10 Things That Completely Changed My Life

• Maranda Pleasant

1. Know When It’s Time to Let Go

I pride myself on my perseverance, resilience, and tenacity. I’m going to be the last one standing in that ring when I make up my mind, which is a great way of making your life unnecessarily difficult at times.

I noticed that 80% of my stress in my daily life was coming from one particular part of my life, someone that I worked with remotely. She was so talented, but every day I could feel my body freeze, basically in fear of having to interact with her by email. It just became unmanageable emotionally.

I thought she was absolutely essential to the project I was doing, and this was just the price that I had to pay, to feel miserable every day and dread checking my inbox. 

And then I started this practice of asking what is the absolute worst thing that can happen, when something cannot be remedied or improved. If you stop those relationships or practices, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? And then you decide if the quality of your life and your mental health is more important. And when you say, I’ll figure it out, but I won’t live this way any longer, the world gets lighter and the universe conspires and shifts and you just feel so much more joy and spaciousness.

Pinpoint if 80% of the stress in your life is coming from one particular area or person, and then figure out a pretty quick way to either improve the situation or eliminate it. I know it sounds cliché, but imagine yourself at 85, and say was it worth costing you the joy of so many days, months, and years of your life.

I promise you, every day does not need to be filled with suffering.

2. You Don’t Need to Stay in Contact with Abusers

I always felt so guilty, like I had to take care of a particular family member who had a history of decades of emotional and violent physical abuse. I thought, family is family and I don’t have much, plus they’re getting old and now it’s my responsibility to take care of them.

And then I realized that you have to let people live with the consequences of their choices and the responsibility of their repeated decisions.

There is no glory in being the martyr that saves people from the lives they have chosen through their daily actions. You don’t owe abusive people your time, your resources, or your money. 

This particular family member would always tell me how sorry they were, and that they’ve changed, yet given any opportunity, it would happen again. Sometimes, a scorpion will sting just because of who it is. Some people cause harm wherever they go. 

I had a therapist once who said that she didn’t have any other clients who went through extensive abuse who still felt so compelled to take care of their abuser or who had regular contact. I want you to hear me: If you’re the one who experienced that abuse, you cannot let other family members or people minimize your pain or trauma and guilt you into communication. People who do bad things get older. It doesn’t mean they should get your sympathy just because they can no longer physically harm you.

You’re always going to be the bad guy when you interact with people who would still harm you if they could. They will always make themselves the victim. Your job is to protect yourself, your mental health, your life, and your family.

Toxic people will always poison any environment that they touch, so perhaps your job is to keep them as far away as possible. It is not your job to heal your abuser, take care of your abuser, or stay in contact with your abuser. Let them live with the consequences of their actions. You cannot take that on yourself.

3. Stop Putting Your Kids Before Yourself

You’re not doing them any favors, in the way that they view you or women, thinking that your needs come last. Your children will respect you and admire you if you teach them that your dreams and your passions are just as important as theirs.

Making your kids feel a part of the center, instead of the center, is the best way to ground them and make them feel secure. You’re not their maid or their cook. As soon as they can clean and do their laundry and help make dinner, they should. It builds their self-confidence and self-respect. 

4. Protect Your Creative Space

Create a space, a corner, a room, just for yourself, to work, to escape, whatever it is, and protect it. If you don’t have one, find a space. Maybe your kids can share a room, but you need your own sanctuary. You give so much to the world and need a place in your home that you can read, retreat, put up your paintings or photography, something that is just for you. Keep it tidy and organized and make sure you love it visually. It’s not selfish to take care of the person who is taking care of everyone else. 

5. Movement Makes It Better

We know that moving our body helps with anxiety, helps us sleep better, helps eliminate brain fog, and everything is essentially better when we can wake up and move first thing.

Yet it seems to be the first thing that we cut when life gets a little bit hectic and our schedule starts filling up. We cut the one thing out that can improve every other thing.

Get a mini trampoline/rebounder, or a treadmill, whatever it is, and give yourself 10 minutes in the morning. Dance baby dance. I get on my little trampoline and I go to town with my favorite music, and it changes the way I interact with the world the rest of the day. 

If you don’t have 10 minutes in the morning for yourself, that is a warning sign that you need to reset and rearrange your life. If your children are not infants, they can respect that mom needs 10 minutes for herself in the morning uninterrupted. I promise your boundaries will make your children better people, not neglected ones.

