Author: Gorgeous

If you didn’t see this week’s blog post on Adulting Through Our Overwhelm, here’s a video recap of it that you may have missed on Facebook Live on Friday.

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While you’re there, let me know what other questions you have for me so I can cover them in future posts or videos.  

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Can you believe we’re already more than a week into the new year?

How are you doing with your resolutions and goals, if you have them?

If you’re not doing well with them, that’s ok. No shaming here.

Last week I shared a simple idea for busy working moms to choose New Year’s goals that are less than audacious in nature. And, how to fit them into their lives in a way that works for their schedules.

Maybe you’ve thought about something you want to change in your life this year. But rather than create a solid, tangible goal, you opted for something…more fluid.

More like: less time on ‘have-tos’ and more time on ‘quality time want-tos’.

But does an even more fluid goal like that feel hard to reach? 

Do you constantly feel frustrated that between the demands of your career and your household you don’t have enough quality time to spend with your family? 

You know, doing the things that you actually want to do? The things that you actually consider important and fulfilling? 

So many women unknowingly put the burden on themselves to do as many things as they can because they feel like they “should” do them.

That they’re somehow obligated to dedicate all of their time on housework and errands to take care of everyone else, and if and when all of that work is done we can just let the other ways we spend our time fall into place. 

How often are we deliberate in how we spend our time? Among all of the ‘must-dos’ in our lives, do we make sure we prioritize spending time on the things that have meaning, like spending time with our kids? Our husbands?

To be clear, this is not meant to be criticism or judgement. It’s simply to point out that sometimes we unconsciously slip into spending time in ways that don’t align with our priorities.

And it’s no wonder. We’ve all got countless things in our lives that are competing for our time and attention: apps, streaming services, social media, shopping sites, etc..

Then throw in IRL things like work, kids’ sports and other activities, requests for help with school fundraisers, laundry, grocery shopping, and the rest of that endless list.

If you’re constantly feeling squeezed by all of the things you currently spend your time on, and always find yourself putting off the things that are important to you, it’s time to hit the reset button.

With the new year well under way, now is the ideal time to take inventory of how you spend your time vs. how you want to be spending it. Make a list of what are your life priorities are, and decide how to spending your time in a way that aligns with that list.

What are the most important things to you? Are you giving them enough time?

A really important part of this exercise is to be willing to be really honest with yourself about what truly is a priority. Are you allocating time for things that you just think your family expects or needs from you, but never really asked for?

Are you doing things for people outside your home simply because you don’t like the experience of someone being unhappy with you because your turned down their request?

Pro tip: saying no to a request for your time and not feeling guilty about it is actually a thing.

Ask yourself this:  in 5, 10, or 20 years from now, are your going to be happy you spent time doing that instead of something on your priority list? 

If you truly want to create change in your life, you need to make a plan for how to do it, and commit to sticking to that plan.

Deciding loosely in your mind what you want to spend more time on isn’t going to be the method for making it happen. It’s too easy to think about something we want to accomplish, then put it on the back burner the minute something urgent comes up.

Or, to scrap it the first time we decide we’re too tired/bored/frustrated late in the day to do something that requires brain power and planning.

Or slip into an old habit of losing time on social media because FOMO got the best of you.

If you do start out strong but then to slip away from your commitment, remember to be kind to yourself. Don’t make it mean that the change you’ve worked for so far simply can’t happen, then throw in the proverbial towel on your plan.

Just assess where you went off track from a place of curiosity and non-judgement, then go right back to the habits you wanted to adopt – without beating yourself up.

In the end, you probably won’t miraculously find all the time in the world to do everything your heart desires. What you will find is that you’ll create more time to do the things that matter to you because you’re not wasting time on things that don’t.  

So, happy planning everyone! I have every bit of faith that you’ll create and implement a plan to help you make more use of your time in a way that’s in tune with your priorities for the coming year. 

If you’re yearning to create your own plan for spending more time on the things that are important to you, sign up for coaching with me.

You can even learn a bit about how life coaching works before signing up for a full coaching package by registering for a free coaching consult. Just click here to get started.

Hello, Mamas!

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Festivus…whatever you prefer to celebrate.

