So today I wanna talk to you about divorce and what I call the divorce victim mentality and what that looks like. I wanna start here because I know that you’re dealing with so much and I know that you could get stuck in this victim mentality mode, and I just don’t want you to stay there. You know, this is gonna require you to do some soul searching and some really hard work.
But anything that you want in life, you know, if you really want it, you gotta work hard to get. You got that. Remember, you have the ability to change your thoughts and create an amazing life after divorce. What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could happen to you?
I’m Doreen Yaa, marital and family lawyer and certified life coach. I’ve been coaching and consulting women for over 26. I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce. I want you to know that just like me when I went through my own divorce, you’re gonna be in a good place.
It just is gonna take you some time. My goal for you is to hurry up that time to help you along, to give you the tools that I’ve learned going through my own. Being also a child from a divorce and dealing with thousands of clients, you know, as a divorce attorney practicing for over 26 years that I’ve seen where you are right now today.
And then I see them like a year later and they’re doing okay. They’re doing great. But why is it that some do really well and some of you don’t? What I’m gonna teach you throughout these podcasts is gonna help you to uncover that, to reveal that so you can start to really work on whatever you want in your life.
One of the most rewarding things for me is seeing people like you blossom and be at such a different place than where you are right now. Because you know what? Although you’re perfect the way you are right now, I know you want something more for yourself. I really do. And I know you know that too. You don’t wanna be stuck in your house every day hiding feeling like a victim.
What is that gonna get you? Nothing. Right? Let’s be. So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna talk about the victim mentality. We’re gonna talk about what it is like, how you’re gonna identify it, and how you’re gonna get out of it.
If you have the victim mentality, you’ll catch yourself complaining a lot. I see this all the time with the thousands of people that I’ve helped both before, during and after divorce. So much complaining. And what is amazing is from the outside, all we hear is a lot of blame being thrown around about your ex.
It sounds like a lot of he said, she said, and on and on, and, In reality, that’s what the courts hear. I hate to say it, but it’s true. So you don’t wanna go there, you don’t wanna be there. You know, I know someone is in the victim mentality as they are always the victim of their own story. What I mean by that, it’s a lot of like what my ex did to me, what he did to them.
You know, it’s always about how it hurts you as well. That’s how I want you to understand it and see your story. Do you wanna be the victim of the story or do you wanna be the person that moves on and gets out of that? So if your ex doesn’t bring your child home on time, or he is late with a support payment, it might sound like he did that to you.
If he’s not communicating clearly about access with your child or post-judgment issues, he’s just not clear. He doesn’t know how to communicate. But truth be told, he probably wasn’t a very good communicator during your marriage. In fact, that might be some of the reason why you got divorced in the first place.
Now, let me tell you, most women who have this divorce victim mentality tend to cycle in it for years, and I don’t want that for you. I know you don’t want that for yourself, right? It’s so super unproductive and why I’m speaking about it with you today.
You’ll realize that you are in a victim mentality when you spend a lot of time thinking about how he wronged you or how the divorce process wronged you. So the divorce victim mentality is what is known as past focused thinking. It involves looking to the past to find evidence as to how you feel. For me, it was my parents’ divorce and how my dad treated my mom and actually treated me and my sister, and it always left me identifying as a victim.
And that happened when I was five years old. And I carried that all the way through to my first marriage. And let me tell you, it’s probably part of the reason why my first husband and I divorced. Now I’m onto my second marriage, and I was able to clean up all that victim mentality thinking, and I’m in such a better relationship.
I know that has a lot to do with getting past that stale victim mentality. In my own circumstance, I just kept blaming my parents’ divorce for everything that was going on in my life, which when you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. Like my parents’ divorce was so long ago, but if I was to speak to you about how bad my dad was to my mom, how he cheated on her for years, how he even took my sister and I to visit with this new person in his.
You would join me in being a victim, you would say, oh my gosh, Doreen, that’s just horrible. I can’t believe you went through that. And a lot of people in your life are gonna help you to stay in victim mentality, so be aware of that.
The problem with being the victim of your divorce is that you give all your power to your ex or the legal system or whomever, or whatever else you are blaming as to your divorce. It in turn creates feelings for you, and I know you’re feeling this of helplessness, disempowerment, anger, fear, and oftentimes your ex who you identified as the perpetrator, Doesn’t even know this is going on in your brain.
I hear my clients so often saying things like, I’m just so pissed off or hurt that he did this to me. That he did this to our children, that he ruined our marriage. So when you think about your ex that you have qualified potentially as a perpetrator, I ask you, would you delegate your emotional life to your.
Would you let them choose how you’re gonna feel today? I suggest that you would never consciously let your ex control your emotional state, but as a victim, that’s what you’re exactly doing. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you go to an event for one of your children and your ex is there at the event.
Your ex says something derogatory to you in front of others, like, Hey, you look really tired. You could immediately go into this place of feeling hurt and project hate and frustration and anger. Then you could go home and you could dwell in it for a while and you could call your best friend and spend a lot of energy speaking about how Rudy was and what he said to you.
Think about all that time and energy. He just spent on one little comment that he said, you look really tired. The reality is, maybe you did look a little tired today, but see how much energy and time you spent there in that place of being a victim. Alternatively, look, you could go to the same event. Your ex could say, you look really tired today.
And you could be like, you know what? That’s your opinion. And just let it roll right off of you. Not spend a lot of time or energy on it. Just like move. You get to decide in that moment how you wanna feel about that comment that your ex just made In those situations, I want you to consider choosing not to be the victim, not to use it to your disadvantage, to gain control of your emotions, to be the bigger person to move on.
It was just an unnecessary, stupid comment. Nothing more, don’t make it into anything. So you might consider saying something like, can we move on now? Or, that’s interesting that you just shared that with me. And you know, that’s all it usually takes. Just shut it down right there and it won’t go any further.
He won’t say anything more and you can move on.
I personally attempted to always take responsibility for how I feel in my life. Well, let me be honest about that. After I did the hard work that you’re doing today, learning about how not to be a victim of my divorce. For me, I always wanna take responsibility for the way I feel and not let anybody else.
Remember your thoughts. Create a feeling that create an action or an inaction that create the results you have or don’t have in your life. If you want great results in your life, you’ve got to change your thoughts, and that includes not being a victim. Now often when I introduce his concept to women in divorce, they say, but don’t I need to stand up for myself?
I mean, if my ex can just say whatever he wants to say to me and I don’t get upset, or I don’t say something back to him in anger, I’m just letting him get away with it. But I strongly suggest that the opposite is true. Think about it. You wanna be an emotional adult, not an emotional. I think that when your ex or anyone for that matter, because remember all of what I’m teaching you, you can use with anybody in your life, not just your ex does or says something and you allow it to devastate you.
You’ve given all your power to that other person. You have identified as the victim, and that is so much. Than if you would just allow people to be who they are, say what they’re gonna say, even when what they’re doing suck. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to say something back. It just means that you don’t say something back out of anger or out of negative emotion.
I mean, you know this already. Like if someone says something to you that is derogatory, let’s say, and you just blow them off, or you’re just like, yeah, did you really say that? And it doesn’t affect you. It changes the whole. Versus if you coward down and like lash out and start to attack them, then you are the person that’s acting like an emotional child instead of letting that person be the person that they’re gonna be anyhow.
