What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t had enough time to heal? Sarah breaks down why waiting for yourself to magically feel better can keep you stuck and why real healing requires intentional action, emotional processing, and a commitment to moving forward. She shares what helped her move through her own breakup and why having the right support can dramatically change the experience. If you’re tired of wondering when you’ll finally feel like yourself again, this episode is your invitation to stop waiting and start moving.
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Speaker 1:
Right. Okay, I am so happy to have you all here with me today. Let's go ahead and get the chat going. I always love to start with let me know where you are calling from and one word for how you're feeling today. What's the emotion present? Hi, Michelle. Hi, Sarah. You're so welcome. I mean, I'm so happy to be here. Sarah's in Detroit. Hello, Erin's in Tennessee. Annie's in Wyoming feeling anxious. Welcome to the anxious. Misty from New Jersey. Sarah's feeling off but functional. Ooh, please help me pronounce your name. I'm going to guess, is it Tui? If you want to unmute yourself and let me know. I think it's important to get names right.
If you can't unmute, that's also okay. I'd make a good effort. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, my name is Tui. Tui? Yes. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Terry's in Kentucky feeling good. Gina from Wake Forest, feeling incredibly sad and angry. I love it. Bring it. All of that's welcome here. Michelle, West Virginia, feeling excited to learn more after yesterday. Yes, that's amazing. All right. I know I have familiar names and faces. Who was here with me yesterday? Give me a two. If you're here for the second time, give me a one if you're with me for the first time. Erins, I'm feeling good. Just can't get her out of my mind. Look at all these twos. Two, two, two, two. We got some ones. Amazing. Well, welcome everybody. Even if somehow you didn't sign up for day one, the way that my email system goes, you're going to get all the recordings, so don't worry.
You're going to get yesterday's recording. I highly recommend that you listen to it, even though you'll listen after today. Yesterday was, I think it was transformational. I think what we do on day one of this is really special. I just listened. So good, Gina. Amazing. Good. Great. Oh, I didn't even think about that. That could be really cool to stack them and listen to them back to back to back. That's really exciting. Amazing. All right. I've got the recording going. I got my notes here. We're all here. People will be rolling in for the next few minutes as they start joining. Just a little bit of housekeeping reminders, please feel free to use the chat to capture your aha moments. That moment that you're like, yes, that thing that Sarah just said was really incredible. I want to remember that. So you can use the chat to remember certain moments.
You can use the chat to ask questions, and you can use the chat to answer when I ask you questions. All right? So we're going to do a lot of interaction with the chat today. I love seeing your faces. This is amazing. Thank you all so much for being here. This is really great. Okay, so I want to do a quick review of what we did in session one. Session one was all about creating some space by letting go. I use this analogy of if you're going to redecorate your living room, it's really hard to redecorate if you don't clear out some of that furniture first. You got to have some space before you can bring anything new in. So yesterday was about how do we clear some space?
Those of you who were here yesterday or who listened to session one, who cleared a little bit of space, who created a little space for themself? You can put me in the chat. And sometimes it happens overnight. Maybe you didn't feel it live, but you woke up this morning and you're like, I'm feeling a little different. Awesome, Bob says me. So good. So good. Good. Good, good, good, good, good. So glad to have, so glad to hear that. And if it didn't happen for you, that's okay. Everybody's different, which is why this work is really wonderful.
Sarah says yes, and the mind is hard. Yeah, we were saying this at the end of yesterday when we clear some space, that space wants to get filled in again. And we have to start setting those boundaries. We're going to talk about that a little bit today, but start learning those boundaries of what do I have to put in place? What mental boundaries? What emotional boundaries do I need to put in place so that crap doesn't get filled into this space? It's kind of like we have to take the trash out every once in a while in the kitchen so the kitchen doesn't get smelly, but you don't want to bring the old trash back. You want to keep that outside. Okay? Mr. Wolf, don't worry, you're going to get the recording. So anybody who registered for day two still gets the recording from day one because I love y'all like that.
If you're here for the first time, if we are meeting for the first time, my name is Sarah Kernols. I'm a certified life coach. I help people move on after a breakup or a divorce so that they can rebuild a life where they feel like they get to feel alive again. I was working with one of my clients yesterday. We were talking about that feeling of aliveness and how when you're in a relationship, you really can feel, you feel alive. And we have a lot, we're going to be talking about this pretty much. It's one of the things we'll talk about today, but we feel like this period of time when we're in the breakup, when we're in the grief, when we're in the sadness, we tend to label this as bad or wrong. I shouldn't feel this way. How many people have that feeling like I shouldn't be feeling this bad or I should be over it by now?
Yeah, Maryanne says, Me. Oh yeah. Oh, you are in the right place. We are talking about this today. Yep. All right. Great. Okay. Yeah. Yesterday we cleared space. Today, what we are talking about is we are going to stop waiting for your ex, for circumstances, for things outside of you to change. And we are going to take back your power so that you are in the driver's seat of your life. This is how we move forward. We put you squarely in the position of power. And when I talk about power, my definition is ability to influence. That's all that that means. Sometimes I think we get a little funky around what power is. Power is just the ability to influence. And wouldn't that be awesome to have the ability to influence yourself to be like, I'm going to decide what I react to. I'm going to decide how I feel today.
