SuperViva Member Uses Life Lists to Change Her Life and the World
Tara joined SuperViva in 2006, and from the get-go saw the positive effects of making a life list.
For one thing, it helped her decide to become a counselor. Here are some recent stories she shared with me:
I’ve really found Superviva useful, especially recently as last year I finally met someone worth dating seriously (we’re actually getting married in less than two months) and upon looking at my life list together, we found that we have quite a lot of goals in common. Still, it prompted some reflection on both of our parts to see where we were both going and how we’d like to get there, as well as how it might clash with the other’s plans. Surprisingly, this life list helped me know that this was someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with - not that Alex wants to do EVERYTHING I want to do, but at least he supports all of my odder tendencies
And I guess that’s the most important thing.
Results of Her Life List Workshop
Now that I’m pursuing graduate work in counseling, I’ve found it even more useful. I even conducted a Life List Workshop at my local women’s center. The ladies found it extremely helpful to look at things they’d always wanted to do, things they’d yet to accomplish, and things they’d done and never taken notice of. I played a game with them and told them to write down a list of all the things they ever dreamed of accomplishing, even if it was something that didn’t seem within their constraints at the moment. I told them to “dream big” and pay no mind to limitations (financial, physical, or otherwise). They had a hard time at first because we (especially women) are so conditioned to be realistic and take care of others, but after awhile, they came around and had so much fun with it! I then went over their lists with them and helped them figure out ways they could make some of their more outlandish dreams come true in realistic ways - one woman wanted to go to space camp when she was younger, but obviously was in no condition to go now. So I helped her think of ways to accomplish what she’d sought to accomplish with this particular goal - why did she want to go to space camp in the first place? Would taking astronomy classes at the local community college, coupled with a mini-vacation to Kennedy Space Center, accomplish the same thing for her now?This technique also really helped some of the women see how and why their goals had changed over the years. Some of them said getting married and having kids meant they could never think of themselves and always of others - I encouraged them to find freedom in the little things, even as some of them continued to feel constrained by their life situations. All in all, it was a wonderful workshop and I recommended SuperViva bigtime!
Next: Life Lists for Prisoner Re-entry Program
I’m going to start volunteer teaching at a Prisoner Re-entry Initiative in my area; though my major task is to teach them basic life and employment skills, I think I’m going to start by having them develop a life list - I really believe that before you can teach someone you have to give them the confidence to learn and life lists are a really wonderful tool to make people “dream big.” Really I can’t thank you enough for constantly developing my concept of how life lists can be used - the website is just awesome and so useful for coming up with many new ways to spread the good word about allowing yourself to dream
(Currently Tara has her life list set to “private” while she updates it.)
New to SuperViva?
It’s quick and easy to start your life list on SuperViva with our “Super Lister.” You can make your entire list private or public, or make just specific goals private. Learn more or get started! Feel free to post any questions here or send an email.
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