Love her or hate you, you can't deny that Taylor Swift is the Breakup Queen. She has taken her very public breakups and turned them into her own personal transformations as well as her empire. In honor of her new album release, here are some lessons I've learned from watching Taylor Swift manage her breakups.
Come on over to my Instagram and share what the theme of your next era will be.
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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 KLEs, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hello, my friends, and welcome to this bonus episode that I'm doing in honor of Taylor Swift's new album release day. Because if there is anybody who is a queen of heartbreak, it is Taylor Swift. Am I right Now, I do want to start this with, you're going to get some really great valuable takeaways that we can learn from her whether you like her music or not, because I didn't like her music for a long time. But really around the Aero tour, I was hearing so much about her business that I really started paying attention to her business, and that's how I got into her music. And there is a quote that circles around that if you aren't into Taylor Swift, you just haven't needed her yet. And I will say since I've started actually paying attention to the songs and listening to them more, it's true, they have been incredibly helpful as I've been processing my own, a recent breakup of my own.
(01:50)
And I was thinking that it would be useful to look at this person who has had many, many, many public breakups and turned that into a billion dollar business. And I thought, let's look at what can we learn from Taylor? So in honor of the Queen of Heartbreak, in her big release day for her new album, I want to share breakup lessons that I've learned from Taylor Swift. So I want us to think about, excuse me, at the tail end of this cold, I want us to think about heartbreak as this universal experience, which I think is what she really was able to tap into. All of us know what it's like to have her heart broken romantically or in life even, but the way that we process it determines whether we stay stuck or if we step into our next era.
(02:56)
Here is lesson number one. Give yourself permission to feel it All. Taylor's music runs the full range of the human emotional scale. She does everything from sass and joy and silliness. Shake it off is about as silly as it gets, and she will go all the way into despair and sadness and anger and longing, and she does everything in between and all of it is embraced, and you get to have the full range of experience, and you even get the full range in a single album, right? You get to see so many different layers in all these different albums that you can feel validated by that emotional experience, and you're not expected to even linger in one of those emotions very long. One of the things I tell my clients so often when we're working on processing through emotions is just put on one song. You don't have to be in an emotion for very long. Just let it be that two and a half minutes, and it doesn't have to be the 10 minute version of all too. Well, in fact, please don't. Don't do the 10 minute version to process your feelings because that's a long commitment to be in the feeling.
(04:21)
But Taylor's really giving us the blueprint in each of these songs on how to process our heartbreak. You can go to a sassy way of like, we are never, ever, ever getting back together and just being really sassy about it. Or you can go completely sad. You get to choose and whatever you feel is valid. So let yourself name the feeling. Don't shame how you're feeling because you're feeling that way for a reason. Of course you're feeling that way. And look, Taylor has felt that way too. You're not alone in this. So identify those feelings. Go through them, don't hold on him, move through 'em. Okay? That's lesson one. Lesson two, write your own story. So Taylor uses songwriting as her way to process heartbreak, but I'm not saying that you need to do that. You don't even have to write good lyrics or good poetry, but how powerful is it if you decide to create something from your heartbreak?
(05:41)
I sometimes think about heartbreak as leaving this giant void in your life, but I find a void is actually a place where creation happens. You can create out of that void, and that is something that gives your pain purpose. If you decide to take everything that you're feeling and everything that you're thinking and you put it into an interpretive dance, right? You can put on a song and you can dance to it. You can make really angsty poetry. I don't know about anybody else, but I went through an angsty poetry phase when I was a teenager, and thank God nobody ever read it, but it felt great to just get it out on a piece of paper. You can paint, you can sculpt, you could garden, channel it into something that creates something else. Make it art. It doesn't have to be good, but here's the other piece I want you to take away from writing your story, is you get to control the narrative, right?
