Self Love To Thrive After Divorce

This is a 30 min segment from our Thrive After Divorce Show. We will explore the Power of Self Love: How Self Love can transform your life - especially after divorce! Our special guest for today's episode is Nicola Beer!

Transcript

Welcome to the Thrive After Divorce series.

My name is Lisa Fountain and I am very honored to have our guest today,

Nicola Beard.

Nicola is a world renowned expert in life and relationship transformations.

She is a four-time best-selling author and has a weekly podcast host for three shows,

Including Divorce Talk and How to Save Your Marriage.

Welcome Nicola.

Hi,

Thank you.

Welcome to you.

Thank you.

You know,

Today I am,

I've been looking forward to this conversation since the last time we talked because I find today the subject we're going to talk about one of the hardest things to do,

And that is self-love.

Yeah,

For sure.

It's something I've struggled with for a very long time,

Actually,

And it's it,

A lack of self-love actually began in my childhood.

So I'm so excited to be here talking about self-love and my journey of how I managed to love myself and help others to love themselves.

You talk about the power of love to transform your life.

How do you do that when you're trying to move on from the end of a relationship?

There's many different aspects to loving ourselves.

And I think the first thing is to understand what self-love is and what it's really not.

And the power of,

I mean,

The power of love can heal anything.

We can transform anything with love.

And so having self-love is essential.

So there's different sides of self-love.

What we learn in magazines is that self-love is about doing yoga or going to the gym or about visiting the salon.

And yet self-love is about so much more than that.

The first thing about self-love that we really need to help us to move on and to realise the power of love is to stop all self-criticism.

Because self-criticism and guilt are emotions that really can just bog us down.

And they can prevent us from actually moving on.

Also,

Regret,

Fear and resentment.

So one of the first things to do is to look at how am I talking to myself?

How am I speaking to myself?

How am I talking to myself?

How am I speaking to myself in a kind way?

Am I blaming myself for what happened?

Am I telling myself that it was my fault?

Am I telling myself that I shouldn't have done this or I should have done that?

That shitting all over ourselves.

Are we living in regret?

You know,

Regret is repeated resentment turn inward.

So when you have an anger towards yourself,

When you're repeating it and repeating it,

That's what regret is.

And again,

This is not loving.

Instead,

It's obviously natural that we're going to review our past relationships.

It's natural that we're going to question perhaps what has happened.

So it's not about saying,

Or don't think at all,

And or giving some unrealistic expectation that you're never going to think about the past.

But instead,

It's saying,

If you do review things,

If you do go over your relationship,

Which most people,

Their mind will go over things,

It's asking yourself,

What can I learn from this?

What can I take from this?

What can I learn for new relationships?

What can I learn to teach my children?

What can I learn to help others from what I have been through?

And when we turn what we've gone through,

The pain,

The stress,

The emotions,

Into a positive,

Into something,

Okay,

I'm going to use this,

Then we can feel elevated and we can then focus more clearly on the future.

But when we stay in the past,

When we allow things to go round and round and round,

We can then just be absorbed by this negativity.

So it's really important to look at what are we carrying?

How are we treating ourselves about what has happened?

And how are we treating ourselves daily?

Because I know for myself,

I used to constantly criticise myself.

Growing up,

My mum was emotionally and physically abusive.

So I learned as a child,

She would say to me,

You're ugly,

You're not good enough,

You're stupid.

And I believed it.

And so then I used to also say horrible things to myself,

Like I'm stupid,

Like I'm ugly,

Like I'm fat,

Like I'm,

You know,

I need to work harder,

I need to exercise harder.

I expected perfection of myself.

And even when I got to the perfection or got to be my best,

My best was never ever good enough.

And so one of the things I changed,

Which completely changed my life,

And this is why I say it's the power of love,

Was to change the way that I spoke to myself and let that completely go.

So when these thoughts would come up,

Why have you drunk this?

Why have you said that?

Why have you done this?

Why do you look like this?

I would just say to myself,

How is this helping me?

Is this way of speaking helping me?

And then I would ask myself and say,

This is not helping me.

And I let it go.

And after a repetition of moving to either that or saying,

Okay,

What can I learn from this?

What can I do better in the future?

