In today’s episode, Anita shares;
- Moving from a scarcity to an abundance mindset in life challenges and transitions.
- How to be to be the creator of your life, rather than the product of external circumstances
- Focusing mainly on infertility and separation/divorce, and why your mindset is critical to thriving, not merely surviving these challenges, and any other life challenge
Anita discusses today why focusing on the destination instead of staying in your journey may lead you to feel pretty short changed in the future. It’s so important to focus on where you are right now, what you can control right now, and what you cannot. Press play on the podcast player above to listen now, or keep scrolling to read the full transciption!
As the past year has taught us, life is a winding road full of bumps, turns, hills and valleys. It is easy to feel powerless and helpless when it seems that we are at the mercy of external forces and events. However, we are not powerless nor are we helpless. There are ways to be at cause rather than effect in our lives, to be the creators of our destinies, rather than the product of external circumstance. When we navigate our life path this way, we are truly growing and experiencing the beauty of the journey. Growth happens along the journey, the destination is simply a bonus. And optimal mindset is critical to being at cause in your life, and thriving through a life challenge or transition. Be it career change, first time parenthood, divorce, or infertility. Although most of us are familiar with the terms fixed mindset, and growth mindset, it is helpful to think of the concept of mindset as a spectrum with survival mindset at one end, maintaining mindset and managing mindset mid spectrum, and thriving mindset at the other end. The survival and maintaining mindsets can be considered fixed mindsets, and the managing and thriving mindsets can be considered growth mindsets. Someone with a survival mindset is disengaged and unmotivated. They approach life as all or nothing, perfection or failure. There is no room for progress or growth in this outlook. Someone with a maintaining mindset is risk averse and lacks trust. They are protective in their outlook, they remain fully within their comfort zone. Someone with a managing mindset has a cautious outlook, is productive, but fears failure, they are reluctant to step away from the familiar and when they do it is rare. And finally, someone with a thriving mindset is forward thinking, optimistic, unafraid to leap out of their comfort zone, and prepared to fail, because they have the awareness that this too, is growth.
There is some fluidity along this spectrum because people can move along it in either direction through life. For example, someone may fall into the category of having a growth mindset and may view themselves this way, but once they experience an event, such as the end of a marriage, they may exhibit more of a survival mindset. When I work with a coaching client, it is not unusual to see them move forward and back along the spectrum, depending upon what they are experiencing at a particular point in time, and how they have progressed with our work, particularly in the initial stages of the coaching process. The goal obviously is to help my client cultivate the ability to remain in more of a growth mindset, to approach a thriving mindset whatever events life brings their way. Let’s turn to two examples of life transitions that I help my clients navigate. The first is infertility, a journey that I personally experienced. The second life transition is separation and divorce, and this is informed by my professional experience as a family lawyer for nearly 20 years and now a master life coach. I became a mother at age 42. My husband and I were married for 13 years before we had our son. I hadn’t envisioned becoming a parent in my 40s. This wasn’t really part of the plan. When we were first married, I was in my second year of practicing Family Law at a busy firm working long hours and my husband was beginning a lengthy PhD in physiology and neuroscience. We were very busy, and we thought it was prudent to wait. And when we decided the time was right several years later, I wasn’t getting pregnant. We attempted four cycles of in vitro fertilization. We experienced pregnancy loss twice and we also pursued domestic adoption. This was a very painful and stressful emotional four year roller coaster ride.
I began and ended each day with thoughts of “why me?”, “why can’t I be a mother?”, “why can’t I get pregnant?”, “ why isn’t it happening?”, “this is so unfair”. My thought pattern was fueled by scarcity. What I lacked, what I was missing in my life, how incomplete I was as a woman and as a wife. Immediately following the embryo transfer of our final in vitro fertilization cycle, I had excruciating lower back pain that made sitting in walking very difficult. An MRI revealed that I had herniated discs in my lower back, and for the next year and a half, I saw a chiropractor regularly and spent a lot of time lying on the floor of my office. Looking back, I am surprised that I survived it, but in hindsight, what happened was not that surprising. I had spent years being steeped in stress, heartache, and resentment, all the while maintaining a demanding career. Of course, this prolonged state of stress created physical and emotional effects. Until one day, things began to shift. My back troubles were truly a wake up call, it was time to make change.
