My life/work is Jargon?

Last week I came across this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-23423541 Here I am in a world where person centered planning and approaches is my job, my life, it's at my core and I was stopped in my tracks when it was described as jargon. Aha, but it is. It is service language.

As I have written in an earlier blog post, person centeredness is innate. It is just what we do naturally in our own lives. We also naturally judge others and have our own opinions about how people "should" live. We have this compulsion to place our values onto other people and expect them to conform. We are person centered for ourselves but often forget to respect it in other people.

Person Centered planning came about because the leaders in the field saw that we need to respect everyones right to live the way they choose. They saw that our innate ability to be person centered has given way to our innate ability to control and fix people. They are trying to bring us back to where we are meant to be, to find our true being.They have created various approaches to help the world learn and respect each individual. It started with helping people with intellectual and/or physical disabilities and has blossomed into helping people in all sectors of service life. The reality is IT'S JUST WHAT WE DO. Everyday we live based on what is IMPORTANT TO AND FOR us and the balance we find which can change daily (Conincidence that these are the key concepts we teach in person centered thinking courses? nope! It's almost unbelievable to me that I get paid to teach and promote this concept.). The difference in the service world is that in various sectors there are people who need help to explore themselves to determine how they want to live and what they might want to change to find a balance and happy lifestyle despite the challenges they may face.We have labelled it PERSON CENTERED PLANNING.... we made it jargon. This concerns me; not the work that we are doing but that families may see it as " just another service world thing". To me it is the most important thing we can focus on in life and helping others find their own lives is my passion, I feel it in my core. It excites me, it motivates me, it satisfies me.

It is a label, it is service world jargon...for some. It is my wish that every family could experience life changing practices so the label or jargon is insignificant compared to the end result. Who cares what it is called as long as people get to live a satisfactory life.

There has been so much hype about positive thinking, The Secret, The Law of Attraction etc.......it is all in line with person centeredness, it is how we were meant to live and we have warped our world so far that we need the great leaders that we have to bring us back to the real world. These are just various approaches to help us really find ourselves and live full, happy, balanced lives. It's sad that we need theses resources and leaders in a way but I am very thankful that our world is slowly turning around (and that it has created a career for me).

We have created a world for only our style of living. Person Centered Practices help us overcome that. It is not just about paper, it is about life. If Person Centred Practices are used effectively they change lives along with people, they are not just documented. For the families that experience this, it is not jargon.

I also came across this story and had an AHA moment when I read this piece:

'Disability,' she protested as she addressed a public meeting on the subject, 'isn't something that you have. It is something that happens when one group of people create barriers by designing the world only for their style of living.' - See more at: http://newint.org/features/1992/07/05/revolution/#sthash.E2Rd49qT.dpuf

Person Centeredness is also my life, my job, at my core and I live it and promote it every single day. It's not just service talk, it's a lifestyle.

I will continue to try to work myself out of a job and when I retire I will live based on my values, happily; even though some don't agree. It's my life and it will always include using "person centered approaches" to help me plan and make decisions and changes. No matter what the label is or how it changes, the practices will always be what makes the difference.