Book

The story of my life in terms of how I recovered rather than an autobiography, because emotionally my life was “the worst life emotionally of anyone I’ve ever met, and you didn’t deserve a moment of it.” To quote an old family friend. A beautiful message, that didn’t help 30 years after the damage was well and truly done, and not something I wanted to write about.

What I wanted to do was help people believe in themselves again, and live the life of their dreams. As such I wanted to provide ideas, suggestions, and different ways of looking at, and approaching life, to get people started on a strong, positive path.

The Rebuilding of You

I went to see a counsellor after my first marriage broke up. My ex husband was a psychopath (counsellor’s words, I didn’t know), and two friends I’d known for years told me that he wouldn’t let me get away with leaving him, I would have to be punished. When I described him to the counsellor, and without knowing what my friends said, he told my he was a psychopath who would separate me from my family, and when he’d done that, he would destroy my family from within and then leave. Which is exactly what happened.

So I landed up alone living with a man I barely knew – although we’re still together 31 years later, with no family and virtually all my friends turned against me. I’d always had anxiety, but as you may imagine it was running rampant. I’d done years of building my strength under difficult circumstances, taken a huge step with the divorce as I was facing being homeless and my family had made it clear they wouldn’t take me in, and was looking forward to a wonderful future. Then my life was torn apart. My mind nearly came apart with it.

You can imagine the pressure it put on us, he’d met a woman with her head finally together, who was now unravelling before his eyes. I’d met someone I wanted to spend a lot of time with in a relationship, but had never worked with a senior businessman before and had no idea of the pressures he was under. So a lot of time became the odd hour in the evenings, and bits of weekends.

There is nothing worse than being alone with your own mind when it’s running around like a rat in a trap trying to work out what the heck happened.

The interesting thing was that although I obviously wanted to kick the anxiety into touch, distance from my family made me realise what we were like as a family, and that was not something I even want to think about now. There were arguments and fallings out in my grandparent’s generation, my parents generation, and now it was filtering down to mine and I was the victim.

As I sat in the counsellors chair he asked me a question, “what do you need to change?”, and I replied “myself, I don’t like me.” He told me I couldn’t say that and I replied that I wouldn’t like myself if I met me and that didn’t bother me, because I could change that.

The take away from this is that if you face yourself and don’t like yourself and the way you are, there is no shame in that, we are all raised by others, and affected by life, but the day you choose to define yourself your way, is the day you win.

This book was intended to offer you a wide range of ideas that you can use to build yourself, I likened it to being reborn and bringing myself up.

I am a spiritual worker, and I’ve also had a lot of direct spiritual teaching from two guides who regularly blow my mind and those of my clients. The teaching isn’t woo-woo, weird, or scary. Here’s an Amos favourite to prove that point:

If it’s going to make you happy, do it. If not, don’t do it. If you’re not sure, try it, but if the result is unhappiness take action as fast as you can.

A client argued that it wasn’t that simple, but it is actually that simple. We spend too much time scared to give up, feeling that if we just put in some more effort everything would be okay, and even when it’s not okay we don’t want to be a quitter.

I still work with Amos and now have other Spiritual support as well, and together we simplify life to the point that people can deal with it. A case in point:

Too Many Problems but Only Three Colours

A client came to me in such a state that she was in tears from the moment she arrived. She felt that she’d gone so wrong, that her life was such a mess, there was no way out. It was all too much. I’d been inspired to bring a drawing pad and coloured pens into the room before she arrived.

I got her calmed down, then said take that pad, use any colours you’re drawn to, and mind-map your problems for me while I make you a hot drink. You may call a mind-map a spider diagram. In the centre you write ‘problems’ and draw a bubble around it, then from there you identify the specific problems (e.g. love, money, work) and draw bubbles around them, and the last level is to drill down and identify the components of each problem.

When I came back the page was covered with writing and she was in tears again, “see it’s a complete mess”. I looked at the page and said “No, you only have three problems”. I knew that as she’d only used three colours and the words written in each colour all related. So in 10 minutes we had absolute clarity on the problems and a clear way forward. At her third session she said “If you’d told me I’d be sitting in this chair at this session telling you that every single problem was solved I would never have believed you.” It was a magic moment.

Remember though: She did the work and the credit goes to her.

You can have all the help you need, but if you don’t turn that help into action, nothing will change. She acted.

Instead of Tinkering…

…on the edges of change, the book is intended to help you change in the only way that really works:

Becoming a new person who doesn’t have those problems.

• If you think as you’ve always thought
• You will do as you’ve always done
• And you will get what you’ve always got

When the saying “If you do as you’ve always done you will get what you’ve always got” was coined, they forgot that it’s your thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that drive all that doing and getting.

Change your mind – change you – change your life!

To your happiness

Deb xx