When life deals you a shit hand, turn it into motivation. It would have been super easy to fall into a slump, screaming the world owes me, every time something didn’t go my way. I could have played

the victim card, like a poker player plays an ace, but something deep down inside me rallied against the self-pity trap. I would not be a victim. I would not let my circumstance fucken well define me.

I grew up in a small country town in New Zealand called Russell. Russell is the apple’s eye of New Zealand. It’s a gorgeous, small, beach-side country town, steeped in history. In the 1830s, Russell, also known as Kororāreka, was a lawless trading centre where whalers, seafarers, and merchants mixed with adventurers, deserters, and escaped convicts from Australia. It was popular at the time for its roaring trade in prostitution and bootleg alcohol. Frankly, not much had changed by the time I came to live there over a hundred years later, only instead of prostitution the towns folk got drunk and committed adultery for free! I know this because my father was one of them. He arrived in NZ, immigrating from Australia with his small family, a clean-cut young man, with his future and ours in the palm of his hand. My parents were going to make it in the land of the long, white cloud. Progressively over the next thirteen years, my father turned into an adulterous alcoholic.

I have clear memories of the nights when Mum would get out her little black book and start calling around to locate his sorry arse.

‘It’s Pat, is Bill there?’ She’d call around the pubs and friends and eventually she’d hit the jackpot and find him, then ask that they send him home. He’d arrive home, walking haphazardly through the front door, making a beeline to the couch.

Russell was governed by one police officer, who often indulged with the locals. I guess if you can’t beat them, join them. No one was ever arrested in Russell, and certainly not for drink-driving or drunk and disorderly. It was a rite of passage to drive home plastered, so what hope did anyone ever have of redemption?

Parents think they can hide the ugly truth, but the reality is far more transparent. When your father arrives home drunk as a skunk every night of the week, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together: Dad’s a pisshead. Often relatives were called to attend our house because Mum couldn’t physically get him into bed. My childhood memories are characterised by the guttural cries of my father, with a belly full of rum begging to ‘get off the train’, as my uncle tried to coerce him into bed. I’d later translate the drunken statements to mean he wanted to die. It’s heart-wrenching to know as a child that your own father doesn’t love you enough to want to stick it out. He was always too hungover to join in for birthdays, Christmas and any of other sentimental holiday dates. As a child, it was impossible to appreciate the internal emotional turmoil he was grappling with. Given his own father didn’t want him, my father was busy slaying his own demons. As an adult and a parent now myself, I can appreciate that expecting him to be a father when he’d never been fathered himself was like asking him to bake a cake with no recipe. As a child, I wasn’t belted or physically hurt in any way but we didn’t have much money since my father pissed it up the wall. Mum did well to make ends meet.

I had just turned fifteen when my parents decided to move back to Australia. They agreed to stagger the move. They had sold their transportation-distribution business but had not yet sold the family home. It was agreed that Mum would stay in New Zealand with my younger brother and wait for the pending house sale to go through. I would move over with my father and older brother, thus ensuring I started year 10 at the beginning of the school year.

Whilst my father and I had never really enjoyed a close relationship, I looked forward to the move. I was certain that now my father was free from the pressures of owning his own business, we’d spend time together. I was happy to sacrifice the strong teenage friendships I’d forged in my first two years at high school. This was my shot to have the ‘ideal’ family lifestyle. However, it wasn’t to be. In the first few weeks of our new living arrangements, I began to notice my father behaving oddly. I was perplexed by his mysterious absences. I couldn’t understand where he would go on the weekends, or why he didn’t come home till quite late over weeknights. He had a day job; it didn’t require overtime or weekend work.

Questions sprang up in my mind. I couldn’t call Mum and ask for her thoughts; the question would most certainly have caused her concern. I have always had a curious mind; after all, curiosity may have killed the cat; satisfaction brought it back.

