What has my profession taught me so far?

May is a Better Hearing and Speech Month. I never miss this opportunity to boast about my profession and to fondly tell my friends how much I enjoy being a speech language pathologist. My profession provides me with my basic necessities like earning bread and butter, work satisfaction and drive to seek for higher goals. I was thinking if these are the only things that keep me passionate about my work? The answer is this is not it; my work gives me deeper insights. It is a continuous process. Below are only few things I felt like sharing which it has taught me: 

1) One has many more powers and much more potential than one can think- While learning to be a speech language pathologist, during the process of training I discovered many things about myself which I never knew I possessed. You might be an introvert or an extrovert, you have that ability to reach out to others. If you challenge yourself, you might find out that you have more patience within you than you think. Working on yourself and trying to achieve goals that you set for yourself is kind of an easy task but you also possess the super power for dreaming for others achievements, imagining them to learn particular skills and making them successful! 

2) Communication is a key to success- Communication is an ability to affect people with words. The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. Speech is a mirror of a soul. As the man speaks so is he. The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observations, not overturning it. Communication is a skill you can learn. It's like learning to type or learning to swim. The more you practice the better you get. If you are willing to work at it, you will rapidly improve the quality of your life. 

3) Empathy is a basic necessity to be a human- You are nothing special if you understand or at least try to understand other person's situation and perspective. It is a basic quality of being human. 

4) You have many things to be thankful for- We often take many things for granted. When you work with people with speech and language difficulties, you learn that you have many things to be thankful for. We often take things like our ability to speak, ability to hear and ability swallow for granted and keep complaining about the stuff which is at times not as important. The patient with swallowing problem can tell you how much he appreciates that one spoon of regular food he was able to eat after months. The person with stuttering can tell you how awesome it was to be able to speak with his/her family over the phone without any interruption and the list goes on. 

5) Many times Different is very Special- When you work with persons with disabilities, you realize that you had a big misunderstanding that disabilities means less skills. You get to see amazing human abilities to over come the roadblocks with strong will power, consistent attempts and never ending patience. 

6) It's not only black and white, there are shades of gray- After working in the field for some time you realize that success and failure are related terms, You can not measure all individuals with same scales. We all have unique sets of qualities. Carrying different intrinsic and extrinsic biases only shows the inefficiencies  of one's knowledge. 

7) There are no short cuts to success- In this world of trends to find quick fixes for the problems, my profession helps me to do the reality check. Success can be achieved only with efficient work (hard work may not be always efficient. ) , belief in oneself and patience. 

These are only few things my profession has taught me. Working as a speech language pathologist is a never ending learning process. It is also a big responsibility because when you work with young kids, you like it or not, you are going to leave an impact on his/her life no matter good or bad. A career in speech language pathology challenges you to use your intellect i.e. the talents of your mind in combination with your humanity i.e. the gift of your heart to do meaningful work that feeds your soul. I am proud to be the part of this community! :)