This Superpower is Armour for the Soul (and it’s a skill you can learn)
The day my ex told me that she was taking my 2 children to the other side of the world is the day I thought my life was over. It came as a complete surprise to me, and the feeling of utter devastation sunk into my heart.
Although I hadn’t lived with them since their mother and I separated 6 years earlier, I intentionally lived across the street from them so I could remain close.
I’m the Dad who takes being a father seriously, the kind of Dad who;
- read to his kids and put them to bed at night,
- told them he loved them all the time,
- hugged them before school every morning.
My kids were in my life every day.
And now? They were leaving. They were literally going to be an ocean away, 9176 miles away to be exact. I knew that I would never see them on a regular basis again, at least not for the foreseeable future.
Anger, frustration, rage, hurt pulsed through my veins. Worse yet, I was vulnerable and felt powerless. And I hate feeling vulnerable. My thoughts became foggy with confusion.
How could I live without my kids?
Why was my ex doing this to me?
How could this be happening to me?
What did I do to deserve this?
At this point, without realizing it at first, I started on a journey of reinvention and personal evolution. I thought things were finally stable after a series of other evolution. My journey had started years ago when I separated from my wife and had to completely reinvent myself, learn how to date again after nearly 20 years, learn to live life alone as a single man. Learn who I was even. That took years to figure out, but a large part of that was being a good father. Soon this would be gone too.
Fast forward to now. My two awesome children have moved far away, and have started a new life in a new country they now call home. I’m still overseas and only get to see them a couple times a year.
Here’s the thing though, they’re thriving. And so am I.
Check out the end of this article where you can learn real strategies of personal change that worked for me to help me up-shift my life.
My life is different from what I’d envisioned, but with a new perspective, I was able to evolve my thinking. I had to re-frame my thoughts from “why me?” and “poor me” to seeing the good in the situation, even as small and as insignificant that “good” might have seemed at the time.
How about you? Are you:
- Facing a huge insurmountable challenge?
- Struggling alone in some area?
- Feeling that you’ve missed out on a huge part of your life?
- Wishing you could have a do-over in some or many areas of your life?
- Just yearning for more?
Do you ever feel like aspects of your life are everyone else’s fault? Have you been busy creating excuses for why your life isn’t what you wanted? Let’s try and re-frame that.
Victim thinking is so easy to adopt, and it’s soooo deliciously seductive. It’s easy to sit in a pit of despair and soak in the pity from those around us. We add a little sigh to our expressions, look a little sadder, and temporarily enjoy the increased attention of our friends who care about us.
I didn’t even realise I was adopting a victim attitude until I started deep-processing my own thoughts. Has this ever happened to you? Sound familiar at all?
Why was this happening to me?
Life is unfair.
If only … I could …
My life is so hard …
Why are they … to me.
Victim. Victim. Victim.
(Obviously I’m not talking about situations such as domestic violence, rape etc. Victim blaming with that is never OK.)
When my kids first left, I believed that this was happening to me. As if I was the center of the issue. After a lot of mental processing, I realised it was never about me. It was and still is about my kids and what’s best for them.
For a while, I had been too stupid to see that. When I was able to move away from playing the victim, my life became better.
Yeah, it’s hard. It’s so easy to soak in others’ sympathy. It makes us feel better. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with receiving sympathy and support in the early stages, but not too much.
The trick is in catapulting yourself out of the depths of despair and setting a new course as quickly as possible.
Re-wiring our thinking is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and mastered. The best way I found to do this was to answer this question:
“How am I 100% responsible for everything in my life right now?”
Boom. Just like that.
By adopting the belief that I’m responsible for myself, for my life, I started taking back control. I started to feel less and less like a victim. Easy? No. Necessary? Absolutely yes. Is it always true? Debatable, but I’ll write more about that at another time.
For now, just play with the concept that you are 100% responsible for everything in your life.
This single step will transform your life and increase your personal power. You’ll begin to interact with the world differently. You’ll start to become rock-solid. And you’ll feel different.
This superpower is armour for the soul.
Wait, did you catch it? There is a subtle shift that happens when you take responsibility for your life. The outcome you’re going to get isn’t about the thing that happened to you.
It’s about how you respond, internally and externally, to what happens to you.
“The secret of life isn’t what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you” -Norman Vincent Peale
But knowing that it’s your choice on how you respond is your power move here.
Understanding that you have the capacity to change your situation is huge. Internalising at the deepest levels that your life changes the moment you start responding differently is a superpower.
How about making one small change in your thinking about your life today?
Your Call to Action
I’ve written a three page Short Guide to Personal Change that you can download for free and start using immediately. It’s an easy-to-read technique that outlines a strategy that you can use to update your thinking and life.
Click here to get access to my free Short Guide to Personal Change now.
One Last Thing
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