Personal Growth & Transformation

Becoming What I Might Have Been

What I Might Have Been

As I passed my 50th birthday, I wondered if I would ever be able to complete some of the dreams I had carried with me for decades. So many things had happened to me. I had been sent to juvenile hall at fourteen, got myself kicked out of school by fifteen, and married by sixteen. We had our firstborn son when I was seventeen, and my husband abandoned my son and me by my eighteenth birthday. Thing went downhill from there. I experienced abuse and trauma. After a gang-rape by six young men I turned to drugs to try to cope with the emotional pain.

By the time I hit my twenties, I was seriously mentally ill. Soon I would lose a brother and three years later, a father, to suicide. I went through another abusive marriage and divorce.

But I worked very hard to recover. These events changed me, but I grew as a person and changed my life. I eventually married a wonderful man. My children grew and became husbands and wives, with families of their own. I had the joy of a house full of grandchildren. My Christmases were no longer the nightmares of drunkenness of my childhood, but instead full of light and peace and the sweet laughter of children.

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5 Ways to Discover & Nurture Your Intuitive Voice

intuitive voice

“Gee Allyson, sure you wanna do this?” my co-workers said as I prepared to quit my job.

I was a tenured “direct hire” for the U.S. government, which meant iron clad job security for life. But despite my gold-plated healthcare insurance, the job felt light years away from my heart’s true calling.

I trudged to work every morning to the subway surrounded by trench coats, humming to myself, “The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah.” By most standards, it was a commendable job working for the U.S. agency that administered foreign aid. The job gave me the opportunity to serve others, but in a paper-pushing sort of way, not the impactful way I truly wanted.

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Are You Stronger Than Your Past? A Lesson From a Holocaust Survivor

stronger than your past

His troubles began with the death of his identical twin brother when he was seven years old. By the age of ten, he had already lost his entire family. Utterly alone, with no food or shelter, he was left to wander the forests, only to be imprisoned in a sealed ghetto and forced to live under the constant threat of death.

Does this sound like the childhood of a happy person?

We are taught that a difficult childhood inevitably leads to problems later in life. Depression in our forties is traced down to how our parents treated us before we were being potty trained. Anxiety all the way in our fifties is attributed to feelings of neglect before we even reached puberty.

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What Life Will You Choose For Yourself?

what life will you choose

In 2012 I had the worst year of my life.

I worked in a finance job that I hated and I lived in a concrete jungle city with little greenery. I occupied my time with meaningless relationships and spent copious quantities of money on superficialities. I was searching for happiness and had no idea where to find it.

Then I fell ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and became virtually bed bound. I had to quit my job and subsequently was left with no income. I lived with my boyfriend of then only 3 months who financially supported me and our relationship was put under great pressure. I eventually regained my physical health, but not long after that I got a call from my family at home to say that my father’s cancer had fiercely progressed and that he had been admitted to a hospice.

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How Controlling Ourselves Can Help Change Others

change others

For eight years, I believed that I could transform my ex-husband into someone else. I encouraged him, coached him, cheered him…anything in my power to change him into what I viewed as his full potential. Even though he constantly asked for my help, the truth was, he never put his full heart into it. I wanted him to change much more than he did, and I was so blind by my mission that I never accepted him for who he was. Not surprisingly, this conflict contributed to the end of our marriage.

We want to believe that we are a positive force for change, both in our lives and in those around us. We see role models accomplishing this all the time. Great teachers can mold young minds. Great philanthropists can provide opportunities to those who have none. But just because you want others to change doesn’t mean you control them. In the end, it is up to each individual to live his own life.

So while we can’t control others, there are things in our control that may influence others to change for the better:

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Has the Self-Help Industry Sold Us a Pup?

self-help

English folklore tells of an old swindle. A peasant goes to market to buy his family a piglet. Piglets are much cheaper than adult pigs, and they can be fed on scraps. Once grown and fattened, they are slaughtered to provide a source of food for the whole family through the lean winter months.

The peasant has saved every spare penny to buy this piglet. And when he gets to the market, he notices an extra special deal. There’s a trader selling piglets, already put into sacks, at a discount. With the money he saves from what the thought the piglet would cost, the peasant can buy himself a beer or two on his journey home.

