We covered the most vulnerable stages of divorce in our Live chat with Tosh Brittan of Divorce Goddess Coaching this week. If you missed it, you can watch the recording on our Facebook page or our YouTube channel.
If you're going through, have been through or are considering divorce and want to find out how to turn it into a positive force for your life, Tosh is the light at the end of your tunnel. She can guide you through a kinder divorce and help you picture the life you'd like to have. There are some lighter moments in there too!
Here are a few of Tosh's top tips on how friends, travel and the change of perspective can help you discover who you are, take control of your life and live mindfully.
Here are a few of Tosh's top tips on how friends, travel and the change of perspective can help you discover who you are, take control of your life and live mindfully.
- You are emotionally ready. If you are going to decide on the divorce, you're far more emotionally ready than your partner. You have the power in your hands to create the foundations for you both to move forward.
- Find joy amongst pain. Dance in the kitchen, be a little bit crazy, and a little bit Goofy. Rock it out on your own if you need to, sing or be a little bit childlike. Amongst all the pain and everything you'll find joy and sunshine.
- Find gratitude. Look at what you’ve got in your life and feel grateful. There is so much you can be grateful about.
- Set intentions. Create a space that it’s nurturing and kind if you're going to ask to walk away from your marriage. Put yourself in your spouse's boots and just think of the fears you'd feel if your partner was looking to get a divorce.
- Talk to one another. Start being kind to each other and have a conversation about where you want things to go. How do you want this to play out?
- Learn to be with yourself and to listen to your interior voice. Don’t listen to your mind monkeys, who override everything that’s been said, because sometimes it feels more fearful to do what your voice is saying. Listen to that interior voice because it's there to stay.
- Your body is the best barometer for how you are feeling. Listen to it and address its needs. It's just literally about connecting with your body. If you feel hungry eat, if you feel tired, rest, and so on.
- How to meditate if you haven’t done this before. Sit really still on a pillow in your bedroom on the floor, and literally think you are just gonna do some breathing. Close your eyes and just see how you feel afterwards. This should stop your mind going mad or racing at 100m/h.
- Find time to meditate even for 2 min. Yes, it does matter. When the kettle is boiling, take deep breaths, and follow your breath with your mind. This will take your mind off what the mind monkeys want you to worry about and you'll be reclaiming your mind.
- Take care of yourself. Eat well try and resist not ploughing into alcohol every night because you're just going to be playing catch up in the morning with the children. And they're going to feel it too.
- Where your thoughts go, your energy goes. I do a lot of work about how to stop thinking about your ex and break the habit because so often I meet lovely women, who are just wracked with anger and resentment. Don't give them any of your energy. You don't need to know if your ex is doing whatever he's doing. That's their stuff. You don't want to be hanging out in that and, and staying in that place when you are trying to move forward. You want to keep all your lovely energy for you! As hard as it is.
- Go travelling. Focus on something else, rather than living in your home, doing this and doing that and just get out of your comfort zone and do something that is going to really challenge you. Go and put yourself somewhere and do something to help other people push your own boundaries as well.
- Your comfort zone is your discomfort zone. I call the comfort zone, the discomfort zone. That's your discomfort that you don't want to step out of. And actually your comfort zone is this amazing world outside, that you can travel in and experience.
- Watch ‘Shirley Valentine’ the movie. This lovely middle aged lady who decides she can't be doing with her husband anymore. And she takes herself off on this trip degree a Greek island and meet she's the love miss the lovely Tom Conti and has this sort of romance…
- Travel romances. It's the mind-set you go into it with, if you suddenly think I need to have somebody wrap their arms around me, then have lots of wild great sex. Yeah, own it. You've got to own it.
- Buy a pair of red knickers or pants, because your root chakra which is a sacrum, is coming from the kind of slightly spiritual side, is your absolute grounding powerhouse, where you feel safe.
- Create some adventures on paper until we can travel.
- Make room for new friends in your life, because they're the friends who will be able to help you look forward to the future of the New Year because they won't have that old baggage of your life. When you work, you know, part of a couple, they'll know you just for being you. And they will help you develop that. And now they won't always kind of look around to see where your partner is when you walk in the room or anything. It helps you. I imagine it helps you feel stronger in yourself because of these new friends.
- I cannot recommend highly enough cold water swimming. The sea is amazing and you just feel incredible when you come out. It’s about finding joy, even in those moments when you choose to be on your own, and you are getting over your fear.
- You have the choice. We can't do anything about what anybody else does to us or says to us or thinks about us. But we always have a choice as to how we let it affect us. And we always have a choice as to how we speak to somebody, how we act and how we think as well.
For more brilliant advice and empowering thoughts listen to Divorce Goddess Podcast and follow Tosh on Instagram.