You will be co-parenting with your ex for as long as you have children. Having a vision for life after divorce is a powerful tool to help you live your life on your own terms. Here’s why!
By Carolyn Ellis
You will be co-parents with your ex for as long as you have children. Don’t let yourself be constrained by the current state of your relationship or worries about how you’re going to achieve your vision for your life after divorce.
Vision is a powerful tool for everyone, from single moms and divorced dads to CEOs and everyone in between. Businesses, governments, and other large institutions spend millions of dollars creating their vision and then articulating it to their stakeholders: employees, shareholders, clients, and voters. A vision ensures that all team members are on the same page and work toward that big picture.
Yet how much time do we — as individuals, or as families — spend creating a vision of how we want to live? Isn’t your life worth spending some time and energy on to reflect and create your own vision?
A vision is the end picture you are working toward for yourself and your children. It is a possible future for your family. Your vision is an expression of the intention you set for how you will create your life as a single parent.
Here are some of the benefits of creating a vision for your life, post-divorce:
1. You create instead of react
Rather than reacting, a vision allows you to create your life in a much more conscious way. Instead of operating on autopilot and default mode, you make conscious and deliberate decisions and choices. Every day, you make thousands of choices that, over time, will determine the future you experience. By asking yourself “does this choice take me in the direction of my vision or away from it,” you take charge of your life.
2. Your vision is your compass
Anyone who has hiked in the wilderness knows how valuable and life-saving a compass is. No matter how disoriented or lost you may become, your compasss unfailingly tells you where north is. Your vision for your life after divorce acts like a compass guiding you forward in the face of competing priorities and rocky relationships. If you “start with the end in mind,” you will clearly see what battles you’ll want to fight and which ones you should concede in matters of divorce and co-parenting. Your priorities are aligned with your vision. You focus your time and energy on the issues that move you toward your vision.
3. Visions are tools to build agreement
Articulating a vision to yourself is powerful. Sharing it with your children or with others in your family gives it even more potency. The process of creating a vision is a great way to build agreement with your children. They will also gain a sense of ownership, responsibility, and power as they participate in creating of a family vision. Your vision is also a declaration to the world of what you see for yourself. It’s like creating your personal billboard advertisement to the universe of what you’re willing to receive.
4. A vision improves communication and establishes a sense of teamwork
Creating a vision for life after divorce is a wonderful way to build a strong team spirit in your family. Remember the jigsaw puzzle and all the different pieces? Everyone has a unique piece of the puzzle to bring. When you put them all together, you can see the whole picture. Everyone in the family will have a better understanding of how their role impacts the overall vision.
Excerpted with permission from the award-winning book The 7 Pitfalls of Single Parenting: What to Avoid So Your Children Thrive After Divorce by Carolyn B. Ellis. Carolyn Ellis is the Founder of ThriveAfterDivorce.com and BrillianceMastery.com. She is an award-winning coach, transformational expert and is also the creator of the award-winning The Divorce Resource Kit. Combining her deep intuitive abilities with her Harvard-trained brain, Carolyn specializes in helping individuals navigate change and uncertainty by tapping into their own inner brilliance and emotional resilience. To learn more or to book a session, please visit www.ThriveAfterDivorce.com.
