We rail against Wall Street and the government.  Blame is raging.  How could this have happened in our day and age? Well it did happen, it is what it is and now we must accept what is and take the necessary steps to move forward. More important, what lessons and deep wisdom can we extract from our present reality that will help us to grow and evolve as human beings?  What do we need to learn so that we do not allow this to happen again?  What are the gifts of this experience?

Here are some insights that I have personally gathered:

1.    The signs were there all along.  We simply chose not to see them or we chose denial. We may not have been able to imagine just how bad things have become but we certainly saw the warning signs. From insanely inflated real estate prices to an overblown stock market to over-spending on our own parts, the signs were there.
2.    We gave up responsibility for our own lives. I can see how I personally absolved myself of personal responsibility in my own investments by leaving it all to the so-called experts.  Ultimately, we and we alone are responsible for our lives.
3.    We get to choose what is really important in life.  We need to determine what our core values are and live them everyday.  So the kids don’t get as many presents this year.  It is time tor return to the values that hold real meaning in our lives: responsibility, acceptance, giving back, common sense, frugality…you know what I mean!
4.    We need to become more creative.  Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results! The government is going to need to do things very differently now because what they had been doing didn’t work. Same for Wall Street, same for us individually.
5.    Greed is destructive.  Unbridled greed on everyone’s part is an element of what got us here.  Back to the basics of right and wrong.
6.    We went unconscious. What were we thinking?  How could we have not seen what was happening?  We went unconscious.   We need to remain aware at all times of what is going on around us.  Only when we are aware, can we make real choices on how to best handle life.
7.    It is a time to pull together. We are all in this together.  Collective responsibility will be the road to positive change.  Obama talks about change we can believe in…be that change.
8.    Wall Street’s use of leverage brought down the markets…so too did our own personal use of leverage.  We need to return to the theory of the gold standard where a dollar has the backing of a certain amount of gold.  We spend what we have and do not leverage ourselves to the hilt.
9.     We need to learn to accept what is and then move forward.  What is is the mess we find ourselves in. Until we let go of should be’s and could be’s we will not be able to create the changes we so desperately need.
10.     We need an attitude adjustment, a new perspective.  Perhaps if we can look at this as the crisis we needed to make the changes that we have needed for so very long, then we can move forward with a positive and empowering perspective that this is all for the good.
11.    We need to let go of what we cannot control: most everything in the external world. We need to determine what we can control in life: ourselves and how we choose to handle what life throws our way.

Your thoughts?

It’s almost akin to a person losing their mate to death.  The mate wasn’t exactly  the greatest guy on earth, indeed on many fronts he was downright lousy and much of their life together, the wife was miserable.  Nonetheless, her memory becomes highly selective and she talks about much she misses him and all the wonderful things about him.  She fails to remember what their life together was really like.

Guess what?  There are lots of women out there in marriages that are are lonely and unhappy.  They live with someone and that’s about it.  They co-habitat. They have the burden of living nearly separate lives under the same roof.  Add to that the constant stress and tension of their not-so-great marriage and you will find someone who may have resembled you back then.

Think long and hard about how your marriage really was, the truth.  All too often, not only do we have selective recall of the good times, we also come to rationalize our marriage via our personal interpretations.  We forget or we are in denial about how bad things really were.  We minimize the fights, the stress, the pressure, the lack of communication, the loss of self-esteem, the tears and the loneliness. Our fear of the present seems to cause our brain to re-wire itself.

I know that it is hard, I’ve been there and I still go there.  I think in many cases that it is just the being married part that we miss, not our ex.  We miss our Saturday nights with friends, the shared carpooling and chores, the extended families and  the holidays as a family.  But if we are really honest with ourselves, we don’t miss our ex per se.  I know this isn’t true for everyone but it is true for many of us.

It is really important to be totally honest with ourselves and ensure that our memories reveal all the facts.  We need to guard ourselves into deluding ourselves, of remembering something that just wasn’t true.  Life is hard for everyone and life is great for everyone.  Being married does not necessarily spell happiness.  We know that better than anyone.