Sarah Curnoles discusses how to determine when "enough is enough" in relationships and other aspects of life. The key points are: Having a low tolerance for emotional pain and compromising your peace, dreams, or self-respect are signs that you've reached your "enough" point. It's important to regularly check in with yourself and look for red flags like feeling drained, walking on eggshells, or being overly critical. When you reach your "enough" point, it's better to leave a situation before becoming resentful or burned out, even if it's difficult. Sarah encourages the audience to establish non-negotiables, create support systems, and honor their own integrity when deciding when to end a relationship or situation.
Reach out on Instagram to keep this conversation going. What are your red flags that you've reached your enough point? https://www.instagram.com/sarahcurnoles/
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Have you gone through a breakup and you're tired of feeling low lonely or lost? I've got a pep talk for you. I'm Sarah Curnoles, your breakup bestie. I'm a certified life coach with years of coaching experience, helping people just like you turn your breakup into the best thing that ever happened to them Each week, tune in to get a pep talk, to heal your heart. Let go of the past, reclaim your power and get back into your main character energy. Your breakup may have shattered your world as you know it, but together let's build a new better world. Let's go.
(00:44)
How do you know when enough is enough? Such a great question, right? Welcome back my friends. Thank you for joining me for this latest episode of Breakup Pep Talks. I am your breakup bestie Sarah Curnoles. And I want to talk about that enough because I think that's one of the hardest questions to answer. I know I can't answer it for anyone else because I, I'm still figuring it out for myself, and that's part of the journey of life, right? There's something that has really stuck with me from the writer, Elizabeth Gilbert. I am a huge fan of her work, and I know that sounds so typical of a woman who is around my age, but I really do, I love her creativity and I love her voice and her approach to things. And I've probably read Big Magic four times by now. And Big Magic is her book for people who want to live a creative life.
(01:50)
And it's probably the closest thing she's ever written to actual self-help because it's really showing you how to ignite and maintain that creative spark within yourself and how to have the courage to put it out into the world. And I am pretty sure it's in that book. She talks about one of the things that has made her the writer she is, and on the topics that she writes about and the life that she's led, is that she has a really low tolerance for being out of integrity with herself. And so she realizes fairly quickly when she's had enough and she has to change it, she has to change things up. And that has always struck me, oh, I think she said something like She has a low tolerance for emotional pain. And that really struck me because I think I have a really high tolerance for emotional pain in some ways.
(02:57)
I've always been that person who too long in relationships, who gives people too many chances, who can reason her way out of a paper bag of why I should stay with the guy when I want to stay with the guy and I can make excuses like you wouldn't believe, and I can really kind of stick it out for a lot longer and sit through a lot more discomfort than probably any reasonable person should. And I've always admired that Elizabeth Gilbert shared that she has a low tolerance for this. And sometimes I wish I had a lower tolerance and then I could just get out sooner. But I really think that leads to this question of how do I know when is enough? How do you know when is enough? It's that age old question, and I find myself asking it more and more lately, and I feel like it's coming up from clients that I work with as well as they're asking the same question of how do I know when it's enough or when I've had enough or when I should leave the relationship or when I've cried enough or whatever that is that you're measuring.
(04:25)
And I think it's important enough that we talk about it. So I was thinking about how would I define it as how do you know when enough is enough? How could I succinctly answer that? And I think the best answer I've come up with, and I'm still sitting with this, but the best answer I've come up with so far is it's enough When it costs you your peace, your dreams or your self-respect, that seems pretty clear to me, right? Am I giving up my own self-respect? Am I giving up my dreams? Am I giving up my peace? And that's the point when I've had enough. And I want to elaborate on that a little bit. I think that we all make compromises, and that's what makes this a little bit tricky sometimes, is that I am going to compromise a little bit on this dream and leave it for the long term so that in the short term, there's something I can have right now or we're going to prioritize my partner's dreams for a little bit and then we'll switch and we'll prioritize my dreams for a little bit and we may compromises and we have to be aware of what those compromises are, and we also have to be aware of what our limits are.
(06:07)
And I think that's the piece that comes into play with enough is that we have to learn what our limits are. And I think it's pretty clear when we're setting something like a non-negotiable, it would be a non-negotiable that I am not going to have a relationship with somebody who's violent with me. That's the limit. Violence crosses the limit, but where do things like emotional or mental violence come into play? I was listening to a book about an actress who had been in a cult, and it can be very tricky. We have to learn those different ways that perhaps people dance around our lines and we have to find what is our limit for that. So I was also thinking of taking this a little bit deeper of when it comes to romantic relationships, it's enough when you can say that you have truly loved this person as best as you could.
(07:28)
If you've loved someone to the best of your ability to love them and it's still not quite working, you've hit you're enough, you can walk away saying, I gave them all of my heart. I gave them all of me. And it still, I don't want to say it wasn't enough because it's not like your love is never enough, but it wasn't right for it to gel for something more long-term, right? It's not that you aren't enough, and I want to be really clear about this. This isn't about you are not enough. You are always enough exactly as you are. There's nothing you have to change about you to be more enough. You don't have to earn being enough. You just are.
(08:24)
This is about knowing your limit and knowing when it's time to leave a situation, whether this is a romantic relationship or it's a job or a friendship or a way of seeing the world, right? You can hit your enough in many different areas. You might notice that it takes the form of questioning yourself or doubting yourself or even shrinking so that you could keep the peace or fit in or maintain the status quo. You might set those as deal breakers of if I start second guessing myself, doubting myself that I'm not enough for this, then I have to reevaluate. I have to change something.
(09:34)
You might also notice, you might play with the idea of what would happen if I walked away and notice how that would feel to you if it feels like a wave of relief to walk away. Maybe you've hit your point, your limit, your point of enough. And I started thinking of how often I recognize when I've had enough and I normally have to go so far down the road, I have to get to that burned out and crispy point where I am just done and I'm, because like I said, I'm the one that hangs in there. I really try to make it work. I hang on and I hang on and I hang on, and I will stay until I'm burned out and resentful and bitter. And that's not a great place to leave a situation either. It's actually far better to leave because you're choosing to maintain your peace and maintain your self-respect and leave on that note rather than leaving on a bitter and resentful note.
(10:53)
So how do we catch this earlier before we get to resentment and burned out and crispy? So I wanted to offer a few ideas so that you can create and perhaps some systems for yourself. We have here in the United States, we have a state of the union address that the president makes on a regular basis about how the country is doing. And it's a full report on everything so far. What if you created a state of the union for yourself, my union with me? How am I doing? Maybe this is a once a quarter. So you do it every three months. You check in with yourself and you ask, how am I feeling about my life? Am I feeling like I am expanding or contracting more? And it isn't necessarily one's better than the other because we all go through periods of expansion and contraction in our life, and that's totally normal. You just want to notice, am I always in a state of contraction? Do I always feel like I'm getting smaller and smaller? Am I never feeling expansive?
(12:19)
Am I feeling energized or drained? Do I feel like I am in this relationship or living my life from a place of guilt or obligation or fear? Or is it coming from a place of genuine love? And you might take this time to also do a body scan meditation where you check in with your body head to toe and you just are paying attention to what's happening in my body looking for are there areas of tightness or clenching or stuckness or heaviness in my body? And just noticing that and notice those patterns. And you could ask yourself, if nothing changed, how am I going to feel about this for the next state of the union?
(13:25)
Or how would I feel about this a year from now? I offer to do this on a quarterly basis. Maybe you want to do it more frequently. Maybe you want to do it on every new moon. For example. The new Moon is a beginning. It's a great time for a check-in at the beginning of the month, once a week, whatever works for you. Find that system. You might also want to start paying attention to what are your red flags for what's enough for you? I knew when I was working a particular job, I actually knew that the end was near for me, that I was kind of done with that job because I was engaging in a lot more office gossip. That was a red flag to me of I was more interested in the gossip and the drama than I was about doing my job or finding a new and exciting project or finding a way that I could help.
(14:35)
Nope. I wanted the drama that was a red flag of like, oh, this job has run its course. It's time for me to either find what my next step is in this company or leave the company entirely. So other possible red flags when you see their car in the driveway as you come home and you dread it or you hear their key in the door and you have a sense of dread. Or if you notice yourself walking on eggshells more of the time, or perhaps you notice your inner monologue, your inner critic is really mean to yourself or towards the other person where you're being really overly critical about everything. These all might be red flags that you've actually hit your limit.
