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Are you tired of listening to all of the voices in your life? You know the ones from well meaning friends, family members, and self-help books and of course the most constant voice of all – the ones in your own head? Why can’t there just be a pill to take daily or an all inclusive manual to help us get our lives organized and directed to feel and work again with purpose and direction? I have tried shopping therapy and that just landed me with more stuff and lots more debt. I have tried going out to the places I frequented in my before married days and that just left me with feelings of stupidity, being old and just ridiculous. I have tried denial or living the “victim” role as well as the “heroic” role and on and on the things I have tried.

A New Day

Then came “the day” – for some of you you’ll understand what I mean by “the day” and of others of you will know it when it comes. It is a time when there seems to be a light bulb go on in your head and you know that you don’t want to live life the way you are living it anymore. The day you realize that your future, security, happiness in your life isn’t going to gallop in on a white horse. In fact you realize you are the prince riding the white horse. If you want a “life after divorce” you have to begin creating it and that begins with being honest with yourself (and the first step of my honesty came when I knew I didn’t want anyone else to create my life for me).

Steps Back to your Life

So here are some steps that I took that I hope you may find helpful on your own journey back to your life.

1. I put God where He belongs – as my Lord and Savior – but not my rescuer. He gives me strength and guidance but He doesn’t do the work for me. He does His part but I have to do mine.
2. I got honest with myself. Denial had been a friend but was letting my life down miserably. Honesty was really scary because some of the things I saw in my life weren’t a reflection of who I wanted to be – such as my debt, my weight, the clutter in my home and my attitude – they seemed too ‘big” to tackle on my own. But as tough as it was I began to name all of them one by one.
3. I broke my “named list” down into categories. And I took on two at a time. For instance, “cluttered house” was one of the first to tackle. If I wanted a safe refuge that I could really enjoy coming home to I needed to go from room to room and inventory what needed to happen to make that room the way I wanted it to be and eventually the whole house would reflect my work and desires. I stayed focused on that one room before moving to the next and gave myself a deadline to have it completed. I will never forget how I felt when I realized my home looked like “me” and I loved walking into it.
4. The bigger the task like “getting out of debt” the easier it was to push to the bottom of my “named list” of to do’s. With again honest evaluation I knew that it was because of fear and the magnitude of the challenge that was paralyzing me. So I hired a coach – someone that was educated in the area of finances, who would break it down into manageable steps and hold me accountable. When I couldn’t trust myself I to get to a “new” place I have learned to not just stop there but to invest in tools, people and professionals to get me “there”.
5. Each morning before even getting out of bed I thanked God that I was still alive and my arms weren’t hitting a wooden box when I stretched. And honestly, there were days I didn’t want to be thankful and in fact I would wake up and the first thing I was thinking is, “oh, yeah my life is a mess” but I would quickly push those thoughts aside and force myself to think from a grateful attitude. I knew that if I made this a habit that the feelings would follow. And I am so thrilled to tell you that today, after much habit forming and healing, I do look at life from lenses of thankfulness and you will too.
6. I focused on my actions not matching my words. See what I was saying wasn’t aligning with what I was doing. Let me explain here; I would say that I wanted to loose 20 pounds so I would feel better and to me look better. However, I would live out my days having a soda as a “pick-me-up” and a couple of cookies (even some of the time having the whole bag) as a reward to myself because I deserved them. When in fact I was giving to myself the very things that took me further from what I was saying I wanted and needed. So I took it in “bit-size” pieces. I cut out the soda and went down to only 1 cookie. I began walking in place in my living room during one sitcom each evening. From there I built a new routine of eating and exercising that eventually lead to even bigger healthier choices.

Life is Waiting on You

Divorce changes so much of our life, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst, but it is our life. I think we often begin to use divorce as our excuse. I know that stings – ouch. But if we want growth and change we have to come from a place of truth. And our truth can no longer be that we don’t have enough money because of our divorce, we are over weight because of our divorce, we are lonely because of our divorce. Yes, we are divorced and yes those things may be true but we are the only ones that can change the outcome.

It is frightening to step into the unknowns but your life is waiting on YOU – go live it fully!

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