Before we can begin moving forward in our lives, and our children in theirs, we must bring our pasts to a close. Legally, that’s what divorce accomplishes. Unfortunately, a ruling from the courts doesn’t provide the kind of emotional closure that allows us to move on. Healing is something that we must handle on our own, and, with kids, it begins with telling them the truth about what is happening to their family and how it will impact their lies.

If possible, couples should find a way to speak to their children together, and explain things as clearly and honestly as possible. Preferably, this should be done before anyone moves out of the house, so that kids don’t have to wonder what’s happening around them.
Questions and Answers

Children aren’t known for a lack of curiosity, so there will always be questions. It’s essential for us to consider these questions in advance and determine how we want to answer ahead of time, so that we can keep calm and minimize our children’s anxiety.

The real reasons behind your divorce may be inappropriate to share with your children, so agree upon a response as to why you’re divorcing with your spouse. By keeping the answer simple, such as “We can’t get along anymore,” you’ll prevent blame and anger from entering the conversation. Be as truthful as possible, without telling your children more than they need to know. Our kids grow up too fast without any help from us, but lies are hard to maintain over time, so honesty, to a point, is the best policy.

Be prepared for questions about how the divorce his will affect your children’s lives. When we can tell our children what will be expected of them, and how divorce might affect their routines, they can start preparing themselves for these changes.

Questions they are likely to ask include:

Will we have to move?
Where will Dad (Mom) live?
Who will I live with?
Where do I go on holidays?
Do I have to change schools?
Can I still see my friends?

We can’t ease every concern our children have about divorce, especially when we have uncertainties of our own, but we can offer some insight into the impact the divorce will have on their day-to-day lives. If you don’t have an answer to a question, or you weren’t anticipating something and don’t know how to respond, it’s generally better to say you’re not sure than to try to think of something on the spot.
Gearing Toward Age

Talking to children all at once may seem the easiest option, but with children who are distant in age, it may be wise to talk to them separately. Teenagers often know more than we realize, and they may ask questions about things your younger children don’t need to know. Talking to teens separately gives them the freedom to express whatever anger or curiosity they have about the situation without opening up unnecessary wounds for younger children. Don’t create a situation in which you have to lie to your teen, even temporarily, at a time when trust is vital.
Listening to Kids’ Concerns

The concerns of children during a divorce are vastly different than our adult concerns. Older kids will likely worry about the big things, like the living arrangement and finances, but kids both younger and older may have some surprising worries, like who’s going to help them shop for a tuxedo for prom or who’s going to read them a bedtime story.

As minor as these things seem in the grand scheme of things, they are important to kids, so they are valid questions. Acknowledge how they feel, and how much of a loss you know the divorce is for them. Ask leading questions to help them express themselves, especially younger kids, who may have difficulty verbalizing how they feel. Listen to every concern, even if it hurts to hear. Kids need to know they can open up to us, and they don’t have to be afraid of hurting our feelings. They need to vent as much as we do.
Handling the Emotions

Children in the midst of divorce experience many of the associated fears and feelings as acutely as we do. For children, divorce is not just the breakup of their parents, but of their family, and the breaking up of their family is one of the most devastating events that will happen in the lives of most of our children.

As parents, we make our own decisions. This gives us a chance to make peace with an impending divorce. For our children, though, divorce often comes as a surprise. Some turmoil in home life is to be expected. The key is to minimize that strife as much as possible. By providing children with extra attention and reassurance during this difficult time in their lives, we can help them adjust to the changing dynamic of their family lives.
“You are Not to Blame”

Many children feel as if they are responsible for the divorce of their parents, or as if they could have done something to prevent it. The first, most important, thing to accomplish when telling our kids about a divorce is that we, the parents, are at fault – that we, as a couple, can’t get along – without placing blame on each other. The important take-away is that we adults made mistakes, and there is nothing the kids could have done about it.
“You are Loved”

Divorce effectively ends a family, so it’s not fair to tell children that it has nothing to do with them. They are not at fault, but they are deeply affected. Instead of trying to remove them from the situation, explain to children that their relationships with both parents are as strong as ever. We must remind our children that we love them, and that will never stop.
“You are Wanted”

During and after a divorce, one parent almost inevitably ends up with a greater share of responsibility when it comes to childcare. With everything else that is going on, it can be difficult not to let being a single parent become overwhelming. It’s important not to show the frustration or stress that comes with being a single parent in front of our kids, or they may see themselves as a burden.

For non-custodial parents, making an effort can help children feel wanted. Even once a custody arrangement is worked out, regular calls and emails can go a long way toward reminder our child that they haven’t been forgotten.
“You are Not Alone”

In contemporary society, it’s safe to assume our children won’t be the first person in their peer groups to go through divorce. Reminding them of the people they know who have divorced parents help them realize they are not alone.