Dizzy on beer, he’s in a jolly mood the whole walk home. In his hut, he opens the sack, his whole family gathered around to see this piglet, a small animal they will put all their hope in to help them survive the winter months. The sack wiggles, the peasant shakes it, laughing with glee. That is, until the piglet emerges. It’s not a piglet. It’s a scrawny little dog.

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How Finding My True Potential Changed My Life

true potential

Many of us go through our lives, never really knowing what we want to do and we simply live in a way that suits others. We may conform to what’s expected of us rather than making our own choices. We may get to a point where we start to question what our true potential really is and whether we’ve lived up to that potential.

Growing up I was always a very awkward looking child. Tall, skinny and rather introverted, I lacked confidence and self-belief, especially in the classroom where my grades were certainly below average. I was a very shy child. I still remember that I would regularly hide behind my Mother’s long dress whenever she stopped to talk to people on the way to school. I still don’t quite know what I was hiding from, perhaps the possible embarrassment of being talked to by one of my Mother’s friends.

Despite being a rather awkward looking child I had a passion from a young age. That passion was fitness. I would try almost any sport. I particularly loved running and I would literally run everywhere I could. The feeling I got from exercising was like nothing else. We lived opposite the park and my Mother would let me play football with friends there after school. I wasn’t a very good footballer as it happened, but I still loved it. I was a fast runner and when I got the ball my long legs made it hard for others to catch up with me.

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6 Important Skills for the Living When Caring for the Dying

caring for the dying

“I am the midwife of my mother’s death”

That’s the title of a poem I wrote a few months before my 81-year-old mother had a stroke and passed away. I wrote it because I felt responsible, yet helpless, to ease her pain as her body became less reliable, her thoughts less coherent, and her resolve to continue living began to fade. Since being diagnosed with congestive heart failure, my mother had become increasingly dependent on me to help her manage the routines of life that sustained her and brought her joy – grocery shopping, swimming weekly at the gym, visiting my house once a week, or going to the doctor.

This is the story of what I learned about dying from the final months, weeks and days of my mother’s life.

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Why Trying to Be Charismatic Backfires (and What to Do Instead)

charismatic

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of being charismatic. It seemed like such an exotic and fascinating trait to have, and at one moment in my life I believed that I lacked it entirely. So soon enough, I decided to try and become charismatic.

The first thing I did was to read about the behavior that makes a person charismatic and to study the behavior of people around me who were deemed charismatic. Then, with fierce determination, I started trying to adopt the very same type of behavior. Often, this is a good approach to developing certain traits. You deconstruct them into specific behaviors and you practice those behaviors until they become second nature. Paradoxically though, with trying to be charismatic, this approach failed me miserably. Not only that I did not become more charming, but I actually became tenser in social situations and I started enjoying them less.

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8 Steps to Dealing With the Difficulties of Life

dealing with difficulties

Last March I had a skydiving accident. My parachute opened without a problem and I was coming in to make a normal landing. The winds were a little unusual and I let myself get distracted by other skydivers who had landed nearby. I ended up flying the canopy too fast and landed harder than I wanted. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t put weight on my foot. A friend had to help me off the landing area.

After some x-rays at the emergency room, it turned out to be more than a sprain. It was actually a fracture of the calcaneus. Which in normal English means I broke my heel. Ouch.

What do you do when life taps you on the shoulder and says, “Hey! Guess what? You need to make new plans.” A relationship ends, job loss, car accident, natural disaster. War, famine, pestilence. Okay, maybe not pestilence but you could get stuck in traffic and miss your flight. How do you deal with all that life sends your way?

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Three Funerals and an Album

Heather Stewart

My father passed away a couple years ago. My uncle one month before him. Another uncle a month after. I went to three funerals in the span of three months all at the same funeral home. I’m fairly certain the funeral home was getting suspicious of the ladies in our family. Had any of the men who passed away been rich, there would have been some arrests. If it weren’t my actual life, I would have thought I was playing a part in a film. Except Hugh Grant was nowhere to be found.

During that time, I felt so numb yet the most alert I had been in years. I was angry yet overwhelmed by love. Things were funnier and more painful. I felt more and less.

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