The day I decided to follow my father was a steaming hot Saturday, a typical day by the standards of Queensland weather. I walked at a safe distance behind him, sweat pouring from my pores. The heat was unrelenting, yet I can still recall the cold, cascading feeling of shock and doom when I witnessed him warmly greet a family friend whom I thought still resided in New Zealand. Focused on his own agenda, he had no idea I’d discovered his second life. He was having an affair.

Upon returning home, I consulted with my older brother, explaining my findings. He gave me an ultimatum, direct from the pages of some bro code: ‘If you tell Mum and they break up, I’ll never speak to you again’. Jesus Christ! I had the motherload of all fucken decisions. The future of the family rested on whether I told Mum what I’d discovered or let sleeping dogs lie.

At the time, Mum and my younger brother were still in New Zealand. The settlement on the house had been finalised and Mum was packing up the family furniture for transportation to Australia. If I had told Mum, she would have stayed in New Zealand, I could have returned, and I would have been reunited with my friends. I’d left New Zealand prepared to turn my back on what my teenage mind deemed the best bloody years of my life.

As a younger teen, I’d spent years on the side-lines, staring in at the cool clique. I had a face and body covered in hideous, angry, bubbling sores of acne. No one makes friends with the chick whose face looks like it’s about to explode. I kid you not, in primary school the principal asked that I stay out of the class photos. At twelve, my face was so obscene he feared it would ruin the shot, and parents wouldn’t buy the clichéd class picture.

With the acne residing, it was like I had been discovered, finally. At fifteen, I’d peaked as friendships blossomed over the year, and I had real friends. I’d solidified key friendship groups. For the first time in my life, I had felt like I belonged to a group. The invites to parties were flowing, much like the alcohol and drugs that characterised these parties. Socially, my life had progressed in leaps and bounds. Whether my life had moved in the right direction wasn’t up for debate. But I’d been willing to sacrifice my friends to live happily ever after with my family.

Only twelve months later, I realised my sacrifice was in vain. I found myself floundering in the conservative, red- neck state of Queensland, Australia, with no friends. I wasn’t accepted, rather I was considered a pariah, an outcast. I didn’t realise my fellow students were still clutching their sacred V cards until it was too late. What I should have done was erase the memories of my past and re-created a more socially acceptable history before I tried to make new friends. I’d naively assumed every fifteen-year-old was sexually active. They weren’t. That mistake earned me the title of ‘slut’. I’d been living a lifestyle well beyond my fifteen years, and now I was miserable, homesick and weighed down with the guilt of withholding information from Mum.

Now I faced the torture of an unfair dilemma. Could I stand the guilt of breaking up the family? Sure it wasn’t me who had actually committed the moral crime, the filthy indiscretion, but let’s face it the messenger always takes the bullet. I decided when Mum returned to Australia the following month, I wouldn’t tell her, rather I’d show her, and thus avoid violating my brother’s wishes on a technicality.

With Mum in tow, I once again trekked the short route to the family friend’s house, where Mum could see my father’s indiscretions for herself. Like me, Mum recognised the family friend immediately. Later we would learn this so-called family friend had hatched a covert plan: she’d moved around the same time my father, brother and I had moved back to Australia. She’d even conveniently relocated three streets away from our flat. Perhaps Dad thought he could have his cake and eat it too. This certainly wasn’t my mother’s plan.

That night she asked him directly, ‘Are you having an affair?’ He didn’t actually answer her; instead his actions spoke volumes. He marched to the bedroom, where he promptly found a suitcase, packed his things and just walked out. Anger radiated off him in waves, as if he was pissed off at having been discovered. After twenty-two years of marriage, my mum’s partner, provider, first love, and father to her three children packed his bags and walked out, as if his parental responsibilities had reached their expiry date. I saw depression first hand the night my father packed his shit and walked out, leaving us alone. Having just moved back to Queensland, Mum had no friends and family to immediately turn to. But worst of all, no money. Mum took the spilt particularly hard. Days passed and she could barely get out of bed.

