The Road of Life

Stella Dove
Mar 4, 2024
6 min read

Updated: Oct 16

Stella Dove sits in a car wearing a soft grey coat, smiling gently at the camera. The image links to the blog The Road of Life — a reflection on how life’s difficult stretches can become moments of emotional growth, resilience, and self-compassion. — Stella Dove sits in a car wearing a soft grey coat, long silver hair, smiling gently at the camera. The image links to the blog *The Road of Life* — a reflection on how life’s difficult stretches can become moments of emotional growth, resilience, and self-compassion.

The Road of Life can get a bit bumpy from time to time can't it?

The road of life isn’t paved in straight lines.

It twists. It crumbles. It asks things of you that you didn’t feel ready to give.

And sometimes, it just... stops.

A dead end.

A cliff edge.

A full-blown breakdown.

When we find ourselves at these moments — the ones no one warns us about — we often panic.

We grip tighter.

We ruminate.

We tell ourselves we’ve failed, we’ve fallen behind, we’re lost.

But what if we’re not lost?

What if the road is simply changing shape beneath us?

What if it was never about moving faster, but feeling more deeply?

In the wake of collapse — of heartbreak, burnout, grief — we are invited to walk differently.

Not with urgency.

Not with shame.

But with curiosity, and compassion, and a steadying hand over the heart that whispers:“You’re still here. And that’s enough.”

Because life will throw the kind of curveballs that leave your nervous system on high alert.

Your breath shallow.

Your chest tight.

Your mind cycling old, inherited thoughts about what it means to struggle.

And in those moments, the greatest power you have is the power to choose how you respond.Not react — but respond.

To take a step back.To notice what hurts, without judging the hurt.To shift the inner narrative from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What is this showing me?”

This is the medicine of Emotional Recalibration.It’s not about pretending life is easy or bypassing the hard bits with platitudes.

It’s about turning toward yourself — especially when it’s messy.

The blog isn’t a roadmap.

It’s not a 5-step plan or a productivity hack.It’s a reflection — a companion for those rocky moments when you forget your own resilience.

It’s for the part of you that wonders if things will ever feel good again.And it’s for the part of you that knows they can… if only you can remember how to listen.

✨ If you’ve been feeling off-track, off-centre, or just done with trying to hold it all together — this is for you.

It's easy to feel that all is against you when the road of life gets bumpy. But, maybe those bumps are there for a reason; maybe they are mean to stir us into action.

But how do we remove our focus from something we don’t want, and focus on something we believe we need, yet we don’t already have? When things start going wrong, really really FUBARed, it's so easy to feel that all is against you, or that you don't even know what you want, you just don't want to feel whatever you're currently feeling.

It is difficult, but not impossible through Emotional Recalibration Therapy to learn to re-focus, and look for the best bits of the situations in which we find ourselves, and maybe even accept the challenge of learning to see things from different perspectives.

Over the years, I’ve been quite overwhelmed with signs from the Universe that, in spite of the odd hiccup, all will be well.

Here's the thing - if I had chosen to look at things in a different way, there are times when I could have spiralled into despair, particularly when life kicked me hard, especially when I was already down, and believe me, I could write a book...come to think of it...

So how do we shift our mindset to look for the good?

How are you looking at things? Do you ever try those visual puzzles, you know the kind with numbers hidden the grid, or faces within another image? You look and look, you squint and see nothing BUT when you take a few steps back from the image you get some clarity?

Fascinating drawing of both a duck and a rabbit. Which do you see? — What do you see first when you look at this image?

Do you sometimes feel like everything is against you?

Have a deep and honest look at what you are doing and what messages you are telling yourself. Perhaps you might not be attracting the sort of relationship you crave, achieving the body you desire, or making the money you want, but do watch out that you are not being too hard on yourself and telling the Universe that you actually want it that way. If you keep focussing on what you don’t want, you will repeat the lesson, again and again, until you learn to adjust your thinking. You will be given the situation in different forms until you change your patterns. Inner Child Therapy helps you to rewire your old beliefs of worthiness and deservedness.

When you dwell in dark thoughts, you automatically lower your vibration and it becomes impossible to be optimistic. Because of this, you actually miss important cues and clues that play out all around you as your mind is concentrating on looking for all the wrong things.

Think of when you are playing sport or a board game, and you miss the vital move because you were concentrating almost too hard on NOT LOSING… instead, if you were in flow, your winning move happens almost as if you had nothing at all to do with it

“Where focus goes, energy flows.”

Choosing gratitude and appreciation over criticism and negativity leads to attracting more of the things you can appreciate and be grateful for. When you look in the mirror, do you see your beautiful smile or do you instantly notice how old you’re starting to look? If you focus on the positives, you’ll radiate confidence and be attractive to others.

Negativity is also pretty contagious. Have you ever been in a car with a grumpy person? It’s kind of catchy and pervading, isn’t it? Equally, if you are open and feeling good, someone having a fit of giggles will soon have you in stitches. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to limit your time around negative people, including yourself, so it’s definitely worth your while to turn your frown upside down.

Everything e v e r y t h i n g EVERYTHING is a choice. Even the way we choose to look at things.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” Viktor Frankl (author of Man’s Search For Meaning).

Take your focus away from where things have gone wrong and concentrate your energy on where they are going absolutely right. That's exactly where you want to be. Even if you are hanging onto a tiny nugget of one small thing, keep thinking of it, and allow it to mushroom into hope in your mind.

If you who want to embark on the journey back to Self-Love try this -

Pay attention to your Self-Talk. Speak to yourself as you would your best friend, or better still, your best friend’s five year old child (real or imaginary). Now, my lovely, now you’re talking…

Here’s a great reverse poem, written by Chanie Gorkin

Today was the absolute worst day ever

And don't try to convince me that

There's something good in every day

Because, when you take a closer look,

This world is a pretty evil place.

Even if

Some goodness does shine through once in a while

Satisfaction and happiness don't last.

And it's not true that

It's all in the mind and heart

Because

True happiness can be attained

Only if one's surroundings are good.

It's not true that good exists

I'm sure you can agree that

The reality

Creates

My attitude

It's all beyond my control

And you'll never in a million years hear me say that

Today was a very good day.

Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,

And see what I really feel about my day.

There are some really great reverse poems you can find on the net, and they are a brilliant way of demonstrating how your thinking can sometimes be distilled into sentences… just a bunch of random words, causing your thoughts to develop into feelings, which can totally affect how you live your life. Scramble the words, re-arrange them and come to a very different view point, and more importantly, a much more comfortable piece of mind. If something stirred while reading this…If part of you whispered yes or that’s me —

Then begin here: