by Renee leNobel | Nov 7, 2014 | Divorce
Do you sometimes think to yourself “I am alone”?
I do. It is usually immediately after dropping my kids off at school on a day that is the start of a five day stretch where they live at their dad’s home.
It doesn’t matter that about thirty minutes earlier they were driving me bonkers with their loudness and fighting and I couldn’t wait to get them out of the house.
As soon as I give them a hug and a kiss goodbye and reluctantly walk away from their school, the thoughts take over.
Here is but a sampling:
“I do not get to see my kids for five days…. actually six if I include Wednesday when they are at school!”
“It is not natural that a mom does not get to see her kids.”
“I can do it, I know this is just a thought.”
“I am sad, it ok that I am sad, it is a sad situation.”
“I have things planned for my time. I was relishing have free time two days ago, remember that feeling.”
“I am alone.”
It is that last thought that really gets me. I don’t know if there is a more unmotivating and devastating thought out there. That thought takes me out of living the day as I want to: with hope, joy and purpose.
So I am writing about this in the hopes of recognising what that thought does to me if I take it on. Awareness if the first step as the saying goes.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 6, 2014 | Finances
You are stuck in some area of your life. You’re in debt, you’re in conflict, something has just happened to you and you are operating on autopilot just to get through the day. If this sounds familiar, I’m asking you to stop, take a break and get clarity on your personal values.
I can imagine you have similar thoughts to what I had in a similar situation: “That’s crazy! I don’t have time to stop, I’ve got things to take care of and if I stop to take time for myself, everything is going to fall apart around me!”
So you keep going. You will force yourself to get through a life you subconsciously do not buy into.
You might be able to do this for a long time, I did and then I hit my wall. Divorce. The reason I got to that point was because I wasn’t clear on my personal values, my ex wasn’t clear on his and thus it follows neither of us was clear with each other. We were both living in a situation we didn’t like, neither of us understood it and we took it out on each other. it’s not hard to see how we ended up where we did.
Eventually the impact of not living according to your values will surface. I think many of us are on a similar path in life and hit the that zone in their 40s. Mid-life crisis anyone? My ex and I were together for 10 years before we got married and we managed fine during that time. There was nothing big at stake. Then we got married and started having to make some big decisions. Getting married should have been the first one, but we thought that it couldn’t be that hard as we had been together so long without many bumps. We bought a house, we had kids, we moved countries. we moved back and we got divorced.
I am now grateful for my divorce as it forced me to search for my values. I finally made the mental connection that putting myself aside was leading to my unhappiness. I spent months resisting discovering my values and now I am spending time retraining myself to operate from my values. I still have a hard time with this, but I know I have to do this to move forward.
I can hear the excuses you are making not to do this, I can hear them because I make excuses every day to give up on this way of doing things and settling back into my old ways. But I can’t ignore the connection I have discovered between putting myself aside and my unhappiness and I cannot underestimate the joy I feel when my new life works because I am living my values.
It takes time to develop a new habit and it is easy to settle back into your old ways of doing things. Consider this one more message to help prod you in the direction of redesigning your life according to your values. And if I can’t convince you, perhaps Oprah and Deepak can.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 4, 2014 | Divorce
Today I woke up feeling unmotivated. I tried to work for a bit and then decided what I was doing wasn’t getting me anywhere so I took a break.
I pondered the fact that it was cold in my house and the pilot light on the boiler had likely gone out again. I emailed my tenant to ask him to check for me and then I thought about how I should phone the heating and plumbing people to get them to come and do the annual maintenance on the boiler.
I thought about it some more. I thought about how I don’t like having to keep asking my tenant to light the pilot light on the boiler as it’s not his problem.
What was stopping me from phoning the heating and plumbing company? Well, my last few interactions with them have not been pleasant. Last year when the repair person came to do the maintenance in September, my tenant told me the guy texted for the entire hour. Not surprisingly our boiler pilot light kept going out after his visit so I called them back and the same person came again. This time, my tenant told me the repairman actually did some work and not surprisingly our boiler did what is was supposed to do…heat the house. As the repairman left, he told me that he wouldn’t charge me, as if he was doing me a big favour. I recognised this attitude as it is the same one I get from the receptionists every time I call this company.
These thoughts were the ones that had been stopping me from phoning the company. But it was the decidedly more uncomfortable thoughts about how I was inconveniencing my tenant and how I wasn’t being a responsible homeowner that motivated me to phone the heating and plumbing company this morning.
The receptionist was rude. She told me that they are busy in the fall and then grudgingly said that they had availability in two weeks and then she told me that next year I would have to have my service in the spring or summer.
After talking with her I reflected on the fact that it had gone as I had expected. I realise that I have been justifying using their services. They did good work (eventually) and I didn’t know who else to use. I was annoyed. Here I was using a company that clearly did not see my value as a customer. This thought moved me to act. I started searching around and found that there are indeed other companies that do this type of work. I phoned one, and the repair person is here as I write this.
This morning I woke up unmotivated. What got me to act? It was the discomfort that I found myself in. In fact, the more discomfort I felt and the worse it got, the more motivated I became. Not only did I finally get someone in to fix the boiler, I wrote my first Yelp review.
It is difficult to be in an uncomfortable place but today I am recognising that those difficult spots we find ourselves in can be very useful. Use that bad place as a stepping stone to get to where you want to be.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 22, 2014 | Divorce
I have gotten to start again (thank you divorce) and my first step for starting again was figuring myself out and what my values are. I know that if I am not living according to my own values, I will be unhappy, unmotivated and unsuccessful.
I continually see how this lesson plays out every day in almost all aspects of my conversations with people.
Today, this idea was reinforced.
I volunteer in a number of capacities and this morning I woke up to an email from the volunteer coordinator at one of those places informing me I wasn’t needed this week after I had set aside the time. I also had gotten another email from a co-volunteer stating that she was unhappy with how we were being coordinated.
Great! I could help clear things up! Or so I thought.
I carefully composed an email, thanking the volunteer coordinator for all the work she has done. I asked her if she could provide clarity on how she decides who gets to volunteer each week as it wasn’t clear to me and likely unclear to others. Would she send out an email to everyone? This would help alleviate potential resentment that could be bubbling under the surface.
Well, I guess she got a lot of these emails because I got a very long and very defensive email back. At the end of the email, she asked if I wanted the job.
Oh! That wasn’t what I was expecting. I even more carefully drafted my reply, apologising that my email had apparently been perceived as an attack.
She replied with an even longer email and asked me again if I wanted the job. She had been strong armed into it, she hadn’t wanted to do it this year, everyone was complaining etc. etc. etc.
I feel for her. She took a job she didn’t want and I know why. In one part of her email she said “I’m a people pleaser.”
Ugh. I’m a people pleaser. If there is one thing that is going to make you not live according to your own values, it is being a people pleaser. You will always try to live according to someone else’s idea of what you should be doing.
She took the job to please someone else. Clearly not herself as she was being dragged kicking and screaming to her computer (or so it would appear) to schedule us all into some semblance of order.
So instead of being thanked for all her efforts she is getting tons of complaints (in her words) and she wants to quit and is desperate to find anyone, anyone at all to take over. If she doesn’t find anyone, she will likely keep at it as quitting would be disappointing so many people.
I hope for her sake that she does quit even if she cannot find anyone to take over. I hope she would perceive it as taking a stand for herself and a learning moment and not see it as a moment when she let people down. It would give her the chance to start again and add things to her life that she will want to do and will have a shot at being happy and successful at.
A first step to breaking the people pleasing persona and a step towards understanding her own hidden values and drive.
