Michelle Guidry responding to Viktor Frankl on the search for meaning

This video clip was fascinating.  It was a little over four minutes so I watched it twice because it had a great message.  So many times in life it is not what you say, but how you say it.  He began by talking about a poll taken on asking college students, what they thought was most important when they graduated.  22% stated that they wanted to make a lot of money.  78% said that they wanted to find meaning and purpose it what they did.  I fall within the 78%, but it took me a while to get here.  At first, if you grow up in a modest lifestyle, you often equate happiness with money.  Growing up, I always had everything I needed, but we were middle class.  We shopped sales, looked for bargains, had vacations, but always shared rooms with aunts, uncles, and cousins.  My first degree is in Merchandising in Business, because I enjoyed fashion and felt I was going to run a fashion boutique, go to market, and make a lot of money.  I soon realized that this lifestyle was not for me.  Hours were long, time spent away from home was difficult, and there was not a lot of money to be made at first.  I also did not have the passion or meaningfulness that I thought I was going to have.  I wanted more.  I wanted to make a difference in the life of someone else.  When I decided to go back into education, many of my aunts who are teachers, discouraged me.  They said, "There is no money in teaching, and you have to deal with discipline problems all day!"   I did not care about the money anymore, I wanted to impact the life of a child.  I would use my positive attitude to change those discipline problems into manageable students.  I did what Vicktor said in his video, I was an idealist about education and overestimated the power of my abilities to make these students into what I thought they should be.  I learned the hard way, that the profession of education was not an easy one.  People who think that teaching is a great profession because you get off at 3:15 and are off for the holidays are sadly mistaken.  We all know the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to be a good teacher.  I am blessed because I found my purpose in life in teaching.  I understood what Viktor said about if we take man as he is, we can make him worse.  What I realized, especially in my low economic school settings, was that I had to change my mindset.  I had to take man as he should be and promote him to be what he was capable of being.  In order for this to work, you must have willing participants.  Some parents and students are happy with C work and really only care about passing a class.  Others want more, and these are ones that you can promote and encourage to be better than they are capable of being.  We all know that it can only take one person to believe in someone or some idea for it to develop and grow into something great.  If you do not recognize what the meaning is in what you are doing, you become frustrated.  A good teacher, must create that spark of meaningfulness and you will elicit great things in your students and your coworkers as well.  This is not only true in education, but in family, the workplace, and relationships with friends.  Finding meaning in why we do the things that we do gives us a sense of purpose and helps us to make the biggest impact.  This video made me think and reflect.  I enjoyed the message.