Jim’s Bio
Like many of us today, I grew up with a world view dominated by fear and anxiety. It seemed every day my feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness grew. The worst part was I felt powerless to do anything about these feelings. Like so many others, I had placed the responsibility for my life on “them”… whoever “they” were. Much to my chagrin I realized that I had fallen into the all too familiar trap of placing the responsibility for my health and well being in the hands of others.
Around that time I was exposed to the most liberating thing I have learned to this point in my life; that our feelings are a unique language and they tell us infinitely more about ourselves than they do anybody else. I was struck by the realization that I didn’t remotely understand this unique language, and so began my journey of self discovery and empowerment.
It is said when the student is ready the teacher will appear, and the universe conspired to place in my life a teacher who taught me how to not only understand what my feelings were telling me about me, but also through meditation, affirmation and visualization to heal my battered self esteem and to recognize how much power I truly had over the circumstances in my life.
One of my favorite affirmations is that smart people learn from themselves; wise people learn from everybody. For the past 19 years I have continued to study and practice the life changing ideas I have been exposed to and am thankful for all of the people and situations that have served as my teachers.
In 1997, during an era that saw more corporate mergers and acquisitions than at any time in industrialized history, I began working for a management consulting company whose products helped employees deal with whatever aversion to change they might encounter as their company was integrated and new process/behaviors were put into place.
I recognized immediately how this information could be adapted to help people in their personal life who were having trouble dealing with the changes that come with simply being alive.
In 1999 I began teaching drug and behaviorally addicted parolees in the California correctional system how to change their lives so that they could, if they wanted to, become healthier and happier. For the next seven years I taught a curriculum that featured 30 hour components focusing on stress and anger management, how to build healthy relationships with healthy people and recovery/behavioral modification in jails and parole units through out the San Francisco Bay area.
In the winter of 2006 my wife and I moved to Hawaii. From the outset we had very minimal goals: live more simple lives than the ones we led in California, and to contribute to our community. To that end I now work with developmentally disabled children teaching them life skills so that they may live happier, healthier, more independent lives.
In the mid-1980s then Los Angles Lakers basketball coach Pat Riley said of his relatively unskilled player Kurt Rambis, that his hustle was a skill. I firmly believe that self confidence, compassion and living a peaceful life are skills, and any skill can be learned.
I would like to share with you what I have learned.
Join me at www.optimismisaskill.com
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