Future

 

Hello again from Bridget

Happy April!!

I hope that your spring is giving you a positive outlook. We are already into our spring season and that makes me very happy. I can’t believe how fast spring moves along and summer is not far ahead of us.

 

I spent a lot of time with family this past week to celebrate my tradition of Easter.  My nieces and nephews were very excited about looking for eggs and eating candy.  I love enjoying the moment with family members and seeing the smiles on the children’s faces.

 

We have been talking about Person Centered life Designs for the last few months. It is a powerful and positive planning process.  I will take a moment to review the information. 

First, we start off thinking about our celebrations and what we are proud of at this moment. We then identify our BIG dreams and hopes in our life. We brainstorm and think about all our gifts & strengths – Like our super powers-  and the things we love to do that make us smile.

The next part is writing down and sharing the things we are afraid of and the things that make us worry. We call them the nightmares.

 

When we do a FUTURE SEARCH we have to pretend that it is a year from now and we are telling someone that it was the best year ever in our life.  Everything we describe is a way to visualize a great future but it has to be POSITIVE AND POSSIBLE.  Clear attainable goals is the most import thing to remember when we are doing the future search.

Today we are ending with the final step in our Person-Centered Life Design. It is the Action plan.  Take each item in the Future Search and decide how we are going to make that happen.  Decide as a group what the action is and who is going to do it and when will that happen. Think of this step as a way to make a “TO DO” list but you have to be very specific about what needs to be done to make things happen.  Who do you need to help you? It is important to include people like your family, a personal assistant, friends, job coaches and others who can help you.  You can get started by putting down the people in your life that you want involved your process.

 

Think of the people in your life that can help you out.  Think of this Action plan like a map that helps you get where you want to go.

 

 For example:

My future search is to get a paid internship starting in September.

My ACTION PLAN IS:

 

·         Get in touch with a person who runs the place where I want an internship at

·         Set up a JOB TASTING with her where we just talk about what they do and discuss if it might be something that I would be good at doing.

·         SET up a time to do a job shadowing this coming Friday. I will go there for about 4 hours to see what it is all about. 

·         Decide the next step.

·         WHO? I had to involve my parents, the head of the department, my support person and a few other people in my action plan to get this done.

·         WHEN? Friday

So that is the last step in the Person-Centered Life Design!  It really comes together at the end if you keep it positive and possible!  I hope this makes sense when you see how it all works together to help you make dreams come true.

Next month I am going to start interviewing some people who are doing some fun and amazing things in their life.  I think we can all learn from them!

Sending good thoughts your way! Bridget Brown