Creating the life you want

Who’s ready for pumpkin pies? Green bean casserole? Giant Clifford the Big Red Dog floating between skyscrapers? I am! Thanksgiving Day will be here soon.  

For the gratitude and celebration of freedom that this special day inspires throughout our country, I am a fan. But for my fellow adult children of alcoholics and anyone who comes from dysfunctional families, this holiday may bring about all the feels.

Fortunately, I am thrilled to share that I may, actually, sort of, kinda, be looking forward to Thanksgiving this year.

I used to D.R.E.A.D. this holiday. This because my mother’s drinking always ruined it. Then there were complicated dynamics when my mother’s substance use disorder worsened when I was a teenager. That’s when my mother and father stopped attending holiday gatherings on both sides of my parents’ families.

This left me feeling highly responsible to represent the family because tradition, you know? Because my grandmas wanted to see us, you know? So, on the holidays, I drove my sister and me to our family celebration for my father’s side of the family and then across southeast Michigan to the get together for my mother’s side of the family. Lots of driving. Lots of energy. Lots of pretending everything was okay. Lots of pretending I was okay. Lots of coming home then to extreme dysfunction on Thanksgiving night.

Thanksgiving is uniquely stressful. Hours of dedicated time with your family, usually many people who may not see each other often and smooshed together. Lots of memories and wounds and relationships you’d call “complicated.”

For you, I have seven ways to survive Thanksgiving with your dysfunctional family.

1.      Picture yourself having a good time.

The law of attraction is real, my friends. Imagine yourself unbothered by commentary and opinions. Be positive and you will manifest better experiences. Do not replay the bad memories from past Thanksgivings in your mind. You will tell the universe, Give me more of that again this year!

2.      Focus on the “fun” in dysfunctional.

In every dysfunctional situation, there’s something fun. Recognize that dysfunction in family systems is as common as turkey on Thanksgiving. Your ultra-competitive brother may be a little too into winning foosball. Another character in the TV show called [insert your family name]. Let the annoyance go and laugh at the ridiculousness.

3.      Avoid the emotional traps by not engaging.  

Odds are, you have some family members who intentionally or unintentionally make you feel like crap about yourself and the way you think and live. When those comments come, don’t engage in the conversation.

If your mother ALWAYS critiques your outfit, ignore. If your uncle asks you why you don’t have a boyfriend for the gazillionth time, answer politely that you’re living the life you love and walk away. You don’t have to have long conversations with your family’s Debbie Downer, opinionated political guru or judge-y perfectionist. Spend the most time with the people who make you feel good.

4.      Take breaks.

Sometimes, you just need a minute. Now that I am regularly hosting Thanksgiving, I take 10-minute walks with my dog every 90 minutes or so. Everyone just thinks I’m being the dog person I am. Take a walk and call a friend. Sit on the porch. Find a quiet corner.

5.      Set boundaries.

Thanksgiving is the official start of the magical holiday season so it’s enveloped in expectations of merriment and togetherness all tied to traditions. If you need permission to opt out, here’s your permission: YOUR ONLY JOB IN LIFE IS TO TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOU SO DO NOT NEED TO PARTICIPATE IN ALL TRADITIONS.

Remember, if it feels wrong to skip it, it’s probably the right thing to do for you.

If you know your alcoholic parent is going to be drunk and you’d rather not relive that experience or abuse, stay at a hotel, instead of your parents’ home.

I will not shop on Black Friday. Nope. I refuse, even though I have people in my life who’ve made it a tradition to rise at the crack of dawn and shop all day. While I enjoy being with those people, my loathing of crowded malls and long lines overpowers it.

6.      Create new traditions.

Thanksgiving lives on with its old traditions until you decide to create new ones. Go see that old friend who’s in town for the holiday. Leave dinner before dessert so that you can go home and put on your comfiest pants and watch a movie or read a book.  

The more things tied to Thanksgiving that you can look forward to, the better the overall Thanksgiving experience will be for you.

7.      Remember that you can control only one person: YOU.

When you feel all the feelings rushing back and salt flinging at your old wounds, remember that you can’t control anyone but yourself. Remind yourself about how far you’ve come in being you. Living and thinking differently from your family is okay. In fact, look around. It’s probably a good thing.

Though social media is exploding with photos and videos of people who are all smiles as they make fancy stuffing and truffles from scratch, that this holiday is, by historical roots, dysfunctional!

The first Thanksgiving feast was with Native Americans and pilgrims over a three-day period. For sure, that feast was awkward and required patience and diplomacy.

I wish you a great, healthy Thanksgiving. I am grateful for you.

Most people say that they want a better life. So why is it that most people don’t actually succeed in doing it? It’s because we think we cannot.

