Growing up I learned to see the world through a very critical lens. I came by it honestly. It was one of the many gifts my mother had given to me. I thought of myself as a happy person, yet I was skeptical and always expecting the worst. That was the universe that I was creating for myself. One where people and things weren’t to be trusted and that nothing good ever happened to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I always outwardly hoped for things to go right. I hoped my dreams would come true, but there was always this element that got in my way that would sabotage my efforts. It was the reason I didn’t get that scholarship, promotion or chosen for that part in the play, band….

“The most important question you can ever ask is if the world is a friendly place.” Albert Einstein

This is an important question because however we see our environment is the environment that we create for ourselves, whether we mean to or not.  If we see our world as hostile we will spend all of our time, energy and resources creating walls and defenses to keep people away. We will look for deception everywhere even in places where it doesn’t exist.

I truly believe that the events surrounding the car accident that killed my mother was the catalyst for this change in my life. At that time I lost not just my mother but my health, my Narcissistic partner of 10 years, my job, my house, my car, my friends – everything that makes a person feel stable and secure was gone in a matter of weeks. I truly believe that what happened in those few weeks was the culmination of all of the negativity, beliefs and energy that I had put out into the universe converging into one big purge. I hated my life, my job, my partner, my mother. I was so unhappy and I believe that when  wrong path and you won’t get off the universe will intervene and force you to move.

At first it felt like I was falling and that I had nowhere to land. I was catatonic, terrified of everything and so depressed and broken that it was palpable to everyone around me. I felt so bad and I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. Reality started to don on me that there was no one that was going to save me and so my focus became survival based.

Aside from finding my own stability with a job, a place to live and the return of my own health, the stability I needed to find was with my emotions and my outlook on life. I hurt. I hurt so bad that I would stare out at the moon and just sob – heart wrenching sobs that took such a toll on my physical body when they ended that my body would hurt afterword.

I made a choice during this time that I didn’t want to feel this way ever again. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to feel good and I embraced the, “I’ll show you,” attitude that fueled me into action.

During this period I learned that you have to decide what kind of life you want to have and then work on breaking down the barriers to get you there. A good life doesn’t just happen by accident. It takes planning and execution. So what if I wasn’t given the tools other people had, so what if I had weight and self-esteem issues, emotional issues – there is no one that is going to ride in on a white horse and save me, so I can either teach myself what I need to know, or I can do what I always did, be negative and believe that nothing ever goes right for me and achieve the exact same results that I always did.

At this time the documentary the Secret was all the rage. I noticed that when I watched it I felt good. I felt inspired and empowered and I watched it every day. I became like a sponge taking in everything that made me feel good. I couldn’t get enough of books and videos that inspired me. I stumbled into meditation and was surprised by just how good it made me feel. I realized that I could manufacture a feeling during meditation. I could feel good. I could feel what happiness felt like and what joy and love felt like and I could become those feelings and emit their vibration. I understood from the I Am documentary that the phrase, “I am,” was a powerful and it showed me just how in control I could be of my feelings and my thinking. I learned that what I absorbed changed me for good or bad, so I had to control the kinds of things I let inside of me.

I know that there are a lot of people that think, “I have X,Y, Z reasons to be angry, so I’m going to stay bitter until I see with my own two eyes that my miserable ex gets just what’s coming to him.” I hear things all the time about the need to make him/her accountable for what they’ve done, but what happens if it takes years to see someone get their comeuppance are you going to waste all that time being negative and focusing on negativity just so you can feel vindicated?  I always tell people to stop giving their ex so much energy and focus on themselves. I get it that people want justice and that you may have every reason to be angry and feel justified about how you feel, but the bottom line is do you want to stay stuck in that angry, disempowering space or do you want to do something different and step away from those familiar feelings and into something much better? I’m at a place now where I don’t go looking for justice. I trust that the universe will take care of that stuff for me, so I can focus on my happiness and my here and now.

As you continue on your path of healing I think it’s essential to develop a positive mental attitude and that you learn how to maintain that positive energy as you go through your day. Like I said you may have every reason to feel angry and bad about what happened, but who really gets hurt by your attitude. You always. You can always choose not to. Instead of hating my Narcissist and wishing all manner of hardships on him I instead began to look at it like this:

-Instead of feeling hatred and anger I feel grateful that it happened – it woke me up in this life. I was the walking dead before and now I am finally me and who I am supposed to be.

-It forced you to look inwards and to really get to know and understand why I was behaving the way I was – what drove me, what created my thought process, beliefs and feelings.

-It’s gave me the opportunity to live out the rest of my life happier and healthier than I ever could have been with him.

-It forced me on a new path, making me more compassionate with myself. It forced me to be autonomous and empowered.

-I learned that I could overcome anything.

-I now know what it’s like to expect success and good things.

-I see opportunity instead of obstacles.

-I stopped being so critical of others and now practice being more accepting

-I learned that continued triumph over problems builds confidence.

-I learned that it feels damn good to be happy. When you get used to feeling happy – feeling shitty becomes something that you just won’t tolerate anymore.

-I learned that feeling bad stops feeling natural when you practice feeling good.

You make this choice – no one else and as Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” When your old tapes start to play in your head, you shut that thing off and start playing your new tape. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean we don’t do it. It means we keep doing it until it stops being hard. You can be mindful of your thoughts and feelings and you can change your view of the world. We all need to take care of our emotional health the same way we take care of our physical health. Our treadmill needs to become the continual practice of being positive and maintaining a positive attitude. Make time for meditation just like you make time for the gym and in no time you’ll be able to flex your emotional and spiritual muscles.

Your Thoughts!!!!!!!!!!!!

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