We were both dog lovers and although having a dog was part of our one day, or more precisely after kids plan, we decided that we had love to share with a dog now, we welcomed a golden retriever puppy into our home. His presence in our family ignited something within us, a wave of gratitude and love that had been muted for a long time. For the first time in years, I began to feel whole, and to be grateful for what I had, rather than being consumed by what I thought was missing. Shortly after getting our puppy, I made the difficult decision to take a six month sabbatical from the practice of law. I started doing things that brought me joy, simple things that I had neglected for too long. And I started to live with presence, without worrying about the future. What I didn’t realize then, but understand now, after my own self development journey and coaching training, is that this was a process of surrender, followed by a beautiful journey of expansion. And by surrender, I do not mean giving up, rather surrendering control, and surrendering the fixation on loss. I had tried to force motherhood, how and when it happened to me, for so long. I was determined to become a parent. But this determination and my actions and efforts to make it happen, were coming from a place of lack, of resentment, of pain, and struggle. I finally let go of the control and let in the love. I surrendered to a plan that was bigger than the plan that I had. And do you know what happened? I became pregnant naturally when we were not even trying and had a baby boy who is now five and a half.
Today I work with my coaching clients experiencing infertility to develop the awareness that they are enough. I help them navigate their journey from a place of abundance. Whether or not they ultimately do become parents, it’s not really the point. It is about embracing the rest of their lives, whether that looks like parenthood or not from a place of expansion. It is about understanding and accepting that having a child a certain way, and according to a specific timeline is not the goal. It is about understanding that having a biological child, conceiving a child through assisted reproduction, adopting, or not having children does not define you or your worth as an individual or a woman. Whenever a woman walks her infertility journey from a thriving or abundance mindset, she breaks through shame, unworthiness and lack, and embraces her full life beyond motherhood.
The end of a marriage or relationship is one of the most difficult events one can experience. When I was a family lawyer, I helped my clients determine their rights and obligations arising from the demise of their relationship or marriage. I was their legal representative and advocate at perhaps the worst time in their lives. However, as I saw on the faces and heard in the words of the women and men that I represented, separation and divorce are more than legal journeys, they are life changes involving deeply emotional, spiritual, financial changes, as well as shifting relationships and parenting challenges. As a coach, I help my clients navigate this difficult path with resilience so that they are excited and empowered to step into the rest of their lives and embrace success in whatever form this takes. I truly believe that mindset is the key to separating well, in other words, separating with clarity, confidence, and calm, with an outcome that you are at peace with, and prepared to move forward with the rest of your life. I know this from both my career as a family lawyer who worked with hundreds of clients over nearly two decades of practice, and my work now as a coach, who helps support and empower my clients to be at their best while navigating all stages of this journey, and preparing themselves for the rest of their lives.
When you go through your separation from a survival mindset, you will be tethered to past events, and the dominant narrative playing in your mind and recited to your divorce professionals will be a historical one of dependence or victimization. Operating through this lens you will be less inclined to consider alternative ways to arrive at consensus. You will likely view every action or step taken by your former partner with suspicion, and you will make decisions and take action from emotion rather than reason. When you navigate your separation from a thriving mindset, you will be forward thinking, be driven by reason, and will be more open to creative ways to achieve resolution, you will have a greater likelihood of not only arriving at a settlement, rather than having a court imposed a decision, you will likely get there without years of legal bills and frustration. While the demise of a relationship or marriage is one of the most difficult life transitions, it can also be a journey of beautiful growth, a catalyst for transformation, and a life changing springboard towards empowerment. Someone navigating a separation should be working with an experienced coach and a family lawyer so that they are cultivating a thriving mindset, and creating and executing a life plan while they are addressing their legal issues; whether they are parenting, financial issues, or both. Beginning the work on your mindset as early as possible, will prepare you for the complexities and frustrations of the family law process, and empower you to move through your journey with intention ready to wholeheartedly embrace your new beginning.
My experience through infertility and becoming a mother at 42 and my work with family law clients, and now coaching those experiencing separation and divorce, have taught me that to truly live is to live the journey, hills, valleys and all. If you are focusing on the destination, that point in the distant future, at the expense of the journey you are on, then you are really short changing yourself. And if you relax that grip on the reins of control and trust in something a little bigger than yourself, you’ll be surprised how ready you will be to accept all that is within reach of your expansive embrace.
Would you like to connect with Anita? You can find her at https://www.anitavolikiscoaching.com
And over on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/anitavolikiscoaching & Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anitavolikiscoaching
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