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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.
(00:44)
Hello everybody. Welcome to breakup pep Talks. This is Sarah Curnoles your breakup bestie. I am feeling a little under the weather today, so I know I'm getting this out late. I've had this sore throat and it is knocking me down for the count a little bit. It's a little hard to talk, but this is really important this week. This is something I really needed to get this message out because I think a lot of people really need to hear this and people have been asking for it. So today we're talking about how to find your way back to yourself after a breakup. And it's because I hear so many people come to me and say they feel like they lost themself in their relationship and that the relationship became such a big part of their identity, that when that ended, they felt really lost and they didn't know who they are anymore.
(01:41)
And so today what I'll be talking about is more about rediscovering yourself, reconnecting with yourself, and even maybe reinvention of yourself. If there's a new version of you that wants to come out, it's not just going to be about recovery. So I have been working with a client recently and he came to me a couple, it's been a couple of years since his breakup. And it's not that he's not over her, he just doesn't feel like himself. He's totally lost all of his mojo and doesn't really want to be dating, doesn't feel like he's showing up as a great dad, and it's really kind of struggling in his business. And when we really got to talking about it, his ex-wife was hypercritical of him and it just made him feel so small. But he always saw himself as being the good husband and being a great father to his kids.
(02:41)
And even though maybe the marriage wasn't great, his identity of being the good husband and the good dad were the drivers for him for staying and trying to make that relationship work for so long, which I totally understand. But he had lost all of his motivation and passion and I don't dunno what else to call it other than deve, as they say in France of your zest for life. And so we started working together and helping him reconnect back to himself and back to his own strengths. And the funny thing is, after just a couple sessions, he was seeing these really major, major breakthroughs and had a huge business win. I can't say details because it still hasn't been announced, but he surpassed his wildest dreams in his business for something that he had wanted to achieve. And that's the magic of what happens when we reclaim parts of ourself that we've lost in a relationship and we begin to wake up to the power of who we are deep down inside.
(04:01)
Because the thing is, your best self didn't come out because of the relationship. And it actually had very, very little to do with the relationship that's always been inside of you all along. And whether his not best self was in that relationship, and it really did push him down my client, but a lot of people were like, how do I get back to being my best self again? I feel like my relationship really brought out the best in me. Well, here's the thing, relationships are our mirrors. They're reflecting back to you what is already inside you. So they are not the magic special sauce here. You are the special sauce, you are the magic, and you are just as capable of bringing that out for yourself as your ex was while you were in your relationship, they were maybe just showing something to you that maybe you hadn't seen before and helping you to see it with new eyes.
(05:12)
And so I don't want you to be focusing on everything that you've lost because of the breakup. What we're really going to do is reframe what are you gaining or how were you growing? Because what that can be is the breakup. You can use that as a tool to look at, well, what were the best aspects of myself? What are the parts of me that I want to cultivate and grow so that I am bringing it out on my own without that relationship? And so here's the good news, if you are in a lot of pain or a lot of suffering right now, I want to tell you there is a positive side to that. And the positive side is that pain is what causes us to start to change most of the time. For most human beings, we don't really change on our own by ourself without some sort of prompt.
(06:18)
And the most effective prompt to get us to change is pain, right? I mean, if you touch a hot stove and it hurts bad enough, you're not going to do it again. That's a change in behavior as a result of pain. And so what if the pain of this can be used to help you to grow into the next level of yourself? And this is really just the prompt to get started because you're naturally going to want to look for relief from the pain. And you can go the route of talking about it for hours and hours. You could go the route of numbing it or you can choose new behaviors that will bring new feelings and new memories so that you can feel more powerful. And this is really, if there's a message I wish I could get out to the entire world, it's that you don't need to wait for time to heal your wounds and you don't need to talk about it for hours and hours.
(07:24)
You actually really need to just focus on, of course, healing the pain and feeling the feelings. That is part of it. I'm not denying that. But also you need to be really focused on yourself and what do you want this breakup to mean for your life? And what do you want going forward? How can this help you grow in love with yourself more into more of your favorite version of yourself? Let this be you reclaiming your life. So when we talk about reclaiming, I want to start by giving you a little prompt that you can take to your journal. So I want you to ask yourself, what parts of myself did I abandon in that relationship? Were there certain friends that you stopped hanging out with music you stopped listening to or activities you stopped doing because your ex didn't like it? Or maybe clothes that you stopped wearing because your ex didn't like it, or a specific perfume or scent?
