Hello!
I have some thoughts as a mother of 4 in my daily life that I am busy. It is not only like I have to go some where but also checking on four of them individually in close range, and I have to help them when they need some help.
When they are babies, I mainly checked if they were dry in diapers or hungry or not. When they grow older, things get more tricky. They may tell me untrue like they are doing ok or manipulate in some situations.
Not only them, but also we have to follow school rules and other rules. Most importantly I am a manager of their well-beings such as what kind of human beings they are becoming in the growth.
We all know that child up bringing is not simple and easy. As a psychologist, I must say that up bringing of the child plays most crucial part of their personality shaping and psychological well being too.
A child gets in trouble at school or in their lives such as having eating disorder or withdrawal from social activity. In my country of Japan, there is “Toko-kyohi” that some children stop going to school in early age.
I must tell you that most of the time, their parents, their marital problems or relationship problems have some influence on the child behaviors anyway.
What I meant was nothing to do with just they are not divorced or have a decent career. It is not mostly based on basic legitimacy of their lives.
The simple and one question serves to know if there is a problem or not in you and your relationships influencing on your child life. That is if you are happy or not. Are you happy?
If you are asked and could say “I am happy!”, I am happy for you. However in my knowledge, the majority would say, “I think I am happy…” or “Maybe…”.
The statement would follow such as “because I have a job and a wife.” or “I am not in trouble and got some money.” or “My kids are healthy.”.
You may say, “I should be happy though I don’t feel the way…”.
I say this again and again though we are the people who decide if we are happy or not on our own. Your marriage, career or children’s health wouldn’t make you happy for sure. Even money doesn’t make you happy.
However strong myth and belief that money, marriage and career would make us happy have been around forever and it doesn’t seem like changing at all.
That belief can make us less insecure or relieved but not happy. That is a reason why we wonder why we are not happy with everything we already had earned.
How do I know the theory? Because I was the one who was always looking for something I didn’t have. Then when I got missing pieces, I wondered why I wasn’t feeling so happy. I asked myself “why?” at each time again and again in the past.
I mentioned that I got four children and two of them (my daughter and son) are adopted who used to be my sister’s ones. They were adopted after my sister passed as teenagers and almost 10 years are passing now since the adoption.
My 10 years old twins are my own so I got four of the children at the almost same time from the situation that I had no kids. This was a huge change for me in my life.
Changes always impact on our lives including our marriage, divorce, child birth or others. Therapists call the changes as life changing events as the terminology.
Child birth, relocation, promotion on career, elderly parent moved in, or whatever of those events are life changing and they would bring us crisis situations or any kinds of problems in the transition.
I shouldn’t say that problems occurs then. Rather than that, I say, the change/transition would irritate or agitate the problems already existed at the first place before the life changing events.
We all have underlined problems and they seem to appeare on the surface when life changing events occur in our lives. The problems become noticeable and could become threats on our marriage or stable life styles.
That is when we find the fact how vulnerable our lives, marital relationships, or any relations in our family members are so our life may corrupts like a sand castle in the sense that people describe sometimes.
Of course every one of us experience the life changing events in our lives. When our life looks stable, still we have something going through in our lives.
It may not look that way at all though we are just barely balancing our lives in our everyday life and we just don’t notice how vulnerable we and our relationships are in our everyday life.
Because we all must tell ourselves that we are ok and at least look for others and in the comparison, we try to feel ok with our lives. In the sense, nobody wants to think that we need a make over of our lives.
For myself, in my last marriage, my partner and I earned Master degrees together and in the last semester of the program, my sister suddenly passed.
My sister was divorced long time ago and her children’s father was already out of the picture there. That still happens family fall apart in divorce like this in Japan.
Then my partner suggested a decision to adopt those children and we made the decision and adopted them.
Those are life changeing events for sure. Followed by our marital separation and divorce. Then I can say that we became an example of unable to overcome the challenge and fall apart.
Life changing events change our lives. Of course.
Some people have a major crisis situation such as depression, addictions and so on at the life changing events in their lives and those must be underlined problems that must be already there before the crisis.
Some drinking people would drink worse and some angry people would become more angry at the life changing events.
With those behaviors and reasons, some people have a hard time to overcome their losses such as divorce, break-up or lay-off. Hopeful self gets long gone so as wild dreams they had at their younger age.
Their life with glory could look different from the past to themselves and also to the others too.
I must say it out loud here.
It is an illusion and a misunderstanding that you lost your own happiness because of your divorce, break-up or lay-off and count them as your own failures.
Because divorce, break-up and lay-off wouldn’t take your happiness away from you. They are nothing to do with your own happiness.
When divorce, break-up and lay-off hit you too hard, you might have had your own issues underlined even before the event would come up on the surface because of the event, I say.
We still can be very happy in difficult circumstances. It is very true. I wrote a book about it and it is going to be published in the US on January 3, 2020. The title is “Rules for Success — How to live happily”.
I became a business owner and a book published author from the situation of 8 year long unemployment. Mean while I was going through my separation and divorce.
I have to say it out loud again here. Of course separation and divorce were life changing events of mine in my life.
However I say that those are two of the best things ever happen to me in my life.
Of course I lost a lot in separation and divorce such as a husband, stable income from the marriage, or even living in maids, two of them who worked for me in Singapore. They are all gone now..
If money, wealth and marriage can make people happy then, I should be feeling unhappy now.
But I am happy now…
And I believe that everyone can think of their life in the way and feel happy. That is why I wrote a book to tell the world about it and also came back to therapeutic field to help people.
I changed my life, no one else did. However hypnotherapy was given to me to change my life just on time too.
Remember divorce, break-up and lay-off wouldn’t make you unhappy unless you decided so. Only thing makes you unhappy is yourself that you decide that you are unhappy, then you are unhappy no matter what you have in your life.
In the other words, you can decide that you are happy in any of the circumstances that you are in. And you wouldn’t decide that you are happy comparing yourself with others or evaluate yourself based on societal average or standards.
To prove the theory, I decided that I am happy even though society told me that I shouldn’t be happy in my circumstances with separation and divorce.
Yes, no one beleives serapation and divorce relating to happiness. A lot of people relate them to unhappiness though.
However my decision was different and I stand for it. I decided that I am happy.
We all should decide what’s the meaning of our lives. It is up to us what kind of life we have for sure because we are the ones to decide.
I am looking forward to meeting you when you need more clarity in your life to find your own happiness!
Have a wonderful day!!
