2020 afforded me some time to look back on my life and to think about how I ended up where I am and what, if anything, I would do differently. A book, “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig, and the Pixar movie “Soul” contributed to my “defending my life” emotional journey. What I ended up realizing was that more often than not, my greatest gifts came when I didn’t get exactly what I wanted. I even found that my 3rd choice moments led to the best opportunities and situations in my life.
I decided at the last minute (literally) to go to college after an amazing typing teacher told me to go home and tell my parents that they should be sending me to college. I did just that and my parents agreed to it and yet it was too late for me to take some of the placement tests and go to one of the schools that I thought might be at the top of my list. The 3rd choice on my list was Western Illinois University. They didn’t require one of the placement tests, it wasn’t too far from home, and my boyfriend was already there. I went thinking that I’d transfer once I could get my ducks in a row to do so.
However, as fate would have it, I met some incredible women as soon as I walked onto that campus and they remain some of my closest friends to this day. I’m not sure how I would have done my adult life without them nor do I plan on finding out. They have stood by me through thick and thin and seeing the joy on their faces at my son’s wedding will stay with me forever. Western Illinois University may have been my 3rd choice, but the friends I made will always be one of the greatest gifts of my life.
A few years later I was finishing up a doctoral program and applying for internships. The internship program for clinical psychologists is highly competitive and we have a match day similar to medical students. We rank our top choices and those sites rank us. I was limited in that I had two young children and could only apply to sites in the Chicagoland area. My top two choices were very well known and would have looked incredible on my resume. My third choice was a health and human services department in a Chicago suburb. I loved my interview there, but it wasn’t nearly as prestigious as my first two choices.
Three Is a Magic Number
Right before the match day I found out that I was pregnant with my 3rd child. I had been told that it was nearly impossible for me to have another child and thus it was quite a shock, and admittedly not great timing, for this ultimately wonderful news. Now I was faced with a match day for my internship and the awareness that my top two choices may not be a good fit for my life. It was too late to change my rankings and so I logged onto my computer on that match day with worry and concern. I matched with my 3rd choice! I couldn’t believe it. Part of me was a bit wounded for not matching with my top choices and the other part of me was thrilled because I believed I could make this internship work with a pregnancy and a new baby.
Happiness is seeing the blessing in getting what you need instead of what you want. #gratitude #regret #reflection #choices Click To TweetThat internship was a true blessing. I learned so much. I was surrounded with love and support during the end of my pregnancy and coming back to work exhausted and missing my baby. At that internship I also met someone who became both a dear friend and a valued colleague, and he was the one who pointed me in the direction of becoming a life and executive coach. I remember calling him and telling him how much I was struggling with finding the right balance of work and family and how he supported me and gave me the advice to look into iPEC, the coaching school that I ended up going to.
Both of those third choices turned out to be some of the biggest blessings of my life. Admittedly both felt like failures at first until I embraced them and decided that I would make the most out of my 3rd choices. Those memories have helped me through a very trying year in which a pandemic was definitely not even a 3rd choice on my list of dreams! We can look back on our life with regret and yet what purpose does that serve? Or we can look back and see that things that seemed rough at the time actually led us to chances, people, and opportunities we never would have found otherwise.
Love,
Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC