Choosing Your Tomorrow
Choosing Your Tomorrow:
Harnessing Your Power of Choice in the Face of Adversity
MEET JODIE BAULKHAM
Jodie is a licensed teacher, professional coach and certified Leader Character practitioner who focuses on cultivating character, igniting passion, and fortifying resilience for herself and others. She is a leadership and mental health curriculum design specialist, trainer and advocate.
Jodie has trained and coached thousands in the first responder community and beyond. She recently released her memoir Choosing My Tomorrow: Surviving Murder, Navigating Mental Health, and Harnessing the Power of Choice which reached best-seller status on Amazon and speaks on stages about her experience and lessons learned.
She lives in Alberta with her husband, daughter, and mini golden-doodle, but we are thrilled to have her join us this Sunday to share her Perspective(s).
First Reading
"The Choice: Embrace the Possible," Edith Eger
...(S)uffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to be victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from outside. It's the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover who cheats, the discriminatory law, the accident that lands you in the hospital.
In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim's mind -- a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors when we choose the confines of the victim's mind."
Second Reading
Richard Wagamese
"All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind. We are not the things we accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us. What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can while we’re here; you, me, us, together. When we can do that and we take the time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each other, we recognize our kinship – we change the world, one story at a time.”