Unlocking Greatness by Charlie Harary

Author:Charlie Harary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2018-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

RAQUEL’S RESOLUTION

Raquel followed through on her homework. She found some support organizations for divorced women in her area and volunteered to help in any way she could.

After months of corresponding via e-mail, she called me. I hardly recognized her voice. Over the course of just a few months, working with those organizations and support groups and becoming a mentor to other divorced women, Raquel had completely changed.

“You were right,” she said. “I thought because my marriage was gone, I had nothing left to give. But I did. I had a lot to give. A lot. I just needed to give it.”

Her voice was full of hope and promise. She sounded younger. She no longer sounded broken, because she wasn’t. She was whole again.

Raquel was able to create deep relationships with all sorts of people by using her pain as a source of giving. She found new friendships with coworkers at those organizations and created unexpected bonds with women of all ages who’d experienced a similar loss. Through those friendships and the work she did, Raquel regained a sense of connectedness that was much broader than any she had ever known in her marriage, along with a sense of significance she had never known in her life.

Her days were full. Her nights were full, too. She stopped calling friends and family to complain. She found she had some valuable advice to share with others after all—life lessons born of all sorts of struggles throughout her many years of marriage that would help to guide some of the other women to find happiness again and do it a lot quicker than she had.

By doing all of this, Raquel changed her neuroconnections. By shifting her attention from wallowing in grief to giving to others, her brain started to create new neuroconnections that brought her more happiness. Over time, it started to shift her schema, and she approached her day differently. She looked out into the world and saw new methods for giving and connecting and a new hope for the future.

When she allowed herself to be vulnerable to these new women, she found connection through the realness. She didn’t have to be perfect or have it all figured out. She just had to be real. She grew stronger by being more vulnerable, by reaching out to other people who needed her help and sharing her story.

In time, she was able to be there for her children again, too—not as the sad mom who wanted to remind them how their father had hurt her, but as the vibrant and wiser mother who was now standing on her own two feet, with new purpose and direction in life.

“I don’t feel like a burden to my children anymore,” she told me. She laughed after she said those words. “I think they actually want to be around me.”

I kept in touch with Raquel off and on after that. I saw her the next time I was in her part of California and barely recognized her when she walked in the room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.