I also hope you gave yourself time to rest, relax, and spend some quality time with your families, recharging yourself physically and emotionally.

Unless you were basically off the grid this past week, you no doubt saw the typical slew of end-of-year of commercials, social posts, emails, etc., about New Year’s resolutions and goal setting. And they really seemed to be ratcheted up in volume and intensity this year, since we’re starting a new decade as well.

“Time to set a big, ten-year resolution!”

“Don’t just set a goal for 2021 – set one for 2030!”

“Look at how far you’ve come since 2009 – now set your sights on how much better your life can be by 2029!”

Oy.

Sit down, people.

You make me want to run and hide under my bed. 🛏

While I agree that it’s a good thing to want to set goals for yourself – audacious ones even – we need to be careful not to do so in response to trendy social memes or an endless drumbeat of tv commercials.

If we do so without having the level of commitment needed to support it, we’re merely setting ourselves up for disappointment. We’re also risking forgetting to be kind to ourselves along the way, falling into the hole of compare-and-despair.

It’s OK to not want to have a big New Year’s resolution or new major life goals. This is especially true if you haven’t already actively defined any of them as a priority in your life.

Instead of grandiose goals, how about deciding on a small goal or set of goals that are easier to manage and prioritize? Ones that you can make just a little bit of time for in between all of your existing daily time demands? That are easy to incorporate into your life without a major disruption in your everyday routine?

I like the concept of 1% daily improvement. If you’ve never heard of it, Dr. Michael C. Melvin discusses it in his book “1 Percent Better Everyday”. Have you ever heard of it?

It’s based on the idea of continuous improvement through small, incremental changes. These small changes, done consistently over time, lead to larger, more sustainable improvements.

So rather than set audacious (yet unrealistic) goals that the average working mom would find pretty difficult to commit to and would ultimately abandon, you just wiggle in a little bit here and there, and over time you see real achievement.

To me, it’s like the tortoise and the hare of goal setting. Slow and steady wins the race. Just be sure to have the patience for slow, and the commitment for steady.

So what would that look like? How about:

• If you want to commit to getting more rest, and you typically stay up past 11:00 watching TV every night, just commit to going to sleep at 10:00 one night a week. Not too drastic, right? Then once you’ve made that a steady habit, bump it up to two nights a week, and so on. In a few months you’ll feel the benefits of many nights of restful sleep.

• Trying to eat healthier? Commit to packing yourself a nutritious lunch one day a week, letting yourself stick to your normal lunchtime habits on the other days. Just pick one day, say every Wednesday. Seems less daunting than the drudgery of making a drastic switch in how you get lunch every day, right? In a few weeks bump that up to 2 days, etc. Before you know it, having your own healthy lunch option available to you at work is a standard, not an exception.

You get the picture. Just apply it to whatever goal or minor improvement you want.

• Job hunting? Send out one resume a week. 
• Need some ‘me’ time? Start scheduling one nail/hair/massage appointment a month. 
• Looking to declutter your home? Set aside just one hour a weekend to clean out a closet, a dresser, or a section of the garage.

As working moms, we have enough commitments on our plates every day without having to work big goals and resolutions into the mix. But that doesn’t mean we have to choose between either jumping on the resolution bandwagon and struggling to keep up, or not setting goals for ourselves at all out of fear of failure and disappointment.

We can choose to do goals our own way, in a way that works for us and our lives. If that means sticking to a goal 1 percent at a time, we’re still making progress.

And that’s all we need to ask of ourselves.

So my recommendation is to choose something you can improve upon with the standard of one percent at a time, be it a day, a week, or a month.  It doesn’t really have to be a measurable one percent, just something that gives you a consistent, incremental sense of growth and improvement the longer you do it. 

This time next year, I predict you’ll be toasting yourself for how well you’ve accomplished your goal.

Happy New Year, Mamas. 🥂 I wish you all the best.

The holiday season is in full swing, and with it the many holiday-related activities and events that are available for us to take part in this time of year.

Many, many, many activities and events. 

And in the spirit of being good parents, we often sign on for as many of these things as we can make time for, all in the name of creating a happy and memorable holiday experience for our families.