Over the following two years, my father ricocheted in and out of our lives. His lies would entice Mum to give him another go, like a fucken yo-yo, back and forth, back and forth. He was torn between Mum and his lover. My father was quite creative. His lies ranged from saying he was being committed to a psychiatric ward where doctors were going to perform a lobotomy, to saying the stamp on his passport which proved he’d been back to see his lover in Queensland, was accidently placed there by Australian Border Force Customs Agency. Unbeknownst to us, he’d completed a round trip, Melbourne, New Zealand, stopping off in Queensland after the family had moved to Melbourne, for fun times then finally returning home to Melbourne. It became quite apparent my father could add pathological liar to his badge of honour.

In one of his attempts at reconciliation with my mother, he convinced her to move to Melbourne, where we could be closer to Mum’s side of the family. So we did. I appreciated the fresh start, and I was determined I would not make the same mistakes with school mates as I had in Queensland. The family station wagon was packed with all our worldly belongings, as we began the long, gruelling drive from sunny Queensland to Victoria. My brothers and I sat in the back, stiff as boards, quieter than church mice, none of us daring to say anything in case it upset dearest Dad and he left again. Fear is a horrible emotion when you’re just a child. He lasted a couple of weeks in Melbourne before relocating himself back to Queensland, back to his lover, two weeks short of my sixteenth birthday.

Once again the cycle began. We’d unknowingly returned to the perpetual rally of back and forth like a fucken ping- pong ball on Groundhog Day. He bounced back and forth, between Queensland and Melbourne, each time trying to reconcile with Mum, then like a rubber band he’d ping straight back to his lover. By the time my father did decide to stay, I’d lost all connection with him, all fourth and fifth chances evaporated. To ensure he knew it, I withdrew his title of Dad. I called him by his first name, Bill.

Mum was born in 1945 and was part of the generation of women who didn’t go to work. Her job was to raise the kids, provide a nice clean home, have dinner on the table for my drunken-arse father, whilst turning a blind eye to his blatant debauchery. And she did that remarkably well given their business in New Zealand bordered on bankruptcy several times. Mum didn’t have any qualifications or job experience that she could call upon. Though she did several cleaning jobs, it wasn’t enough. We lived off welfare in a poor, crime-riddled suburb in Melbourne.

Both my older brother and I attended school as well as worked so we could contribute to the family finances. Whilst still in senior school, I worked evenings and weekends. We couldn’t afford a landline phone, so I paid for it. Each month the bill came in the mail and, like a grown-up, I marched to the post office, bill in hand and dutifully paid it, no questions asked. Was I pissed most my wages went towards the upkeep of the family? Hell, yes. What teenager wants to fund the family food bill? I wanted to buy pretty clothes and make-up; I wanted to be a teenager. I was so angry, so pissed-off, that the two adults who had given me life had seamlessly fucked up my life because they couldn’t get their shit together. There I was broke, working like a dog trying to keep all the balls in the air and maintain a passing grade whilst working after school and weekends. I was a fully fledged member of the rat race at sweet sixteen. And all for fucken what? Life was not working out as I expected. Having made friends in Melbourne, I’d discovered just because you weren’t financially rich didn’t mean your family was emotionally poor. You could be rich in love, happiness and peace. It seemed the only barrier was parents. Carrying the burden of my family’s welfare was an incredible stress to bear at such a young age and coupled with the emotional turmoil of my parents’ relationship, it would have been easy to fall into a depression, and become a victim. After all, poor me, I didn’t ask for this bullshit, I didn’t want any part of the swinging pendulum of their parental paradigm. It wasn’t my fault the old man had no idea what a father was meant to be. At the time, it seemed like there was only one adult in the picture here, and that felt like me. Those wonderful carefree years of being a teenager were stolen. I was catapulted into adulthood well before my time.