In fact, when you’re able to handle situations like that, you stay in your integrity, you stay in your emotional happiness, and the person acting like an idiot appears to everyone else as just being an idiot and being in a negative. Think about it. When you are happy and you’re in a positive place, you don’t talk negatively to other people.
Just doesn’t go, you know, if you are having a great day, you’re probably not gonna come down on somebody in a negative way. So remember that.
Here’s the key. The reason why you’re experiencing a negative emotion in the moment that somebody does something is because of thought in your brain. I cannot emphasize that enough. It’s not the statement that your ex makes, it’s not the act that he does. It’s the thought about what he did or didn’t do, and I can’t emphasize that enough.
Remember, thoughts create feeling. Create action, create results, or lack of results in your life. If you give the credit for feeling negative to your ex, then you just handed him all your power and you don’t wanna be in that divorce victim mentality. Until next time, love yourself. Be kind to yourself. Hold.
For yourself without judgment and know that you are absolutely a hundred percent perfect and amazing just the way you are. Thanks so much for listening. Get further information and some free secrets on how to make your life amazing after [email protected]. And remember, my. Yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce.
See you there. Views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Yaha Family Law Group or your Divorce Law Center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives. The content of your amazing divorce is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
None of the content on your amazing divorce should be considered legal advice, nor does anything herein create an attorney-client relationship. As always, consult a lawyer for your legal questions.
There’s something I wanna talk about today. In fact, it’s so important to me to share this with you that I’m actually recording this over the weekend on our boat. I felt the need to record this because I know you really need to hear it. So the audio on this might sound a little different than usual, but here we go.
So, before we get started on my lesson today, I wanted to talk to you about something in my personal. My youngest daughter who’s 19, I have a 19, 21 year old and a 23 year old, and they’re all doing very well, thank goodness. My 19 year old told me that when she was visiting her grandmother this morning, who is my ex-husband, Sam’s mom, that she mentioned to my daughter how thankful she was that she and I still maintained some sort of a cordial relat.
Earlier today, I sent her a text message and I reach out on different holidays, birthdays, and different events in the children’s lives. I wanted to maintain a relationship with her and other family members on my ex-husband, Sam Cell because of my children. Whatever issues I had with my ex, whatever reasons that we decided to get divorce.
I thought my children deserved me to show them that I was capable of having a relationship with my ex’s family. Now, I’m not talking about day-to-day contact. I’m talking about special events of the children’s things that happen in our lives that would touch either side of of the family. To reach out and just send a text message or, you know, a, a card or, or a phone call, or to maintain some type of a relationship for the sake of our children, and I know it’s paid off.
Look, I don’t think that there is any reason, at least in my case, in my divorce, to hold on to grudges and to be mean-spirited and not kindhearted to my children’s grandparents, to my children’s aunts and uncles and nephews. Cousins and all of these other family members on the ex’s side. That’s just not something that I wanted my children to experience because when my parents got divorced, not only did my mom take us and move us from New England to Florida, my father never reached out to us.
His family never reached out to us, so we were divorced as children from the entire other side of the family, and that’s sad. So just a little tidbit. I hope you’re having a good day, and I hope you have many more to come. What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could happen to you?
I’m Doreen Yaa, marital and family lawyer and certified life coach. I’ve been coaching and consulting women for over 26 years. I’ve seen it all. Now, I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce. Well, hello there. I’m so glad that you’re with me again today.
This is your amazing divorce where we change where you are today, which may not be in a great place to whatever you want to accomplish tomorrow, to make an amazing life for yourself. You know, I have so much to be thankful for on my end. I have been working with amazing people like you post. That are stuck in their old bad BS ways and working with them on cleaning up their minds, their thinking to move them and to move you to such a better place.
So today we are going to discuss one of my favorite subjects, and I hope that it rocks your world as much as it did mine. I call this the manual. Sometimes when I’m working with a client as their lawyer or I’m coaching someone post divorce as a life coach, I sarcastically will say something like, Hey, you know this very thick manual that you’ve written for your ex-husband?
Have you ever let him see it or read it? Does he know what he is supposed to do in order to operate himself in your life post divorce so that his relationship with you works correct. Now, most of the time when I say this to people either by Zoom or in person where I usually do most of my meetings nowadays, I see this perplexed look on the face of my client and she’s like, well, what are you talking about?
Emmanuel is like a playbook or a rule book on how the other person should behave, what he should and should not do, and. Emmanuel is basically your instruction book that you have written for someone else. And while that in and of itself is not an issue, it’s when we are all tied up in letting our emotional state be dependent on whether this person, let’s just say your ex follows the rules and expectations you’ve set in this manual that he has never even seen.
I know what you’re thinking, but Doreen, shouldn’t I have expectations of other people? I mean, like, isn’t that practical? I mean, if he would just do what is to be expected of him, then my life, our lives would be so much easier. And PS by the way, I’m right. But having these manuals is downright damaging and frustrating for you because you can’t and never, ever will control another.
And never ever are they going to follow the rules. You get that right? So many of you have these built in belief systems that if other people, including your ex, would just behave themselves the way that you would like them to behave, then you could in turn be happy. Now how many of you don’t even realize or didn’t even realize until now that you were doing this and that you had these manuals?
Now, originally when I outlined this episode, I was going to call it my ex’s manual. And you know, that may apply to your circumstance, but I think the concept of the manual is so useful that I didn’t want you to limit it just to your ex-husband. Because the manual applies to anyone in our life that we are expecting to act, behave, or to be a certain way.
When I discovered the manual, I realized that I’m all over this stuff and that I am so darn guilty as I had plenty of these manuals for most everyone in my life, including my ex.
You see, I had manuals, I call them brain operational manuals per people. And to be honest, it wasn’t just my ex-husband or other people in my life. It was my new husband. And what I saw was when I understood the concept of the manual and I started to study it, is that I needed to change that if I wanted my marriage, this marriage to be.
So lucky for me, I learned about the manual after I got divorced. So it helped me with my ex-husband, helped me in my life in general with people, but it also helped me mostly with my new husband, Jeff. So what I want to share with you today and to get you to think about. Because it was such a game changer for me, and I expect it will be for you as well, is that if you have these manuals, I want you to be aware of them so that you can figure out what you wanna do with them.
If you have these manuals, which I know you do, if you’re honest with yourself, it is likely one of the reasons you are upset post divorce, many things that you don’t need to spend so much time and energy being upset. Take that time. Go for a walk, make a meal plan. Set a goal, take a nap. I don’t care, do anything else, but spending time getting so frustrated with these things I call the manual is really just nothing more than a waste of time.
My goal for you in this podcast is to awaken you to consider. To help you move on and use your divorce and learn from it to create the most amazing future life you can have. Hence the name your amazing divorce. Remember that from adversity in life like your divorce, you can go down the path of self pity and poor me, and you can hide and buffer with alcohol and food and social media.
And ignore things and stay in and with bad habits that are hurting you or you can own it and learn and move on and be stronger and better, and have a great future. Many of my teachings are directed to you and the divorce, but these lessons will assist you moving forward when you get into new relationships, like with my husband Jeff, so that you learn from what I consider mistakes, so that you break certain cycles you may be in.
Have awareness and make better choices moving forward and create the life you want.
