Becoming Patterns
How you move through life as an adult, using  ways you created to manage your childhood

Despite the effects of Patterns created early in life, we are in a constant process of growth, change, and movement beyond who we are to what we may yet be. You probably manage your life pretty well; you’ve had many years to practice. In LEAP we look at how you manage growth and change. All involve an important thing that may make us human beings unique, and that is our ability to mentally visualize the way things could be, and then do things necessary to make them happen.

Information gathering involves the many ways you learn things necessary to manage your life, make changes, grow, create new beliefs, etc. The LifeCourse Effective Action Program is one way to do this.

Imagining involves creating mental pictures of the way things could be, alternative to the ways things are. (This is why, earlier, we ask about fantasy and day-dreaming). These mental pictures are like the blueprints used to build a house, or design sketches. Important to this is goal-planning (below).

Decision-making involves choosing between two or more possibilities. We’ll. look at the idea of a "decision tree," where choices "branch," and where each choice not only leads to other choices, but also involves a "not-chosen." When Robert Frost chose the "road less traveled by" which made all the difference, he did not choose the other road. So with us: choices made involve choices not made.

Problem-solving involves doing what’s needed to overcome obstacles to progress. We imagine what we want in the future (our "goal") and deal with the things that keeps us from having it.

Goal-setting involves deciding what we want in the future, how much we want it, and what we will do to get it. Goal-planning involves envisioning the future, creating a mental picture of it, and preparing for the steps and gathering the resources necessary to attain it.

Goal-attainment involves (1) doing what’s necessary to get there, (2) arriving, and (3) thinking about what we’ve learned in the process so we can achieve our other goals better, and what our next goals will be.

Some ways to think about your "Becoming" patterns:

Write below one word which best describes you now in terms of . . .