By ANGELA PIDDUCK Sunday, May 20 2012

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Gone are the days when the choice of a profession was either a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Today, life and career coach Anthony Hadeed, chief executive officer of YourLifePurpose Limited (Helping You Discover Your Purpose in Life), says that with psychometric testing “there are 840 categories of careers in the US Department of Labour database under which there are multiple careers, so there are thousands of careers that young people have to choose from, so it is understandable that young people are confused because of the proliferation of career choices”.

Hadeed, a Jerningham Gold Medalist from St Mary’s College in 1979, initially wanted to be a medical doctor.

“My father died when I was 15 but I always wanted to help people, and as a teenager I was always concerned about people’s suffering,” Hadeed told Sunday Newsday.

However, as the seventh of eight children and with the A level results late that year, his mother could only afford to give him a ticket to Canada and one term’s tuition. Hadeed was 17 when he entered Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and had started to study the sciences in a pre-med course, when his mother called to say that he had won an Open Science Scholarship and the Jerningham Gold Medal, having topped the A level exams in the country.

Meanwhile, he had been accepted to study medicine at both the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the University of Manchester in England, but gave up his dream to pursue medicine because he had no one to take him to the UK. He was still recovering from the culture shock of leaving Trinidad to go to Canada, and could not endure another culture shock in going from Canada to the UK. Canada was no longer accepting foreigners in its medical program and so Hadeed decided to become a professor instead and remained in Canada. By 1983, he had obtained a first class honours Bachelor of Science degree in physics, and by age 22, in 1984, had obtained a Master’s Degree in High Energy Physics from the University of Toronto.

“I began of pursuing a doctorate in physics at University of Toronto, and after two years of doing research and teaching physics, I found out that Canada was not hiring professors at that time. So I came home in 1986 and tried to get a government job to pay back for my scholarship, but they couldn’t find me a job in my field,” Hadeed recalled.

In 1987, Hadeed returned to Canada and kept searching for a job, when he met a Guyanese national at a cricket game. “He started to talk about his C programmer that was leaving in two weeks at Crowntek, owned by CrownEx in Canada, and asked, ‘Would I take the job of C programmer?’ This was my first entry into the world of information technology,” said Hadeed, who quickly did crash courses on his own and taught himself C programming in two weeks.

His only experience in IT had been a half course ten years before but by September 1987 he was employed as a full time programmer analyst. It was at this point that Hadeed gave up the dream of becoming a professor in physics.

At the end of 18 months, Hadeed transferred to systems engineer, which he said “was more suited to my personality, as programming was too isolating. I am a people person and so this gave me an opportunity to help people, and as simple as it seems I was indeed helping people”. Within a year he was promoted to manager of the systems engineering group at Crowntek.

“I told my staff that we were not just installing systems, but helping people stay employed, because if their systems go down they are out of jobs, and so my staff became more motivated when they saw the people connection. I learned always to try to keep the people contact, and to see yourself are a human being helping other human beings, so I got my staff to see they were helping society.”

After eight years working up the chain of command with Crowntek/GE, Hadeed started his own business in IT – AMH Communications Inc, Toronto, again working at something that was not his passion.

“Major Law firms in Canada were our clients. We were providing IT solutions for them, by understanding their needs on how their money was best spent and not wasted.”

He enjoyed 14 successful years (1995-2009) but said, “It catches up to you in midlife. I was doing something that I wasn’t really happy doing. I was no longer going out to customers, because I was managing my staff, and so the isolation started to kick in. I was literally burnt out and almost gave away my business to get out at all cost. I was happy that my employees took it over, as it was not worth my peace of mind and health to continue.”

Hadeed visited John Schurmann, a life coach in Toronto, and through the use of Psychometric testing (derived from psychometrics, the science of measuring mental abilities and processes), Hadeed was guided to try careers like guidance counselor, medicine, youth counseling and medical technician.

“I realized if I started studying medicine at age 47, I might be a medical doctor at 56, that much older for studying, and the stress of internship. But with one or two years study as a “coach” I could help people to be proactively happy, as if I catch them young they will see a job as a hobby, and I was always comfortable working with the youth,” Hadeed said.

“The good Lord was leading me to guide them into the right path, almost like preventative medicine, so I would at the same time fulfill my childhood dream in a different way. I saw the effect on my health and life from not doing what I really wanted to do, and knew the dangers of not speaking up and going into the wrong career … I wanted to do medicine but just didn’t pursue my dream strongly enough.” Hadeed completed a research paper for his coaching certification and determined that three out of every ten people suffer from health or family problems because they are not living a purpose driven life, a life with the right career. He noted that eventually this affects your health and you take it out on family, as you keep the unhappiness within you and it causes health problems.

It is because Hadeed once again gave up his previous dreams that he is able to pick up when young people are not in touch with their emotions. He said if one’s emotional intelligence quotient (EIQ) is low, you cannot assess your own emotions and will be unable to assess other people’s emotions because you are not emotionally perceptive. He noted that an emotionally well balanced person is someone who can show reasonable ranges of happiness, anger and sadness, without going from one extreme to the other, as no emotions and extreme emotions are both unhealthy, somewhere in between is healthy. With a high scoring EIQ, an emotionally well balanced person has a much greater chance of being successful in his/her career, family and society, “it’s a modern indicator of success in life today, and businesses are aware of this, and schools are becoming aware, that an early indicator of a child having problems and shutting down, means they are not in touch with their emotions”.

Hadeed realized that career guidance is one of the weakest points in the global education system, went online and eventually got certification as a certified professional coach, specializing in life coaching and career coaching with the International Coach Academy, a worldwide international company. A year ago, well into his 40’s, Hadeed became nostalgic and the extremely spiritual man felt God was guiding him back home.