Now, we all have certain reasonable expectations of how the people in your life should behave. And when I say that out loud and you hear. I would venture to say that you think that’s pretty reasonable, right? That certain people in your life should act and do and behave in certain ways. But the issue with this is that you are assuming that what you think is reasonable is, I’m sorry to say, not what someone else is thinking is reasonable.
That’s just a reality of life and you know, your ex, you got divorced for a reason. So trying to make sure that he acts in a certain way when he probably was doing these saying behaviors beforehand is really kind of ridiculous when you think about it. One of the first things that I want you to really grasp is that adults get to act and do or not do and behave however they.
They get to make choices and they get to decide and have the freedom to do so. And yes, this includes you. I want you to really sit with that and think about this for a while. There is nothing you must do ever, or that anyone else has to do for you. There are certain things that you should do or maybe you want to do, but the reality is that we as adults get to make the decisions in our lives on how we.
Sometimes people make decisions and act in ways that get them fired or divorced or arrested and on. When you have a relationship with someone who you expect to fulfill your needs and make you happy, you are headed for absolute failure from the get-go, you are the only one responsible for your. But making someone else responsible for your happiness, when you cannot control it, and when we know that they’re not going to do what you want, it’s going to happen, I promise.
Is just setting yourself up for disaster.
So I wanna talk about therapy and counseling for a minute, and I have a great respect for therapists. And that’s a big, but when it comes to marriage counseling, I do take a few issues with this common practice where the therapist will sit with the parties and say, Hey, why don’t you tell him what you want him to do?
And hey, why don’t you tell her what you want her to do? That’s one of the more common practices amongst therapists, but in my humble opinion, a therapist trying to expose what I call the manuals can be a real formula for a disaster. I think it is a disaster because first, we should all be responsible for meeting our own need.
So going to the therapist and explaining each of your needs to the other. If we go there, then unfortunately now, not only are responsible for someone else’s needs and them feeling responsible for your needs, but now each of you are supposedly responsible for the other person’s happiness. I mean, it just doesn’t make any.
Then you’re in this relationship that you are always on guard and always trying to check in and see if the other person is living up to his end of the bargain so you can feel happy. No one comes outta winner. And my personal take on it is that this formula lends itself really to hurting relationships.
So can you acknowledge first that you truly cannot control another person?
Next, I ask you to think about who you have manuals for in your life, an ex, a friend, a family member. The next thing I want you to truly consider is to start taking responsibility for your own happiness and check into your own manual that you have for how you live and want to live your. Because with your own manual, you can control it, modify it, take responsibility for it, and decide what you want it to be.
Operating manuals for ourselves are okay. Truth be told, we have enough challenges in our own life trying to control our own brains and do what we know we need to do. I ask you, how can we possibly then be expected to control someone else’s? I mean, it seems really rather crazy, right? How many of you have tried to control someone else and you find yourself living in this place of constant frustration?
I suggest that you may want to consider why you want them to act a certain way. Think about that. I’m going to explain why. The reason why is because you have this thought process that you think you will feel a certain way if he does this or. But remember that your thinking causes a feeling, not what the person did.
It is your thinking about what they did See, the action of what he did is not what causes the good feeling. It is the thinking about what he did. The act itself is nothing. It creates nothing until you think about it. And then a feeling stems from that. So when he is following your manual, you think he. He respects me.
He’s good. And that thought brings you a happy feeling of sort On the other hand, when people don’t follow your manual, the ad they took itself didn’t create a negative feeling like anger or sadness. It is a thought you had about the person not following your prescribed operating manual. That causes the negative feeling.
And remember, most people don’t even know what the operation manual wants them to. It’s in our mind, but even worse than the fact that we have no control over the actions of another person, is that we put all our anticipated happiness in the control of another person. I mean, if I was you, I would question whether you wanna place all the control over your feelings and the hands of your ex or anyone else in your life for that matter.
Wouldn’t you want to be the one in control of how you. I know I would. So I strongly suggest that when you expect someone else to act a certain way in order to create happiness in your life, that you are always going to be super disappointed. So know that, please,
if you guys are anything like me, I’ve spent so much energy and wasted time and got myself into such a frenzy trying to get other people to behave the way that I expect them to. So I was able to catch myself and be aware that I was doing this. It took a lot of self-awareness, but now what I do when I catch myself trying to enforce Emmanuel or getting upset that someone did or didn’t do something is first I’m aware.
And then I know that I need to take a huge breath and stop trying to control things and people, I first have to recognize that I’m doing it. And then I have to take that deep breath and realize, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? And really just take a step back. So now I wanna make a distinction here.
There are situations in your life in which there are expectations, but those are like with children that need your direction to learn and grow and do the right things. Or if you are in a business or hire someone to do a job for you. And those situations, you have an understanding that I will pay you X for Y.
And of course, it is appropriate in those circumstances to have expectations and let the job be done correctly. And as you. If you ask your child to take his plate and put it into the dishwasher, you expect him to do it, and he should, because he’s learning from you. He is a child, but these, as I’m sure you can see, are very different than having manuals for adults.
The other thing that I want to make really clear is about a request or asking for something versus a manual. If I request you to call me in an hour and you don’t call me, that’s on you and not on. I can make the request, but if you don’t call, I am not going to be all hung up on it. I realize it’s just a request and nothing more than that.
So some clients will say to me, Hey, Doreen, are you telling me that I shouldn’t ask my ex to put the kids to bed on time? Or to do the children’s homework with them when he has ’em or not. Let them stay up late and be so tired. And what I say to them is, listen, you can make whatever requests and how many requests you want of everyone in your life, but when you get all crazed up and tie your emotional happiness to whether he does it or not, then you will live in constant problems and be banging your head against the wall and frustration trying to get him to do what you want so you can feel.
Remember, we cannot control another person. You can make the request and do so from a place of explaining why and asking, but just know that there is a strong possibility that the person that you’ve asked a request of may not do what you’re asking. And so be ready for that and understand it. You have to take responsibility for how it makes you feel when they don’t do what you’ve asked and not get all crazy.
Let me also clearly say that this doesn’t mean that you have to stay with or around people that have a different set of values than what you have. You get to make choices on who you associate with. There are some, like your ex, if you have children together, that you have to deal with on some level, and that’s reality, but you also need to recognize that you can’t control or change him or make him operate the way you.
Now if it’s a legal issue, then you can discuss it with your attorney and maybe there are certain specific parameters that the court can impose, like paying support on time. And if they don’t, then your attorney can likely get an automatic deduction order for the support payment straight out of his paycheck and situations like that.
But know that there are certain things that the court can do and certain things that the court can’t help you with. The court’s not gonna micromanage him, and you can. You get to decide how you wanna spend your energy in your life and where you want to place it. Do you wanna place your energy into trying to change someone and control a situation that you absolutely cannot control?
Or would you rather accept that you can’t control another person? Instead, place all that energy on your self development improvement and the things that you can control.
So let’s discuss another situation as this applies to all people in your life, not just your ex. Let’s assume, for example, you have a friend that is always late when you meet up with her. Now you can tell her, Hey, it would be really great if you could be on time when we meet because it makes me feel like I’ve got a priority or my time isn’t important to you.
Or I don’t like standing around the bar by myself and explain it in a kind and loving way. But if the next time you set a date, she shows up late, you can get all angry and you can ruin your. Or you can just know that this is a choice she made and you get to control whether you wanna set another date with her again or not.
