I saw a play last week in NYC entitled, Next to Normal.  The story is about a woman who is bi-polar.  Her disease was set off by  the death of her 8 month old son. She was unable to accept his passing to the point that he actually was alive for her.  She saw and communicated with an 18 year old son who was not there.  She created her own reality that was a fantasy.  Ultimately it drove her mad.

I attend a good deal of live theater in New York City.  I believe in taking  advantage of this incredible City that is at my fingertips and the theater in NYC is one of passions.  As in life, some plays are phenomenal and some not so great.  A few nights ago I saw a not so great play entitled Happiness BUT it did give me something to think about and a tool to utilize on those days that I am feeling not so great.

The Perfect Moment.  The concept presented in the play was this:  10 or so people are trapped in a subway car, all of them suddenly made aware of the fact that they have died.  The conductor informs them that they must come up with a Perfect Moment from their lives and if they do so, eternity can be spent in that perfect moment.  Oh if that were actually true!

So slowly but surely, each of them arrives at their perfect moment.  For an older woman, it is a moment from the 1940's when she was dancing with a soldier at a USO dance and he asked her to be his girl.  For a doorman, it was when his Dad took him to the 1954 playoff game where he saw Willie Mays make a ground-shaking catch.  For a young Hispanic bicycle delivery man it was when he dressed up as the tooth fairy and gave his daughter her 50 cents.  For a young woman who spent her life in Manhattan selling perfume at Bloomingdales and living in a make believe world of the rich, it was a night on the beach in Brooklyn with her sweetheart.  And so on.

I give my clients undergoing divorce a 'time-out' exercise that allows them to bypass a negative emotional reaction. They sit quietly and spend a minute or so taking deep, cleansing breaths to slow down their heart rate and thus calm themselves. In the past, I have asked them to then visualize a time when they were joyful or at peace.  Now I plan on using the Perfect Moment.

Here a few of my Perfect Moments:

- playing in the woods with my gang of neighborhood friends when I was a kid
- Sitting   at a dinner table with my dearest friends for my 50th birthday
- Lying in bed with my teenage daughter and just talking about her life
- Falling asleep with my children when they were young, cuddled up to me in my bed
- Awakening from a deep sleep and seeing my two year old son, standing with his blanky, staring intno my eyes.
- Hiking in the rain-forest
- Sitting on my Dad's lap
- Immediately after my wedding ceremony when my ex and I sat alone together for a half an hour to ponder the wonder of being married..
- Lying with a sleeping infant on my chest.
- Talking on the phone late at night with my first boyfriend

There are so many of those perfect moments in our lives but we forget about them all too soon.  Its the muck of life that seems to be on our minds most of the time. We have to remember to remember the perfect moments in our lives, especially when life is not treating us so good.  These are gifts we can give ourselves to bring a smile to our face and realize that life is indeed good. 

In divorce recovery as well as any other major loss in life, acceptance is the most important step we must take.  By acceptance I mean the acceptance of your reality as it exists for you right now:  what is and not what we think should or could be.  Acceptance means being grounded in reality with the release of blame, resentment and regret.  The ability to let go of those negative  emotions is true acceptance and gives you the freedom to move forward.

A couple of recent occurences in my life have reinforced this concept.  I recently received an e-mail from a cousin of mine who has been terribly sick with cancer this past year. Really sick, near death far too many times. She had a bone marrow transplant. This is a woman who also experienced divorce when her two kids were young and has aised her chlldren on her own. 

For those of you having trouble accepting your reality, I want to share this with you:

"Hi Shelley-
How are you doing?  How are the kids?
I am recovering - still. Unfortunately, I have Graft vs. Host disease. The disease basically means that the transplant is not working right now. The host (me) and the donor (graft) immune systems are battling and hopefully my donor's immune system will win. I am also suffering from severe osteoporosis. I have been left with a deformed spine, 7 fractured vertebrae which has led to quite a bit of nausea. Because my torso is now deformed to accommodate my new structure, I have trouble processing and digesting food. Let's see, I have lost a lot of my sense and smell, I have an inoperable hernia. It is inoperable because there is a high risk for infection, so no surgery is allowed. I wear a spine brace and I am in a lot of pain. My physical demeanor is that of an elderly person. (Note: she is only in her early 50's)

 BUT on the flip side I am above ground and I do appreciate life. I have a big support system. I have good medical care and  my friends and family are the best. I just want to get on with my life and stop being a patient.

My girls have been awesome through my whole ordeal, their  compassionate character makes me proud. My best friend and caregiver is without a doubt, an angel sent from heaven. We live together and he is my shadow. He has been caring for me physically and emotionally and I am very grateful. Of course, without my mother's help, I wouldn't be here. So, there are many things to be grateful for, it is just hard to be me right now."