It’s also vital to keep as many steady influences in our children’s lives as we can. By making sure our kids see the people they are used to seeing on both sides of the family, we remind them that they have a large support group.
“You Are Allowed to Be Happy”

Almost all of our children who go through divorce will experience some sadness. It’s an expected emotion. Happiness in the midst of divorce can feel more confusing than misery. By reminding our kids that life goes on, and that it’s okay to feel happy, we can eliminate guilt and help them heal.
Keeping Yourself Healthy

Time and again, children prove resilient to the adult things life can throw at them, so, as the reality of the situation sinks in, children will begin to adjust to the changes in their lives. As parents, we can be of no help to them during this important period if we allow ourselves to fall apart.

Keeping up with healthy routines, including eating proper meals, exercising, and engaging with friends and family, helps in our own healing and recovery. By taking part in activities that we enjoy with people we care about, we allow our kids to see us moving forward.

Our children are more in tune with our emotional states than most of us realize. It’s essential for us to be well, so that our children can see us well. If we are unhealthy or unhappy, our kids will notice and they will worry about that on top of everything else.
Lean on Others

We humans are a social species. Most of us need a support system to function. When in the midst of divorce, that’s the system we need to lean on. By venting to friends and family members who will listen, we can get out our anger where the kids won’t hear. This keeps us from leaning on our kids for emotional support, which is a good thing, because divorce is too heavy for children to have to carry.
Avoid Conflict

Most of us know not to argue in front of our children, but we are often less conscious of other types of conflict we may create. Not fighting about our children is as important as not fighting in front of our children. If you and your ex can’t agree on something that involves your child, don’t mention the situation until you come up with an agreement. Then, when you tell your kid the decision, make sure you state that the agreement is mutual. Don’t let kids think they are the reason behind you and your ex-spouse’s latest fight.
Routine

Across the board, experts agree that children thrive on routine, and too much change to routine can be detrimental to a child’s sense of security. By keeping the same routine – school, sports, activities, meal times, homework, bath times and bedtimes – throughout the divorce process, and into the new custody arrangement, kids won’t be forced to deal with multiple changes at one time.
Discipline

Our kids may not like it, but discipline is part of routine. While it may be tempting to let things slide based on our own guilt right after a divorce, this kind of change-up doesn’t benefit our children in the long run. The more things stay the same, the easier the adjustment will be. That means our kids should get the same scoldings they’ve always gotten for not getting homework done or staying up past bedtime.
Fairness

Custody arrangements have an inevitable effect on kids’ free time. That’s why custody arrangements should ideally have some flexibility. When our children are expected to skip slumber parties or school events because they take place on days when they are supposed to be with their non-custodial parent, it may feel like as if they are being punished. Children should be able to make plans and take part in activities without any sense of guilt that they are letting one parent down.
Getting Input

When we’re engaging in open communication with our kids, we must be conscious of what they are actually saying. If a kid says that he doesn’t want to see his father, he may really not want to see his father, or it may simply be that the custody arrangement is taking time away from his friends or making it difficult for him to do things he wants to do. The more information we can get out of our kids, the easier we can make the situation for them.
After the Divorce

Children have a very narrow view of love and affection. For their entire lives, they have loved the people who have cared for them and spent time with them, and it has never occurred to them that they could stop loving someone. This is likely why so many children of divorce harbor hopes that their parents will reconcile.

As comforting as this hope may be to children early on in a divorce, it can also keep children from adjusting to the reality of the situation. By telling kids that it’s normal to hope for such a thing, while being honest about the fact that there will be no reconciliation, we can acknowledge their feelings, while keeping them moving forward.
New Relationships

It’s difficult, but, at some point, we all move on after a divorce. Unfortunately, our timetables are not the same as those of our children, and just because we’re ready to jump back into the dating pool doesn’t mean our children are ready for more change.
Dating

When it comes to dating after divorce, one rule seems to work the best. What our kids don’t know can’t hurt them. Keep casual romantic interests away and, when you do find someone of long-term potential, introduce that person slowly into your kids lives. Let them pick you up for dates at home, for instance, but don’t invite them for the holidays.
Stepparents

Second marriages are often difficult for children of divorce, and for good reason. While we gain a new spouse, our children gain an additional parental figure, whom we expect them to respect and, in some cases, mind, which can lead to resentment. After all, their friends whose parents are still together have only two people telling them what to do, instead of three or four.

