by Renee leNobel | Apr 11, 2017 | Divorce
It has been four years since I separated from my husband.
My kids have gone from 4 and 7 to 8 and 11.
I have a pretty fantastic life right now. While it has its struggles, I am in a new career that still excites me, and I get up every day looking forward to work. I have a parenting relationship with my co-parent that allows us to share the burdens and joys of parenting far better than we did when we were together.
I spend most of my day feeling content, and some of my days are truly amazing and awesome. The days that are not great last a day (sometimes two), and then I return to being content.
If anyone had told me how long it would take to get to the place four years ago, it would have depressed me further than I already was. But I would be surprised if they had told me how happy I would be. When I was in the hell of separation, I was living out my life as a mom – when that job was done, I was going to be done. Moms are never done being moms, so I would never have been done. Instead, I would have lived out my life as a mom in a sad and depressed state.
I was reminded of this recently.
I met someone who is in an unhappy marriage. She wants out. Her husband does not.
They each have their reasons for their choice. My ex was the one who wanted out, and I did not. I wasn’t happy in my marriage, but fear kept me there. My ex was likely fearful, too, but his unhappiness must have been bigger than his fear, and he stepped out of our marriage. I am grateful for the end of my marriage and the path it set me on.
Divorce opened up a new path for me.
Before, I lived in fear; I did everything out of fear. I took jobs I didn’t like that paid well because what would happen if I couldn’t find work?
I stayed in a marriage that I was unhappy in because what would happen to my kids if I got divorced?
I stayed small and contained, fearing what opening myself up to change would do. I assumed it would be bad.
Change was hard and not easy. I had to change a lot of things.
The hardest part of all was that I had to change my mind about almost everything that I thought I knew about being a woman, a mom, an accountant, and single with children.
Everything. And to do that, I needed help. None of it was easier than staying in a marriage that didn’t work. Yet every step that I took on the new path has opened up a world I thought I would never live in.
So, if you’re hesitating, know that when you reach out for help, you are putting your feet onto your own path forward.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 31, 2016 | Divorce, Finances
I don’t know where to start with this blog post but I know the outcome I want. I know what I need to say but I’m not sure how it is going to look when I finally do say it. I am relying on my values and my life experiences to be pulled forth from me by the exploratory writing process to come up with a blog post that reflects what I want to say.
This is how collaboration works.
Collaboration is a multi-step process but a large part of it is exploration.
We as individuals are like icebergs. A tiny part of us is shown to the world, but the underlying support and essence of us is as big as the part of the iceberg that sits under the water. A huge life of experiences and values shapes the way each person responds in each situation in life.
The parts of us of that are underwater are hidden – no one else sees them and yet they are the parts of our being that drive the way we do things. Other people only see what is on the surface and make assumptions about how we work and how we respond in situations. We get into conflict with each other because we don’t see the values and life experiences that are hiding beneath the surface.
So to deal with conflict, we each need to explore what is under the surface for both ourselves and the other person we are conflict with.
As you each gain understanding of yourself and of the other person involved in the conflict, ways of moving forward start to become apparent. Solutions become clear and easily implemented because both parties to the conflict now buy into the solution.
What is amazing about collaboration is that it is a process that can be learned and it is a process that works.
The not so amazing part of collaboration is that most of us are not trained to be collaborative (despite me telling everyone that they need to take this course) when dealing with others in life and usually when you get to the point where you are required to use it, you are too emotional to do so. It is challenging to do something that is so completely different from what you have learned in life. It is doubly hard when you are already in the midst of emotional conflict.
So what do most of us do? We revert to the way we have been trained in life do deal with conflict. Now let me be clear when I say trained. I am not saying that someone specifically trained you, but I am saying your personality combined with your life experiences turned you into the person you are (your style of conflict is part of the iceberg that is hiding beneath the surface).
In situations of conflict, some people are trained to be bullies and always win. Some people are trained to be avoiders. Some are trained to capitulate and be accommodating at all costs. What is your style of conflict?