“It sounds crazy,” he said, “with the kidnapping and everything else, but I felt I was being guided back to Trinidad. I was suffering the seasonal affective disorder syndrome, depression in winter, and just needed to come back and see if I liked it. In a matter of months everything gelled, I completed the international coaching certification and opened my business YourLifePurpose Limited at 9-11 Fitt Street in Woodbrook (E-mail: info@yourlifepurpose.com , Tel.: 1-868-224-3474, Mobile: 1-868-474-1198) in July 2011, and nearly one year later I am happy.”

Eighty percent of his business is career coaching and the list of psychometric assessments offered to clients is very extensive and covers a wide spectrum of assessments in the categories of career, personality, attitude and lifestyle, intelligence and relationships, to recommend careers which suit their personality. The other 20 percent of his business is life coaching, which includes four coaching aspects — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. If something is missing in a client’s life, Hadeed helps them to get a better balance and avoid a crisis.

Because health problems can follow not living a purpose driven life, Hadeed stressed it is incumbent upon the Ministry of Education to focus some efforts on career guidance in a more structured scientific way, such as starting psychometric assessments for students from form three. It should not be all about academics, he said, career guidance is an integral part of developing a successful individual, which in turn would bring tremendous returns for the citizens of this country and their families, if they lead purpose driven passionate lives through their careers. He said, however, that to do so, persons must get their career right and have the courage to make that change at whatever age, preferably before going to university.

© newsday.co.tt

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Introduction

A survey carried out by Harris Interactive (2006) on behalf of CareerBuilder.com showed that 84% of working people in the US do not have their “dream jobs”. This means that most people are not in careers that they like or are not passionate about, and thus are not fulfilling what they consider their “life purposes”. The present research seeks to determine what effects this has on the personal and family health of such people, and how this problem can be tackled at the root level. From a survey carried out by the author (Hadeed, 2012), in which people answered questions pertaining to this wide-spread and important issue, over 60% of respondents said that they were not living their life purpose(s) through their careers. Of these, 2/3 of them believed that this has had negative effects on their personal and/or family health. This means that roughly three out of ten people are experiencing personal and/or family health problems because of careers that they are not passionate about, and probably not in line with their strengths and long-term visions! This is because not living a purpose-driven life through one’s career leads to unmanageable levels of stress, and according to the Biopsychosocial (BSP) model of health, this stress is directly and indirectly linked to poorer health. Thus, offering life and career coaching on a personal and group level, as well as consistent and sustained career guidance courses at the secondary school level and beyond, especially to adolescents and young adults as they endeavor to discern their vocational career paths in life, can assist them in proactively living healthier, happier, and more fulfilled lives.

Biopsychosocial vs. Biophysical Model of Health

The traditional Biophysical model of health focuses primarily on the physical and pathological causes of diseases in humans, and the treatment of such diseases by the use of medications and therapy. In recent years, the medical profession has undergone an evolution toward a more holistic view of health, with the Biopsychosocial model being proposed by Engel in 1977. It focuses on the biological, psychological and social aspects of human beings, and how these three important areas interplay in determining overall health, as shown in the following diagram ^[1]:

Figure 1: The Biopsychosocial Model of Health
– Venn Diagram

Unfortunately the promotion of health through the understanding of the Biopsychosocial model in the early periods of life is not emphasized in most countries, and this contributes to long-term health problems and overall family instabilities.

Career Choice, Life Purpose and Effects on Self-Efficacy

There are few other decisions that have such a major influence on people’s lives as the choice of a vocation and subsequent career, which is ultimately linked to their perceived “life purpose”. Most people spend considerably more time on the job than in any other single activity, and the choice of one’s career significantly affects one’s lifestyle. Adjustment to work is closely linked to mental health and physical well-being (Hackett & Betz, in press). According to Bandura, 1995, “Perceived self-efficacy is defined as people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives. Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave.” Thus if people are assisted in discovering the vocational careers that match their interests, intelligence types, values, and work-styles, they are much more likely to develop better self-efficacy. This in turn will lead to better coping mechanisms for stress in their careers, and thus better overall health according to the Biopsychosocial model.

Young adulthood is definitely a time when individuals must learn how to deal with numerous new expectations, especially work-related careers. A strong feeling of self-efficacy is a vital factor for the achievement of additional abilities as well as successfulness. People who go into their adult years inadequately armed with proper abilities, and suffering from self-doubts realize that many elements of their adulthood are stress-filled and discouraging. In many ways self-efficacy helps lead to success in vocational career selection and development. Values concerning a person’s abilities influence the vocational careers that they often select. Psychosocial abilities have more to do with career success as compared to one’s technical abilities. Choosing the appropriate vocational career early in a person’s life leads to better self-efficacy or beliefs in one’s abilities which in turn greatly enhances confidence in living one’s perceived life purpose. This ultimately leads to better overall health and family dynamics.

Conversely, people in careers that they perceive themselves lacking self-efficacy for, often under-perform in their jobs. According to Bandura, 1995, such people “view insufficient performance as deficient aptitude, and it does not require much failure for them to lose faith in their capabilities. They fall easy victim to stress and depression.” Thus a career that is not purpose-driven and fulfilling often leads to unhealthy amounts of stress.

Effects of Prolonged Stress from not Living a Purpose-Driven Life

Excessive and sustained amounts of stress that plague an individual due to psychological and social factors have been shown to weaken the immune system and lead to compromised health (Krantz, Grunberg, & Baum, 1985; O’Leary, 1990). Many of the biological effects of one’s perceived abilities arise in the context of coping with high levels of stress in the many issues and tasks of daily life. “Exposure to stressors without per­ceived efficacy to control them activates autonomic, catecholamine, and endogenous opioid systems. After people’s perceived coping efficacy is strengthened, they manage the same stressors without experiencing any distress, visceral agitation, or activation of stress-related hormones” (Bandura, 1995). The kinds of biochemical responses which have been proven to be associated with inadequate coping abilities take part in regulating the body’s defense mechanisms. Hence, experiencing unmanageable stress has a tendency to weaken the body’s defense mechanisms, which can lead to compromised health. (Kiecolt-Glaser & Glaser, 1987; Maier, Laudenslager, & Ryan, 1985; Shavit & Martin, 1987).

