by Renee leNobel | Dec 10, 2015 | Finances
Last’s week’s post is missing. Where did it go?
It got decimated by the negative internal chatter and negative future focus that was going on in my brain for the last two weeks. When I finally got out from it, this week’s blog post presented itself:
Your victimhood perspective is making you stuck.
You know the victimhood perspective right? It’s those thoughts that life is harder for you , your circumstances are too challenging, you can’t do it, life is unfair, etc. , etc., etc.
Those are the thoughts that lead you to make less than ideal choices or simply not make choices at all and avoid, avoid, avoid.
Instead of addressing the things you need to do with hope and optimism, you get dragged into doing things because things have gotten so bad, you are forced to do them kicking and screaming all the way.
I can think of one thing that I see people avoiding time and time again – taxes anyone?
Not doing taxes is not my issue; I like doing those. I have other things I avoid when I thinking these thoughts:
I’m too busy
My life is harder than everyone else’s
There’s a big conspiracy to stop me from doing “this” (“this” being whatever you are stuck on).
I can’t do it, I’m not capable.
This was me last week when I was feeling like I was being forced to do something I didn’t want to do.
I started off by trying not to let it affect me. My last post was all about waiting to see what would be revealed.
That didn’t work for me at all and it turns out I’m not very patient when there is uncertainty in my life. It felt like there was a ticking time bomb about to go off in my life which I had no control over.
Then I started talking to people about it despite my other self-imposed rule not to do this. I did this anyway because I was feeling sorry for myself and wanted sympathy.
I got sympathy. Did that make me feel better? Nope. I just thought “my life is so unfair.” even more.
Other people advised me that I needed to be an adult and deal with it.
I listened to the people telling me this and I chose to add it to the “more proof that my life is unfair” file I had set up in my brain.
“Why do I have to be the adult? That’s not fair. I’m always the adult.”
So then I sat around some more for a couple of days and felt worse and worse.
I hadn’t felt this low for a while.
So I hauled out my self-help tools and I started to trick my brain into feeling better.
I started writing. I wrote a lot of angry emails that I sent to myself. I started many (blamey and angry) blog posts.
I started practicing gratitude by writing down three things I was grateful for when I woke up every morning. I even got my kids to practice gratitude and that morning there was no yelling…coincidence? I journaled and generally pretended I was Pollyanna. Remember her? The irony that I have to try to be Pollyanna these days is kinda funny to me because when I was in my twenties, I was accused of being too much like Pollyanna by a friend of mine . It was considered a bad thing with certain people and frankly it got buried in me because I used to hang out with a bunch Eeyores.
I then started repeating this to myself:
“I’m choosing not to be a victim. After all I can deal with whatever is thrown my way. I always have, I always will. That is life. Everyone deals with whatever comes their way. We all do. Yes, some of it is really terrible and yes, it could possibly be very unfair but we all deal with it. I get to choose how to deal with it.”
Then I sat down and became the adult.
I addressed the issue that was making me feel like a victim.
I addressed it the way I know best.
And you know what? I got to get on with my life again and I got to head in the direction that I wanted. Suddenly I became productive and unstuck again. I contacted people I had been avoiding, I got on with my work backlog and I felt good.
So if you are feeling stuck and unhappy, check in with your perspective. Are you feeling like life is unfair?
If yes, you need to do some work.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 26, 2015 | Divorce
I have a friend and she has two sets of what look like playing cards, called Life Cards and Angel Cards. Every once in awhile, she drags them out of the cupboard and we pick one of each (without looking). It’s something that takes about 10 minutes but it is an exercise that drags us back into the present moment and gives us the chance to shift our (usually) future-focused perspectives.
In fact, we have turned this into a semi-weekly fun thing to do so we remember to make time for reflection and pausing in our lives.
Anyhow. This week I pulled the revelation card and the patience card. Every week I seem to pull a card that applies to my life in that particular moment and this week’s choices were scarily relevant. It is also a theme that seems to keep playing over and over in my life. Wait, slow down, let things resolve themselves. I think this theme keeps playing over and over because I haven’t gotten it yet.
The revelation card told me that I should wait for life to reveal itself to me and the patience card just said patience. Patience while I wait for life to reveal itself I guess. Isn’t that weird how these two cards go together ? Completely separate decks. Eerie.
I am not patient and I hate waiting. I like to control the outcome.
What about you?
Are you the type of person that likes to sort life into neat piles and bend it the way you want it to go? Do you look at a problem and immediately start thinking of how you are going to fix that problem? Do you create mental deadlines about when that has to happen by?
I am that type of person and that is what I do.
I am also a bit of a stress case.
I noticed that my tendency to sort life into neat little boxes would just lead me to feeling frustrated when nothing fit.
I noticed that life never matched what my future focus had envisioned.
I would kill myself over work deadlines, stressing out myself and my kids, only to have the work deadline move or not matter anymore. Or the project I was working on would change so dramatically, that the work I had done was no longer relevant.
