My Purpose in Life: to Help Others as a Counselor

Introduction

According to McLeod, counselling is a purposeful, private conversation arising from the interview of an individual to reflect on and receive a problem in living and the willingness of another individual to assist on that endeavor. In other words, counselling is a form of storytelling. Because my purpose in life is to help others, counseling is something I am very interested in. Counselling is the application of mental health through cognitive, affective and behavior approaches. Cognitive therapy is relatively a modern approach that focuses on how we think while affective therapy is based on our emotions by understanding how we are feeling. Behaviour therapy focuses on our actions towards changing our behaviors. There are many different types of counselling. For example, mental health counsellor, marriage, child and family counsellor, school counsellor, pastoral counselling and many more.

Skills and Qualities of an Effective Counselor

Based on my opinion, an effective counsellor should enjoy helping others and also he or she should possess certain skills. Effective counsellors should have good communicating skills. They should be able to listen and explain their thoughts clearly. They also need to have empathy on their clients by trying to put themselves in their clients’ shoe. Most importantly counsellors need to be non-judgemental and accept their clients for who they are and what they are going through. Furthermore, counsellors need to be genuine. Genuineness is a way towards an open communication. Counsellors need to be open and direct in the way they communicate to their clients. This way the clients tend to feel comfortable and they would willingly open up themselves to their counsellors.

Furthermore, in order to be an effective counsellor, I feel that he or she should have good problem solving skills. This is because they need to be able to identify and make changes of their client’s negative thoughts or harmful behaviours that might be contributing to their problems. Moreover, an effective counsellor should have good rapport building skills. Counsellors need to possess strong interpersonal relationships with their clients so that they are able to establish rapport easily. They need to provide all their attention towards their clients in order to build up their clients’ trust.

Motivations to Help Others as a Counselor

It is never an easy job to be in a helping profession as you need to deal with many people who experience various situations. In my opinion, some individual enter helping professions because of their willingness to help those who are going through a rough time. This maybe be because the counsellors might have faced certain psychological difficulties in their past and when they have overcome their problems, they tend to lend a helping hand knowing how the others would also be feeling at that time. Some are also willing to do so because of their natural habit to help people. According to Mandy Hale, there is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.

Another reason people enter helping profession would be gratification purpose. When these counsellors have successfully assist their clients in improving their lives, they are motivated by receiving gratifications. Thus, they end up being an effective counsellor. Moreover, some people desire to be a positive role model to others. This desire is usually related back to the counsellors’ past where they may have experienced a positive helping experience.

Additionally, certain counsellors took up such profession is because they want to identify themselves further. Throughout the journey into the helping profession, they are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and they tend to use this self- awareness to leave behind judgement, criticism and discrimination to truly help others. Some people choose helping profession for its challenges. At times, it will be emotionally challenging. The experiences that they might hear or see will sometimes their breath away. It is so easy to get attached to their clients and sometimes their success and failures would feel like the counsellors own successes and failures. These are some of the reasons why people are entering helping professions.

Challenges Faced in the Helping Profession

Like any other human being, I also am facing certain challenges and I also wish to achieve certain life goals in my life. One of the challenges that I face currently would financial wise. Since, I am pursuing my studies in university, the expenses here are not cheap as I have to pay for my room rental, semester bill, food and many more. Sometimes I wish that I could take up a part time job just to ease my parents’ burden a bit. Unfortunately, I cannot do so because it is just nice for me to come back from class and finish up my assignments and tutorials. Moreover, having good friends of circle I one of the challenges that I am currently facing. During our school life our group of friends is different. This is because then we will be under our parents’ supervision. They will know our circle of friends and sometimes they would advise us if we have friends with attitude problems. Our parents are always there to guide us yet in our university life our parents are not always there with us. Therefore, the tendency to be involved with friends with attitude problem is high. I had culture shock when I first entered my university. It was a bit scary for me as I get to meet people with big age gaps and it took me sometime to adapt with the surrounding. I find it difficult to find proper groupmates for the assignments in university as assignments play a significant role that leads to graduation. I have the fear of getting sleeping partners as my groupmates as it would affect our assignment marks. Therefore, I find it difficult to find a good circle of friends in my university life.

Personal Goals and Purpose to Help Others

I wish to achieve certain goals in my life because I believe that it would make me a better person. First and foremost, I would like to find a job that suits me well. I don’t want a job just for the sake of the salary. I want to really enjoy my job so that I am able to understand and adapt to that job culture. Not only that, I find that it is easier to overcome stress by enjoying our job. Moreover, I wish to inspire others as much as I could. I hope that I could make an everlasting changes in people’s lives. Being a role model to someone couldn’t give you more satisfaction.