I'm going to decide how I move forward. Okay? So that is exactly what we are doing. And really when you think about it, when you have more space, we created some space. In that space, we're going to start to build awareness today. When you have space and awareness, that allows you to make choices. Choices are the number one way you're going to bring your power back. Okay?
Choices allow for change. And that's ultimately what we're here for. We're here for change. Okay. So I want to first talk about, I think that phrase, giving my power away, I think it gets thrown around a lot without much context or much understanding of what that actually means. All right. So who feels powerless right now? Go ahead and you can either raise your physical hand or you can put me in the chat. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Partly. Yep. Yep. Yeah. All right. I'm upset with myself. Uh-huh. A little bit. Great. That's awesome. Great. Everybody's in theorying places.
We want to start being able to direct your life in the direction that you want it to go. Yesterday when I was sharing my story, I was telling you about how I had this decision point after my breakup of I can either decide to do it the way that I'd always done my breakups in the past. And the way that I'd always done it in the past was where I felt very much, I felt powerless. I was weepy. I felt like I couldn't control what was going on. I couldn't make these decisions. It was just something that had happened to me and I could not influence where my life was going to go. And what that created was a temporary depression. And situational depression, I think is what they call it because it's not a clinical depression. It was situational where I would lose my focus.
I wouldn't be able to function at work or when I was in conversation with my friends. It was that low desire to do anything, and it would last for several months for me. So I had this opportunity of I could go that path again because I've done that in a breakup, or I could figure out another way. And when I decided to go that other way, really what I was saying was there has to be a way that I can direct my life so that I feel like I'm building my life, not somebody else's, or not somebody else's version of what my life should look like. I'm going to figure out how to come back from this breakup so that my life looks like me. All right? So I want to do a little check-in. I want to give some examples of what does it look like when we're giving our power away?
Who has said either internally in your head or in your journal, or maybe you've said it out loud, "I can't move on until they apologize." Yeah. Oh, this is so good. Yes, this chat's blowing up. I love this. A says, "I have no idea what my life should look like." That's okay. Sometimes we start before we're ready. You're in the right place. You're okay. You don't have to always know. What's that Martin Luther King Jr. quote, which is brilliant of, "You don't have to see the whole staircase in order to take the first step." Ani says, "I feel foolish for trying so long. I hear you. I hear you, and I feel you. Agreeing to do things that we don't want to do." Ooh, Michelle, that's a good example of loss of power. Elena says loss of safety. Yeah. Sarah says, "Allow a person to go over your boundaries." Emily says not.
Apologize. Give me some kind of closure. Totally. I was going to say the closure thing too. I need to have that one more conversation. I have to get closure from them.
One that I've been hearing a lot more recently is people have been telling me I can't be happy until I meet somebody new. I have to meet somebody new in order for me to move on. Or I can't feel good because they hurt me. I can't move forward because they wasted my time. Yeah. And if you have others, I love that you're contributing yours too of I need them in order to feel safe. Yeah. Emily, I can't even imagine meeting someone new right now. Totally. I get that too. Everybody has their own process with this. I hear you. So go ahead. If you have others, go ahead and drop them in.
Hang on. It seems like somebody came unmuted. One second. Okay, great. I don't want to be alone. I want my right person. Yeah. Okay, great. I missed what we had. Hypnosis is an abortion. Closers come up. Yeah. All right. Wonderful. Yeah. Each of those statements, all of this, this is so good. This is like a purge. I love it. We're taking the trash out right now. Each of those statements is putting your happiness in somebody else's pocket. It's saying, "I can't feel okay unless somebody out there does the right thing." And by the right thing, it's usually the thing defined in your own brain of what the right thing is. So I need them to behave in a certain way in order for me to be okay. This makes it really, really hard for you to feel in control of your life. If you're saying the outside world has to match what I see in my head in order for me to feel okay, no wonder we feel powerless.
No wonder. Because we can't control the outside world. We have literally zero control over what your ex does, what the rest of the world does. We cannot control that. So it feels really hard to feel good because we are. Who was it that said a loss of safety? Because that's exactly what it is. You're right. You aren't in control of what happens. All right? So no wonder we feel some powerlessness. I'm going to show one other way that we give away our power. And it's actually one, we planted this seed yesterday. The other sneaky way that we give away our power is when we are in resistance to what is. When we are in resistance to reality. What this sounds like is kind of how we started at the beginning. I shouldn't be crying. I should be over this by now.
I should be further along. I shouldn't be thinking about them anymore. Yeah. How many people have had one of those thoughts come up where it's like, I shouldn't be feeling this way. I shouldn't be thinking about them. I should be further along. I should be over this by now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that what you wanted me to repeat again, Bob? The resistance state one. Session one was all about creating some space by letting go. I use this analogy of if you're going to redecorate your living room, it's really hard to redecorate if you don't clear out some of that furniture first. You got to have some space before you can bring anything new in. So yesterday was about how do we clear some space?
