One year ago, I sold my shiny new(ish) 2017 black Nissan Rogue for a 2004 pearly white (and dented) Toyota Sienna.

Hello, mom van.

Her tan leather seats were worn out by the sun with various rips in them from the leather being so dry and unable to support the constant in and out of the family before me. The plastic dashboard, too, was cracked all the way from the driver’s side to the passenger side from sun exposure and poor care.

She needed a lot of TLC for a fresh start. The aesthetic fit though, because I had just gotten divorced 10 months prior and was now a single mom “starting over” too.

Why did I decide on an older car, you ask? To be honest? Because it was cheap.

At the time, I was struggling with my money mindset. I was a spender, with never enough funds to support my habit. Buying this older van actually put money in my pocket versus leaving my wallet empty like I was so accustomed to. I had sold my Nissan for a great price, and since it was paid off I had zero debt.

In looking for a new car, and ultimately being led to purchase my 2004 Sienna, I was gifted a few life lessons, starting with number one:

1. Spend less than you make. Make more than you spend.

Now, reader, you, may not struggle with spending and saving, or you may have already known and hold tight to this important life lesson, in which case, good for you. However, I did not. I was proud of myself in that moment when I finally chose to make a mature decision with money. It gave me a new appreciation for my van and my efforts. My wallet thanked me too.

When I bought the van, cosmetically she was in rough shape, but her functionality was good. As time went on, little things started popping up here and there. In marriage, my previous mentality had been that someone else could do the heavy lifting, instead of doing it myself. No honey, not this time! This single girl rolled up her sleeves and got busy. I changed power steering fluid, coolant, and not one but two headlights, all on my own. Piggybacking on the money lesson my van instilled in me, I knew it would be infinitely cheaper if I worked on my van myself versus paying a mechanic to do it. Which brings me to life lesson number two…

2. Always remain teachable and independent.

I never went into fixing my van without pouring hours into research and technique. I learned so much through watching videos, reading forums, and networking with professional mechanics in my area. I also listened to my gut if a project seemed too big. When my serpentine belt needed to be replaced, I knew I’d rather pay the money to get it fixed by a professional than trying to tackle that on my own.

Diagnosing my car’s problems was also heavily dependent on me trusting myself and my intuition. I was the only one driving this van everyday, so I knew every rattle and quirk by heart. Even after getting the serpentine belt professionally replaced, I had to take it back to the mechanic two other times after that because something still wasn’t right. I had only been listening to what the mechanic was telling me instead of listening to and advocating for my car. Which blessed me with life lesson number three…

3. Always listen to your intuition.

Intuition is that little voice inside of you that makes you uncomfortable. For me, it was challenging the mechanic. “Speak up! Something’s still not right,” my intuition would say, but pushing back to someone else in authority had always scared me. That’s why I  retreated after I took it back the first time. “He surely knows more than me. Cars are his specialty.” However, it only took a few weeks of my van screeching at start up every morning to call him for a third time. Finally, the issue was fixed and my mind was at ease again. I trusted myself and leaned into the uncomfortable. Our intuition is never wrong.

At times, I would get so frustrated with myself for buying such a dated, worn out van. I would spiral into a pity party and allow it to consume me. I remember one such instance, in pity party-mode, I was driving home and as Law of Attraction would have it, a nearby truck kicked up a tiny rock. That tiny rock came flying at my windshield, causing a huge crack, as if saying, “You want to be in a negative thought spiral? Here. Be negative.” That literally showed me that I am the co-creator of my life story. If I’m putting more of my attention toward the “bad” aspects of my situation, I will in turn reap more unwanted outcomes. But if I can somehow flip the narrative of what I’m telling myself, then my reality could change, even by 10 percent.

Now I’m not saying to put rose-colored glasses on and flip it to think, “Yay, I’m so glad I have a huge crack in my windshield.” That wouldn’t help anything, but what I started doing was, when I’d be talking about my van to other people, instead of saying “Yeah, so a new issue has popped up,” I started saying, “She’s such a tank! The girl just keeps going!” Instead of being ashamed or triggered when my three-year-old toddler would cry because she missed our old car, I would say, “But our old car didn’t have this cool DVD player built into it!” or “Our new van is so much bigger. We can fit so many friends in here!”

I would reflect to the Universe that I was grateful to have a working car to get me from point A to point B, rather than cursing the van and myself the whole drive. Lesson number four was a harder one to put into place because it took the longest to regularly implement…

4. Practice gratitude. Shift your mindset.

We don’t realize how powerful the words we speak over our life are. They can easily make our waking lives better or worse, depending on how we use them. Practicing speaking gratitude over my life and the things that I do have changed not only how I viewed my journey, but how I viewed myself. It helped get me out of self-pity and into self-empowerment.

Being grateful and kind to myself during these hardships got me out of thinking of myself as some charity case and into seeing myself as a strong, independent woman making it all on her own. Shifting my mindset quite literally saved me.

In times of chaos and the unknown, I now tell myself, “You can do anything!” And just like my 20-year-old van keeps going on down the road, so do I. So do you. We can do anything.

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