It's Your Life Isn't It?

By Beverly Kievman Copen

"Throughout life we are faced with challenges that are outside of our control. This book offers you life tools to deal with changes and difficult times. This is your choice .... lt's Your Life, Isn't it?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781312617537

Book preview

Beverly Kievman Copen

IT’S YOUR LIFE, ISN’T IT?

It’s Your Life, Isn’t It?

It’s Your Life, Isn’t It?

© Copyright, 2020. U.S.A.

By Beverly Kievman Copen

Author / Photographer / Entrepreneur

www.beverlycopen.com

Originally Published in 2000

by Diamond, Inc., Tokyo, Japan

English version /Revised May 2020

For information on It’s Your Life, Isn’t It? book or bulk sales of book, contact:

Beverly Kievman Copen

Copen Life Series

Sedona, Arizona 86351

Telephone: [phone]

E-mail:  [e-mail]

Website: www.beverlycopen.com

www.flickr.com/people/bkcopen

For inquiries about publication rights in other countries, contact the author

It’s Your Life, Isn’t it?

©

Copyright, 2020

By Beverly Kievman Copen

Author, Entrepreneur, Photographer

Website:  beverlycopen.com

ORIGINALLY published in 2000d by Diamond, Inc., Tokyo, Japan

PART ONE:

CHOICES AND OPTIONS FOR WORKING WOMEN TODAY

Prologue                                                      Page

From My Private Notebook                                          6

The Impact of Change: Challenge, Fear or Opportunity? 14

Understanding and Taking Risks 26

Setting YOUR Goals - An Amazing Process 40

So, What Do You Think? 66

PART TWO:

LET’S GET PERSONAL - MY LIFE AND YOURS

What is SUCCESS?  To You? Or To Other People?81

Philosophy of Life - An Ongoing Process92

The Changing World of Our Families109

Romance137

PART THREE: 

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Selling Yourself and Your Ideas154

Ongoing Learning: The Key to Change169

When You Want Your Own Business    179                                                       

How to Turn Life Struggles into Business, Books, Poems

      and Other Fun Things                                              191                                                               

What Worked - What Didn’t Work - and Why199

FOREWARD

It’s Your Life, Isn’t It? is primarily based on my life and many different career and personal paths. It is also about the importance of cross cultural learning from living and traveling in our 21st Century global world.  I openly share the successes as well as failures, the achievements, the mistakes and the lessons learned.  I have managed to combine marriage (most of the time), children, step- children, grandchildren and an entrepreneurial career that has taken several different tracks.  Professionally, I have served on the board of directors of several prestigious companies, and president or director of many community, charity and professional organizations.  Several of them, focused on the needs of women, were organizations that I started, because I saw a need.  I have traveled to many parts of the world, frequently giving seminars or programs for women in business.  That part of my career led to my first book called Today’s Saleswoman (Prentice Hall, Inc. 1982).  Speaking and consulting assignments have taken me to Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, Central America, the United States, and Japan.  I lived in Costa Rica in Central America for two years, just prior to moving to Japan for 3 years.  As is the case in real life for everyone, there have been unbelievable high’s and struggles deeper than I ever imagined.  The toughest one of all was the long illness and death of my late husband, Michael Kievman.  That led to the writing of my second book called For Better or For Worse (Contemporary Publishers, 1989).  This period is where I learned the real meaning of the phrase handling change, and how to deal with obstacles that are outside of your control. 

It’s Your Life, Isn’t It?  includes stories from some of my successful female friends who love mentoring younger generations of women.  This is giving back. (Most of the real names of these people have been changed, unless they have given me permission to use their true identity.)    Almost every chapter includes strategies and advice - for both women and men - with philosophical thoughts as well as very specific techniques that have been shared with both women and men of all ages in my seminars around the world.  In It’s Your Life, Isn’t It? I have used true stories and examples of life in America as well as my perspective of life and cultural understanding several countries around the world.

I am re-editing this book during the watershed virus event that is impacting the whole world.  It is a period of time filled with uncertainty and changes in everyone’s everyday life.  I am hoping this book will provide thought-provoking insights and as well as inspiration; and tools for analyzing what is truly important now, and then moving forward for what you really want from life.

