How to Stop Having the Same Old Problems

This is for everyone who keeps getting stuck in the same old places.

No matter how you try to change the love dramas, the money dilemmas, the life panics … there it all is. Again. Repeating itself in an endless Mobius strip of hell.

Man, this gets old by the time you reach midlife.

For me, the theme is severity. Historically, I had a loud, angry woodpecker in my head, drumming in one ever-present message: You are not enough, Suzanne. No matter how hard you try.

Until recent years, the woodpecker was my master. It helped me manifest harsh relationships, harsh money habits, and the harshest work schedule on the planet.

And why wouldn’t it? The template for my suffering was firmly in place. On some deep subconscious level, I needed that good, old familiar harshness I’d known since childhood.

Yet … what I consciously craved was far different. I longed for someone to reach out and say, ‘Yes, Suzanne, I see you. And you are good and whole and perfect just the way you are.”

Somehow this was not something I could tell myself at the time.

So, what was the deal, God? How many thousands would I have to spend on therapy and workshops before I could finally, finally be healed?

Then a remarkable thing happened. My daughter died, and in an instant all the pretensions in my life were shot to hell. Suddenly I had to sit up and tell the truth.

I had to admit that with all that harshness came addictive behavior around money and love. And I had to do the unthinkable and get help with this. Yes, even me, Suzanne the Invincible.

So I learned that the healing comes not from some wonder drug or the latest process or technique. The greatest healing happens simply by telling the truth about your life.

By finally owning my weaknesses, and being willing to examine my worst fears, my secret resentments, and the things I’d done over many decades that I was truly ashamed of, I was reborn.

And ironically, finally, I learned to give myself a break.

This is the kind of thing you do when you suffer a great loss, for now you see the great joke about life. All those things that held such meaning and importance turn to dust in an instant.

You find yourself telling the truth in a new, clean way that is unencumbered by the past.

Now it takes far less to make me happy than it used to. I can walk down a street in Oakland and find something to smile about. Usually it is just something simple, like a little dog who gurgles instead of barks or the perfect shaft of sunlight hitting a storefront.

My incessant need to be a workaholic also lifted— simply because it grated on me more and more. It was as if my soul was finally having its say, and I was finally listening.

My life is not always pretty, of course. Now I have feelings I no longer numb with glasses of wine or spending splurges. And I find I feel my fear more deeply as well. But this fear is no longer my own.

I talk about it. I pray. I ask for support. And then it lifts, as quietly as it appeared, and I’m left feeling not only better … but truly, deeply free. And so I find myself on the road to receiving.

I talk to my sister, Lisa, on the phone – the one I’ve made the least time for all these years – and we hang out and just get to know each other again. I can hear her big heart pouring through the phone and it fills me with love.

I sit in an Indian restaurant with my friend Jon, feeling lit from within by the perfect conversation about Grace.

I hug my wife and feel the floodgates of joy open up once again. This is the old joy of early childhood, bubbling back up. Before I had something to prove, before I had somewhere to get.

Once again, I feel the simple joy of being alive. And so each day becomes nothing more than a parade of tasks that pass through my life, none being more important than any other, as I remember that no matter what is present in my life, I am not alone.

I love myself in a new and tender way … and so others finally can, as well. And I remember: that no one has to love you any more than you love yourself

No one has to validate you.

Not one has to make you whole.

No one has to finally really and truly see you … so you can finally see yourself.

Because it’s not their job. It’s yours.

Instead, simply look in the mirror. And what you will see staring back at you is just your old self. The one who’s been through so much, who has taken so many disappointments … and the one who has let go of dream after dream.

It’s all okay. Really.

You’ve got this.

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