Happily Even After with Life Coach Jen
Happily Even After shares weekly insights and tools to create more fulfilling relationships with yourself, your family and God. Jennifer is a certified life coach that was married for 26 years . She has 4 amazing children and 1 son in law. She doesn’t have it all figured out but she has lots of personal experience and has learned what to do and what not to do in relationships. I help women and men who have experienced betrayal in their marriage or have been divorced learn that their is happiness to be had even when your life doesn't go as planned.
Happily Even After with Life Coach Jen
Living Joyfully Beyond Betrayal
Feeling trapped in the aftermath of betrayal can leave you paralyzed, stuck in cycles of fight, flight, or freeze. Ever wondered why it’s so hard to move forward? Join me, Life Coach Jen, as I share my personal journey and dive deep into how our nervous system can keep us from breaking free. By becoming aware of these feelings, identifying our triggers, and taking responsibility for our part in the scenario, we can begin to practice self-forgiveness and cultivate presence. Together, we’ll explore ways to break free from autopilot mode, creating a healthier and more fulfilling future.
In the second half of the episode, we discuss the transformative power of connection. Discover how reaching out can lead to personal growth and lasting happiness, even after experiencing hardship. I'll share actionable insights on living happily ever after and invite you to join me for a free consultation call through lifecoachjen.com. Stay connected by signing up for my email updates at hello@lifecoachjen.com and following me on Instagram and Facebook at Happily Even After Coach. Let’s build a joyful life together, despite past betrayals, and find new paths to happiness and personal fulfillment.
Please follow me on instagram and facebook @happilyevenaftercoach and if you want to see what coaching is all about I offer a free 45 min. clarity call via zoom.
Email me: hello@lifecoachjen.com for any comments or questions.
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My website is www.lifecoachjen.com
Welcome to my podcast Happily, even After. I'm life coach, jen, I'm passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I rode the intense emotional roller coaster and felt stuck and traumatized for years. It's the reason I became a trauma-informed certified life coach who helps people like you navigate their post-betrayal world. I have the tools, processes and knowledge to help you not only heal from the betrayal but create a healthy future. Today we begin to help you live happily even after. Hey friends, welcome to today's episode. I'm so glad you're here listening.
Speaker 1:I was actually on a walk with you know my favorite walking girls, the Diamond Dolls that we walk every morning almost Not every morning, but we try to walk a lot. And we were just talking about how I live in Utah and it snows here, right, and it literally like just even a few weeks ago in May it snowed and I don't really love the winter, but we were making the comment that how walking in the rain and the snow has helped make winter not so miserable because we have something to look forward to. And I just stopped and I kind of wrote like why do we feel stuck sometimes in our life? Because many of us, especially if we're experiencing betrayal, we feel very stuck, and that's for many reasons. For sure, our nervous system is completely out of whack. We are probably stuck in fight, flight or freeze, and so our nervous system is literally stuck, which causes us to feel stuck. Feeling stuck is also. It's a feeling, but also a thought, also a thought, and so I just wanted to like explore this concept, and a lot of us feel stuck or trapped in our life even though we aren't. We aren't in prison, we aren't in a jail cell, which you know would definitely feel like we were trapped, but a lot of us are in our own prison, in our mind, in our marriage.
Speaker 1:I know, for me, I felt stuck in my marriage because I didn't want to get divorced and I had lots of thoughts and feelings about it, and so, unfortunately, I think when you feel stuck or trapped, it turns off the part of your brain that you need to come up with different ideas and solutions, and so think about it. I want you to think about where in your life do you feel trapped or stuck? And is it really even true? Because I think people feel stuck in their jobs, where they live, their house they live in. We always think, if we change our circumstances, like okay, if I move to a beach climate, my life's going to be so much better because I get to see a palm tree every day. Well, that's probably not true because, remember, our life is 50 50 and we bring our brain with us and so really like learning to embrace. You know what your circumstance now, your house, I mean it's either too big or too small, like, are we ever satisfied? So, if you have this inner struggle in your life, just pay attention to it and I'm just going to give you nine ways to get mentally and emotionally unstuck and hopefully these can be helpful for you. So, if you're feeling stuck, like, just open your mind and we're going to talk about these nine ways.