Those of you who were here yesterday or who listened to session one, who cleared a little bit of space? Who created a little space for themself? You can put me in the chat. And sometimes it happens overnight. Maybe you didn't feel it live, but you woke up this morning and you're like, I'm feeling a little different. Awesome, Bob says me. So good. So good. Good. Good, good, good, good, good. So glad to have, so glad to hear that. And if it didn't happen for you, that's okay. Everybody's different, which is why this work is really wonderful.
Sarah says yes, and the mind is hard. Yeah. We were saying this at the end of yesterday when we clear some space, that space wants to get filled in again. And we have to start setting those boundaries. We're going to talk about that a little bit today, but start learning those boundaries of what do I have to put in place? What mental boundaries? What emotional boundaries do I need to put in place so that crap doesn't get filled into this space? It's kind of like we have to take the trash out every once in a while in the kitchen so the kitchen doesn't get smelly, but you don't want to bring the old trash back. You want to keep that outside. Okay? Mr. Wolf, don't worry, you're going to get the recording. So anybody who registered for day two still gets the recording from day one because I love y'all like that.
If you're here for the first time, if we are meeting for the first time. My name is Sarah Kernols. I'm a certified life coach. I help people move on after a breakup or a divorce so that they can rebuild a life where they feel like they get to feel alive again. I was working with one of my clients yesterday. We were talking about that feeling of aliveness and how when you're in a relationship, you really can feel, you feel alive. And we have a lot, we're going to be talking about this pretty much. It's one of the things we'll talk about today, but we feel like this period of time when we're in the breakup, when we're in the grief, when we're in the sadness, we tend to label this as bad or wrong. I shouldn't feel this way. How many people have that feeling like I shouldn't be feeling this bad or I should be over it by now?
Yeah, Maryanne says, me. Oh yeah. Oh, you are in the right place. We are talking about this today. Yep. All right. Great. Okay. Yeah. Yesterday we cleared space. Today, what we are talking about is we are going to stop waiting for your ex, for circumstances, for things outside of you to change. And we are going to take back your power so that you are in the driver's seat of your life. This is how we move forward. We put you squarely in the position of power. And when I talk about power, my definition is ability to influence. That's all that that means. Sometimes I think we get a little funky around what power is. Power is just the ability to influence. And wouldn't that be awesome to have the ability to influence yourself to be like, I'm going to decide what I react to. I'm going to decide how I feel today.
I'm going to decide how I move forward. Okay? So that is exactly what we are doing. And really, when you think about it, when you have more space, we created some space. In that space, we're going to start to build awareness today. When you have space and awareness, that allows you to make choices. Choices are the number one way you're going to bring your power back. Okay?
Choices allow for change. And that's ultimately what we're here for. We're here for change. Okay? So I want to first talk about, I think that phrase, giving my power away, I think it gets thrown around a lot without much context or much understanding of what that actually means. All right. So who feels powerless right now? Go ahead and you can either raise your physical hand or you can put me in the chat. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Partly. Yep. Yep. Yeah. All right. I'm upset with myself. Uh-huh. A little bit. Great. That's awesome. Great. Everybody's in varying places.
We want to start being able to direct your life in the direction that you want it to go. Yesterday when I was sharing my story, I was telling you about how I had this decision point after my breakup of I can either decide to do it the way that I'd always done my breakups in the past. And the way that I'd always done it in the past was where I felt very much, I felt powerless. I was weepy. I felt like I couldn't control what was going on. I couldn't make these decisions. It was just something that had happened to me and I could not influence where my life was going to go. And what that created was a temporary depression. And situational depression, I think is what they call it, because it's not a clinical depression. It was situational where I would lose my focus.
I wouldn't be able to function at work or when I was in conversation with my friends. It was that low desire to do anything, and it would last for several months for me. So I had this opportunity of I could go that path again because I've done that in a breakup, or I could figure out another way. And when I decided to go that other way, really what I was saying was there has to be a way that I can direct my life so that I feel like I'm building my life, not somebody else's, or not somebody else's version of what my life should look like. I'm going to figure out how to come back from this breakup so that my life looks like me. All right? So I want to do a little check-in. I want to give some examples of what does it look like when we're giving our power away?
Who has said either internally in your head or in your journal, or maybe you've said it out loud, "I can't move on until they apologize." Yeah. Oh, this is so good. Yes, this chat's blowing up. I love this. A says, "I have no idea what my life should look like." That's okay. Sometimes we start before we're ready. You're in the right place. You're okay. You don't have to always know. What's that Martin Luther King Jr. quote, which is brilliant of you don't have to see the whole staircase in order to take the first step. Ani says, "I feel foolish for trying so long. I hear you. I hear you, and I feel you. Agreeing to do things that we don't want to do. Ooh, Michelle, that's a good example of loss of power." Elena says, "Loss of safety." Yeah. Sarah says, "Allow a person to go over your boundaries." Emily says not.
Apologize. Give me some kind of closure. Totally. I was going to say the closure thing too. I need to have that one more conversation. I have to get closure from them.
One that I've been hearing a lot more recently is people have been telling me I can't be happy until I meet somebody new. I have to meet somebody new in order for me to move on. Or I can't feel good because they hurt me. I can't move forward because they wasted my time. Yeah. And if you have others, I love that you're contributing yours too of I need them in order to feel safe. Yeah. Emily, I can't even imagine meeting someone new right now. Totally. I get that too. Everybody has their own process with this. I hear you. So go ahead. If you have others, go ahead and drop them in.