Logically, I now know this: life never plays out how you expect it will and even if I throw all my energy at something, it is not going to go the way I planned. What I have also learned is that I can handle everything that does come my way. So I can relax, I can take my time and try to live a life according to my own values and beliefs. I can gather information and gain new insight into things but in the end it is the interplay between the circumstances and the people in my life that determines what will be revealed. I know this, yet I don’t live as if I do.
I was just reminded of this when I looked in my oldest son’s bedroom. It is a disaster zone. As usual. Added to the piles of detritus on the floor are all the candy wrappers from this most recently ended Halloween. He likes to save them to remind himself of the good times gone by I guess.
I immediately started grumbling and complaining, saying things like ‘these have got to go.” and “this room is a disaster – you have to clean up.” and he mumbled “I will.”
Yeah – he won’t. He won’t because I never let him get to that point. I start freaking out and yelling until he grudgingly tidies his room.
I’m going to try something different (and all because of those cards). I’m going to be patient and let life reveal itself to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I still want to control the outcome. What I’m hoping will happen is what happened to some friends of mine. In their early twenties they started living together as a couple. One of them was not what you would consider to be a tidy person.
This couple had been living together for about two years. They were living the pattern where their home would get more and more slovenly until the tidier person would freak out and clean up. This kept happening. The tidier person could not wait, she’d reached her limit.
But after two years, I guess she reached her limit on the number of times she could freak out and be upset with the slob she was living with. She was tired of all the arguing. So she stopped. She waited to see what would reveal itself. I love this story.
Well, their place got really bad. Really really bad. Dogs would come over to visit and find a good meal in itself on the floor.
It got so bad, one day, unbelievably, the person who seemed to have no limit to his tolerance for mess, stood in the middle of the room, lifted his arms to the sky and went “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
He’d noticed the mess.
He started to clean the mess. All without any yelling or cajoling from his partner.
Since that time, he’s never let things go so far again.
So, I’m hoping I can last as long as my friend (which could be a very long time) but I am also curious to see what will be revealed. How will this play out? Will there be a different outcome? Will it make for as good a story?
I’m hopeful that training myself to wait on minor life situations will help me develop a waiting muscle that I can use on the seemingly more serious situations in life.
This is going to be my challenge to myself for the next little while. Will you join me in this challenge? Will you wait to see what is revealed?
by Renee leNobel | Nov 18, 2015 | Divorce
Not sure if many of you watched Seinfeld back in the day it originally aired. I did and there is one episode that really resonates with me right now. What I remember about the episode is the fact that George was in conflict with his two personas: Independent George and Relationship George. Relationship George was killing fun-loving Independent George.
I admit I have the same problem. Relationship Renée (“RR”) is causing all sorts of problems for Independent Renée (“IR”) and IR does not get off so lightly in the blame department either.
IR seems to forget what RR’s life is like the minute the kids walk out the door to spend time with their dad.
IR, in a bid to stave off loneliness, takes on work commitments, volunteer commitments and social commitments. All IR can think is that she must fill the hours that the children are absent. IR must be productive and not wallow in self-pity.
Then the children seem to suddenly descend and IR becomes RR. Suddenly, RR finds herself having to make breakfast, lunch and dinner, ferry kids around to various activities all while trying to finish the work that IR started and did not finish in her free time. In addition, these children are constantly disrupting the peace and quiet of the work space. How is RR supposed to get anything done! The children are no longer with RR, they are with GR – can you guess? Yup. Grumpy Renée.
GR longs for the peaceful solitude that IR had. Seriously, what was IR thinking, lonely? I’ll give you lonely, GR thinks. GR would kill for some lonely time when she is in the thick of getting everything done. GR looks ahead at IR’s calendar and cuts a swath through everything. “That ignorant IR!” thinks GR. “I’ll teach her to overschedule and overcommit. She is not doing anything this weekend when the kids are with their dad. She is going to recharge and lay low and prepare herself for the week ahead when the kids are back.”
Then quicker than you can blink IR is back and staring at the weekend ahead that GR just planned. IR recharges in a day and then peaceful solitude turns to debilitating loneliness. IR adds as many things as she can to stave off loneliness and starts to create rules for RR. RR must go to yoga during the week. RR must do better at getting work done when the kids are in bed. “NO MORE NETFLIX RR!” shouts IR.
Then RR is back and trying to negotiate these rules that IR setup. “IR has not been using that brain of hers again.” She doesn’t know how exhausting it is to work all day, fight with the kids over bedtime routines and now she wants me write blog posts and better myself in the hours of 9 to 11 pm?” I cannot do it, thinks RR. RR gets depressed and wonders what the point is off all this work anyway. Seriously RR says to herself. There must be a better way.
As with everything, communication is key. Much like the movie Mememto, RR and IR have started to leave notes for each other on their shared desk.
These are the notes from RR to IR
- Before taking anything on, ask yourself if it fits your values and beliefs.
- What are you taking this new project on for?
