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The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
Dads face unique issues during and after divorce. We identify and address the issues relevant to divorced/divorcing dads and create an action plan to survive and thrive!
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DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to inform not influence. It is not a substitute for professional care or advice by a qualified professional. The host as well as guests who speak on this podcast express their own opinions, experience and conclusions, and The Divorced Dadvocate Podcast & Website neither endorses or opposes any particular views discussed here.
The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
242 - REPLAY: Take Control of Your Divorce
What if you could become the CEO of your own divorce, steering your life towards a future that truly aligns with your values and desires? Join us for a compelling conversation with Bill Miles co-founder of Best Self Magazine and the Best Self Intuitive Divorce Coaching program, as he shares his transformative journey through difficult divorces. Learn how his experiences led him to develop tools and strategies aimed at helping fathers take control, minimizing trauma and unnecessary suffering for themselves and their children.
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Hello and welcome to the Divorced Advocate, where we help dads create a healthy and less traumatic divorce. My name is Jude Sandoval and I'm your host. Today. We're going to be talking about taking control of your divorce, and we got a phenomenal guest that has both practical and personal experiences so many of us do in this topic and I'm really excited to talk with him. Before we jump into it Again, show note, the divorce quiz is still up. Many of you are getting many of these a day, which is awesome, which means, I think, that it is helping you to gauge where you're at in your divorce process compared to where others have and are at in their divorce, and so check it out. It takes about 10 minutes. It's going to give you some immediate results to take a look at, and if you want to schedule a time to interpret those results or just talk about anything, then you'll have the opportunity to do that right as you get those results. So check it out, either at the website at thedivorcedadvocatecom under divorce quiz or directly at thedivorcequizcom.
Speaker 1:My guest today is a father of three, just like me and probably many of you listening, who endured a highly toxic divorce nearly 18 years ago and for many years that followed. We all know about that. His partner, kristen Knoll, a mother of one, also survived a dramatic divorce with a young child and as part of their healing journey, they co-founded Best Self Magazine, a leading voice for holistic health and conscious living, and, most recently, the Best Self Intintuitive divorce coaching program to help other parents in the early stages of divorce take control over the divorce and avoid a prolonged, expensive process and a lot of emotional suffering for themselves and their children. In short, they now teach that which they needed to learn. Please welcome Bill Miles. Bill, how are you? Thank you, I'm doing great. Thank you very much for the introduction.
Speaker 2:Please welcome Bill Miles. Bill, how are you? Thank you, I'm doing great. Thank you very much for the introduction. Happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I think your introduction basically describes a lot of myself or what a lot of people, or a lot of the men that are listening, have gone through. So share, just maybe elaborate a little bit more about your divorce and about yourself, and I just I want to start off by saying kudos to you, and I'm so grateful for people like you that have taken something that is so challenging and are doing something good and then coming and talking to us about it, so I really appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Well, the bottom line is, I feel that there is so much unnecessary suffering that goes on in divorce, both through, you know, for us fathers, through any parent, and for the children of course. So it's really become a work of passion right here because I know it can make a difference. But just briefly on the details, my divorce process started about 18 years ago and it takes a little while to actually get divorced. But that's just the beginning. Then you actually live with the divorce for the years that come, and so the time I got divorced, my kids were very young. They were five, eight and 10 at that point. Now, you know, I see them as adults and I've seen they're still wrestling, they're still grappling with the process of the divorce and the years that followed, and in different ways, and it's just fascinating to me sometimes painful and sometimes heartening as well to see how they navigate this and how things could have been different for them. You know, and so that's really the genesis of this, and my partner, kristen Noel, and we've been together about 16 years at this point and she ended up getting divorced about the same time with her son at that point was five or four, I guess, and again, so he's now an adult and we've seen you know we have, yes, a blended family at this point but we've seen what strategies work and what strategies don't work.
