“How do I get through a divorce?” This is a typical question that has so many answers to it, but for the purpose of today I want to focus on one aspect of it, which is to ask  a different question. “How do I get through the emotions of divorce?”

Overcoming the anger and resentment is the challenge and the emotions make it all worse. However, here is the amazing thing about emotions and feelings – they are tied to what we think about what we are going through.

Just imagine for a moment – that you had no thoughts about what he did or didn’t do? Imagine, that you saw the event as an event, with no story, with no meaning – just as it was..what would life be like in that moment? Do you think you would have peace of mind or chaos?

I can guarantee that you would have peace of mind.

You see, having peace of mind is our natural state. At any point we have whacked out thinking – thinking that goes off the grid – we find ourselves feeling the negative emotions. It is our body’s way of saying, “Hey you – you are buying into thoughts that are not real, so take some moments to just gain perspective so you can come back to your natural state.”

This is how you get through the emotions of divorce. Notice that you are feeling crappy, and use it as a guiding system to realize that you are buying into thoughts that are just not real.

At first, you may be thinking, “Hang on, it really hurts that he had an affair or left me and its because of this that i am angry.” It may seem like a real problem, but its not. The only problem we have is how we think about it.

The difference between feeling happy or sad is just a thought away. How to survive a divorce is to recognize that your thoughts are like the movie on the TV screen – they are not real.

Please leave your comments below as I would love your feedback on what this blog provoked for you…

To find out the rest of the steps of how to get through a divorce

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A question I get asked a lot is “How do I cope with a break up?”

And my answer usually is…..there are many ways but one of the ways I coped with my divorce was to nurture myself even when I did not want to.

Part of being able to cope with a break up is the ability to self nurture. We, as women, at the best of times find this challenging. However its important that if we want to cope with a break up that we do by nurturing ourselves.

As you can see by the photo, I occasionally like to indulge in going to a spa. Yesterday I was whisked away to Cambridge by my partner marc and we agreed that we would nurture ourselves and take time out of a very busy schedule. Running a business is like looking after a child and if you are doing so on your own, its important to take time out and cope with a break up this way.

When I was dealing with the divorce, I would drag myself to the local spa, get a massage, spend time in the sauna and steam room. I don’t know about you, but I found it a concerted effort to do anything nice for me at the time, because i didn’t feel like a deserved it.

But like with anything in life, the more we do something, the more it becomes part of who we are. These days a small trip to the spa may cost you as little as £20, but the way you feel when you come out is much more than this! At least that is the affect it had on me. The more I looked after myself, the more I wanted to look after myself as the good feelings, kept me going.

What small thing can you do today to cope with a break up?

To find more ways to overcome your breakup jump on our FREE webinar here

Today I was having a conversation with someone and she said, “I know I am over my ex, because I wouldn’t want him back, but I am not really over what happened.”

From that I gaged that there is an important distinction to make between thinking that just because you don’t want someone back that you are over them. Sometimes, to put up your hand with the turning of your head to say “I am so over him”, feels like you are, but to be truly over someone, is to feel that - Whatever they have done or not done, you are grateful for how it all turned out for what they did or didn’t do.

The truth is that you are still energetically tied to your ex if you are still holding onto emotions of the past. Which means that you are not over him yet, even if you don’t want him back. I talk about this in my book Goodbye Mr Ex that there are 3 stages to heartbreak.

1) The yo-yo stage – this whether you are coming or going, your emotions are everywhere and your thinking goes from I hate him to I love him and miss him.

2) The acceptance stage – you are at the stage where you are moving on with your life and you my have had relationships in between, and yet you would still change how things ended or what happened while you were in the relationship.

3) The gratitude stage  – it is at this point you would not change anything. You look back and you feel no emotion other than gratitude for who he was and how things ended. At this stage to be in gratitude is simple.

You may think you are over your ex because you don’t want him back, but its knowing that you would not change anything that really allows you to see whether you are or not.

Take know whether you are over Mr Ex and what to then do, fill in your Goodbye Mr Ex Quiz here

With International Women’s Day coming up on 8th March and I have been wondering about its origins and what it means to be a woman and how far we have come from such a short while ago.

Have we come far? Yes of course we have (in terms of doing) we can vote, we can share our thoughts, work, assume leadership roles and even govern countries.

And yet,there is still a lot of work to do in terms of healing the collective conscious. The stats for self harm and anorexia are going up and I see women on my doorstep who do not recognize how amazing they are and what incredible gifts they bring to the world.

The comparison game takes over, and before we know it we are comparing ourselves to others, left, right and center. In addition, old belief systems that are handed down from generation to generation are entrenched in the pysche, which affects us as a whole. We are a receiving station of information and so if we pick up on the collective pysche then it makes sense that there is still a lot of work to do to heal the whole.

