Counting Your Blessings

It's the surest way to improve your life - take it from one who knows!

When I was in high school and college, I was surly, angry, and pissed off at the world. I had received a raw deal in life, and I wanted the world to know all about it. My mother was mentally ill and emotionally abusive, and she had taken me away from my father when I was in middle school. She forced me to go with her to Florida while my dad, who was my saving grace, stayed behind in New York. My mother did not teach me basic life skills - so much so that, when I went out into the world, I knew very little about how to get along with people. I was completely self-taught, and every time I looked at other kids from happy two-parent families, I cried inside. It just wasn’t fair.

And my life wasn’t getting a whole lot better. My luck with women was rotten, and other guys seemed to have it so much easier than I did. Living with an unpredictable, hostile mother had left me terrified of women - so how was I supposed to have a relationship with one? Worse yet, my mother's habit of getting in my face and screaming her head off had left me with a stutter. I was scared to say what was on my mind, so I quite literally learned to breathe in and hold my breath while I was attempting to speak. Saying what I thought could get me in really big trouble. I eventually ran away from my mother’s house shortly before I turned 17, and I never went back. For a year I slept under bridges, on friends’ couches, and stayed with my grandparents. As soon as the dorms opened at Florida State University in the fall of 1989, I was there. I had to get away from the chaotic home in which I grew up.

But the demons from my mother’s house followed me. Being physically out of that house didn’t mean I was emotionally healed. Far from it. I was scarred and continued to hate myself. I blamed myself for things that weren’t my fault, and every time I screwed up, I ripped into myself far worse than my mother ever had.

So here I was as a young adult, cursed. I had been held back socially and emotionally through no fault of my own. I was afraid of women, I couldn’t speak when I was in a tense situation (and often in situations that weren’t tense at all), and I didn’t know how to interact socially with others. To put it plainly, I was basically screwed.

But here I am today, a 54-year-old full professor at one of the most prestigious public universities in the United States. I have been happily married to the woman of my dreams for almost 26 years, and we have two young adult children who are doing very well in their lives. I look back at my mother, who passed away in 2012, and I feel compassion for someone who was lost and unhappy her whole life. I treasure my relationship with my dad, who remains my biggest fan, and with my stepmother, who has always been full of practical and wonderful wisdom. I am an internationally known academic researcher, and I now have five prospective doctoral students who are applying to work with me next fall.

So how did I get from there to here? From sleeping under bridges at age 16 to living a happy and comfortable life at age 54? From being terrified of women as a young adult to having been with an amazing woman for more than half my life? From hating myself to giving myself grace? From insisting I couldn’t do anything right to receiving daily emails from people around the world? How on earth did that happen?

By learning to count my blessings.

We Are All Blessed - We Just Don’t Know It

The other day, my wife was listening to Pastor Joel Osteen’s podcast. Osteen runs a megachurch in Houston and records a daily podcast where he doles out nuggets of wisdom. The other day Osteen was talking about reframing chores and other tasks that people don’t want to do. “You don’t want to take out the garbage?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, you can thank God that your arms and hands are healthy enough to do it! You don’t want to cut the grass? You can thank the Lord that you’re able to walk behind that lawnmower!”

Holy crap, I thought to myself. He’s right. And his statements served as the inspirations for this post.

I learned to count my blessings in the early 1990s, after I had finished my undergrad degree and was working on my master’s. One day I was with a friend of mine, and we ran into the assistant principal from my high school. She asked what I was up to, so I told her I was pursuing a master’s degree in family and child sciences. Her face recoiled in shock. “You?” she asked incredulously. “I wasn’t sure you would even graduate high school.”

Truthfully, neither was I. But that moment crystallized for me the importance of rebirth, of reinventing oneself, and of not allowing oneself to be held prisoner by the ghosts of one’s past. Mrs. Farrington, the assistant principal, was surprised that the kid who was Least Likely to Succeed was now working on a graduate degree. (I wonder what she would say now if she saw that I was a full professor at the University of Texas!) I instantly became thankful for Dr. Richard (Dick) Dunham, my undergraduate mentor at Florida State - he stuck with me through all my excuse making until I woke up and started reaching my potential. I was thankful to my dad for never losing faith in me even though I probably hadn’t done much to warrant his faith. I was grateful to my grandparents for giving me a place to sleep during my senior year of high school. I was grateful to my friends who had always backed me.

A few years later, I met the most amazing, beautiful, wonderful woman I had ever laid eyes on. I spotted her in the research lab where I worked as a doctoral student, and I could not stop looking at her. It took me a few months to get a date with her, but our first date was on Valentine’s Day 1998. We have been together ever since. Lisa has supported me, built my confidence, and loved me even when I was at my lowest points. She gave me faith that I could rise above even my wildest dreams. And even today, she continues to support and back me.

In terms of my career, the people who have done the most for me have been Dick Dunham - who mentored me from 1991 through 1998 and who first gave me the confidence that I could become a scientist; and José Szapocznik, my faculty mentor who hired me into my first faculty position at the University of Miami, where I worked for more than 20 years. José critiqued my scholarly writing - and sometimes he ripped it to shreds. But he did it because he believed in me and knew I could become a serious scholar. And under his tutelage, I did just that. Most of what I know about academic work, I learned from José. And even though I left the University of Miami almost six years ago, I still keep in touch with José and collaborate with him. He is a wonderful human being, and the fact that he invested so heavily in me was a blessing from heaven.

My friend Charles Martinez, whom I have known for many years, brought me to the University of Texas as part of his role as Dean of the College of Education. Sure, Charles would tell you he did that because my colleagues in my department wanted to hire me and because I brought grant money with me - but I am still eternally grateful to him. This job has been a godsend, and I have Charles to thank for opening that door.