When possible, discipline your children on your own and leave the stepparent out of it. Let respect for a new spouse grow naturally, so that when he or she takes on a more parental role, it’s a better fit.
Blended Families

Remarriage becomes an even stickier situation when other children are involved. To make the transition easier, it’s important to let our children know that new children in our lives won’t rob them of any of our affection. Divorced parents must make effort to make children feel special by reminding them of happy memories and planning one-on-one time with them.
Future Issues

There is no getting around the hard truths. Divorce increases the likelihood that children will suffer from mental and behavioral problems, such as depression or substance abuse, and many of these effects last into adulthood. A study by Cornell University shows that children of divorce are half as likely to attend a top college, while North Carolina State University’s “Long-term Effects of Divorce” finds adults who went through divorce during their childhoods have many carry-over ssues, including:

Strained parental and romantic relationships
Decreased quality of life and lower life satisfaction
Fears of betrayal, abandonment, loss and rejection
Anger and resentment
Depression
Lack of trust
Fear of intimacy
Poorer physical health, including shortened life-expectancy

The effects of our divorce on our children can be a disturbing thing to know as parents, but being aware of these long-term effects can help us work through short-term issues that arise. By focusing on the future health and well-being of our kids, we can determine which small battles are worth fighting with our kids, and which things we should just let go.
Therapy

When it comes down to it, controlling our own emotions is key in helping our kids deal with theirs. When parents can’t get a handle on anger and disappointment, therapy may be advisable to get back on track.

Children may also need the help of a therapist to help sort through the myriad of emotions they are likely to experience after divorce. By watching children for signs of stress or depression and talking to their teachers, we can differentiate between typical post-divorce sadness and real changes in behavior. If kids withdraw from others, change eating habits, lose interest in hobbies, have extreme anger, experience sleep issues, start using drugs or alcohol, or begin to struggle in school, it’s probably time to see a therapist.

During and after a divorce, there is simply no way to make the coping process painless. All that we can do for our children is soften the blow. Being attentive, understanding and honest, and allowing our kids to feel what they are feeling openly and without judgment, provides a sense of security and helps minimize the scars they will carry with them through the rest of their lives.

Copyright 2012 Nick Singelis

We live three times as long these days as we did a few hundred years ago, so let’s get one thing straight right up front: you’ve got a lot more space to fail and to succeed again than you think you do. Flunking out of school, losing a great job, getting divorced, putting on a lot of weight, none of these are really an ending anymore given how long (and ever expanding) the average lifespan is in the 21st Century, so really, you’re wasting it if you never make a comeback. If you never take a shot at something that you might not be good at, if you never make a go at that marriage that might or might not work out, if you never take that job that you’re not 100% sure on or attend the college course that you’re merely curious about, then what are you doing with your life?

Making a comeback is about taking risks, acknowledging that failure is a possibility, and doing it anyways because so is success. If you’re ready to overcome fear, bad habits and self-doubt and take another shot, making a comeback in any area of your life is always very real possibility.

1. Facing What Went Wrong

A good first step to dealing with any personal failure, disappointment or tragedy is to simply put it down in writing. You’ll be surprised at just how effective this is in getting right to the root of the problem, of your feelings of doubt, and laying out what it is, exactly, that needs to be dealt with before you can move on. Write down what went wrong and you can start to work on confronting it.

What You Write

Before taking another step, the fact is that what you actually write down might not be the root of the actual problem. Flunking out of college might be what you write down, but did you flunk out of college because you didn’t try hard enough, or were you studying subjects that just plain didn’t interest you? A divorce may be the problem that you write down, but is the problem that you failed as a wife or husband, or did you and your spouse just not really belong together?

It’s important to determine where the problem lies. What you’ve probably written down is not so much the problem itself but the end result of letting a problem build for far too long. When a septic tank overflows, the problem isn’t usually that the septic tank overflowed, but that the homeowner was waiting too long to have it pumped, or that they should have gotten on a sewer system from the start.

The problem is rarely the same thing as the turning point, the conclusion to a situation that wasn’t working. The problem isn’t usually the breakup or being fired or dropping out, the problem is usually what led you to that point. That’s what you need to confront.

2. Determining and Dealing With the Root Problem

You can usually trace what went wrong back to the root problem itself, but it’s not always easy. The idea is not to determine what ended that chapter of your life, but to determine what made you unhappy, listless, lazy, what distracted you from your goal, what forced you to change your plans, what was going wrong in your life before what went wrong went wrong.

Say you dropped out of college. Maybe you loved the subject, the studying, the learning process, but you hated the environment. Maybe you loved the environment as well as the subject matter, but you just couldn’t find the free time to study as seriously as you needed to.

Asking the Tough Questions

A warning: as you explore this part of your life, you might not always like the answers you come up with, so you need to be ready to think critically, to analyze those answers from a logical, rational perspective, not from an emotional or biased perspective. It’s very easy to ask yourself the kind of question that leads to the answer you want to hear.

Maybe you want to blame your weight gain on your family. Maybe you want to blame getting fired on simple bad luck. Even if you can pin it on someone else, on a natural disaster, on random circumstance, there is often a precautionary measure that you could have taken or a relationship you could have ended or social boundaries you could have set, and if there isn’t, if you were simply dealt a bad hand, then the problem is already solved, because there’s no excuse not to try again.