Speaker 2:And we kind of created this Best Self magazine about seven years ago as a labor of love. It's kind of taken on a whole life of its own which we're excited about. It's become kind of a leading voice for holistic health and conscious living. It's really about self-empowerment, but it was a process of learning all the tools that neither of us had in our toolbox when we were up to this point. It's like how do you recover from how do you not only recover from the ashes of a collapse? How do you learn from it? How do you let that guide you so that you don't make the same life mistakes going forward?
Speaker 1:Right? Well, do any of us have the tools to go through divorce? Right? Hopefully, none of us go through it more than once. So if you don't go through something more than once, have you ever really developed those tools?
Speaker 2:You. This is the thing I now know that we all actually have tools within us to. Yes, it's a new experience, but we have tools to handle the chaos and we have tools to make important decisions. We have to make it from a grounded place. If we can access, if someone can guide us, if we can learn how to access those tools.
Speaker 1:Right, that makes sense. So we're literally like if divorce is the Home Depot and we're trying to do a drywall repair, but all the tools are in the Home Depot, we just don't know which ones to use. We need somebody like you or somebody else to say, okay, these are the tools, this is where you go buy them and this is what you. You know, this is how you implement them and you know this is a guy. Analogy, right?
Speaker 2:Tools, that's a really good analogy. Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that a little bit, then, about how to take control of your divorce. And you've to take control of your divorce, and you've, you've, you've, you've identified these tools or these, these five different ways in in in which you can do that. What's what's the, what's the first one, that that you need to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's Kristen and I've kind of developed a methodology and they're basically five, five shifts mental shifts that you have to make to take control. It can be very effective to allow you to take control of your divorce, and the caveat to this is that I'm really speaking to well. I'm speaking to any person at any stage in their journey, but especially people in the first hundred days of their divorce. And the reason that that's so important is to catch them in the early stage is because it's when you're emotionally so charged right, whether it's shame or anger or chaos or confusion, it's really an emotionally charged period. Yet in those first hundred days you're asked to make decisions that are critical to both your financial security and the emotional security for you and your children for years and years to come. So that's why, if you can get a hold of it early on, it can really dramatically shape your outcome.
Speaker 1:And when you say the first 100 days of your divorce, you mean hundred days of starting the divorce process or considering filing for divorce.
Speaker 2:It's clearly not a concrete definition of when it starts, but basically, once you cross the line, you know we're not really involved in saving marriages or marriage counseling and so forth, and I hope marriages do survive. But when you cross that line and you know the divorce is imminent, so either you've made that emotional shift or you've discussed it, or maybe you already starting the divorce process. Um, but you know it takes a while to get divorced. The average divorce is is in this country is 11 months and if it goes to trial it's 18 months or longer. So it's a long road ahead, but the stage is set is set quite early actually, because you start with your initial, your temporary agreement and it just builds from there.
Speaker 1:Right, and I'd add because the majority of men are the ones that are served with divorce papers that that process starts right there. Right then, whether you're aware of it and consciously aware of it, that this is all going to start a whole cascading effect of emotions and feelings and all kinds of things that are going to be happening, whether you want it to or not, because you were just served papers.
Speaker 2:That's right, it is going to happen. That train is moving Exactly, and that kind of is another analogy is what we want to help you prevent is this runaway train. Yeah, your life feels like a train wreck right now. I mean, that's a very common emotion, so Right. So how? What do we do? All right, so the first, the first shift, is to view your divorce as the opportunity of a lifetime, is to view your divorce as the opportunity of a lifetime, and that seems counterintuitive, because if you are in the thick of this chaos and you feel like your life has been ripped apart and your dreams have just collapsed, the last thing it looks like is an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yes, I get that all the time right. I say it's an opportunity, it can be an opportunity. And sometimes you get that splank stare like opportunities are good, right, right.