Brief overview of personal history

Throughout this book there are frequent references to two significant periods of the authors’ life.  One is the ten-year period from 1977 to 1987.  During this time I was married to Michael Kievman.  Michael was a respected, broadcasting executive at Cox Communications, and was ill for half of our ten-year marriage.  He had diabetes, and lost both legs.  During the last two years of his life I was his caregiver.  He died in 1987 at the age of sixty-four; I was almost fifty. That was a sad, painful, challenging period of my life. I felt strongly that I would never marry again. 

But, a new path lay ahead for me that was not a part of my plans.  Four years later I married Dr. Melvyn R. Copen, (Mel), a brilliant man whom I had known and respected as a business colleague for many years.  Mel was then President (Rector) of a prestigious Central American graduate school of international management, living in Costa Rica.  At the young age of almost 54, I married Mel.  One week later we moved to Japan where we lived for the next three years.  That was from 1991 -1994.  After moving back to the United States, we lived in Atlanta, Georgia (where I was born and lived most of my life); a few years later we moved to Sedona, Arizona.  Yet once again, after 20 years of marriage to Mel Copen, I was faced with yet another huge loss.  After a short 3 month illness, Mel passed away in 2012.

I think of myself as a survivor.  I did not allow myself to become overcome with grief; but began thinking about how to re-make myself and my future once again.  It is now 6 years later, and I feel more vibrant and alive than ever, still living in Sedona, and being blessed with the love and deep friendship of my sweetheart, Ken Rouse.  I have celebrated my 82st birthday.

Beverly Kievman Copen

Japan. Mieko is a vivacious young wife and mother, running a delightful family restaurant with her husband.  We were frequent clients and talked while enjoying many glasses of delicious sake.  She showed me her artwork that she considered a hobby and that I felt was creative enough to become a business.  Yet her self- image would not let her believe the art was good enough to be sold.  It was good enough.  This book is for her, and so many others like Mieko.

Mrs. Seki is a gracious woman who considers herself a typical Japanese housewife and mother of a married child.  Over the three years I had dozens of conversations with her at her home, at our home, and during fabulous matsuri’s (festivals) in our small- town.  Seki-san spoke no English, and my Nihongo (Japanese) was limited, but getting better.  Yet we were able to communicate, and a very strong bond developed between us.  She was incredibly talented, and showed me, with pride, her wonderful paintings that never left her home.  I would have bought several, had they been for sale.  We had such fun together and I learned so much from her.  Tears flowed down both of our faces as she waved sayonara at the Shinkansen train station when we left.  This book is for her.

I vividly recall the night at Tokyo Joe’s restaurant with 6 amazing Japanese women, plus two husbands (including mine).  The women were probably in their 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s.  (It’s impossible for me to tell the age of Japanese women!)  Each was very successful in her life and her work; yet told of incredible struggles.  The conversation that night flowed for hours.  It was so honest and intimate - even with the men there. 

But the story that lingers in my mind, even today, is about Noriko (fictitious name).  She was a traditional housewife who lived with her in-laws.  She rarely went out of the house, except to market and other brief shopping.  One day she learned that her husband had left her for another woman, and she was devastated.  Her world collapsed.  She could not go back to her own family; and divorce was out of the question.  Her husband ran a large family business; but he had left town.  Alone, she came to the realization that she must get through this and begin a new life.  One day she decided to go to the plant to work.  She had never traveled alone by train before, and was terrified.  She had no business or work skills.  But she did go and start to learn the business, and slowly began to gain self- confidence and self- respect.  Then came the day that she announced she was going to run the company.  On that day, the majority of the employees walked out - never to return.  They would not work for a woman.  She did not give up.  She found resources within herself to develop solutions to challenges that seemed insurmountable.  She didn’t have a support system of friends who could help.  That business became a thriving, much larger company than when she took over.  I don’t know if she is still running the company.  What I learned that evening, and from her, touched my heart.  This book is for her.

It’s Your Life, Isn’t It?