There is also an indirect correlation between not living a purpose-driven life and one’s health in that the feeling of living an unfulfilled life can lead to unhealthy habits such as excessive alcohol consumption, drug abuse and other addictions, lethargy leading to lack of exercise, frustration and displaced anger. These behaviors often affect one’s family life as well.

A survey was carried out by the author (Hadeed, 2012), in which people answered questions pertaining to the important issue about their careers, life purposes and the effects on their personal and family health. Here are the questions asked in the survey and the results:

Question 1: Do you believe that every person has a main purpose in life which should be lived out through his or her career?

- Yes, I believe that each person has a specific overall purpose in life which should be lived out through his or her career: 38.89%

- Yes, but there can be a broad range of purposes and careers for each person: 50.00%

- No, I do not believe that each person has a specific purpose in life: 11.11%

Question 2: If you believe that people have specific purposes in life with regard to their careers, are you currently living your life purpose in your career?

- Yes: 37.50%

- No: 62.50%

Question 3: If you are not living your life purpose through your career, has this had a negative effect on your personal health and/or your family’s health?

- Yes: 46.15%

- No: 15.38%

- I’m not sure: 38.46%

The above results imply that roughly three out of ten people experience personal and/or family health problems because of careers that are not to their liking, probably not in line with their strengths and passions, and thus not aligned with their perceived life purposes!

As we have seen above, not being fulfilled in one’s career (i.e. the feeling of not living a purpose-driven life) leads to unhealthy levels of stress, and if left unresolved for many years, can lead to feelings of inadequacy, depression, mid-life crises, nervous breakdowns, physical health problems, family problems, and even marriage breakdowns. These were the various health and family related problems reported by some of the people in the above survey (Hadeed, 2012).

Examples of Purpose-Driven Lives

There are many people in history who have lead extremely purpose-driven lives and certain ones standout as models for the rest of society. They show what the human spirit is capable of achieving when a clear life purpose is understood and followed to the end. The effects that these three men (and others, of course) have had on our world have been nothing short of remarkable and life-altering.

Jesus Christ

The most famous example in the author’s opinion is that of the life of Jesus Christ, who lived from the year 4 BC to 30 AD. He spent forty days and forty nights in the desert at the start of his public ministry at the age of thirty. During this time, he prayed and fasted about his mission or “life purpose” in the world. When he returned from the desert, nothing could stop him from accomplishing his mission, not even his own prophesy about how and when he would die. One of his disciples Peter tried to convince him not to go to Jerusalem where his public execution awaited him. This was Jesus’ response to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man”, (Matthew 16:23 Revised Standard Edition). After the completion of his public ministry at the age of 33, he was forced to carry a heavy wooden cross to Calvary hill. He was nailed to the cross and left there until he died, thus accomplishing the salvation he came to bring the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi lived from October 2, 1869 to January 30, 1948. He was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement. Pioneering the use of non-violent resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a tool to fight for civil rights and freedom, he founded his doctrine of nonviolent protest to achieve political and social progress based upon total nonviolence for which he is internationally renowned. ^{[2] [3]} Gandhi led India to its independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Martin Luther-King

Another example is that of the life of Martin Luther-King who lived from January 15, 1929 to April 4, 1968. He was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. ^[4] He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. ^[5]

How Life & Career Coaching Can Help Build Purpose-Driven Lives

Career development has not received a lot of attention in the mainstream literature (Osipow, 1986). “Career development, as opposed to training for job skills (e.g., vocational education), can be defined as the preparation for, choice of, entry into, and adjustment to work throughout the life span” (Super, 1990). Although the demand for career guidance has long been high among adolescents and young adults, career counseling has not received the attention it warrants from most applied psychologists (Hackett, 1993; Spokane, 1991). In today’s rapidly changing job markets the need for career services has never been greater. The US Department of Labor in 2010 listed over 820 various types of careers from which people can choose!

Thus if people are assisted in discovering the vocational careers that match their interests, intelligence types, values, and work-styles, they are much more likely to develop better self-efficacy. As demonstrated in this research, this would lead to better overall health. Psychometric testing within the context of life and career coaching is one important tool that can assist in this often difficult task. Two such Psychometric assessments used by the author in his career and life coaching practice are (i) the “Vocational Style & Personality Assessment or VoSPA”, and (ii) the “Multi-Dimensional Emotional Intelligence Quotient or MEIQ”. Both of these assessments are licensed from Psychtests, Inc. The VoSPA assessment produces a report that lists the interests, intelligence types, values, and work-styles of the client in descending order of scores, and then lists six to ten careers that match the client’s strengths. These careers are retrieved from the most up-to-date US Department of Labor’s O*Net career database. The report can then be used in a career coaching relationship as a starting point for the client’s self-discovery regarding their career path and consequent “life purpose.”

Similarly, the MEIQ assessment produces a report that lists the client’s strengths and limitations in five key categories, namely, (i) Emotional Identification, Perception, and Expression, (ii) Emotional Facilitation of Thought, (iii) Emotional Understanding, (iv) Emotional Management, and (v) Moderating Emotional Intelligence Factors. The report then provides concrete advice as to what areas within the five categories the client needs to work on to improve his or her EIQ. Again, this report can be used in a life coaching relationship as a starting point for the client’s self-discovery regarding their emotional health and intelligence. This in turn can assist clients in asserting themselves more when it comes to the choice of their vocational careers, and subsequently in dealing more effectively with the challenges surrounding this important aspect of their lives, namely, their life purpose!

Conclusion

The goal of this research was to show the negative effects on personal and family health of not living a purpose-driven life, and how life and career coaching, and sustained career guidance courses can assist in this very important area. Based on the Biopsychosocial (BSP) model of health, biological, psychological, and social factors all play important roles in the overall health of individuals. The survey conducted by the author (Hadeed, 2012) showed that three out of ten people reported experiencing negative effects on their personal and/or family health because they were not living their “life purpose” through their careers. Departments of Health in countries around the world would do well to pay attention to this correlation and to the profound social and economic consequences of a lack of consistent and sustained career guidance in most educational systems. The introduction of a mandatory career guidance course for all students beginning in the first year of secondary school (approximately at age 13), and continuing until the completion of secondary school, would benefit all students immensely. Parents willing to supplement this career guidance should seriously consider engaging the services of a life and career coach for additional one-on-one assistance in the life altering choice of their children’s vocational careers. They owe it to their children’s future health and family well-being, as well as to the overall socioeconomic health of society.

References

Bandura, A. (1995). Self-Efficacy in Changing Societies. Cambridge University Press.

Hackett, G. (1993). Career counseling and psychotherapy; False dichotomies and recommended remedies. Journal of Career Assessment, 1, 105-196

Hackett, G. & Betz, N. E. (in press). Career choice and development; In J. E. Maddux (ed.), Self-Efficacy, adaptation, and adjustment: Theory, research, and application. New York: Plenum.

Hadeed, A. (2012). The Effects on Your Personal and Family Health of not Living Your Life Purpose. http://yourlifepurpose.com/2010/01/14/the-effects-on-your-personal-and-family-health-of-not-living-your-life-purpose/

Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. & Glaser, R. (1987). Behavioral influences on immune function: Evidence for the interplay between stress and health. In T. Field, P. M. McCabe, & N. Schneiderman (Eds.), Stress and coping across development (Vol. 2, pp. 198-206). Hilsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Krantz, D. S., Grunberg, N. E. & Baum, A. (1985). Health psychology. Annual Reviews in Psychology, 36, 349-383.

Maier, S. F., Laudenslager, M. L., & Ryan, S. M. (1985). Stressor controllability, Immune function, and endogenous opiates. In F. R. Brush & J. B. Overmier (Eds.), Affect, conditioning, and cognition: Essays on the determinants of behavior (pp. 183-201). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

O’Leary, A. (1990). Stress, emotion, and human immune function. Psychological Bulletin, 108,363-382.

Osipow, S. H. (1986). Career issues through the life span. In M. S. Pallak & R. O. Perloff (eds.), Psychology and work: Productivity, change, and employment (pp. 141-168). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Shavit, Y. & Martin, F. C. (1987). Opiates, stress, and immunity: Animal studies. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 9, 11-20.

Spokane, A. R. (1991). Career intervention. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Super, D. E. (1990). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. In D. Brown, L. Brooks, and Associates, Career choice and development (pp. 197-261). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Footnotes

¹ The Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Illness. Module by: Dr. Shaheen E Lakhan

² Gandhi, M. K. (1982) [10 November 1921]. “The Momentous Issue”. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 25 (electronic ed.). New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India. pp. 76–78. Retrieved 11 January 2012. “Complete civil disobedience is rebellion without the element of violence in it. An out and out civil resister simply ignores the authority of the state. He becomes an outlaw claiming to disregard every unmoral state law. …In doing all this he never uses force and never resists force when it is used against him. In fact, he invites imprisonment and other uses of force against himself…“

³ Gandhi, M. K. (1976) [10 September 1935]. “Letter to P. Kodanda Rao”. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. 67 (1st April- 1st October 1938) (electronic ed.). New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India. p. 400. Retrieved 11 January 2012. “But I found that even civil disobedience failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I therefore adopted the phrase civil resistance. Non-violence was always an integral part of our struggle.“

⁴ Schlesinger, Arthur M. (2002) [1965], A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, p. xiv.

⁵ D’Souza, Placido P. (January 20, 2003). “Commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.: Gandhi’s influence on King”. San Francisco Chronicle.

Figure Captions

Figure 1. The Biopsychosocial Model of Health – Venn Diagram

We have a choice in these hurtful life experiences: will they make us bitter for the rest of our lives or will they make us better people? But you might object – how can a very hurtful and unfair situation in our life possibly makes us better people? Here’s the secret:
(1) BITTER – The “I” in bitter stands for just that. When we focus on ourselves and what we have lost or suffered in the particular hurtful experience, we become and can remain bitter for the rest of our lives.  We compound the hurt with more hurt and the world around us becomes even darker with our added bitterness.  The “Enemy” smiles because he is succeeding in making the world a worse place.

OR

(2) BETTER – The “E” in better stands for Eternity. When we focus on the value of suffering in God’s plan of salvation as was revealed by Jesus’ own suffering to save us, we realize that we are participating in God’s plan to save the world. What we have lost or suffered in the particular hurtful experience can make us better if we unite our sufferings to that of Jesus. We become and remain better for all eternity!

So the choice is ours: Bitter or Better,  ”I” or “Eternity”, my plan or God’s plan, self-centered or God-centered?  Make the smart choice and the world will become a brighter place!

(1) Jesus died on the cross to conquer Sin and Death.  He won the ultimate victory in the greatest battle that the Universe has ever known – the battle between the forces of Good and Evil.
(2) Jesus promised to be with us until the end of time.  He comes to our help whenever we call on Him, just like a good shepherd comes to the rescue of his sheep when they go astray and bleat for help.

Jesus wants us to become like children again in our relationship with God, just like the relationship that Adam and Eve had with God in the Garden of Eden before they sinned.  Remember Jesus’ words as recorded in Matthew 18:3: “Truly, I say to you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Adam and Eve were innocent and childlike in their trust in God, much like little children are with their parents. They also enjoyed what is known as the “beatific vision”, that is, they saw God face-to-face!  After they sinned, they lost the beatific vision, they were no longer childlike in their relationship with God, they tried to become self-sufficient and independent, and generally life became much more difficult and even miserable.  Their relationship with each other and with God became strained, they fell prey to illnesses, work became a struggle, and women now had to bear pain in childbirth!  This is a tall order for wanting our independence from God and wanting to be our own bosses!  Life could have been so much simpler and worry-free if Adam and Eve had remained childlike in their relationship with God.

So here is the “good news” in a nutshell: Jesus can restore you and I to that original childlike relationship with God if we want it – that’s it!  But He leaves the decision up to us.  All we have to do is to believe that Jesus has overcome the world and all of its allurements, our weak flesh and all of its temptations, and of course, the Devil and all of his tricks and deceptions.  These are the three highways that lead to spiritual death: the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Jesus has conquered all three of these by coming to earth, taking on flesh, and resisting all the temptations of these three forces without ever committing a single sin!  He has won the battle for you and I, and He wants us to call on Him anytime anyplace to fight our battles, so that we can have the victory in His name and go to Heaven and not to Hell!

The choice is yours:
(1) Will you choose to become like a child again in your relationship with God, and let Jesus fight your battles for you so that you can go to Heaven one day and enjoy eternal happiness? OR
(2) Will you choose to ignore Jesus’ offer and fight your own battles with the world, the flesh and the Devil, and risk going to Hell one day and suffering eternal damnation?

Here are some practical tips for becoming more child like in your relationship with God, the way He meant it to be, right from the very beginning:
- Call on Jesus as soon as you are in trouble in any way, by simply saying with all your heart, “Jesus Good Shepherd I need you!”  Don’t be independent and try to fight the battles on your own because you’ll lose more battles than you’ll win.
- Talk to Him throughout your day as you would to a very close friend.  Share all of your joys, successes, frustrations, sorrows etc. because remember, He wants to have an intimate friendship with you even more than you want it!
- Know that He loves you no matter what happens.  Even if you fall into sin, don’t run away from Him, but run toward Him and ask Him for forgiveness.  His greatest attribute as God is His mercy.

Now I don’t know about you, but that’s the greatest news that I have ever heard in my life, period!  Heaven knows that our world desperately needs some good news given all of the bad news that surrounds us every day.  So go ahead and dare to be a child again with God; you’ll soon start to wonder why you took the harder road of independence from God all these years.  Adam and Eve must have wondered the same thing too after they sinned.  Our world has suffered the terrible consequences of our desire to be independent from God, and the rest is history as the old saying goes: violence, wars, death, diseases of every kind, mistrust, family breakdown, human and animal abuses on many levels, injustices, poverty, hunger, famines, social unrest, incompetent and corrupt governments, civil wars, polution, environmental disasters everywhere, nuclear weapons that threaten to destroy the very planet we live on, and the list goes on.

God is waiting for mankind to surrender and say: “We should never have rebelled against You and tried to run our own lives.  We should have remained childlike in our relationship with You because the world would have remained perfect, just the way You created it.  We are very sorry for what we have done to You, to ourselves, and to our world.  You know best and we obviously don’t.”  It is my dream that every man, woman and child on our planet will one day cry out with one voice: “Please forgive us, and come and be our King, our Father, and our God.”  God would then transform our world into the new Heavens and the new Earth.  But alas, we know how this story will end from the Bible: mankind will rebel right up until the end, and Jesus Christ will make His glorious return when we least expect it, and whether we want Him to return or not.  Then He will separate the sheep from the goats.  The sheep will be those people who chose the first option that I mentioned earlier in this article, and became childlike in their relationship with God.  The goats will be those people who remained obstinate and independent of God, and fought and lost the battle against the world, the flesh, and the Devil.  So which option will you choose: sheep or goat, Heaven or Hell, eternal happiness or eternal damnation?  The time to choose is NOW and not tomorrow, because tomorrow may never come!

Here are twelve benefits of suffering as listed by John Clayton (Lecturer/Writer) on his website:Pain and suffering can:

(1) help us to learn important lessons in life;
(2) bring about creativity, resourcefulness and courage;
(3) help us to comfort others who are going through similar pain;
(4) help to shape our character;
(5) test us to show what we are made of;
(6) lead to repentance and salvation;
(7) help us to trust God if we can see His bigger plan;
(8) be an inspiration to others when borne well by us;
(9) have a Divine purpose in preparing us for glory;
(10) prevent us from becoming dangerously proud;
(11) in the life of one person provide the grace of conversion in the life of another person;
(12) help us to become more like Jesus.

I would like to focus on the last two benefits above for this article.  How can our suffering help to save the souls of other human beings?  Normally when someone does something wrong, they must atone for this wrong.  For example, if someone steals or commits murder, they are sent to prison for a number of years to suffer and atone for their mistakes.  By definition, a person experiences mercy when someone else is willing to suffer and make reparation for the sins of that person.  This is exactly what Jesus’ innocent suffering did to satisfy the Divine justice of His Father by atoning for the sins of mankind.

How then does our suffering factor into this equation?  The clue comes from the Scripture passage Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.”   St. John Eudes explains this beautifully: “We must strive to follow and fulfill in ourselves the various stages of Christ’s plan as well as his mysteries, and frequently beg him to bring them to completion in us and in the whole Church. For the mysteries of Jesus are not yet completely perfected and fulfilled. They are complete, indeed, in the person of Jesus, but not in us, who are his members, nor in the Church, which is his mystical body. The Son of God wills to give us a share in his mysteries and somehow to extend them to us. He wills to continue them in us and in his universal Church. This is brought about first through the graces he has resolved to impart to us and then through the works he wishes to accomplish in us through these mysteries. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us.”

So in summary, isn’t it an honor and a privilege to know that our sufferings, when united to those of Christ, can help to save souls, as depicted in the picture above of the scales of God’s justice?  And by “saving souls”, I mean saving souls from experiencing the pains of Hell for all eternity, and helping them to experience the eternal joy and peace of Heaven!  Imagine in Heaven how many souls will forever call you their spiritual father or mother because they made it to Heaven because of your sufferings!  That’s what St. Paul told the Corinthians when he said that he was their spiritual father because of the suffering he endured to bring the Gospel message of Jesus Christ to them.  So in the words of St. James 2:1, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…”

How often have we put our trust in another person’s love only to be disappointed or hurt?  This has happened to most adults on several occasions in their lifetime. The results are a lot of broken relationships, friendships, and yes sadly, marriages.  The consequences are damaging and even devastating in the case of broken marriages, especially when children are involved.

