HotmailDr Phil: How to prepare for ‘Real Life’
Celebrity reading room |
Read juicy excerpts from these celebrity biographies. |
 |
 Kid chef cooks holiday treats Nov. 27: A 13-year-old cook teaches the TODAY hosts how to whip up a turkey risotto that is perfect for the holidays. |
Here is a breakdown of the seven days I have chosen to discuss. If you find yourself experiencing one of these days you will recognize the painful descriptions. As I have said, these seven days were selected based on my opinions and my observations of their potential for interference with your life and peace of mind, and on the commonality with which I have seen them occur in people’s lives.
The day your heart is shattered
On this day, you lose something of great value and your heart is broken. It’s safe to say that none of us will escape this day, and chances are that at some time in your or your loved one’s life, you have already experienced it. It’s also likely that you’ll go through this day more than once, and each time will be different depending on what it is that you are losing — a loved one lost to death, a marriage, a friendship, your career, or life’s dream — but one common denominator is the sense of grief, mourning, or gripping pain that can bring you to your knees.
The day you realize you have lived your life as a sellout
This is one of the seven most challenging days because it’s the one when you realize that you are living without courage and without integrity. You finally admit that fear has been ruling your life and that almost every choice you have made up to this point has been fear-dominated. You realize that you have sold out on yourself and your dreams because you were afraid you might fail or displease those people whose opinions you value. You cannot look back on your life with a sense of pride because it’s not even your own life you’ve been living — it’s been for someone else, or maybe everyone else ... everyone except you. You have let your “authentic self” down.
The day you realize you are in way over your head
How you cope in this world is what I call your adaptability. On this most challenging day, your ability to meet life’s demands has broken down. Mentally, emotionally, and physically, you feel completely overwhelmed — whether the source of your meltdown was financial or just the realization that you can’t keep living as though you have everything under control because you don’t. This day you are overwhelmed and feel that you are out of options. You feel as if you are drowning in demands and can’t do a thing to keep your head above water.
The day the body breaks down
We hate to think about getting sick, but a health breakdown is one of the inevitable facts of life. The chances that either you or your loved ones are going to encounter a major health crisis at some point are pretty high. Even if you live a healthy and accident-free life, at some point your body will just wear out. Like all of these difficult days, the attitude of approach you take into a situation when you or somebody you love is diagnosed with a life-threatening or health-compromising disease, or experiences an injury or a breakdown, is crucial.
The day the mind breaks down
The day you recognize and acknowledge that you or a loved one’s mental or emotional functioning is in trouble can be a day of pain, shame, fear, and confusion. We as a society are much less enlightened about mental as opposed to physical breakdowns, and as a result the challenges perceived in finding answers can be daunting, to say the least. Looking for answers can sometimes be as scary as the problem you are seeking help for because of the pain and fear of judgment by self and others. Amazingly, mental health is something that’s still not openly discussed very much in this country, yet it’s one of the most important aspects of our existence. It is something that defines all our lives in some form or another. When mental health breaks down, it can take many different forms, but statistically is most likely to be expressed as anxiety, depression, or the less frequent but more severe mental disorders that involve gross impairment of reality testing or, more simply put, an inability to distinguish what is real versus what is fantasy, delusion, or hallucinations.
The day addiction takes over
One look at the headlines, and it’s clear that addiction is sweeping through this country at an alarming rate. It used to be that drug addicts were found mostly in dark alleys or other seedy parts of town. But today you might find them anywhere from the suburban bedroom to the executive boardroom. Hearing about a soccer mom or successful businessperson who’s addicted to drugs isn’t a fluke anymore. Part of this is how much easier they are to obtain — you can get your drug of choice with the click of a computer mouse. And it isn’t limited to drugs alone; alcoholism too is occurring at alarming levels. Whether it’s your own addiction or that of someone you love, it takes over your life and can easily destroy it.
The day you have lost your purpose and have no answer to the question, “Why?”
This is the challenge of finding meaning for your life. It deals not so much with who you are but why you are. This can be a crisis of faith or a feeling of losing your compass or purpose in this life. What’s the point? What’s your purpose? It’s that feeling of being insignificant. Time is finite, and you have a limited amount of time to make an impact. What are you going to do? If you have lost your connection to meaning in your life, you need to examine this area and get plugged in to something that will stabilize you when nothing around you makes any sense. This could be anything from a new foundation in your faith to devoting yourself to a cause you have always wanted to join to just being the best dad, mentor, employee, daughter, or friend that you can be.
When you face your challenges on these seven days or on others that may come into your life, and you watch yourself come through to the other side, you can be exhilarated and empowered by it. You can hold your head up even when everything around you is falling down.
Life is not a success-only journey
The fact is that despite our best-laid plans and deepest desires, real life isn’t always easy. It isn’t a success-only journey for any of us. Going through life can at times feel like going through a wind tunnel. Sometimes life comes at you in a steady breeze; other times it’s like a category five hurricane. The storms of life may not always have happy endings, but they can at least be dealt with and sometimes even put you in a better place on the other side. What’s at least as important is that you will be able to be in a position to lead your family — to be calm in the middle of the storm.
If you live a faith-based or spiritual life, you may say that you will pray to God when a crisis hits and He will save you. That makes perfect sense, but you also have to get busy yourself. I can tell you that as somebody who embraces a faith-based life, I am also very active in using all of my resources to help myself. I figure that’s why God gave them to me. My point is that no matter where your strength comes from, your job is to kick, fight, scratch, and claw for your best position in this world. Whether you think you got them through the DNA chain or as a gift from God, you have resources that are going to be called into play especially on those seven days, and what I want you to do is learn how to mobilize them.
Hold your head up
We are all products of our learning history, and if there were never any challenges, we wouldn’t develop mentally, physically, emotionally, or spiritually. I’ve always said that if you face adversity in life and you don’t learn from it, it’s a penalty. If you learn from it, at least you can consider it tuition. I’m not saying that changing your attitude of approach or having an action plan is going to keep you from having problems or keep you from the challenges that life is going to serve up. It won’t. I’m not saying that it’s going to prevent these seven days of your life. It won’t. You may still hit the same bumps on those seven days, but now you can react differently.
The way you walk through this world is going to be different. It’s sort of like this: Imagine someone who is a black belt in martial arts walking down a dark alley late at night. Then imagine someone who doesn’t have that training going down that same alley. The difference in their experience of that walk is huge.
Ultimately, my goal with this book is to equip you to walk with confidence and power, not based on a false bravado, but based on readiness.
Excerpted from “Real Life: Preparing for the 7 Most Challenging Days of Your Life.” Copyright (c) 2008 by Dr. Phil McGraw. Reprinted with permission from Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
-
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM TODAY BOOKS: MISCELLANEOUS |
 Racing to save Earth’s most endangered species |
| Add Today Books: Miscellaneous headlines to your news reader: |
Sponsored links
Resource guide