Part One:

A World of Choice

Prologue:  From my Private Notebook

Introduction:  From My Private Notebook

September 6, 1991

How can I be so excited and so afraid at the same time?  I am 53 years old.  Tomorrow is my wedding day to Dr. Mel Copen.  The day after tomorrow we leave for Japan, where we will be living for the next three years.  I am leaving the comfort and security of my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, my family and friends, my professional career.  I will surrender my own self -identity as we pass through immigration.  Instead of being Beverly Kievman, author, entrepreneur and professional speaker to audiences around the world, I will be Beverly Copen, accompanying spouse of Professor Mel Copen.  That was my legal status during our three years in Japan.

I have wanted to go to Asia, to Japan for half of my life.  The Far East has always held great fascination for me; yet I am going with high anxiety and confusing emotions.  Mel has his work; I have only what I create.  What does the future hold in store for both of us as we start over, once again, alone in a totally new world 10,000 miles from home?  The implications of this are almost mind boggling to me. While I have thought of those implications, I clearly have not really focused on them.  Just like Scarlett O’Hara, in Gone With the Wind, I’ll think about that tomorrow.  Today, my mind and my heart are open for this extraordinary journey.  Every principal I have taught, and lived, will be personally tested and challenged during this next phase in my life.

For 20 years I wrote and presented to audiences about my business ideas and philosophy of life.  There have been several key issues that have been consistent throughout the years: Regardless of your age at this moment, these principles apply.  If you are wonderfully happy with your life now, then enjoy this time, and help someone who needs help.  Count your blessings every day for this contentment.  But as your journey continues, events within and outside of your control change circumstances throughout the journey.  Whether you feel yourself helplessly trapped, sad or depressed, or simply know you want more out of life, here are my seven life principles:

You always have choices and options

You can take control of your life

Your attitude determines how you see problems and opportunities

Risk taking is a vital part of life, and living life to its fullest.  When you do make a mistake or fail, forgive yourself, learn from it, and move on

Use logic in planning and decision making -- your own common sense

Goal setting -- master the process of exploring what you want, then decide when it is right for you

Ask for what you want, believe that you can accomplish it, and go for it!

  One of my dreams is that readers of many countries take away a new cross -cultural understanding from reading and using the ideas in It’s Your Life, Isn’t It?  During the past few years I have shared my thoughts and views of our life in Japan with friends, both Japanese and American, as well as numerous in Asia, SE Asia, India, Central America and other countries.  By sharing some of the very honest stories from my private notebook, you will be able to read and feel the wide range of emotions as they evolved. 

September, 1997

The experience in Japan was a life changing one for me, as meaningful and extraordinary as anything I have done or accomplished in my adult life.  I did write a great deal; but most of it was just for me.  I wrote poems, letters to my family and friends back home, our impressions of Japan, the way of life, the people, and the dramatic changes taking place with the burst of the bubble.  Many of the observations and experiences were based on events we attended or relationships that we formed.  I had long, often-intimate conversations with Japanese women of all ages.  My mind flashes back to teenagers struggling with studies; young people pressured to get into the best college; boys and girls curious about the world outside of Japan. 

Before we left for Japan, Mel and I started a business in Atlanta, a travel agency, and I was President and co-founder.  But my status in Japan always remained accompanying spouse.  What I learned, I feel certain, is the equivalent of getting an advanced degree at a prestigious university.  I was full of ideas and determined to translate this experience into something that would be meaningful, potentially profitable, and make a difference.  More than anything, I wanted to do something to help the changing generations of Japanese women.  I wanted to be a change agent.  That particular path would evolve over the next 3 years -- and lead to this book.  The key was an invitation by Kazuko Sato, a thoughtful editor who heard me present a seminar in Tokyo and liked the message; and a forward thinking Japanese publishing company which took a big risk by asking me to write a book which was to help and guide Japanese women!

Before we returned to the United States in 1994 I was filled with so much emotion and sadness about leaving, that I wrote something I called Precious Memories of Japan: Reflections.  Mel helped me clarify and added to the thoughts in this piece. These reflections have helped me remember many of the illustrations and feelings that were so vibrant to me. That includes the beautiful and funny things, the confusing and the outrageous things, the sad moments, the awesome things, poignant moments, the fabulous and fascinating things, simply wonderful memories, the disappointments, things I still don’t understand, and the lessons learned.  Some of these thoughts will be included in this book.  I am grateful that I had the time to frequently write down the experiences.  If I am open and honest with you, my hope is that you will become more open and honest with loved ones and friends who are important in your life.

