After a breakup, we often find ourselves replaying happy memories and wishing we could get it back. But here is the secret: you aren't actually longing for your ex; you’re longing for the sense of aliveness you felt in their presence. In this episode, we explore why your brain outsources your magic to others and how to reclaim your role as the Wizard of Oz in your own life. Learn how to stop chasing the dopamine hit of a past relationship and start cultivating a life that feels electric, even while folding laundry.
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Speaker 1 (01:37):
Maybe you're replaying all those happy memories and you're thinking, "I really wish I could get my ex back. I really wish I could have those good times again. Why did I have to go screw everything up? What went wrong? How did I fail?" If this is resonating where you feel like you are spending a lot of time thinking back to your ex and wishing things could be good like that again or sad because you're thinking like maybe I'm never going to have it that good again. And what you're really wishing, you're like, "Man, I just wish I could be unbothered. I wish I wasn't so upset every time I thought about this. And if only I could have that feeling of being the one that won the breakup, right? I got into a relationship first or I'm happy again. I just want to be happy again." It's okay if these are all the thoughts and the feelings that you're having.
(02:43)
Even if you don't even know how to get where you want to go, you just know I want to get there. This episode's for you. I'm going to show you what you've really been longing for and how to get the thing that you want.
(03:01)
Here is the truth. You are not missing your ex. You're missing the way that you felt when you are around them. You are missing the version of yourself that felt totally alive when you were with them. We are all chasers of that high. We love feeling good. And you are probably thinking back to some of those good times, remembering how good it was to feel when you were with them, whether it was after some really great sex, or it was in those early days where you just couldn't get enough of each other and you'd spend hours looking into each other's eyes or looking at the stars or going on walks talking about everything and nothing.
(03:53)
You keep thinking of how good it was. What happened subconsciously was that your brain associated this person with you feeling good and you felt really alive when you were with them. And so it associated that feeling of aliveness with being with them. And right now, in this post breakup place that you're at, your dopamine's really low. You haven't had that hit of pleasure in a long time. It's natural science. When we go through a breakup, we actually have a depletion in our feel good chemicals and hormones and we haven't had those good feelings. And because you are reaching to feel that way again, you kick up memories of the last time you felt that way because it does feel like a lot of effort to try to create that on your own. So you kick back memories of the last time you felt that way.
(05:01)
And you start to think, "I'm only going to feel that good if I'm with them, or it's only accessible because it was them." This isn't true. It's not true that the good feelings came from your ex. This is actually faulty wiring in your brain. The person is not responsible for you feeling good. It didn't come from them ever. At best, that person is a mirror of yourself. They were showing you a side of yourself that you were able to access those good feelings. They brought out a side of you that was available to have fun and to connect and to feel good and alive, but it was always you all along. It was always within you. It did not come from them. It didn't start with them. They were just revealing something to you that maybe you hadn't seen before, you hadn't seen in a long time.
(06:10)
They were waking something up, but it was always inside of you. I want you to think about the Wizard of Oz story. There's a reason why we love this story and why it has been around for I think a hundred years. I think it's been around for over a hundred years since the first book. It's really a coming of age story. Girl leaves home because she feels unseen and unloved and nobody understands her, so she runs away and she is caught up in this tornado and she gets thrown into a new world where all she wants is she just wants to go home. She wants to go back to feeling the way she used to. And everyone says, "The wizard will fix this. Go see the wizard." So she goes. She goes on this quest and along the way, she meets new friends who become her allies to help her to meet the wizard.
(07:02)
And along the way, she is experiencing these challenges that come from the wicked witch, who's trying to take her magic from her.
(07:11)
And along the way, she's having to use her friends. She's having to use her smarts. She's having to play with this situation to find her way through to finally get to the wizard. But at the end, the wizard reveals he doesn't have any power. He can't help her get home, but he is able to provide some tokens. So the scarecrow gets a diploma to show that he's smart, but he has that immediate ... He's able to know the root of MC squared, which he knew all along. Didn't come from that diploma. And the tin man gets a clock to represent his heart, but he says, "I know I have a heart because I can feel that it's breaking." And the lying gets a medal to ward his courage, which he had courage all along and he was expressing it. And Dorothy, he can't give her home.
(08:00)
And Dorothy is told that all she has to do to go home is click her heels three times and say there's no place like home and that she has had the magic inside of her all along to do that at any time she wanted. And when they ask the good witch, Gelinda, "Why didn't you just tell her that at the beginning?" The good witch replies, "Because she wouldn't have believed me. " She had to go through all those experiences to have an appreciation for what she truly wanted and what she really desired. And when she set her heart on her true desire of what she really wanted, then she could access it quite easily because she was clear.
(08:49)
See, she didn't even like home at first. She just needed to figure out all along the way what she really wanted and she was able to see what was true for her and these struggles, these challenges helped her to grow up. It helped her into a new version of herself. And this is really true for all of us. Whether you're going through a breakup or you're going through something really challenging, these hard times are our opportunity to wake up, to look at our life and say, "What do I want to keep in my life? And what do I want to let fall away? What version of me is trying to emerge in this? And what do I want my life to look like?
(09:41)
" You're going through an identity change with your breakup. You were a person in that relationship with a person who was mirroring to you what felt good, what made you come alive. Okay. That relationship, that container has ended. And so now it's your responsibility to create your own container and your own way of accessing your feelings of aliveness. That person isn't anything special. Sometimes we get really stuck on that of like, "It was just that person. It takes me so long to find somebody I connect with and that I feel like I really click with. " Not necessarily. You were just able to get what they were reflecting back to you. You were able to see that and connect to it and bring it out and amplify it in yourself. That aliveness is inside of you all the time. You can feel alive while you're folding your laundry.
(10:39)
You can feel alive when you're on a bad date because it's inside of you. It doesn't come from the other person. They are not the Wizard of Oz. You are. You have the power inside of you all along.
(10:58)
We just need to learn how to tap into that feeling because we're not taught how to. We're not taught how to feel alive at any moment and how to feel alive even when things feel hard. And so I was having a conversation with a friend today. We were talking about that documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light about the poet, Andrea Gibson. And Andrea went through most of their life with depression and feeling like they didn't want to be a part of the world. And it took getting a terminal cancer diagnosis for them to start finally living their life. And once they felt that they were going to die, they started tapping into a sense of aliveness.
(11:47)
You don't have to wait for a terminal cancer diagnosis to feel alive. That was just what they needed in order to wake up. This can be your wake up moment. Aliveness doesn't come from another person. Aliveness comes from you. You have the ability to access it at any time. And sometimes aliveness does not feel good. I'm sorry to say it. It doesn't feel good sometimes because half of life isn't going to feel good. Half of life is going to be grief and heartbreak and pain and despair and disappointment and jealousy and anger. We haven't been taught how to deal with those feelings, and that's one of the conversations I have so much here. So if you've been here a while, you've heard me talk about it, but learning how to process those feelings and to tap into our sense of feeling alive, even when feeling pain, even when feeling disappointment, that's the magic right there.
(12:54)
Not needing another person to pull magic out of you. That is next level. But I feel like that's what we are here on this planet to do is to figure out how do I tap into my own sense of aliveness no matter what.
(13:10)
And when you're able to do that, the life that you can create from there is truly unbelievable. It's the kind where you're like, "I didn't even know I could do that. " And man, wouldn't that be great? Think about, think about this. If you could wave a magic wand or if you had a wizard of Oz who could do anything, what would your life look like if you could be in touch with that sense of aliveness, that same aliveness that maybe you felt the beginning of your relationship or after some really great sex? That sense of being fully alive and fully in your body and fully present. If you could create a whole life out of that feeling, what would your life look like?
(14:00)
What would be different from the way that it is now? What would be the same? What would come with you? This is how you go from not just surviving in life, but actually thriving. And if you want something that is different, that means we're going to do something different to get that. This is your wake up call. Stop outsourcing your magic in other people. There is no Wizard of Oz. Don't peek behind the curtain, right? Isn't that the line that the Wizard of Oz says? It's like, don't look behind the curtain because they don't want you to know the truth.
(14:49)
The magic is inside of you. That shift can happen right now. This is your invitation to change something. And if this conversation really resonated with you, I have something really special I'm creating and I'm going to be announcing and talking about it soon. But if you know already, man, I want to be able to tap into that sense of aliveness. I want to be able to know how to feel alive even when I'm feeling crappy. I want to know how to do that, how to process these feelings that I've been shamed for my whole life. I want to know how to go through those. I want to know how to create a life that blows my own mind. If you already know that that resonates for you, I want to talk to you because you are exactly the kind of person I want to be working with.
(15:35)
I'm building something really special. I haven't publicly announced it yet. I'm going to. It's going to be for a select group of 10 women who really want this for themselves and want to build it with a sisterhood of other women. If you know that that sounds like something you might be interested in, you want to have a conversation to explore what it is, I'm not publicly announcing it yet, but you can get first dibs. I'm going to do a post about this on Instagram, but you can comment on the post or DM me. Tell me the secret. All right? If you want to know the secret, you got to ask, tell me the secret, and I will send it to you with a really special offer and a one-time price that isn't happening ever, ever again. And if you're not quite sure if that's your jam yet, come follow me on Instagram anyway and keep watching.
(16:30)
Let me know when you have felt you're most alive. So my Instagram is @sarahcurnoles. You can find me there and we can come play over in that space. All right, my friends, that's what we have today, and I cannot wait to keep this conversation and to keep talking some more. Have a great day.