Ask yourself these questions:

Do you trust yourself?  Do you trust your instincts?  Do you listen to what your mind and your heart are telling you or, do you argue with that little voice in your head?  Or even tell that voice to shut-up?

When I was a young woman I had good instincts and made good decisions.  I think I knew myself well.  But, that changed.

For the past three decades or more I stopped listening to myself.  I stopped listening because I knew that little voice was right about my marriage, my husband, my career moves, about everything.  Throughout my married life, I had to shut down my instincts because listening to them meant breaking up my children’s family (I guess that came from the motherly instinct to hold the family together).  I can sit here and name a hundred times when I had to convince myself about one story while I knew the truth was another.  Consequently, so many of my decisions were poor at best and disastrous on the bottom end.   My personality was different.  Some of the people I spent time with would not be a match today.  I had no self-confidence, although no one who knew me would have believed that.  And, I didn’t like myself for many of the last thirty years, not because I thought I was bad, just not me.  In short, I was not myself because I wasn’t listening to my heart and my mind and following that path.

I need to put a disclaimer here for my children:  every second that I spent with them and on them was my only real joy.  That was real, that was authentic, that was the place where I listened to my instincts.  They were and are my North Star.

Today, I am the happiest that I think I have been in a long time.  Of course, I am disappointed that I am soon to be divorced, but I can only use that as a springboard for the new life I want to lead.  Since the day I knew that my marriage was finally over, I have been listening to the voice in my head and the decisions I have made have all been the right ones.  Everything just fell into place once I got myself back.  My hair even started growing back (yes, I had lost a lot of hair and I didn’t start with much).    I now listen to my heart and my head and they haven’t steered me wrong yet.