Laura Berg - How to Live Your Best Life No Matter the Cards Youre Dealt

Thriving Life

How to Live Your Best Life No Matter the Cards Youre Dealt

Laura Berg

T o my husband, Moe, thank you for always providing me comfort and safety. For understanding and supporting who I am completely and without judgment. Thank you for being my security, the person I can always depend on and trust. You are my rock, my love, and my best friend.

To my daughter, Fireese, I admire your passion and strength more than youll ever know. You are self-aware and resilient and always strive to seek betterment and growth, even when it is difficult. I am in awe of who you are. You are fearless in your ability to tackle challenges, and I cant wait to see all that you will achieve in the future.

To my son, Hartford, you are the kindest, most caring and compassionate soul I know. You teach me how to be a better person through your empathy for others. My wish for you is that you never lose your kind and open heart. You are destined to touch peoples lives in a meaningful way.

To my friend, Holly, Thriving Life would not exist had it not been for you telling me I should write a book. You never made me feel damaged, but the opposite; you made me feel strong and resilient. Thank you for always being a supportive ear.

To Louisa, thank you for always reminding me that my mom would be proud of me. Im grateful that you came into our lives and became a surrogate grandmother to my children and a loving friend to me. I am always and forever grateful for your love and support.

To my brother, Jason, I hope you are at peace.

To my birth parents, thank you for giving me life.

And finally, this book is dedicated to my mom, Lenna. You are not alive to see the finished product, but I know you would be proud. You are and have always been my inspiration to be a better person. No matter what life threw at you, you would put a smile on your face and handle all adversities with grace. You are my hero.

New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.

Lao Tzu

I t took me forty-five years to realize that most people have some sort of shadow following them. I grew up with so many shadows, feeling sorry for myself all the time. We were poor. The years were filled with abuse. My home never felt secure.

As a child of adoption, I always felt that I could have had a different life, a better life. I was envious of everyone I met. How could I be so unlucky? It wasnt until very recently that I realized all those people I envied had carried their own shames and traumas. People hid unpleasant things like poverty, abuse, mental illness, and emotional neglect.

Im not sure how we became so closed as a society. Imagine how great the world would be if sharing, openness, and support were the norm. Instead, we find ourselves in a world where people share happy photos online that paint a false reality. People are programmed to share happiness and the positives in their lives and shy away from sharing hardships and struggles. I am guilty of doing this too. When we ask someone, How are you? the expected answer is, good or fine. If we didnt paint this fake sense of well-being in our public personas, maybe we would all feel more normal with our true realities. I often wonder how my mental health would be today if I knew that I wasnt alone in my suffering. I am incredibly grateful for my life today, but it was a struggle to get herea long, hard, painful struggle.

Ive made it this far and now I want to share my life experienceshow I not only survived them but also found a way to be better in spite of them. Or more appropriately, Im better because of them. Who knows? My experience has taught me Im not alone in the horrible circumstances that life has thrown at me. Weve all had bad things happen to us. Finding hardships isnt difficult; the challenge is overcoming those hardships.

I always thought some people were lucky enough that they lived a life free of bad experiences. And maybe some people are lucky, but those people are four-leaf clovers in a vast field of regular clovers. The people who seem to be living a charmed life are just people who decided life wasnt going to knock them down. They put in the work every day to feel better and overcome lifes adversities. Elsewhere, people who seem to have it all often dont. If they did, then larger-than-life people like Marilyn Monroe and Robin Williams wouldnt have died by suicide.

I remember when Robin Williams died. It shook the world because he was one of those lucky, seemingly untouchable people with money, fame, friends, family, and laughter. He seemed to embody happiness. But Robin Williams fought his own battle with depression and lost. We tend to look at other people and think their lives are easy because they have money, a stable job, a car, two parents at home, or any number of happiness indicators. We see what is lacking in our lives through the lives of others, and we envy that. Meanwhile, they envy someone else for a totally different reason.

If you are unhappy and want your life to change, then you have to put the work in. Change doesnt come because you want it. Change occurs because you make it happen.

Say there is a person named Pat who is a receptionist and unhappy in her job and life. Her unhappiness is largely because she is sitting behind a desk all day, answering phones and filing papers. She continually wishes she could be somewhere else, do something else, and be more fulfilled. One day Pat decides she wants to be a marine biologist. She loves the ocean, loves sea life, and wants desperately to work outside and throw her office job away. So Pat sits down, updates her rsum, and starts searching for her dream career. Every time she finds a posting for anything resembling a marine biologist job, she emails her rsum with an inspiring cover letter showing her passion for wanting to work in the ocean. She waits.

Two years go by, and Pat is still mailing out her rsum. Shes now angry and defeated and still in the job that makes her unhappy. Pat wanted to be a marine biologist, but she had no education or work experience in that field. How on earth did she think she was going to get a job simply because she wanted it? She spent two years doing tasks that would never lead to what she wanted. Pat should have used those two years to go back to school and properly train herself. When a friend asked her why she didnt do that, she said because she thought that would be too hard.

Though she wanted her life to be different, Pat wasnt ready to take the steps necessary in order to make that change. Learn from Pat.

By picking up this book, youve taken the first step to bettering yourself. You want something to change in your life. Whatever it is, now is the time to commit and put in the work to reach the happiness that you want and deserve. Dont be Pat. Dont just pick up a book and read it and hope things will change. Pick up this book, read it, and act on the advice within. Make an effort to implement the things that inspire you. Keep this book close by and return to it whenever you need it. You are the navigator of your life. Dont sit in the back seat and hope things will change. Get behind the wheel and drive!

Throughout this book, I am going to share some of the significant lows Ive experienced in my life and how I overcame them. The most important takeaway is that you must start by loving yourself. This is one of the hardest things for people to do. You can hate your circumstances, your job, where you live, how your family treats you, and so on. But you must stop hating yourself. If you dont love yourself, how can you expect others to love you?