So the question is how do we heal the whole? In my view we have to take care of ourselves and fall in love with ourselves again and this means fully embracing all that we are – namely embracing and nurturing all that we believe we are not – both good and bad. You cannot shine as a woman if you cannot see where you are all of that you wish you were.

And here is the clue…..when you wish you were like someone else, instead of saying I wish I were that way – ask “where am I like that, and how do I express it in my own way?” Because you will…

To fully embrace all of who you are, download your free chapters of Goodbye Mr Ex.

Moving on is such a big deal when heartbreak hits, however breathing properly is a a really important component to how you will feel and will be crucial to your healing.

I think that the breath is one of the most under utilized resources that we have at our disposal. If we do not have use of our eyes, we can still hear, if we do not have use of our ears, we can still see. If we lose both we can still breathe.

However if we stop breathing, we die.

But how often do we strain our life because we are not breathing properly? This happens every day and when our breath becomes constricted you will feel fear, anxiety and in some cases anger.

Have you ever seen a young baby breathe? They use all of their diaphragm – their small belly rises up and down, and up and down.

Have you ever taken the time out to watch your breath? If not, do so now and you will be astonished how little oxygen goes into your lungs and through the rest of your body. We especially constrict our breath when we are in fear or we have faced some sort of trauma. Have you noticed how we are told to calm down, or are given a cup of tea when something bad happens?

Well the constricted breath is just an example of how we deal with shock, just as having a cuppa tea is the solution too. Both of which may help on the surface but that keep the trauma and negative emotions locked in (mainly in the womb area for women) which then can manifest into disease.

If you are in fear, shock or feel sad and depressed because your ex left – then lie on your back and breathe from your diaphragm and watch the stress disappear.

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Last weekend, I spent the weekend with a beautiful bunch of gorgeous women on a retreat, called The One Retreat organized by the infamous Shaa Wasmund. We spent the weekend at this beautiful barn, sharing our business and personal challenges with a wonderful group of supportive and dynamic women.

During the weekend I learned a lot about myself and the challenges that we face as women. Observing myself, I realized that the top challenges that I face and that I see a lot of clients struggle with (which you may well resonate with) are:

1) I do not acknowledge how amazing I am ENOUGH.

2) I find it hard to ask for unpaid help and lean into my support networks.

So it got me thinking about why I have found it challenging and this is what I have come up with.

1) Being brought up in a British culture, I was taught that bragging was not nice and that you had to be modest as this is an attractive quality. I suppose I mixed up bragging with self acknowledgement, which I now realize are two very different things.

Self-acknowledgement is quiet but creates a sense of knowing inside of you that you are incredible and that when you have done a good job, you pat yourself on the back and say ‘I am so proud of myself for what I have achieved. Thank you to me!’

The key here is to celebrate your successes and achievements on your own or with other like-minded individuals no matter how small because you are worth it! Note to self – I will be doing this a lot more!

2) The system that we are brought up in, does not really advocate the “ask for help” model. At school we are taught to learn on our own, compete against others and do individual tests. Imagine for a moment being brought in a world where we get scored on collaborative effort and not on individual success?

There is of course, the fear that the other person will say no. But in my experience, people love to feel good about themselves and helping someone else out, will do just that. It is actually in our nature to want to be kind to others, so don’t worry about someone saying no. 9 times out of 10 they wont.

So how do you get over this fear of asking for a grief share when you are dealing with loss? Well, in my experience – you just start asking! Just like with anything in life, at the beginning it will seem challenging but the more you do it, the less daunting it will be.

So if you are going through a tough time, remember YOU ARE AMAZING and that there are many people around you just waiting for you to ask for their help.

I talk more about getting the right support and what to look for in a group to help you through heartbreak in my new book Goodbye Mr Ex, to download your free chapters go to www.GoodbyeMrEx.com

I have realized now that the worse you feel about your break-up or divorce is usually in correlation with how much you love yourself and what you are doing with your life.

Having coached many women through heartbreak and have seen a pattern emerge. The pattern is clear: after breaking up my clients who find themselves lost, with time on their hands, with a job they don’t like, with a life they don’t want are the ones who not only have trouble loving themselves from the inside out but who also are the ones who suffer the consequences of the loss the most.

The find out how you can get over him and how to gain your confidence back download your free chapters of new Goodbye Mr Ex

Maybe you find yourself in this position? With time on your hands – it gives you time to think and pine over your ex. If you don’t like your job and what you do, it seems that the only bit of happiness you could have was from your ex. This makes sense, if you cannot make yourself happy and love yourself fully, who can?

Everything starts from the inside out.

I know it is REALLY challenging (as I have been there) and understand how difficult it is to un-stick yourself from him, when you don’t know how.

However all is not lost as you can change things around as I have seen so many of my clients do (as well as me).

By

1) Looking at what their values are so that you can start to see what makes you tick.

2) Asking the powerful question “What would you do, if you didn’t need the money?”

3) Fill your time with the things you love to do.