6. Live It Your Way

I am generally left feeling destroyed by criticism, but it hasn’t really ever stopped me from doing what I wanted. I would travel with my daughter with any money we had scraped together any chance we could, even though we didn’t have a lot of possessions. I just didn’t invest my life in material things when my daughter was younger. We would take the summer off and travel to countries where we could live on $600 a month (18 years ago). Everybody had something to say about how irresponsible I was, how I should be investing in stuff.

Now that my daughter is grown, I believe those trips were the most formative parts of her life. A decade of summers, seeing how other children interacted with their families, lived without electronics, lived with so much less, with so much more joy than her counterparts in the U.S. She played with animals in jungles, got to meet people from all over the world, and it formed her in such an incredibly beautiful way.

Many times it would rip me in half, because you want to be this full-time mother and give everything to your child, but you’re not willing to give up everything you want for yourself, so it results in this constant ripping and tearing of your emotions. You can end up feeling guilty, inadequate, or resentful.

I would talk to her when she was young and I told her that I had dreams and I still wanted to make art and travel and there was so much that I wanted for myself. I hoped she had chosen me because she wanted to be on that journey with me and we would have to figure out a way to be fulfilled together. I don’t ever remember talking to my daughter like she was a child. We generally would have conversations as equals.

7. Stop Using Your Kids as an Excuse

You can wake up and change your entire life. You just can’t use your kids as the reason why you’re not. 

Look, if you want to sell everything and move to Europe with your kids, there’s clearly a way that you can do that if the dream is in your heart. You can educate your children outside of a conventional school—there’s always a way out of the life you have into the life you want. There are so many online and international options that they’ll actually get ahead with schooling. 

I look at the people who offer non-stop enthusiastic criticism for me and my choices, and I realize that most of those people just felt absolutely stuck in the choices that they had made for their life. 

Here’s the kicker: Miserable people generally want you to be miserable too. Are you listening to advice from people who feel trapped inside their own lives?

8. Recognize Where You Feel Powerless

I've been wanting to learn a computer design program called InDesign for years. It would always help us if we were on a deadline, or a graphic designer got sick or had an emergency, and it would undoubtedly make my life so much easier.

I’ve built up a wall on how difficult it is to find someone to teach you in person or even find a tutor at all. I tried online, it was a shitshow. I posted on social media groups in my city, I reached out to as many people as I could and I gave up on that dream that would drastically improve my daily life, because I felt hopeless and helpless to get the help that I needed.

Are there any areas of your life where you have given your power away, where you’ve given up on something that would be quite meaningful? Is there anyone or any way that you could find a path forward?

Today let’s say it together: “I’m going to find a way to get this thing that’s really important to me.” Find the thing that you’re always bitching and complaining about, and find a way to turn it into a major positive.

9. Change Can Come Quickly

Let companies know that women over 40 are not bad for their brand. There are particular brands that I love, and my friends all gush and we text each other when they'’re having a sale.

I noticed though, after looking at 100+ photos on their website and social media, no one actually looks older than 24. I don’t know anyone who could actually afford their clothes who are under the age of 24, and I feel confident that most of their consumer base is probably 35+, yet none of their customers are actually represented in their marketing

Check those email newsletters, look at their ads in magazines, their Instagram, and their website. If you’re a 35+ woman, let’s stop supporting brands that only use people who look like teenagers in all of their visual marketing. Let’s think about what that really means, when women over 30 are not represented in advertising or selling of products that you regularly buy.

It means women over 35 are so unattractive that we represent a derogatory impact on their brand, because only young are beautiful and desirable, so we have to continually use teenage-looking models, because older models would be negative for a brand’s image, because no one wants to be that old, correct?

Do you ever stop and think: When did we all just accept that as normal? When did we all accept that most models are 18 to 25, and think that that was an okay practice and keep supporting brands that engage in that insanity.

I encourage you to respond to your email newsletters, post on their social media accounts, let all the brands know that you’re not going to purchase anything else from them until women 40+ are reflected in their marketing and in their models. If we all collectively stopped buying tomorrow and made our voices heard, that spring collection would look a lot different on social media in a matter of months.

We have to be determined, and organized, and absolutely refuse to purchase from brands engaging in this, but you have to let them know how much you actually have shopped, and how much they’re going to be losing. If we do this every single day when we are targeted in media ads, we could make such a monumental and almost immediate impact.

10. You’re in Perfect Timing

My partner and I repeat this mantra every morning, especially when our schedule is changed up: “We’re in perfect timing. We’re always in the right place at the right time for the most protection, safety, love, creativity, connection, and success.” When we’re traveling and we think we miss something or we’re just a bit too late, he always looks at me and says we’re always in perfect timing and it genuinely calms down my nervous system and it adds some kind of warmth reassurance that everything is alright.