Reorganizing Your Goals

It’s scary to reorganize your goals. It’s a type of comeback that involves simply starting over from scratch. Maybe you studied guitar for four years to become a studio musician only to find that there are way too many guitarists in your city already. That four year learning process is a big time investment if you’re going to pick up an instrument where you won’t have so much competition from other professional musicians, it’s daunting.

Fortunately, knowing that you’ve already failed once, and learned from it, can help to bolster your confidence. Remember that the most important thing is to try again. Don’t rush headlong into a new goal without covering your bases, thinking it through and making sure it’s what you want to do, but once you’ve decided, don’t let fear make you hesitant: you can’t win if you don’t play.

3. Making a Plan

We should start this chapter off with a bit of a warning: some people get caught up in the planning stage. The planning stage is where you can keep fiddling with your ideas and plans indefinitely and never actually take action. Don’t confuse planning for doing. You may find greater success in your comeback if you plan for it, if you think things through, do a little research and personal soul searching and go from there, but don’t get caught up in trying to perfect the plan.
Here’s how you keep from getting trapped in the perpetual planning loop: set a timeline to take action, and don’t miss it. This will push you to get your ideas together by then, to organize a plan of attack, and to just go ahead and do it.

Where to Start

Once you’ve determined where you want to go, what you want to do, a good plan always starts with the same question: “What can I do about it?”
If the answer is “nothing” then you don’t need a plan, you need a new goal. Most of us will probably never be astronauts. Most of us will probably never run in the Olympics unless we started training as children. Plans are for achievable, realistic goals.

That said, you can probably shoot a little higher than you think, just so long as you can formulate a sensible, realistic plan for getting there. Maybe you can’t be an astronaut, but who says you can’t get a pilot’s license and buy an airplane of your own for around the same price as a new car? Maybe you can’t run in the Olympics, but who says you can’t find a sport that you can excel at? Who says you can’t put in the time and effort to improve your physique? Once you have a real goal, the only question left is how to get there.

Organizing Your Plan

Every life goal seems daunting until you break it up into smaller tasks. Getting your theological degree in Christian Existentialism seems impossible until you chop it up into an itemized plan that looks roughly like this:

Look into theological scholarship options
Study at community college
Write essays on favorite theological subjects and try to get them published, failing that, self-publish online
Apply to universities

If you focus on one of these at a time, breaking each one down into smaller sections, such as…

Write essays on favorite theological subjects

Read through the works of Kierkegaard
Read essays on Kierkegaard
Write my own take on the material
Submit to theological journals

…then it becomes quite easy to accomplish a step at a time.
The same goes for getting into shape. You start with a plan to research how to get the body you want, and then you make that routine a part of your daily life.

The smaller you can make each step of your plan, the better. When a director makes a movie, they don’t film it all at once, they film it one shot at a time. Some of them don’t even cover a few dozen shots a day for the thousands of shots that make up a feature length film.

Don’t think of your goal as a mountain to climb, but as a series of small hills. Get enough of them together and you’ve got Mount Everest, but you don’t march to the top in one day.
Organize a plan based around your resources, around your abilities, your daily schedule, and most importantly, what you’ve learned from past experiences.

4. Goals and Priorities

Setting your goals clearly, and keeping your priorities straight, is an important part of the process of staging a comeback even after you’ve made your plan. A list of priorities is essentially this: what are you willing to sacrifice, and for what?

Take the things that you’re not willing to give up on under any circumstances whatsoever, and put those at the top of the list. Take the less important stuff and put that at the bottom.

For most of us, those top priorities are easy to figure out. Chances are you’re going to put general security and safety somewhere around the top, as it’s very hard to chase a dream from a position of hunger and homelessness. Stability is key to any endeavour, because it’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net.

If you have children, then it’s probably a safe bet that family goes somewhere near the top, as well. Hanging out with friends might be a little lower down the list, but still important.

Determining What Really Matters

This is the real question here: what really matters? Sometimes the answers are scary. If maintaining your current romantic relationship isn’t near the top of the list, then you may need to reassess your place in life. If your career isn’t near the top of the list, then you probably need a new job.

The question comes down to what you’re willing to sacrifice, what you’re willing to compromise or outright give up in the name of living the life that you want to live. Obviously, everything isn’t going to be perfect all of the time, you need to put more energy into some things than you do into others, so it’s very important to make sure that your list of priorities works for you. No two people are going to write the same list, but here’s what one might look like, taking an aspiring novelist as an example:

A Sample List of Priorities

Maintaining steady income
Finishing a novel
Maintaining friendships
Learning to drive
Catching up on favorite authors
Getting in shape
Dating more

As you can see, getting in shape isn’t as big a priority for some as it is for others. This is a partial priority list, feel free to write as many or as few priorities as you like. If you only write one priority, then it’s quite clear what you need to keep in mind as you pursue your goals. If you have hundreds, then you might need to do some careful arranging and adjust your plans accordingly.