Cookie exchanges. Taking the kids to visit Santa. Driving the neighborhood light displays. Caroling. Watching all the Christmas specials on TV. Choir concerts. Country Christmas hay rides. Disney on Ice. Craft shows.

Decorating and more decorating.

Work parties. Friends’ parties. Neighbors’ parties. Family parties.

Shopping, wrapping, cooking, driving here and there. And more shopping, wrapping, cooking, and driving here and there.

And don’t get me started on the nightly Elf on the Shelf surprises. 🤦‍♀️

And while all of these things can be fun, how often do we ask ourselves: do we really need to be doing all of these things, occupying ourselves every way possible and through every experience available to us, in order to enjoy the holiday?

As working moms, we already put ourselves through the ringer the rest of the year trying to achieve the elusive work-life balance. Always feeling like we’re not doing a good enough job at work because of our limited time there.

Then we feel like we’re not doing a good enough job at home raising our kids and keeping the household running due to our time limits there.

So why on earth do we willingly ratchet that up a few notches during the holidays by adding even more demands to our lives?

It’s time to be completely honest with ourselves about our real reasons:

👉 Is it to make our kids happy by fulfilling their every request for holiday fun and excitement?

👉 To try and make up for the guilt that we often feel as working moms?

👉 To make our families or spouses’ families happy that we were front and center when they expected us to be?

👉 To make everyone else in our lives happy?

Maybe you will…but at what cost?

Does running yourself ragged meeting other people’s expectations of the holiday make you happy?

Or does it make you feel tired, anxious, mentally spent, and secretly resentful?

If that answer is yes, it’s time to put the brakes on the holiday madness.

Take an honest assessment of what really makes a great holiday for your family. If it doesn’t pass that assessment, take it off your to-do list. You have my permission.

It’s OK to say no. To select which family activities you’ll plan for and attend based on your own interests, needs, time, and energy.

It’s also OK to say no to certain things even if doing so makes other people unhappy, including your kids or your spouse. (Chances are pretty high they’ll still love you anyway.)

They may say they want to experience as many things as you can possibly make time for over the holiday period. But is that what they need?

What they need is a mom and wife who is rested, centered, and truly present. Who is focused and enjoying what is going on at that moment with her family.

Not on what’s happening next, on what still isn’t decorated or baked or bought or wrapped yet, on who’s expecting your presence somewhere else.

Or on where to move that blasted elf tonight. 😉

I’m not suggesting that creating fun holiday memories and spending time with people important to you isn’t worth the time or effort.

I simply want you to be willing to honestly assess what makes a fulfilling time for your family and for you. (It is Mama’s holiday too!)

Creating holiday fun powered by Mom Guilt is not it. 

It’s time to prioritize, and learn to say no.

Saying no can be one of the hardest skills to learn, especially when we’ve always avoided it in order to avoid experiencing guilt. We think that when we say yes to everything we’re being a good mom, spouse, neighbor, colleague, etc.

In reality we’re doing the opposite. Saying yes to things that aren’t our own priorities, to things that we accommodate in our schedules in order to make other people happy with us, is just another way of saying no to ourselves, and to some of our most precious resources: time and energy.  

We have to be willing to say no sometimes, to let other people be unhappy with us, in order to allocate our time and energy for things that are aligned with our own priorities. In the end, it will benefit the people in our lives.

Enjoy your holiday! 💙 ❄️

P.S. Head on over to my Facebook page and let me know what you’ll start to say no to this month in order to prioritize your time and energy

World Kindness Day was celebrated earlier this week, a day that was created by the World Kindness Movement to: 

“…further focus on the positive power of kindness…

…kindness is a fundamental part of the human condition which bridges the divided races, religion, politics, gender, etc. 

Therefore, nothing is as rewarding as giving back to others.”

Kindness always sounds like a great idea when we hear people talk about it. Of course it is! Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where we’re giving and receiving kindness every day, everywhere we go?

But kindness is often hard to practice on a day-to-day basis. We go about our daily lives, concerned about our troubles, focused on what we have to accomplish. On what we don’t have in the here and now. On people who we believe annoy us or have wronged us. 

And that’s pretty normal. The human brain evolved to protect us and keep us alive by looking for danger. But our society has evolved to the point where we don’t need that kind of constant threat detection to stay alive and safe any longer. 