(15:46)
And so what do we do? Do we notice these things? We have these check-ins. We notice our red flags. We've decided our non-negotiables ahead of time, like I mentioned earlier, of really deciding what is not okay ever. What's a non-negotiable that that's my limit no matter what. It's great to decide that ahead of time. What do we do? Do we just immediately get out? Possibly. That possibly might be the answer. You might also want to take some time to journal on it, sleep on it. Nobody's saying you have to notice the red flags and you have to immediately act on it.
(16:30)
Maybe you need to get a few ducks in a row before you take action. And there are some things that you can do to make sure it doesn't get to the place of burnout or crispy, right? Maybe you plan a little extra alone time where if this is a relationship, of course you have your schedule a couple time, but maybe you take some time for yourself so that you have plenty of time that you get to just be with yourself or you take some time with your friends and it's non-negotiable that you get that time because that's your time to connect with yourself or with people who are important with you. You can also create a relationship with a support team, whether it's a therapist or a life coach, so that you have somebody who is not biased, who is outside of the situation that you can just talk to and you can process before it gets to the point where you're breaking down and resentful this conversation.
(17:55)
I think we all need to be having more often because if we had it more often, we wouldn't be getting to the point where we are leaving because we are so fed up and we are so done. And I think also we would take away so much of the guilt of, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. This isn't about hurting anyone's feelings because if you are feeling done, you're probably acting like it and how do you think the other person feels on the other side of that? You're probably not showing up your best and they deserve somebody showing up as their best, even if it's not you. And of course it can hurt to end a relationship.
(18:44)
I'm not trying to lessen that, but I'm trying to honor your sense of integrity and integrity. I mean wholeness with yourself, which means that you are doing what is true for you and you are coming from a place of wholeness. So I've been thinking about this point of enough for a long time, and like I had said earlier, it's been rattling in my brain for a long time because of what Elizabeth Gilbert wrote. And I was dating somebody several months ago, and I used to be the person that would go on one more date, just one more date. Maybe it'll get better after that date. And I realized pretty quickly there were a couple dates. I just don't think this is going anywhere. And I saw myself doing my own red flags of trying to put distance between when I replied to the texts and putting off scheduling another date, and I caught myself in it.
(20:00)
I was like, oh, nope. That's what I do when I've had enough and I know my answer and I know that I'm not into this person. And I ended it. We'd only been on a couple dates and I let the person know, I don't see this going any further romantically. I wish you all the best. I think you're a great person. And I, of course, because I'm a human being, I felt guilty. I'm also, I have habits of people pleasing that I am learning to not listen to all the time. And I didn't want to hurt that person's feelings either. I didn't want to, could tell he was interested in me and interested in dating and interesting in it going forward. I didn't want to disappoint him or make him or hurt his feelings. I didn't want to do any of that, but I knew I had to honor myself and I wasn't showing up as a great dater in that situation.
(20:58)
So it was better that I ended it, and I was reminded by how he handled my decision. I was reassured that I made the right choice because I was very self-honoring and I could tell that it just wasn't a good fit for me personally in the way that it reacted just showed me, yes, I was right, that we weren't a good fit for each other. It wasn't the kind of person that I wanted to continue a relationship with. And sometimes that's exactly what we need. We need that validation of like, yes, I did the right thing in honoring myself, and I called it when enough was enough, and I am so glad I didn't let that keep going. So what is your takeaway from this today? I'm so interested to start this conversation and keep it going. I would love to connect over on Facebook and you can send me a message there.
(22:08)
It's just my name, Sarah Curnoles, or you can connect with me on Instagram at Sarah Curnoles, S-A-R-A-H-C-U-R-N-O-L-E-S, all one word. And I would love to hear from you, what's your takeaway? What is your enough or what is your red flag sign of like Uhoh, hit my limit. Let's keep this conversation going. I'd love to hear from you if you're looking for extra support. If you are looking to learn more about yourself and get more clear on what your non-negotiables are, what your red flags are, and you're looking to either figure out what your enough is or you're looking to recover from the burnout of going past enough, and you are in that point where you're suffering a little bit, I really want to talk to you. Let's connect and let's talk more about that. Send me a DM and let me know you want some support around enough, and I would love to have that conversation with you. Okay, my friends, I hope you take care and let's keep the conversation going, okay. Have a beautiful day.