The Inner Voices

Around this time was the first experience when I can recall hearing the inner voices and tapping into an inner strength to get me through. We all have an internal monologue. Our inner voices will battle in our mind, each trying to defeat the other, desperate to gain control over our body, mind and spirit. I use the plural, because that’s right, there are two voices. Whether you care to admit it or not, the statement itself sounds crazy. Two people inside your head? Isn’t that commonly known as schizophrenia? I hear you! But wait for a moment before you shut me down. Hear me out.

Consider a moment in time when you’ve been faced with a tough emotional decision. One when you’ve struggled to reach a decision because either way your answer challenges your self-esteem, courage, fear and vulnerability. These decisive moments call into question who the hell you are. They call into question the two internal voices inside your head.

Now sixteen, I realised I stood at a fork in the road. Emotions twisted inside me like a tornado aimlessly destroying everything in its wake. I was angry, sad and disappointed. Like a kaleidoscope of colours, I was feeling the range and depth of the colour wheel. I had real life choices to make if I wanted to put a stop to the emotional turmoil that threatened to overtake me. I had to address how I was going to navigate my emotions.

One voice was cajoling and soothing. It beckoned me to just Give in; it will be easier. I had permission to wallow in negativity, play the role of a victim in a blame game where no one would emerge a winner. I could stay mad as hell; it felt fucken good to be pissed, after it wasn’t like I’d asked for any of this shit to rain down on me, like a winter storm. I could forget school, drop out and just work full time or maybe not work at all. After all, why freaken bother … right? Shit just doesn’t work out for people like me, poor, struggling, emotionally spent. Nothing had worked out so far, so what hope could I have for my future?

But this internal voice was challenged by the other side of the discussion, a voice that encouraged persistence. It called upon my determination and courage to keep going even though there were no clear answers on the horizon. Are you really going to give in and let this arsehole win? What the fuck is wrong with you? Fight the good fight, God damn it. It begged me to rise above the fear that threatened to consume me, the fear that maybe this was all there was to life. This was really as good as it got for people like me, the poor kids, from broken homes without as much as a pot to piss in.

It was in a particular internal battle of conversation that I began to clearly see the decision that had to be made. I chose to use what my father did to me and our family, and the opportunity he gave up be a father to love us unconditionally, as motivation. My shit circumstances would not be my excuse. I would not allow him to be the reason I didn’t have a shot at a better life. It didn’t matter that there was no plan in play. The most important step moving forward was attitude. I refused to lose. I would turn this shit show into a gift. I would take this bullshit and turn it around. My resolve hardened. Determined to better my situation, I would channel the deep-seated anger, the frustration, the fear and sadness, the grief and re-direct my energies. I let these emotions become the fuel for my determination. Success would be my revenge on the life I had been given and I’d play the shit hand of cards I’d been dealt like a professional gambler in a game of a lifetime.

My attitude was the key to unlock the power of my mindset. Your mind is an incredibly powerful tool. I’ll say it over and over again, in this book, because it’s with your mind you can make the changes you need to achieve what you want out of this life. Your mind is hungry and with the right fuel, you can begin to believe you will get through. But it is dependent on listening to the right voice. It’s dependant on what choices you make for yourself and your future. I refused to believe that I couldn’t do anything about my situation. I refused to accept this was my deal in life. When you tune into that inner voice and champion yourself, the fear that threatens to rise is forced back down.

I have learnt that when you feel that deep-seated rage and hate for the wrongs actioned against you, it can become your superpower. If you allow it, anger can provide insight into yourself. If you let it, anger will help reveal what it is that you really want to achieve. Anger has a negative reputation, it is generally associated with violence, but this isn’t necessarily the case in all situations. Anger has the power to motivate people to act against the injustices, against the violations, perpetrated against them, and act with an optimistic outlook on taking risks. Through anger you can accomplish change.

The trick is not to get caught up in your own mind and thought processes and succumb to that other voice. If I’d given myself time to reflect and listened to the other voice, I would have questioned and second-guessed myself, especially since I didn’t have a plan that I could readily commit myself to. In fact, I had no fucken idea how I was going to drag my arse out of the cesspool that was my life. But more importantly I knew I would not let this become an opportunity to fail.