What’s the cause of this epidemic and what’s the solution?  Saint Augustine of Hippo in the 4th Century once said: “Our hearts were made for Thee, O God, and they will never rest until they rest in Thee.”  Nothing but God can satisfy the deepest longing for love in our hearts – that’s the way God created us.  That is why the 1st of the Ten Commandments is: “You shall have no other gods before me.”  Jesus reiterated the importance of keeping the Ten Commandments when he summarized them as follows: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbour as you love yourself.”

We cannot love our neighbour and ourselves if we do not first love God above all else.  And we cannot love God above all else if we do not believe that we are unconditionally loved by God!  Nothing that we have ever done or will ever do (good or bad) will ever change the fact that God loves us unconditionally.  After all, He created our souls even before we were knitted together in our mother’s wombs.  He has always loved us because he conceived of us long ago.  It is sometimes very hard for people who come from broken homes or from families where little love was shown by parents toward their children, to believe and accept this truly amazing gift of God’s unconditional love.  I have great sympathy for such people because I have had the same struggle all my life.  My parents never showed love toward me or any of my siblings in an outward fashion, and they never showed love toward each other.  So not having experienced love in the home makes it difficult to believe and accept the love of a God whom we cannot see.  Yet, this is the key that can unlock such great joy and healing for us and indeed for the whole world!

Here is another way to understand it: God is infinite, and GOD IS LOVE (1 John 4:16).  Therefore, GOD IS INFINITE LOVE.  So that is why God loves each and every human being unconditionally, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  All we have to do is to accept this love from God – it’s that simple!  A daily prayer like this will do: “Dear God, I know that You love me very much, but I sometimes have difficulty understanding and accepting Your love.  I open my heart at the start of this new day to You and I accept the free gift of Your love.  Love in me and through me as I go about my day.  Amen.”  That’s it – let God fill you with His love and then you will love yourself.  In turn you will have an abundance of love for others in your life.  So we might change Hal David’s lyrics slightly from:
“What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.“
to
“What the world needs now, is love, God’s love.  It’s the only thing that we need to fill us.” 

So what does all of this mean to us humans in general. Have we been duped by a higher power of evil?  Are we being led down the proverbial garden path that will end in the eventual demise of our families and our societies?  It sure seems that way unless we are able to notice that the temperature in the “pot” of life is getting warmer and warmer with each passing year.  There is an old saying that “Evil flourishes where good men do nothing.”  What can good people do today to stop the moral demise of our children, our families and our societies?  For starters, we can speak up with courage when we hear and see material that is inappropriate for public consumption, in particular, things that belong to the bedroom of married couples.  Sex before marriage by a dating couple is wrong, sexual relations between two people of the same sex is morally wrong, and viewing sexually explicit images online or in print is morally wrong.  Remember that many television programs and movies display a lot of graphic content as well as violence, and by not watching these programs, we  decrease their ratings, which helps to eventually get them off the air.  We can also write to our politicians about the lack of government control around what the public mass media is allowed to air to our societies.  Finally, let us continue to dialog with one another to re-sensitize our awareness around the increasing “immorality temperature” in the world around us, and to come up with creative solutions to reverse this trend.  Otherwise, we will all end up like the frog in the pot above – dead! And by the way, our death will be an everlasting one, because we have immortal souls.  So death for us means everlasting suffering in that place we all hate to acknowledge – Hell!

If however the emotional issues come together at the same place and time, then it becomes obvious that there is no weight on that quarter of the wheel to support these issues, and the wheel can spin out of control, and even fly off its axle.  Furthermore, the wheel certainly cannot spin properly with two quarters missing (e.g. spiritual and emotional).  Since this is so critical to our sense of well being, including our family life, our work life and our social life, how do we try to regain this balance?  This is where the fields of Life and Career Coaching can assist. By meeting regularly with a Life and Career Coach, you can assess the state of your “wheel” i.e. the balance or lack thereof in your life, and create a plan to regain and keep that balance. The rewards to you, your family members, your friends and co-workers will simply be amazing. Your sense of joy, peace and well-being will radiate from you to those around you.

I hope that you will consider using a Life and Career Coach to help you on your life’s journey. You owe it to yourself and your loved ones. I am an International Professional Coach currently studying at an accredited International Coaching Academy. I have a Masters degree in Physics from University of Toronto. I worked for over 23 years in the Information Technology (IT) field, 8 of which were spent in various IT related positions at GE Capital Technology Services, and 15 of which were spent running my own successful IT Consulting business in Toronto, Canada. I sold my IT business to become a Life and Career Coach because I have an intense passion for helping others find and pursue their purpose in life.  You can contact me via:
E-mail: ahadeed@yourlifepurpose.com
Mobile: 1-868-474-1198
Office: 1-868-224-3474

Both these men in this story have a deep faith in God, and now walk closely with Jesus in their newly recreated lives.  As I was talking to Adrian for the first time on June 18, and he was telling me his life story,  I told him that I had just met with a former high ranking official the night before who had also been to prison.  When I told Adrian his name, he exclaimed that he knew this man because they had been in the same prison for a few months together before he was transferred to another prison on the island!

Both men were eager to share their life stories with me, and they were not at all afraid to give God the glory for rescuing them from their former ways of life.  I told Adrian about my new profession as a Life & Career Coach, and he immediately went to a hut on the beach to get a hand-written article which he composed when he had gotten out of prison.  He showed me the article, which he had tried unsuccessfully to publish in one of the local newspapers.  He was keen to try to help young people in schools to avoid making the same mistakes that he had made in his youth.  He firmly believes that education about the realities of life and peer pressure is vital in shaping the youth of today to become responsible citizens of tomorrow.  He said that if the students could just listen to his story, and even if only 10% of the them took the message to heart, then we would have successfully planted good seed in these youth, and they in turn could become the catalysts to positively affect other youth in their own communities.

