A step-by-step guide designed to
help the serious traveler on the journey of life to identify his or her life
goals, to create a plan for achieving them, and to begin putting those plans
into effect. It is written in plain,
every-day language, and is broken down into bite-sized, easy to digest chapters
that provide essential background information, as well as easy-to-understand
strategies to help the reader get through his or her current crisis,
successfully. The book is divided into
a number of segments. It begins with The Basics, which suggests a primary
life goal of personal happiness and reviews the underlying principles of human
development. Who Am I?, which follows, uses a brief quiz game to identify the
reader’s personality type. This is
followed by another short, game-like segment, What Do I Want?, that helps to clarify values. How
Can I Get It? is a detailed blueprint for personal development. Mutual
Support outlines the skills needed to nurture long-term, mutually
supportive relationships. We Need to Talk! teaches specific,
essential communication techniques. The
final segment, Tips on Types,
explains and expands on the psychological type theory of Carl Jung which has
been popularized by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Frank Losik has been a licensed
Marriage & Family Therapist for over sixteen years. He is an experienced problem-solver who
specializes in working with clients who are temporarily overwhelmed by some
sort of life crisis. He has worked with
a wide variety of clients in many different settings from private practice to
state prisons to at-risk high school students. He began his study of counseling and psychology while working
through his own personal crises of divorce, career change, custodial and
non-custodial parenting, step-parenting, and remarriage. He strives to achieve two goals with his
clients: the first is to relieve their current pain and suffering; the second
is to empower them to develop the skills to resolve future problems on their
own.
(Pages vi and vii,
“My Gift”)
Most of us spend the first
thirty-five years or so of our lives trying to establish ourselves in some sort
of career and some sort of family situation.
Lacking our own reservoir of
personal experience, we have either bought into our parents’ values and
beliefs without really being able to
test them, or we have charted our course to oppose them for whatever
reason. In either case, we tend to live
our early lives, positively or negatively, under the unconscious control of our
parents and early care-givers.
Fortunately, most of us
experience an “identity crisis” somewhere around our thirty-fifth year on the
planet. We seem to be driven to go back
to complete a task that we began in adolescence. We want to become more aware of our individuality, to define our
own values and beliefs, and to chart
our course, consciously, for the rest of our lives.
Resolving our “identity crisis”
requires that we withdraw ourselves, at least mentally, from the hustle and
bustle of our daily lives. Our efforts
are best spent searching our being for the things that give meaning to our
lives, that give us a sense of direction and the will to go on. It is also useful, during this time of
reflection, to take notice of the results of other people’s experiences, their
recipes for success.
In this book I have set down the
results of my own personal search for identity and meaning. My journey led me into the formal study of
counseling and psychology and then into a career as a Marriage & Family
Therapist. It helped me to recognize
and to accept my individuality with all of its strengths and its
short-comings. I learned how to use my strengths
in appropriate situations, how not to over-use them, and how to develop new
skills to overcome my shortcomings.
I offer you the results of my
experience as a starting point for you to work out your own answers to guide
you in your own search for meaning and happiness.
Respectfully,
Frank Losik