(06:53)
Taylor took these very public breakups with some of her very famous boyfriends and turned them into iconic songs about her side of the story and her experience of what it was like to be dating that person or to break up with that person. Just, I mean, think about some of her biggest hits, actually. They're about some really famous dudes, and she's just telling her experience. She's not taken away the fact that they probably have their own story, but she is telling her side, your side is valuable. Tell your side to your journal. Tell your side to a friend, to a therapist, to a coach. Put it into that art. Do not worry about what the other person is thinking. Let yourself have free expression. Now, I'm not saying go and blast their name all around the internet, right? I'm saying that Taylor's songs are about some famous dudes.
(07:55)
We don't actually know that. She doesn't name any names. She doesn't really give concrete clues to what songs are about who we fans. We kind of put pieces together and we make guesses on our own, right? It's all speculation. We don't really know and we also don't know. Well, there's a concept with artists that I've always really loved of. You take your life and your real life that you're going through, and when you're making art, you put it into a blender and you can put that on a low setting, like a one or a two, and your life is going to come out in big chunks. That's easily recognizable. You know what those chunks of your life are. There are other artists who tend to process it at a much higher number on the blender at like an eight, nine, or a 10. So that is blended, so smooth.
(08:54)
You don't know what actual pieces from their real life there are because you're just getting the art, but everybody is putting their life into their art. This is what I mean by writing your story. Put your life into it. Put your experience into it, and you don't have to name names or point fingers or make it obvious who it's about. You can make it vague, but this is your opportunity to express yourself and to let yourself be heard, even if it's only by a friend or even if it's only by your journal or your voice notes app. All of that is valid and helpful for you towards your healing. Tip three, your heartbreak is an opportunity for a reinvention. So just like each Taylor album is a new era, your heartbreak afterwards can be your new era. You can transform at any time. Transformation's always possible to you, and you can do that just by changing your style, by picking up a new habit or a new hobby. Or you can go completely wild and go as big into a new personality as you want.
(10:18)
I started a business after a breakup. It was so inspiring to me. That was my new era. I took my heartbreak and I said, I'm going to help people from this. So let your breakup be the catalyst for becoming a new version of yourself. What feels like the most fun for you? What feels like a more confident version of you? You have total freedom right now because this is a new start. It's a new chapter. So I'm going to ask you, I'm going to challenge you pick a theme. What do you want your new era's theme to be? Right? Just like Taylor had those different themes for those different albums, what theme do you want? I will say after a number of breakups, mine was kind of like a bad bitch reputation of like, I'm just going to be a little mad for a while, and then that evolved into something else.
(11:13)
Okay? So tip four is about closure and power. Taylor does not wait for someone else to give her closure. She creates her own, and she does that through her art. She creates her own through her art. She chooses to leave the red scarf behind. She doesn't need to get it back. She's left it, but she turns it into a really powerful song and really powerful imagery. So you do not need closure from anyone else. And when you decide I am going to give the closure to myself, I have everything I need to give this an ending right here, right now, that is you taking your power back of saying, I'm not giving my power to anybody else. They don't get a say in how I'm going to live my life. They don't get a say in what my life looks like anymore.
(12:20)
They don't get a say of all of the tears that I could be crying. I get to decide and I get to decide when I'm done. That is you being in your power and you taking your life back. Alright, so those are some key lessons that I want to leave you with. Feel it all. Write your story, reinvent yourself, and create closure to step back into your power. And all of this is about you creating your next era. So here's what I want for you, right? Your challenge is to decide the theme for your next era. I want you to come on over to Instagram and I'm going to put up a tailored post and you can either comment on the post or you can DM me and I want to hear what's the theme of your next era, because I want to cheer you on. I want to be that super excited fan wearing friendship bracelets and holding signs and just screaming wild, mad to cheer you on for your next era because you deserve that. Alright, my friends, you get to determine what's next for you. I am here for you. I want you to take good care of yourself this week and come on over to Instagram and let's keep this conversation going. Okay? Alright friends, take care and have a good week.