You get to control your own decision as to whether or not your friendship is worth waiting or not. Cuz you know she’s likely gonna be late again. That is your choice and that is where all the power lies. Get it. You have the power then to decide to enjoy your friendship or. Know that whether someone decides to honor your request or not has nothing to do with you.
It has everything to do with them, and you can enjoy them as a person anyway or on some other level, and that is on you. This in term, makes for a happier, more satisfying relationship with people. So ask yourself who you have manuals for in your life. We mainly have these for people who are closest to. We have ideas on how we would like them to behave and who we would like them to be.
It comes from this idea that if they were more likely want them to be, then we would somehow be happier. This could be spouses, boyfriends, friends, family, coworker, bosses, our ex. It could even be our neighbor or someone that we see on a regular basis that we don’t even have like super close relationship.
I hope you get that your emotional happiness comes from you. Some people make it easier to have positive relationships with and thoughts around because they just live and they jive with us. They understand and we’re like on a sync together. You know, it just kind of flows easy. You share more common values.
It’s like my ex and I, we were both similar in the way that we raised children, and so that made it a lot easier for us post divorce to kind of not have a lot of issues surrounding the kid. If I asked or requested something of my ex, he was like, sure, no problem. And because we jived together when it comes to the kids, he usually followed through because it just made sense to him.
But that’s not every relationship when you’re dealing with. You know, some of you just have very, very different thought processes about many things, and if that’s your relationship with your ex and know it, own the fact that he likely is not going to do what you ask of him. I think about my current husband, Jeff, and like I used to get so worked up that he would forget to do something and then I would nag him about it.
I’d say, Hey, but I don’t understand. Why didn’t you place it on your calendar? And blah, blah, blah. And then I realized that he’s just that kind of guy that while he gets things done, his timeline is different than mine. And so while I like to calendar everything, And I’m super detailed and specific, and I like to get things done quickly.
He takes his time, he gets things done, but he runs at a certain level that’s just different than mine. And you know, that’s okay. And so now when I’m like, Ugh, why do he do that? Why am I waiting? It’s been like two minutes. No, just kidding. It’s been like two days. I’m like, okay, let me just give him another day.
And nine times outta 10, he’ll come through in the long run. It’s just a few days later than what I want.
I suggest that you think about the people in your life and who you have manuals for. Write down things you think it would be awesome for these people to do. Really take out a piece of paper and write down the things that you think that this person in your life should do. Then I want you to take time and think about it.
What do you imagine that you would feel if he did it voluntarily? What would you be thinking? Remember, all of your feelings come from your thinking. What would you be thinking if this person behaved in the way that you want them to behave? Think about that. Do you have that thought available for you now?
Now ask yourself, can you think about this person without having them do those things? If the answer is yes, you. You don’t have to go around changing other people in order to feel better. What you can do is feel better on your own accord. You can decide that you’re not going to make your life about what you think you’re entitled to have or get from other people.
What if you were to change your thinking to the thought that you are not to have any expectations, and instead that you have to and will take control of your own happy? Your own emotional life that you get to make the happiness in your life yourself, and having thoughts over people and situations that serve you instead.
For example, if you really want something done and it’s really important to you, ask yourself why you’re not doing it yourself. Instead, be honest with yourself and ask yourself why you are not doing it or why you’re not willing to. Again, you can make a request always from a place of kindness, but just get that.
Even if the person says, yeah, I can do that, that there’s always a chance they won’t. I see this with my divorce clients all the time. They get so wrapped up in what their ex is doing or not doing. They spend so much energy telling me, well, he did this, he did that, and I’m just like, hello. They’re not gonna do it.
So you can ask, but they’re not going to. And so assume they’re not and move on and just know that, you know, I’ll give you an example. One of my clients this week was having such a meltdown because her ex refuses to work with her son on his schoolwork, and he needs help. But this has been an ongoing issue that I’ve heard from her for the last year.
So what I said to her was, look, is there any possible way that we can just accept the fact that your ex is just not gonna come up to the plate and help your son with his homework and the extra studying that he needs? Can we use this energy and direct it towards getting him help somewhere else? And she did.
She got a tutor, which by the way, her ex has to pay 50% up. She talked to the teacher. She’s putting aside more time to work with her. So instead of spending all that energy complaining about her ex, she’s now taking that energy and using it to really make a difference to help her son get better grades.
Take some time to consider this idea. Are you willing to give up your manual? Are you willing to let go of your expectations that are based on what you want in your life and focus all that time and energy on yourself and create the best life that you can for yourself that’s independent of anyone else’s behavior or action.
And in fact, it will only, in essence enhance the relationships around you because people will generally do things not because you are telling them and insisting on it, but because they want. Again, you can always ask, but just don’t expect If it happens, great. If it doesn’t know it, and take action elsewhere.
So I ask you to sit down with your journal and to think about the people in your life again, that you have manuals for. Write out what your expectations of them. Put down the reasons why you have these expectations and figure out if it is something that you can take control of. Use your energy wisely because you know what, you’ve been through a lot and it’s time now to focus in on you, the life that you want and your amazing future.
So listen, have a most amazing week. Remember to love yourself. You are amazing just the way you. And take care of yourself. You deserve it. Until next time, my friends, thanks so much for listening. Get further information and some free secrets on how to make your life amazing after [email protected].
And remember my friends? Yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce. See you.
Views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Yaha Family Law Group or your Divorce Law Center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives. The content of your amazing divorce is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
None of the content on your amazing divorce should be considered legal advice, nor does anything herein create an attorney-client relationship. As always, consult a lawyer for your legal questions.
So have a new expression and it goes like this. Yes, you can. Well, it’s not really mine, I have to be honest with you. Kind of like stole it from the sky. Cody on the Peloton. Love Cody. Give me some Cody. And let me remind you, I’m gonna say it a million times. It’s a 50 50 life. That’s just the way it is.
And when you can come to peace with the fact that life is a mixture of good days, bad days, bad years, good years, great years, It just makes life a bit easier to understand and be at peace with. What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could happen to you? I’m Doreen Yaa, marital and family lawyer and certified life coach.
I’ve been coaching and consulting women for over 26. I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce. Hi there. My most amazing friends. How are you now? Really? Tell me. Be honest with me. How are you doing today? Now, remember after divorce, but anytime actually in life, you’re gonna have good days and you’re gonna have bad days.
Or should I say more appropriately, right? You’re gonna have good moments and bad moments. I get that. Been there, done that. This is rough stuff. But you are strong and I know you have what it takes to move on from your divorce into a better, more amazing life because you know what? You are amazing.
You know when something bad happens to us, like we get served with the divorce papers, especially when we didn’t know it was coming. That’s not good. That’s bad. That’s that bad part, right? Y’all get that. So we’re not always supposed to feel good. Now, social media marketing, you know, everything you see on tv, they’d all want us to think and believe that life is all amazing.
We look amazing, feel amazing. Our families are perfect, et c. But, uh, that’s not reality, my friends. So for all of you newbies, and for all of you that have been listening to me for a while now, listen, I wanted to remind you that I named the podcast Your Amazing Divorce, which by the way, I get a lot of slack about, you know, I tell people the name of the podcast, your Amazing Divorce, and they’re like, what?