- Would you do this if you were short of time? or are you just doing it to keep busy?
(yes, all the notes are a variation on a theme)
These are the notes from IR to RR
- I am sacrificing some of my weekend fun time to catch up on grunt work. Please make sure you try to let go when you are with the kids and have some fun time with them.
- I am recharging and using this time so you can not turn into GR. Please remember that your time with the kids is brief and the most important thing is to be present with them and take care of yourself.
- Please remember to look for time when you can complete work when you are RR. Schedule a reasonable amount of time for me to complete that work if you don’t and don’t forget to schedule something fun for me to look forward to.
Then IR adds more as she has more time to reflect than RR: “I know it’s tough RR, but remember, you eventually get to have some solitude, think of all the single parents out there that do not have a co-parent. Remember to be grateful.”
Slowly, these messages between IR and RR are starting to get through.
The one common message that they tell the other? “It’s going to take time to get this right, be kind to yourself in the meantime and I will forgive your errors in judgement. Afterall, we learn best from our mistakes!”
by Renee leNobel | Nov 12, 2015 | Divorce, Finances
I recently did a set of spending plans for a separated couple. They are trying to sort out how they will share parenting arrangements in the future. Their individual financial situations depend on what they decide. Are they going to share parenting, or will one parent be designated the Primary Caregiver?
In an ideal world, this couple would decide what is best for the children without thinking about how it will affect them financially, but often, people let their financial situation drive their decisions rather than vice versa.
How do different parenting arrangements affect the individual parent’s financial situation?
These are the basic rules:
Primary Caregiver Situation
The primary caregiver, the person who parents the children more than 60% of the time, receives child support from the other parent. The primary caregiver also gets all the tax credits and benefits related to the children.
Example 1:
Parent A is the primary caregiver of a two- and four-year-old child and earns $40,000 per year, while Parent B earns $60,000 annually. Parent B pays Parent A $900 a month in child support.
How does this look after taxes are considered?
Parent A pays about $6,000 in taxes (including EI and CPP).
Parent A is therefore left with $40,000 less $6,000 in taxes plus $10,800 (child support – non-taxable to Parent A) plus $4,000 (Canada Child Benefit) for a grand total of $48,800 (after tax) per year.
Parent B pays about $14,000 in taxes (including EI and CPP – Parent B does not get any credits related to the children).
Parent B is therefore left with $60,000 less $14,000 less $10,800 (child support) for a grand total of $35,200 after tax. That differs from Parent A, who started out with less.
As stated, Parent A is the primary caregiver of the children and so will, therefore, have much greater costs. That said, in the above situation, Parent B will also be on the hook for a greater percentage of child-related expenses, such as work-related child care. In this case, if Parent A earns $40,000 yearly with a two and four-year-old, there will likely be child care. Parent B will pay 60% of the childcare costs, and Parent A will pay 40%. Parent A gets to claim the childcare expense and Parent B does not.
Will Parent B understand that and give up almost $20,000 per year, or will Parent B decide equal parenting would be better?
Shared Parenting Situation
If the parents share parenting, they each must pay child support to the other parent. Essentially, it works like this:
Example 2:
Parent A earns $50,000, and Parent B earns $50,000.
Parent A has to pay $760 to Parent B for child support, and Parent B has to pay $760 to Parent A for child support. These two amounts offset each other.
Example 3:
Parent A earns $40,000, and Parent B earns $60,000 (as above in example 1)
This time, Parent A pays a monthly amount of child support to Parent B, $600, and Parent B pays $900 to Parent A. These amounts are calculated based on the Federal Child Support Guidelines. Here is a handy calculator.
The child support guidelines are meant to equalize the children’s standard of living in the two different households (where they spend equal time). The calculation considers taxes as the recipient of the $300 receives the money tax-free, and the payer does not get a deduction. Now, their respective incomes look like this:
Parent A – $40,000 less taxes of $6,000 or 14.7% plus $3,600 in child support plus $2,000 (Canada Child Benefit; it is shared) for a grand total of $38,000 (after tax) per year.
Parent B – $60,000 less taxes of $11,500 or 19.15% (this is lower than in example 1 as this time parent B gets to claim one child as a dependent) less $3,600 in child support plus $2,000 Canada Child Benefit for a grand total of $46,900 (after tax) per year.
Parent A and B’s incomes are not completely equalized, but Parent B will end up paying more for things like medical and dental for the children as well as for extracurricular activities and other special expenses for the children. Parent B pays 60% of these expenses, and Parent A pays 40%.
If I were Parent B and were only concerned with money, I would choose example 3.
Do you see what the child support guidelines did?
The guidelines encouraged both parents to step up and be equal caregivers to their children—money talks.
In an ideal world, both parents would also step up and share parenting responsibilities, not just the money.
Parents starting out on the shared parenting path will struggle at first. One parent was likely the primary caregiver when the couple was married. That is usually the way it works. They will have to learn strategies for sharing parenting duties in the future.
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.
