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Ways to discover your true passionPosted on 09/19/08, 03:02 pm I found this when I first became "single" it inspired me to find the real me I feared I had lost so long ago ,it has helped me on my journey and I would like to share it with you ......

Ways to Rediscover Your True Passion After Divorce

Going through a divorce is a very challenging time in a person's life. It is hard to adjust to being single again, as well as living "out of the habit" of being married, especially if you have been married for many, many years.
Eventually, you begin to think about dating, but it is suggested that you take your time. Use this precious opportunity to rediscover yourself. Think of this time in your life as an adventure to explore the real you. If you have worked outside the home combined with being a mom and wife for the last ten, fifteen or twenty years, you may have lost yourself along the way. Certainly not on purpose, but as most women try to do it all as "super" moms, many times we put our own wants and needs on hold to keep our families and jobs running smoothly!
Take a deep breath and let's start to rediscover our true passions and say... Will the Real Me Please Stand Up!
1) Treasure Your Gifts Within
Realizing we are all born as "gold nuggets" is a hard concept for many women to believe about themselves. Think about how magnificent you really are! Over time, you might have forgotten your unique gifts and are only thinking of what you don't like about yourself or your life. Set a new intention, starting today, to list all of your great qualities and read that list everyday. Keep reading it until you believe it. Examples: beautiful smile, kindness, generosity, loving, caring, intelligent. keep going. Your list is endless, when you start focusing on your great qualities. Allow yourself to see the shining gold within. It's already there!

2) Give Yourself A Break
During and after a divorce it is common to have the feeling of grieving, similar to that of the loss of someone. Many women feel the need to stay busy to keep their minds off of this stressful time, such as working overtime or cleaning the house from top to bottom, but let this time also include pampering yourself. For example, barter with a friend or neighbour to watch your children or leave work early to give yourself this needed time. Yes, you do deserve to do something special for yourself. It can be as simple as taking a bath or a walk, going to the mall or reading a book with your favourite cup of tea. Give yourself permission - it's O.K. Remember, the happier you are, the happier your family will be!
3) No regrets! No bitterness!
Holding onto regrets and bitterness will only keep your life from moving forward. Is your inner voice working overtime with all the "what if's" and "if only's"? This is normal for a period of time, but ask yourself... are these thoughts serving me or helping me feel better? Will thinking about them over and over again change anything? To move your life forward, it is important to acknowledge your feelings and to learn from your past experiences to prepare yourself for the next exciting chapter of your life. Yes, there is life after divorce. Learn to let it go! Just, let it go! A quote from Buddy Hackett, "I never hold a grudge because while I am being angry, the other person is out dancing."
4) Enjoy the Little Things
Life after divorce usually means added responsibilities. If you are a single parent or are now the one responsible for the once shared to-do list, how do you handle it all without being totally stressed out? To start, learn to laugh more, especially at yourself. Learn to let things go and not take life so seriously. Lighten-up! Learn to live in the present moment. Living in the present is where all the "good stuff" in life happens. Yesterday is gone forever and tomorrow's worries are tomorrow. Think of it this way, when one is missing this moment in time, one is missing out on one's life.
So how do we live in the present? If you are feeling stressed, immediately leave your thoughts in your head and take off your blinders. (Blinders similar to what a horse would wear, not allowing it to see from side to side). Start to look around you. I mean really look around you. Look closely at everything. Really focus. Use all your senses! For example, if you are with your children observe them. Cherish their smiles. Give them a hug. See the true beauty of who they are and appreciate them for being a part of your life. You will start to feel your stress subside and a feeling of peace sweep over you. To be present, no matter where you are, use all your senses to pull you back into the moment. Take time to appreciate all the beauty that already exists around you. You only have to be present to see it!
5) What Makes Your Heart Sing?
What really matters to you? What do you feel is your true purpose in life? If someone asked you that question, how would you answer them?
Why is it so important to be clear on what your life's purpose is? Knowing your purpose, will give you a true sense of who you are and why you were put on this earth. It gives your life direction and helps you make clear and easy decisions concerning that direction. It's your compass! Without a purpose, can your life be compared to a piece of driftwood? Floating endlessly in whichever direction the tide decides to take it and ending up on any beach with no will of its' own. When you live your life based on your purpose you are living in integrity with yourself and are in alignment of who you really are in all aspects of your life - body, mind and spirit. Take this time to focus on what really matters to you. Feel the true passions that exist in your heart and write them down.
6) What Are Your Vibes Saying About You?
Are you familiar with the Law of Attraction? Maybe you have heard the expressions, "What you think about, you bring about" or "The more attention you give to something, the more attention it will give to you." When going through a divorce, your emotions can be compared to a roller coaster ride. Use this time to become reconnected to your inner awareness of who you are. Recognize if your feelings are low energy or high energy.
A few examples of low energy are stress, negativity, fear, resentment, or a sense of lack (lack of time or money) and high energy is joy, abundance, happy, positive, love or compassion. If you are having feelings of low energy, how do you make a shift to feel more of the high energy?
First, acknowledge and accept the feelings you are having. Be gentle with yourself! Your goal is to make a shift, but realize you might not be able to go from low to high instantly. Start with baby steps! Repeat step number three and become present! Be thankful for what is working in your life right now. Do something simple like pat your pet, smell a flower or, if you are in the office, take a minute to think of a previous fun time or experience you have had that could bring a smile to your face. Feel the shift you are starting to make in your energy.
Now, to amp up this high-energy feeling, think of another time of joy or something you were passionate about in your life. Keep adding these thoughts to your high-energy feeling and begin to feel great! Does it seem the people or situations around you have changed or is it you who has really changed? So, who has the power to feel their own joy? When you are feeling your high energy, this is the time to take your next inspired action. Enjoy the feeling of accomplishing something with ease and less effort!
7) Be True To Yourself
During and even after a divorce, we are often filled with doubts. We question ourselves about what is right, what to do or how we feel. Should I or shouldn't I? It seems difficult to make a decision. Listen to your heart. What feels right? What doesn't feel quite right? If a situation does not feel right, honour your resistance by pausing or waiting. Sometimes waiting is the best thing to do. By waiting you may have allowed the situation to unfold more easily without having to worry! If a decision feels good or right, usually that means you are heading in the right direction. When we listen to our hearts, we are in integrity with ourselves. When we are in integrity with ourselves, we learn to say NO more easily.
Has this ever happened to you? You are asked to be on a committee or to volunteer for something and you say yes, even though you know it will make your schedule even tighter or you really don't want to or have to?
How do you stop this from happening? Next time you are in this situation and you are ready to say yes, yet, find yourself having doubts, try this. STOP! Take a breath or even take a step back (this action will prevent you from saying yes). Pause! Thank the person for thinking of you, but let them know you will have to check your calendar and get back to them. When you do have time to think about it, focus on how you are feeling. Are you excited to volunteer or do you feel some resistance? If in a day or two you are still feeling doubtful, realize the timing might not be right for you. If you are still excited, join the committee and have fun!
Divorce is not easy or fun, but you can make it through this time of your life by realizing you WILL make it! Also, honour yourself and listen to your heart! Your true purpose and passions are waiting to be rediscovered within you! When you have discovered the "gold nugget" you already are, you will start to live your life with more ease and enjoy the feeling of peace. "You are truly free!"