I managed to move myself from the past into the present and into focusing on what I really wanted next in my life,

Which was more love,

More happiness and more joy.

You help people all over the world with this subject.

Do you,

I bet,

Is it just one of those things that it's universal that self-love every culture struggles?

Yeah,

I think every culture does struggle.

And I would say that it's because often we're taught that it's to be a show-off,

To love yourself.

That if you love yourself and there's something wrong with you.

As women,

We learn to look after others a lot before ourselves.

And obviously can be men as well.

So we're brought up in this culture and we're taught in the media and in the adverts that self-love is buying yourself a handbag,

Treating yourself to a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine.

But actually that's not really self-love.

Self-love is how you treat yourself and how you respect yourself on a daily basis.

And it's also about taking time for yourself.

Often we put our own time for ourselves right at the end of the list of things that we need to do.

And this is also a way of not really loving ourselves because what we really need to give ourselves and there's five keys really to loving yourself.

And these come from David Rico who says this is relevant in all relationships.

It's relevant in relationship with yourself,

Relationship with your partner in a marriage or other relationship and relationship with your children.

And these five things are attention.

So we need to give ourselves attention.

We need to give ourselves time.

We need to give other people that we're in a relationship with time,

But not at this sacrifice of ourselves.

So attention is one.

And then acceptance.

And acceptance is accepting our imperfections.

Accepting that some days we are happy and we're able to get lots of things done and we don't snap at other people.

And then other days we're tired,

We're snappy,

We're stressed and we may not be our best.

And that's okay.

That's accepting.

The third one is appreciating ourselves.

If we don't appreciate what we are achievement,

Celebrating what we've done well,

Celebrating ourselves,

Then again,

We're going to have a miserable life and we're not going to feel good.

And this is often what a lot of people do,

Especially at the time of the new year.

They think,

Well,

What am I going to change rather than what did I do well last year?

What have I been doing right?

What are the good things that I'm doing?

So it's appreciating ourselves,

Praising ourselves.

We find it so easy to put ourselves down when people give us compliments.

We can say,

I don't deserve that or gifts,

Please don't give me anything.

And so actually this is really appreciating yourself,

Allowing people to give us love and then affection.

So affection for yourself is looking after yourself,

Looking after your body,

Looking after your mental health,

Looking after your needs,

Not pushing yourself.

Not pushing yourself if you're feeling down,

If you're feeling stressed,

If you're feeling tired.

So really looking after yourself physically.

And then the last one is allowing.

So this is allowing yourself to be who you are,

Not trying to fit in to what society says that you should be doing right now.

What your parents have said,

What your ex is saying,

What your children are saying,

Actually allowing yourself to be who you are.

Because nothing is more loving in any relationship,

Whether it's with yourself or in a romantic relationship,

Than being allowed to be who you are.

Wow,

Those are five.

Those are five.

They're such things that we should just do,

But it's hard to do those to yourself.

To really look in the mirror and do those five things.

Since we talked,

I've been thinking about it so much and I thought self-love is really a form of brave love.

You know,

You almost have to be really brave to just love yourself completely.

Absolutely,

It is brave,

Definitely.

One of the things that I help people with is loving their body.

And that was something I really struggled with because I struggled with my eating for over 25 years.

And loving your body is about not just the nutrition and not just the exercise,

But actually looking yourself in the mirror and looking at the wonder of your body rather than straight away we can tell you,

Okay,

This is wrong about me.

I don't like my stomach.

I don't like my arms at the top.

I don't like my thighs.

I don't like this.

We can often just get so into attacking ourselves.

So one of the things,

One of the exercises that I give people is to give themselves an oil treatment,

An oil massage,

And just be loving to their body because their body actually hasn't done anything to them.

It's the mind that has created the body.

We've chosen what to eat with our mind.

We've chosen whether we expose or not with our mind.

We've chosen how we see our body.

So it's actually our mind.

And so we need to forgive our bodies for what our bodies haven't done.

And eating is definitely something that comes up a lot when people get support to get through their breakup and divorce because some people will go to emotional eating and some people will not eat.

And neither of them really helped to thrive after a divorce.

No.

And so many people coming out of the end of a relationship probably haven't felt loved in a long time or love themselves.

