In this episode of Breakup Peptalks, Sarah Curnoles dives deep into what it truly means to be over your ex and how to get there. She defines being over an ex as no longer being emotionally tied to that person or relationship — feeling free, peaceful, and excited for the future. Sarah explores the subconscious reasons people stay stuck, such as fear of the unknown, loneliness, or clinging to memories for comfort. She explains that suffering comes from resisting reality and that healing begins with one powerful act: deciding to let go. Through conscious decisions and new habits, like focusing on yourself twice for every thought about your ex, you reclaim your energy, self-trust, and power. The episode ends with an invitation to declare, “I’m done,” and step into the next chapter of your life with clarity and confidence.
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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.
(00:44)
This episode comes with a warning because this is going to change you at a very deep level if you let it. This episode has an opportunity to crack you open and see things in a totally new way. And so unless you are ready to get over your ex, by the time this episode is over, don't listen any further. Okay? So welcome my friends. My name is Sarah Colonels. I'm a certified life coach and I help people turn their breakup into the best thing that ever happened to them. But in order for that to happen, we have to learn how to move on and let go first. And that's what we're talking about today. What does it actually mean to get over your ex and how do we actually do it? And by the end of the episode, if you are ready and if you are willing, you might be over your ex by the time you finish listening to this.
(01:46)
So let me first define, what does it mean to be over your ex? Or how do you know if you're over your ex? So here's how I define it over your ex means I'm no longer emotionally tied to that person or to the relationship. They have no power over my emotions and I am no longer emotionally affected by them. You no longer define yourself or you're future by your relationship. Thoughts of your ex Don't bring up pain or regret, longing or anger. Now does that mean that you're perfect and you never ever think about them or you never ever have feelings that come up? No. No, because you're human. And it will happen from time to time that something might come up. And if it does happen, there is nothing wrong with you. Sometimes you will still feel grief and sometimes you'll miss them. But a majority of the time you are free from feeling bound to them emotionally.
(02:54)
You might find yourself no longer wishing for things to be different, and that can be an incredibly powerful moment and you don't make what happened, be any kind of reflection on you or your worth. You're genuinely at peace and you're excited for what's next. Alright, so if that's where we're headed for, which to me sounds pretty great, to no longer feel tied to that person anymore, that's from my past. And to be able to move on it sounds great, but if you're anything like me, you might have a period of time where you're like, I don't know if I'm ready to do that. And if you're like some of my clients, you can get really stuck in the, I don't know if I'm ready to move on yet and feel like, excuse me.
(03:51)
And you might feel like it's a butter idea to postpone getting over your ex and just waiting a little bit longer. So in case this is you, here's why sometimes people do that, why people might postpone getting over their ex, even though it sounds really great to no longer be bound to them. Sometimes we hang onto our ex even when we say that we want to move on, we still hang on to them or the memory of them or the relationship because that means you get to maintain a connection on some level. Deep down, if I maintain that connection, even if it's only by stalking their Instagram or by remembering bringing up those great memories of how good we had it back then sometimes we do that so that we can avoid feeling lonely.
(04:46)
Sometimes we do it because it feels like we don't really have purpose or meaning in our life. We're not really excited about who we are or what's around us or what's ahead of us. And really when you take it down all the way down to the studs, you're really devaluing yourself saying that my life isn't that great without the relationship, or I am worthless without that relationship, or they were the best thing that ever happened to me. That can be what's all the way under wanting to maintain a connection, right? This is funny. This is all happening under the surface really, because you're not even consciously saying, I want to maintain a connection. No consciously you're probably saying, I want to get over my ex, but I can't or I haven't. And all of that is happening under the surface, right? Okay. So then there are also some other reasons why people tend to hold on to an X.
(05:55)
And again, this is still all subconscious. It's not something that you're probably going around saying. Another thing that might be happening is that you feel really unclear about what your future's like now. And anytime we are facing something that is uncertain, like a future that you once had planned because you were going to have kids with the person you were going to get married, you're going to buy a house that was a plan for your future and you thought you knew what your future looked like. And now that that's all gone, now that the relationship is over, it can feel like a big black hole. And that can be really scary and confusing and disappointing. And frankly, that can feel really boring. It doesn't feel compelling to move towards that of like, oh, I can't wait for that future of my big black hole. There's no excitement there.