And they look at me and they’re like, yeah, amazing. In the same sentence with the word. I guess maybe for some, it’s a little over the top, but that’s okay. I’m gonna roll with it cuz I believe it and here’s why. I’ve been practicing marital and family laws and turning down in Florida now for 26 years and I’m also a certified life coach, and I went through my own divorce a million years ago.
Remarried now for 11 happy years. Okay. Not always happy, but mostly happy. Let’s just say much better. Yeah, so here’s what I noticed. I noticed, and I believe this for you, is that when I’m coaching people, either through the divorce as a lawyer and I see them years later, or as a life coach, I realize that they’re in such a better place.
Most of them, even without coaching from somebody like myself, seemed to get it. Like they seemed to realize that they were in a bad marriage. Things weren’t right. It ended for a reason. And then they move on and they grow and they end up being in a much better place. I had one client the other day and her and I were talking and she said, you know what, Doreen?
I actually called up my ex and I thanked him. I’m like, what? She goes, yeah, I called him up. I’m in such a better place. She just started this amazing business and I thanked him. I said, you know, Best thing you ever did to me was to file for a divorce. So anyhow, if you are like in a bad place, I just want you to know that we’re here for you and together we’re gonna get through.
You have the ability to learn and grow from your divorce, and that’s why I’m here to help you, give you some tools and things to figure it out, to let you know that you are not alone, that you will be okay, and in fact you will and can be better than, okay. You can be amazing. It’s really up to you.
So I’ve been thinking about all of you and what you’re dealing with, picking up the pieces and moving on. So I have a secret and a question you see after my divorce, and to be honest, a few. I had a lot of regret feelings that I was dealing with. Are you dealing with any feelings of regret stemming from the breakdown of your marriage?
I bet the answer is yes. For some of you, it may be a lot of regret that you’re thinking about it on a more regular basis, and for others it might creep in there every so often, you know? Go on a date and the guy’s a real dud or whatever and come back home and you’re like, Ugh, you know what? My husband wasn’t so bad.
My ex was pretty okay, but I don’t want you to get it stuck in that regret mode. But to be honest with yourself, you’re probably having some regret feelings every so often, regret around your kids, and a broken home regrets when things get rough for your alone on a Saturday night. So today I wanna dive into the feeling of regret and how you can use regret to your advantage to create a better life for yourself by avoiding the same mistakes and instead going for your.
So let’s start with the definition of regret. I, of course go straight to the Googles, and here’s what I found. Regret means as a feeling, a verb is to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has happened or been done. Especially the loss or missed opportunity to feel sorrow for the loss or absence of that pretty much may sum it up for you as.
But did you know that there is a way to deal with regret effectively, or should we say maybe more accurately not to deal with it? You’re like, what Dore? What are you talking about?
So regret can be a useful emotion. First of all, emotions, especially the ones you have after divorce, can be either emotions that are useful or that are not useful, even though they feel just plain horrific when you are feeling them. But these negative feelings like. Can help you to propel forward to the life you wanna create.
Now, when you feel regret, it likely is because of something you did or something you think you should have done right? Do you get what I’m saying? And all of these tools that I’m teaching, it’s not just because you went through a divorce or going through a divorce, you can use these in your everyday situations.
So let’s take a rather harsh example. Let’s say you had an affair and your ex found out about it and you ended up getting divorced. So in that circumstance, maybe you are thinking, well, that was a big mistake. That’s the regret thought, right? It cost me my marriage. But that kind of thinking is past thinking, thinking about what happened in the past and what you cannot undo.
You know, it’s done. It’s. But it’s not as easy as just moving on. That’s not the purpose of this. The purpose here is to learn and grow. You see, if you can learn from a past mistake and realize that it was not the best choice, then we’re on to something here. Then regret can be a helpful emotion. You can move past the regret to a place of growth so you can learn and not make the mistake again.
So what about if you were the one that was cheated on, right? It’s just another example of looking at something in the past. So if you were the one that did the wrong in the relationship, and let me just suggest this and get it out there. It takes two to tango guys, okay? I know that there’s some real shitheads out there that you know, shouldn’t be in relationships to begin with, but most of the time in most marriage, It’s both people’s fault, right?
So whether you had an affair, he had an affair, there was a lack of communication, money issues, children problems, whatever it is, it’s a combination of both people. And so your regrets about the breakdown of your marriage or your relationship is something that hopefully you’re just gonna learn from.
So you can think about the regret and how you can make a different choice in your next relationship. That’s when regret is helpful. So the issue is that most of us, when we feel regret, we have a tendency defend it by turning it around to what I call the blame game. It sounds like. But you know, if he was more attentive, if he was home, or if he was more romantic, if he worked harder, I would’ve never been tempted when that guy came around, you know, to pursue him or to make his life miserable or whatever.
We could have worked things out. You see the difference here in this mindset, you spend a lot of time focused on what the other person did or didn’t do. Casting blame rather than just owning it. And this kind of thinking about regret serves absolutely no purpose for your growth, your future, and your amazing life.
It just keeps you. No growth, no learning what you can do differently the next time around in your next marriage, your next relationship. No reaching for your dreams and the life you want and becoming the best version of the person you can be. I hope you think about this and how if you focus on the past, when you think about regret and how someone else did you wrong, that this is just a worthless use of time and energy.
It doesn’t serve your future. So may I suggest that you think about regret as not what you could have done differently in the past to what you can absolutely do differently in the future so you can work on avoiding future regret. Got it. It’s not the easiest of lessons to teach, but it is one of those things that once it clicks, it clicks and it can be amazing.
There is a famous quote from an American actor, John Barrymore. I love this quote, and it goes like this. A man is not old until regrets. Take the place of dreams. It’s the difference between being stuck in the past and looking forward to creating and reaching your dreams. That’s what I want for you to look forward and to learn and grow and blossom and become the person you envision your future self to be.
We can’t undo what already happened it was meant to be, and so it was. And so when you think of the past, let it set you free, that it’s over done and gone. You have today, tomorrow, and the next day and on to change your life and to avoid regret. To make the choices to get to the life that you want, that you deserve to say to yourself, Hey, listen, self, that was supposed to happen so that I could be right where I am today to grow from it and move forward, stronger, better, happier.
What matters is that I make a different choice now.
Let me just take a pause here because I want you to get a piece of paper and sit down in a quiet place and do a little exercise with me. No tv, no kids, no dogs, no anything, just you and your paper. I want you to close your eyes and envision your future self five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from.
Even 25 years from now, think of your future self. You’re 25 years older than you are today. Can you close your eyes and envision yourself there? What choices can you make today to avoid regret years from now? For me, I would regret not being here with you and doing this podcast. Had I not been brave enough to put myself out there, I’d regret.
I might regret not eating healthy today. You know, if I was to get sick in the future or to exercise, or maybe I would regret not spending more time with my children years from now, I would regret that for some of you, maybe it’s starting a new career or a business. If you’re gonna regret it 10 years from now, the biggest disappointment would’ve been in my mind for you, that you could have done it.
You could have accomplished this goal of yours, but you didn’t put yourself out there and take the risk. What might your future regret look like based on the choices you make? You know, decisions today to take care of your future self are key. Think about it. Think about your goals. Think about what you want, your world, your life, your years later down the line to look like and go for it.