Speaker 2:Ain't nothing good happening here my life Exactly, but. But you know, we've got some hindsight here, and the fact is it is an opportunity, and it's not just for the obvious reasons. It's an opportunity to rebuild your life and get right things that you didn't get right before. And that's a lot deeper than just maybe choosing a different partner, if that's what it feels like it should be to you. What it really means is getting in touch with yourself and taking accountability for your role, and that's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, especially if they are the ones that feel like divorce has happened to them, like I mean. There are many situations. Maybe your spouse had an affair, maybe you felt dumped, maybe who knows what it was, maybe they just fell out. But if you're on the receiving end of that, you know it can be hard to have to do that inner work to see the role that you played.
Speaker 1:It took me a long time, but I see it now, and so let's, can we talk briefly about what you just said there, which is divorce happening to you, because I find that interesting, and I find interesting that when I hear that from some of the divorced dads going through that divorce is never going to just happen to you, divorce is never going to just happen to you, that there's some dynamic that has evolved in the marriage and in the relationship that took both, something that happened, whether that's a better marriage or parenting or whatever it could be. At least for me, it was an entire better life, right, because the dynamic wasn't just exclusive to the, to the marriage, it was permeating through my entire life. So talk about, talk about that a little more detail so we can help, like some of the, some of the dads that are like this is horrible, but like I do want to have a better life and I want to have. If this is an opportunity I really want to, I want to seize on it.
Speaker 2:You want to seize it. It's a lot to grasp and it's going to be a lot to grasp in the short time that we have. But it is very easy to feel like this. This impending train of divorce is happening to you. I felt like that way. It's not what I wanted to see happen. I was, my life was literally blown apart overnight and it was like, oh my God, this is, this is real, this is going to happen. This is happening to me.
Speaker 2:But so there are two parts to that. One is that you, as in me, happened equally to get to this end result. Right, that's the accountability part. Go back in time and look at the red flags. How many times did you not listen to that inner voice which is something I'll get to in a minute when maybe you swallowed what you felt was really correct for you in the name of, I don't know, social appearances or the children, or not wanting to rock the boat, whatever it may be? There are many reasons that we stay into things that maybe we shouldn't. The other part, the other side of happening to the divorce is that you actually can have control. That's really what I want to empower our people to realize is that they're going through divorce. You can take a controlling position in this and shape the outcome and design the life that you want.
Speaker 1:That's really what it's about, so don't take it passively Go ahead. Well, and why is that important? Well, I guess I got to get sincere. To the next one. Why is that important to take that active role?
Speaker 1:right, Because that's a huge point and I also want to say that the points we're making here, bill's going to have an opportunity and offer for you guys to be able to plug into this and get more information about it. So if you're taking notes or if you're like wanting to get more, we'll have at the end of the show, some more information for you. But why is that taking control so incredibly important?
Speaker 2:Here's the setup If you don't take control to design the life that you want, it will get designed anyway. It's going to get designed by your ex, by your lawyers, by your family, by your friends, by your children, none of whom probably have your best interests at heart or know what you really want, period. So something's going to happen. You will have a life that's designed, but if you want it designed by you, you have to step up and be proactive about it If you want to take command of what your financial future is going to look like, what your relationship with your children is going to look like much less, of course, the logistics of where you're going to live and all that sort of stuff, but even the bigger picture. What kind of a future love relationship do you want to have? These things have to be considered, they have to be actively thought about, because you can control these and if you don't as I said they will be you'll get a result anyway. It just won't be the one you want.
Speaker 1:Yes and they you don't. As I said, they will be. You'll get a result anyway. It just won't be the one you want. Yes, and they all correlate together. So the parenting plan that you create impacts your future relationship. It impacts the relationship you have with your children. It impacts the financial situation that you have. I mean, this impacts everything that you do. So burying your head in the sand or just allowing your attorney to determine what stock agreement they may have that they use on 95% of cases is not a good plan for getting through this process.
