Category Archives: Achieving Goals

“Try Not! Do or Do Not. There is No Try”: Life According To Yoda

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During my 11 year journey to becoming Dr. Jacklyn Chisholm, my wonderful husband and a mentor of mine often reminded me, “If it was easy, everyone would have a Ph.D.” Those words fed my spirit and became my rallying cry. I didn’t realize until much later that the movie Star Wars, and in particular, the character Yoda, would provide me additional words to live by…

I recently had a conversation with my daughter who is applying to graduate school.  We were discussing the process and the essay that is required to complete the application. I told her that she just needs to “Do It,” like Nike recommends in their commercials.  After almost 20 minutes, I asked her to repeat to me what I suggested her next step should be.  She said, “You told me to try.” I said, “No. My advice to you was “Just Do It!”

I then described to her the moment in my doctoral process when I was stuck in “analysis paralysis” — the place where I couldn’t move forward because I felt that I was missing too much information. In actuality, I was SCARED because I didn’t know what the outcome of all of my hard work would be.

The issue was not that I didn’t know what to write about;  I had an outline and all of the data that I could gather, but I didn’t know how to organize it. Questions like, “What would the committee look for in the paper? How long should it be? What if I leave something out?”  had me tied in knots. You see, I had worked for over 10 years to get to this point of writing the dissertation, and now all of those hours and days without sleep, feelings of anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, joy and excitement hinged upon 100+ pages of a dissertation that I had to defend to a four-person faculty committee. Talk about pressure!!

In a previous blog and as I noted above, the words, “If it was easy, everyone would do it” were instrumental in getting me through graduate school. However, I still had to do the work and walk my path in order to earn the prize that awaited me at the end of the process. I have often likened it to running a gauntlet with people and obstacles standing in my way. I had to decide (there goes that word again) that I was in it for the long haul.

You will recall that I began the Ph.D. process knowing that God had brought me to it– I didn’t begin graduate school to earn a Ph.D. God only talked to me about applying for the Masters program. It was in my obedience and following through on His guidance that I was told that if I “high passed” the same comprehensive (or “comp”) exam that I was required to complete to earn the Masters, I would be automatically admitted to the Ph.D. program.

My response was, “Is this the kind of doctor you want me to be God!” See, I began undergrad expecting to become a physician, not a psychological anthropologist, but once I accepted God’s plan for me to pursue a Ph.D. rather than a M.D., God then revealed the next step in my process. Like Abraham (for the Bible scholars), God called him to leave his hometown without telling him where he was going until he packed up and left. In other words, it was when Abraham moved that God began to reveal the destination!

Once I agreed to go with God’s plan, my initial internal dialogue with God became, “I’ll try to do what you want me to, but I am afraid because I am outside of my comfort zone and I don’t know where you are leading me.”

I have one more example,  I mean, lesson to share on this subject…While I was walking down the aisle to marry my first husband, my thoughts were “I’ll try to make this marriage work. If it doesn’t, I’ll get a divorce.” Needless to say, it happened just as I thought it would because a try is not a commitment to a success, it’s a commitment to an attempt. Yoda understood this when he was coaching young Luke Skywalker, who had returned to the planet where he was to receive training to become a Jedi Knight…

Luke crash-landed his ship in water in his attempt to find the Jedi master to train him. He didn’t recognize Yoda initially as the one he was seeking.  Yoda instructed Luke to move the ship out of the water with “the Force.”

Luke responded: “All right, I’ll give it a try.”

Yoda says: ” No! Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.”
Luke then says, “I don’t, I don’t believe it.” and Yoda ends with, “That is why you fail.”

I don’t know what “tries” you are attempting. I hope not a lot because you could spin your wheels and make very little headway because you are not fully committed to your success.

So, please, for your future’s sake… take the advice of a pint-sized Jedi Master and a blissfully married woman with a Ph.D. — TRY NOT! DO… OR DO NOT. THERE IS NO TRY!

 

 

If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Do It

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Four questions:

1) What would you do if you were not afraid?

2) What would you do if money weren’t an issue?

3) What is your passion?

4) What are you willing to do or sacrifice to pursue it?

Each of these questions have my destiny wrapped within them…

When I was younger, I used to spend a great deal of my time thinking about how my life would be when I grew up. As I mentioned in other posts, there was a lot of dysfunction in my family – not unlike everyone else that I know! In order to cope with it, I would go to the library and check out books about far away places that I would visit as an adult or I would imagine the fantastic life that I would live.

My mother, more than anyone else, influenced my love of learning.  She also helped to fuel my desire to pursue my passion because she had always wanted to go to nursing school, but felt that she had to settle for a career as a surgical technician because of her family responsibilities in raising three girls as a single parent. As we became adults, my sisters and I would encourage her to pursue her dream, but she would always say, “I’m too old.” Unfortunately, my mother died at the age of 53 without having given herself permission to go to nursing school.

Her comments regarding the importance of education and the lesson I learned from her unwillingness to pursue her passion of becoming a nurse combined with my dream of a better life through education kept me focused even when things in my personal life took a turn for the worst.

I have met many people who want more than they have now — and I don’t mean more stuff —  they want to go to college, they want to secure a better or more satisfying job or they want to open a business, but what gets in their way often is their fear of what they will have to do or possibly lose  if they were to pursue whatever their passion or dream may be.  I really understand their concern because I have confronted these same issues throughout my life, especially in the past 20+ years.  Fortunately, asking myself each of the four questions at crucial times has been the key to my success so far.

Question one, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?,” is powerful! It gets to the heart of what prevents many people from pursuing their passion – FEAR.   Fear has a way of grabbing us by the throat and not allowing us to move forward, so we stay stuck in situations that either no longer feed our spirit or never have. Hopefully, you’ve heard that FEAR is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real.   If we were to confront the fear, we’d often find that it’s a barking dog with no teeth!