The thing is, our brains haven’t kept pace with that societal evolution, so our tendency is to keep looking for threats. In our current existence, it shows as a tendency toward interpreting everyday circumstances as negative ones.

Which makes it rather challenging to go about our days thinking about what we can do to make it a kind world. We have to set our minds to LOOK for opportunities to do so. 

Opportunities for creating and spreading kindness are all around us, every day, in every relationship and interaction.  

Not just in the easy ones, like smiling and saying good morning to a stranger.

Sometimes true mastery of kindness means practicing it in the more challenging ones, when you typically wouldn’t ever think of it: 

➡️  The older man who brought the line at the coffee shop to a screeching halt because he decided to pay for his donut by counting out 37 individual coins, rather than quickly swiping or scanning an app like most people do during morning rush.

➡️  The woman at the office who’s been there for over three years, and yet you’ve *never once* seen her take a turn making a fresh pot of coffee.

➡️  That guy in the pickup truck who sped up just so you couldn’t merge into the lane ahead of him.

➡️  Your child’s teacher, who felt it was her place to ‘counsel’ you that you child’s attention span lately is surely a result of what you pack for lunch, and you should really consider going all organic/ vegetarian/ vegan/ Adkins/ whole foods/ paleo/ fill-in-the-blank-fad-diet. 

➡️  Your sister-in-law, who you’ve always had a strained relationship with, and who couldn’t resist making a snide comment about your new highlights. 

Tough ones, right?   

But like many habits, becoming good at practicing kindness takes just that – practice. 

Even when it feels the hardest. 

When we feel justified not to. 

When we believe the receiver doesn’t deserve it. 👅

Do it anyway. Let go of the belief that the other person doesn’t deserve our kindness.

Practice kindness because it feels good to be giving and kind to others, even if for no other reason than it feels good to us, the giver. 

Kindness always feels good when it comes from a place of not expecting anything in return.

That’s how you know you’re giving from the right place.

Happy World Kindness Day to all of you. 💕

We’re already well into November, which as you well know means the holiday season is approaching.

Whatever holidays you celebrate in November and December – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, or another – if you’re a single mom, depending on how your custody arrangement is structured, you’ll likely find yourself facing one or more of these holidays without your kids while they visit with your ex.

It might seem a bit soon, but now is the time to begin making plans for how to spend the holiday time when your kids are away so that you’re not spending the holiday focusing on not having them around.

To be clear, my job as a coach is to help my clients to understand the thoughts going on in their brains that create the emotions that drive their actions, not their actions themselves.

But I’m willing to step outside of that role for this post, mostly because I’ve been there. The November/December holidays tend to create strong emotions for many of us. A few suggestions can be really helpful to alleviate negative emotions that amplify the sense of loss and longing for your children when they’re away over that time.

To that end, I’m going to offer a few suggestions on ways to plan how you spend your time on the holidays – well in advance – so you can focus your thoughts BEFORE any holiday emotions creep in.

This can also serve as an exercise in taking action and managing our thoughts well in advance of any situation that we consider to be a less than ideal. Taking positive action provides you with a sense of accomplishment and control that prevents our brains from allowing “I’m-without-my-kids-on-a-holiday” blues to take front and center. 

✅ Spend time with family and friends. This is a no-brainer, of course, but start to ask your inner circle about their plans now so that you know well in advance that you’re going to be spending that time in a way that occupies your mind with positive thoughts and emotions.

This means all of the upcoming holidays that you might be spending kid-less, now through to New Year’s Eve. Even if your family and friends haven’t begun to make plans that far out, you’ve put yourself on their respective radars for when they do.

✅ Serve a holiday meal at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. This can do wonders for filling your heart and mind with gratitude for what you do have, rather than what, or who, you’re doing without on a holiday.

✅ Do you have a specific talent, like singing, dancing, or playing an instrument? Offer to entertain for an hour or so at a nearby retirement home or assisted living facility.

✅ If you don’t have an artistic talent, volunteer to read to patients at a children’s hospital. This provides a double reward of offering relief and entertainment to both the children and their parents during a hospitalization that spans a holiday. 