We all have these two inner voices. Picture that crazy cartoon with the iconic angel, dressed immaculately in a bright white robe, shining halo glowing over its cherub like features contrasted with the traditional devil, with reddish skin, pointed horns, barbed tail and pitchfork in hand. The characters sit on either shoulder; they personify the internal debate that resonates within all of us when facing a challenging decision. Our internal voices will go to war, battling for supremacy.

Most of us are tormented by our inner voices, which continually scrutinise our behaviour, performance, and self-worth, as they battle for the position of top dog. You have a choice to make and the outcome totally depends on which internal voice you decide to listen to. The voice you ultimately listen to, the one that wins the battle, is a result of several other factors working together, including fear, courage, willpower, determination and, most important of all, how honest you can be with yourself.

For some decisions, one inner voice will easily dominate over another. Our internal voices are particularly prevalent when our reality fails to meet our expectations or when we need to make more significant choices in our life,

e.g. changing jobs, or coming to terms with a death or a relationship breakup. The more significant the decision the greater the battle between which inner voice to listen to, and the decision grows increasingly more difficult.

The Source of Your Inner Voice

So where does this inner voice come from? It’s no coincidence you’ll hear the inner voice more in times of fear, failure or when life fails to meet expectations. The volume of your inner voice is loudest in direct response to these moments. Let’s delve into a little science to explain that voice that seems to miraculously pop into our heads.

The inner voice generally speaks loudest when challenged. When I say challenged, I am referring to the moments that give rise to fear, moments that will cause a fight-or-flight response. From the fear of public speaking to the fear of not fitting in at your new place of work, irrespective of the cause, if the result is a feeling of fear, your body will go into a fight-or-flight response. This causes a physiological reaction in your hormones that begins in the amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for the perception of fear. A bit like a bug’s antenna, when your body senses a perceived threat the amygdala reacts by sending signals to the hypothalamus, which stimulates the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

The ANS consists of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system drives the fight-or-flight response, whilst the parasympathetic nervous system aims to conserve energy to be used later and to regulate bodily functions like digestion, breathing and urination. Its primary function is to modulate visceral organs such as glands. How you react depends on which system dominates the response at the time. When your ANS is stimulated, your body releases adrenaline, and cortisol, the stress hormones. These hormones are released very quickly; they can affect your heart rate, causing it to beat faster, which increases oxygen flow to your major muscles.

 Your pain perception drops and your hearing sharpens. These changes help you react appropriately and rapidly. You’re more likely to hear that nagging inner voice, with its critical chit-chat bullshit, when it perceives a threat. The larger the perceived threat the louder the inner voice. Why? Because upon identifying any perceived threat, the inner voice will move straight into protection mode. If you’ve grown up in a more negative or critical environment, then your inner voice might be more negative. The body’s fight-or-flight response allows us to act quickly, so we can protect ourselves. It’s a survival instinct that our ancient ancestors developed many years ago.

Let’s look at an example. You might be sick and tired of your current role. Maybe the career you thought you wanted has turned out to be nothing like what you’d imagined whilst working your way through school. Yet the idea of quitting to undertake an apprenticeship in a field completely opposite to your current career fills you with pure fear. The perceived threat is the fear you feel about changing professions: what if it doesn’t work? Or it could be the panic of what will your friends and family think, or that you’re throwing away a perfectly good career. The angst could be financial: how will you cope with the substantial drop in salary if you were to move to the preferred profession? Maybe you’ve been conditioned all your life to believe you won’t ever amount to anything and that you should not try something out of your comfort zone. Of course that will be enough to scare the fuck out of you. I could list half a dozen more fears, but you get my point.