I was trained to always capitulate (after I had first avoided the conflict). Many of us have two styles of conflict. I use avoidance to stay away from conflict and then when it didn’t go away and the situation becomes more stressful, I capitulate. Despite knowing this about myself and despite knowing that this does not work, I still naturally revert to this way of dealing with conflict in life.
So knowing this, I have set up some systems in my life so I am forced to be collaborative.
Systems are good (says the accountant).
Because life seems to be a series of conflicts and I seem to revert to my old style of dealing with conflict. I got reminded of this AGAIN this past weekend.
On Friday, conflict turned up in my life (yes again).
Someone asked me a favour.
Now – I never respond right away to certain requests and this was a pretty big one so I said I needed time to think about it. This is the first step in the system I have put in place for myself:
- Never give an answer right away.
Give yourself time to think. Despite thinking you are cool calm and rational and have let go of all your issues, you have not (unless you are Deepak Chopra).
Because did I ever want to give an answer. It seemed so clear. The request flew in the face of a resolution I had recently made for myself. So while I said I needed time, I thought I knew my answer would be no. Yeah – I knew it. I felt calm and clear. But I still said I needed time because I have surprised myself before.
Then, I did something that goes against my rules of the collaborative process. I started to poll other people for their opinions in the matter. Because I thought they would agree with me (hah). This leads to step 2:
- Do not poll people that are not involved in the conflict.
(I have not learned this one yet – seriously – it’s one of my rules, but I broke it! See what happens when you are emotional? Revert revert revert).
What did I get when I did this? I got the underlying beliefs and values of my friends and family. They did not jibe with what I believed for many reasons – and that would involve an entirely new collaborative process for me to understand why they were telling me what they were. So all I got from this was guilt and confusion. One thing of interest was that opinions divided clearly along gender lines. The women lent towards capitulation. The men told me to do what would make me happy. Interesting…
So now that I was confused from my polling, I spent Sunday morning testing how each answer felt. Yes, I’m trying to be less analytical and go with my intuition. So I tested how saying yes felt (crappy) and how saying no felt (equally crappy).
This leads to step 3:
- When you start to cry, scream, get grumpy and become a nasty person it’s time to stop thinking about the conflict and take a break.
So I took a break. I rode my bike. That should be a rule too. Go ride your bike. OK, I’m kidding, but find something to do that you enjoy that will take your mind off the conflict. I know there are a lot of you out there that want to get the conflict resolved and this step seems indulgent, but it is essential. I will say it again, it is essential. Because most of us have been trained to think enjoying ourselves is bad. Especially when there is work to be done.
When my break was done, I felt good again. The light bulb went off (again). This leads to the next step:
- Get back to the collaborative process when you’ve fallen off and reverted to your old style of dealing with conflict.
So this morning I woke up and sent an email to the person that had asked me the favour. I requested another meeting because there is no clear answer to resolve this new conflict I find myself in. We need to do more exploration around the underlying issues that are leading to the request. I need to understand what is going on with the other person involved and he also needs to understand what is going on with me. I know when we get to that point we will find a solution that will be clear and work for both of us.
Now I await an answer for when we can meet. Now – this part is tricky. What if the other person does not want to collaborate? Well, it appears you have a new conflict on your hands and the only thing to do in this case is explore why they do not want to use collaboration. Now you have two conflicts to resolve using collaboration. All I can say is… more practice. Woo hoo!
Because I don’t know how the final outcome of my most recent conflict is going to turn out, I’m going to have to make some assumptions. I am going to assume that I am going to meet with the person I am in conflict with and we are going to work collaboratively until new and ingenious ways of solving the issue at hand become apparent.
This leads to the final step:
- Implement your solution to the conflict…
and test it by living your life. Next thing you know, another conflict situation will happen along and you will get to try it all over again.
I think I have spent enough time on this post. It feels right now. The collaborative process (me and my blog often get into conflict) has worked again!
by Renee leNobel | Sep 18, 2016 | Divorce
I was trained to believe that being busy means you are important. This wasn’t overt training. It was training I chose to believe from observing the world around me. OK, there was a bit of overt training in school. I see it now when I see what I’m doing to my children at the start of the school year. The school year has started and the pressure to sign my children up for all sorts of extra-curricular activities has begun. And I have bought in. My older child is resisting hard and I think I’d better let him win this one (after I sign him up for a few things – swimming, choir, cross country – hey it’s only a month and I’m only doing it so he gets the bus ride home to the park near where we live). I am in such a quandary over signing him up for dance though.