today is were your book begins the rest is still unwritten ..........

January 15, 2008
MIND
Crisis? Maybe He’s a Narcissistic Jerk
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.
With the possible exception of “the dog ate my homework,” there is no handier excuse for human misbehavior than the midlife crisis.
Popularly viewed as a unique developmental birthright of the human species, it supposedly strikes when most of us have finally figured ourselves out — only to discover that we have lost our youth and mortality is on the horizon.
No doubt about it, life in the middle ages can be challenging. (Full disclosure: I’m 51.) What with the first signs of physical decline and the questions and doubts about one’s personal and professional accomplishments, it is a wonder that most of us survive.
Not everyone is so lucky; some find themselves seized by a seemingly irresistible impulse to do something dramatic, even foolish. Everything, it appears, is fair game for a midlife crisis: one’s job, spouse, lover — you name it.
I recently heard about a severe case from a patient whose husband of nearly 30 years abruptly told her that he “felt stalled and not self-actualized” and began his search for self-knowledge in the arms of another woman.
It was not that her husband no longer loved her, she said he told her; he just did not find the relationship exciting anymore.
“Maybe it’s a midlife crisis,” she said, then added derisively, “Whatever that is.”
Outraged and curious, she followed him one afternoon and was shocked to discover that her husband’s girlfriend was essentially a younger clone of herself, right down to her haircut and her taste in clothes.
It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to see that her husband wanted to turn back the clock and start over. But this hardly deserves the dignity of a label like “midlife crisis.” It sounds more like a search for novelty and thrill than for self-knowledge.
In fact, the more I learned about her husband, it became clear that he had always been a self-centered guy who fretted about his lost vigor and was acutely sensitive to disappointment. This was a garden-variety case of a middle-aged narcissist grappling with the biggest insult he had ever faced: getting older.
But you have to admit that “I’m having a midlife crisis” sounds a lot better than “I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.”
Another patient, a 49-year-old man at the pinnacle of his legal career, started an affair with an office colleague. “I love my wife,” he said, “and I don’t know what possessed me.”
It didn’t take long to find out. The first five years of his marriage were exciting. “It was like we were dating all the time,” he recalled wistfully. But once they had a child, he felt an unwelcome sense of drudgery and responsibility creep into his life.
Being middle-aged had nothing to do with his predicament; it was just that it took him 49 years to reach a situation where he had to seriously take account of someone else’s needs, namely those of his baby son. In all likelihood, the same thing would have happened if he had become a father at 25.
Why do we have to label a common reaction of the male species to one of life’s challenges — the boredom of the routine — as a crisis? True, men are generally more novelty-seeking than women, but they certainly can decide what they do with their impulses.
But surely someone has had a genuine midlife crisis. After all, don’t people routinely struggle with questions like “What can I expect from the rest of my life?” or “Is this all there is?”
Of course. But it turns out that only a distinct minority think it constitutes a crisis. In 1999, the MacArthur Foundation study on midlife development surveyed 8,000 Americans ages 25 to 74. While everyone recognized the term “midlife crisis,” only 23 percent of subjects reported having one. And only 8 percent viewed their crisis as something tied to the realization that they were aging; the remaining 15 percent felt the crisis resulted from specific life events. Strikingly, most people also reported an increased sense of well-being and contentment in middle age.
So what keeps the myth of the midlife crisis alive?
The main culprit, I think, is our youth-obsessed culture, which makes a virtue of the relentless pursuit of self-renewal. The news media abound with stories of people who seek to recapture their youth simply by shedding their spouses, quitting their jobs or leaving their families. Who can resist?
Most middle-aged people, it turns out, if we are to believe the definitive survey.
Except, of course, for the few — mainly men, it seems — who find the midlife crisis a socially acceptable shorthand for what you do when you suddenly wake up and discover that you’re not 20 anymore.