Determining your priorities will help you to stay on track as you follow your plan through. If your partner simply cannot understand how important it is to you that you follow your goal of becoming a veterinarian or getting your pilot’s license or whatever it may be, then you need to figure out whether your partner is more important to you than your life and career goals, and if you want to stay in a relationship that holds you back from what you really want to do with your life.

Staying Focused

The most important thing in setting goals, in setting priorities and in writing your plan is staying focused. That’s really the whole point of setting out to stage a comeback in the first place. You need to stay focused on what you want, what you truly desire out of life. It does you no good to pursue a goal half-heartily. There’s simply too much competition from other areas of life, from other demands and concerns, so if you can’t make a serious commitment to what you want, then you need to reconsider what it is that you want.

Settle on a goal that you can stay focused on, because if you can’t, then you need to reconsider what it is that really gets you up in the morning.

5. Talking it Over

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how to overcome defeat, failure and loss and take another shot from a logical perspective, but that’s only one half of the picture. Nobody ever got back up off the mat unless they wanted to, and many times the difference between wanting it and not wanting it is whether or not you have a strong group of people in your life who support you.
And that includes you.

Be Your Own Best Friend

Talking things over with friends and family is great for getting an outsider’s perspective, but it’s hard to find someone who can be as brutally honest with you as you can be with yourself, without either side carrying a grudge.

This is the greatest gift that you can give yourself: self-criticism.

Not a pity party, not “woe is me” wallowing, not beating yourself up or being pessimistic and chalking every one of your failures and disappointments up to what a great big fat loser you are, but looking at mistakes you’ve made and saying “This is how we can avoid that in the future,” looking at bad decisions and saying “We really shouldn’t be doing that,” looking at jobs we hate, relationships we want to escape and situations we need to get out of and saying “It’s time to pull the plug on this.”

Your closest friends probably won’t tell you when your boyfriend or girlfriend is just plain wrong for you. They probably won’t tell you that your job, which earns you a nice $50,000 a year, isn’t making you happy, because they don’t want to be the one who talked you into quitting a comfortable, safe career. They won’t tell you that you need to get a divorce, and it takes a friend far too long to let a friend know that they have a drinking problem, a gambling addiction or some other serious issue to deal with.

The only person who can get away with talking to you like that is you.
Be ruthless, be brutally honest, but don’t be pessimistic. Figure out what mistakes you need to avoid making, what situations in your life, right now, need to be dealt with or abandoned entirely, and don’t accept any wishy washy pseudo-commitments from yourself.

Don’t just be your own best friend, be your own drill sergeant.

An Outsider’s Perspective

Although it’s ultimately up to you to determine what advice is worth taking and what advice is not, there’s something to be said for an outsider’s perspective. Simply put: your friends and family can see things that you cannot. It’s all about perspective. If you look at the back of the Mona Lisa, you don’t see a painting, you see a white canvas, and you don’t know what the heck people are talking about when they tell you that it’s a picture of a beautiful woman.

Listen to the wisest people you know, such as parents, older siblings, friends and co-workers who have been through what you’re going through, and take their advice into account. Acknowledge that neither of you has the complete picture, that while they can offer tremendous insight by looking in from the outside, they don’t know what it looks like from the inside looking out. In other words, take their advice seriously, but take it with a grain of salt, and learn to identify useless advice quickly.

We could fill a whole other book on how to identify useless advice, of course, but it essentially comes down to this: any advice that is provided as some sort of Final Say on the matter, any advice that seems to be saying “This is what you must do,” is probably being presented for the sake of the presenters ego. The best advice is going to be offered to you with humility and respect rather than arrogance.

Forget Blame

Here’s an important thing to keep in mind when determining who to trust, what advice to take, and how to formulate your plan and stick to it: don’t blame anybody for anything.
Maybe you had to quit college because of a bad relationship. That doesn’t mean that it’s your fault or your ex-partner’s fault, it only means that the time wasn’t right, that you were in a situation that didn’t allow you to do what you wanted to do. And now, you’re out of that relationship, and free to pursue your goals.

If you just can’t help but blame someone, anyone for your disappointments, try for a moment and pretend that it was a natural disaster that did this to you. You can be angry over a natural disaster, but you can’t be mad at a hurricane. It’s just plain silly. Blaming a tornado or an earthquake, wanting to see that earthquake pay for the damage it’s done, it just doesn’t work.

Your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, your crummy boss, your lazy college professor, they may not be natural disasters, but harboring anger only holds you back. What you’re concerned with right now is how to get where you want to be from where you are right now. Anger can be a fine motivator if you’re working in a field that addresses social ills, if you’ve decided to campaign against corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, but as a motivator towards your life goals, it’s rarely helpful. If you’re trying to succeed at something only to get revenge on someone who dumped you, say, then you’re trying to succeed for the wrong reasons.