I put him in dance a couple of years ago because he does not appear to like the team sport thing. Plus, whenever we were at the beach – a place he claims to hate with a passion – he would break out in dance. I decided that dance was the happy place he needed to go to so I figured he would love it as an extra-curricular activity. So I put him in dance and he did well and frankly I loved the year end concerts and hearing that he was a natural from his teacher. But he doesn’t want to do dance. He tells me that it is boring – they repeat the same moves over and over again and it has become a chore for him. Just one more thing to do to please people, including me, the woman who runs the dance studio and the world. Despite knowing this, I still want to sign him up because if I don’t, how is he ever going to figure out what he loves in life if he doesn’t try it and keep practicing it? He is going to get left behind by his peers. He is going to lose the thing he loves!
Yes, this is the argument that is going on in my head that is leading to me badgering my child to sign up for dance again. Sometimes I really hate self-awareness.
Yet self-awareness is hitting me over the head with a hammer this weekend.
Why?
I am alone.
Why am I alone?
Well, I was supposed to go on a big hiking trip with some friends but then it turned into a torrential rain weekend (of course it did – it was the start of soccer season) and we decided it is not much fun camping and hiking in a torrential downpour.
So I have no kids – they are with their dad this weekend – and I have no plans.
This is a place I found myself in A LOT when I was freshly separated. It was a place I really could not mentally handle at the time. When I was freshly separated and alone I spent a lot of time crying. A lot. I equated being alone and not busy with being useless and a failure. I had no career to bury myself in, I had no kids to take care of (they were with their dad) and all my friends were extremely busy with their families.
It sucked big time and drove me to depression.
Then my coach helped me understand the importance of alone time (especially for introverts like me and my son). She told me it was OK to sit on the couch and cry. She told me eventually I would get tired of it and move on to something else. She also told me to start figuring out what it was I enjoyed doing and to just start doing it when I had that alone time. She told me to recognize the guilt that would crop up when I was doing something that I enjoyed that I didn’t think was a “valuable use of my time” according to the old rules I had taught myself. She told me to push through that guilt and not let it stop me from doing what I enjoyed.
The great thing about this for me was that she prescribed alone time and fun time for me. I am a rule follower, a lot of us are as we are trained to be in life. So I did what I was told and sat very uncomfortably in my alone time because she told me to. I also started to go out and do things that I had enjoyed in the past. Because at that point in my life I didn’t enjoy anything. I was depressed. I repeated this prescription for a couple of years and in fact sometimes I have to go and get a new prescription for it.
This weekend I got a new prescription for it.
It is amazing because even knowing that being alone is OK now I still can’t quite handle it. I still equate being alone with many bad things and it takes me a lot of (wait for it…ALONE) time to realize how important being alone is.
So on Saturday I woke up and stared alone in the face again and started to get antsy.
I texted my friend that I was supposed to go hiking with to see if she was up for a hike even though it was pouring. Nope. So I sat on the couch and started to see the weekend stretch out before me. I RAN to my closet and put on my exercise gear, hopped in my car and drove myself to the Grouse Grind. I did that, drove home and started to work. I did that for a while until I started to beat myself up again for having no life outside of work and exercise and then I started to text all my friends. My dear friend recognized I was sliding a bit and offered me the opportunity to come over and help her prepare some healthy food.
Um. I hate cooking. I can do it and I can do it well and it has taken me many years to admit that I hate cooking. My family are all fabulous cooks and foodies. My sister reads cookbooks for fun. I should like cooking. Shopping for healthy food at the local markets, cooking and healthy eating are all the rage. OK – this is turning into another post but when my friend asked me if I wanted to come over and help her cook I realized I would rather be alone. Heh. She heard me recognize that and told me to just go make lists of everything I have to do (because I do have work I could be doing) and she knew that would give me something to do so I would’t be obsess about being alone AND I would get something done which I still haven’t let go of as being important.