Speaker 1:The first thing is to become aware that you're stuck in the first place. So, just remember, awareness is key because I think this part of ourselves kind of lives in our unconscious mind. Whatever we're struggling with, we haven't brought it forth to really think and analyze and critical think about things that we're feeling stuck in. Identify what triggers you're experiencing, what is triggering you and how is it getting in your way. And the thing I love about triggers are that is where your healing journey needs to go. So if you get triggered about something. Often, instead of blaming whatever is triggering, you look inside and say, okay, what about that? Do I need to heal that's inside of me. Pay attention to relationships like if you're always having the same fight or you're always complaining about the same thing. Just pay attention to that. Be aware of that and be curious about it, because as soon as you can bring curiosity into the picture, you're going to be able to get yourself a little bit more unstuck.
Speaker 1:Take responsibility is number two. So take ownership. Don't blame your circumstance on something else because we love to blame other people or other things for our struggles. Blame other people or other things for our struggles, but we are the ones that are in control of our life choices and we can't blame other people, even if our husband is having an affair. We have to take ownership for our part and our responsibility. And how can we get emotionally unstuck so that we can make better choices and better decisions? We can know what we want to do and what's best for us. Take an honest inventory and find ways to practice forgiveness for yourself and others. And as far as betrayal goes, I'm not even going to suggest forgiving the person that betrayed you. Right now. I think the most important person to forgive in this scenario is yourself. That's the greatest work you can do is learning to forgive yourself. I still at times, have to remember that, because it's really easy to be like, oh my gosh, why did I do this? And blame ourselves. So just really focus taking responsibility. That's going to help you get unstuck emotionally.
Speaker 1:Number three cultivate presence. It often feels like we're being told to do more instead of be more. When we follow this, we often start functioning on autopilot, meaning we're just doing things to do them right and we're not really paying attention. You know, being present with ourself. We're just doing it to do it and we don't even know why or how. We just put ourselves on autopilot, and sometimes that's good right. Like our brain doesn't always want to be thinking about every little thing we're doing, but it can lead us down a path of being like why am I in this job? Like I've been in this job for five years and I hate it and I'm miserable. And so becoming present with your thoughts and feelings is really important. And, of course, you know mindfulness is always a great way and they say 13 minutes a day of mindfulness can really be life-changing. So could you even start off with one minute or two minutes? And when I say mindfulness, I think people are like, oh, I have to meditate and like just sit and be or even just turn off all the music in your car and your podcast unless you're listening to mine but just drive in silence. I think my brain when I do that sometimes I'm like, oh, I need to do this more often. Even though we're kind of on autopilot, we know how to drive, especially from familiar territory, but it can help our mind like calm down and have a great thought. Every now and again it may help to take a step back and make decisions from a place of calm and clarity rather than busyness and chaos. So I just think this is a way to get emotionally unstuck.
Speaker 1:Number four detach from unrealistic expectations. Number four detach from unrealistic expectations. Really, expectations ruin a lot of marriages and a lot of things in our life because many of be or what something is supposed to be and we're comparing it to maybe someone on social media, to their perfect day, to our worst day, and it's just a recipe for disaster, especially if you're a perfectionist. Also, if you're, you know, if you have imposter syndrome, you can't be yourself because you feel like an imposter. So really pay attention to those qualities that you have so you're not setting yourself up for failure, because those things are going to get in the way of getting you mentally and emotionally unstuck. Figure out something that's manageable for yourself. Remember, life is not perfect. It's not meant to be perfect. We're meant to fail. We're meant to make mistakes and the more you can embrace that, the more unstuck you will get.
Speaker 1:Number five choose self-love. Invest in yourself. It's okay to love yourself. It's actually really amazing the more you can love your good things about yourself and the not so good things about yourself. A lot of us we have an inner critic. Really pay attention to what you say to yourself and think would you say that to your child? Would you say that to your best friend? Would you say that to your spouse? And start really paying attention and changing your thoughts, because what we say to ourself matters and it can really affect us and there's no need. The world is critical enough. There's no reason we need to continue being critical of ourselves. Critical enough. There's no reason we need to continue being critical of ourselves. When you love yourself and practice self-compassion, it's going to help you rejuvenate your energy, your motivation and you're going to feel more alive and want to do more things in your life.
