In this episode, Sarah Curnoles shares how to shift from a victim mentality to a hero mindset after a breakup, so you can stop overanalyzing the past and start creating your next chapter with power and purpose. She offers practical steps to reclaim your strength, focus on what’s in your control, and move forward—one small win at a time.
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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.
(00:43)
It feels like there comes a point for a lot of people after a breakup where they've been processing the emotions, but now it's slipped into wallowing a bit too much and they've been thinking about what went wrong, but now it's slipped into rumination and self-blame and being really stuck in your head and it feels like this is dangerous territory because what starts happening is pointing the finger outward at this is the other person's fault. It's because of what my ex did to me. If this at all sounds familiar, where it feels like you've been staying in the places the low places a little bit too long, this is an episode for you. I am Sarah Curnoles and I am a life coach, and I specialize in helping you go from broken hearted to breakthrough, which now that I said that out of my mouth, sounds a little cheesy, I don't like it.
(01:50)
What I really hope you do is I turn your breakup into the best thing that ever happened, and that I know is a really big claim, and I stand behind it a hundred percent because it's happened for me and it's happened for all the clients that I've worked with because I truly do believe that your breakup can be one of the most life-changing moments for you where you get to intentionally decide, how do I want to be living my life without the demands? Demands might not be the right word without the constriction of having to compromise with another person. And you get to start asking yourself, if I could have it all my way, what would my life look like?
(02:36)
But what is necessary in order to ask that question, and in order to be able to answer that question and start living into it, there has to be a big shift in how you are looking at your life, and I'm going to call this shift shifting from victim to hero. Now, victim, I don't mean I'm not using it in the context of the person who survived a terrible thing, right? Sometimes that is the case, but what I mean is the mentality of victim and what the mentality of a victim is. It's using a lot of excuses in order to avoid taking responsibility for your life, it's giving all the power to the other person or the circumstances for the ways that you are thinking and feeling. It's saying something outside of you is more powerful than you are, and that might sound like, I want to move on, but I can't because my ex cheated on me, or I want to have kids, but I wasted the best years of my life on my ex and now we're broken up and I'm screwed.
(03:52)
Right? It is saying something outside of me is more powerful than me and my desire, which honestly, from all the years I've been doing as a coach and all the people I've worked with, there is nothing farther from the truth than saying something outside of me is more powerful than myself and my desires because you are so much more powerful than you even know, and maybe that's really where this shift happens is hearing that sentence, letting it land in your body and noticing how it feels to believe that, not to believe the voice that's probably pushing back and saying, no, no, Sarah, I'm not the powerful one. That's everybody else, not me. Nope. If you're listening to this, I believe you are powerful. Even those people who aren't listening to this, I believe they're also powerful. They just haven't found their way here yet. You are more powerful than I 100% believe that about you.
(04:59)
What does it feel like if you suspend your disbelief for just a moment, just a moment, and you play and you let yourself believe I am powerful. The desire that I have for what I want in my life is also powerful. That's the shift it's getting out of saying everything else is more powerful than me and stepping into being powerful. Now, before I go into how to make that shift, I want you to know it makes a lot of sense why sometimes we want to stay in that victim mentality, right? I understand I've been there. Honestly, there are still parts of my life that I am unwinding my own beliefs, where I'm keeping myself small and I'm playing the victim in other areas of my life. It happens to all of us from time to time for good reason.
(05:56)
Some of the most common reasons I see are that if I stay the victim, I don't have to take responsibility for my life because taking responsibility for my life feels too big or too scary, or I don't feel competent in managing my life or my money. I don't feel like I'm able to handle it right? There is something so convenient of escaping the responsibility and saying, well, it's just everybody else's fault. I don't have kids because I dated the wrong guy for too long. It's his fault, right? Because looking at the reverse of that is scary. Taking responsibility of saying, there's something I really want in my life. I don't have it yet. What do I need to do to get there? That can feel really big and really overwhelming.
(06:55)
Sometimes people also stay in the victim mentality after a breakup because it lets them stay out of acceptance. It's not quite denial, but it's definitely not accepting. If I stay in this victim mentality, I get to keep a connection to that person, even if it's an unhealthy connection. I know this to be true because I actually did it for a really, really long time. I had an ex who cheated on me and I held onto my anger and the betrayal for eight years, and I held onto that so tightly because I got to be the person who was wronged and he got to be the bad guy, and there was no gray. It was just black or white. He was the bad guy and I was the good person, and I didn't do anything wrong. I just wanted to love him, and I just wanted to be in a relationship. Nothing wrong with me.