It is simply mind-boggling to me that she can be talking about gratitude given her life situation!!  She could be stuck in anger, depression or victmhood but I heard nothing of that in her e-mail.  Her life has taken a terrible turn and she has accepted her fate.  Of course, she has depession...who wouldnt given the cicumstances. Yet I hear someone who has acknowledged her reality and who wants to live the rest of her days with love, compassion and gratitude for what she does have... or in her own words, " I am above the ground."

Next up, Melissa Stockwell.  I saw an interview on television with this Iraqi vet who lost a leg in the war.  She has gone on to compete in the para-olympics in Bejing where she set  a recod in swimming.  Despite the challenges of adjusting to life with one leg, she has taken on one physical challenge after another, proving again and again that she can still be a formidable athlete.

And she does not waste time with regrets or dwelling on the past.She was very clear in the interview I saw that there was no way she would waste a moment in blame or resetnment or a yearning for what was. She let it go.

"When I signed up, I knew I was taking a chance," she said. "I'm proud of how I lost my leg. I was proud to wear the uniform. I  still am. I've done more with one leg than I ever did with two," she said. "I have bigger dreams than I ever would have had with two legs. I don't know if things are meant to happen, but I'm very happy."

These two women humble me.  They make me think about all that I have to be grateful for and how my attitude will dicate the quality of my life.

President-Elect Obama’s theme of change strikes a common chord.  The world and everything in it, whether animate or inanimate, is in a constant state of change.  This is an unarguable fact, the truth.  Physics confirms this.  Just take a look at the world around you and you will see that everything changes and nothing remains static.  The one thing that you can always count on is change.  So why are we so afraid of change?  Why is it so unsettling?

I believe that it has to do with the unknown and our uncertainty with the unknown.  We want and need to be in control, to know what is going to happen.  The paradox in this need is that one can never know what the future holds, not a minute from now or a year from now.  We cannot control the outer world.  Things happen, they always have and they always will.  Just when we think we have it down, something else pops up to challenge us.  It is how we handle what life throws at us that is important.  It is our inner world that we can control which will ultimately elicit the change we want in our outer world.

You want to adjust your perspective on change from one of fear to one of a belief that everything will work out in your best interest.  You need to learn the difference between what you can control and what you cannot and thereby let go of the things that you cannot control and concentrate on those you can.  You do have full control over how you choose to handle the changes that life brings you.  More important, you have full control in being the change that you desire.

What do you want to change in your life this year?  Do you want to be healthier?  Then put all your full attention on that intention.  There is a saying that when you are fully committed to something, the universe will align itself to give you what you want.  I don’t know for a fact whether that is true or not but to live as if it is true would be a welcome change, an empowering perspective. The belief that you can become healthier can only move you in that direction but it must coupled with you taking full responsibility for being healthy.  Responsibility for our intentions is empowerment.

Creating positive change in your life begins with your belief and commitment to what you desire.  What you desire must be of great value to you. Focusing your attention on that change and weaving it into the fabric of every day is the key to success.  Doing whatever needs to b done is mandatory.  If you need help then get it.  Trust me, you don’t have to go it alone.  A prima ballerina will have spent years of practice with instruction and coaching to reach her goal. So too a star athlete.  Access all the tools and skills you can to move you forwards.  

A final thought for you to ponder:  What would you regret never having done in your life?  Don’t find yourself heading into the great unknown and wishing you had done this or that. Now is the time to initiate the changes that you want.

I wish you the change that you want in your life this year.  I know that you can access your inner wisdom and strength in order to achieve what it is you want.  I wish you health, happiness and joy in this one precious life of yours.

I believe that New Year’s resolutions are unique and meaningful opportunities to commit to positive change in our lives.  For those of you who are undergoing a divorce or are recently divorced, a deep commitment to create change that will move you forward into a new life is hopefully very compelling.  What better time to promise yourself that you will do all you can to let go of the pain of the past and move into a future filled with possibility than a new year?

Resolutions must be extremely compelling to us personally in order for us to keep them. They must resonate on a deep level.  They need to be truly important with a clear connection to our values and passions.  That is why so many people fail in their resolutions…they just aren’t important enough to them.

What could be more compelling to a woman who is newly divorced than to resolve to heal herself and build a new life based on what she wants now? In order to determine what she wants, she needs to know herself, the self that is emerging from the end of her marriage, a phoenix rising from the ashes.  The past is gone with no hold on your future self except the hold that you choose to erect.  It really comes down to choice.  You are blessed with free will, the will to choose how you want to live your life.

