The Sooner You Laugh the Faster You Heal How to Challenge the Assumptions that Ruin Your Life

Transcription

1 The Sooner You Laugh the Faster You Heal How to Challenge the Assumptions that Ruin Your Life Anne Barab

2 Introduction Laughter makes life richer. Anne Barab Laughter makes life richer. It s also the absolute best way to express and eliminate anxiety. And YOU are your own best target. On the following pages, we ll poke fun at our common yet ridiculous assumptions imbedded in the serious business of relationships, parenting, cancer, work, travel, aging, complaining, speaking, laundry, exercising and Jerry Springer. Take lifelong relationships please. No wait, what I mean is: maintaining a relationship with an unrelated person until you re dead takes more than puppy love, mainly because unexamined assumptions create most of our unhappiness and disappointments. Relationship expectations are constantly reinforced by the fantasy culture of movies, TV, and lengthy chats with girl friends. Some of these assumptions include: My spouse is supposed to make me happy. True Love is easy. If it s not easy, then it s not True Love. We ve lost the magic. I deserve to be happy. If you ve ever said any of these things, or even thought them, then you DESPERATELY NEED to read this book. 2

3 What you think ought to be is frequently irrational and often comical, but there you are with your shorts all twisted up in a knot over an impossible expectation. Fix what you think ought to be and you fix your relationships, your happiness and your success. When things are tough, we respond in one of three ways: 1. Change the situation. 2. Change nothing. 3. Change yourself. This book is not about changing the situation by making others do the changing. Expecting everybody else to do the heavy lifting sounds like this: It s all your fault! I quit! I want a divorce! We re putting you up for adoption! This book is also not about changing nothing and just blunting the pain. That s victimhood and its theme song is Why me? We re all victimhood experts; we just use different pain killers like alcohol, drugs, work, adultery, food, TV, porn, internet, video games the list goes on This book is definitely not for you if: 1. You really enjoy being crabby and unhappy. You may not realize you re toxic, but others around you do. Just ask them. 2. You blame your partner, your boss, your kids, or your circumstances for your unhappiness. 3. You can t laugh at yourself. 3

4 If that description fits you, I beg you to PUT THIS BOOK DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM THE SHELF! You re not going to learn anything because you never do and frankly, I don t want this book added to your ever growing list of stuff to complain about. This book is about changing yourself. It s the unconscious junk in your head that creates your problems. We ll illuminate some of these assumptions, laugh at their absurdity, readjust your mindset and heal what hurts. If you ve suffered through tough times and you re ready to stop the pain, then this book definitely IS for you. I ve been there. I know how it feels. I m happily married to the love of my life, but it hasn t always been that way. We were soooo happy on our wedding day, but then inevitably things started going downhill roughly five minutes after we drove away from the church. The reason was because we went into marriage with wildly differing and equally unrealistic expectations. I thought we would come home from work and over a candlelit dinner we d endlessly share our deepest innermost feelings and every little detail of the day. His deepest emotion was I feel hungry. I expected complete emotional support. He expected live-in maid service and sex. 4

5 In a moment of abject misery, I made a list of my Beloved s pros and cons. There were jillions of nit-picky criticisms on the cons side, and only one pro. He makes me laugh. A mate who can make you laugh is worth keeping. That was 43 years ago. We like to think of our marriage as the happiest 37 years of our lives. The way we ve learned to survive and then really thrive is through laughing mainly at ourselves and our silly assumptions about how things ought to be. We ve discovered this practice works wonders in facing the daunting challenges of keeping a relationship together for centuries, raising kids to become taxpayers, confronting workplace frustrations, thriving with cancer, re-inventing ourselves and our marriage, exploring the world with a sense of wonder, grand parenting with gusto and growing old but not cranky. Yes, broken relationships hurt. Yes, kids disappoint you. Yes, jobs suck. Yes, life hasn t turned out the way you thought it should. If you re ready to laugh about the unconscious assumptions that keep you painfully paralyzed, then keep reading, start laughing at yourself and let the healing begin. Anne Barab May,

6 Fall in Love with the One You Married A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. Mignon McLaughlin Long lasting relationships are the most valuable commodity on earth. They re also quite rare, primarily because they require unrelated people to get along with each other until they re dead. Relationships are generally composed of two different components, mainly a woman who is looking for Prince Charming, a life partner who will ceaselessly adore her, with whom to reproduce perfect little clones of themselves, someone to share laughter and tears, good times and bad while always remaining young and alluring like lovers in movies, a soul mate who can read her mind, surprise her with fabulous gifts and shower her with love and companionship. The other component, the man wants casual conversation leading to sex. In the beginning the complex feelings of attraction make participants feel giddy and light-headed. You can t stand to be apart; you think, dream, eat and sleep in a haze of intense fascination with the other person. You re alternately full of anticipation and desire, then despondent or lost when you re apart. 6

7 Unfortunately, these are also the symptoms of obsessivecompulsive disorder. First Comes Love If you re the female, you spend long hours writing Mr. and Mrs. Sturdy P. Berger, Ms. Elaine Berger, Mrs. Sturdy Berger, Elaine and Sturdy Berger, Sturdy and Elaine Berger. Then you branch out into the whole hyphenated name dilemma: Elaine MacDonald-Berger, Elaine Berger-MacDonald, Mrs. Sturdy MacDonald-Berger, Mr. and Mrs. Sturdy P. MacDonald-Berger, etc. all surrounded with little hearts. You dream about little Sturdy Jr. and his precious baby sister Inez MacDonald-Berger. You imagine a darling starter house with cute curtains, bright sunny rooms and a big back yard full of flowers and a wooden swing set with children running and laughing. Then of course, as Sturdy Sr. becomes more successful, there ll be the Big House, a showy Georgian manor with rolling lawns and limos driving up to deposit beautiful people in diaphanous garments for the spring garden party. Yes, life with Sturdy will surely be the stuff of your dreams. If you re the guy, you re watching sports and vaguely wondering when you ll have sex again. You also dream of tickets to the World Series. Yes, men and women enter relationships with differing expectations. Scientists say the obsessive-compulsive disorder, which many people call love, wears off after about two years. If you ve been living together before the wedding that magic elixir 7

8 called love will disappear and boredom will set in roughly five minutes after the ceremony. But you re stuck, so you plunge ahead with the relationship unless of course you re a Kardashian in which case you file for divorce during the reception. Back in the olden days a girl was supposed to keep herself pure for her wedding night. There were two reasons for this custom: a) It was in accordance with Biblical teachings that apparently a new car is more valuable than a used clunker AND 2) The hope for sex was the only way to get a guy to commit. Frankly, I don t know how any woman today gets a man to the altar, what with the cookie jar being fully explored before the nuptials. Then Comes Marriage Post ceremony the fun really begins because you re in it deep and F-O-R-E-V-E-R, but no pressure. As a newly married couple you can party till dawn, sleep late, travel at will and just generally maintain a carefree and exuberant lifestyle of nonstop good times knowing that somewhere down the road the ball and chain of children and responsibility and soccer are going to destroy your existence. 8