The Dream Goes On Forever

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. “
– Earl Nightingale -

I think if I had known then what I know now, I would have done it differently.  But the one consistent thing, the thing that kept me on the journey, was “the dream.”  

When I started graduate school at LSU in 1976, I my goal was to get my Ph.D. in experimental psychology and teach at the university level.  I had gone to LSU specifically to work with the great Dr Robert Thompson, a physiological psychologist who was a leader in brain mapping and learning theory.  We’d teach rats to run a maze or perform a specific task like hit a lever to get a treat, then we’d do stereotactic brain surgery on the rat and lesion a specific part of the brain.  If the rat could still perform the task, that brain structure was not involved in the learning chain;  If the rat couldn’t perform the task, that structure was involved in learning.  It was interesting work.  I paid for grad school by working as a research assistant to Dr Thompson and as a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses.  So I was getting a taste of teaching at the university level early on.  I finished my master’s in 1979 and went to work as a psychological assistant at Villa Feliciana Hospital, a 400-bed geropsychiatric and long term acute care hospital in Jackson Louisiana.

And that’s what did it.  At Villa, I was exposed not only to clinical operations but also to administration.  I had almost daily contact with Jack London, the hospital’s CEO.  I watched as he made decisions that impacted and improved the entire hospital.  I learned about the challenge of being in charge.  And I decided that I wanted to be a psychiatric hospital leader.  

But at this point, I was 25 years old with a master’s in experimental psychology, working on my Ph.D. and no healthcare or management training or experience.  But I had the dream, I could see myself doing this job.  So I went about the hundreds of little steps to realize the dream.  When I completed my training at Villa, I changed my focus from experimental psychology to organizational behavior/industrial psychology and I picked up a minor in Management, focusing on research on Leadership and Change Management.  I got a part-time job as a psychological associate at Baton Rouge Developmental Centers, a company that operated outpatient clinics and managed inpatient psychiatric programs, over the next 5 years I rose to Special Projects Director and eventually, Chief Operating Officer…always with an eye on “the dream.”   

When I completed my Ph.D., Baton Rouge Developmental Centers sent me to research a project in Wilmington NC, where I became the Administrator of The Oaks, my first psych hospital at the age of 31.  I never gave up on the dream just because of the time it took to accomplish it.  The dream provided the motivation to stay on course.  

Interestingly, my Assistant Administrator at The Oaks was a Recreation Therapist by training.  One day she told me she was thinking about getting her MHA (master’s in hospital administration) but was uncertain about it “because it’s going to take me four years to do it.”  I told her:  “In four years you will be 31 whether you get your MHA or not.  And you always regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you do.”  She got her MHA.  And replaced me as the Administrator when I moved on to be the CEO of Charter Cypress Behavioral Health System in 1997.  Follow your dream.

So, think about these questions…

How do you plan to work towards one of your dreams today?

How can you support your organization as it take steps towards accomplishing its dreams?

How can you support and encourage the dreams and aspirations of your patients?