Any one of these thoughts is enough to set off your ANS, shut down your motivation and end any thought of trying to find happiness elsewhere in an alternative career. Or doing something different in your life. Your internal inner voice has already made sure you know that failure is most certainly the only outcome. What happens next? Nothing! That’s right nothing, unless you drive down that negative inner voice and overcome the fight-or-flight response that threatens to hold your future hostage. Building mental strength and fortifying your mindset demands that you learn how to overcome your negative inner critic! There is no greater illusion than fear; fear will hold you hostage from the life you really want to live. Resilience demands that you deal with the fear you are feeling. That hard work right there, it can only come from you.

The Resolution to Move On

My resolution to move on didn’t mean I suddenly liked the situation I found myself in, nor did it mean I was condoning my father’s actions. Instead, accepting the situation for what it was became a better option than spiralling down into a vortex of self-pity that would most likely lead to depression. The realisation was this: the world doesn’t owe me a thing. That’s just reality. Suck it up, princes and princesses! No matter how shitty your circumstances are, no one owes you a goddamn thing. No one is coming to save you; you have to do this for yourself. Don’t make excuses.

Yes, you are entitled to feel hurt, you are entitled to feel pain, and your pain is real, but the gravity of your situation, no matter how deep, does not make you entitled to overstay your welcome at your own self-indulgent pity party. You cannot compensate for your struggles through entitlement. You do not deserve special treatment just because you’ve suffered. Everyone suffers at some point in their life and you are no different. What you believe you are entitled to plays a pivotal role in what you expect to happen in your life and therefore the choices you make.

Time to Make Some Choices

So if, like me, you’ve had a shitty time of it, it’s time to make some choices. You can either succumb, and go down the path of self-sabotage and surrender to your fears, or you can redirect those negative emotions and address your fears by climbing on board the chariot of determination, and use that anger and frustration to power you forward. Life was never meant to be easy. Somewhere this message got lost in amongst the designer labels and influencers and between the haves, have-nots and the wanna-haves who ultimately expect to live a life of rainbows, pretty unicorns and air kisses.

We live in a society dripping with expectation. We are bombarded with images, advertising, and daily content that convinces us we should expect a life that is fun and easy, a regular bowl of sweet cherries. And if your life isn’t full of brilliant rays of glistening sunshine, then you’re clearly doing it wrong, or worse yet, something is wrong with you. But the truth is we can’t expect to enjoy life unless we experience the hard times. More often than not, when people feel mistreated, or believe they were dealt a crappy hand, they slip over to the dark side into their internal voice, the welcoming voice of sympathy and self-pity. How often have you heard friends bitch and moan about their lives, leaving you thinking, holy shit what an ungrateful arsehole. I’d kill to have their life. If we’re honest, haven’t we all done it? It’s much easier to walk through life bitching about the tough times, the shit hand of cards you were dealt, than to step up and take responsibility for your life.

We all have a choice. YOU HAVE A CHOICE. You can choose to change or stay stuck in a cycle of misery, continuing to blame your circumstances on everyone and everything. Challenge accepted. The only way you can expect to overcome the misfortunes of your life is by choosing to actually do something about them. Is it as straightforward as that? Dial down the voice that tells you change is not possible, dial back the fears and start to listen to the voice that believes you can do something better with your life, that you deserve better, that you are not a victim. In fact, don’t ever use that word to describe yourself. You are a survivor. Prepare for war!

Battling Your Internal Monologue

If you have decided to make a change in your life, you will pit yourself against that internal voice that incessantly tells you, for someone like you, you shouldn’t expect more from life. You will do battle with the internal dialogue that tells you to resist change, because there is uncertainty ahead, fear of unchartered waters, and you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing. What-ifs will spring up in your mind, like a garden bed of weeds; slay one and another will freaken rise just as fast. You’re worthless. Born into poverty, you’ll stay in poverty. You’re not worthy of a decent relationship; your parents didn’t make it work, why did you think you could? Shit, I could fill a book on the statements we tell ourselves to ensure we don’t risk the biscuit. That’s fear talking!

You can do something about your circumstances; you are not a victim. You do not have to accept this is your hand in life. You deserve much more. The bigger question is what are you actually going to do about it? Change your reality to better met your expectations. You got this.