by Renee leNobel | Nov 5, 2015 | Divorce
When I was freshly separated I was under terrible stress and in extreme emotional pain. My days were consumed with anger and sadness and I remember wondering if anything could be worse than going through a divorce. According to the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, death of a spouse tops out as the most stressful known event and this is followed by divorce. However reading further, one can develop a stress score by adding up all the events that have happened to a person within the year. If you are getting divorced or have recently divorced then you can add up the following scores:
Divorce – 73
Separation – 65
Change in financial state – 38
Change to different line of work (often comes with divorce) – 36
Trouble with in-laws – 29
Change in living conditions – 25
Change in social activities – 18
Change in sleeping habits – 16
And I could go on as many other stressors seem to come with divorce. By now, your total stress score is up to 300. You are at risk of illness. Wow – I’ve never added it up before, but that score speaks volumes.
As everyone told me, eventually I would get through it and life would get better and they were right. I did get through it and life is way better but it took considerable time for things to get better. I spent a good two to three years living with above average stress. Being a mom, I passed this stress along to my kids and I know that their dad also was in stress and did the same thing. This is not a good situation for anyone.
How could it be better?
This is something I’ve been trying to figure out.
One of my first ideas was that it should be a lot harder to get married and perhaps marriage should just be banned. Yeah – that’s not going to happen. I decided I didn’t want to go around being the dream killer. Now when people tell me that they are getting married, I just smile and say “congratulations.”
So instead I decided to be part of the movement to help people divorce better. Maybe if more and more people start divorcing better, the stressors associated with divorce will start to go down.
How can you divorce better?
Do what it takes to learn how to do conflict the right way. Doing conflict the wrong way is likely what got you to divorce and continuing to do conflict the wrong way is what makes divorce so stressful.
This is not a quick fix. After all, we have spent our entire lives learning how to do conflict our own way and we aren’t suddenly going to change just by deciding to change. It takes work and practice.
You will likely have to find a support system that is going to help you do conflict the right way. Don’t hire pitbull lawyers that love the court system and war. Hire people that will support both you and your ex as you figure out your more positive future now that you have decided to part ways. Hire people that are going to support you as you implement new tools in your life that allow you to thrive.
Spend your divorce dollars and energy wisely. Don’t spend your dollars on the type of support that is not going to help you move to a more positive life. Spend your time and energy on figuring out ways to live your life with hope.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 29, 2015 | Finances
I recently went to the Economic Update that CPABC (that’s Chartered Professional Accountants of BC) puts on every year. I go every year as it is free professional development (well, almost free as it consumes my time) and I always think that I might learn something. This year I learned that the Economic Update works like a creativity hour for me.
This year the speaker went through his various charts on GDP, inflation and bank rates and gave his predictions. I am perhaps a bit of a cynic but are these economists ever able to predict anything? As he was going through his various charts he focused on the winter of 2014 where everything took a tumble due to bad weather, yet weather does not seem to be one of the factors when he made predictions for the upcoming years. Instead his predictions were based on all the old culprits: the state of the various world economies and the demand for the raw materials that Canada ships out.
After a while I tuned out. There were at least 100 slides of different charts predicting various things. After hearing that the Bank of Canada rate would likely remain unchanged, I sat back and began to daydream. After all, most of us middle class citizens are mainly concerned with knowing if our mortgage, line of credit or cost of doing business is going to change. As the economist predicted the Bank of Canada rate will not change for a year, we can all get back to paying off those mortgages and loans while building our lives and businesses.
As my mind drifted, I started thinking about our new Liberal government. I hadn’t followed much of the Liberal election campaign, but I did want to see change in Ottawa so I was happy to see that change. After the election I started hearing and reading about the Liberal’s election platform and in particular, I heard that Justin Trudeau is going to help Canada spend its way out of its economic doldrums by spending more money than is coming into the National Coffers. He is going to create a spending plan deficit for Canada… but just for a few years, because with that overspending, Canada is going to figure things out and build a new economy that is not just based on exporting natural resources. Canada is going to turn itself around and become a country whose economy is built on innovation and creativity.
I do agree that sometimes you have to spend money to create positive change.
I also know that sometimes spending your way out of a problem is just not an option. If Canada were like Greece, Canada could not improve its economy by spending more money to fix it. There would be no money to spend.
I think of individuals who find themselves in a job that just isn’t working for them or have been recently let go from a job that they have held for a long time. If that person has the opportunity and flexibility to take time and train and financial reserves to allow that to happen then that person could find something far more sustainable and financially rewarding than the traditional job they recently held.
I recently taught the time value of money to a class of grade 4 children. I told them that if they started investing $200 per year today, they’d have a nice tidy of sum of money to finance their mid-life crisis. Now that got me dreaming – wouldn’t that be fantastic if everyone did this?
But this is not the case for many individuals these days. Many people have no cushion.
People who have dug themselves into a financial hole with no savings, emergency funds and who are living paycheque to paycheque, simply cannot afford to take risks to get themselves into a better situation.
I also think about the person that is stuck in an unhappy marriage or relationship. If that person has a financial cushion, they are much more likely to take steps to improve that relationship by spending money on counselling or by spending money on a divorce. Sad to say, but many people stay in an unhappy marriage because they cannot afford to fix it or to get a divorce.
So what can a financially stuck person (or country) do in the situation where they cannot spend their way out of the problem?
Well, in Greece they enforced austerity measures. That doesn’t seem to be working either. Why not?
I think the key word in the above sentence is “enforced.”
Before someone makes the decision to start looking at options to cut personal spending, that person needs to know what future benefit the current pain is going to generate. It is hard to live with austerity, but what helps is knowing that it is for a defined period of time and it is to build a hopeful future. A clear path and plan for the future is necessary so you are not just living on the cheap forever. There must be a link between the current suffering you are going through and the future benefit so you are willing to continue that suffering.
Just like there has to be a clear path and plan for the spending that Canada will be doing. I would hope there is some sort of link between what the money is being spent on and how that will continue to benefit Canada in the long run. Where will that bridge we will be spending money on to build lead us to? Hopefully to a place that most of us want to go.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 21, 2015 | Divorce
“People turn up in your life when you need them.”
This was said to me by someone recently and she was essentially predicting her appearance in my life.
At the time of our meeting, I was actually thinking: “I do not need
this person at all in my life.” She blew in the door and proceeded to “advise” me on how I should be living my life, and according to her beliefs, I was living my life all wrong.
Within two minutes of meeting her, she decided she had me pegged and told me I was too analytical and that I needed to think with my heart and not my head. Then she went further and told me that being analytical was why I was unhappy.
I was a little taken aback by her statements and immediately started analyzing them because yes, I am analytical. I do like to figure things out and so often take in information, analyze it and then either add it as support to my theories on life or reject it as not valid. She did read me quite well; it was actually quite impressive how she figured me out so quickly.
So I agreed with her, yes, I’m analytical, but actually, I’m pretty happy with that state of affairs so I put that argument back to her that her initial argument was flawed. Thinking with my head is not a recipe to make me unhappy, despite her strong beliefs.
This didn’t sit well with her and she spent the next hour telling me why I was wrong and why I needed to start living according to her beliefs and values system. She even stepped up the pressure by telling me I looked way older than my age and that was due to me being unhappy. Some of you may be wondering why I listened to her go on for so long. I will refer you to my blog post on
maintaining personal boundaries. Yes, in hindsight, it would have been better for me to simply stop defending my belief system to her and walk away; this is something that I will probably have to work on for the rest of my life because the people pleasing gene is strong in me (as Yoda would say).
That said, I did eventually walk away and went to my room to read
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. Actually, I think this book waltzed it’s way into my life when I needed it. The irony was funny as my attacker was telling me I needed to dye my hair and Caitlin Moran was questioning why woman have to focus so much on maintaining their youthful looks when men spend their time worrying about how to get ahead.
My attacker eventually got the message and left me alone and then I got thinking about what had just happened (oh – I’m so analytical :))
What I started thinking about was Coaching compared to Advising.
I started thinking about how coaching worked for me and my life. My coach listened to me and what I have to say. She helped me elucidate what is important to me and what is going to drive me forward in life.
This is very different from someone that already has an idea about how life works and then tries to put those ideas onto someone else.
I can say that coaching worked for me. I don’t have to push myself to do things that I naturally want to do. I can also say that advising seemed to work for a while in my life. I did listen to what people advised me to do for a very long time but eventually the disparity between how I was living and my personal values led me to being stuck in life. I was not moving forward anymore when I was living someone else’s life.
After I had finished thinking about coaching and advising, I realized that this person did have one valid point that I will buy into. People do turn up in life when we need them, but sometimes it takes a little work (and analysis) to recognize this.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 15, 2015 | Divorce
Empathy is an interesting thing. I’ve always felt like I have a bit too much of it. I could easily empathize with someone who was in pain and I would spend a good chunk of my time figuring out how to help that person. If I couldn’t help them, I would feel bad.
I always thought my empathic nature was a benefit to others and just slightly detrimental to me as I spent way too much time trying to solve other people’s problems and then I would feel terrible if I couldn’t help.
Today I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that my empathic nature has been helping me more than I ever realized. What I discovered is that having empathy for others and having an understanding of how their lives have their own hurdles, helps me reflect on my own challenges…which often seem trivial in comparison.
I start to see how my life is actually pretty wonderful and my mood swings towards being grateful for my life circumstances. I become happier and my life flows better.
Why did I have this thought today?
I was recently helping a couple who are separated have a discussion about money. They are trying to map out their financial future going forward as single parents, co-parenting their two children.