You know, I’m gonna talk in another episode about reaching goals, but when you think about your future self and what you want that to look like, I love to work backwards. You know, for example, and I use this a lot, is that if you wanna get into the best shape ever, You know what you need to do. So if you know that a year from now you wanna look a certain way, you wanna be a certain kind of weight or health, or maybe put more muscle on whatever it is, I know you know what you have to do.
You’ve gotta work out, you’ve gotta be dedicated, you’ve gotta eat well, and it’s pretty simple. So now you just gotta write it down and you just gotta follow. You don’t wanna have regret years from now for the things that you know you want and that you can accomplish, and I know you can. Absolutely. A hundred percent.
Yes you can. You can accomplish anything you want, anything you set your mind to do. So you have a choice right now today to stop punishing yourself with regret and to create the life you envision for. Don’t let regret steal your future, your dreams. Look back, forget the blame. Learn from things, learn from mistakes, and move forward.
Instead, by showing up and becoming the best version for your future self, take the risk. Go for it. You got it. If one way doesn’t work, try another way. Just keep trying. You got. I think the worst regret in life would’ve been what you could have done, achieved, been experienced, and you didn’t do it. Listen, my amazing friends have a most amazing day, and until next time, love yourself.
Give yourself a big hug. You deserve it. Thanks so much for listening. Get further information and some free secrets on how to make your life amazing after [email protected]. And remember my friends? Yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce. See you there. Views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Yaha Family Law Group or your Divorce Law Center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives.
The content of your amazing divorce is for entertainment and educational purposes only. None of the content on your amazing divorce should be considered legal advice, nor does anything herein create an attorney-client relationship. As always, consult a lawyer for your legal questions.
Listen, you know, I want to get to know you. Reach out to me at any time. Let me know what’s on your mind. Maybe think of a topic if you have something that you would like me to discuss. I’m happy to consider it and I’m also happy to bring up questions and answers online. So if you have a question that deals with something life coach related post-judgment.
So I don’t give any lawyer advice here that’s, that’s a different hat I wear over at my law firm down in Florida. But if you need any advice as a life coach and how to move past onto your most amazing life, Below is my email address and you can reach out to me at any time cuz I would love to hear from you.
What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could happen to you? I’m Doreen Yaa, marital and family lawyer and certified life coach. I’ve been coaching and consulting women for over 26 years. I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my e. And my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce.
Hey, there, all my beautiful friends. How are you doing? Okay, here’s the dealio. I want to talk today about goals, and I want to first give you a little bit of background. For those of you who don’t know me as well, you can always listen to episode one. That gives a little more of my background, but just to briefly tell you, so my parents divorced when I was.
Never saw my father again. It was partly my mother’s issue. She moved, uh, from Massachusetts, moved me and my sister from Massachusetts down to Florida and really did not cooperate with, uh, time sharing, access, custody, all those kind of things named differently in different states depending on where you live.
So I didn’t see my dad. So this happened when I was five. They divorced and I did see him around 21 years old. It was not a good encounter, meaning he really didn’t want anything to do with me and my sister. And so, uh, that’s, that. Met my first husband, Sam in law school, got married and, uh, had three beautiful children together.
Three girls who are all now grownups, 1921 and 20. That marriage ended about 10 years into it or so on a very mutual level. And we remain to this day very good friends. We are probably what I like to call the poster children for what a couple a new family relationship dynamic should look like post divorce.
And I think that’s part of the reason, or I wanna say that’s probably a big reason why our three girls have done relatively. Now when I tell you that they wish that we stay together, of course all children want their parents to stay together, right? I mean, let’s just be real. But as far as post divorce, parents, co-parenting, you know, we sat at events together.
We had birthdays together. I invited him over for dinner. I gave him care packages. You know, when he dropped off the kids like food that I’d made that night and treated him with. Because to me, and from what I understand in the, uh, psychological world, you know, children see themselves as a reflection of their parents.
And when we treat each other or post divorce badly as co-parents, really what the child, from what I understand, I am not an expert and I’m not a therapist, nor am I claiming to be. Only from what I’ve learned in my life as a lawyer, different therapists that I’ve had to hire for different reasons, the children are very much affected by this, and they see the way in which one parent treats the other as a reflection on something that they did wrong.
and I won’t get into it more than that, but we made, Sam and I made a conscious, conscious decision to really keep our differences away from the kids. And to be honest with you, we didn’t have a lot of differences, at least from my, my thought process. So then, uh, in 2011, I remarried my husband Jeff, and um, he has a son, Spencer, who is 20.
So we had a blended family thing going on, and we got married in four months. Now, would I recommend that to you? Don’t tell Jeff, but likely not, but it’s been 11 years and things are are really good. You know, no marriage is perfect. No relationship is perfect. No person is perfect, right? But I learned a lot from my first marriage.
So we’re doing pretty good. I always say I’m very blessed. I have the best of both worlds. I have the most amazing father to my children, Sam and I have the most amazing husband to me, Jeff. So who could ask for more?
The lessons that I teach, they’re based in the foundation of my life coaching. And so everything that happens is all based on a philosophy of life coaching that I use called the model so that our thoughts about a circumstance create a feeling action, and. And what I’m doing in these episodes and in my teachings and in my work with women post divorce or during divorce, is that I’m teaching you life skills that I’m applying specifically to divorce.
But really can be used by you in any circumstance. So keep that in mind. So today I wanna talk about goals. Now, why did I tell you about my past history and a little bit about myself? Oh, I should also mention that I’ve been practicing family law, marital family laws, a board certified marital family lawyer down in Florida for 26 years.
So, and that’s all I. Meaning that’s the only type of law that I practice. I have a, a nice team. I have, uh, several lawyers and, and paralegals, et cetera, but we deal only with divorce, post divorce related issues. Some adoptions very rarely though, and some other family related issues, but that’s primarily my practice.
So I’ve helped a lot of people get to the next part of their most amazing life. Now, another quick thing is the name. The name is your amazing. Why? Because what I know from my own experience being a divorced child, going through a divorce, co-parenting with my ex remarriage blended family, 26 years of practicing marital family law.
I know that divorce can be used to strengthen you, to help you grow, to help you understand, learn from, and now create an amazing life for yourself better than it was before. So hence the name, your amazing divorce.
You know, after divorce, you likely are feeling a bit numb, sad. Unmotivated. And as I have talked to you before about this, there is a time and a place to mourn this, to permit yourself the chance to grieve and to not be hard on yourself. And depending on how your marriage ended, you may likely be in a much different place than one of our other amazing people listening.
For example, if you were the one that wanted the divorce, Versus your spouse who wanted it. That’s just different. And if you and your spouse were both in agreement like me and my exam after therapy for a year, that’s a different situation. Then you have the situation, for example, where get a knock at the door and there’s a process server there who hands you divorce papers that in your mind came outta nowhere.
So it hits you like a ton of bricks and divorce takes time to. But when you finish the morning, because you can’t get stuck in it, it’s so easy to be in the woe is me stuck position. But when you are ready to move on, you take little baby steps first and then you move forward. So understanding where you are in your journey, post or past divorce.
Is important. It’s important to your healing, and then it’s important to taking action to your best future self and life. So part of what I believe is important to becoming the best version of ourselves is to have goals. So I wanted to talk today about why we need goals as. And how they help us on such a larger scale and with a bigger picture in mind.
To create a life you want. The point of goals is to have a picture, a destiny in mind. There is a goal that comes, of course, first, and then there’s the system or the process. How do I get there, right? So you first have to understand the goal clearly. Of what you’re trying to accomplish needs to be something that you can define.
I always use the example of weight cuz I could use to lose a couple of these pounds right now. So if I wanna lose 25 pounds and Ps I do, I know that’s a number, right? So if I step on the scale today and the scale reads out a number, and the number that I’m want to lose is 25, I can easily do the math. So the goal is something that is defined.
Then you have the process of determining how to get there, and that is called what I call system or process of achieving your goal, right? So I’m talking today mostly about the setting of.
You see there is the goal that comes first, and then there’s a system or process of getting there. They have to coexist together. You can’t have one without the other. If you have a defined goal, but you don’t create the system to get there, it won’t work. And if you have a system without a defined goal, the same thing is true.
It makes no sense to say that one is better or more important than the other. They work in compliment with each other. I suggest some of you have never stopped long enough to even think about what you want your goals to be. Maybe you are one of these people that does everything for everyone else, right?
And I hope you reconsider putting yourself as a priority and give yourself permission to place your needs as number one. It’s okay, really. You know, there’s a reason why they tell you to place the air mask on yourself first before you assist someone else. You have to take care of yourself, for yourself and for those around you that you love.
When you’re going through a divorce or post divorce, you need to nurture yourself. You need to not be hard on yourself. You need to take time for yourself. Sometimes I suggest that people place other people first because they don’t wanna deal with their selves. They don’t wanna deal with the negative feelings or thoughts they have about themselves.
So it’s a lot easier to go and take care of your children’s needs. Get up in the morning, feed them, take them to school, take them to camp, pick them up, you know, busy, busy dinner, this, that, and the other thing. Then just sit down and really know who you. Know what you want in life. Know what you need, know what your goals are, and then there are some of you that have goals, but you don’t even really know what they are, meaning they’re a part of who you are, but you have never taken the time to define them, to really understand them and your why.
Okay, W h Y behind your goal. Maybe it was somebody else’s goal for you or some cultural or expected goal. I encourage you to write down and journal about your why on your goal or your goals, and be honest with yourself as to why that goal you have set is important to you. And it’s okay. And it’s typical to have several different why’s.
You will be amazed at how the journaling and writing this down will help to keep you motivated and on track to your goal. You know, I do it every morning. I have a cup of coffee, cup of tea. I get up early, I might work out. But first thing I. Is I just take literally five minutes, that’s all it takes. Not even five minutes.
Sometimes it’s just a couple minutes cuz I’m anxious to get going and I just write down my goal for the day. What do I wanna accomplish? What do I wanna accomplish with working out and my goal of losing weight? What do I wanna accomplish with my goal and my business? What do I wanna accomplish with my goal in some of my cases?
What do I wanna accomplish with my children? Whatever it might be. I’m gonna set those goals down and I’m gonna prioritize, and I’m gonna write it out, but equally important is the clarity of your why. That comes from writing it down as to what the goal means to you. Look, motivation is a lot easier when you are clear about the outcome you want and also if you focus on one major goal at a time.
This one I have a struggle with. I think I just mentioned, you know, several goals that I have just as of today, but having a lot of big goals at one time can run into some confusion, overlap, and just plain. . So I suggest that you consider one big goal at a time and how you’re gonna arrive at that. If you wanna do more than one goal at a time, then you have to have a good reason.
Now, why am I asking you to consider goals post divorce? Because goals are gonna make you think about your future life and what you want that to look like.
Now I wanna turn for a moment to some clarity about the goal versus the system of achieving the goal. I don’t know if you know, but James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits says, I’m paraphrasing. Of course, if you want a better result, forget the goal and focus on the system. But there is a balance of focus on the destiny and the journey to get there.
I am a big believer in the journey being just as important as a goal itself. But one thing I want you to remember as you’d set your goals is that reaching your goal is not going to make you happy, and that’s what we also need to keep in mind. This is why you hear of so many people that reach amazing goals, and they’re still unhappy, they’re still struggling.
You see, the issue here is that they mistakenly believe that the end result of the goal will change their life. Make them. But once they meet the goal, and while they do feel happiness in the short-lived part of it, because your thoughts create your happiness, not the goal itself. For example, if I lose the 25 pounds, is my whole life gonna change?
Like, am I gonna now be this most amazing, happy person? I’m gonna wake up every day like this is the most amazing. No, because remember, life is a balance of good and bad, and so when I reach my goal of losing 25 pounds, will I be happy when I step on the scale and I see that you bet you will. I be happy and feel great as I see the scale moving down.
Yeah, I’ll know that I’m reaching my goal. I’m getting there. It feels like progress. It feels great, but when I look at that number and I’ve lost the weight and something bad happens, someone gets sick that I love and care about, I’m gonna have to deal still with that bad feeling. So understand that reaching goals is only gonna propel you forward, make you happy for a period of time.
Keep you focused on becoming the best version of yourself, but it’s not the end all to your happiness. When I was researching today for the episode, I came across an analogy, and I guess they actually did experiments around this. It went something like this. You see, if I was to blindfold you and place you in the middle of a large field and ask you to walk a straight line to get to the other side, the chances are statistically.
That eventually you will start out okay, but you will likely then start to go in circles or run off course without being able to visualize the other side of the field. It’s very hard to get there, and this is the same thing to keep in mind with your own goal. Without the clarity and vision of your goal in place, eventually you can end up wondering like where your life went, you know how life just got away from you.
So goal setting for you, especially when you’re dealing with something as difficult as getting through and past divorce, is super important. It provides focus and directs your thoughts. It gives you something to measure progress by. It helps you to overcome procrastination and overwhelm. It keeps you motivated, it gives you guidance to bring you back on track and where you need to be when you’re off course.
So most of us are searching for the same thing, right? We wanna be happy, healthy, balanced, and that comes in many different forms to each one of us. But to be honest, isn’t that what we’re all striving for? If you don’t see the goals and direction of your life, then life just ends up happening to you and you wake up saying, well, that was a total waste of.
Just showing up day in and day out, and likely dealing with your negative emotions by buffering to feel better like overeating and overdrinking and surfing the net for hours and even overworking. Ps I’m guilty of that one really over any thinging, any thinging. Try to say that right. I looked it up. It’s not a word, of course, is when life just happens to you, and that’s super depressing.
Wouldn’t you agree if you’re feeling blah? No growth, no focus, no goals. It’s not a good mindset or state to be in, but when you set a goal for yourself, you get this special pep in your step. And I have to tell you, it’s intoxicating. You know these people that are like so good to be around because they always seem to be happy and I’m not talking.
The ones that are like got another issue going on. Cuz they’re happy all the time and I don’t know what they’re on. But I’m talking about the people that just seem to be making headway in life. They’re doing things, you know, they’re creating things. Usually people with big goals are just small goals, right?
That stay focused and work on their goals on a daily. Those people are just great to be around. Whether it’s running a 5k, writing a book, starting a new business, going back to school, losing weight, whatever it is. When you set a goal, your attitude just changes and you start creating a life on purpose.
People with goals. They say, they say they’d live longer. Hey, I’m in for that one too. The reality is that most people don’t have a goal. I mean, they might have a vision of something. I would like to be skinny. That’s a vision, that’s not a goal. Now, some might argue with me that it is a goal, but it’s not defined enough.