Many people, especially those who experienced trauma as young people in group and dysfunctional environment, feel that these are the life cards they’ve been dealt. They are victims with a lifelong abuse. I believe that it is easier to change your life than you may realize. You don’t have to quit your job, leave your spouse, move to another state, and completely flip your life around.

Here are seven ways to change your life without really trying.

1. Believe in the power of your mind to make things happen.

The law of attraction is real my friends. I was recently assigned a project at work that wasn’t good for me or my organization that I work for. Now normally, in my people-pleasing ways, I will normally just go with the flow and don’t raise concerns unless it’s really, really concerning. However, in this case, taking on this project would prevent me from completing other important projects and would cause a tremendous amount of stress and pressure for me. That wasn’t worth it for me – or my employer. 

With my effort to take better care of myself, I was faced with a tough decision and effort to make this project simply go away. I went to my boss and mentioned my concerns. While she agreed with me, she felt that the project was too important to fight, as it was coming from a few of the key leaders for the organization. However, she encouraged me to express my concerns to other leaders if I felt very strongly about it. Normally, at this point I would proceed with just getting it done, even though it wasn’t good for me and despite my concerns. The next morning as I was driving to work, I thought, “This project is going away. I am going to dissolve it.” When I arrived at my office, I called a leader and expressed my concerns. To my shock, the leader agreed. Within seconds, she called other leaders. And. The. Project. Went. Away. Just one day prior, I was preparing to just suck it up, and get it done, just as I’ve done my entire life. I could not have imagined that I have the power to make things like this happen. All I did was make a phone call.

The mind is a very powerful thing. I made the decision in my mind to make something happen. And I did it. The universe didn’t make the project to go away. The law of attraction was at work. It gave me the confidence and the direction to make it happen on my own. After these small instances of the law of attraction at work, I’ve been applying it to larger facets of my life. I hope you do, too.

2. Spend more time with people who are better people than you.

It is often said that you are the sum of the five people who surround you most often. As an adult child of an alcoholic, I recognize the tremendous value and influence people outside of my family have on my life.

Over the last 10 years, I see clearly the closed-mindedness, the dysfunction and mental health issues of the people I have spent the most time with throughout my life. Once I begin pursuing my dreams and taking good care of me, I met more people who are like me – but better. I embraced these magnetic people whose positive words and stories of how they overcame and healed from tough experiences had a huge impact on me.  

I was stunned when I shared with them my dreams of writing and how much I loved it that they were so encouraging and supportive. I had never known such true givers. I made the conscious decision to spend more time with them and to give more time and goodness to them. I invited people to lunch and coffee. I joined writers’ groups and organizations.

The more time I spent with people like this, the more I healed and the stronger I became. This gave me deeper faith in the power of my mind to create the life that I want and deserve. Go where people are who you want to be like. Their words, actions and positive energy will influence you more than you know.

3. Take good care of yourself.

As an adult child of an alcoholic, I never learned how to take good care of myself. I did not understand self-care basics such as getting enough sleep eating properly, drinking enough water and making sure I was safe. You cannot possibly make good decisions to create the life that you want and deserve if you are tired and your body is suffering. Make a conscious effort to get enough sleep to care for your body, and it will have an extremely positive effect on the health of your mind.

4. Turn down the volume on unhealthy, toxic people in your life.

Everyone has people in their lives who we have to deal with – family, in laws, co-workers, neighbors, etc. – who we know are not good for us.

In my experience, we give way too much energy to thinking about the actions and words and behaviors of these people. Toxic people are given power unknowingly by people who are vulnerable to this – such as yours truly. I used to get all worked up over my mother and coworkers who could really just simply push my button. I would often think about things I should’ve said or done related to dealing with them. As I understand the law attraction today, I was inviting more of their toxicity by giving such energy and thought to them. Now, I am wiser and understand that my energy and thoughts should be reserved for positive things and people. The more energy I give to things and people, the more I’m going to get of them. So now I turn down the volume of these toxic people; I turn up the volume of the encouraging positive people. The sound from the toxic people are still there; I just don’t choose to pay as much attention to it as once I did. Once you make this dramatic shift in your life, you recognize the power that you have in your life. I may always have one jerky coworker but I have 30 inspiring, positive people in my life. That ratio tells me that I’m doing something right.

5. Live life like a sponge.

It’s been nearly 10 years now since I started this healing journey to build the life that I want and deserve. In those early days, I wanted so desperately for an overnight healing and to wake up with the perfect life. But I soon recognized that is a journey; there are great milestones – some coming at a rapid pace – on this healing journey. However, I know that creating the life that I want and deserve is always going be part of my life; it’s always going to be a process of education and understanding. As I’ve grown and healed over the years, I’m quite proud of my progress but I am humble enough to know that I always have a lot to learn and understand. The more I grow and become more satisfied with my life, the more I recognize how much I have to learn. The more fascinating, healthy, successful people I meet, the more I recognize what is possible. Education and the pursuit of being a healthier person is a must there is no final destination on this journey I must always be a sponge, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

6. Be 100% OK with being different than most people around you and in broader society.

The reality is that the majority of people do not take the more difficult road to create the life that they want and deserve and to be better, happier and healthier people. You have the power to live the life exactly how you want it to be. Ignore societal pressures ignore the people who comment that this or that is weird.