Another goal of mine is to travel around the world. This is because I wish to learn about foreign countries’ culture such as, their marriage culture, business culture, education wise and many more. I feel that by travelling it helps us to maximize the good and minimize the bad. Sometimes being more conscious of our surroundings can be a lifesaver. By travelling, I may be able to improve the quality of others’ lives. To be financially stable is also part of my life goals. It means that my family and I have all that we need to thrive now and also in the future.

Values That Shape My Life

The first thing that I value most in my life is myself. This is because my happiness and self-respect is something that I mostly care about. I never like getting hurt. If someone hurts me a lot , I tend to ignore them later on. Whenever I am feeling down, I would look back at myself. I would support and courage myself then and also during my happy days. I value myself the most because I don’t easily judge myself. I feel that everyone should value themselves more than anyone else as nobody is more deserving than ourselves.

Another thing that I would value would be good people. Sometimes they are very difficult to find. You don’t only need money to have a successful life, you need to also surround yourself with good people. They are the ones who would encourage and support you throughout our lives. Additionally, I also value my parents a lot. This is because they are the reason why I feel secure. They taught me every approach of life that I would be facing later on in my future at a very small age. Although it is all still a learning process for me, whenever I face certain issues, I am capable enough to deal with them

Something that I value more is time. Time has given me many learning experiences, many sad and happy moments as well. According to Nelson Mandela, we must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Another thing that I value the most would be my freedom, it gives me happiness. It also gives me the opportunity to speak, act and pursue happiness without unnecessary restrictions. I feel that freedom I important to enhance expressions of creativity and original thought, increases productivity and many more. Because my purpose in life is to be happy, I must live and do the things I do for myself.

Another thing that I value the most would be my well-wishers. They were and are always there when I needed their advices or when I needed someone to listen to me or even when I needed to share anything with someone. My memories are also something that I value. Good memories are one of my ways to cheer myself up.

Lessons Learned in My Life's Journey

So far in my life I have learnt that I need to love myself more and do thing that makes me happy. Furthermore, I learnt that I need to allocate some time for myself compared to spending time with others. I have noticed that people who want to be in your life will wait for you. Moreover, I have learnt to love and respect people who make their time for you. As years passed by, I have also learnt that we get to learn something from every people we meet disregarding their age.

I have also learnt that money and hard work is very important during our adolescent stage. I have learnt not to spend money unnecessarily a money plays an important role in my university life. According to my dad, we should work hard now and enjoy our life later rather enjoying our lives now and suffering later on. Another most important thing that I have learnt is to never compare our lives with other people. I constantly remind myself of how blessed I am and that keeps me going. Just because others have a better life or maybe they are loaded, that does not mean that I should underestimate myself. I believe that one day I will also be successful in life. I know and understand my current situation well and I cannot be comparing myself just to live up to their expectations. I also believe that life is filled with ups and downs. It is never easy to achieve success in life.

Additionally, I have learnt that forgiving those who have hurt us is something that we all should accept. Mostly this lead builds up our hatred against that person. But trying to forgive is the same as the will to be strong. I believe that I’ll be able to find peace not just within the situation but within myself as well. I have also learnt to be patient in my life. Patience is the key to success. I have tried not to rush into anything without thinking twice.

Adding on, I have learnt that we need to take our own decisions. I realize it can never be easy to make decisions. I understood that there is a fine line between making our own decision and seeking help from other to make decision for us. I have experienced that in life there will be events where we cannot be waiting for someone to help us make decisions. We need to be bold enough to make our own decisions because I believe that nobody else knows better than what we are seeking in life. The authority of making the final decision should rest in our hands.

I have also learned that all the mistakes we make in our lives are just lessons that we need to master. If we learn from everything that happens to us, then there is no such things as mistakes, only lessons to be learned. Furthermore, I have learnt that our attitude determines our life. I tend to have many reasons to complain about. Such as, thinking that life in unfair, bad things always happens to me and many more. However, I realized that if we decide to just keep on thinking about the negative side, our lives will also turn out in a negative way. If we choose to think about the positive side, our lives will turn out positively.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the journey towards a helping profession can never be easy. It involves a lot of patience, being emotionally strong and many more. Being in a helping profession means that we will need to buckle down and accept the quest of learning, evaluating and working on ourselves. It also means enhancing our leadership skills, critical thinking skills, judgemental skills and many more. Sometimes we cannot always be nice to our clients. Being overly nice can destroy our work and our relationships with our clients very quickly. Moreover, we need to learn to understand people in different ways more than they understand themselves. We may need to utilize strong emotional capacities and boundaries although it may be challenging at times.

Works Cited

1. McLeod, S. (n.d.). Counselling. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/counselling.html