they summoned forth by the needs of others and realized in response to that summons.”

“That’s what’s so enticing about the idea of vocation: in embracing one’s vocation, the draining internal opposition between compassion and personal ambition is, at least in principle, overcome.

As Frederick Buechner says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

In continuing about callings, I am using another book from my “textbooks for my life” group of books, Stand Like Mountain, Flow Like Water, by Brain Luke Seaward. He writes: “At some point in life, each individual is beckoned by the call of his or her soul to fully awaken spiritually. It may be curiosity, an intuitive inclination or a full-blown crisis. My friend Jane is one of many people who, as Kubler-Ross would say, has entered into her spiritual quarter—”someone who has begun to question the meaning of life and her relationship to the universe.”

“Some people walk gracefully into this stage, some stumble, still others immerse themselves. Since the territory is unfamiliar, however, the majority of people refuse to budge, thus denying any pursuit of the spiritual aspect of their lives.”

Having been born in 1940, when I had my Moment of Truth, I couldn’t keep quiet about what had happened to me. Even in twelve-step programs, talking about radical conversions was very suspect. The skepticism was many things. One of these fears was to be expected—in that every struggling addict would like to be “saved” and the ordeal of recovery could be done.

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, I always loved the passage about some of us looking for the easier, softer way. Every change I came to, I sought the easier, softer way. But none of those choices ever ended up to be the best choices. The best choices were the ones I came to after I had exhausted all other routes. They could easily be labeled, “Letting go and letting God.”