One parent is re-entering the workforce after a hiatus of six years to look after their young children. The other parent is taking on half of the parenting burden as they switch to a week on/week off parenting schedule.
The parent re-entering the workforce is uncertain of the future and how to cope with starting a new career while maintaining a hint of her prior life as a stay-at-home parent. She is afraid her kids will think she is abandoning them and she also knows she will miss being with them when they are at their dad’s home.
The parent taking on more parenting could not get past the fact that he would still be contributing money to the other parent while looking after their children 50% the time. He thinks he just took on 50% more work without seeing any benefit at all.
As they talked they got more and more entrenched in their individual positions and I could tell they had stopped listening to each other.
As I watched their dialogue deteriorate, I thought about how their inability to see each other’s perspective was hurting each of them. I don’t know what they were feeling, but their language indicated that they were both feeling like the victim in their current situation. I do know that feeling like a victim often leads to feelings of anger and depression. Before I stopped them, they had gotten to the point where they were searching their memories for other instances where each perceived that they had been treated unfairly. Their focus became who had it harder in life.
Now – this couple is very angry with each other, but I kept thinking – wouldn’t it be nice if they could each see each other’s perspective?
What if they both recognized that the other person had similar fears and concerns? Both of them are starting something new and both have fear of the future. If they could each put themselves in the other’s shoes, they would each stop focusing on the negative aspects of their own lives. Instead of using all their emotional resources to shore up their own feelings of hurt, they might start thinking about how the other person had it equally bad and then maybe, just maybe, they might start trying to think up solutions to help the other person.
This would be natural collaboration. And where did this natural collaboration come from? It came from empathy and understanding of the other person.
I realize that with this couple, this is too big a challenge at this point, they dislike each other too much. So that is why I suggested taking a breather from the discussion. Perhaps time and distance will allow their natural empathies to grow and we can get back on the subject of their hopeful futures another day.
by Renee leNobel | Sep 30, 2015 | Divorce
When I realized my marriage was over, one of the first things I started thinking about was how my life was going to change and not only change, but change for the worse. Everything was going to be harder. I was becoming a single parent for half my waking hours and I was starting that journey with drastically reduced financial circumstances. These thoughts were part of the reason why I had tried to make my marriage work for so long – it just seemed easier to try to hold things together than to start again with an entirely different set of harder circumstances.
I was heading into my divorce when a huge amount of fear and uncertainty. I also felt like everyone else: my ex, my lawyer and the overarching rules of society that define how a divorce must happen, were now controlling my life. I had no say in how my life would be from here on in.
I began to operate on automatic pilot and tried to do everything as quickly as I could to get through the entire divorce process.
I drove myself through our divorce process without every taking a time out to figure out what I wanted. We used the Collaborative Approach to divorce and after five meetings we had a draft separation agreement and were essentially done. The reason it took five months was because we could only have one four way legal meeting per month. We could not go any faster because it is challenging to book three to four hour sessions with four people (me, my ex and our respective lawyers) and their busy schedules. Our lawyers tried to get us to talk about what was important to us but I mostly thought to myself: “let’s get on with it!, can we stop talking about needs and values now?”
Then I entered a six week back to work program designed to help women find work. Again, I thought to myself as we worked through the first part of the program where we had to do endless self-analysis: “Can we get on with it? I need to write my resume.”
And then I was done. My divorce was finalized and I had my resume in hand.
But I was no closer to knowing what I wanted. I was still operating on fear and I still thought the best part of my life was behind me.
And nothing in my life appeared to be working. I was not getting a job. I was sending resumes off into what appeared to be the void as I heard absolutely nothing back from anyone. I was stuck, I was scared and I was unhappy.
Things did not begin working in my life until I took time to figure out what was important to me. Yes, I went on that mid-life crisis soul searching bender because I got to a point where fear would not drive me forward anymore. I had gotten to the point where fear immobilized me.
Figuring out what drives you is a journey and it never stops but about six months into my quest to discover what would get me happy again, I had a list of my seven core values (I’m a type A accountant – I like my lists) that I posted up on my wall.
What I have discovered is that list is very handy in making decisions in my life. It is especially handy for making money decisions. My list of values helped me determine how I am going to earn my money and how I am going to spend it.
If you are finding it challenging to make decisions around money, the way out is to do some good old navel gazing. Because if you know yourself, it’s not hard to know when making a spending choice does not work for you and it becomes a no-brainer when it does.
When I was freshly separated I was under terrible stress and in extreme emotional pain. My days were consumed with anger and sadness and I remember wondering if anything could be worse than going through a divorce. According to the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, death of a spouse tops out as the most stressful known event and this is followed by divorce. However reading further, one can develop a stress score by adding up all the events that have happened to a person within the year. If you are getting divorced or have recently divorced then you can add up the following scores:
