Total Life Management I*
Bill Long 6/25/08
A Most Needed Professional Service
[*This isn't the place critically to analyze other Internet resources which claim to provide "total life management." Some of them look downright flaky to me...]
If the 1970s saw the explosion and development of the mental health profession, especially psychologists, the 1980s and 1990s the growth of the "motivation speaker" industry, and the 2000s the efflorescence of the "coaching" profession, I have something that ought to be the wave of the future in the personal care industry. I call it "Total Life Management" or "TLM." Indeed, I have been practicing it in the last few weeks, and I think it is something needed in our culture today. A "TLM" counselor will be committed to helping a person come to grips with the multifarious tasks of life in their complexity and detail. A TLM counselor differs from a motivational speaker and coach in that the TLM person is committed to helping the person achieve success in living through mastery of all the important details of life; a TLM counselor differs from a psychologist/coach in that the TLM counselor also wants to deal with all the important areas of life in which a person might have difficulties. Thus, a TLM counselor is committed to trying to understand all the complexities of life of the person being counseled, and to lay out paths to success for the person stuck in the thicket of these complexities.
The philosophy behind the TLM approach is that people "out there" want to become successful but that they are often overwhelmed by a multitude of concerns that defy easy explanation or solution. They are held back by many energy sappers, whether they are personal health issues, trouble with kids or finances, difficulty with relationships or personal motivation. By willingly taking on all of the presenting issues, a confident counselor can do more than any specialized professional can do.
My method, as I perceive it now, consists of three steps:
I. Taking An Inventory
The first step in becoming an effective TLM counselor is to know how to take a personal inventory of the counselee. This means that the counselor needs to do two things: ask people directly about what issues are "bugging" them and then probe important areas of human endeavor beyond that to see if more light can be shed on the situation. I was counseling someone earlier today, and I learned fairly quickly that money and business plan were front and center in her consciousness. She had been leading what might charitably be called an "undisciplined" spending life. Rather than being offended at my suggestion that she had been doing that, she agreed with my assessment right away. But then, we went through the check-book for the past few months, highlighting check after check that seemed not to have been written for any compelling reason. By the end of the session I had put her on a budget, with fairly stringent requirements--checking in with me for purchases above a certain amount; agreeing to check in with me each week for the next few weeks on the issue. Of course, a person can simply "hold their nose" for a few weeks and then continue the binge, but my "inventory" method might also stop the financial free fall in her life.
Divide and Conquer
The second thing to do is to divide the problems that were isolated in the inventory into meaningful and easily-identified "steps" of understanding. One person I was talking to was a photographer. He couldn't understand how to do some complex processes with his Nikon camera that would lead to the reproduction of large prints after he fed the pictures into his computer and then "photoshopped" them. I know little about taking pictures; I know less about production of high-quality reproductions. But what I do know is that everything begins with simple steps, steps that can be described in a few words. So, I started with the obvious statement. "Your camera takes pictures." Then, I said, "Where do the pictures go?" He answered, "The 4 Gigabyte Flash Card." Then, I responded, "How do they get from the Flash Card to the computer?" You see the point. I took every step of the photography process seriatim, making sure that I understood it fully before I moved to the next. By the time we got to the questions that were confusing him, we were able to lay them out with such clarity and brevity that he knew exactly what he would ask the next time he met with his photo partner.
Patiently going step by step in the questioning process is difficult because it seems to everyone that the questioner is just a little "slow." But if you do it right, it is the best (and quickest) way to resolve difficulties. It takes a lot of confidence to begin an interview with a photographer by saying, "Your camera takes pictures," or something similar to that, but you need to begin with that level of simplicity in order to let others know that you are not afraid of the simplest questions. Indeed, in almost all circumstances, focusing on simple questions that build on one another leads to all the substantive issues that need to be handled.
III. Light Dawns
As I continue to break down the process of taking pictures, for example, into its component parts, something interesting begins to happen. The person I am questioning says somethign like, "Oh, I didn't think of that," or "Oh, I think I just answered my own question." In other words, slowly working through simple facts gives the other person the opportunity to solve their own problem. In almost all instances with which I have been associated, problems are solved by the one who claims to have the problem. I, for example, have no expertise in photography or many other fields. But I do know how to pose questions, and I do know how the human brain aspires to work when it is working most effectively. Knowing these two things enables me to keep probing gently on all the important issues. Eventually a person either an "solve" some of the problems s/he presented or has focused questions to consider when s/he goes into meetings with others.
Conclusion
When I told a lawyer friend with whom I lunch bi-montly that I was spending some time memorizing Paradise Lost, he reacted strongly and said, using the language of property law, that that activity was not my "highest and best use." I think that developing a system of Total Life Management and putting it into effect may just be that "higest and best use." Any takers?
The next essay puts flesh on the concept.
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