I took a wonderful yoga class this week that reminded me of how impactful the practice of mindfulness can be on our well-being.  The instructor gave us many affirmations to recite, each corresponding to a different chakra.  One of them really stood out for me because it seemed to apply to my clients in divorce recovery.  It states:  The process of purification dissolves who I am not and reveals who I am.  If we substitute the word purification for self-discovery or divorce recovery, it clarifies exactly what divorce recovery is all about:  finding out who we are now and creating a life that is based on that person.  

We dissolve the mind chatter that attempts to sabotage our self-esteem and confidence, the mind chatter of our wounded ego and the pain that wants nothing more than to keep us stuck where we are after our divorce.  We reveal the person behind that mind chatter, the person who we have always been meant to be.  We dissolve or let go of what holds us back and venture into a new life filled with possibilities for our future.

Use your divorce and the New Year as opportunities to heal, let go, claim your power and a life that will fill you with joy, meaning and fulfillment.  Resolve to move beyond your perspective of pain and doubt and to remove anything that is standing in the way of your happiness. Resolve to do the work of divorce recovery.

All around us we see the repercussions of the financial disaster. People have lost the bulk of their life savings that had been invested in the stock market.  Unemployment is rising everyday and all around us people are losing their jobs.  Credit is unavailable. Home values have plummeted and many of us have mortgages that exceed the value of our homes.  The holidays are approaching and we simply cannot spend what we do not have.  This is a scenario that our parents or grandparents lived through in the 30’s, that they repeatedly warned us about and one we never in a million years imagined could touch our own lives.  But it has.

We rail against Wall Street and the government.  Blame is raging.  How could this have happened in our day and age? Well it did happen, it is what it is and now we must accept what is and take the necessary steps to move forward. More important, what lessons and deep wisdom can we extract from our present reality that will help us to grow and evolve as human beings?  What do we need to learn so that we do not allow this to happen again?  What are the gifts of this experience?

Here are some insights that I have personally gathered:

1.    The signs were there all along.  We simply chose not to see them or we chose denial. We may not have been able to imagine just how bad things have become but we certainly saw the warning signs. From insanely inflated real estate prices to an overblown stock market to over-spending on our own parts, the signs were there.  
2.    We gave up responsibility for our own lives. I can see how I personally absolved myself of personal responsibility in my own investments by leaving it all to the so-called experts.  Ultimately, we and we alone are responsible for our lives.
3.    We get to choose what is really important in life.  We need to determine what our core values are and live them everyday.  So the kids don’t get as many presents this year.  It is time tor return to the values that hold real meaning in our lives: responsibility, acceptance, giving back, common sense, frugality…you know what I mean!
4.    We need to become more creative.  Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results! The government is going to need to do things very differently now because what they had been doing didn’t work. Same for Wall Street, same for us individually.
5.    Greed is destructive.  Unbridled greed on everyone’s part is an element of what got us here.  Back to the basics of right and wrong.
6.    We went unconscious. What were we thinking?  How could we have not seen what was happening?  We went unconscious.   We need to remain aware at all times of what is going on around us.  Only when we are aware, can we make real choices on how to best handle life.
7.    It is a time to pull together. We are all in this together.  Collective responsibility will be the road to positive change.  Obama talks about change we can believe in…be that change.
8.    Wall Street’s use of leverage brought down the markets…so too did our own personal use of leverage.  We need to return to the theory of the gold standard where a dollar has the backing of a certain amount of gold.  We spend what we have and do not leverage ourselves to the hilt.
9.     We need to learn to accept what is and then move forward.  What is is the mess we find ourselves in. Until we let go of should be’s and could be’s we will not be able to create the changes we so desperately need.
10.     We need an attitude adjustment, a new perspective.  Perhaps if we can look at this as the crisis we needed to make the changes that we have needed for so very long, then we can move forward with a positive and empowering perspective that this is all for the good.  
11.    We need to let go of what we cannot control: most everything in the external world. We need to determine what we can control in life: ourselves and how we choose to handle what life throws our way.

Your thoughts?

I returned home today from the great state of Pennsylvania where I was privileged to spend four days with the incredible army of volunteers working to elect Barack Obama as our next President. Over 57,000 out-of-state volunteers showed up in Pennsylvania to walk the streets, work the telephones and man the polling stations.  It was truly amazing!  What I have taken away from this experience once again reinforces my deep and abiding belief that our life experiences have gifts for us that can, if we are willing to identify and absorb them, transform our lives forever.  It was not only the four days in Allentown but the entire two years of Barack's campaign that has proven to be such a powerful impact on our country and the world at large.