I used to omit information about my life in general conversation with people. For example, at work, a common question on Fridays is, “So, what are your big plans this weekend?” I would feel pressured to get a reply that would mirror that person’s plans –i.e. going to be a barbecue, hanging out by the lake, doing home-improvement projects, etc. It took me a long time to be OK with sharing that I was spending my time writing a book, reading or going to writer’s group event or making a video like this. I feared they would think that I was weird or that I was avoiding a “normal” life for whatever reason. Now, I realize that it is WAY easier to share my actual plans – i.e. I’m writing and I’m excited about it!

7. Give 15 minutes every day to something that moves you closer to the life that you want.

Never let a day pass without giving time and energy to what you love.

If you’re working in accounting in corporate America but you love being in a band. Do not go to bed at night unless you played your guitar your piano whatever it is for 15 minutes. If you dream of opening a small bakeshop, do not go to bed without sharing another creation on Instagram. Whatever your interest is, make it a part of your daily life. If you want to get out of debt so you have more money for travel, take the time to sit down and look at all of your essential expenses and make a plan about what you can skip. If you know that meditation or yoga is very good for your mental health and well-being, make the time.  If you need to wake up 15 minutes earlier every day to do this, do it.

You get what you give precious time to.

I hope you are so well on your healing journey and that you were actively building a life that you want and deserve.

What you feel are the barriers to change in your life? Let me know in the comments.

Some people say that the future is already determined by their genetics, the trauma they experienced in childhood, by the way their brains are programmed – by the cards the universe dealt to them.

I felt this way, too, about my own life. I landed in grownup land and felt life was NOTHING like I’d envisioned it as a little girl. I felt as miserable as my alcoholic mother who addiction gripped her tightly. I felt as trapped as my codependent father.

This is it, I thought. This is my life. I was clinically depressed and heartbroken for little-girl me who’d had such hope for the future. In my journal, I wrote that these were the cards I was dealt in life. Unfair as it was, this was my destiny. I couldn’t imagine EVER feeling anything other than I did then and as I had my whole life: trapped. I didn’t want to go on anymore.

Around that time, I don’t think I believed in free will. Past experience = destiny. Everything was already determined.

But then I got better. I’ve spent the last 9 years studying people.

The most satisfied, fulfilled, “successful” people I’ve come across are living examples of going against the odds, breaking the destiny, creating their own future. There are stories of extreme trauma that would seem to write the future of the person in stone. But the opposite has happened. They take that those painful experience and that unique perspective and change their future.

These stories have convinced me that futures are not defined because the mind is extremely powerful. I believe wholeheartedly that you have the power to shape the future.

Henry Ford said, “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

This is an extremely difficult idea to embrace when you are trapped in life circumstances that make you believe that you’ll never be out of it. When you’re just a kid or teenager without a means to support yourself, in a relationship with a narcissistic, addicted or mentally unwell person you love or have a family to support and bills to pay – whatever the situation is, it may feel like there’s no way you can change your life.

There are millions of people who experienced terrible trauma and whose genetics and addiction and codependency cycles in the families add up to create odds that they’re going to have this or that kind of life. But they told the universe, the Higher Power, their destiny: NOOOOO!

1. Believe you’re going to have a certain life and it will happen – no matter how completely unrealistic it seems now.

The people who are unique enough to think that they will go against the odds to make something amazing happen are the ones who do.

2. Have sharp focus only on what will lift you up and support the changes.

The thing about changing your life is that you will still have the negativity around you. The same people who put you down, who manipulate you will likely still be there. The people who don’t have your drive, your belief – all the people who won’t get what you’re doing – they’ll be there. This may mean that you need to spend less time with people who distract from your focus. Put on your music, podcasts, audiobooks and videos and listen and be inspired. Follow people on social media. Read books. Be a sponge to everyone who inspires you. Go to support groups. Find more people. Break societal rules. Live differently.

3. Keep going.

There is nothing easy about changing your life. It is a journey. You will want to give up on the struggle. You’ll feel like a rolling stone – alone. You will say it’s unrealistic and impossible. Keep going anyway.

10 years ago, I didn’t want to live anymore. This morning, I woke up and felt abundant gratitude for this life that I never thought I’d have. And by life, I mean how I think – how I behave – how I live.

There are millions who’d share the same about their lives.

You own your future.