This is an episode that came to me on morning and I never had to write down any notes.
I am a strong believe in our ability to choose our life, our perspective and how we want to feel every day.
Some days we achieve that feeling easier than others and some day it’s out of reach all day. But if we don’t even try to find the calm, the peace and the love in our days then for certain most days will not be easy.
You deserve peace in your life and you can create that for yourself and in doing so you are helping create that for your family and those you love.
I wish you all the peace and love and happiness in the world. And I am here to help you get more in touch with that through this podcast and the work that I do. I would love to work with you to achieve this. Send me a message on social media, grab one of the coaching packages linked below or email me and let’s start doing this work together. Or you could join one of my retreats. 🥰
You deserve this.
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Hi there and welcome back to another episode of a blessing and divorce going through divorce can be very stressful obviously and today I want to talk a little bit about finding that calm during the storm if you will um finding some peace as you’re going through something that is very high
Conflict perhaps and even if you are in the situation where the split is more amicable or more respectful and kind and maybe not full of chaos and toxicity and whatever it’s still an emotionally turbulent time to say the very least you know a lot of feelings going all kinds of different
Directions all at once anger resentment frustration um you know even frustration and anger towards yourself perhaps for the how things have been handled it could be anything and today I’d like to focus a little bit about a little bit on the strategies to to just find some
Peace and some quiet and I’m going to share how I did that when I went through my divorce hello and welcome back to another episode of a blessing in divorce I am so grateful to be allowed into your headset and day today my name is Elizabeth and I’m the host of this
Podcast and the owner and founder of the separation club which is the club you never wanted to be part of but the best club to be in if you’re going through separation and divorce here we talk about how to heal move forward and find love if you’re so inclined also
Motherhood through divorce finding yourself and creating the life you deserve our tools are Community Sisterhood honesty vulnerability spirituality and coaching and thus when we aren’t talking to our experts I’m also a divorced mother of four adult sons remarried and a stepmom to three so we will be talking about everything that
Goes with all of that here if you are recently separated thinking of separating divorce ining or even beyond your divorce but still feeling it then this is the podcast for you going through divorce can easily become a very high conflict a very stressful um constant sort of battle feeling
Experience and one of the hardest things can be just to Simply bring down the anxiety and feel more regulated emotionally and just simply just lowering the temperature on just about everything the conversations the emotions the tears the feelings all of it you know typically when going through divorce
There’s a lot of blame for example uh there can be a lot of accusations a lot of resentment for things that have been tolerated uh there might be have been abuse uh you know infidelity lots of things that are incredibly charged emotionally like so you know create an experience that is
So heightened and uh volatile because it takes just about nothing to kind of push you right over the edge you know you’re kind of constantly just managing the tears and anything happens and boom you’re crying you know or you’re just keeping a lit on the anger and then
Something happens and you fly off the handle even if it’s unrelated to your ex it could be something your kids did for example and nothing feels worse than blowing up at the wrong people or realizing that you’ve handled a situation badly at work for example or you know you’re just not being yourself
That you just don’t feel in control of your emotions and yourself it’s it’s a horrible feeling and divorce I think one of the reasons it’s so stressful is because we we feel like that all the time and it can take months and sometimes years for that feeling to go
Away so I’d like to talk to you today about how to make those days fewer or the you know instead of it consuming your whole day maybe you’re able to have several hours a day where you feel more at peace and maybe you’re able to bring
That peace of mind to yourself a little bit sooner so I’m going to take you on my journey uh I I went through a very hostile divorce there was some really awful things that happened both before we split and definitely during the process um but I’m not going to make it
About that this is not about that it is about how to have that going on and still be able to live a life or live your life rather in a way that’s still heart-c centered that still um allows you to have a more peaceful ful existence you know if you for example
Are coming out of a very you know abusive situation verbally mentally even physically that trauma is going to sit with you for a while and you know that’s something that needs to be resolved through or dealt with or managed or whatever through therapy um coaching you know those kinds of
Things but it is also how we perceive our trauma how we choose to label our traa trauma and ourselves that tend to determine how we feel it is the conversations that we choose to have with ourselves and others that will determine how we feel every day so let’s