First off I learned the lesson of non-reactive behavior, of taking the high road.  So often when we feel we are being attacked or when our feelings get hurt, we immediatly react and do and say things that we ultimately regret.  How many times was Barack Obama viciously attacked during this campaign?  His resolve to stay the course of taking the high road, to be patient and to control his emotions is a lesson for all of us.  We have the choice to react without thinking or to take the high road.  If Obama can do it under such  heavy barrage, we certainly can learn to stop, think and choose how we will handle a situation.

Obama trusted his gut instincts.  He refused to change course, even when his staff and fellow Democrats asked him to hit back harder against the Republican swift boat tactics.  His ability to trust himself and not succumb to outside pressure is why he is now the President-Elect of the United States

Obama recognized the power of one.  I saw it in the streets of Allenown.  So often, we assume that one person cannot make a difference but the Obama campaign proved that assumption dead wrong.  This campaign brought millions of people together, people from every walk of life.  The ground game was a one-on-one strategy: the power of millions of 'ones' coming together to create a tidal wave of power.  Never ever think that your efforts don't matter or that you cannot effect change.

Yes we can is a mantra for all of us.  Who could imagine that a state politician who only four years ago was an unknown entity could now be headed for the White House?  To believe that you could defeat a politican as powerful and savvy as Hilary Clinton? The sheer power of his will and the will of the people behind him has proven to me once and for all that one's perspective and attitude can alter reality. 

Putting out an extraordinary yielded an extraordiinary result.  His entire life story was about effort resulting in amazing results.  A multi-racial child, raised without the presnce of his Mother and Father, attends Harvard, becomes the first African-American to head the Harvard Law Review, heads to Illinois and becomes a State senator and then the state's representative to the United States Senate.  The hard work and enormous effort he put out resulted in what you see today.

In his life, Obama' refused to take on the victim mentality and I believe that is why he was able to stand before the country not  as a black man but as a man.  Not a red state or blue state but a nation.  His ability to forge the coalitions that propelled him into the Presidency was his insistence that we are far more alike than we are different.  We are all human beings with the same yearnings and concerns.  If that message were translated on a global level, imagine the repercussions?  Israelis and Arabs, Sunnis and Shites, the tribes of Africa. To quote John lennon: Imagine all the people living in peace.

There is the powerful matter of hope versus fear.  There were and are people out there who remained fearful of change and of someone different from them or their neighbors.  The negative ads were based upon the knowledge that fear is a great motivator.  Yet hope won out over fear.  I was poll watching in Pennsylvania and I saw the hope in the faces of people from every walk of life as they headed into the voting booths. If we let fear run us, it is virtually impossible to move forward in life. Fear paralyzes us but hope inspires us to believe that life will work out in our best interests.

These are the gifts I recieved from the Obama campaign.  I have great hope and faith that our country will trurn around.  The impressive, positive reaction around the world with his win has already improved our standing in the world.  It will not be easy, especially given our current situations and the problems that we face.  Nonetheless, if Barack Obama remains rooted in his inner wisdom and instincts, as we all should, then all will be well.

 




 

I was watching a really silly movie, Evan the Almighty with Steve Carrell,  with my teenage daughter the other night and got a little insight into life.  You just never know where you'll get a sage piece of advise these days! Listen, it was either Evan or SuperBad so I think I was lucky.

In the movie, God asks Evan to build an ark.  His wife is losing it because she understandably thinks he has wigged out!  God, in the form of a waiter at the restaurant where she is eating with her sons, reminds her that she prayed for a closer family.  He suggests to her that perhaps when we pray to God, we don't necessarily get the exact thing we asked for but instead we receive the opportunity to cultivate on our own ( a much more powerful option than just being handed something) what we asked for. 

Example:  The wife prayed for a close knit family.  Her husband had been building the ark with their sons but she up and left figuring he was wacko.  Perhaps the opportunity to build a close family was in the building of the ark together...the opportunity presented itself for just what she wanted.

So I'm thinking that isn't that what life does all the time?  It hands us 'stuff' to deal with. We can look at that 'stuff' as either an opportunity or an obstacle.  We get divorced and we pray that we have the strength to withstand the heartache and to move forward in life.  Our divorce gives us the opportunity to develop the strength we will need to create a new life...it demands that of us. We might never have been able to develop a strong will and character had we not been faced with a circumstance that challenged us to create strength in our life.  Right?