Oh, hang on. It seems like somebody came unmuted. One second. Okay, great. I don't want to be alone. I want my right person. Yeah. Okay, great. I missed what we had. Abortion. Closers come up. Uh-huh. Yeah. All right. Wonderful. Yeah. Each of those statements, all of this, this is so good. This is like a purge. I love it. We're taking the trash out right now. Each of those statements is putting your happiness in somebody else's pocket. It's saying, "I can't feel okay unless somebody out there does the right thing." And by the right thing, it's usually the thing defined in your own brain of what the right thing is. So I need them to behave in a certain way in order for me to be okay.
This makes it really, really hard for you to feel in control of your life. If you're saying the outside world has to match what I see in my head in order for me to feel okay, no wonder we feel powerless. No wonder. Because we can't control the outside world. We have literally zero control over what your ex does, what the rest of the world does. We cannot control that. So it feels really hard to feel good because we are. Who was it that said a loss of safety? Because that's exactly what it is. You're right. You aren't in control of what happens. All right? So no wonder we feel some powerlessness.
I'm going to show one other way that we give away our power. And it's actually one, we planted this seed yesterday. The other sneaky way that we give away our power is when we are in resistance to what is. When we are in resistance to reality. What this sounds like is kind of how we started at the beginning. I shouldn't be crying. I should be over this by now. I should be further along. I shouldn't be thinking about them anymore. Yeah. How many people have had one of those thoughts come up where it's like, "I shouldn't be feeling this way. I shouldn't be thinking about them. I should be further along. I should be over this by now." Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that what you wanted me to repeat again, Bob, the resistance statements? Yeah. Okay, great. Yep. Totally. All right. The reason why this is an area that's sapping your power, sapping your power?
It's taking your power away. This is an area where you are burning away so much of your power and your energy because what we are doing is we are literally pushing away the reality of what is actually happening.
You don't have to like it. Here's the tricky thing. You don't have to like it in order to accept, "Huh, I'm feeling really sad right now. I'm thinking about my ex for the millionth time. It's been months and I'm still thinking about them." Right? Huh, that's actually what's happening. But when we say I shouldn't be, we are engaging in a fight with what is that we don't need to be fighting. You don't need to burn a second of your energy fighting the fact that it is happening. Because what happens is that you're just engaging in a fight that You're not going to win. Yeah, you're beating yourself up even more. Right. And that old saying is very true. What we resist persists. So think about it. I'm a geek in all kinds of ways. If you think about this in terms of physics, if you push against something, it's going to push back.
There's going to be an equal amount of force, an equal and opposite force. This is not how thoughts don't work in the way of like, well, if I just push my thoughts and feelings away, they'll just go away. It's not how they work. They push back. They get louder, they get bigger. They don't just go away because you push them. I wish they did. That would be amazing. Because I am a skilled pusher. I can push away my thoughts and feelings like the best of them, but they just come back stronger. They don't go away.
So who is ready to reclaim some of their power, to stop burning their energy, and to start feeling like they're in the driver's seat? Amazing, Maryanne. Yeah, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So good. Love it. I love this. Great. Okay. All right. All right. What I want us to all. There's a few principles to how we start to reclaim our power so that we are in the driver's seat. There are a few things I'm going to teach you today. The very first, and I think it's the most foundational. Your ability to heal, your ability to move on, your ability to feel good, your ability to create closure is not outside, it's inside.
You are incredibly capable. I'm saying this to each and every one of you. Okay? You are incredibly capable. You are incredibly powerful. We're going to learn how to use that capability and that power today because I bet nobody's taught you. But it all begins by knowing I have the ability to influence how I feel, what I create. Okay? You don't need anybody else's participation for this. Just your own. Okay? This is where we start. That's right, Michelle. Nope. Yep. Nobody taught me until I found the right teacher. I had to find the right teacher for this. So you are in good hands.
All right. So what I want to do first is I want you to put your hand on your heart. Yesterday we created some space. I'm going to very purposefully put something in this space that we created. I want you to close your eyes. And in your mind or out loud, whatever you're comfortable with, I want you to say, "I call all my power back to me now." And you can repeat that. I call all my power back to me now. You can imagine if you're a visual person, you can imagine sort of waves of power bringing that back into your body, bringing it back into your heart, bringing it back into your mind. All your power that maybe you left and you scattered in all these places in your relationship at work, in the road rage you had in the car. You can call all that power back to you right now.
Beautiful. Great. All right, let's get to work. So the number one way you can start influencing more power in your life is with decisions. We're going to get in a habit of making decisions. Because what most people do, they think that a decision is when we say, "Well, I'd like to move on. I'd like to get over this." That would be nice. Wouldn't it be nice if that just happened? Yeah, that would be nice. That's not how decisions work. Decisions are literally saying, "I want this, not that." It's taking a stand. The root word, where the word decide comes from, the root, the translation of that root word is to cut. So when we make a decision, we are literally cutting away something.
