How I overcame my biggest obstacle: Myself!

If I was being totally honest, I would admit that the biggest obstacle that I’ve ever had to overcome was myself.

In my early 20s I had it all. My family was finally healing after a nasty divorce, I was going into my third year of college and I was surrounded by great friends. I was happy!

Then I slowly began to lose my spark. That once young and competitive young girl was fading away and I didn’t know why.

Within a few months I was diagnosed with major clinical depression and checked myself into a hospital. After a month of medication mix-ups, group sessions, individual counselling, and bad food I was released back into society with a prescription and a shrink, which wasn’t enough for me to confidently take the world head-on again!

After almost two years off, I returned to school and graduated but I still felt that something was off. The fight in me was numbed and I struggled with persistent negative thoughts. After graduation, I bounced through a variety of part-time, dead-end jobs before heading back into Toronto to work in film and television production.

I ended a six year relationship, packed up what little I had and moved into a disgusting, mouse infested apartment. My boss at the time didn’t make my life any easier and was an absolute nightmare; scattered, verbally abusive, and even withheld pay cheques! A friend finally took pity on me and got me a job working on a Disney film and from there I bounced from production to production for two years or so.

Honestly, there was a lot that I loved about those jobs! The cars, endless supply of coffee (yes!), posh dinners, meeting celebrities, and learning how movies and tv shows were really made. But still I was struggling on the inside.

When I met my husband I decided to leave the film industry behind for a fresh start. Unlike the endings of the Disney films I worked on, my story didn’t have the fairytale ending here. Even before I married this Prince Charming, I had made it abundantly clear that I didn’t want children and was adamant that we could never work together in the same business.

God laughed! We now have three children (whom I adore to pieces), and have owned, worked, and sold a business together. During these years, I had been taking a program to help me overcome hurts, habits, and hang-ups and it was starting to help! But, something was still stopping me from being the real Cori. I was making progress but still didn’t feel like myself yet.

My unexpected aha moment came in early 2016. I was listening to a teaching about the power of positive thinking, and even though it was a message I had heard before, for some unknown reason, that day I was more receptive to hearing it and something changed inside me. Something got through to me!

In that moment, it was like I was standing beside myself, recognizing that I was letting my thoughts run amok like my kids hopped up on 15 pounds of birthday cake! I had heard over and over, “take each thought captive.” But I wasn’t doing it! I’d have a negative thought pop up and I’d dwell on that sucker until it became an end-of-the-world scenario. I’d feel frustrated, dissatisfied, and sometimes enraged. It nearly ended my marriage. THREE TIMES!

Right then, I vowed to put a stop to it. Over time, I worked to replace the negative thoughts with positive and true ones. For example, if my husband came home after I’d had a long crazy day and made an off-hand comment about the kids’ rooms being a mess, the old Cori might have been thrown into a “mood” thinking that “he doesn’t care that you’ve had a rough day!” The Cori today chose to ignore it and focus on the fact that he too had probably had a hard day, working to support his family.

In my journey I faced many obstacles and, in retrospect, most of the obstacles were not other people or things. I was the obstacle preventing me from living a happy, fulfilled life.

What did this journey of overcoming obstacles teach me? I learned that every one of us has the ability to control our thoughts, it takes practice and perseverance but it’s worth it.

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