The ending of a relationship does not mean that it needs to be the end of you, use this time to discover the truth of who you are and the gifts you bring to the world. As you will. We all do.

To find out what your gifts are download your first free chapters of Goodbye Mr Ex.

Thanks and until the next week.

Thanks

Marina

PS If you found this blog helpful share it with friends facebook or tweet about it!

“He makes me feel so guilty.” This is what I hear from a lot of my clients, and what I have said MANY times. However taking on guilt will be detrimental to you and your well-being.

When you fall into the trap of taking guilt on, you end up feeling as though he is also manipulating you, which renders you powerless and keeps on feeding on your guilty conscience. Are you finding it hard to get off the guilty cycle and find yourself feeling worse and worse?

If so…then give the following steps a go.

1. Change your language. NO-ONE can make you feeling anything.You are 100% responsible for how you feel. Every time you you say “He makes me feel guilty when he….” you are giving him the power. Change this to “I make myself feel guilty when….” This way you are making yourself aware that it is indeed you who is judging a part of yourself, otherwise the feeling of guilt would not be triggered. All your ex has done, is illustrated that your guilt story needs attention.

2. Discover which part of you – you are judging. Once you have identified that it is indeed you that is making you feel guilty, its time to discover which part of you you are judging. Is it Miss Meany? Miss Selfish? We are brought up (especially women) to be polite, be kind or be nice…in the society we live in, we are taught that to think of oneself is not a good thing – however this is not true.

3. Embrace this part of you. Now that you know what part of you are having difficulty with. Close your eyes and ask yourself how this part of you helps you. What gift does Miss Meany or Miss Selfish have to give you? How has she added value to your life? Everything has value. For example, being selfish is truly valuable if you are to look after yourself. This is even more important if you are running a guilty story because you will automatically want to make everything right.

 What is your guilt story sharing with you right now?

To find out more about getting over guilt download your FREE chapters to Goodbye Mr Ex

What can we learn from this incredible story of a boy who survives a devastating shipwreck with his one companion – a bengal tiger? The two things that I got from the wonderful move is the power of surrender and balance are two extremely important factors in any given situation to bring us what we want.

There is a clip in the movie when another powerful storm hits the seas; at this point you believe that they will die as he does. He shouts out and tells God that he surrenders his life and his situation to him. He tells God that he has had enough. In the next clip, we see that the storm has stopped and that they have hit an island where everything on its floor is edible. By surrendering his control to a higher power, they were saved.

What I learned from this is that the minute you stop wanting to control your situation with your ex or hanging on, the suffering stops. Let go and watch the magic happen.

The next thing I thought the film did really well is illustrate the unarguable truth of balance through nature. There are many examples of this in the movie, but one I thought was the most powerful was the relationship that he has with the tiger. When you find out that the tiger is along for the ride on the boat,

You think “Oh no! Out of all the animals that he could have landed with, it had to be the most dangerous that would kill him for sure and wouldn’t life be better if he had no tiger?”

Well, its exactly the life threatening relationship he has with the Mr Parker (The tiger) that saves his life.

What I learned is that situations and people that we perceive as bad are exactly the situations and people that can save us. Its all a matter of perception.

What can you do today to see your ex as a source of your healing and bringing color back into your life?

So you may have noticed that last week I actually didn’t write my weekly blog, this was really down to the fact that I was on a beautiful island without much internet but more importantly I had decided to take a week out to focus on the beauty around me and practice the art of divine surrender and get out of my own way. I have a lot of friends who talk about surrender. I thought I had experienced it before, however I realize now that I had only intellectualized it as the doubts would creep in.

So, why would I want to surrender and what was it exactly I wanted to surrender to?

In the middle of my trip in Bali, I started to feel VERY anxious about money and not having enough. So much so, that I started to feel guilty about spending it, and feeling that there was not enough, and that I would run out. In fact, it got so bad I started to have nightmares. At this point I knew that if I wanted to live a life in abundance I would need to shift my beliefs around it.

So with help from a wonderful friend, I did.

This was the start to finally feel that everything we have is already here, that I need to trust the process with infinite regard, that we live in a world of infinite possibility. Over a period of one week I took time out and meditated on the mantra “I surrender it all up to you.” (in this case the divine)

Yes, it may sound very woo – woo, however it works. I got back from the islands and logged on to find two people asking for my book and service. At this point I can no longer doubt that as soon as we consciously surrender to our situation and ask for help, the struggle disappears and people and situations show up to answer your command.

If you are struggling to get over your ex ask yourself whether you have completely surrendered into your situation? The chances are that you haven’t. It is the lack of surrender that causes the struggle. Its also a testament of our disconnection to source and the sense that we are separate from spirit. Which is not true.

So, if you are going through the pain of divorce and breakup during this supposed festive part of the year, lean in, have the conversation and trust that you will be supported. Because you will be.

To find out more how you can surrender find out in my new book Goodbye Mr Ex if you live in the UK and find out more here in my new book if you live in the USA.