Its a great concept.  Life happens.  Chaos often reigns down upon us.  Things don't always go according to plans.  Obstacles and challenges present themselves to us during the course of our lifetime again and again.  It is how you choose to see these occurences that makes the world of difference.  You can view them as opportunities to to handle so that you grow and evolve or you can see them as some sort of cosmic punishment.

It is the same with praying to a higher power. Perhaps God dies indeed give us what we need to become who we are meant to be.

We have all been shaken by the turmoil rocking the financial world.  It is scary.  We simply don't  know what will happen next.  The future is uncertain.  But I submit to you that there are some very important life lessons to be gained from this catastrophe that can be used in all areas of our lives.

First off, let's address worrying about the future or the real issue of the unknown. The stock market has always been a perfect example about attempting to predict the future.  What we have on Wall Street is a bunch of guys attempting to make money based upon what they think will happen in the future. A better word for predict might be guess, although I would grant them the term, educated guess.  There is no way to predict the future...not an hour from now let alone next month or next year. It is not so much the future that worries us but rather the unknown. We live with the unknown everyday.  It is a  condition of life. We can only know the present moment.  Therefore, worrying or being frightened of the future makes little sense since we have no idea, nor any control over what might occur.  What if everything turns out just fine?  Now it becomes a matter of perspective: how we choose to look at life.  Are we looking for everything that might go wrong or everything that might go right?

Second lesson: take responsibility. The blame game is being played full out right now.  Blaming someone else for how we feel or what has happened makes us powerless as we are transferring our personal responsibility for our lives to the person or institution we blame.  Blaming someone else means we cannot make changes or improve the situation.  Look back and claim responsibility. For example, I invested in the market knowing full well that it was a risk and that there was rampant greed on the Street.  I could have  assessed the risks in a more productive fashion. I could have taken the time to track the stocks myself instead of leaving it to my broker.  I could have see the writing on the wall. Now is the time to ensure that we do not repeat these mistakes, that we will learn the lessons and take full responsibility for our lives.

How about understanding the basic nature of life and that is: s--t happens.  To have an expectation that everything will go according to your plan is close to insane.  The universe does not work that way.  Expectations that things will go our way are premeditated dissapomintments and resentments.  That's life and we need to accept that fact.

Clean up you mess. The government needs to clean up their mess, Wall Street need to do the same and so do we.  That done, we all need to ensure that we make conscious choices about how we want to invest our money in the future. 

How about the issue of control?  Exactly where do we have control and where do we not?  We cannot control the outer world. We cannot control what others choose to do.  Learning the difference between where we have control and where we don't will lead to a much more centered and content existence.  Trying to control life is like swimming against the current...you get nowhere except highly frustrated, tired, angry and resentful.  We can only control ourselves and how we choose to handle what life throws out way.

There are undoubtedly many more lessons to be gleaned from the crisis on Wall Street and I challenge you to find them so that you not onnly don't repeat them but so that you evolve into a wiser human being.

It is so easy to have selective recall when it comes to our marriages after our divorces.  We are lonely, our married friends seem to disappear and we seem adrift in a  foreign land.  We start to think that perhaps our marriage wasn't so bad after all.  We think perhaps it was better being married than being alone. 

It's almost akin to a person losing their mate to death.  The mate wasn't exactly  the greatest guy on earth, indeed on many fronts he was downright lousy and much of their life together, the wife was miserable.  Nonetheless, her memory becomes highly selective and she talks about much she misses him and all the wonderful things about him.  She fails to remember what their life together was really like.

Guess what?  There are lots of women out there in marriages that are are lonely and unhappy.  They live with someone and that's about it.  They co-habitat. They have the burden of living nearly separate lives under the same roof.  Add to that the constant stress and tension of their not-so-great marriage and you will find someone who may have resembled you back then.

Think long and hard about how your marriage really was, the truth.  All too often, not only do we have selective recall of the good times, we also come to rationalize our marriage via our personal interpretations.  We forget or we are in denial about how bad things really were.  We minimize the fights, the stress, the pressure, the lack of communication, the loss of self-esteem, the tears and the loneliness. Our fear of the present seems to cause our brain to re-wire itself.

I know that it is hard, I've been there and I still go there.  I think in many cases that it is just the being married part that we miss, not our ex.  We miss our Saturday nights with friends, the shared carpooling and chores, the extended families and  the holidays as a family.  But if we are really honest with ourselves, we don't miss our ex per se.  I know this isn't true for everyone but it is true for many of us. 

It is really important to be totally honest with ourselves and ensure that our memories reveal all the facts.  We need to guard ourselves into deluding ourselves, of remembering something that just wasn't true.  Life is hard for everyone and life is great for everyone.  Being married does not necessarily spell happiness.  We know that better than anyone.