And I know you have probably stories you can share of people that you've helped or tips to the first things you can do to just get the process going.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean,

One lady I worked with,

A lady called Linda,

She decided to leave her husband because he cheated on her more than once.

And he didn't want the divorce.

So he made the divorce very difficult,

Especially financially with her.

And she just felt so deflated.

Her self-esteem was at an all time low,

Not only because she couldn't understand why her husband had cheated repeatedly.

You know,

She was stuck into asking herself all sorts of hurtful questions like,

Why am I not enough?

What's wrong?

Why not enough?

What's wrong with me?

How could he do this to me?

Why,

What did I do to deserve this?

And she was really stuck in these questions.

And the thing about our minds is that our mind will answer any questions that we ask it.

So if we ask it,

Why am I not enough?

It will come up with reasons in our mind.

Oh,

You're not enough because of the way you look.

You're not enough because you weren't open enough,

Or you didn't do this right,

Or you didn't do that right.

So one of the first things to really kickstart with this is looking at the questions that we're asking ourselves.

Are we asking ourselves empowering questions that are going to move us forward?

Or are we asking us questions that are going to hurt us and keep us in a trap?

So the first set is really getting into the power of this is the mindset.

And when Lim just started to change and ask herself,

What am I going to focus on today?

What do I need to do for myself that's loving today?

What can I do for my daughter that's loving today?

When she asked these questions,

Her mind was moving away from the anger,

The resentment,

The negativity,

The self deprivation that she was sort of pushing herself into and helped her to really get out quickly.

So I would definitely say mindset and changing the way you think and asking yourself,

What can I do now?

What can I do today?

This was like the first key.

And definitely part of that is just doing something loving for yourself each day.

Another person that I worked with,

She was finding it really hard moving on after her divorce,

Because in her marriage,

She had always done everything for her husband.

She was always looking after him,

Obviously looking after her children,

And very rarely looking after herself.

So she was running the household,

Bringing in the money,

Organizing all the activities.

And she'd felt so resentful for many years.

And yet,

Even though she was divorced,

She still found herself finding it hard to not feel guilty for not doing things for her husband.

Even though he was now her ex,

Or she kept on doing things for him.

And she because she felt this this huge amount of guilt.

So for her,

The first step in really getting into self love is letting go of guilt.

And if you think about it,

Guilt is one of those absolutely wasted emotions.

It doesn't serve anyone.

It doesn't help anyone to feel guilty.

All it does is harm ourselves.

So instead of realizing that,

No,

We have no reason to feel guilty.

And the only way to let go of guilt is to recognize that it has no value.

And also to realize that if you look up guilt in the English dictionary,

It says the intent to harm.

So unless you're deliberately intending to harm someone,

All these things that often we feel guilty about,

We don't need to feel guilty about,

Because we didn't actually intend to harm.

So hurt for her,

Letting go of guilt was the power that she really needed to step into this kind of love.

And then,

Yeah,

And then the last was the man that I worked with,

And he was a very good man that I worked with,

And he was devastated that his wife had left him,

And he really wanted to win her back.

And he also was struggling to let go.

Some days he felt very angry,

And then sometimes he felt very angry at himself.

And the best thing that he could do for himself was to take on some new areas of focus,

Because when I was helping him was just on what happened,

And what was his wife doing.

So he was obsessing about the relationship,

The past,

And obsessing about what his wife was thinking,

What his wife was feeling,

Was she with anyone else?

So he was just so stuck in the marriage.

And so for him,

It was the best way to love and to experience this power of love and get through this is to find new friends,

New actions to love yourself,

A new area of focus.

So he started doing walking and then running,

Even did some half marathons when he built it up.

And then he was also researching and following his passion and began setting up his own business.

So it's about giving yourself new things to focus on to replace the old ones which are disempowering if you cannot control them.

Wow.

I'm thinking how we think so much that a breakup or divorce is such a matter of the heart and it's heartbreaking,

But it's really a matter of the mind.

How much?

Yeah.

It's definitely intertwined,

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Because our thoughts create our emotions.

Right.

I love how you said.

.

.

I'm sorry.

Oh,

Just help.

Your mind will always answer.

If you ask it a question,

It's going to answer it.

Yeah.

And so by asking different questions,

I find that just amazing.

I've never thought of that.

That you will always answer.

