“Tomorrow is Another Day, Scarlett”

-Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

My mother added the “Scarlett” to the quote. This was was her regular sarcasm to the urgency with which I felt I needed to address the pressing issues in my life, even from a young age, I could not understand the need to put off until tomorrow what simply should be done today. This statement shot through me driving me almost to the brink of madness, as if even at 3 years old, I would have liked to have responded, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

Don’t get me wrong, my family really wasn’t quite certain what to do with a child like me. They tell me that they joked when I was young that I was going to grow up to be a Goodwill Ambassador. So, obviously, when it was bedtime and I was still trying to work through things that did not concern every child of my age, my mother was simply suggesting to just let it be for the night; whereas, I knew that this would be another sleepless night of trying to figure out how to fix whatever hurtful situation I may have witnessed at school, unfairness at the softball field, something I’d observed on the news that I was trying to make sense of, etc.

As I have gotten older, I still have with me the same sense of urgency. In fact, if I were to be perfectly honest, I would say that it has grown much greater. I’m a behavioral expert who spent the majority of my career working in a variety of capacities within the juvenile justice, education, mental health, criminal justice, and social service systems creating and running programs, providing consultation, or assisting investigations. Through my work, I learned that making great change is much easier than the large majority of people think and that we all can choose actions everyday that will greatly contribute to a much better world. We need to take responsibility for all of our actions and have awareness of how they impact others. It takes awareness of ourselves and others, a little different perspective and a change in the relationship we have with our ego…just enough of a shift for each of us to stop worrying about our own wants and needs enough to be mindful of the people around us and what they may want or need. Take the time as you are walking or driving to stop thinking about your list of errands, what’s going on at work or whatever selfish concern on your mind to actually pay attention to the other people around you. This, in and of itself, will cause you to contribute more to others’ lives in ways you never imagined you could. That’s one of the main purposes for which I decided to start this blog, to bring attention to how we all have the ability to be part of positive change and how quick and easy it is if we all choose to be a little more invested in others and a little less consumed with our own agendas.

The other goal is to bring the same optimism to how easy it is to create successful change in communities on a programmatic level. At the outset of my career, I spent several years, involved in extremely successful initiatives, which I will spend more time explaining in the articles within the Programming that Works category. Then I relocated to California and found myself in a job where I was only contributing to a broken system. I knew I needed to step away and figure out how to once again use my skills and experience effectively. Spending time in the LA area, having Hollywood and the media all around, one of the most important lessons that I have learned is that the biggest block to us being able to implement new, different, better solutions is the lack of proper information available to people and our inability to tap into the media to present the real truth, the compelling, factual, accurate truth. I believe that if people really knew how easy change is, both on a personal level and in terms of the programming that we can implement, the majority would do what they can to help.

I have been fortunate to have had many supporters as I have started down this this path, but when people ask me to share my goals and ask what’s the population I want to help, I’m speechless…Everyone! There’s an answer. Everyone who has a need. I understand this may sound ambitious and, from a traditional way of thinking, too large too accomplish, but it is not and it simply is the way we should look at community programming. We should not limit our resources to just one group finding anyone’s needs greater than another. If you just stop and think in the moment that you are confronted by a need, “What can I do right now,” the action you take will blossom into the next right thing and the solution, healing and answers will all appear almost immediately, this I can promise you (whether you are an individual or a program). I’ve seen it. I’ve proven it. I’ve seen it proven time and again by skeptics themselves and assure you the material contained within these posts will help be testimony.

I don’t mean this in an idealistic way. I am quite sincere that I do not believe that we need to define a single population on which to focus. Through my experience, interventions can spread among many groups and we can best use resources if we don’t limit them to a single population, but make them available to those in need, when they are in need and that includes time, money, energy, people, thought into solving the problems, etc. And, by no means do I think we should wait til tomorrow when we can start today, now, in this moment.