Challenge Limiting Beliefs

Hm.  To blog or to take awesome and amazing dog for walk?  I'm blogging - or I'll lose the day to the swimming pool (no worries - Keeley will get a walk...it will just be a little warmer outside and she will refresh herself by laying in the dirty street water).  Several years ago when I was feeling uncertain of the professional direction I was headed (not really the profession - if that includes working with young people - but rather how I was going about it) I focused my attention on what I really wanted:  To inspire and empower young people to feel important (originally it was 'worthwhile') by teaching skills and co-creating opportunities.  It became my personal mission statement that I could return to when I felt I was lacking purpose and/or direction.  This tagline is now expanding to include TEACHERS/PROVIDERS of young people.  Where my heart has always been open and engaged with young people, it is now stretching its expanse to the providers for these young people.  If the provider is worn out and lacking purposeful energy so goes the instruction time.  This class that I speak of teaching was sorely lacking fourth quarter as I succumbed to the exhaustion that went into creating it.  The last few blogs had to do with noticing our thinking, feelings, sensations and impulses.  Today I want to suggest that if the 'thought is the ancestor to any action' then what fuels the thought?  I will answer my question with 'a belief'.  If our belief (whether conscious or unconscious) is limiting (I teach a lesson on the use of high energy and low energy language) than our efforts to intervene with the situation will be limited.  I say situation because I believe in the intrinsic worth and dignity of a human being (it's my favorite social work ethic) - so where the situation may be difficult, the individual involved is a human being - worthy of dignity, love, and respect. This belief can be challenging.  However, it is a belief - as deeply entrenched in my core as 'water is wet'.  If the core of my being believes in this idea, than regardless of my actions it is still my core belief.  Simply put - I can have a bad day, run my mouth, be judgemental...yet, if it is my intrinsic belief that people matter, than ultimately that energy is still the undercurrent - it is still ever present.  If you work with young people, perhaps you have noticed that they have a tendency to respond to adults like an animal might respond to a human.  It doesn't matter what comes out of your mouth, if they feel a negative energy coming from the adult that is rooted deep within the adults belief system, that is ultimately what they react to.  They can respond in a variety of ways...but they will react to the energy.  If I were a science person I could probably say all this in a scientific way that would make more sense.  If my core belief is 'you matter', than even if I'm going in a gazillion different directions, that young person might recognize that I lack organizational skills, but will not doubt my belief in them (even if some structural things need to change so that I can help them best by being present).  Clear as mud?  If you have children (I do not) than I suggest considering your love for them and then all the things you have said and done on the surface that seem unloving - yet the young person does not doubt the love because it is an undercurrent, an energy that seeps from you because it is a deeply held belief:  I love you.  You matter.  My suggestion to the people who are reading this that work with young people in the school system and have time off this summer...the best thing that we can do (more than attending conferences, reading books, or writing blogs) is to realign and reevaluate our belief system:  Do we believe that young people matter?  No doubts...is that our core belief?  If that is our core belief than we are effective in the job we do.