Speaker 1:Number six create a vision. There are many ways to develop a vision for what you want in life. You can write it down, create a mission statement, for example. Write your goals and your action plan with measurable steps that you can take. I think when you feel stuck, you can't even move. It's like you're in quicksand. But as you start doing some of these things, you're going to feel more like okay, I can do this and don't make it so big, I just like to do. I work in baby steps. I'm like okay, what am I going to do today or in a week? Like you don't have to plan out your entire year if that feels overwhelming and I think if you've experienced betrayal trauma, that can feel overwhelming. So just do little things, creating the life that you want, so you can be living your best life, even if it's in your same house or with your partner. Whatever, your circumstances haven't changed, but your outlook on life will definitely change.
Speaker 1:Number seven request support. I think support is really underrated. Like we need each other. We heal in community. We need a community to help with our kids, just to have mentors. I've loved the life coaching community that I found because it is giving me some great examples of powerful, strong women that are also very kind and loving, and I just I've really loved having all the new friends that I've made that are trying to work on their businesses and be moms and, you know, do all the things, but it's been very healing for me.
Speaker 1:And so find your support system. Find your people. Create. If you don't have someone, create it, like there are women everywhere or men that need community. We all do. So just keep on trying, don't give up. Look at old friendships. Maybe and I don't know being divorced, I've had to create a different life for myself and I can't just rely on my kids. My kids are all young adults and they don't always want to hang out with mom and I don't want them to. I want them to be living their life, not feeling sorry for me at home and so creating whatever that looks like, finding support groups and whatever you need to support, whatever your values and mission and what you want to accomplish in your life.
Speaker 1:The eighth one is practice healthy detachment. So look at your current relationships. Are they helping you or hurting you, and sometimes some relationships just need to end. I know that's hard. It is hard to stop a relationship. I get it. It took me 26 years. And so pay attention. Like what about your job? Are you stuck in your job? That you're just like? This isn't where I'm meant to be, this isn't where I'm thriving. They don't see my value. If you have the conversation with your boss and they're still not seeing it, maybe it's time to move on from your job.
Speaker 1:Pay attention to what is causing you to feel stuck, and maybe it is your house. Maybe your house is so overwhelming. That's how I felt. That's one reason I decided to move. After I got divorced, my house was so overwhelming and big that I was like I can't take care of this myself and I didn't want to have that feeling of overwhelm all the time, and so downsizing was the best decision for me. I can see that now, like I, my house is very manageable now and I love it, and I love walking into the front doors. And so get really curious about what things you might need to get rid of or keep the last one.
Speaker 1:Nine cultivate your inner strength, which means getting your nervous system, strengthening it, knowing how to be more resilient in your life. So when setbacks happen, it doesn't like put you in bed for four days, and not that. If you are in bed for four days, that's okay, that's what you needed. But become more resilient. So when someone gets in a car accident or you fail at something or you know, just things happen. Like life happens. Good and bad, everyday things happen. It doesn't totally get you stuck again. You can manage those and you have coping strategies and you're not turning to unhealthy coping strategies, which I think is really important to know. Like, okay, where are your weaknesses? What do you struggle with? Like, okay, where are your weaknesses? What do you struggle with? If it's food or you know whatever, it is making sure, like, you have things in place so when something does happen, you don't fall back into those same patterns. Hopefully this was helpful, I really. I think we all have have experienced feeling mentally and emotionally stuck in our lives in lots of ways. But in order to live your best life, it's important, I think, to learn these tools so you don't have to stay stuck and even just remember the awareness is your best friend, because that's gonna help lead you down a path to healing.
Speaker 1:Anyways, thanks so much for listening. I'd love to be your coach, so reach out, go to lifecoachjencom and sign up for a free consult call. If you've enjoyed listening to my podcast, I'd love for you to like and review it. That's how people find me and share it with your family and friends. Thanks so much. If you want to learn how to live happily even after sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjen with one n dot com. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after. Coach. Let's work together to create your happily even after.