stages of development

piaget identifies 4 stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operations.
freud's psychosexual development consists of 5: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.

i would like to offer another - 3 stages of starting over and finding happiness:
anger and forgiveness
self-examination and introspection
laughter and forgetting

anger and forgiveness: when life hands you a bad situation or when a relationship ends, there is inevitably some anger - with the situation, and with yourself. does it ever go away? can you ever completely forgive? anger may be constructive to a point, and forgiveness a challenge but it's a necessary step to keep moving on.

self-examination and introspection: this is a lifelong process of constantly reevaluating and lightening the load. steve jobs said it well, 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.'

laughter and forgetting: what's the point if you can't laugh at life, with life, or yourself? we are blessed with a short term memory - it's easy to forget how vulnerable we are and how crushed our hearts have been. this forgetting is necessary to open up our hearts and take that plunge again..

and it is worth it. no matter how many times we cycle through these stages, this is our journey and we can attain happiness.