(06:50)
And so your past, even when it's just thinking of the memories, feels so much more exciting than looking towards the black hole of the future. Which brings me the other reason why sometimes people hang on, it's because they're scared. The unknown can be really scary. And maybe you're making that mean I don't know what the future holds ahead of me. Maybe I'll never find love again. Maybe I am worthless because I'm not in a relationship anymore. Maybe I'll discover that my best days are behind me. All of that can be really scary to face when we have this wash of nothing as ahead of us, but we have very clear memories behind us of, look how happy I used to be. Look how great I had it. Once you can point to those things and your future just seems blurry so it doesn't feel like anything you want to rush towards, so we stay stuck. So you might be in that place right now where you are feeling stuck. And what's really happening when you're stuck is that there's probably something to let go of.
(08:05)
And you might be in the place where you are resisting the reality of what is happening right here and right now. And when we are resisting the reality of what's happened, whether you like it or not, you don't always have to. What happens to you? A lot of life, we don't like what happens to us, but if we are in resistance to it, it's that fighting against what's really happening. It's that denial. It's like, I don't want this to be true. I don't want this to have happened. I am going to hold on to my past and choose my memories over my future, over myself.
(08:53)
And when we do that, we are limiting the possibilities of what we can have in our life. You find yourself always facing backwards and always stuck in this place where you are suffering longer than you need to. Pain in this lifetime. I can't remember who said it, Nope, can't remember it. I can't attribute to who this quote goes to, but pain in this lifetime is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Pain is those naturally occurring feelings that happen when we suffer a loss. But your suffering is when you keep thinking of the pain over and over and over again. You create it with your thoughts, you create suffering with your thoughts. And the longer that you hang onto the past and you don't live in the present moment, you are creating unnecessary suffering which will lead eventually to emotional exhaustion.
(09:59)
Your mental bandwidth will suffer. It's like it gets hijacked of your brain can't stay focused on the moment. It is always pulling you out to something else. Like it's always pulling you back to an old memory. You lose your effectiveness at work, in your relationships and at your life in general. And it stops your own personal growth and your own expansion, which leads to feeling like I don't have a purpose anymore. My life is stagnant, my life isn't moving forward. And ultimately the deepest, and in my personal opinion, the worst risk is that you risk losing yourself if you continue to hang onto your past. Because what happens is when you are choosing your past, you are choosing a ghost of a memory and to stay connected to that rather than connecting to yourself. And that can take a hit on your self-esteem and your self-trust, which makes it harder to take action in the future. And you might end up missing opportunities for new relationships, for new adventures, for new exciting challenges in your life because you'll be feeling like, I just don't have the bandwidth for this anymore. I'm too tired, I'm exhausted, I'm too stuck. I can't take something new. I'm not available for it.
(11:31)
So I want to transition here into what do we do about it? And I want to talk about the power of our decisions because most of us, and this was me until, I don't know, maybe a couple years ago, I was really underestimating how powerful a decision is and how much that actually makes me feel really good to make decisions in my life. You are and your life is made up of the decisions that you make and the word decide. It's the word it comes from in Latin, that word translates to cut. So when you make a decision, you are making a cut. You were saying, I want this, not that.
(12:25)
And the way I was living my life for a really long time was I was just letting my life happen to me and I wasn't making decisions. My decision was to not make decisions. Life just happens and I'm just along for the ride. And what happens with that is you feel this level of powerlessness of everything's just happening to me. I don't know where my life is going. And it also goes at a pretty slow pace. Things don't change very quickly. And when they do, sometimes there are these big cataclysmic changes. It's like life is having to shake you awake again.
(13:08)
And what I want you to start waking up to is that most of us are not making enough decisions in our life. We are not playing an active participant role in our own life. And what that looks like is starting to look at what do I actually want? Do I want this or that? Do I want to focus on my career right now or my next great adventure? Do I want to go back on the dating apps and start dating again? Am I ready for that? Or do I want to spend some time developing some new hobbies?
(13:42)
What does it look like to take care of myself? What do I want and need right now? Your decisions are where your power lies. It's you taking the wheel and driving forward towards the future you want and you can make decisions at every point in your life. You can make choices at every point in your life. You are never too old, too late to make a change, and this is your opportunity to stop waiting for life to happen to you. Stop giving away your power. You have so much more power over your life than you think it is. Just one decision away, one decision at a time. So how do you get over your ex? You might be asking like how does this all tie in? The way you get over your ex is you make a decision to be over your ex. It is actually as simple as deciding to get over your ex. And what that looks like is you decide, I am no longer going to be emotionally tied to that person or that relationship. That's a decision. I am no longer available to be tied to that.