This is incredibly powerful because when you choose, it's not that, it's going to be this. You are declaring what you want. I think people get tripped up with decisions and they put a lot of pressure on, it has to be the right decision. I have to make a good decision. But how do we know when we make a good decision? We only know after we've made the decision. You can't know for sure. You can't be a hundred percent certain when you make a decision if it's good or bad until after, until you have the results of the decision.
So we can't ever look for what's the good decision here? Because you're never going to know before you make the decision. And the incredible thing about getting into a habit of making decisions is that if you make a decision that maybe gives you a result you don't like, you get to make another decision. That's all. Jesus make another decision. Very few decisions that we make, there are a few, but very few are permanent. Most decisions, you can just make another one. If you decide that you're going to move cities and you pack up your life and you don't like it, it might be inconvenient, but you can choose to move again.
That's just another decision. You start dating somebody. I did this. I started dating after several months after my breakup because I thought I was ready. And I was like, oh, guess what? I'm not ready. I actually need some more time for just me. I want to focus on myself longer. I'm going to make a decision to do that. So examples of decisions that we're talking about. Well, actually, let me stay in the abstract again for a minute longer. I want to stay in the abstract before we start talking specifically about what we're going through right now. Okay.
I want you to think about decisions that maybe you've made over the course of your life that have nothing to do with this breakup. Maybe don't involve as much pressure as I'm packing up and I'm moving cross country. Some of the smaller ones. I used to be a smoker. I decided to quit. I decided to quit smoking. I decided to start a business. I decided to book a vacation. That's such a good example. I've never used that one before, but think about that. What you're saying is that time on the calendar from that day to that day, I'm deciding that is vacation. It is not work time. That is vacation time. So I'm cutting away of that is not work. That is vacation.
So the reason why I say we want to make more decisions is because a decision shapes you or it helps to create an identity. So think about this in terms of I quit smoking. When you say, I decided to quit smoking, and you've made that decision and you are committing to the decision, you start taking actions as somebody who doesn't smoke and you're building new habits, you're creating new routines. And eventually as that strengthens, you become a non-smoker. You are a non-smoker now. So that if somebody asked you, "Hey, do you want to smoke? Do you want to have a cigarette? Do you want to step outside and smoke with me?" You say, "No, thanks. I'm not a smoker." There's no waffling there. There's no like, "Well, maybe you already made the decision. I'm a non-smoker." So I'm reading in the chat too. So Annie and Elena, I want you to also recognize you are here in community.
I know it's not the same. I know that an online community doesn't feel the same as being in person with somebody, but you are taking steps. This practice of showing up in community is a practice of saying, I am somebody who wants a social life. I am somebody who wants to be around like-minded people. That's a decision.
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So your decisions, you could see even this, like I was just saying, I didn't even do it intentionally. Your decision to show up and attend a meetup, right? To be in a class is saying, I'm somebody who wants community. I didn't even mean to do it that way, but that is creating an identity. I'm somebody who values being community. Thank you, Michelle. Maryanne says I moved on to being more social. Michelle says, "I think deciding to come to this meetup was an excellent decision." Yeah, right. Right. I made good decisions. Look at me. I showed up to this meetup. There you go. Perfect.
So I want to shift this now to your current situation. Have you actually decided I'm going to get over my ex? Most people I talk to have not made that decision yet. Most people are still waffling. It's okay. It's totally okay to still be waffling. But even that of choosing of I'm not going to make that decision yet, that's an active decision. And I would far rather you say that actively of I'm not ready to say that decision out loud of I'm deciding to get over my ex. I would much rather you say, I'm not ready to say that yet. Rather than to do that unconsciously.
All right? So what we want to be doing is making active decisions. Amazing. We've got about half my brain. All right, I love this. This is a perfect example, Erin. Yes, but half my brain still wants to hold on. That's okay because sometimes we make decisions before we're 100% ready. We make decisions of, and I'm going to talk about this a little bit deeper in a second. It's okay to make the decision of I'm going to decide to commit to getting over my ex. I'm going to decide to commit to moving on. I don't know how to do that yet. And part of me still wants to hang on, but I consciously am making this decision that I want to move on. I'm going to figure out what the next step is. It's the staircase again. You don't have to have the whole staircase lit up to say, I'm taking it one step at a time.
One step at a time, one step at a time. And the reason why decisions are so powerful, like I said with the cigarette example, it becomes your identity. It's not easy to go from being somebody who's a smoker to being a non-smoker. If anybody here has done that, you know what it's like. You have a lot of habits that keep pulling you back of like, oh man, I really loved my cigarette with my morning coffee. And so every time you have your coffee, you're associating that with something new instead of coffee and cigarette. I used to work in the performing arts. I was in theater for a long, long time. And it was like the come down ritual of stepping outside and having a cigarette. I had to figure out a whole new come down ritual of how do I relax now if it doesn't involve a cigarette?
But we make the decision and we say, "This is what I'm doing now.
Now what does that put on the table for me?" It also kind of dictates, okay, if I'm moving on and my brain still wants to think about them, okay, we got to work with my brain. That shows exactly it's putting a spotlight on. That's exactly what we have to work on. Okay, how do I get my brain on board now? Yes. So Michelle says like smoking, you have to make the decision to eliminate all of their options that don't support your new choice, which isn't easy. Correct. I don't want to tell anybody that this is easy. It's simple, not easy. Oftentimes I find the best things are though. The best things are simple, but not necessarily easy.