✅ Help feed the animals at an animal shelter. In the absence of your kids, what could be more healing for your heart than kitten snuggles and puppy kisses, amirite? 🐱 🐶

Pro tip:  many organizations require a volunteer application, orientation, and even security clearance prior to starting volunteer work, so it’s best to contact them well in advance to get all of those arrangements in place before the holidays.

✅ For something fun and different, why not volunteer to help run or be a part of a holiday parade? You can lend a hand on any number of things from organizing the high school marching bands, helping decorate a parade float, to driving the local beauty queen around in a sharp-looking convertible. 

✅ Get a jump on the holiday shopping. While I prefer not to encourage companies to force employees to spend time away from their families on a holiday, I also accept that by now it’s simply become another fact of life. So, you may as well use it to your advantage.

Many major retailers open on Thanksgiving evening, and some malls and their anchor department stores do as well. Use the time to accomplish lots of holiday shopping without the distractions of having your kids with you.

Christmas day is a different story, with far fewer places open for business. But a simple Google search will usually show what’s open near you along with any special holiday hours.

✅ Head to Starbucks or Cracker Barrel in the morning and relax with a good book and a cup of coffee. While it’s not exactly hot-chocolate-by-the-fire cozy, it adds a tone of normalcy to the day, instead of a steady flow of reminders that it’s a holiday and you are without your kids.

Pro tip: bring ear buds and your favorite music to drown out the Christmas tunes if needed. If you’re like me, certain songs bring up holiday memories with strong emotional ties. Just 30 seconds into the tune and the waterworks are a-flowin. And there I am in a public place yanking tissue after tissue out of my handbag to dry up the tears. 🚰

✅ Help a friend Santa prep. I knew of two divorced mom-friends whose had their respective kids at home for Christmas Eve on opposite years. When the kids were young they took turns helping one another with last minute Santa duties like wrapping presents and assembling bikes and doll houses. Break out the scissors, tape, wrapping paper, and a bottle of wine, and you’ve got a fun little party in the making!

✅ See a movie. Many theaters are open on Christmas and Thanksgiving, and throughout Hannukah and Kwanzaa. It’s a great opportunity to see a movie that may not be appropriate for your kids.

✅ Try a new cuisine. If you live in an area with a mixture of cultures, you may be in luck. Lots of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, and Jewish restaurants and delis are open – and busy – on Christmas day. Make it more fun by trying a cuisine you’ve never experienced before.

And some well-known chain restaurants such as Ruth’s Chris, Macaroni Grill, and McCormick & Schmick’s are open on Christmas with limited hours and/or menus.  So grab a friend and head out for a nice meal and some deep connection time.

✅ Have a back-up plan. Don’t decide on one activity and let it go at that. Because what’s worse than being alone on a holiday because your plans fell through? Plus, having a backup offers the satisfaction of being able to choose from more than one way to spend your time. 

Now here are a few things I recommend you not do on a holiday:

✖️ Spend the time on mundane activities such as cleaning and organizing your house just to get ‘caught up’, unless you’re doing so because you’ve invited people to your place for a holiday get-together.

✖️ Decide to spend the time finally organizing all of your photos (or anything surrounding sentimental memories). The last thing you want to do is spend several hours looking at pictures of your kids while you’re missing them.

 ✖️ Use the time to catch up on work. No matter how well you think it will take your mind off the fact that it’s a holiday, the day off is meant for unplugging, relaxing, and recharging. Spend it reinforcing your commitment to work-life balance. The emails and reports will still be there when you return.

So again, while these are just a few suggestions for actions to take to help redirect your thoughts over the holidays, the most important thing I want you to remember is the ability you have to manage your thinking during that time.

If you direct your energy toward choosing thoughts that serve you, rather than make you feel sad and lonely, you open yourself up to experiencing the holidays post-divorce in a way you never thought possible.

If you feel like you could use help navigating the holiday season, working with a coach can be just what you need. It’s a great gift to give to yourself.

You can give coaching a ‘test drive’ with a free 30-minute consultation with me. Click here to sign up for a time that works for you.

Like a dead bug on your windshield, self-doubt is one of those emotions that pretty much all of us experience at some point in our lives.