Let’s get into that a little bit because while we had no control over how someone treated us and over the things that were done to us or the things that they’re choosing to do now through the family court system them through you know just in general and the way they treat you
Message you phone you talk to you whatever you can’t control that they’re going to do what they’re going to do there’s nothing you can do to change their behavior or impact their behavior anymore the thing you can control the thing you can change is your response
Your reaction and how you choose to give it um not value but how you choose to give it Priority I guess or importance in your life when I first started going through my separation I mean I was I was devastated you know he cheated so I mean I went
Through those sort of that range of anger and just you know so many huge emotions um and then we we kind of went right into a very hostile split but um I just you know I spent hey I spent months crying every single day more than once you know being really angry talking
To my friends about it talking to my lawyer about it you know you know just constantly wanting to voice this anger and let people know what are horrible things that he had done to me and you know po me and I wanted people to feel
Sorry for me and support me and I did get that from my friends and my family um you know as needed and and of course that’s important it’s a really important part and we do have to get all of this out of our body we have to get the anger
Out so we have to verbalize it we do it in therap we do it with our friends we do it uh in our journals for example like we have to get rid of all of that all of those feelings need to come out we need to work through them however if
That’s all we’re doing then we’re kind of getting in like a bit of a repetitive cycle of just you know almost like we are um addicted is the wrong word I’m trying to find a better one but just bear with me here like we’re kind of getting almost attached to or needing
The validation that comes from this Cy of you know guess what this person did to me now or you’re not going to believe the text I just received or you know I can’t believe that they’re doing this thing or guess what happened you know like this constant sort of
Shocking new facts you know rallying of the support troops you know getting the girls together and getting them all angry with you and and they’re going to say all the right things they’re know he’s such a jerk or whatever like they’re going to do all that and in the
Moment it’ll feel make you feel more validated you’ll feel supported and loved and all of those things but but it also keeps you in the pain in the anger in the frustration and I think it was one day when I had been spending time with a
Friend of mine or a new friend actually and we kind of became close because we were both going through it at the same time and we were sitting there sharing stories um and she was expressing you know the appropriate amount of outrage over what I was going through and I was
Doing that for her and I remember we were sitting outside it was a it was in the summer it was really hot it was beautiful we were sitting in the patio having a drink you know in the afternoon on a Friday and then you know we finished and we parted ways and I
Started to walk home it was walking distance from where I lived at the time and I remember walking away and thinking I feel like crap all I did for the past you know 2 hours in the sun on a patio was give away my energy and my
Time to go on about what my ex was doing or had done or listening to her talk about her ex I’m like this doesn’t feel good it’s it doesn’t feel good to talk about it all the time I don’t want to talk about it anymore and I’m not saying
I never talked about it again of course I did because things would happen and again I get all angry and I needed to get it out of my chest off my chest and out of my system but what I learned to do was to limit the amount of conversation that happened
Um around my situation if you will so I had certain people that I talked to about it and then it was gone you know like I talked to my very best friend almost every day and so we would do sort of an update on what was going on and
Then I was like okay now it’s done how are you doing right I had other very well-meaning wonderful friends who would call me ask me how I was doing but I started to instead of just like right away jumping into the story I started saying you know what I don’t want to
Talk about me today I want to talk about you tell me something about your life how are your kids doing how are you doing you know like just wanting to focus on something else and little by little as I did that I started to create these gaps in my day gaps from the
Sorrow gaps from the anger that were now about other things and other people and I started it it was fairly immediate the positive effect that that had on me less crying less sort of you know internal focus and on the past because that’s the other thing that I realized as I started
To shift out of this constant regurgitation of the story was that I was living in the past whenever I’m I’m talking about what happened even if I’m talking about what happened in court that day or the day before I’m living in the past and I’m continuing to emphasize that you know
Today I’m going to still feel the pain of the past and today I’m still feeling the pain of the past and today I’m telling the story yet again so guess what I’m feeling the pain of the past I was done with that I don’t want to
Relive it all the time I didn’t want to go through this pain all the time so I wanted to feel good plain and simple I wanted to feel good and I know you do as well um I I put down in the in my Facebook group one day I asked asked if
You know what’s what is it one word to describe how you’d like to feel and most of the responses were peaceful um many of them were strong uh but all of them except for one all of them and there were many responses all of them were positive so meaning like said
Peaceful strong um confident empowered you know those kinds of words one person posted that she wanted to she wanted Revenge more than anything else which I just saw was sad but whatever that’s for like a Karma episode anyway um peaceful came up so many times and and even when
I talk to my clients like in a coaching session so often we you know it’s just she just wants peace she just wants to feel calm she just wants to feel less emotional less triggered less heightened so how do we do that you know one of the ways that I just mentioned
Now is like turning our Focus away from the story all the time it’s starting to listen to other people’s stories hearing about their day and so therefore also hearing about good things like something that their kids did and then you can share about your kids something good right something positive that’s not divorce
Related you know we are going through you’re going through a journey of getting divorced but the divorce does not define who you are unless you allow it to when we talk about the divorce all the time and we constantly focus on how we’re feeling because of the circumstances that led to the divorce
And what’s going on during the divorce the divorce becomes who we are but it isn’t who you are you are a beautiful human being the same human being that fell madly in love 10 8 20 30 two years ago whatever the person who fell in love and was radiant and magnetic
And fun and vibrant and all of those things she’s still in there she’s not gone she’s not dead she’s not you know she doesn’t vanished she’s still inside you don’t let the weight of the divorce the weight of what happened between the two of you in the past that happened
Yesterday that happened two years ago Define who you are now don’t let those things completely you know snuff out any part of you that knows how to feel peaceful joyful happy confident radiant excited about life all of those beautiful emotions so how can we stop feeling that
Negative ity all the time and how can we feel more centered and peaceful and in in contact or connected to our heart and soul well we slow down and we become aware of the what’s happening right now because the only thing you can impact really in your life is what you’re doing right
Now if you want to feel differently tomorrow when you wake up you have to do things differently today by the time you wake up tomorrow if you spent all day today feeling like crap and being angry and sending having a huge or text argument with your ex or
Whatever you’re still going to wake up and feel like tomorrow it’s just it’s just going to happen but if you spend some time today um pampering yourself taking care of yourself spending some time in peace and quiet um maybe spending time with peaceful friends um doing things that nourish you
That make you feel loved that make you feel good aren’t you more likely to wake up feeling a little better tomorrow and then have a slightly better day tomorrow so remember that today you are creating your day today and you’re creating your day tomorrow so let’s start creating our
Future instead of reliving the past so how do we bring some more peace into our life how do we live in the more centered way well you know what it’s about doing the little things the little things like the things you do every day but doing it more mindfully so what
Typically happens is we have a shitty day or we have our day whatever it is and then we get up and we do it all over again tomorrow but I want you to interrupt today a little bit so let’s just let’s just pretend we’re walking through tomorrow so I don’t know what
Your day looks like but as an example right you wake up in the morning and maybe the first thing you normally do is hit snooze and start thinking about that you don’t want to wake up and how tired you are and how shitty the day is going to be that
Doesn’t work so let’s just change that maybe that’s the only thing you Chang right now maybe you just decide tonight when you go to bed that when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning or when you wake up tomorrow morning you’re going to get out of bed immediately and go and do
Something nice maybe it’s making yourself a cup of coffee and because you didn’t hit the snooze button you can actually sit with your coffee or your tea or whatever a little bit longer in the morning you can just take some time for yourself maybe you can make it better cup of coffee maybe
You can let the tea steep a little longer maybe you make yourself breakfast at home instead of picking it up on the go or skipping it all together it’s just it’s just shifting from the the sort of doing the same thing the habitual every single day that’s not making you feel
Good and just taking some time to feel a little differently another way that I have found really helpful is a mindful shower so when you go into the shower if you shower in the morning and you could do this in the evening too by the way so
That you feel calm before bed is to have a a cleansing shower a mindful cleansing shower every day meaning you get into the shower and you mindfully cleanse your body so you think of it as a cleansing experience I’m starting today cleansing off anything old cleansing away anything that no longer serves me
And as you’re washing and rinsing your body you’re literally rubbing or you’re like sweeping yesterday or um negative feelings or negative energy in general off your body think of yourself as washing away pain hurt anger negativity even if you know you might be thinking it’s not that easy Elizabeth I