When I told Adrian that I had a website for my Life & Career Coaching profession, he humbly asked if I would consider publishing his article in a blog, to which I gladly responded yes.  Here is Adrian’s article:

“Those people who have moral and spiritual values, will understand what I am about to say.  For those of you who don’t, please give it a chance, and listen to what I have to say, so that we can embed it into our lives for the sake of our youth.  Let us give the youth a chance to carry on the legacy of respect, brotherly love, and regard for other people’s property.  To all my fellow citizens, please stop and think: this is what past and present prophets were sent here by God to teach us – proper moral and spiritual values!  Here are some examples of moral and spiritual values that I think are important to pass onto our youth:

“Moral Values: Respect for people and their property, and consideration for the feelings of others.  What you do not like for yourself, you should not do to others.  Put another way, it’s the Golden Rule ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’  Our youth also need to return to the moral value of courtesy toward others, especially toward their elders.

“Spiritual Values: Love for God and love for those He sends into the world and into our lives to teach us His ways (i.e. His prophets).  Love for our fellow human beings (i.e. our neighbours), love for His creatures, love for His planet, including the simple but life-giving resource of water, without which we cannot have life on our planet!

“If parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and teachers were to teach our youth these and other moral and spiritual values, then we would have a better society and a better world.  Spreading the seeds of love and respect among our youth would be like planting seeds of a healthy crop.  In years to come, when the harvest is ready, we as a society will reap the virtues in our youth from our labours.

“This is my long-term solution to crime, domestic violence, rape, incest and many more parasitic vices that plague our communities, our towns, our nation, and indeed the whole world.  So please my fellow human beings, let us try to get these teachings back into our schools and into our homes, so that the youth of today have a fighting chance to become fine young men and women of tomorrow.  Let us try to make this a better world for us all.  Will you join me in the fight to get this message into the hands of educators and adults everywhere?”

Adrian can be reached by cell at (868) 327-4045.  He would love the opportunity to come into your school or community to share his life story with the youth, so that they can learn from him and not make the same mistakes he has made, which cost him dearly.  In fact, he lost eight years of his life in prison, and in many ways he is still paying for his mistakes, by struggling to make a living renting chairs on a beach.  He is happy and content but he realizes that his past mistakes have cost him the chance at having a better life.

Childrearing practices are the basis for adult personality and as literacy practitioners, we must question and seek understanding of those factors in our students’ lives that have influenced or affected their learning. I would like to suggest that it is crucial that educators realize that childhood and adulthood are not two disparate spheres but rather that adulthood is a stage in life that is determined by childhood. I suggest that both an examination of society’s attitude towards children (as reflected in our homes and schools), and also a study of the history of childhood itself are crucial if we want to help our present day adult students (as well as those of future generations) learn and go forward in their lives. I suggest that as educators we must address the humanity of our students if we want to affect any real change in their ability to learn and live productive lives.

The history of childhood has been largely ignored. Such determined avoidance must be examined, for a society’s childrearing practices are not just items in a list of cultural traits. They are the very condition for the transmission and development of all other cultural elements and place definite limits on what can be achieved in all other spheres of human endeavour.

Few insights gained in the last twenty years are so securely established as the realization that what we do to children when they are small-good things and bad things –will later form part of their behavioral repertoire. Battered children will batter others, punished children will act punitively, children lied to will become liars themselves, protected children will learn to be protective, and respected children will learn to respect others weaker than themselves.

Alice Miller, in her book, For Your Own Good, examines the ways in which society views children. She delves into the history of pedagogical practices from the eighteenth century onwards, and indicates how they provided breeding grounds for hatred. The pedagogy promoted the idea that children be regarded as property, and legitimized the power basis of the parent-child relationship. According to Alice Miller, it is the parents’ conscious, uncontrolled and covert exercise of power over their children that is the primal source of all contempt and discrimination. Except in extreme cases -i.e. murder- this unrestrained use of power is tolerated by society; what adults do to the spirit of their own children is totally their own affair. Unless and until we become sensitized to the child’s suffering, states Alice Miller, the wielding of power by adults will continue to be regarded as a normal aspect of the human condition.

The pedagogy practiced by parents and teachers was poisonous because it called for the destruction of a child’s will and the murder of his soul. Obedience to authority was believed to be of prime importance, the basis of all education, so that willfulness and wickedness were to be eliminated in a child’s very first year of life. Love of order was to be instilled by the age of two. The suppression of the child’s emotion, of the child’s vitality, of his desire to know, was considered necessary pedagogical practice. Since it was believed that the things that happen to a child at an early age would never be remembered, parents and teachers did not realize there would be serious consequences to such practices.

They could not have been more wrong. Things we do not remember make us sick. If the child must risk losing love in order to feel, he will repress his emotion, and it is this repressed emotion, the defence mechanism of the vulnerable child, that becomes fateful in the adult. Repressed emotion lives in the body, inexperienced, but powerful nonetheless. It produces feelings of abandonment, feelings of despair that are so dreaded, that the adult turns to alcoholism, criminality, drugs, or sexual perversion as defence mechanisms against feeling them. Repression of anger and hatred leads to the destruction of one’s own children and fellow human beings, and to the acceptance of abuse as a normal way of life.

Poisonous pedagogy is a term that reflects the complex practices of childrearing that perpetuate the generational abuse of children. In order for a child to develop naturally, he needs respect from his caregivers, awareness of his needs and feelings, and authenticity on the part of his parents. Disrespect functions as a defence against unwanted feelings and, if it goes unchecked, is transferred to our own children when we see our childhood selves in them. This means that, as adults, we must face our own history. We have to break down our own walls of repression and develop feelings of empathy for the child within.