It will,

Unfortunately,

Yeah,

It will always answer.

Which is a good thing if we're asking good questions.

You might not get the answer straight away,

But if you say to yourself,

What can I do that's kind towards myself today?

What can I do that's healthy for me today?

What can I do to focus on my happiness this week?

What can I book to look forward to?

Things will come to our mind.

We could be doing the washing up or driving somewhere and then something will come into my head.

You know what?

I would love to do that.

Or why don't I give that friend a call?

Things do come to us.

Yeah.

And I'm sure it just slowly takes time,

But eventually it's an easier process to.

.

.

I mean,

At first you probably have to start very conscious that you're asking the questions,

But over time it will just gradually.

.

.

Your mindset will change.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And what can help some people is putting a few questions on your phone.

Like three empowering questions you can ask yourself each day.

What have I learned today?

What can I focus on that's going to help me move forward?

What am I grateful for?

Now,

Some people can't go straight to what am I grateful for if they're really struggling.

So sometimes to switch from really struggling to being grateful can be a too big leap.

So that's why I like,

What can I focus on?

What can I do for myself?

Wow.

Even if you have to break it down into just hours in the day.

Because sometimes when you're really in a dark place,

A whole day is long.

But maybe if you start with even an hour,

Just going hour by hour or trying to just get through with one,

You know,

What can I do for myself this morning?

Perfect.

Yeah,

Exactly.

And what I used to do is when I was feeling really low or down,

I would,

And like crying,

I would go and lie in my bed.

I would set my alarm for 15 or 30 minutes.

And I would allow myself to just be in complete self-pity to wallow,

To cry,

To just feel the emotion.

And then after that,

I would be like,

Right,

Now I need to get into some action.

Because we don't want to just ignore our feelings.

If we're feeling our feelings,

Sometimes it's good to,

Well,

It is healthy to release them.

So if you can cry,

Cry,

If you can let it out.

And sometimes I do anger at work,

Because often if people are angry,

But not this anger is sadness,

Is sorrow,

Is grief.

And so sometimes I have people who have a bat and punch cushion with the bat,

Or just the punch cushion with themselves,

Just to get out what they're angry about in a few minutes.

Then they often burst into tears,

They release,

And then they can carry on.

Because all our emotions are healthy.

It's just,

We don't want to wallow in them.

We want to express them,

Feel them,

Let them go.

Some people like journaling as well,

Just to get out all of their anger or their hurt.

Yeah.

Just whatever works best for you.

Just giving that emotion the respect it deserves,

And then move on.

Yeah.

A little bit.

Another great thing to do,

And it's a gift that you actually have brought the audience,

Is a meditation.

Do you want to tell us about the meditation that you're offering?

Sure.

Absolutely.

So I've learned that often we can say to ourselves,

We want to love ourselves more.

We can say to ourselves,

I need to be happier.

I need to stop going over the past.

I need to think positively about life and about myself.

And yet,

In reality,

It doesn't happen.

And this is because we're not working with the unconscious mind.

Our unconscious mind is on overdraft.

It directly takes us back to the past.

And so we need to retrain the way that our conscious mind that controls our thoughts and therefore our emotions and feelings.

We need to give it positive suggestions so this can change.

So I've created a self-esteem meditation,

Which boosts your self-esteem.

Enables you to really love yourself more.

So when you listen to it,

And if you listen to it repeatedly,

It will help you feeling more positive and better about yourself.

And when you feel better about yourself,

You'll feel more positive in all areas of your life.

You'll be able to handle any drama with your ex or any playing up with the children.

You'll be able to handle the anxiety over the future.

Most people,

When they come to me,

They're worried about,

Will I ever meet anyone again?

Will I ever be loved?

Or will I survive financially?

Or will my children be damaged?

And we can only focus on what we can control and take those actions.

So being worried about these great big things often just eats us up.

So it's about calming this and saying,

And in the meditation,

It says positive things like I'm feeling better and better every day.

I'm feeling more calm and confident.

I'm seeing myself positively.

When negative self-talk comes up,

I let it disappear.

And so this is a free meditation that you can download,

Listen to again and again,

To help you into retraining your mind to loving yourself and focusing on what you can control.

And looking towards the future,

A brighter future.