Get it I get it I really do but the act of doing it will feel good I promise and you will feel a little bit different after for two reasons one of them is you haven’t done it before so just changing that changes everything after that everything we do has a ripple effect
Energetically everything you know whether you think about it this way if you are going down for breakfast and and your kids are downstairs and they’re being kind of loud and the first thing you do is scold them maybe or maybe you even yell at them I used to sometimes because I was
Just so stressed that sometimes I just responded in a way that was just not good and and then you feel crappy and that ripples right and it’s like oh now I feel like a horrible mother and and it just kind of ripples into your day and
Next thing you know is like I can’t believe I’m going through this and why do I have to go through this and I’m crying and you know there we go right or you have been able to settle yourself down and do something for yourself like like that cleansing shower that had
Enough of an effect on you that when you go downstairs you don’t yell you’re actually able to be you’re more um calm and uh I know just more peaceful self like it just feels easier and so you deal with the situation with your kids in a different way and then you don’t
Have to go through all those negative after feelings right do you see the ripple effect everything we do has an emotional Ripple it does there’s an energetic Ripple that comes out of everything so taking changing one thing changes the Ripple for everything that day so doing one kind and loving thing
For yourself first thing in the morning is going to have a positive peaceful loving Ripple it might not last all day and that’s okay we start small I might have well I know I’ve mentioned this before but I’m going to bring it up again I met a client to mine she was actually
My first coaching client and she called me said Elizabeth I need help she said I cry every day I cry several times a day I just want to stop crying every day that was really her first goal and her reason for hiring me she goes I want to
Feel better so I noticed when I went to see her so this was before Co and she happened to live really close to me I’m like let’s do our first session in person so I was sitting in her living room and she had one of those calendars
On the wall and you know where you write down what you have going on and I said could we use that calendar to write a happy face or sad face every day and she’s like okay we can do that so I said to her every single day I want you to
Put at the end of the day a happy face or a sad face depending on like you know how that day has gone so if you were crying a lot then you put the sad face down and if you didn’t cry that day you put a happy face down even not to say
That she’d felt happy that day but this was about not crying every day that was her goal right so she asked me she goes goes well what happens if I have a really good morning but then I cry in the afternoon I said then put a happy
Face and a sad face so she started and just the intention to Mark happy days and to start to notice if she had a happy morning but a sad afternoon was enough to for her to have the first week first day I should say in six months without
Crying so that first week after I met her she had her first day with a full happy face no tears for a whole day and I you know I’d love to think that I’m some kind of Miracle Worker I’m not all I did was introduce the idea that let’s
Pay attention to when we have a better day let’s put a happy face down for the morning or the afternoon if you have a really good afternoon just that little shift that little attention to when you feel good was caused enough of a ripple effect that she had her first day without
Tears by all means try that method if it would work for you other things of course that you can do to feel more peaceful are the more obvious ones that you probably have heard of like meditating journaling um you know doing things like going outside going outside for a walk
Focusing on what you’re seeing around around you um maybe you know the weather depending on where you live I live in the Northern Hemisphere so we’re in the dead of winter here but if you happen to be in a milder climate or you’re listening to this in the summer um you
Know going and taking your journal with you in your bag and just you know walking around and deciding for example I’m going to observe three things like Simon says you know find three things that look pretty or that make you feel good so as you look around you might see
A gorgeous you know flower bush or Garden or you might see a really adorable dog or a beautiful bird and then we’re going to make the moment last you’re going to sit down somewhere on a on a rock or a hill or a park bench and you’re going to write in
Your journal and yes if you had the joy Journal that would be even better right anyway you’re going to write in your Journal I saw three beautiful things today and these were and then you write it down now not only did you take the time to look for something good in your
Day but by writing it down you made it last and as you go through your Journal day after day and you probably write about things that feel really sad and difficult sometimes too and it’s important to do that you can also notice the things that feel good this is why
When I in the joy journal and the the prompts that you have every single day on The Daily Pages there’s a prompt for what you feel grateful for and that’s a perfect place to write down things like that good things that happened you know you know so it could be what am I
Grateful for I didn’t cry before noon today or I didn’t wake up crying today or I didn’t cry myself to sleep tonight like it could be something little like that could be a huge Victory and then you could just add to that and I feel really proud of that you know we