Yeah. So let's define what it means to move on. Because again, this is another phrase that people say all the time, but we don't ever really talk about what that means. From where I sit, the way that I work, I define moving on. It's not about I never think about them again. It's not about I'm never going to feel sad again. And it's not about not missing them again or not loving them anymore. That actually has nothing to do with whether you've moved on or not. When I talk about moving on and being over your ex, what I mean is that you have decided that you are no longer emotionally affected or tied to the relationship or to the person. So that even if sadness comes up or missing them comes up, you don't let it derail you. It doesn't tank your whole weekend. You can go, okay, grief, I got you.
I'm going to move this grief and I'm not going to let it take me over. I'm going to choose how to handle this. I had a client who was such a beautiful example of this.
She was starting to date again and she was on the apps and the nightmare scenario came up. Can you guess what the nightmare scenario would be if you were on a dating app? She saw her ex. We all are nodding. She saw her ex on the dating app. Yep. And so as you can imagine, she kind of lost her mind for a minute. We all would. I saw my ex on Airbnb in a review and I lost it. And it was almost a year after the breakup. But she did not stop there. She said, okay, I know how to move through grief. I know how to process this. I know how to handle this big wash of emotion that came up. I can navigate my way through this and come back to myself so that I'm in the driver's seat here. And she said she did about 30 minutes of some emotional processing that I had taught her and some journaling.
And at about half an hour, she was like, you know what? I'm on the dating app too. So if I'm there, he can be there too. And we can both coexist.
And she said it brought such peace. That's what it means to be over your ex. Because she said, I had an emotional reaction. This is normal. I'm a human being. I'm going to guide myself through it. I have so many examples of this from my clients and from myself. The Airbnb example wasn't a super one because I wasn't having a huge reaction. But my ex and I broke up in the fall and the spring came around and he was a really big Orioles fan. I'm from Baltimore. We had great seats. It was a regular thing that we did often. And spring's coming around and the stadium is a big part of Baltimore. You drive by it all the time. But for whatever reason, I hadn't driven by it. I guess I just hadn't taken that route. And I took it in April after our breakup, and I just started weeping because I realized, oh, it's a baseball season and I'm not going to have that thing with him.That was a really special thing that we did together.
And he taught me a lot about professional baseball and blah, blah, blah. And I just let myself have the sadness. I didn't make it mean anything that I was having a backside or that I was wrong for crying. I just let the sadness happen. And it's okay. It's okay to be sad because I was letting go of something. And that's a natural reaction. When you're letting go, sadness is a natural reaction. Yeah. Yes, I saw it, Annie, and that was the first time I'd ever seen it like that. So that's why I get to teach it now.
Because I don't know many people that are saying it's normal six months after your breakup to cry and still be over your ex. I didn't make it mean anything wrong. Nobody's talking about that. Everybody's like, oh, that's a backslide. No, it's not a backslide. You're a human being with feelings having an emotional reaction to a situation that hadn't come up yet. Michelle says, I have some growing to do because I would've absolutely left that app immediately. I don't want another one like that. I hear you. I get it. So, all right. Does this feel clear about why I find decisions are so important? Can I get a yes if this is clear? You can also tell me no, and I'll slow down.
I was pissed off. I talked to someone and it was weird and I though, how did he know me? Okay, cool. And if you're a no, it's okay. I will also say that. Yeah, it's okay, Bob. It's okay to be sound. I also had a coach while I was going through this breakup. I mean, honestly, I was with my ex four and a half years and I think I was six or eight weeks in and I was like, I should be over this by now. And I was like, I'm so tired of being sad. And she said, well, how do you want to feel? And I really sat with that and I checked in with myself and I said, how do I really want to be feeling? And I thought, oh, I want to feel sad. Sad feels appropriate because I lost somebody that was really important.
I loved him. I said yesterday, for those of you that weren't here yesterday, we're not compatible. We loved each other a lot. Nobody did anything wrong.
Nobody cheated. Nobody was. I mean, I think we brought out some toxicity in each other. We both did it, but there wasn't bad toxicity. We were not compatible. We were not good for each other. But yet I loved him a lot. I can love somebody. This was probably one of the phrases that changed everything for me. I can love somebody and know that they're not right for me. Yeah, that's so true, Elena. I feel like I cry for myself, not for the loss of him. Oh, and Sarah and I've done that get back together, breakup, dance a lot. So I've been through that a lot. Okay.
Yeah. And Maryanne, I think it's the memory that brings up emotions. That's okay. All right. So I want to come back to what Erin said because Erin, it was really, really smart. The whole thing of I'm deciding to get over my ex. I just don't know how. My brain keeps pulling me back. Now that we have a working definition of what it means to get over your ex, to get over your ex means that I'm in the driver's seat here. Even when emotions come up, I know I'm going to be okay. I'm going to guide myself back to myself. Yes, I see your question, Mr. Wolf. We'll catch up. I want to make sure I stay focused here. Thank you so much. So we are going to talk about what does it mean to move on and what do we do with this? So when we make the decision, here is the framework I want you to remember.
