Analyzing the Profile of a Successful Middle-Aged Woman - Essay Example

?Profile of a Successful Middle-Aged Woman Christine is a 47-year old woman. She has been married for eighteen years to her college sweetheart and they have a sixteen-year-old son who is a junior in high school. Her health is robust and has not been sick of any illness for years now. She comes from a very close-knit family. She had a very happy childhood growing up with 2 sisters and 3 brothers and loving parents who doted on them. Her sisters lived abroad but they regularly communicate online and visit each other once a year. Her aging parents live in a nearby town and she visits them once a week. She makes it a point to visit them with her brothers and their families so that they have a mini-family reunion at least twice a month. As adults, she and her siblings are very close and treat each other as friends. They share a great sense of humor that every time they get together, their laughter seems to be non-stop and they have so much fun with each other. Her own family is happy and stable. She lives with her husband and son in their own place with a pet dog that they also treat as a member of their family. They consider their only child as a huge blessing from God because her husband had difficulty with his reproductive system and was diagnosed as having a very slim chance of siring children. However, one time, they tried being “prayed over” by a priest and it bore them a baby boy! This family sometimes have money struggles, but overcome these with their industriousness at work. Christine’s son studies in an exclusive school for boys and she and her husband pay dearly for his education. They believe that he deserves the best education and made sure he got one. Even if both of them become pressured with work to earn enough income to pay their bills, they do so without any complaints because they believe that they are blessed with work unlike some people around them. Her relationship with her husband has been filled with trials and triumphs. Since they have been college sweethearts and have had a long engagement before they finally got married, they both went through life changes together – finishing school, finding jobs, establishing their careers, getting married, raising a family, etc. Christine holds a Master’s Degree in Child Psychology from a prestigious university. Her specialization is in Early Childhood. She was a preschool teacher for 22 years, with the last 18 years, running a preschool of her own. During this time, she worked closely with young children and their families and has trained teachers well that her school was considered one of the best in the city. However, due to some economic problems that beset the school, she decided to close down the school and went on to teaching part-time some Early Childhood Education courses in another prestigious university. She also worked as a researcher for education and psychology as well as became a corporate trainer for customer service, personality development and business correspondence. She has been very successful in her career as an educator and writer and takes pride in having been influential in the lives of so many people because of her jobs. Although Christine is very busy with work, she manages to maintain different sets of friends – some from graduate school, some from her high school, some colleagues at work, and some from her childhood and other social networks. Of these many friends, she has about 3 or 4 who are closest to her and she spends more time with them on separate occasions. Christine is a confident woman with a very pleasing personality. She is so approachable and finds herself being a confidante of problems of the people she encounters. Sometimes, she can get too affected with other people’s problems that she gets stressed out with them. However, when she gets her bearings back, she gives wise advise and feels fulfilled to be able to help others. Currently, she is working full time on some research writing projects and spends most of her time in front of the computer. She gets deep in concentration when she writes that she forgets the world around her. That is why she always feels dehydrated and so tired after a few hours. She tries to balance her schedule with surfing the web and interacting with her friends online and goes on walks with her dog once a day. Sometimes, she goes out for a run and does floor exercises to keep fit. She cooks healthy food for her family but sometimes cannot resist eating sweets. Her only maintenance medicines are vitamins are some food supplements. Christine continues to live happily in her simple life. Like all people, she longs for something more like some financial freedom to live more securely and comfortably. However, she is thankful for all the work coming her way to enable her to pay the bills. She knows she can still maximize her innate potentials if she gets work that would make full use of her talents and skills, and a good-paying one at that. She hopes to get more invitations for speaking engagements and consultancy work and have a more stable status at the university she teaches in. Analysis Christine’s life has been relatively smooth-sailing from childhood up to the present. Her positive experiences in the past have strongly influenced how she turned out as the person she is right now. According to Piaget’s cognitive development theory (1969), a child develops his learning abilities that prepare him to survive life’s challenges. Initially, he discovers the world using his senses, and as he grows, learns to form associations and conclusions. With close relationships to significant adults, the child develops a sense of security enabling him to venture into more learning about his world. Christine’s claim that she had a happy childhood being a member of a big family of 6 children with loving parents and maintaining her close ties with them up to the present, supported her growth into a confident and successful woman. Erikson was another prominent who came up with his own theories of human development. He presents human growth “from the point of view of conflicts, inner and outer, which the vital personality weathers re-emerging from each crisis with an increased sense of inner unity, with an increase of good judgment, and an increase in the capacity “to do well” according to his own standards and to the standards of those who are significant to him” (Erikson, 1968, p. 92). In Erikson’s Psychosocial stages, Christine is in the Generativity vs. Stagnation stage. Adults in the mid-life stage have a strong urge to leave a legacy by helping the new generation. They become very productive as they adjust the discrepancy between one’s dream and one’s actual accomplishments. Failure to achieve a sense of productivity results in psychological stagnation (Erikson, 1963). Christine’s successful academic career has led her to also raise her own expectations for herself. As one who prides at having a postgraduate degree, she has invested much of her work on education, research and writing. She feels that she has made good use of the skills she has acquired from her education as well as the ones she learned from her professional practice. She credits what she can do now to everything she has learned over the years and believes that her career path was well prepared for her even if she did not expect that it would turn out the way it did. She never expected to be a teacher when she was younger, but her natural talent in dealing with young children and advising parents has led her to this profession. Then what she learned from her vast experiences as a teacher, she decided to pass on to her graduate students who are mostly young teachers themselves. She has fully made use of her cognitive skills, which have benefitted so many young children, families, her graduate students, her trainees in the corporate arena and her clients in her research projects. She also has influenced several readers of her writing, which she has published in her online blogs as well as a magazine she contributes to. Christine’s need for self-actualization is very strong. Maslow (1970) has come up with a hierarchy of needs that must be satisfied in a person’s lifetime, and that as one’s more basic need is fulfilled, he moves on to a higher one. Chronologically, the hierarchy of needs is as follows: physiological needs; safety needs; belongingness and love needs; esteem needs and need for self-actualization (Maslow, 1970). In her current life stage, Christine has been successful in meeting all her needs and is currently in the process of meeting her self-actualization needs, which she believes is a lifelong mission. The term self-actualization was first coined by Kurt Goldstein, “it refers to man’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially” (Maslow, 1970 p. 46) Simply put, a person must do what he has been designed to do, what his talents and potentials have molded him to be. Maslow eloquently says, “What a man can be, he must be. He must be true to his own nature” (Maslow, 1970, p. 46). An individual will desire to be better at what he does well, usually where his gifts lie. For Christine, this is in her gift of communication and sensitivity to others. That is why she has spent her life teaching others, listening to their concerns and offering advice as well as writing. Physically, she tries to maintain a clean and healthy lifestyle for herself and her family. She has no lingering illness, eats well, exercises, does not smoke nor drink and keeps her relationships with others harmonious. Hopefully lives to a ripe old age truly fulfilled with the life she has lived. Christine’s life story has been inspirational. It is hoped that there are more people in this world like her, for surely, it would be a much better place to have more positive people like her. References Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton. Erikson, E.H. (1968) Identity Youth and Crisis. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. Maslow, A.H. (1970) Motivation & Personality. Harper & Row Publishers Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. New York, NY: Basic Books Read More