This is turning into a very long blog post. Is anyone still with me? I work out the analytics of things as I write.
So I started to list all the stuff I have to do and then I realized I was losing my alone time. It was vanishing before my eyes. OMG – I have a lot to do and not much time to do it in. I need more alone time!
I decided I had to go to yoga – it is like alone time. It has meditation built in. I went to yoga.
I came out of yoga and my dear friend had asked me over for pizza (that is how first met in life – she randomly asks strangers if they want pizza as they walk by her house).
Of course I wanted pizza (it had bacon and potato on it!) and of course I wanted to hang out with my friend.
Then I came home and it was still Saturday night and I was alone.
It was then that I finally FINALLY recognized how well and truly I have been trained to think that there is something wrong with being alone with nothing to do because I realized I still subconsciously believe this fallacy.
Then I recognized what my alone time that day had brought me.
I had re-learned what is important to me and I got re-charged doing the things I enjoy. I actually got very excited about life again and I was grateful that I had gotten alone time to get reminded of these things. It really was the best day ever. I felt happy when I woke up this morning. Happy.
To bring this post full circle I now recognize what I am doing to my children when I fill up their schedules with extra-curricular activities. I am teaching them that being alone and being bored is bad. I am also not giving my introvert son enough time to figure out what it is he enjoys. He is being told what to do and he does it because he is a rule follower just like me. I am setting him up for a future mid-life crisis. Someday, he will have to learn that being alone is not bad. He will also have to learn what it is that he loves because he will never have had a chance to figure it out for himself.
I subconsciously knew that I was not letting my son be OK with himself and what he wants. I was trying to convince him he is wrong about stopping his dance class. This is the other awareness I had this weekend in my alone time. I realized that though all I’ve ever wanted for my kids is for them to be happy, I’m still following a set of parenting rules that does the opposite. I am still following the rules that I thought I had unlearned.
So, to be clear and because it seems it takes a lot to unlearn 40 years of training, I am reminding myself that alone time is good – not only is it good, it is awesome.
So this is my reminder and I hope it helps you too.
by Renee leNobel | Feb 3, 2016 | Divorce
I think our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves drive our lives. It is what your head is telling you that determines if you will have a good day or bad day. Yes, I believe we manifest our destiny by our beliefs.
I came to this realization after a lot of self-reflection. What is it that makes one person happier than another? It is basically that the happier person believes that they are happy.
I know this from my own experience.
When I first separated from my husband, I sank into a depression. The only thing that got me out of bed everyday was just my mom strength. I couldn’t crater completely because what would happen to my kids? So I managed to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I remember wondering how I had ever gotten to that place. I had always considered myself to be a happy person. In fact, that was my persona. I used to love reading depressing books because I wanted to experience that emotion because I did not have it in my life!
Every morning I woke up and felt terrible. The stories started playing in my head and the big one at that time was “what is the point?” I imagined just putting in time until my kids were old enough to look after themselves. This story played in my head for about a year. It sucked in all sorts of evidence to confirm that life sucks and it got bigger and bigger until one day I realized I did not want to go on.
That was not a good thought. What would happen to my kids then? I am so grateful that at that point I had a wonderful coach in my life who came to me through the Minerva Foundation. She understood what was going on and asked me the right questions to get me to the point where I could start shifting the story that I was telling myself.
The amazing thing was after a short time of telling myself a different story I started to feel better. This incremental difference in feeling felt so amazing that it was like a revelation. I started reading again (no, not depressing books). I started reading all those self-help books that I had mocked in the past. You know the ones and if you don’t, here is a list of my favourites:
Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life – Srikumar Rao
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom – Don Miguel Ruiz
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are – Brene Brown
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life – Byron Katie
Some of my friends noticed the change in me and asked me how I had done it. I said I just decided I was going to make myself better. When I said it that way, it didn’t seem possible and I think a few people raised more than one eyebrow and thought – yeah, right.
It wasn’t easy and it has taken some time; two years in fact, and I still tell myself some stories that are not helpful. That is what is so incredible. I have first hand evidence that the main thing that determines how my day goes is what thought I buy into when I wake up in the morning. Is it going to be a good day or a bad day? It’s as simple as that. What is not simple is letting go of those stories that make us feel terrible. They can get a hold of you and it can sometimes take a while to shake them. I rely on certain things to help me shake those stories, but that is a different blog post.
Why am I writing this post today? I was recently reminded of this by someone who wakes up everyday and says “Life is awesome!”
I had noticed that some of the stories I was starting to tell myself these days were starting to impact my day-to-day living again. I decided to adopt the “life is awesome, I’m going to crush it today” thought and for the last couple of days it has helped me get through the overwhelming thought of “HOW AM I GOING TO GET THROUGH TAX SEASON” that has been playing in my head for the last month. Life is awesome – I just will. That is my story today.
I want this blog to be the start of a series on stories we tell ourselves.
Next week’s topic? Stories we tell ourselves about money and how that affects our spending.
In that vein I would love love to have some feedback on a story that you tell yourself about money. I know mine. Mine is I’m broke, I cannot spend. What’s yours?
by Renee leNobel | Jan 10, 2016 | Divorce
I have a good friend who is very insightful and she has done it again. She has inspired this week’s post.
We hadn’t talked in awhile and we started talking about how we are each doing in life. She has Lupus – a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body’s immune system attacks your own tissues and organs and I have an ex. Now it wasn’t me that made this connection, she did. She said “Renee, your ex is like a chronic disease you have no control over. Just like a disease that flares up unexpectedly in life, so does your ex.”
He has recently “flared up” as she so succinctly put it.
Another friend noted that ex flare ups tend to happen around stressful times of the year, birthdays, Christmas… yup, right again.
I especially liked the part where she said I have no control over it, just like she has no control over when her Lupus hits.
Now, some people might object to this comparison because after all I made the choice of marrying my ex and it really is only my perception that he is flaring up. It’s simply a matter of opinion that something he has said or done is stressful to me. That is the difference here. It is mostly my reaction to my ex that causes me stress and pain whereas with my friend, her lupus is a concrete disease that she has to deal with.
That said, she has noticed that if she modifies her diet and tries to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it helps decrease the severity of her Lupus flare ups. I too have implemented strategies that prevent severe reactions to ex flare ups.
I have cut back on coffee (sigh), I exercise (well, not lately, but that’s my goal) and I have built my ex flare up response system.
My ex flare ups come on suddenly. Out of nowhere. They are infrequent but severe. I don’t see them coming. They just hit.
Now I don’t know what my friend does when a severe Lupus flare up occurs, but I have learned what to do when an extreme ex flare up hits as even though I don’t know when it is coming, I have lived through enough that I have had to develop a strategy.
The first thing I do is dump my first knee jerk emotional response into an email (making sure I remove his address first). I put in everything that is upsetting me at that very moment. I go for it. Then I hit SEND and send it to my dummy email account. I’m not sure how it works, but it calms me down.
Then I give myself time. I don’t run off to my support network to scream about the latest outrage being perpetrated by the ex (well, not for a few days anyway as I guess this blog post did come out of talking, ahem, ranting, to my network).
I take deep breaths, I meditate and I practice gratitude and remind myself that the future never turns out the way I imagine and certainly not the worst case scenario that I tend to gravitate towards in my thoughts.
Now, all these strategies don’t make the flare up go away but they do alleviate some of the symptoms such as lack of sleep and extreme grumpiness.
These strategies also get me to the best mood for dealing with my ex. Before managing myself, I would tend to fight or avoid my ex, but after time I get back to understanding I need to collaborate with my ex.
Because fighting it just exacerbates the flare up and avoiding it, well, that just puts me in into a waiting and apprehensive state.
So I sent my ex and email and proposed we talk in person with some collaborative ground rules set in place.
After a series of meetings and conversations, the flare up has subsided. We have settled back into a good routine and I will continue to work on strategies to decrease the frequency of ex flare ups in the future.