You make your decision. What follows decision is commitment. So you can decide I'm going to be a non-smoker. Then you have to actually commit it. You got to start walking your talk. All right, if I'm a non-smoker, I'm going to throw out the half-smoked pack when I get rid of it. I am going to empty all the ashtrays. I'm going to get rid of the ashtrays. I'm going to start asking those questions. What am I going to do as my come down ritual? What am I going to do during my coffee time? I'm going to start figuring this out. I'm going to start asking these. Yeah, and that's such good awareness, Elena. Oh, I haven't been able to commit. Great. Great. You get to figure out what that looks like. So, okay, decision, then commitment. When you make commitment, you're going to start taking action.
And then here's the big thing. This is where this is super, super important. You're going to make mistakes. Okay? So you're going to make imperfect action. You're going to try things. You're going to. I actually probably should use the vacation metaphor here because this one was even better of you check your email while you're on vacation and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Now I'm thinking about work. We make mistakes. So then you go back and you're going to take different action. You're going to try something else or maybe you need to go back and you're like, do I have to recommit? Did I slip on my commitment? You're going to make a decision. You're going to make a commitment. Take action, make mistakes.
Okay? And then repeat. Most people are going to think if I make my decision, then I have success and everything's easy. Unfortunately, this doesn't work this way. Success comes from making a lot of mistakes and taking a lot of action. And I think we need to. Where was it? Mr. Wolf said, reward yourself every month. Why not reward yourself for taking action even when it's imperfect? Even when you make mistakes. I'm trying. I am putting myself out there. I am committing to myself. Because mistakes are going to happen and mistakes aren't the problem. I was working with one of my clients and I think there was something, I think she had a vacation, and so we were going to have two weeks in between when I saw her. And I was like, "Go out and take what I gave you and make mistakes and bring me back some really juicy mistakes.
Let's coach on these mistakes because we think that the mistakes are the problem. They're not. They're just a part of the process.
Okay? So when we start taking action is when we start figuring out. It's when we start figuring out next step, next step, next step, next step. Because a lot of times the biggest part of getting over this is the fear. What am I letting go of? I'm afraid nobody better is out there for me. I'm afraid that was my last chance. I'm afraid I'm too old. I'm afraid. Fill in the blank. We have so many things that we're afraid of. Fear doesn't go away with time. The cure to fear is action. Gave away the punchline for y'all. The cure to fear is action, even when we make mistakes.
Okay. So let's bring this home. I love that, Elena. I can really relate to that. I feel like my identity was so wrapped up into managing my partner. I'm afraid to face who I may be. I said this a little bit yesterday. I think I did. I did. The process I guided you all through of creating space, that's when I realized, oh my God, I was giving so much of my time and my energy and my brain space to managing my partner, right? Walking on those eggshells. That's where the idea for my business came. When I had the space, I was like, oh my God, I have so much mental space now. I have so much capacity. I could create a business with this.
It's the same thing that I've been saying all along today. We don't always see the end when we get started. I was committed to getting over my ex. I made that commitment of I'm going to get over this. I know I'm going to be okay. And I started walking it step by step. It was really imperfect because I did not have a process at that time. So it took me a lot longer than it takes me when I work with my clients. Yeah, Mary says I lost my identity in the relationship totally. I didn't have my identity when I started. And I'm trying to remember, I think it was A who said at the beginning of I don't even know who I am. I didn't either. I did not either. I started taking steps. I started saying, I'm getting over my ex. I'm going to figure this out.
And pieces of my identity started coming back through throughout that. And I started making more and more decisions, which led me to creating my identity of how I am today.
Yeah. Yeah. Annie said same thing. I don't know who I am anymore. Yeah, we start first. So we're going to start by making a decision today. That decision, like I said a couple minutes ago, could be I'm not ready to get over my ex yet, so I'm deciding to not do that yet. That's a decision. And how much freedom is it? I mean, a decision's wonderful because it's like you get to Close that open tab in your brain. You don't have to have all the tabs open and running in your brain. Decisions help close those down so that we create more brain space where you're like, "You know what? I'm not ready to decide to get over them yet, so I'm not going to." Great. That decision's off the table. You don't have to think about that right now.
Some examples of some decisions. I decide to stop waiting for closure and I'm going to create my own. That came up in the chat earlier. I teach a class on that. I'll teach it again next month. I'll put it in the meetup group because you do not need somebody else for closure. You can create your own. You can say, "I decide to trust myself. I decide to stop making my ex responsible for my happiness. I decide to move on." All right. What decision do you want to make today? I am putting you on the spot. This is how we create change. We make decisions. Do you have a decision you're ready to declare and put it in the chat?
I want to create my own closure. Yes, Maryanne. It could be, I decide to figure out who I am. That's a really powerful one. To start to get over my ex officially. Amazing. I decide to move on. Yes, I am going to move on. Yes. I love this. Incredible. Amazing. Forgive me with my cold brew. Oh, here they go. Here we go. I want to heal and be a better me. I decide to live my life to the fullest. I am going to commit to reclaiming my power, going to work on me. I have decided to be independent. Amazing. This is so great, everybody. Good. This is really powerful.