I could go on and on about all the people I’m grateful to, but you get the picture. Oh, and I’m also grateful to my mother for forcing me to develop the resilience and inner strength that has served me so well throughout my life. So many of the people I went to high school with - you know, the ones who came from the perfect families, had all the friends, and dated all the cool girls and guys - well, they are not internationally known full professors at major universities. I’m not saying that to brag, boast, or put anyone down. I’m saying it because I am a phoenix. I rose from the ashes to become someone who is greater than I could have ever dreamed of for myself.

How To Count Your Blessings

So how does one do this? How do you know what to count? What is a blessing, anyway? Do blessings only refer to good things that happened to you? Or do they also refer to people, events, and circumstances that knocked you down, challenged you, and humiliated you? Can you tell what’s a blessing only years after the fact, when you can look back with a clear perspective?

Here are my answers. A blessing is anything that pushes you forward along your life path. But here’s the catch. When I say “forward,” I don’t only mean in the direction you want to go. I mean in the direction that the Flow of Life (or fate, or God, or the Universe) is sending you in. That direction could easily feel like “backwards” to you! In the spring of 1993, I was rejected by every single one of the 13 clinical psychology PhD programs I had applied to. I was crushed. I literally thought my life was over - I’d wanted to be a clinical psychologist since I was 12 years old. But those rejections forced me to pursue a master’s degree in family and child sciences, where I learned about family research. What a discovery that was!! More than 30 years later, I’m still using what I learned during that degree! And guess what? José was a family researcher! Without that master’s degree, I would probably not have attracted his attention when I applied for the position as his faculty-level assistant. You see, life often makes sense - but sometimes not until much later.

In 1995, I dated a young woman who was only somewhat interested in me. She eventually decided she’d rather be with someone else - so she dumped me. I was devastated! I really was crazy about her. But fast forward a few years - when Lisa and I went to our friends’ wedding, with Lisa wearing the engagement ring I’d just given her, that young woman who had dumped me was there. She was apparently upset about having kicked me to the curb, because she shoved Lisa and insisted that she had been with me first. But in the end, I got the woman I was supposed to be with - the one who would support me through all my growth and healing. That other woman could never have done that - she was too self-absorbed. God was looking out for me.

You know what else is sometimes a blessing? Destructive events. My colleagues and I have studied Puerto Ricans who came to the US mainland after Hurricane Maria - the storm that destroyed much of the island - and rebuilt their lives. When we interviewed these people years later, some of them referred to the hurricane as a blessing. Their lives were far better - in their own words - because they had moved to the mainland and had started businesses, made friends, and sometimes even found life partners. Without the hurricane, none of those things would have happened.

Losing my mother was a punch in the stomach. We were out of touch when she died, and there was so much unfinished business that I had to work through on my own. But I’ve grown emotionally and spiritually in ways that would have been impossible without that crushing loss. I’ve become more forgiving, more trusting, more loving, and more peaceful. All the anger I had felt toward her for so many years is gone now. This growth has been painful, but it was necessary. I feel a sense of serenity that had eluded me for my first 40 years on this earth. Again, my mother has been my teacher - often in ways that were painful - but I am grateful nonetheless.

So, in essence, be grateful for anything and everything that pushes you toward where life is sending you. Be grateful for the parent who mistreated you. Be grateful for the partner who cheated on you - they showed you their true colors and led you to move on. Or maybe that partner apologized and rededicated themselves to you. Be grateful for the jobs you didn’t get and the schools you didn’t get into - they weren’t meant for you. At the same time, be grateful for the mentors who invested in you, for the friends who stood by you, and for the family members who always had your back. Be grateful for the disease that forced you to focus on what’s really important in life. Be grateful for the children whom the Universe has entrusted to you - they are precious cargo indeed! Be grateful for the good and the bad. It’s all part of your Life Story - and your story continues to be a work in progress until the moment you leave this earth. Look at your life and smile.

In The Secret, Rhonda Byrne writes that gratitude is the surest way to bring blessings into your life. Thanking the Universe for bringing you what you need - before it arrives - will ensure that you will indeed be blessed. My wife has become an expert at this. She thanks the Universe in advance, and what she’s thankful for usually comes to fruition. Lisa is a woman of deep faith, and her life is a testament to the results. It’s okay to be angry at God for however long you choose to feel that way, but know that you may be pushing blessings away from yourself by staying in that place. When I was an angry, unhappy, brooding young man, blessings didn’t come nearly as often as they do now that I’m happy, grateful, and at peace. Your inner world must change before your outer world can change.

Neale Donald Walsch explains this perfectly in Conversations With God. Walsch says that most of us get the “Be-Do-Have” sequence wrong. We say that, if only we could have that car, or that partner, or that house, then we could do what we’ve always wanted to do, and then we can finally be happy!! But the truth is the other way around. Being happy is a choice! If we make that choice, then we can do what we’ve always wanted to do, and we can have what we really want. My life is living proof of this - when I decided to be at peace and grateful for my life exactly as it was, blessings started raining all over me. And they still are.

Lastly, remember that the greatest blessings are often things we take for granted - our health, our families, our homes, and our jobs. Do you know that, if you live in a house with electrical power and running water, you have three things that so many people don’t have? A home, lights to see at night, and clean water to drink. Many people in other countries do not have those things. Remember that the next time you insist that your life is a mess.

The best way to invite blessings is to insist that you already have what you need! You want what you have - and that is a message to the Universe to keep blessing you. A Message of Gratitude is a signal to the Universe that you are ready to be blessed again, and again, and again.

And with that, I will end this post. It has been a blessing to write it!