Discover Yourself, Discover Happiness: Create a Happy Life - a Practical Guide

© 2013 by Eva Stanová. All rights reserved.

Translation by Viridiana Carleo. Edited by Adrian Brown.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/12/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8245-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8246-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8247-0 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Part One

MY VERY OWN STORY

Chapter One—Before The Wedding

How it all began

Dating and, woohoo, wedding!

Chapter Two—After The Wedding

What’s it like living at your parents’ house?

Our first solo living and our new house

Chapter Three—Something Is Happening… But What Is It?

Maturing and realizing things

Attempts to find our path once again

What do you do when it’s not working?

Will separation fix things?

Coming home

Can we still work things out, or is it too late?

What’s next?

Chapter Four—Divorce

Gratitude

How to divide property—before the divorce or after?

What are the skills I lost during our marriage?

How other people dealt with divorce

PART TWO

THE JOURNEY

The beginning of finding myself

Changing my point of view

Chapter One—What Systems And Methods Helped Me On My Journey Of Change?

ARARETAMA, system of vibrational essences

The Artist’s Way

Do you know Faith?

Tale of Craftsmanship

Artetherapy

The Virginia Satir method

Family constellations

What should my life be like?

Chapter Two—New Beginnings

Who am I without the other half?

I love myself even though I am divorced

Exercise

Food heals my soul too

I love being 40!

Chapter Three—Interviews With Therapists

ARARETAMA—an educational system of personal development

The Artist’s way—what positives did it bring other people?

The Virginia Satir method

Artetherapy

PART THREE

DISCOVER YOUR HAPPINESS LIFESTYLE

Chapter One—What Is The Happiness Lifestyle?

Keys to creating the HAPPINESS lifestyle

What other people have written about happiness

Chapter Two—Creating An Image Of A Happy Life

Turning thoughts into reality

Find your own way

I am scared and worried: what should I do?

Is it important to show love?

How does the frankness method work?

Chapter Three—Create Your Own Lifestyle—The Happiness Lifestyle

Activity is value

Keep working until your vision becomes reality

What can divorce do to life’s abundance?

Recounting the past, or which experiences have influenced abundance?

Which steps should you carry out to change your vision to reality?

Me and accomplishment of my vision

Gratitude for…

Miracles that have happened thanks to my DIVORCE

About The Author

I am looking into the distance, seeing images and hearing words.

I can see my life flashing before my eyes as if in a movie.

What started it?

After all it was pretty well buried in my subconscious.

A total triviality.

My necklace fell and the beads scattered everywhere.

Each of us has their own story and with it a lot of memories.

How will I go on?

And then I remembered something from when I was little.

When I was a child I believed that I could live my life according to my own wishes.

Create it myself.

But as I got older, I came to believe other people instead and I stopped having faith and creating life for myself.

It’s time to get started!

Foreword

This book is my personal story, my journey through life. I am writing it despite what I read somewhere that it’s not good to write about oneself. But how can I write about things I haven’t experienced firsthand? The most difficult thing that has happened to me in my life—divorce—also brought about the best things. I discovered my own lifestyle—the HAPPINESS lifestyle.

Maybe all that is needed is a change of viewpoint and an understanding that if two people are not heading in the same direction, it might be time to part ways. Peacefully, lovingly and with nothing but the best wishes for the other person.

I am writing this story for those who are looking for happiness, searching for it themselves, and those trying to deal with their relationships. I am also writing it for myself. I am closing a chapter of my life and I am assessing its worth. I will write about my experiences, wins and losses and maybe through them you will realize what you want and don’t want in your life, and those things that influence us in life. Sometimes it can be some small thing, and sometimes something more serious, that will be reflected in our subconscious. This negative information about ourselves then influences us on our journey through life and will trap us in certain modes of behaviour. My story is about searching for my own path. Despite being divorced I am fully supportive of the family life and that it is an arena of freedom. What do you think gives us freedom?

For me personally it is being able to speak the truth and have open communication. Thanks to these two things I am able to grow, and the same goes for the people that I am communicating with. We give each other an opportunity for change. If we are not communicating openly and are keeping our emotional wounds to ourselves, maybe we are destroying a prospective relationship. Yes, I know, you need two to tango. Where is the best place to start? With yourself. No one will teach you how to live a happy life. We learn from our parents. Without even knowing it they are showing and teaching us models of behaviour, whether they are negative or positive. But as children we’re not able to recognize what these are, and we accept everything that we see, and also what we feel.

In January 2005 I laid hands on Virginia Satir’s book Conjoint Family Therapy. As early as 1970 Virginia Satir was describing how we could live freely within our families. Yes, we could, if we knew how to COMMUNICATE, truthfully and openly, without fear, without anger and without hurt.

My divorce mobilized all the inner power and skills I had that I was unaware of until then. It was a valuable part of my journey of finding myself! This path began sometime during this period. In the two years leading to my divorce I felt as if I was buried alive. Do you know that feeling?

We can all decide whether we want to live again and cherish every minute of life. I decided that I did.

This book is consists of three parts: part one is my very own story; part two talks about ways and methods that have helped me; part three allows space for creation of a happy life.

‘Don’t believe a word I say.’ Let the book just inspire you. Examine and discover your lifestyle—the HAPPINESS lifestyle.

