August 16, 2009
Now I know I’m starting off negative but … Divorce doesn’t work. Divorced people are seldom happier, wealthier or more successful as a result of getting divorced. Divorced families seldom become more functional and the children of divorced parents would generally prefer that their parents stayed together
Where am I coming from? Apart for lots of study, I have been divorced and I have worked with plenty of divorcing people. People almost always get divorced looking for greater happiness and a better life … and they hardly ever find it. With a bit of luck, they can get it as good as they would have had it anyway had they known how not to get divorced
Relationship Breakdown means heartache, despair, depression, family dysfunction, loss of income, loss of wealth and emotional frustration, with quite a lot of emotional and psychological abuse for good measure. Simply put … life generally sucks for quite a while!!
I read the other day that 90% of the kids of parents who are breaking up see their parents being physically violent with each other at least once. And most of those people have never been violent before and are never violent again. Yep, emotions run high when relationships break down and some pretty crap decisions get made.
About 1-in-3 first marriages and 2-in-3 second marriages end in divorce so it’s just as popular as it has ever been (around 50% of marriages on average).
Lots of divorcing parents try to convince us that in the long run the kids are better off. Overall the kids don’t think so.
So how come after spending all those billions of dollars and billions of hours counselling people in relationship breakdown the rate of divorce remains unchanged, and has even risen. To state the obvious … something is not working and the result is both very costly and very painful.
Well relationships breakdown because people go about it all the wrong way. I reckon that only about 10% of people should divorce. The other 40% that do divorce just need to do it differently and they can end up better off than ever.
It’s all in the knowing how and once you know how, you can be in for an exciting ride and one you wouldn’t want to miss for anything … so stay tuned.
July 13, 2009
Problems – You gotta luv them!
Life is a struggle, so it is said. But it is worth it because what comes out of the struggle is everything wonderful in our life. Many people struggle hard to get rid of their problems, in the belief that this will make everything fantastic.
“If I can have a new relationship with someone who truly understands me then things will be great”.
“If my children behave themselves then I will have a wonderful life”.
“If I have more money, then my problems will all be over”. And so on …
However a problem-free life is just not possible. Solve one problem and you’ve got another. Deal with one issue and you’ve got a host of new issues to deal with.
Every time you solve problems, the next set of problems rushes into your life, and these ones are usually bigger and more complex than the ones just solved.
“My problem is that I live alone and I am lonely”. So I go and get married and the loneliness problem is now totally solved, but hey life is anything but problem free now!!
Problems are a fact of absolutely everyone’s life, and all of the time. Perhaps that’s why we are such great problem solvers. We are collectively addicted to finding problems and solving them. Without problems to solve, life is all but meaningless. Without problems we have nothing to do … we have no reason to drive ourselves forward … we have nothing daring us to become even greater.
Our problems are actually our constant motivation to grow and develop. That’s why happy people are those who are constantly solving problems, while unhappy people are those who are stuck on the same old problems year in and year out.
It stands to reason then that the greatest gifts you can potentially receive are most likely to come from those who you regard as the source of your greatest problems!