All we all tend to go to the negative when we’re going through something stressful you know your entire system is living in fight or flight your anxiety is probably higher than this ever been you’re afraid for the future you don’t know what’s going to happen financially Everything feels really
Scary but it doesn’t get better or easier or resolved more positively by you being stressed fearful anxious it might though if you’re feeling at peace if you’re feeling confident and calm so that you’re able to look at things with a different perspective and maybe more clearly and maybe more able
To see the path forward and realize it might not be as scary as you thought it was the benefits to trying to bring some peace into your day are huge notice yourself resisting notice yourself what are you saying to yourself internally as you listen to me say these things are you hearing yourself
Say that’s easier said than done that’s resistance are you hearing yourself say I just don’t know how to do that or are you hearing yourself say you don’t understand my situation is worse than most people that’s resistance I’m not saying that any of those things are not
True it’s not about that it’s about Choice everybody has a choice every single day as to how they want their day to go does it always work out no of course not but if you don’t even try I can guarant guarantee you it’s not going to
Work what if you make a decision every single morning when you get out of bed I’m going to do something really nice for myself to start my day good I’m going to start with a really nice cup of tea and an extra 10 minutes to meditate
Or I’m going to have a cleansing shower and I’m going to take my time and be mindful while I do it what if you started your day just with that or you get up 15 minutes early and you go for a nice walk or you take the time to do that after
Work or you do what kind of mind did and you buy a dog that forces you to go for a walk every day that’s what she did make a choice to feel better make a choice to invite peace into your day you know how to be peaceful start writing
Down the things that make you feel peaceful when I say the word peaceful what comes to mind what do you think of do you think of a pretty Garden do you think of a beach do you think of a holiday do you think of a quiet night at home under a blanket like
What do you think of when I say peaceful write those things down write them in your journal and then when you’re feeling anxious and scared and emotional and angry and all of those things which you’re going to feel you can go to your list and you go you know what I’m going
To make myself a cup of tea and snuggle under my favorite blanket and I’m going to grab my book for example or I’m going to listen to a podcast or I’m going to do a guided meditation or I’m going to have a cleansing soak in the tub a very mindful cleansing soak in
The tub and by mindful I mean your phone’s put away you’re aware of what you’re doing in your surroundings you make sure you put some you know essential oils in your bath so it smells really nice and while you’re in the bath you’re not on your phone taking pictures
Of your toes sticking out of the tub you are inhaling the lavender or the rose water or the whatever you’ve done you’re observing the candles and you’re just sitting there and you’re loving yourself and you’re saying to yourself I can do this right now I’m okay right now I’m
Safe right now I’m at peace in this moment I hope that this has been somewhat helpful this is a shorter episode but I just wanted to give you some tools and bring some peace into the conversation because there’s so much talk around all the bad things but today I wanted to help you
Find that peaceful place inside you and it’s going to be different inside all of us and invite you to bring it forward as often as you can even for just a few minutes and see what the ripple effect is in your life when you do that when
You give yourself a gift of peace and time time when you allow yourself to to sit with it to just be happy for a minute to feel Joy for a moment to observe something beautiful and allow that to wash over you invite peace into your day as often
As you can make it a priority doesn’t have to be hours it can be moments and minutes if you need some more help with this you know where to find me this is what I do this is what I share this is my gift this is my passion my
Purpose to help you find that because it is in this place of peace that we can start moving forward and creating a new life for ourselves start developing skills that help us move forward that help pull us out of the fighting and the conflict that allow us
To maybe take a slightly sort of outside step and be able to see what’s happening and respond differently in the moment when something comes up that makes you feel masterful it makes you feel confident it makes you feel um accomplished all of those things and that feels good and then we can
Invite a little bit more peace into our day the joy Journal was made to guide you on this journey because that was my journey um that how I created The Joy Journal it was my path back to my inner Joy I am a happy person at heart I’m an optimistic
Person I always have been but the divorce yeah it kicked me it really showed me a different way of living that’s for sure and one that I didn’t want and this is how I found my way back so I invite you to go and get yourself
The Joy Journal um it is available on Amazon and of course the link will be below and I invite you to take yourself on a joyful self-discovery Journey finding your own inner peace your own inner calm and it all starts with the small things like the shower the coffee
The cup of tea the blanket I wish you a beautiful beautiful day thank you for letting me be part of yours I’ll talk to you soon I love you big Time