Acknowledgements

Before you enter the story itself I would like to thank the people I met on my journey. Above of all I would like to thank my parents who, despite the fact that they are still not completely over the divorce, are standing 100% behind me.

I also want to thank my ex-husband for being able to part on amicable terms and give each other freedom. I am grateful to him for all the wonderful moments we had together. I know it wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it.

Big thanks go to my friend Veronika, who was always there to hear me out. She heard ‘my song’ over and over again, played out. Thank you, Veronika, for sticking by me through it all and for your optimism.

I would also like to thank Ivka who also went through this with me. The talks we had and her view on things really helped.

I also want to thank all the people I met during this period and to whom I spoke regarding my problem. Everyone provided a little piece of puzzle for the big picture of my life.

And last, but not least, I would like to thank those people that have left my life as a result of my divorce. They just didn’t know what position to take in this situation.

I salute your originality!

Eva Stanová

The events in this book take place in Slovakia.

PART ONE

MY VERY OWN STORY

Up until my own divorce, the word was considered taboo in my family. I am the first divorcee in my Catholic family. As a child I enjoyed going to church and because of this ritual Sundays always had a special feel to them. Sunday morning was spent at church, then cooking lunch, then after lunch came studying and at five p.m. a visit to Grandma Anna’s house—she lived just two blocks away—and in the evening, bedtime. As a child I had those Sunday feelings of unease. God, in the morning I would have to go to school again! Even though I was a good student I never felt like going to school.

My mandatory Catholic upbringing, without the option of exploring and learning different things, took its toll. As early as my fifteenth or sixteenth year I started rebelling. I didn’t feel like going to church at all. I just didn’t see any point to it. The sermons seemed strange to me. My father used to say that it’s a great time to think about what has happened during the week, to think about the good things and bad things that we have done. That way you could prepare decisions for the upcoming week. To tell the truth, I liked thinking about these things better in my room—in my kingdom. At eighteen I stopped going to church. My parents tried to engrave their life philosophy onto me, but I needed to find my own ways of thinking. From the age of eighteen, things like church, religion and such had no place in my life. I had strong dislike towards all those things, with the exception of one—a church wedding. So you can imagine what sort of a storm the divorce created in my family. I didn’t talk to anyone from the family about divorce beforehand. I didn’t consult anyone on what to do, and no one in the family had any idea that I wasn’t happy in the relationship. It had been like this since childhood. Our communication from the early beginnings was crippled by fear. I always decided things on my own first. I told my parents of the decision to divorce in a letter, giving away few details. They nearly had heart attacks and it took them at least two years to get over it.

Many people asked: Why are you getting divorced? You seem like the perfect couple. My husband didn’t beat me, or vice versa, we didn’t argue, we didn’t have children. We got used to the way things were. But for me, this image of perfection was only on the outside. In the beginning I used to try to explain it to people, but they didn’t understand. Later, I would say that I would have to write a book in order for them to understand. That was my first incentive to write. Nothing happened for a long time, until one day all the puzzle pieces fitted and I started writing. I’m not sure if the people that used to ask the reason why will understand. To be honest, I don’t really care about that anymore. Someone else will always understand. The only thing is if that is the person standing by you during the hardest times.

Just a moment ago, I was checking the Internet for topics on divorce. Besides all the basic information I found an article from a certain psychologist. She wrote that divorce is the equivalent of death. After four years and few months post-divorce, I have to admit she is right. Divorce is an emotional death. It will completely test your self-worth: whether you actually like yourself, and believe in yourself. Your friends and loved ones will start to test you. The strongest and most persistent examiner of the rightness of my decision was my mother, and to a lesser degree the rest of the family. Some addressed the topic publicly and asked me straight out. Others would quietly discuss it out of earshot. Some of them, not even four years later, can understand that I am happy because I am living my life. Lucie Bílá (a famous Czech singer) said in an interview: I think the worst thing that can happen to a person is that they don’t feel anything at all.

I believe that my story can help revive a few marriages. I know that I bear a 50 percent responsibility for the divorce. What do I remember about marriage from my childhood? It was my parents’ marriage, which from my point of view, was a marriage without argument and without any visible problem solving. I remember them discussing issues like flowers and children. I don’t know how they dealt with issues pertaining to their relationship. It is only now, in the past two years that I have come to understand that such issues existed. From childhood I carried an impression that my parents’ marriage was problem-free, a fairy tale… married and then they lived happily ever after. But what did they have to do to achieve all that? I am happy that despite everything I managed to find my own path, that I live and feel every single day of my life.

CHAPTER I

Before the Wedding

How it all began

Simply. One beautiful summer morning I was born. I literally fell into this world. Just to be saved by the doctor’s skilful hands. Thank God for those, since the umbilical cord was tied around my neck.

I don’t remember much from my early childhood. I know that I was a happy child and I laughed a lot. Until the age of ten I really enjoyed life. They say I was a girlie girl. I lived in an ideal environment in a house in a rural part of the city. One grandma lived two blocks away and the other one four. Surrounded by people my own age—cousins, friends from kindergarten and from school, I was well liked. But I also remember moments that weren’t so nice. Being chastised by my kindergarten teacher for something I drew. I can’t even remember anymore what it was, but from then on I didn’t want to draw. I became convinced that I couldn’t draw.

I loved spending time in the