Yes. I decide my decision is acceptable and supportive of my highest good. Processing takes time. Tweet says, I decided to make myself happy first. I love it. Amazing. So great. Okay. If you are ready to take this a step further, right? The decision I am not going to smoke anymore means I'm becoming a non-smoker. If you create a sentence around this, around your decision, I am the person who. How would you finish that sentence? I decide to be happy even the relationship is over. Yes. So let me give you an example. So tweeze was, I decide to make myself happy first. I am the person who makes myself happy first.
If I go back to my vacation example and I've booked a vacation for a certain number of days, I'm the person who takes vacation. I am the person who values rest. I am the person who likes the beach. Elena's, I'm going to give you some examples, but I want you all to start figuring this out for yourself because I can give it to you, but it just gives my brain the exercise. And I want your brains to start building these muscles to get the exercise. Yeah, I decide to be in control of my life. I am the person who made and makes everything happen. Yes. I am the person that is control of my destiny and I decide what happens next. I am statements are very powerful, which is why we want to use them on purpose. We want to use them to reinforce who we're becoming and who we want to step into.
Exactly. I am taking my power back and moving on. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah, so good. I have the power to be happy on my own. Amazing. All right. We shifted a lot today. Before I do my official closing, I want to hear from you all. And so there's a tool that I use. The tool's called framing. And it's sort of like taking a snapshot and capturing it. So it's putting something in a frame. The most powerful frames are based in your body, not always necessarily your head. So having something where you anchor in, I frame the moment when I felt powerful. I frame the moment when I said I'm the person who, and I believed myself for a second. I frame how powerful it is to make an I am statement, or I frame how powerful I felt to make a decision. Or I frame when Sarah said, honestly, I've been in flow. I can't remember a thing I said.
So hopefully maybe you all took notes and you remember something.
I don't remember everything I've said. I framed the analogy of becoming a non-smoker. Let's hear some frames. So we start capturing this, anchoring it in. We start digesting this. So go ahead and put in the chat, what is something that you want to frame that you want to capture in a snapshot? Terry says, "I'm a person who will seek to be authentic in all my relationships." Good, great. I frame the day I told my partner to leave. Happiness. Beautiful. And meant it. So good. Elena saying, "I wish I had this group available every time he calls and Annie's saying, me too. Well, I have good news and I will share good news tomorrow. I'm going to put you in anticipation.
What else do we want to remember? What do we want to anchor in? What do you want to capture in a snapshot? I know we had some breakthroughs today because this chat was alive. So I know you had some moments that we were popping. I am the boss. Yes, Jerry. I love that. So good. I'm not sure. It's okay. I have taken my power back by taking another tangible step towards healing. Oh, it's so good. I love it. All right. So we made some big shifts today. I want to capture my happiness and freedom. Amazing. Yes, we made big, big shifts. I don't know if you can feel it. I can feel it. And this isn't even in person, this is on Zoom, and I can feel the energy of the people here in this room making some big steps forward. I also can feel like there's some grappling with it, and it is okay to wrestle with this stuff because honestly, I'm flying in the face of most breakup advice.
I want to work with what is and what's present, and also the possibility of what can be. All right. So this is stuff that we wrestle with. Grapple, grapple, grapple. It's one of my favorite words. I like grappling. Yes. So today, some of my favorite moments, your power does not come back when your exchanges. Your power comes back when you declare it. When you put yourself at the center, the moment that you decide that your life is beginning. Really, I didn't put it this way, but it's the moment you decide your future is more important than your past.
So you can see this isn't about your ex. It was never about them. I'm here for you. I'm coming after you and your future. This is what it's about. It's not about them, it's about you. It's about reclaiming yourself. Okay. So as we are wrapping up today, the question that we are going to be moving into day three with is now what do I want to create? And Elena, this is really important. You're also saying there's also a lot of hurt and pain here, but finding common ground amongst others feels so reassuring. Totally. This is not to negate the fact that there is grief, there is pain, there's hurt. We work with both. And there are really powerful ways to work with hurt and pain so that it becomes fuel for our future. And it is so much easier. I'll put this as also, because this is a big thing of what I'll be talking about tomorrow.
A quote that I read that is now one of the guiding principles of my business is from Reverend Michael Beckwith. And he said, "Pain pushes until vision pulls." Pain pushes until vision pulls. I believe we spend far too much time being pushed by pain and not enough time building out the future and the vision of what I want to be pulled forward by. So I do spend a lot of time talking about vision and moving forward because I also do a lot of work with pain. But it makes the whole process easier when we have a vision of what we're going towards.
It's that whole saying of turn your pain into purpose. It's that. But I like this. It feels tangible to me. All right. Tomorrow, come back tomorrow, come back tomorrow, come back tomorrow, same time. We are going to start really answering that question. What's next? What am I creating? Who am I? We are building vision. All right. I hope I will see you all here tomorrow. We have some more really powerful work to be done. Don't skip on day three. That's where really the magic happens. All right. I can't wait to see you all again tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday, and I will see you next time. Thanks for being here. I'm so glad you were here. All right. Bye everybody.