Sometimes you can clean it up quickly and it goes away. But sometimes it stays there as this annoying smudge that hangs out in the periphery, clouding your vision every.single.day.

For some people, self-doubt occurs in many areas of life, and for some just a few. For this post, I’ll be talking about self-doubt when it comes to making parenting decisions.

It’s no news flash that this can be a challenging job. We Moms are constantly needing to make decisions for our children’s well-being, from large to small:

✔️ What school to send them to. 

✔️ What pediatrician to see. 

✔️ How to care for a child with a chronic illness. 

✔️ What is a good bedtime for their age. 

✔️ How many hours a day you should let them use the iPad. 

✔️ Etc, etc, etc.

The list goes on and on and on, changing as they develop through each stage of life.  Throughout all of this, we are bombarded with an endless number of news reports, blogs, and books, all offering the ‘best’ and ‘latest’ advice on how to parent your children.

With so many opinions on what’s ‘best’ for your children, it’s common for Moms to second-guess themselves on what choices we make. And if we no longer have a husband or partner in the household to easily turn to for advice and support, it’s common for single Moms to feel overwhelmed when deciding which route to take.

Sometimes our self-doubt is made worse when our parenting is scrutinized or by our exes, mothers, former mothers-in-law, our child’s teacher – basically any parental armchair quarterback. 

Woah, Nellie. 🐴  Hit the pause button.

I’ve seen so many women spin and spin in indecision because they have relied on a partner as their parental backup or sounding board while they were together. And when they don’t have that endorsement to rely on, they become plagued with self-doubt.

Understandable, yes. We’re all human.

But what they don’t realize that they’ve already been making great decisions all along, on their own. They simply felt as though they needed someone else’s endorsement for their decisions in order to believe they’ve made the right decision.

If you find yourself spinning in self-doubt, the first thing to do to overcome it is to become aware of your thoughts. Understand where they may have come from, and whether or not keeping those thoughts will serve you. (spoiler alert: probably not)

So now it’s time to focus your energy on thoughts that will serve you going forward. 

If you experience self-doubt as a parent, ask yourself these questions:

➡️ What if I did know the answer, without turning to an outside source?

➡️ What if I trusted my own judgement?

➡️ How would I show up as a confident parent if I chose to believe in my own judgement, decision-making, and parenting ability?

➡️ What if I owned my decisions regardless of whether or not I have someone else’s approval?

Freedom and self-assurance come from deciding to believe that you are able to make the best decisions for your kids and be a great Mom, without someone else’s input or approval

🧚🏻‍♀️ I hereby give you permission to let go of the need for anyone else’s advice for what’s best for your child.

Because the fact is, YOU are the expert on what’s best for your child.

Yes, you.

How do I know that?

Because you ARE their mother.

That’s all the approval you need.

YOU are the only parenting approval you need.

Because you’ve already been doing a great job.

And you have been all along. 💜

What are some ways that you’ve experienced self-doubt as a single mom? How have you been able to overcome your self-doubt?

Head over to my Facebook page and share in the comments! 

As a single working mom, you have quite a lot going on throughout your day to say the least!

When your day doesn’t go the way you planned, how do you think about it?

So many of us default to the thought “I had a hard day”.

But the truth is, there are no real hard days. Days just happen. They are neutral. All of the circumstances in them are neutral.

There is no hard to them unless we allow our minds to think that they are hard. We create the bad day in our minds by how we think about the day. 

When we allow ourselves to default to thinking “I had a hard day…” or “I have a hard life…” we don’t just cause ourselves unnecessary pain. 

Some of us also use it as a reason not to show up as the best version of ourselves. To hide.

Or to bury those negative emotions by engaging in diffusing or distracting behavior.

This means being grumpy towards the kids. Eating half a package of Oreos after you put them in bed. Blowing off going to the gym for the umpteenth time this month. Or going on another magnolia.com shopping spree when you know you don’t really need another six throw pillows for the sofa, but you “deserve it”. 

If you’re telling the story of a hard day, you could just as easily tell the story of a great day, because it’s there too.  You simply need to refocus your thinking to find the good in the day, and not let the bad overshadow it.

