Workshop offers positive choices

Despite a gloomy economic forecast and generally trying times, living a physically, financially and psychologically healthy lifestyle is within reach, said a group of speakers at a Center for New Directions seminar last weekend.

Most often the only thing standing in the way, they offered, is you.

An audience of about 35 people attended the four-hour “Healthy, Wealthy and Wise” event held last Saturday in the Edminster Student Union Building at North Idaho College. The morning presentations, hosted by the NIC-based organization, which provides “choices for change” for anyone at a crossroads in their lives, offered tips for personal wellness through four presentations that covered everything from Wall Street, to emotional states. The Kissler Family Foundation Philanthropic Gift Fund in the Inland Community Foundation sponsored the seminar.

“This workshop is about positive things you can do for yourself and your family even when times are tough,” said Carol Haught, director of the Center for New Directions, which offers personal counseling, community resources and educational and career assistance. “Everyone should leave it feeling upbeat and hopeful.”

The presentations were meant to be preludes to answering the more discouraging problems some people face every day. Those issues include emotional withdrawal, financial hardships, investment concerns, or just the dread of being trapped in a dead-end job.

Feel like life has you pinned down? Ever fretted about getting out of bed in the morning? Worried about how the financial meltdown will affect your retirement? Or, as keynote speaker Michael Kroth said in his presentation “Creating a Lifetime of Passionate Work,” ever feel like the only difference between your workplace and the Titanic is they had a band?

Then today, not tomorrow, is the day to turn it around, said Kroth, an assistant professor in adult organizational learning at the University of Idaho who has authored or co-authored several books including the upcoming “Career Development Basics.”

“Make every day count,” he proclaimed.

Offering as an example a time in his life when he dreaded getting out of his car and going to work every day, Kroth said it’s never too late to turn things around. Sixteen years after leaving that job, in which he obtained a business degree and doctorate, Kroth said, “I went from what I considered a corporate prison, to a job I love. …For anyone who thinks they can’t do something, think that with time comes power.”

What was his source of strength? In a word: passion. In a quick poll from the audience to find out what they are passionate about – eliciting responses such as dog rescue, tennis and being a better Christian – Kroth explained that those are “all qualities of passionate work, they are all qualities of a passion that we should have for our jobs every day.”

However, he added, behind every reward is a risk, an unavoidable part of confronting a problem. “Passionate people are people who take risks.”

If excitement is already a part of the job, then maintaining that sense of “occupational intimacy,” or doing work you love in an organization that loves you back, as he called it, falls on the shoulders of every employee. That’s done through taking responsibility and willpower. “You have the power in you to make passionate work and facilitate passionate work in others,” Kroth said.

In the second presentation “Go-Learn-Earn: Why now is the time to attend college,” Northern Idaho Consortium for Higher Education director Jay Baldwin said studying for a degree at any age can be the incentive for change.

“About 60 percent of all students in college are over the age of 25,” Baldwin said. “Our idea about college students in this country is totally wrong.”

The advantages of higher education are abundant, he added. In Idaho, those with college degrees earn roughly $1 million more through their entire careers compared to those with only high school degrees. College graduates also have more career options, show higher levels of job satisfaction and go through shorter bouts of unemployment.

Also, the impact globalization has had on jobs in the U.S. has been profound, altering everything from job-hunting and workplace technology, to what jobs are available and where. And North Idaho isn’t immune to those effects. The resource-based economy that drove area mining operations and lumber mills is changing, Baldwin said, which is why having technical training such as in the healthcare industry is more important than ever.

The good news for North Idahoans is they don’t have to travel far to attend college, with NIC and four satellite campuses available in Kootenai County alone. “You’ve got to have the skills to compete in a global marketplace. Idaho is not immune, it’s not unaffected,” Baldwin said.

But perhaps the number one reason, Baldwin explained, is for future generations. “You go to school yourself – that’s how you get your kids to go to school,” he said, reeling off statistics that illustrate how children of parents without college degrees very rarely get one themselves. “Kids learn from the actions and values represented by their parents, and kids know that talk is cheap – actions speak louder than words.”

Beyond that, Baldwin said, “It is worth having an education, even if it didn’t do all those other things; it removes the constraints of a limited world view.”

Next up was La Donna Beaumont, a financial adviser with Citi Smith Barney, who offered investment advice in her presentation “How the Other Half Invest: Why Anyone Can Become Wealthy.”

To survive the sometimes frightening roller coaster ride of the stock market, Beaumont said it’s essential to develop a long-term wealth management plan, which should include second opinions, a diverse portfolio and investments beyond the U.S. border into the global arena. Also, she added, with stocks selling way down, it’s an ideal time to invest. Stocks, she said, are “the only thing in the world people don’t want to buy on sale.”

Given the historic meltdown of the economy, she said it’s common to see people want to pull out their investments. What’s important, she said, is to keep a long-term plan in mind and expel any get-rich-quick ideas. “Define your goals and priorities and what is important to you,” Beaumont offered. “Make sure you understand your own risk tolerance.”

Concluding the seminar, staff members from the Center for New Directions presented tips on general wellness in “Living a Five-Star Life.”

Culling advice from the book “Get a Life That Doesn’t Suck” by Michelle DeAngelis, Haught and Sarah Johnson compared life to a car, joyriding during the good times, hitting potholes occasionally and in the shop for the bad stretches. “If you are going to have a happy life, a joyriding life, you are going to have some maintenance to do,” Haught said.

The five steps to a five-star life, they offered, include: start with thinking good thoughts, act now, get a system, love yourself first and finally give and be grateful. “Ask yourself: Is what you’re doing working for you? Some of us are just surviving,” Johnson said. To make a change, she added, “people just need to start.”