(07:58)
He had to be the total bad guy. And guess what? It didn't make me feel any better. Hanging on to all that energy was heavy. I feel like it weighed me down. It prevented me from having genuine connection with my next boyfriend. There was definitely a part of my heart that was blocked off and feeling resentful towards anybody just feels like an ick. It's an energy dream. It was a way of avoiding feeling. The grief of the dream that I had with that person was never going to happen and feeling the actual pain of being betrayed that much. It was my way of skipping over feeling big feelings because honestly, I didn't know how. I didn't have the tools then that I have now, so that at that eight year point, eight years after it happened, he sent an apology letter and I was actually finally able to receive the apology and I let myself feel everything.
(09:15)
So honestly, I cried for almost an entire weekend straight. It was ugly and painful and terrible, and thank you to the friends that held me through that. But on the other side of it, I was completely clear because I had the tools of how to use those emotions, how to sit with those emotions. I had the capacity to be there with those feelings and then what to do with them. I knew how to turn that into compost basically, because really what it is, that's what's happening. And I could look at those places in myself that still needed some love and care and tenderness, and I was able to ask friends for help. I couldn't give that to myself in the moment, so I turned to some trusted people and I let myself be taken care of for a little bit and feel somebody else's love, and so I was able to close those wounds.
(10:14)
So I'm sharing all that to let you know I'm not making anybody wrong if you're staying in that victim mentality because maybe you're just not ready yet, and that's okay. When you're ready, you'll be ready. And this is me sharing resources with total compassion of here they are. Sometimes I have to listen to things several times before I fully receive them, before they finally click for me of like, oh, I've been really stuck in that one mentality. I've been stuck seeing things in that box, and now I'm ready to break out of the box. And what this transformation really is, it's very much like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, all right? The caterpillar doesn't become a butterfly by overanalyzing all the things that has happened to him in his life as a butterfly. No, it doesn't happen that way. It happens by letting itself dissolve go into a cocoon and letting itself evolve and restructure itself towards the future vision of becoming a butterfly.
(11:28)
So that's what I see this process of going through a breakup is your caterpillar self does. Your old self essentially does have to dissolve a bit, and that can be painful, that can be hard, but it is not about overanalyzing the past. That actually tends to feel worse of why did I get here? What did I do wrong? What are all the mistakes I've in my life, right? Why did I pick this bad guy? That's actually not the right question. The question is, who do you want to be on the other side of this breakup? And that to me is hero mentality. The hero mentality is facing forward. Where am I going? What do I want all of this to mean? At the end of the day, I am going to face the hard parts of looking at where I have felt like I've struggled and feeling the bad feelings and uncomfortable feelings and sitting myself through all of that, and I am doing it for a reason.
(12:39)
Who is your hero self? And sometimes it can help to look at a archetypes or celebrities or characters of, I admire the way that so-and-so shows up in the world. I really like that about them. Look at whoever you want. Taylor Swift, Beyonce. I wish I knew Marvel characters. I really don't. You could probably name some great Marvel characters right here. Actually, there's some decent female characters in the Marvel universe. I've seen a couple of the movies, but I don't, I'm obviously not a raving fan, but you can look at whatever source makes sense to you and pull your inspiration of what are the qualities that you see in these heroes or heroines. I'm speaking to this because I've been teaching a lot of women recently, but I know that I have men that listen to this as well. So obviously there are a lot of great male characters too.
(13:47)
I mean, Tony Stark is a great example of somebody who evolves and gets to become someone different when he steps into that Iron Man costume, right? He has a great arc in that story. Captain America, another great arc. See, I do know some characters, but you can pick anybody that you want. Who are the heroes that you see, that you look up to and you like them? And what are the qualities that you want to strengthen in yourself? Because here's the truth, you can't see a quality in someone else unless you already have it. Maybe it is a little dormant, maybe it's been asleep for a little while and we just need to wake it up, but if you spot it, you got it.
(14:36)
And that's what this process can be of. What is the transformation that's happening for me? Who do I want to be on the other side? So how exactly do we go through this change? You might be asking, I get it. I understand this concept, but now what are the steps that I take in order to be in this hero mentality to step into this other version of myself? Well, let's think about the hero's journey, which was developed by Joseph Campbell. The hero doesn't become the hero overnight. It is a process. They get their call to adventure, they get the invitation to step forward, they meet a mentor, they face challenges, and through all of that, they get a reward at the end and they step into their new self, right? It is a becoming process. So one of the ways that you can step into this, right?
