D-Dedicate yourself to pursue your individual goals

I have chosen 26 tips for married life as my theme for the

A-Z challenge 2016.

 Today’s word is

Dedicate yourself to pursue your individual goal.

One of the healthy ways to build strong and authentic relationship is to encourage one another to pursue individual goals. I state this is very important even for overall health; and help us stay relevant, and busy in lifelong learning process. When I married David I just had one post graduation and was working in the service sector, as I continued I felt another PG in the area of understanding society would be added advantage to my career. So I registered for MA sociology which kept me busy for two full years, stimulating my brain, with a lot of reading for my assignments and exam. I still recall David sitting and waiting outside the examination hall while I was writing my sociology exams.

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I kept moving searching for meaningful work which would also meet our basic needs of life; and kept attending training, workshops, seminars to update myself with the current issues that needs to be addressed. So I worked for a health  organization for over 13 years starting small and moved into training that gave me opportunities to travel and work with a clinical psychologist for over 5 -7 years. By then my daughter arrived and we bought a flat and I still kept exploring and bringing changes wanting to do more and then again move to another small organization that worked with Child Rights, HIV and later on Domestic violence. 

I worked here for the next 7 years learning and growing and then my son with special needs and my life changed completely leading me to understand and explore the world of children with special needs. At that point of time, I felt like updating myself academically and pursue a degree in special education. I am happy I did not do as that would a robbed so much of my time, depriving me of spending time with my kids.

On the other hand, I also encouraged David to pursue his own goals, enabling him to complete his graduation. I found him very much inclined towards religion –  so motivated him to learn  the art of meditation,  read the bible, understand and share learning’s  in small prayer groups, translate local language devotional songs in Hindi for praise and worship to be sung for the prayer services. In his own office he attempted to write his internal exams to qualify for a better position with good perks and thus enhance his net worth as a government employee. Thus we helped each other pursue our individual goals and still continue to do so as we keep moving on in this journey with gratitude.

I still continued to progress academically and completed another two year degree in psychology after the demise of my son and moved into the area of psychological counseling and today I work as a counselor at the university. I believe that it’s very important to pursue your own goals and marriage should never stop one from ongoing learning. I learnt that you are never old to start a new goal.

Be blessed & Be happy J