New Hope in the New Year During Divorce

How do you find hope in the new year during divorce? While living in turbulence and uncertainty throughout divorce, life feels hard at best and often impossible to manage. Struggles with your finances, stbx, kids and perhaps even your faith feel like a vice closing in on you…with no place to turn.

New hope during divorce is not found in your circumstances, but rather in how you choose to experience them.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”   ~ Charles R. Swindoll

As you contemplate your divorce on new years eve day, how would it be for you to divorce with less suffering? The secret to experiencing your divorce with more hope and greater ease is found not in your circumstances, but your perspective, beliefs and attitudes.  

Without anyone or anything changing, your experience can dramatically improve providing hope in the new year during divorce.

We often unwittingly sabotage our own desires with the stories (nightmares) that we tell ourselves.  For instance:

• Story:  My ex purposely didn’t communicate with me just to upset me.
• What’s real:  He/She has often been weak at sharing details, not much has changed.
   
• Story:  My attorney is dragging out this process just to suck me of all my money.
• What’s real: My attorney has little control over the court process, is doing his/her best and understands my frustration.  
   
• Story:  I am going to lose everything and struggle the rest of my life.
• What’s real:  My financial situation is changing and temporary. I can adjust and rebuild.
   
• Story: I’ll never find love again and grow old and lonely!
• What’s real:  I have fear around creating my new life and beginning to date.  I am capable of meeting new people and creating a life of my choosing.
   
• Story:  God doesn’t exist or He is punishing me. Otherwise, He wouldn’t put me through such pain and suffering.
• What’s real: God is more interested in our healing and refinement than our comfort.  It is through our pain and struggles that we transform into our best self, if we are willing to keep the focus on ourselves.  

Change your story and you change your emotional experience!

12 Step Divorce Recovery programs have been so successful because they encourage members to have the courage to change what they can, accept what is out of their control and discern the difference between the two.  Central to 12 Step programs is also the belief in a higher power, a power greater than ourselves who is at work in all circumstances, knows our needs and desires to comfort us as we surrender our struggles. This belief is guaranteed to foster new hope in the new year during divorce.

Here are a few suggestions to help you veer from thoughts of fear, doom and devastation to the belief in something better.  

• Challenge the story running through your head – ask what the facts are and what’s real.
• Before reacting ask yourself, ‘how important is it?’ and
• Remember, you don’t have to attend every argument you are invited to – pick and choose your battles and let the small stuff go, keeping your ego in check.
• Create a mantra or say a prayer that resonates with you and anchor your mind there:

This too shall pass 

Look how far I have come

I choose peace

The Serenity Prayer (as much or as little as fits for you)

God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change…
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.

(Here is the seldom displayed 2nd verse)

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.

DON’T go it alone. New years eve day is a time for reflection, the new year a time for action. There is a TRIBE of men and women navigating similar circumstances. They gather DAILY to support and encourage each other. Click here to join our Journey Beyond Divorce Facebook support community and receive new hope in the new year during divorce.

Karen McMahon, Journey Beyond Divorce Founder