I hope you will find that my thought process is very LOGICAL.  When I have a vision of something that seems out of reach to many people, I think about the most logical way to accomplish this desire.  I do not let the structure of the system, my own mind, or other people’s opinions interfere with the objective.  I always listen to those opinions with respect and thoughtfulness.  I weigh the risks carefully.  But then, I make my own decision. 

When I started my first business in 1960, I was in my early 20’s. I had no business plan, no goals, and no great vision of the future.  My first son was 6 months old, and I took over a very small model agency from a friend and paid her one U.S. dollar.  There was virtually no business.  I changed the name to Atlanta Models & Talent and began calling on advertising agencies and photographers in the area, selling services to help them with their modeling and talent needs.  I had no experience; but my sense of logic said that is how I should build the business.  Six months later, I was still working from home, but had two telephones plus an answering service.  The business expanded so quickly that I had to move into my first office.  Less than two years later, my model and talent agency had become the largest in the Southeastern United States between New York and Miami, Florida. I sold that company after 15 years, but it is still in business today, beyond its 60th year! 

Logical thought processes have led to some of my life’s greatest moments.  Whatever the outcome, personally or professionally, I believe in keeping a sense of humor.  I have always been able to laugh at my antics and myself and, I hope, retain a childlike way of looking at the world.  By doing that, I can look at a situation or idea and ask, Why Not? 

This book is not written for people of a certain age or income level.  It is simply for women and men who want more out of life, especially since the awakening call of the COVID-19 virus.

  Perhaps you want a better balance in life, a more stimulating work situation, a chance to start your own business one day, or a way to sell some of your creative products or art work.  You may want a more meaningful relationship with your spouse, increased self- confidence, or greater ability to make tough decisions.  As you read the concepts and strategies throughout the book, I recommend you share those particular chapters with family members and good friends.  These concepts are powerful if you learn to adapt them into your life.  You can have more control over your own destiny.  This is your life, isn’t it?

Life is a journey - not a destination, filled with choices and options.  Whatever your age and personal situation at this moment, you can learn how this powerful concept will help you choose the path that is right for you - at very different stages throughout your life.

Part One. Chapter 1

The Impact of Change: Challenge, Fear, or Opportunity?

Change affects every aspect of your personal and professional life.  As we move well into the new century, we are all faced with new choices and new challenges. How are you reacting to them?  In many other countries around the world, these are critical issues to face. The status and interests of women throughout the world are changing.  Women now have choices, challenges and opportunities that are unprecedented.  Change can be a cause of happiness, excitement and opportunity, as well as frustration and anxiety.  Unwelcome change, or being unable to deal with it, can cause a personal loss of power and self-confidence.  This first chapter reveals my personal saga as I was building a new business while caring for a critically ill husband and a mother with Alzheimer’s disease. I learned difficult but meaningful lessons from the dramatic, emotional roller coaster ride I found myself on.  I will share with you how you can deal with changes that are both within and outside of your control. You will have an enormous impact on shaping the society of tomorrow.  If you focus on the ideas and concepts in this book, you will see a world of new opportunities.

Life is full of dreams and wishes.  It is also filled with things that we wish we had done, or said. I call it the should have and would have, but..., followed by the appropriate reason or excuse.  My mother was a beautiful young woman; I saw photographs of her in her late teen- age years.  In the early 1930’s she was asked to be in a beauty contest, where the winner would have a chance at stardom in movies.  But her mother thought that was outrageous and she forbade her to participate.  Ironically, when I was about the same age, I was asked to sign a 5- year singing contract for a record company, and my mother told me I could not do it.  Instead, throughout life I sang privately to my children, my grandchildren, in the car listening to the radio, and of course, at karaoke bars! 

Too often the choices are made for us.  In this 21st century, women around the world are realizing that the choices for traveling down different paths are within our own power of choice.  The impact and influence of our own culture, family conditioning and society usually dictate how we live today, and think about the future.  Throughout our childhood we hear phrases that stick with us as adults:  don’t make waves, don’t speak to strangers, don’t stand out from the others, don’t argue with your elders, and many more messages that permeate our minds.  I don’t believe those messages are valid in today’s incredibly fast paced, high