Hello again from the beach in North Carolina! It is a beautiful partly sunny day, a light breeze is blowing in from the ocean after early morning showers. Spring is finally making it to coastal Carolina! But you are not here for a weather report. It's just that as the weather warms here, I am reminded more and more of my OTHER home, Iquitos, on the banks of the Amazon river
in northeastern Peru'.
I love both places and so leaving one to go to the other is only difficult in that I wish I could be in two places at once!
The Jungle has fascinated me since childhood, so being offered a chance to live there, well I jumped at it! The animals and plants, the people, culture and climate are so different, that no wonder I was immediately in love!
And like any place you go, there are good parts and bad parts to the experience. It takes a willingness to learn and adapt, and to see everything and everyone as potential learning experiences. Everything you do is teaching you SOMETHING. ( Sometimes I learn that I was better staying in bed that day! ) And everyone you meet is your teacher!!!
So with apologies to David Byrne: : "How did I get here?"
The "how" I got here ties in with my introductory post here on Steemit and how I have tried to conduct my life up to this point.
First I had to see my future self. If you can't see your "Future-Self" in a place, or situation, or work that excites you, you will find it difficult to get there. Each step of the way, I found I had to "see" myself doing these things. Like a waking dream, or day-dream, I had to first have sort of a vision of myself doing what I wanted, and where I wanted it. Many times the idea came from a conversation with myself that started with : " WOULDN'T IT BE COOL IF........???"
(me and "Bob Marley"- chilin')
I could help rescue orphaned animals! "Well" the interior dialog goes, " "I've never done that"
See, you are not giving yourself enough credit. If you have been a pet owner, you already have some related experience for doing this. And doing this requires that you look at yourself and your abilities, critically, in a new way. And say to yourself: why not?
The real trick is to be able to strike a balance between challenging yourself, (reinvention) finding that place where you are for sure leaving your comfort zone to go learn something new, and tempering that with enough personal experience and skill to rethink how you can use what you already know and are comfortable with .
Those skills that are already part of your own power and personal self image.
Remember the old adage of looking for the sweet spot between being on the LEADING edge, yet not right on the BLEEDING edge?
You will be learning and that has both components of anxiety (can I do this?) and confidence (I've been here before and parts of this feel familiar). I didn't have any experience with Monkeys, but hey, I've had dogs and cats and other pets. I learn what their needs are, and go from there.
As it turned out Howler moneys like Bob were the perfect choice for a first try. They are very calm and do not have sharp baiting teeth!
I like that second definition of "Reinvent"from the dictionary. To remake or redo completely. However, even that definition doesn't convey the sense that, this is a process. You should not try to redo everything completely all at once. First, you must look at your existing skills and interests ( let's call them passions) and ask yourself, is there any thing I know now that can be applied to this new direction?
When I left Burlington Northern Railroad as a Forester, I decided I wanted to learn Building Construction Supervision. OK, cool.
Now, what skills do I already have that can be applied here? Where is the overlap between what I already know and where I want to be?
And this is a CRUCIAL question I have asked myself EVERY TIME I have made such a step.
In that case, as part of the curriculum at the University, I was requited to take construction management and surveying classes. And BN put me to work both overseeing road design and construction, but also surveying property boundaries.
These skills I could readily apply in my new position.
Get creative and look for opportunities to "Re-task" what skills you DO possess.
I got here
by first visualizing myself doing this. If you can't see it in your mind's eye, it will never come to pass for you.
SO dream a little!!!!
So tell what is YOUR vision?
I'll tell you mine, if you tell me yours!
My next blog entry will look at how this process worked for me, in some very tangible ways. I hope you can find some application for this process in your life.