6. Making Resolutions

Resolutions are a part of your plan, but rather than being a series of linear steps, a resolution is about kicking a bad habit or starting a positive one.

Identifying Bad Habits

A bad habit is any routine behavior that holds you back. Easier defined than identified, right? Is checking your email ten times a day a good habit or a bad one? Is quitting smoking a priority right now or is it actually helping you through times of stress? Is sleeping in hurting your chances at success, or does it not really matter?
It’s hard to identify a bad habit, to tell it apart from a good or benign habit, but identifying a habit that’s holding you back is the first step to kicking it. Here’s a simple checklist to help you figure out what qualifies a bad habit:

Something you do compulsively and without joy or purpose
Something that doesn’t benefit you in any practical way
Something that distracts you from what you’d rather be doing
Something that has actively cost you, financially, professionally or personally, more than once
Something that you do on a daily or semi-daily basis

A bad habit could be spending too much time on Facebook, for instance, but then again, if you’re self-employed, building relationships and market share on Facebook might be helpful. Sleeping until noon might have cost you a hot date, but if you get your best work done at night, then it might be a trade that you’re willing to make.

As you can see, there are few universally bad habits. Most people should probably lay off of drugs and alcohol, and smoking does more harm than good in the long run, but by and large, one person’s bad habit may be another person’s good habit. It all depends on what your goals are and how you want to achieve them.

Developing Good Habits and Kicking Bad Ones

Bad habits are easy to maintain because they tend to involve immediate reward. A good habit like working out every morning might take weeks before you see any serious results, but when you drink a beer, you immediately feel good. If you decide to start reading a new book every week, it might take months before your critical thinking skills improve, before you need to call on the knowledge you’ve absorbed, but when you flip on your iPhone and play a round of Angry Birds, you feel great the minute you see those wooden columns topple over.

Developing good habits takes time because very few good habits involve instant gratification. Good habits include saving money, going to bed earlier than you might like to, eating healthier, switching from coffee and soda to water and tea, eating more fiber and going for a walk every single morning.

None of these pay off immediately, they pay off in the long run. You skip the expensive dinner now so that you can put a little money in your savings account later. You limit yourself to a couple hours of playing video games a week so that you have more time to study.
Developing good habits means making a sacrifice, and not everyone is willing to make those sacrifices, and not everyone is willing to do that.

The Replacement Method

What needs to be understood about bad habits is that they’re there for good reason. Your brain needs the rewards that you’re getting from video games to stay interested in something. Your body needs the comfort of fatty fried food to function properly. You need that extra hour of sleep to have energy for the day.

The trick is to give yourself what you need without giving yourself what you don’t need.
An obvious, simple replacement trick is to swap a favorite snack with something healthier. Swapping ice cream for frozen yogurt is a start. The same goes with swapping fried potato chips for a tuna melt or an apple. You get the “kick” of eating a delicious snack without the fat and sugar of less healthy foods, or the guilt, for that matter.

You can take some of your bad habits and literally transform them into good ones. If you have a habit for zoning out on brainless reality TV when you should be studying, find a documentary on your subject and zone out on that, instead. If you can’t put down the Xbox controller for more than a few minutes at a time, map your studying progress on a simulated “leader board” inspired chart.

The trick is to figure out what part of the bad habit is giving you the “kick” you’re chasing when you open another bag of chips or reach for the remote control, and to isolate that and attach it to something positive and helpful. Taking a power nap at lunch instead of sleeping in an hour every morning, replacing video games with a competitive sport, as long as your brain is getting the same jolt of endorphins, it really doesn’t care if it comes from beating someone at Call of Duty or beating them at basketball, eating a chimichanga or eating a lean chicken salad.
Isolate the kick, that endorphin rush that you get, and figure out how to get it in a safe, healthy and productive manner, and you can develop a surprisingly effective series of good habits.

7. Find Your Support Group

Support groups aren’t just for people dealing with chemical addiction. If you’re trying to develop better reading habits, your book club is your support group. If you’re trying to stay in shape, your gym buddies are your support group. If you’re trying to ace your finals, your fellow students might be your support group.

Your support group in this sense may include your friends and family, but it extends to people who are on the same path as you are, fellow karate students going for their black belt, fellow cancer survivors recovering from the biggest fight of their life, fellow teenagers hoping they get into the right college.

Giving and Getting

The best way to endear yourself to any support group, to plant a flag, is to give as well as you get. You’re surrounded by people who have some surprising information for you, people who have been there and can help you navigate the twists and turns of overcoming bad eating habits or recovering from an injury or developing better study habits. They have guidance that they can offer you, and you have guidance that you can offer them.

When we give and get within a small community, we don’t give thinking “What will I get in return?” and we don’t receive thinking “What am I going to owe them?” Rather, people in a support group give as needed and take as offered. Simple as that.

