OPI Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary

“If you don’t break your ropes while you are alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?” by Kabir translated by Robert Bly, 1971.

This year, OPI celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Looking back, I remember in 2004 when Anne and I first talked about our dream of establishing the Optimum Performance Institute. We “broke our first rope” by leaving northern California to move south and open OPI at a time when most of our friends were retiring. Other “ropes” we broke: making the unending additions and subtractions to programming and staff in order to find just the right balance to move OPI forward, holding our first conference and learning what happens when you don’t properly plan for it, and, more than anything else, creating new ways, both therapeutic and extracurricular, to help young adults find their passions and come to grips with whatever is preventing them from discovering who they are. With so much to reflect upon, I’d like to share some highlights.

The best memories:

They come from the hundreds of young adults from throughout the world we have been honored to meet and support on their journey of transformation. We’re thrilled to pay tribute to the incredible strides they made at OPI by sharing some of the many success stories on our OPI Living blog.

The best realizations:

1. We are always open: adding new ideas and models, programs and staff, psychiatrists and therapists, responding to the changing and unique needs of parents, providing each young adult with customized care.
2. Our philosophy has evolved. It endures and is successful.

Our Philosophy

• Irrespective of diagnosis, irrespective of where one is from, the need to find joy in our hearts and successfully express it by becoming part of a community and world is universal.
• The key elements of creating resilient young adults is giving them the skills to learn how to find passion and motivation within their own hearts, then expressing and sharing it.
• The need for nonjudgmental understanding that reaches beyond the psychotherapy room into a community of peers as well as caring staff.
• Non-adherence to a single philosophy.
• Integration: combining therapeutic approaches (DBT, Cognitive, Behavioral and Milieu therapies) with:
  • experiential therapies/approaches.
  • psychoanalytic and psychopharmacologic modalities.
  • an accessible region rich with opportunities for growth (colleges, universities, fashion, culinary and acting schools, auto mechanics and much more).
• Teaching independent living skills and helping participants move forward with educational, vocational and career development goals through our departments of education, career development, volunteer and extracurricular activities.
• There are more specifics, too many to mention. Our OPI Living and OPI Intensive websites are the best in the business so check them out (I can’t resist mentioning,  however, our 12 activity clubs ranging from jam sessions to art, hiking, and writing clubs. Also, we have participants currently working at Best Buy, Johnnie Was, Earth Bar, and many other locations. Enough said.)

By understanding and supporting young adults during their transformation on their quest for renewed excitement and passion, by integrating individuals with different interests and capacities, we develop compassion, tolerance and patience for others, as well as ourselves.  These are the seeds from which mutual loving and supportive relationships begin to grow again and evolve.

A Final Realization

We have learned to acknowledge that we are all imperfect. It is within this imperfection that individuality, beauty, and tolerance can arise, and within imperfection, we can also find moments of joy and happiness, share them with others, and create a community and a life worth living.