Today authors carefully mask the importance of gaining control over the child and replace the practice of physical abuse with a form of mental cruelty hidden under the term of childrearing. Without a doubt, the values of the parents of the present generation have changed. They don’t adhere to the concepts of absolute obedience, coercion, lack of feeling and severity. However, they have trouble dealing with the repression of their own childhood, often idealizing it. As a consequence, they lack empathy; and empathy for the self is key. Without it all appeals to love, solidarity and compassion will be useless.

Present day society is callously indifferent to the suffering of children. There is no empathy. When Quebecers, for instance, permit their government to ignore social reality and to pretend that a fraction of the required budget for child protection is perfectly sufficient, despite the massive increase in child suicide (300% among 10 to 14 year-olds from 1975-1998, for example), they are not only demonstrating a complete lack of empathy but also a determined avoidance of the truth about childhood: for many children, it is an ordeal that has to be survived. Society so fervently idealizes the notion of childhood that we unknowingly live our lives blind to the brutal reality of these children’s existence. We fail to realize that while the notion of childhood has been protected….the children themselves have not.

Many members of our society are responsible for perpetuating this attitude. Official biographers ignore the importance of childhood by rarely examining the early years of the people about whom they are writing. Somehow they fail to understand that the child is father to the man. Literary historians, mistaking books for life, construct a fictional picture of childhood, as though one can tell what really happened in the nineteenth-century home by reading Tom Sawyer. Even teachers – individuals professionally involved with children – devote themselves to the organization and curricula of the schools, and to various theories of education, with only occasional reference to what actually happens to the children at home or in the world at large. But it is the social historian, whose job it is to dig out the reality of the social conditions of the past, who steadfastly turns his eyes away from the truth. When one social historian described mothers who regularly beat their children with sticks while they were still in the cradle and commented without any evidence that “if their discipline was stern, it was even and just and leavened with kindness;” when another refuted the opinion that mothers who dunked their infants into ice water each morning to “strengthen” them were cruel, one can only conclude that to the social historian, no practice in the past seems anything but benign.

In actual fact, the history of childhood is a nightmare. It tells of the heartless treatment of children from the practice of infanticide and abandonment through to the rigours of swaddling, purposeful starvation, beatings, solitary confinement and sexual abuse. There is considerable evidence that whenever there were selective or neglective factors in place, especially in the earlier medieval centuries, girls were at a disadvantage: they were not valued in a military or agricultural society and were even more at risk if they were illegitimate, physically deformed or mentally retarded. These children were regarded as changelings, the work of another powerful enemy of children, the devil.

For example, prior to the 12th C. there was no concern for the education of daughters unless they were given to the monastery. Early marriage was the destiny of those girls who did not enter monastic life. The choice was rarely theirs to make; decisions were made by parents who based them on practical reasons rather than on the desires and feelings of their children. Girls were married extremely young, the minimum age for girls was twelve. Many women came to marriage as frightened children in which physical brutality and rejection were far from uncommon. Conjugal affection was a happy accident rather than a natural condition. The authority and power of the husband was absolute. In a model marriage, a woman’s submissiveness to her husband’s authority was emphasized. She was described as pious, dutiful, accepting of burdens and responsibilities and devoted to the spiritual development of their children. She had no authority over herself. To women, marriage was regarded as a state to be endured. Many turned to (ran to) the security of religious life, once they were widowed. Many others were sent screaming to a monastery at the age of 12, hands and feet tied.

By the 17th century, more attention was paid to the inner world of the child. Self-control was demanded rather than good behaviour by external control. Method for disciplining girls at this time was the use of shame. There was an attempt to make them feel guilty. At Port Royal, France, little girls as young as four were taught to follow a schedule wholly dedicated to putting individual consciences in the service of God. Body language, as well as the spoken word, was censored by the pedagogue. Emotions were not to be revealed by movement of the forehead, eyebrows or cheeks.

Noble adolescent girls became mothers, and often had several children, not all of which would survive. Lactation could not interfere with fertility so babies were sent to wet nurses. Female babies survived more often in urban areas. A threat to the survival of the babies of the poor was that it was believed that the milk that was produced for female babies was superior to that produced for males. Many poor women made their living by wet – nursing so that many female babies were thrown out. Incredible abandonment of children existed at this time.

Certainly, there have always been parents who have loved and nurtured their children and who may have made bad mistakes with their upbringing due to ignorance rather than ill will. But children have always been the victims of forces over which they have had no control, and have been abused in many imaginable and even some almost unimaginable ways. Indeed, the further back in history one goes, the lower the level of childcare; a large percentage of children born prior to the 18th century would be considered battered children by today’s standards. And yet despite the gradual emergence of a more humanitarian attitude, too many children still suffer lives waning from neglect and brutality. Callously, the Quebec government turns a blind eye and refuses to provide sufficient, stable funding to the very agency that was created to protect them.

The fact that society continues to tolerate child abuse raises the question of our attitude towards children. It has always been ambiguous. In the past, children have been loved and hated, rewarded and punished, considered bad and loving all at once. They are, and have always been, completely vulnerable to the physical and emotional aggression of adults. Indeed, children are often regarded as parental property and except in extreme cases – murder, for example – the power relationship between parent and child goes unquestioned: what the adult does to the spirit of his own child is totally his own affair.

Until we become more sensitive to the suffering of children, the wielding of power by adults will continue to be seen as a normal aspect of the human condition. Instead of focusing on matters of control, i.e. the right levels of strictness or permissiveness, we must learn to respect the child and concentrate on her needs, her feelings, her individuality. It is urgent that we do so, for disrespect, passed on from one generation to the next, leads to destructive behaviour. Psychosis, drug addiction, and criminality are all encoded expressions of the early experience of abuse.

It has been said that whoever asks about our childhood wants to know something about our soul. Society must take time to inquire.