I wanna lose 25 pounds is an actual quant. Goal.
So I was working with one of my life coaching clients and she was having thoughts that she was unlovable basically. These thoughts stemmed from something a bit deeper and when we pressed the issue, it was that her ex-husband had moved on to a new relationship. And not only was he in a new relationship, from what I understand, pretty serious relationship with a woman 15 years younger than him and my client.
So let me walk you through this and what was going on with her and how we worked on her thoughts to help her set new goals and results for herself to help to get past this thought that she was unlovable and worthy and just not attractive. To something that really served her circumstance, if you recall, is a fact.
So it can be something that someone says to you, the words, or it can be a factual thing that no one would debate with. So in her case, the factual circumstance was her ex was dating someone 15 years younger. It was quantified. Okay, do the math. 15 years. Her thoughts about this was that she was unattractive, unlovable, and fat, unlike his girlfriend, and that she was never going to be attractive again.
Her feeling was sad, depressed, and ugly. Her action as a result of her thought was basically, screw this. I’ll just eat everything cuz I feel like Ola and I wanna buffer right now. So buffering for those of you who don’t know yet, is when you have a negative feeling that you now try to escape by using something artificial.
So for example, food, sugar, alcohol, surfing, the net shopping, those are all, or can be all acts that you do to give your body physically a dopamine hit. When you eat sugar, you get a dopamine hit. When you drink alcohol, it feels good physically. So our bodies are trying to always protect us. That’s what we’re built to do.
And your brain says to you, what is the fastest way that I can get out of this negative feeling? And most of us will turn to buffering. Now, some buffering is more harmful than other buffering. But buffering is buffering and recognizing this is gonna be helpful to you now and in the future. And we will talk about that, I’m sure in episodes to.
So in my client’s case, she was so depressed thinking about that her ex was dating this younger woman who was attractive from what she said. Okay. But the attractive part of it, that’s not a fact. So we stuck with the fact, which was that she was younger because that’s quantified, right. and that she was like, well, screw it.
Let me just eat more. Let me just get into the fridge. And she was one of these binge eaters, you know, she’s working on it, right? And so the action she took was to buffer by eating to get the feeling of feeling better. And her result was that she was gaining weight and she was more unhealthy. So her thought of, I am unattractive and.
Her action was that she ate unhealthy and the result was that she was gaining weight. See, your thought always plays in to your results. So what I did with her was we started to work through her thoughts because this is where all the beauty lies. This is where the secret in life lies. Your thoughts are the key to your success, your happiness, and reaching your.
And so with her, we had to start with tiny little changes in her thinking because your thoughts and when you try to change them from what we call an unintentional model to what I call an intentional model, you have to believe it. You can’t just say, oh, I’m beautiful. You know? And believe it. If you truly don’t.
But you can take little baby steps. and so we started to work through her thinking like that her ex dating a younger woman was his choice, and that it did not define who she was or her ability to love and be loved. And with that thought, she started to realize that her feelings were changing from sad and attractive to something like, I’m a good person.
I said, dig a little deeper. She said, well, you know, I’ve always had great skin and hair and I look really nice when I do my hair and my makeup, and I feel attractive. So she started to feel now from her new. Enthusiasm of what her life could be and that she had all the power to create a better existence for herself.
So now her action line, she started setting goals and her first goal was to lose 20 pounds, which she knew she could do because she had been a runner and was excited about getting back into running again. And of course, the coming off of the weight just came along and would follow. So she decided to set the goal of running a 5K within six months.
And with that, she assured herself that she had a game plan to be healthy and to feel good. So she knew her goal, 5k run within six months. She knew how to get there to get up early, start working, out, running, eating, clean, all that, and it was attainable. She had a six month window to. And guess what? She got into the best shape.
She’s been in years now. I always thought she was amazingly beautiful anyhow, but when I look at her, I’m like, damn, girl, you are rocking it. And along the journey as she was getting into running again, she got into various running groups and she made some new great friends and her social life started to change.
So one of the reasons we need goals is to work through and change our thoughts, because if you change your result on your model, remember it’s circumstances, the thought about it, your feeling, your action, your result. You can start from the result, which is the goal, and you can work backwards. And that’s what she.
Now we need goals to have like a compass and therefore direction to be able to clearly see where we are headed and not go around blindfolded in circles like we’re in the middle of that field. Your goal doesn’t have to be as big as running a 5K or something more traditional, like starting a new business or something like this.
You can have more gentle and relaxed goals and don’t let anybody judge your goals. Your goals are your. So many of my clients, you know, they just want to be peaceful. They wanna be less stressed. That is a goal, that is an actual goal, and that is a great goal. So your goal is unique to you, your circumstances at that time.
Remember, goals change. Your goal when you were 15 versus 20 versus 30 and on have changed and your goals will continue to. And so it’s okay to have a more simple goal.
Another client of ours is looking to learn how to be less busy, less stressed, like she is one of those people that jam-packed all day on her calendar. . So she’s learning how to meditate. You know, she wants to be less stressed. She wants to be more organized. She knows that meditation from what she understands about it, will help her to reach her goal.
And we’re working on some other systems and processes to reach her goal. You can either have no goals and sit there isolated and eat and drink and buffer, or you can set forth a plan to achieve your goals. Any goal you make is a valid goal. Remember, it’s your goal and you don’t have to tell. I like to share goals with people, some goals, not all of my goals.
I like to share some goals with people because they help to keep me motivated, but I decide whom I’m gonna tell a goal to. For example, I told my husband that I wanted to lose weight. Well, he knew that for a while, right? But I didn’t tell him how much because that’s between me and myself and my scale.
And I didn’t wanna go there. So when we go out to dinner or I cook or I make something, he understands that I’m going to prepare food in a certain fashion. Now. Now I’m lucky cuz he’s on board with it and he loves when I cook healthy and I do love to cook and I do like to try new recipes, so he’s all in on it.
But I shared that goal with. , but you don’t have to share your goals. Your goal can be between yourself, your journal, and that’s it. This is why it’s super helpful to be very explicit as to your measurable goal and your purpose for wanting the goal. See, my first client that ran the 5K would’ve had a purpose of losing weight to compete with the new girlfriend or show them.
That purpose likely would not have sustained her. So your why is really important. When she turned the why to wanting to run a 5K be in the best shape ever for her life or her health. That was a goal that was sustainable for her. That was a good why. That was a great why. But if it would’ve been a different why, like, oh, I’m gonna show them that likely would not work.
Meaning that when Thet comes up, you know, she doesn’t wanna get outta bed that morning, she doesn’t wanna train. Weather’s bad outside. If she didn’t have that why in place and really understand it, she probably would’ve stayed under the covers. If you don’t have a purpose for the future, if you’re not striving towards certain goals, then the present doesn’t have any meaning.
You see, goals are really important to balance what I call the ying, or people call the ying and the yang balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance. And they can coexist in harmony for you and for me. So I encourage you, my beautiful friends, to think about your goals, write them down, journal them, include your why or your whys.
Think about your whys, and then set your intention.
And until next time, have an amazing rest of the day. And remember, yes, you can. Bye everybody. Thanks so much for listening. For tips, updates, and expert advice, be sure to visit your amazing divorce.com. And remember my friends? Yes, you. Have an amazing life after divorce. See you there. Views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Yaha Family Law Group or your Divorce Law Center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives.
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