I was in a place of fear early in my professional career, and one of my mentors said something so profound that it shook me out of my complacency. He said, “Feel the fear and do it anyway!”— drag it along as you pursue your dreams. That’s how I was able to overcome my fear of failure in college and in different professional roles.

The second question is equally impactful: “What would you do if money weren’t an issue?”  How many times have you said to yourself or has someone said to you “How are you going to pay for school? How are you going to pay for the training? How are you going to get there? How, how, how? This is what I’ve learned in my journey:  if I believe that I am in God’s will, then the money or whatever resources I need will be provided.  I heard Bishop T.D. Jakes say it a little differently, “God always pays for what He orders.”  What a powerful reminder that God is my source, and as long as I am in His will, all of my provision for the journey will be made!

The third question, “What is your passion?,” is often ignored by people because to ask the question means that you want to know the answer. I’ve met many people who refuse to ask themselves the question because the answer would require sacrifices they are not willing or feel that they can’t make.

My passion for a long time was to earn a Bachelors degree. I’ve recounted some of the challenges that I faced in pursuing it, but what I glossed over were the numerous times when the degree seemed to get farther and farther away; I became exhausted and disillusioned because obstacles, big and small, were in my path – some I created and some were created by others.   What kept me going was God reminding me that, “Anything worth having is worth working for.”

Which leads to question four: “What are you willing to do or sacrifice to pursue your passion?”

When I told my husband that I felt that God was leading me to return to school and earn a Masters degree and Ph.D., my husband said, “If God wants you to do it, then I’m behind you!” (Sorry ladies, he doesn’t have a brother.)  Our girls were 1 and 4 when I started. They were 12 and 15 when I completed the Ph.D.

What kept me going for what seemed like a thousand years in school was something a mentor said to me during this time: “If it was easy, everyone would do it.”  What a blessing that statement was and is to me! This one statement separates those who accomplish their goals from those who talk about accomplishing theirs. Pursuing your passion or your dream will cost you something – it always does. But I want you to consider this:

If it takes you five (or more) years to pursue your passion or achieve your dream, do you plan to be here five years from now? If so, you can either be five years older having pursued your passion or five years older still thinking about achieving your dream. It’s your choice!

So, are you ready to join those of us who have adopted the mantra, “If it was easy, everyone would do it?”  I certainly hope you are!

Let me help you start this part of your journey today:  On your mark… get set… GO!

It’s Worth It Because You “Are”

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Welcome to my blog. I’ve entitled this one: It’s Worth It Because You “Are.” The title comes from the name of my company, “It’s Worth It Educational Consulting,” which I founded with my husband in 1999. My goal then, as now, is to help people accomplish their dreams through education and personal investment. One of my mottos is “Dream Big” because it takes the same energy to dream big as it does to dream small. The other is that “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

My hope is that you will find in the experiences and lessons that I’ve learned on my life’s journey something that will inspire you to pursue all that you are capable of and all that God has for you. It’s taken me a lifetime to understand that I am worth it simply because I am — I exist, I’m not a mistake. I am the image and the likeness of God, therefore, I am worthy to experience all of the good that God has for me in this world.

As you noticed, I am a Christian – I make no apologies for this — it just “is.” Without my faith, I know that I would not have survived to become the person who can share my heart with you through this blog. Let me explain….

In 1980, I was in a terrible place emotionally and spiritually. I had just come out of a physically abusive relationship only to go into a marriage at the age of 20 during my sophomore year of college (no, I was not pregnant) that was psychologically abusive. Within 6 months of the marriage, I found myself sleepless and depressed. I contemplated suicide: I was going to walk in front of a bus on a busy street. People would have thought that it was an accident, but I would have known that it was intentional. The only thing that stopped me were my mother’s words that she shared with me years before: If you commit suicide, you go straight to hell with no possibility of parole! So, I figured that I didn’t want to go there, even though I wasn’t particularly religious or spiritual, but it didn’t sound like a place that I wanted to spend eternity. At that time, I had separated from my husband and had returned to school to complete my junior year of college and was living in a dorm. Once I realized that God would know that it was suicide, I walked back to my dorm and told one of my roommates what I was contemplating and how I had to figure out how to do it without God knowing it was suicide!

My roommate walked me to the counseling office – thank God! It was during those sessions, I learned how much stuff I had buried deep inside of me. Feelings of rejection, loss, unworthiness, anxiety, fear – you name it, I felt it! It took almost four years of therapy to understand much of what happened to me and how my decisions – good or bad – stemmed from those hidden thoughts that many of us are unaware of because of what we saw, heard or experienced while young.

This blog is my way of sharing what I’ve learned to make your journey, hopefully, easier. I’ve been blessed to achieve a great deal in my life with God’s help: I left my first marriage and found my soulmate in the process, who became my husband. Robert is his name. We will celebrate our 27th year of marriage in November. We have raised two incredibly gifted girls – Robin and Jennifer – who are the loves of our lives and make us proud to be parents. We also have the most beautiful and brilliant grandchildren in Shanum and Yahya, who have added more to our lives than I can possibly say. I also have earned three degrees: B.A. in medical anthropology, M.A. in psychological anthropology and a Ph.D. in psychological anthropology with an emphasis in educational anthropology. And if all of this wasn’t enough, God allowed me to become a Vice President at one of the most recognizable museums in the world! Now, how’s that for bouncing back!!

I believe that it is now my time to share what I have learned along the way – the ups and downs – so that you, too, will know that there is life after hardship and heartache, even suicidal thoughts. Life is so worth living because you “are!”

So, if you’re ready, let’s take this trip together!