Now That Hes Gone

looked like, is gone and there's no point in trying to re-create it. Plan B might not compare to your original picture, but that's what you must accept. What's gone is gone. Like Tom Hanks’ character in “Cast Away,” you must let the past go in order to have any hope of creating a Plan B that can be, in her words, “not only good, but great.”
    How good—or great—you make your own Plan B is pretty much up to you.
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Chapter 7 – Plan B: Victor Replaces Victim
    All right, we've discussed how important it is to accept what has happened in the past, knowing your Plan A is gone and you can't change that. We've also talked about embracing the path that life has shown you—and rather than resisting it, beginning to create your Plan B. We've even considered a pretty good argument for being grateful for everything life has thrown your way, no matter how awful it was, no matter how difficult it still is.
    Now we're going to take one step further. I'm going to suggest that you not only accept what has happened to you, but that you actually celebrate it. To “celebrate” something means to note or observe it with rejoicing. In other words, don't just be grateful, be happy for what is. It may seem a little loony to suggest that you be happy about the losses and pain you've suffered, but yes, there is value in that too, as we shall soon see.
Victim vs. Victor
    I'm going to tell you the stories of two of my clients: Anne and Stella. They don't know each other, as they live in different parts of the country. But their contrasting approaches to life have taught me the same lesson as if it were one set of words written in two different languages.

    Anne is an exceedingly unhappy woman, bitter in her attitude and rigid in her outlook. This is almost surprising, because her life has been quite full of things to be happy about. In her younger years, she was married to a successful professional man who provided her an affluent, comfortable lifestyle, a beautiful home and plenty of luxuries. She had three children, who after causing her about the normal amount of grief that kids do, went on to become productive adults who still care about her and keep in touch with her.
    During those younger years, she unfailingly found things to be miserable about, was never satisfied and was rarely even pleased with what her husband and children did. She complained that her marriage was unhappy, her children didn't respect her, she had too much housework and no one appreciated her. Had you known her then, you would have thought life had given her a very raw deal indeed.
    Now 87, she has been a widow for just three years. She lives in a house that is way too big for her needs. She constantly complains the house is too difficult to keep clean, but she won't sell it and move. She doesn't actually “live” her current life, her real life. In fact, she claims her real life ended years ago, when her children left and her husband died. To hear her tell it now, her previous life, when the family all lived at home, was the only happy time for her. She is one of those people who complained about the present, always wanting it to be different so she could be happy in the future. When the future did come, she kept on complaining, saying that she had been happy in the past and could not be happy now.
    Then there's Stella. She has led a full and successful life, balancing her work, the demands of her family and her never-ending desire for personal growth. She too is a widow, and she too has known hardship—more, in fact, than Anne ever did. Yet her looks, her voice and her vitality would make you deny that she could be 85 years old.
    One of the keys to Stella's vitality is that she is part of a group of unusually dynamic women, all about her age. Though these women are in their 80's and 90's, they are extremely active and keep to a social and travel schedule that would gobble up the energy of many people much younger than they. All of them have computers and do online dating. They take tours of the European Continent. They go to theater and opera in New York. They organize shopping trips. They have regular get-togethers in their home city, attending lectures and concerts, then sitting around for hours afterward, talking about the ideas or the music they just experienced.
    Stella herself is unusually open to learning. She reads the classics as well as what's currently causing the buzz on the bestseller list, not to