The free exchange of ideas and advice and experience is what ties a support group together. These are your fellow travelers, your navigators and your experienced advisers on the journey that you all share.

Finding your support group is easier for some of us than for others. A health club is a great place to meet people with the same fitness goals as yourself, a library or your school are great places to meet fellow students, and you can’t study the martial arts without spending an hour a day with like minded people. Some of us rely on family members to learn how to cope with a breakup or similar loss, while others turn to web forums and personal ads to find others with similar life goals.
While some will have an easier time than others, there are people like you out there, people who have been dealt the same bad hand, people who are reaching for the same stars. Get online, check out the personal ads in your local paper and on want ad websites and find your tribe.

Taking Your Second Shot

If we’re going to be completely honest regarding what this book is all about, we’ve tried to offer some solid, practical and literal advice, we’ve shown you how to develop a plan of action and how to overcome bad habits, but the truth is that we’re mostly here to talk you into doing what you already want to do.

The hardest part about taking another shot is taking another shot. Putting yourself at risk again, taking the chance, once more, that you might falter.
It’s scary, and nothing that anybody can do or say can change that.

The alternative to trying again, however, is to do nothing, to coast, to become a recluse, to stick to a bad job, a bad relationship, to keep eating unhealthy food and to simply give up.
There’s a slim chance that you will never succeed at what you want to do, or that it might take a lot longer than you’d like, but the alternative to a life spent trying and trying again on the off chance that you might succeed is a life spent not trying at all, and if you ask us, that’s a pretty easy decision to make.

CONCLUSION

A comeback can be harder to make than your initial victory, that first A+ at college, that first great job, because you had never been dealt a substantial disappointment prior to that big win. Now you know what the sting of defeat tastes like and you may be scared to take another shot.

Do it anyway.

If you take nothing else away from this text, let it be this: you may be scared, but you owe it to yourself to do it anyway, no matter what anyone says, no matter what that nagging little voice in the back of your head is telling you, do it anyway.

Copyright 2012 Nick Singelis

We would like hear from you!

What or who are you grateful for this year?

I’ve been sharing the last couple of days from an article by Pastor Larry Stockstill from Ministry Today Magazine concerning Leadership “Dysfunctions” in the church today. In light of the tragedy today of the killing of 20 children and 6 adults we see the total hysteria and dysfunction in a generation of youth, such as this 20 year old kid, who obviously was a part of a “fatherless” generation! This did not just begin, it began 50 years ago when, as the nation became dysfunctional by sliding into a moral decline, such as taking prayer out of schools! The church became dysfunctional by leadership who failed to speak the truth, bring correction, and thus, reproducing an “illegetimate” spirit of rejection and a lack of affirmation in children!! As the church stood by powerless, waiting to go to heaven, instead of equipping a generation to “occupy till He comes!” Now we must break the generational curse by reversing it with the generational blessing of the FATHERS!

ISA. 58:12- And those that be of you shall build the old waste places and raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

Malachi 4:5,6- Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn The hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, LEST I COME AND STRIKE THE EARTH WITH A CURSE.

But, if you owed taxes last year or received a refund that was a great deal larger than expected, it may be a good idea to adjust your withholding. The bottom line is to pay the lowest amount of taxes possible.

As the end of the year looms, there’s still time to talk to a licensed tax specialist about adjusting withholding, as well as other possibilities for easing your tax burden for this coming season.

Read some tips for last-minute tax savings from America’s tax experts, the National Association of Enrolled Agents — a group of licensed tax practitioners who focus solely on taxation year-round.

* If you’re in the top tax bracket of 35 percent, you may want to accelerate income into 2012, if possible. Depending on Congress, the highest tax rate may rise to 39.6 percent in 2013.

* Along with the possibility of higher ordinary income tax rates, there’s the possibility of higher capital gains rates on investment income in 2013. The top capital gains rate for investments held for more than a year is 15 percent for most taxpayers through 2012, and zero capital gains tax for investors in the 10 percent and 15 percent tax brackets. If your crystal ball says capital gains taxes are going up next year, you may want to consider locking in profits on long-term investments before the end of this year.

* Giving to charity can help reduce your tax bill if you are able to itemize deductions. In addition to contributions made by cash, check or credit card, the crisp fall air may provide the energy to clean house looking for items in good condition that can be donated to a qualified charitable organization. Remember to make a list of the items and determine their fair market value. Clip the list to the receipt from the organization and keep it with your tax documents for your records.

* Sometimes, a major life change is thrown your way, and you might not think of it as a tax deduction. If you found yourself looking for a new job, then agency fees, resume expenses, career counseling costs and travel related to the job search may be deductible even if the job search was unsuccessful.

Get more tips and find an enrolled agent at www.naea.org.