(14:59)
That is no longer what I want my life to look like. You can make a decision of how do I want to make sure I state to that, right? So you might make a decision of I will take 100% responsibility for my emotions and I will care for myself while I'm going through my feelings. When I think you might also say, and I tell this to my clients all the time. When I think of my ex, I will think about myself twice for every thought I have about them. I think of myself twice. And that might look like, what do I need right now? What do I want right now?
(15:34)
It is as simple as saying I'm done. And of course I wish I could tell you that it's like a one and done. You make the decision, you never have to do it again. But you make the decision of this is what I stand for in my life and your brain, the way that it works is it will pull back to old habits, right? Just like if you've ever driven the same way to work every day and then all of a sudden you decide, I'm going to take a new way to work. And if you go on autopilot, you're going to go the old way because you have so much repetition doing that over and over and over again. You have to consciously take the new way for a little while, while that becomes a habit. So this decision needs you to consciously pay attention for a little while and create new habits to support your decision. So one new habit might be, every time I think of my ex, I will think about myself twice. That's a new habit. It might also be you notice yourself bringing up old memories and you decide, I am going to support my new decision and I will tell myself, no, we don't do that anymore. And you practice. What does it look like to let go of that thought?
(16:52)
I don't have to hang onto it. I don't have to keep going down that road of thinking about the memories. I can pivot and put my attention elsewhere. So some things you might want to think about as you're building these new habits that will support your decision. You might want to think about how do I want to respond to myself when I do think about my ex? How do I want to refocus myself? Do I want to think about my emotions caring for my emotions? Do I want to think about my physical comfort? Do I want to do something that would care for myself? Do I want to think about work? Do I want to focus on building my next great chapter in my life? Those are some questions I want you to be asking yourself to support this decision in.
(17:45)
I also want you to know that sometimes it does take your heart a little longer to heal than it takes your mind. So your mind will be making this decision and your heart will have a period of time. It may, I can't say that it will because different. So your heart may have a period of time where it feels like it's playing catch up, right? Where your head knows like it's over, but your heart still feels emotionally tied. And what that needs is you just have to care for yourself. You have to soothe yourself. You step in and you tell yourself, I know this hurts right now. I know this is hard. It can be true that we are deciding to be over our ex right now and it can still hurt. Two things can be true. I can be done and I might still have some feelings that are catching up. That's okay. How can I show up for myself right now? How can I care for myself with these feelings?
(18:50)
It's really interesting to explore how can it be true that I can be healing and over my ex at the same time? How is that possible that two things can be true? It is possible, but how is it possible for you? So when you make this decision of deciding I am moving on, you are giving yourself the space you need to heal and under the best possible conditions, there's no more holding onto what ifs. There's just giving yourself clarity and closure. No loose ends, no wondering, right? All of that's gone because you made a decision that I'm moving on, that I am done.
(19:37)
And when you have clarity and when you have closure, you can be in the present moment. Your brain isn't somewhere else, your body isn't somewhere else, you can just be in the present moment and deal with it. Instead of trying to escape or fantasize or bring up old memories and go somewhere else in your mind, which just creates a lot of friction and a lot of wasting of energy and creating suffering. What you get to do is you get to direct all that energy that could have been put towards resistance or suffering is you get to direct that energy to what does it look like to care for myself right here, right now? Or what does it look like to start my new chapter? That is a much better way to harness your energy because it's fueling you. It is fueling your esteem, your self-trust, your future.
(20:36)
All we have is this moment, the past is over. The future hasn't happened yet. So we have to bring yourself to being here and now because that's actually the secret of how you get good at life. It's how you create a future for yourself is you take care of yourself here and now. And that is also how you get better at dealing with change. So that's how you get over your ex. That's how you're going to get over your ex just by listening to this episode. You decide to, if you are making a decision that you are over your ex, I want to create a club, I want to create a movement, I want you to come on over to my Facebook group and I'll put the link in there, join it. It's free. I go live in there all the time with new tips and new tricks and new insights on how to help you get over your x. I want you to tell me, I made the decision today, and you can say the date, this will come out on November 11, 11, 11. I make the decision today that I am over my ex. I want to hear from you. Come on over to the group, join me there and let's make this a movement. Let's all decide together right here, right now. I'm done.
(22:00)
And I want you to also sit with that if you listened, if you were with me on this, if you've made the decision right now, notice what shifted inside you. How do you feel? What is present? Is there a little hum of excitement of possibility? There might also be fear. It's okay. There could be a mix of emotions and it's all okay because you're not alone. I'm here beside you. Alright, my friends, that's our episode for today. I would love to hear from you. Come on over to the Facebook group, tell me you're done. Tell me how you enjoyed this episode, and I can't wait to connect with you further.