This is from a print-out that my therapist gave me. I'm not sure who wrote it, but they are very smart. :)

It may seem that most divorces are similar in nature. Actually, there are different types of divorces, each of them with their own unique psychological characteristics and emotional intensity.

The Mutual Agreement pattern of divorce occurs when both mates are unhappy and conclude that they will be happier being apart. This couple often settles their affairs amicably and quickly, and may stay friends.

The Unilateral pattern of divorce entails one person deciding to leave to the dismay of the other. There are greater emotional implications in this type of split, where the person who chooses to leave has had time to consider, reflect, weigh the options and emotionally detach, while the "left mate" is caught unprepared, treated unfairly, surprised and abandoned. Requests for more time, counseling or opportunity to change the situation are denied. The process of this
divorce is harder and more emotional due to the imbalance of power.

The emotional intensity is even greater in a Compounded divorce pattern, where there is involvement of a third party. In this situation, the partner not only feels abandoned, he or she feels replaced. The pain here is about having lost a primary position in the mate's life to another individual. There are added painful emotions about immorality, betrayal, and failure.

Within each of these divorce patterns there are additional subsets. The following subsets are associated with the Compounded divorce pattern.

In the Compounded pattern, a spouse meets another person who is adoring and makes them feel very valued and desired. At first, they lavish in the attention and feel invigorated. With time, the spouse begins to COMPARE his/her feelings about the new admirer to those he/she has for their spouse. If they decide to break up their family and start a new life (or they are asked to explain their affair), the adulterous spouse is likely to go through the following psychological stages:

1. DEMONIZING THE MATE: The offending spouse is a decent person who is aware that their conduct is frowned upon both morally and socially. They begin to feel great guilt, yet, continue the relationship with the other person. In order to reconcile the conflict between their view of themselves as a moral being and their unacceptable conduct, the offending spouse resorts to demonizing their mate as a justification for the affair. They ascribe to their mate many negative and unforgivable traits and behaviors. Suddenly, their mate is an inept person, companion, lover, parent, and they may even be labeled "evil" or "crazy."

2. REWRITING HISTORY: Not only is the partner found to be irrevocably faulted, the offending spouse claims that he/she has been so for the duration of the marriage. The offending spouse re-creates a view of historical suffering and pain he/she has endured. They may say, "I have been unhappy in the marriage for 20 years" or, "She made every day of our married life a miserable day." It is clear that this is a re-created story because of the exaggerated nature of the comment, its intensity and the lack of balance. The offending spouse assumes no personal responsibility for their role in the so-called "long-term suffering." They seeks approval and support from others for having been a victim, which in their mind fully justifies their affair and subsequent abandonment of their family.

