Chapter 21
SAL Hierarchy Case Studies
To illustrate how one's Existential Growth develops over time from the Education Stage (Level 1) on up to the Creation Stage (Level 9), consider the following THREE (3) theoretical case studies that follow the career trajectories of a Doctor, a School Teacher, and a Stay-at-Home parent.
As you review these case studies, keep in mind that these examples represent relatively generic and IDEAL existential scenarios. As such, they by no means capture or represent the extraordinary diversity of background, circumstance, and experience of persons throughout a massive planet of eight billion souls, each of whom carries a unique SAL Variables Quotient and otherwise treads a singular pathway through life.
While we at Freedom Focused are firm believers in the theoretical potential of ALL human beings to rise to the highest levels of Existential Growth as described in the SAL Hierarchy, we also recognize and acknowledge that practically speaking, not everyone will have access to all of the necessary opportunities and resources required to complete this climb during their lifetime.
In light of this reality, we encourage SAL practitioner's everywhere to avoid comparing themselves to others and focus instead on their own unique journey. SAL is not an interpersonal competition. Rather, it is an intrapersonal toolkit for individual development, growth, happiness, success, and inner peace.
Maria's Story: A Doctor
As a little girl, Maria learns of her potential to someday become a doctor (Education Stage).
As a child and adolescent, she throws herself into her studies to lay the foundation for her college and medical school pursuits (Beginner's Stage).
After graduating from high school, she enrolls in a pre-med undergraduate program at a local university (Practitioner's Stage).
After overcoming every obstacle placed in her pathway by the rough retinue of her refining crucibles, Maria finally lands her first official job as a board-certified DOCTOR. Here she enters the Polishing Stage, where she begins to enjoy the fruit of her many years of diligent study and underpaid labor. It is also where she begins to fine tune and hone her credibility and reputation—and begins paying back her massive student loans!
Years after her crushing romantic letdown, she finds love again, and gets married. Her spouse brings two children to their union, and they decide to add a third through adoption and a fourth through natural birth. The grounding of her personal and familial life adds strength and vitality to her successful professional career, despite taking maternal time off to have her baby.
After a decade-or-so has passed, Maria is personally successful, professionally respected, debt-free, and making a handsome salary. As a noted physician who has helped thousands of people with their health and well-being, she has fulfilled the core of her personal, career, and family goals to enter the SAL Actualization Stage.
As Maria's career progresses, she increasingly secures roles as a coach, leader, mentor, and teacher of others on their own medical journey. She provides further guidance, love, and leadership to her four children—and later on, to her grandchildren as well (Leadership Stage).
Later in life, having earned plenty of money, acquired much recognition and many awards, and helped all the people she has set out to help, she realizes she has truly become the doctor of her dreams (Self-Transcendence).
She also begins engaging in philanthropic work, and aims to spend the rest of her life gradually gifting away generous chunks of her ample retirement portfolio to worthy causes she believes in and is passionate about (Creation Stage).
Maria is excited about her capacity to build and give back and is confident she can contribute meaningfully by lending her expertise to creative pursuits aimed at serving others and promoting higher causes.
She spends the rest of her life thus engaged while splitting time with her spouse, children, grandchildren, friends, and colleagues in service, hobbies, and other pursuits she enjoys (Creation Stage).
While attending grade school, a young lad named Jason learns about his potential to someday become a school teacher (Education Stage).
Throughout his formal education, Jason takes his schooling seriously and closely watches his many teachers and professors to glean ideas for his own future leading a classroom (Beginner's Stage).
Like most first-year teachers, his first nine months turn out to be incredibly challenging. 12-15-hour workdays are common throughout his first semester, and there are days when he questions whether he chose the right career field (Refining Stage).
Jason has a great mentor, but also a very demanding principal. His many miscues and stumbles prove embarrassing and painful; but he persists and doesn't give up. By the end of the school year, he starts to get the hang of things, makes significant improvements, and regains the trust of his supervisors, including his principal. Over time, he begins to gradually glean more joy and satisfaction from his job (Refining Stage).
In his personal life, Jason fell in love and got married very young, while still in college. Things went okay at first. However, incompatibility issues conspired with financial stresses and other issues that ultimately led to a divorce after a couple of years (Refining Stage).
After graduating from college and beginning his teaching career, he gets remarried after he has gotten on top of his finances and matured as an individual and partner. He and his spouse have two children and adopt one more over the years. Family is important to both of them and they work together to ensure that their family relationships remain a top priority in their lives (Polishing Stage).
Professionally, Jason spends the next ten years focusing on becoming an outstanding classroom teacher and gets a little better with each year that passes. His confidence grows and his enjoyment of the students and subject matter mature along with it. His salary is modest and always will be compared to many other career fields; nevertheless, he does receive marginal raises with each year that passes. He also goes back to school and earns a masters, then a doctorate degree, thus expanding his knowledge, skills, expertise, and salary—albeit again, only marginally (Polishing Stage).
After fifteen years, he is named Head of the Math Department at his school. Things have really started to come together for him as an educator and he is genuinely enjoying his career. He's not getting rich, but he and his wife and family are financially secure, and are patiently and proactively preparing for a modestly comfortable retirement (SAL Actualization Stage).
After 15 years of success in his District Training and Consultant's job, he decides to retire—to great acclaim and praise—after 35 years as a professional educator (Self-Transcendence).
Still a relatively young man in his mid-50s, he spends the rest of his life as a part-time traveling speaker and consultant around his State, Nation, and even the world further promoting the same material that he made popular in his district training job. He never becomes "famous" or "rich" in a traditional sense, but he does become well known and respected in his field and wisely guards his allocated resources to retire comfortably in due time (Creation Stage).