The Green Side Of The Grass Is…Greener?

About 10 years ago my mother was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, a type of cancer for which, at the time, there was no known cure and a 0% survival rate. Fortunately, her oncologist was involved in a clinical trial using stem cell transplantation as an experimental treatment.

Prior to the stem cell transplant she had to undergo months of chemotherapy, causing all of the typical side effects: hair loss, nausea, fatigue, fever spikes and other medical complications.  For the transplant itself she underwent massive radiation treatment to completely strip her body of its immune system so it could then be replaced by the transplanted stem cells.

Which created even more severe and more frequent uncomfortable side effects while her body rebuilt its immunities over the following year.  To no surprise, she had quite a few days when she was feeling down about her situation, just wanting it to finally stop so she could feel better.

On those days her husband would try to cheer her up by saying:

“Don’t worry, honey. As long as you’re on this side of the grass, you’re doing OK.” 🤔

As macabre as those words might seem, it illustrates something very important: there is always, always, always a better way to look at any situation in your life, no matter how difficult it may seem.  No matter how bad your day may seem.

Ultimately, the choice of how you want to look at each day is yours. If you choose only to focus on the good in every day, there will be no ‘hard’ days.

So decide for yourself every day: what is it about today that makes it a great day?

Do you have a comfortable, safe home to come back to every night? People to love, and who love you in return? Food to eat, and a steady job to keep it coming?

What does it mean to be an amazing mom who handles the hard things and just keeps going, regardless?  Can you do that without using self-pity, crankiness, and indulgent behavior?

Can you look back at any given day and think:

“That day was hard. And I kicked its butt, because I can do hard things. I‘m a badass, after all.”

You decide what that looks like for you, and what you’re willing to believe for yourself every day in order for that to happen.

💜

Other people’s opinions.

They can be some of THE most crippling elements of our lives.

People will turn themselves inside out worrying what others think of them, and doing what they think they need to do in order to get others to like them. 

In the business world that behavior is rampant. No doubt you’ve come across people who endlessly jockey for political power by wearing the right clothes, eating at the right restaurants, living in the right neighborhoods, driving the right cars. They take their families on the trendiest vacations and weekend activities.

And never seem to miss the chance to try and impress their colleagues and boss by sharing it all with their colleagues. All to get others to like and admire them.

(Bleh.  I’d rather poke my right eye out with a fork than put myself back into that world again. 👁 )

But therein lies the paradox:  when we’re trying to control someone else’s opinion of us, we’re not actually controlling their opinion – we’re merely changing our thoughts about their opinion.

You can’t control someone’s opinion of you because you can’t control someone else’s mind. They might say that they think you’re awesome or just behave as if they like you, but the truth is you don’t really know what they’re thinking.

🤷‍♀️ So in the long run, what’s the point of bothering?

When we go through life attempting to control other people’s opinions of us, we’re not showing up as our authentic selves. We’re merely showing up as another version of ourselves, living an unhappy existence in the process.

We don’t take chances, because we believe failing will result in losing others’ approval and admiration, which might lead to negative emotions that we’re not willing to experience.

We also close ourselves off to opportunities. We avoid pursuing things that can help us grow and become more fulfilled. Living a more authentic, fulfilling life.

Being free of others’ opinions can begin with understanding that some people are just going to have a negative opinion of you, and it’s OK. You can be the most amazing, funny, attractive, talented, or kind person in the world and still not be someone’s cup of tea.

It’s only problematic when believe it, internalize it, and make it mean something negative about you. That you’re not likeable. Or that something is wrong with you.

Give people permission not to like you, and notice how freeing it can be (haters gonna hate anyway, amirite?). Instead, pour your energy into being the authentic version of yourself.

👑 Show up as the real you. Dress, style your hair, and wear your clothes and makeup in a way that makes you feel that way you want to. Talk how you want to talk. Like what you want, and dislike what you don’t.

When only your opinion of you matters most, you start to live your life as the person you are meant to be. You attract your kind of people, because they will be attracted to your uniqueness and authenticity.

Now, let me clarify something important: not caring about other people’s opinions of you doesn’t mean that you should feel free to behave and speak according to whatever impulses hit you in any given moment, regardless of how it may affect another person.