(15:44)
What is your call to adventure? You are being called forward. What purpose do you want to give to this season of your life? Maybe I want to never have that kind of a relationship ever again. I want to become the person who has a better, healthier, loving relationship next time, or maybe this is going to become a season for you where you focus on your career or you focus on having epic life adventures, or you want to become a single parent and you want to go on that big life adventure without the pressure of needing a partner and needing to do it, needing the timelines of like, oh, we must get married tomorrow so I can get pregnant right away. I actually have had clients who've decided this season, I have decided I'm going to become a parent. I'm going to go through the process, whatever that is, that feels right for you.
(16:47)
So think about that. What purpose do I want to be giving this season of my life? And then I want you to start with some really small steps. What is actually in my control right now? We think our brains are so interesting, and that's why I love doing what I do, that sometimes we think we can control things that actually aren't in our control, like other people's behavior, and we neglect to see the things that are actually in our control. What can you control right now? You can control how you speak to yourself. Are you beating yourself up or are you giving yourself comfort? You can control how you see things, right? Are you using thoughts that make you feel worse or are you using thoughts that make you feel better?
(17:53)
Are you resisting your feelings or are you allowing them and you're sitting with them? Are you asking for help and support? All right, so first step is finding your purpose of what is the season of my life for right now? Your second step is what's focusing on what is actually in your control? And the third thing is I want you to focus on giving yourself a little win as often as you possibly can, at least one win a day, and those wins can be really small, like, I made my bed this morning. I got up, I showered, I took care of myself. I ate some food, or I slept well last night, right? Those are all wins. Celebrate any win that you get because what a hero does is a hero stacks up the wins. It will put win after win after win and will focus on those wins as you move forward. It's not about looking backwards of beating yourself up. If you do look backwards, it's solely for the purpose to learn and grow, not to make yourself doubt or make yourself feel worse.
(19:07)
There's a difference, and then you're going to focus on those wins. What small wing can I give myself today? All right, so that's how you step into your hero mentality. What is the purpose? What is in my control? And what is a small win that I have already had or that I can have today? And as you move forward, which is what a hero does, a hero is going to keep moving forward, keep focusing forward. Let yourself keep evolving into a butterfly version of yourself, right? You are going to keep coming back to those things.
(19:51)
Keep looking at what are these qualities that I'm developing? What are the qualities I want to be evolving into, right? That's why we talked about sort of those heroes that you look up to that are in the rest of your life, and then keep going forward step by step, little by little, focusing just on your winds and what you can control. You don't have to know everything. A caterpillar doesn't go into the cocoon knowing every single step that's going to happen in order for it to become a butterfly. It just takes it one step at a time. The next step, next step, the next step.
(20:30)
If this sounds good to you, if this is exciting to you, I want to invite you to consider what it would be like to go through this process with me as your coach, your personal coach, where you don't have to go through this evolution alone. You support. You have somebody who knows the path, somebody who also knows the pitfalls, the things to avoid, and the traps that can get in the way and somebody who can help you evolve faster. I used to do this kind of work by myself of reading the books and listening to lots of YouTubes and podcasts and all that stuff. I used to try to do it by myself, and honestly, I kept getting stuck. I would make a little bit of progress and it wouldn't really stick and it wouldn't last very long, and I'd go back to being my old self, and I would stay stuck in the wallowing for a long, long, long, long time.
(21:25)
And I am here to tell you that's totally optional. Everything changed for me when I started hiring my own coaches, and I knew that I was going to be talking to somebody every single week who cared about me and my progress and my evolution into my hero self. It means the world to have somebody who believes in you and who is holding that for you and helping you move forward and knowing that you're not alone in it, right? Knowing that there is an actual path. So that's what I want for you, and that's what I want to offer you. That's what I offer all my clients when I work with them. If that's exciting to you, I want you to book a discovery call with me, what this is as your opportunity to discover what it's like to coach with me because I'm going to ask you some questions to understand your situation, and then I'm going to tell you about my process and how it works, and then we can decide if coaching's a good fit.
(22:22)
I'll put the link so that you can do that right in the show notes, and you can go ahead and grab your free call today. Now, I will tell you, my calendar does start to book up towards the end of the year because it's the holidays. Holidays are hard, and we also have Valentine's Day not that far away, and people don't want to still be focusing on their ex when it comes to Valentine's Day. We want to be looking at the new person. We want to be in that new relationship. So if you want to be over your ex before the end of the year so that you can get into your next great relationship, or whether that's a relationship with yourself or the next person, it doesn't really matter. I'm here for you. Come join me and I can't wait to work with you. Alright, my friends. That's it for this week. Take good care of yourselves and I will talk to you soon.