3. PUNISHING THE MATE: The offending spouse retells his/her newly developed view of suffering often enough that he/she begins to believe that his/her mate DESERVES to be punished. The offended spouse becomes the "offender" and thus needs to be dealt with harshly. The punishment is dished out through financial withholding, or worse, through fighting over the children. The offending spouse believes that their mate is not entitled to receive any future benefits from him/her, sometimes not even those allowed by the law. In many cases, the offending spouse may even attempt to deprive the spouse of equal, fair or appropriate access to the children or to child support. Needless to say, this divorce will be very bitter, lengthy, costly and detrimental to the children.

4. SEEKING APPROVAL: Despite all of the offending spouses vengeance, he/she still wants the affirmation and approval of family, friends, and curiously enough, even his mate. He/She wants the mate to ACCEPT that he/she was primarily responsible for the break-up of the family and realize that he/she had no other choice but to act as he/she did. Sadly, this view may be imparted upon the children, who are traumatized enough by the divorce. The deep-seated guilt that the offending spouse experiences continues to plague him/her.

5. RESTORING BALANCE: The offending spouse expects their left mate to accept their new life and even be happy for them. They want their left mate to take the full blame for their need to escape the so-called intolerable marriage. Therefore, the left mate should also accept the "new reality" and make peace with the OW or OM. Since the left mate does not share the offending spouse's reconstructed view of their history, he/she is often unwilling to embrace the offending spouse's new life. With time, some couples learn to act civilly toward each other, often for the sake of their children.

In summary, in the Compounded style of divorce, which involves a third party, the following happens:

*A spouse becomes involved with a third party and is subsequently beleaguered by guilt.

*To justify his or her socially and morally unacceptable conduct, he/she first demonizes the mate, rewrites the history of their union in negative terms and then depicts himself as a victim and the mate as a persecutor.

*This partner then moves to punishing the spouse for the alleged unforgivable acts. He/She then seeks approval from others and even his partner for being "forced" to exit the marriage.

*The divorcing couple eventually try to restore balance, whereby a normalized or civil relationship is created. This may or may not be fully achieved.

If you have been a participant in this divorce pattern, or know someone who has been, you are fully aware of the emotional turmoil involved.

The left mate experiences a HELLISH NIGHTMARE. They are likely to go through the following stages, which are often reported in the form of sequential questions:

*The demonizing process produces feelings of pure shock.

"How can my partner betray me in the worst possible way? Not only did he have an affair, but he compounded the betrayal by accusing me of causing it."

"Not only did he blame me for the failure of the marriage, but he also restorted to DEFAMING my character. How could he believe that I am such an evil being after having loved me for years?"

"How could he be so callous and insensitive toward the children by depicting their mother in the worst possible light to justify his own immoral conduct?"

*The rewriting of history is a major violation of the mate's reality.

"How could he have been miserable for 10 years without my awareness? Or worse, how could all of the joy I recall be a figment of my imagination?"

"If things were truly that offensive to him, why did he not complain, and not request change or seek help FOR HIMSELF?"

*Being punished for creating a partner's misery is a mind-boggling state.

"He started an affair, lied, deceived, violated trust and his commitment, started fights to escape from home and ultimately decided to leave our family, and I need to be punished?"

"Not only do I lose my whole life structure, but I am also seen as a greedy enemy? Please, somebody help me understand how my whole reality became so skewed."

"To make things even more bewildering, he expects me to admit my wrongdoings, take full responsibility for the marrige failure and give him empathy for "his suffering"?"

"I am also left with the task of preserving his dignity in the children's eyes while helping them with their anger, confusion, and pain. But, as long as the children are in pain, I am accused of turning them against him!"

"If all of this isn't enough emotional torture, he now thinks I should accept this other woman and rejoice in his well-deserved happiness. It is my task to help the children embrace her and welcome her into the fold."

"Since when did I select her entry into our lives? Does she deserve kudos for participating in the break-up of our marriage? How did I get assigned the job of welcoming a woman whose only interest was not that of our family unit, but of her own needs?"

The people who have gone through this trauma describe it as "crazy-making." Such severe distortion of their reality causes left mates to doubt their sanity. Recovery from this profound trauma is slow.

What can a left partner do under these circumstances?

*Realize that all of these five phases serve the leaving partner and have little to do with you.

*Understand that this is your partner's tragic way of dealing with their guilt. Their perceptions are the reconstructed ones.

*Your partner's lack of any cupability is a clear sign of misdirected adaptation.

*Talk with people who can affirm your view of the marital history, interactions, and your worthy personality.

*Reassure yourself that you are sane and that the reality you are being fed is created for your partner's self-exoneration.

*Surround yourself with people who love and affirm you.

*Remember that every parent earns his or her separate relationship with the children. Your youngsters will eventually process these events appropriately.