Many people today will never reach their full potential or become the person they sense is hidden inside, good people who desire to grow in love beyond their frustrations and weaknesses. They long for purpose, meaning, and fulfillment—to live a life of love—but have difficulty in finding it.

I know how they feel.

Through much adversity and with the help of God, this is what I’ve found. For all my struggle and disappointment, the answers to life’s most difficult situations are usually simple. In fact, God is a God of simplicity.

***

We are often the ones who make life difficult for ourselves. In fact, the answers to life’s most difficult problems are usually simple. Jesus summed up the secret to life in a very uncomplicated, profound statement: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said that doing this fulfills all of God’s requirements of us.

That’s where “The Prayer of Love” comes in. Whether you know how to love or you feel that love has eluded you, this prayer will change your life. This is because love is not meant to be an occasional feeling but a daily experience that continually brings peace and joy.

“The Prayer of Love” is a little-known yet powerful prayer that the Apostle Paul prayed over the church he founded in Philippi in what is now Greece. The Prayer of Love follows the outline of this fifty-nine-word prayer and is broken down into seven parts that form benchmarks for understanding and maturing in love. The Prayer of Love is a small book with a simple prayer and a memorable, easy-to-follow method for developing the capacity to allow peace and love to rule in our lives every day.

“The Prayer of Love” available at most major retail outlets including Hanby.org, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Christian Bookstores throughout the USA and Canada and online at Amazon.com and simonandschuster.com. The book is receiving rave reviews and we think you will benefit from its message as well.

The debilitating effects of depression assault 15 million Americans these days. By 2020, it’s estimated that depression will become the second most common health problem in the world. But depression isn’t the only issue preventing adults from feeling content each day — perhaps it’s a stagnant job, poor health, a loss of faith or countless other factors.

Author, comedian and keynote speaker Ken Davis was a member of the walking dead for years before he realized he was living an unfulfilled life — mentally, physically and spiritually.

“This idea of living fully alive is not some thrill-seeking quest. It doesn’t require leaping from an airplane or riding bicycles at breakneck speeds or jumping a log cabin on skis,” says Davis. “I’ve done all that. What I longed for was to experience that sense of adventure in my everyday life. Shouldn’t we feel some of the excitement that comes from jumping off a fifty-foot cliff when we jump out of bed?”

Ideally, yes. But as adults get caught up in the stressors of daily life — work, commuting, bills — it’s easy to lose sight of the many components that interact to form a meaningful, healthy life.

“The very nature of the words ‘fully alive’ implies completeness,” Davis says. “We are physical, social, mental and spiritual beings. To ignore any aspect of our humanity is to be only partially alive. I’m not interested in partial life any more than I’m interested in partial plates or premature death.”

Davis shared his epiphany and desire to reinvigorate life in his newest book, “Fully Alive: A Journey That Will Change Your Life.” Here’s a snapshot of the advice Davis offers to his readers:

* Kick guilt to the curb, and experience real freedom.

* Be active for an hour a day, and find ways to push your body to its limit several times in that hour.

* Develop spirituality in your life, whether through prayer, meditation, reading, connecting with nature or attending a religious service.

* Focus on positive behaviors and goals, not problems and fears.

Consuming dairy products as part of your daily diet can help keep weight down, according to several studies. Findings in the Journal of Nutrition demonstrated that higher-protein, high-dairy diets shaved off belly fat and increased lean muscle.

“One hundred percent of the weight lost in the higher-protein, high-dairy group was fat. And the participants gained muscle mass, which is a major change in body composition,” says Andrea Josse, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University.

In addition, a Harvard study, which suggests that the food quality is more important than its calorie count, found that eating specific high-quality foods was linked with less weight gain over time. Its data showed that the more daily servings people ate of fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and yogurt, the less weight they gained. In fact, the research found that each extra daily serving of yogurt prevented 0.82 of a pound of weight gain.

The Nutrition and Metabolism journal reported a study in which participants who consumed three or more servings of dairy a day after weight loss were able to eat more calories without gaining weight than those who didn’t consume dairy.

Milk is nutritionally unique in that it is a great source of nine essential nutrients: calcium, potassium, phosphorus, protein, vitamins A, D and B12, riboflavin and niacin. It provides three of the five “nutrients of concern” that children do not get enough of: calcium, magnesium and potassium.

By combining a high intake of nutrient-rich dairy with regular physical activity, it won’t even feel like you’re trying to lose weight.

“However, as with any diet, you must be realistic. Results take time, so first commit to getting through January to establish a real routine,” says Alyssa Greenstein, a registered dietitian with the Dairy Council of Florida.

According to a National Health and Nutrition survey, 86 percent of women and 76 percent of men fail to meet the recommended dairy intake of three servings each day. That means the majority of Americans don’t have satisfactory levels of essential nutrients like potassium, zinc, calcium and folate. These levels plummet when dieters attempt to trim calories by purging dairy.