Well,

Thank you for bringing that for everybody.

And we'll have the URL listed for everyone to get that.

And I know you have books that you've written that they could buy.

You have an amazing website with information that they can go to and look at.

And I'm actually,

You said so much in the last 30 minutes.

My head is just spinning thinking of all the information you just gave us.

Yeah,

Sorry about that.

No,

No.

I mean,

You said like life changing things.

I'm even thinking about how,

You know,

It's the beginning of January and we're so trained to like,

What can I change about myself?

What can I change about myself?

What can I do differently this year?

Rather than praising herself and saying,

What can I continue to do?

All those little things make a big difference.

And when we review the year,

Looking at what did I do well?

What did I achieve?

I mean,

Going through a divorce is one of the hardest things you can do.

Yeah.

One of the most traumatic grief events that a person goes through.

So if your exercise wasn't perfect,

If your diet wasn't perfect,

If you weren't perfect in your head and how you wanted to be with your family,

Then it's like letting it go and saying,

Well,

I've done really well.

I've made some difficult choices.

I've made some difficult decisions.

And I'm here and I'm listening to this and this just even listening to this and listening to this amazing show that you're putting together,

It's also a self loving action.

It's saying,

I want more for myself.

I deserve it.

And getting into the action for yourself as well.

I really admire all the listeners for doing that,

Because it's only when we have the courage to say,

I deserve to be loved.

I deserve to have a great life.

Then that's when we get what we really.

.

.

Yeah,

We have to choose it.

Yeah,

We have to love that person that you look at in the mirror and you have to start with loving yourself.

Yeah.

Takes a long time sometimes to realize that.

But with people like you showing us the way,

It's more than possible.

It just is.

So yeah.

Yeah,

I used to think that I love myself when I was achieving.

And I realized that,

God,

I love myself when I'm the right size,

When I'm achieving this,

When I'm doing well at work.

And actually,

That's not love at all,

Because that's conditional.

I'm only loving myself if I do these certain things.

And so really practicing loving yourself through a breakup,

Through a divorce,

Through the aftermath of divorce is one of the most bravest and admirable things I think you can do.

Yeah.

We all just have to keep strong and find that brave love.

And yeah,

I'm just thinking the only person in my life I have conditional love for is myself,

Like you said that.

And so I'm going to listen to the meditation.

And I think self-love is just a constant thing that you have to give attention to,

Just like everyone else in your life that you love.

Because you're just putting yourself on that list is something we all have to do.

And if any of the listeners or yourself are interested,

Then I also have a self-love audio program.

And it's just an eight-week course that you take yourself through,

16 modules,

Has an audio and a workbook for each of the exercises.

And I've made it really,

Really affordable so that anyone that really wants to love themselves can do it and take themselves through the steps from letting go of negativity,

Letting go of resentment,

Stepping into forgiving yourself,

Forgiving others.

That's the difficult part.

And then the brilliant part is all the loving action parts,

Loving your body,

Creating your home in a loving way,

Creating yourself love sanctuary,

Treating yourself the way you deserve to be treated,

All lovely things like that.

Good.

And I would think after doing that course,

You'll attract a different relationship than the one you had.

When you love yourself,

You'll attract somebody that loves you too.

Don't you think?

Yeah,

I so believe that.

Like attracts like.

And I think that's why I struggled so much in my early years,

My early relationships,

Because I didn't love myself and I wasn't treating myself very well.

And I just kept meeting addicts.

And I was like,

What is wrong with me?

And then I realized that it was all because of my energy.

And when I changed that,

The quality of men that were coming into my life was amazing.

Well,

I am so grateful that you honored us with your time today and all your pearls of wisdom.

My goodness.

And I am so excited for people to hear this conversation.

I'm very grateful.

And I wish you just a beautiful day or I guess it's night in Dubai.

I wish you sweet dreams,

I guess.

And I look forward to everybody coming back tomorrow for another talk that will help you get out there and thrive.

So thank you,

Nicole.

Thank you.

Do you want?

Thanks.

Okay.

So,

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Reviews

Amazing! This has given me so much energy and positivity to begin again

Really great talk. A lot
of wisdom and things to think about going forward. Made lots of notes to refer back on. Thank you for sharing.

So, so very helpful. So glad I found this.