Just as importantly and meaningfully, Jason remained similarly devoted to his marriage and family relationships. As a result, he found success there as well. This afforded him great joy and satisfaction as a husband and father throughout his career, thus setting him up pleasantly and rewardingly to spend his retirement spending quality time with his spouse, grandchildren, friends, colleagues, and church community where he was involved regularly in productive service opportunities. As an old man, Jason looks back with pride and satisfaction on all he accomplished and the countless lives he positively influenced through his teaching, speaking, writing, and example (Creation Stage).
Growing up, a boy named Jack had wanted to follow in his father's footsteps of being a Construction Foreman and General Contractor (Education Stage).
When he wasn't in school, Jack often watched and/or worked with his father in the construction industry. Later on, in junior high, high school, and college, he worked as a salaried laborer on his father's construction crew (Beginner's Stage).
During college, Jack met, dated, fell in love with, and decided to marry a young architect named Lisa. She was unusually intelligent, talented, and performed at the top of her class. While he attended a local State College, she was enrolled in a neighboring university that was ranked in the top #5 in the nation in architecture.
Jack's dream was to start his own construction company. After Lisa graduated and got a job with a big-name firm in a distant city, he quit his job and began to pursue his dream of starting his own construction company in the same city where his wife worked.
Accomplishing his dream, however, proved to be much more complicated and difficult than he had anticipated. In the meantime, he and his Lisa had a couple of kids while she continued to work full-time (part-time for six months-to-a-year following each maternity leave).
After a couple more years of struggle and toil trying to get his construction company off the ground, Jack and Lisa decided that it would be best—for the time being—if he set aside his entrepreneurial dreams and focused on being a stay-at-home parent to their two kids. After going back to work full-time, Lisa's salary alone was sufficient to support the family and the two of them determined together that having at least one of them raise their children up-close-and-personally was more important to them than having two incomes or starting a business right now (Refining Stage).
At first, raising two small children proved even more difficult than trying to start a new construction company from the ground-up. Then, to make matters even more challenging, Lisa had another couple of babies, again working part-time for six months-to-a-year following each maternal leave. With these added family responsibilities, they decided he would continue to be a full-time stay-at-home dad for the foreseeable future (Refining Stage).
Over time, Jack gradually got better at being a stay-at-home dad by building a routine and finding a groove in his process, which continued for the next decade until all the kids were in school. The more experienced he became, the more he enjoyed his work at home, and the less he missed his past business building endeavors (Polishing Stage).
After 10 years of successfully leading his construction crew, his last child graduated from high school, at which point he and his wife decided to start an organization together that incorporated both architecture and construction elements and services (Leadership Stage).
After five years of this additional business building, the couple had risen to the point where they no longer had to be intimately involved in the day-to-day operations and decided to appoint a leadership team to take over while still retaining ownership (Self-Transcendence).
With an empty nest and plenty of time and money on their hands, they decided to spend the rest of their lives devoted to their colleagues, friends, and most importantly—their growing family of grandchildren and later great-grandchildren. They remained loosely involved at the top of their organization, but eventually sold it completely, while still doing the odd business consult and/or teaching/training from time-to-time.
In later retirement, they enjoyed traveling the world together, often accompanied by one or more of their adult children and their families. They also served three missions for their Church, including in two international destinations and one domestic location (Creation Stage).
Don't Despair if You Aren't the IDEAL
Do not despair if your life does not resemble any of the fictional case studies from the previous section.
Indeed, don't panic if you aren't the IDEAL.
After all, the vast majority of human beings, including myself, aren't.
These three fictional "Case Studies" in several ways represent IDEAL circumstances and scenarios.
Obviously, "Life Happens" and not everyone will be fortunate enough to "Have it all" as these three individuals seemingly do by the end of their lives.
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| Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Commander of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (Aka: The Rough Riders) Spanish American War, 1898 |
It is not necessary to check every single IDEAL "Box" in order to progress in your own Existential Growth. A host of life difficulties and challenges reminiscent of the "Refining Stage" can (and often will) arise across a spectrum of life stages to make life messier than you'd like and otherwise throw "Curve Balls" that complicate, interrupt, and disrupt well laid-out dreams and hopes and plans. When that happens, as it assuredly will for all of us in various ways, don't despair!
Just keep going and remain ever committed to doing the best you can with what you have where you are.
IDEAL case studies are presented here not to make you feel undo pressure, stress, or to unduly influence you to compare yourself with others, but simply because IDEALS serve as loadstars to which we can principally and collectively hitch our wagons.
After all, the purported value of IDEALS is a fundamental hallmark of this entire Life Leadership textbook. Thus, I invite you to derive inspiration and motivation therefrom.
It is also important to remember that while failure to realize an IDEAL may sometimes be the result of bad luck or unfortunate birthing or other unfavorable life circumstances beyond your control, sometimes the exact opposite is the case. In other words, sometimes you fail to realize an IDEAL because of a very real moral failure or other preventable blunder for which YOU must ultimately take complete personal responsibility.
In all situations, you cannot change the PAST. As such, your best will always involve moving forward with determination, persistence, and positivity toward a brighter FUTURE.
- What pathway (career / lifestyle) lies in your mind, heart, and soul?
- What pathway (personal / family) lies in your mind, heart, and soul?
- If you make it to the Creation Stage, what would you like to contribute and/or create?
—Dr. JJ
Author's Note: This is the 412th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 221st consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
Click HERE for a compete listing of the other 411 FF Blog Articles
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL QUOTES
Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL POEMS
Click HERE to access the FULL TEXT of Dr. JJ's Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
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Chapter 21 Notes