It’s not free license to be openly racist, homophobic, mysogynist, or otherwise hateful towards other human beings. If that’s your situation you have a lot of work to do on yourself before you should be allowed out in public, or given access to a keyboard, IMO. 👹

Nor is it free license to finally tell you sister that you think her husband is an abject moron and nobody at Thanksgiving dinner cares about his fantasy football teams. Just let that dude be who he is.   

What I’m referring to is the act of consciously altering elements of your overall personality or the way you prefer to live your life in order to influence someone else’s opinion of you.

When you release yourself from that burden, it opens you up to any number of possibilities. 🙌

Woah. Call it coincidence, but this morning while I was preparing to sit down and write you this week’s post, the Ariana Grande song Thank You, Next played on the radio.

I love the song, because it’s so different than most pop songs that dwell on emotional angst and pain within difficult relationships or breakups. Instead, she discusses the experience of personal growth after a relationship ends:

Say I’ve loved and I’ve lost
But that’s not what I see
So, look what I got
Look what you taught me
And for that, I say
Thank you, next

I think it’s a great message to send to her typically younger audience about what they can choose to make a breakup mean in their lives.

So what does that have to do with divorce?

Pop music reference aside, there is an important thing to understand about our past and relationships.

And that is, the past only exists in our thoughts. It is a non-tangible thing. We can record it, but we can not change it.

And while we can not change it, we still get to decide what we want to think about it. What we want to make it mean to us, and about us.

Then we get to re-write it, if we choose.

Regardless of what someone said to us, or did to us. Regardless of what we’ve done, or said, or thought.

Most of us aren’t even aware that the thoughts we have about our past selves and our past lives are merely thoughts. We think that those are facts.

And we might be living in victim mentality and not even realize it. When we do that, we are perpetuating the pain by telling that story over and over.

I hear this play out soooo often when women talk about their marriages and divorces, particularly the things that took place in the past through which they still define their current lives – even years and years after their divorce!

“My ex-husband blew all of our money on gambling and alcohol, so I deserve to be angry.” “My ex-husband left us for one of his co-workers, and so I’ll never be able to trust another man again.”

If we believe we are victims of unjust, unfair, or cruel behavior, we will carry those beliefs forward and limit our futures with them.

I’m not saying that we should ignore the past or deny it. But we should be conscious of whether we’re focusing on it as a means of defining ourselves and what we’re capable of having and experiencing in our future.

I was recently working with a woman whose ex-husband had an affair that had started shortly after their second child was born. Then after her divorce, she eventually moved on to a relationship that ended just shy of two years when that man revealed that he’d been carrying on a relationship with another woman for almost six months.

She took these two examples of infidelity to mean that she wasn’t worthy of love, and any relationship in the future would surely end in yet another man cheating on her. She had also decided that she ‘just doesn’t know how to pick ‘em’, and that she couldn’t trust her own judgement when it came to assessing someone’s character.

So she just gave up and stopped dating altogether. At the time we spoke, she hadn’t been in a relationship in over four years! 🤷‍♀️

When we explored other ways to think about what those circumstances of her past meant about her and any future relationships, she came up with a few alternate thoughts.

My favorite is that there are approximately 3,487,869,561 men alive in the world today, and that the actions of just two of them have absolutely no affect on what she will experience with another man in the future..

She also decided to think that infidelity is caused purely by the thoughts of the person committing the act, and has nothing to do with her worthiness for a partner who remains committed in a relationship with her.

Now the ‘story’ of her marriage and relationship past isn’t the story of her current life, nor is it something that she’ll carry into her future.

When we actively re-interpret what has taken place in the past and make it mean something totally different it can be so empowering. It allows us to take full responsibility for our feelings and our thoughts about the past, and use them in a way that serves us.

When you think about your divorce, become aware of what thoughts are you having about yourself. Are they thoughts that you want to define you?

Are they focused on the past? Or, are they focused on the future?

Are they thoughts that are serving you?

How have you been able to change your divorce story to empower yourself?

You can decide if you are a victim of something that happened in the past, and that your life is diminished by it.

Or you can decide that the past makes you feel stronger.

Thank you, next.