(08:35)
There's so much that we give up in the name of compromise, and this is your opportunity to look back at yourself before the relationship and say, what were the things I really loved that I want to bring back into my life on purpose? So I want you to create a come home to me list. And so this is going to be your list of activities or people or things that make you feel like yourself, that light you up from the inside. And I know for me it was things like going for really long walks, doing lots of travel, going to the gym and working out really hard. Those were all activities that my ex didn't really want to participate in. And I did less of it because I was trying to spend more time with him. And so I compromised and let go of some of my favorite activities and chose to be with him more.
(09:40)
Or if we did travel, we didn't travel the way that I like where I get dressed in the morning and I go out for the entire day and I wander and just explore and follow my senses, and he hated that. And so being able to do that again, of travel without an agenda and just explore and come home at the end of the day just totally exhausted and worn out from all the wonderful walking and exploring. Anyway, I digress. See, this is the vibe that you want to go for though of. I naturally got excited just talking about it. And I know that there are things that are just as exciting and will light you up just as much.
(10:25)
So that's part of reclaiming yourself as you're going to create a come home to me list of activities or things or people that you are going to feel like you're coming home to yourself. I also want to talk about the big power of what happens when you spend a weekend alone and you get through it or you go to the movies alone or a concert or any of those things that maybe you used to do with that person. Maybe they're shared activities, but they're activities that you still really love going to the beach. So there's a lot of power in saying, my ex doesn't get the beach. I am not giving that up in this breakup. Sure, we had good memories there, but now I am going to reclaim that and I am going to be with myself in this thing that I love because it brought me joy even before the relationship happened or getting through a weekend by yourself or going to the movies alone.
(11:27)
And that power of I did that and I'm okay. I didn't die, I survived. That might sound really dramatic of I didn't die because I went to the movies alone. But it feels that way sometimes of wondering what's everybody thinking? Am I a loser for going to the movies alone? Which none of that is true. There is something really powerful about a person who decides to go and enjoy a movie by themself and be in the pleasure of the experience. So what are the things that you need to reclaim for yourself or that you need to do that are going to help you to feel really powerful of like, yeah, I can get through a weekend alone. I don't need the distraction of a hookup, or I don't need to spend every moment out of my house, but I got through it and I am okay.
(12:21)
I survived that. And what are the activities that maybe you did with your ex that you want to reclaim together? I mean, sorry, you want to reclaim for yourself that those were things that you used to do together that you enjoyed, but you want to keep them for yourself. And I like to call this sort of my reclaiming list of I live in Baltimore and so does my, I'm not leaving this city just because he still lives here. You don't get to claim my city where I grew up and I have great memories here. And so for these things where it was a shared thing like a favorite restaurant or a hobby or like I said, a city or going to the beach now becomes your job to reclaim that for yourself by intentionally creating new memories. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who went on a bike ride that she used to do with her ex, and she took a friend with her and they made a plan of like, we're not going to talk about my ex because I'm here to create new memories. And so even though that was challenging for her because she's still very much in a morning period where she feels like all she wants to do is talk about it, she really did push herself to stretch a little bit and do what felt uncomfortable by talking about other things and making new memories, laughing with her friend. So I want you to know that there is such a sense of peace and power when you learn to just be with yourself. And no one can take that away Once you have it, it doesn't go anywhere.
(14:04)
Okay? So the next thing I want to talk about is what happens when we have an emotional trigger that comes up and how do we use that to our advantage? And so when I'm talking about an emotional trigger, I want you to notice where are you thinking? I'm never going to find anybody that loves me that much again. I'm never going to find anybody that hot. I'm a loser. I'm a failure. I'm so lonely finding those phrases in your brain that keep coming up, that are making you feel like crap. Okay? So it might be something like, I'm never going to find anybody who gets me, right? And so that one was a really painful one for me, and I hear it a lot from a lot of my clients. No one's ever going to get me like my ex did. And that one caused a lot of pain.
(15:06)
So what we want to do is we want to rewrite that. We want to rewire this in your brain. And one of the most helpful things to do is to look to your past. Has anybody, not even in a romantic context, but has anybody ever understood you that way? It could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be a mentor or a teacher, but somebody who's understood you deeply in a way where you feel really understood and seen and heard. If it has happened before, it can happen again. And honestly, you could even say, because I did date somebody who got me. It's happened once. So it's far more likely to happen again.
(15:53)
That brings in a little bit of hope, and that is a really powerful phrase that you can use with a lot of these thoughts of if it happened once, it can happen again. I also really like the thought that I said earlier of I am the magic special sauce. They weren't the magic special sauce in the relationship. I was bringing my magic to that relationship and I deserve somebody who is going to love and appreciate what I bring and who's going to want to keep that around. Another really painful thought that I hear a lot is they were my person. They were the love of my life. Well, I would like to flip that into a power phrase of they could not possibly be the love of my life if they chose to leave. The love of my life will choose to stay.
(16:45)
I mean, right? That's true. By definition, if it is the love of your life, they're not leaving. They're going to be in your life. It's in the name love of your life, in your life. So I want you to play with some of these phrases and it can really help to say if it's happened once, it can happen again. I'm the magic secret sauce here. The love of my life isn't going to choose to leave me. You can also look at it. It's really easy to start comparing ourselves to others and think everybody else has it all figured out and we're the one that's failing. But you can also use that as positive evidence of if it can happen for other people, why not me? If it can happen for others, it can happen for me. Other people aren't any more special than you. They don't have anything different that's making them live a easier life.
(17:49)
You have everything you need. Okay? So I want you to also learn how to borrow the good stuff that really attracted you to your ex. So this one is probably a little specific, I should say for a lot of my clients. I find when they are listing the good qualities of their ex, like they were funny, they were charming, they could really work a room at a party. They have great friends. They made me feel so fun. We always did fun things together. We were always laughing when I really dig in. Those are qualities that my client wishes they had in themself. And it's interesting. Usually what attracts us to another person is something that we wish to cultivate in our ourself. So this is a real power move here of getting clear of what was it that attracted me to my ex, or what did I really like about the relationship?
(18:56)
Are those qualities I wish I had more of in my own life? This, I'm telling you, this is such a power move because then you stop dating people from a place of lack of like, I need you to fill this gap that I think I have in myself. You actually start cultivating those things that you really want. You start to create them for yourself in your own life. And I'm going to talk about how in just a second. But then you can date somebody, not because they're filling in missing parts of yourself, but because you truly like to be around them and they inspire you and they help you be the best version of yourself, right? That's a totally different place. Rather than, I need you to fill in these gaps of my personality. So the ways that you're going to do this power move and claim these things for yourself is you're going to get clear on what they are first, by looking at what are the qualities that I was really attracted to in my ex, and what were those best parts of me that that relationship brought out? And maybe that's, I felt really attractive and sexy. I felt valued. I was always laughing. We were always having fun. He was so silly. My ex could just make anybody laugh.
(20:25)
They were great at parties, people were always talking to him, whatever it is. And you're going to have that list and you're going to take a teeny tiny step of how can I bring more fun to my life? How can I learn to let go of a little bit of social anxiety at a party? Maybe I'll just talk to one person. So you're going to take it bitty baby steps and start building these in your life because if that's what attracted you to the person, that's what you want in your life and it's your life, not theirs. So you get to do this for yourself in your own way and becoming more of your favorite version of yourself by learning from your ex instead of being stuck on what you've lost, right? You could just focus on how I've lost all that stuff from my life, and this is why this is a power move. Or you take it and you say, I'm claiming this for my own life as something that I want.
(21:28)
See the difference. And so the qualities that you see, they're not exclusive to them, it's not unique to them at all. You can have those in yourself, and this can be your next chapter. So I want to leave you with this thought of that you did not lose yourself. You just temporarily disconnected, but you are coming home now. This is your invitation to come home to yourself and you are returning as a wire freer more whole person than you've ever been. And it's because of the relationship ending. This is all happening because of the breakup. If the breakup hadn't happened, you might not have to go through this ever. So what an actual blessing that you're getting this opportunity. So I want to hear from you. How is this resonating? What did it bring up for you? Send me a DM on Instagram and I'd love to hear more of your story.
(22:29)
And if you want to take this work even deeper, I am currently taking one-on-one clients. If you want the accountability of somebody to talk to every single week to help you uncover where you're stuck or where you're holding yourself back, or where you're focusing more on the loss than the potential gain and growth, I am here for you. That's what I do with my clients each and every single week. And you have somebody who listens to you all the time no matter what without judgment. And you get to show up totally as yourself and have somebody coach you through all the bumps and the ups and the downs of this. So I want you to use the link that I'm going to put in the show notes and claim a free hour of my time where we're going to go through a consultation process where I'm going to understand you on a very deep level and I am going to help create a solution for you. And you can decide if working with me as your coach is the right fit. Go to the link below and get yourself signed up today. I can't wait to talk to you more. I can't wait to hear from you, and we are going to really make this breakup the best thing that ever happened to you. Alright, my friends, have a good week and take care.