Speaker 2:And the attorneys in particular, and I have nothing personal against attorneys except that I spend a lot of time with them and paying them. Right, yeah, and I can tell you that however well-intended they are, their agenda is very different than yours.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:They have a lot of knowledge. I'm not saying you don't need attorneys you probably will but you can manage them as well. You can manage that outcome.
Speaker 1:Well, it is your job to manage them. You are hiring them, and just like you hire anybody else as a team member or for a service or anything else, it is incumbent upon you to be the one that is I call it driving the bus.
Speaker 2:And so that actually is a good segue into shift number two, which is to become the CEO of your divorce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:It's really taking charge of your team and what do you do as a CEO? You set the vision and the tone. Okay, this is how I want to proceed, this is what I want for my outcomes, this is how I want to conduct myself and what's your objective for the team. And once you have clarity and, as I mentioned before, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a child psychologist, not a financial advisor you will. You might need all of those people. They all serve a role, but you need to be clear with them what your goal is and what tone you want to have through the divorce Right. So I want you to. You know all the dads out there, so step up and start taking control of this at an early stage. Even if it feels awkward right now, you do need to lead this and if you do, you'll have amazing results.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for many listening, that may be a new thing.
Speaker 1:That may be a new thing.
Speaker 1:They may not have been and this may be have been a part of the challenge in the dynamic and why the dynamic was unsuccessful in their, in their relationship, because they had not taken control, they not led like, like they may have needed to.
Speaker 1:They're faced with this. You know this very challenging time that is going to determine a good part of the next decade, maybe two decades of their lives, and if there's no bigger wake-up call in your life than right now, then you're going to be stuck with an incredibly difficult and challenging and potentially unhappy life if you don't step up now. And that may be hard to do and that may be scary, and there may be all kinds of stuff going on in your mind as to what could happen. But now is the time to do it, because the impact is and, if not for anybody other than your kids, because it's going to impact your kids too. And I want to circle back to what you said, which is your kids, your parent or your kids, your family, um, your ex, any none of them are thinking about you first. They're thinking about themselves, and that's not a bad thing. That's just, that's just human nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's just human and that's just. That's okay. But you need to be thinking about you and what your needs are and how you move forward and how you get clear on all that and I think we're going to talk a little bit about that too, coming up here too, because that is incredibly important. But I just want to emphasize what you said, which is now's the time. Be the CEO, be the bus driver whatever you want to call it Now is the time You've got to step up, get your head out of the sand. Hopefully this is a wake-up call that it's time for you to, at the very least, lead your own life.
Speaker 2:And the fact is it sounds like work to say that, but it actually is joyful. And I say joyful that may be an overarch of the word, but when you realize that you actually have control to design something in the future, that suddenly gives meaning to the whole process.
Speaker 1:It kind of carries you through through yeah, yeah, and, and so again, you and I have the um, uh, the pleasure, if you will, of hindsight and being able to look at that and say, yes, I can see that, uh, that this is a positive and this is a good way to do it. Now, I'm sure you did it a lot smarter than I did. Mine was like all through mistakes and screwing itself up, and everything else.
Speaker 1:But you strike me a lot, a lot smarter than me, but we at least have I at least have the hindsight to say, yes, you can do that. You can through you know, through control and being able to be proactive in this, design it how you want.
Speaker 2:I certainly, when I went through. I don't think it has any more capable or smarter or anything else.
Speaker 1:I was blindsided, we all are, that's the thing, and I'm setting you up for a sales pitch here, just a mini one in the middle here Like yeah, I'll work out for you guys my five shifts, you know, check out the webinar.
Speaker 2:Anyway, you guys my five shifts, you know.
Speaker 1:check out the webinar anyway, All right.
Speaker 2:So shift number three these all tied together is to harness the power of your intuition. And now that sounds very woo woo to a lot of people, especially a lot of guys, but it's not, and there's actually science behind it. You know, the brain emits an energy field, right? The heart emits an energy field, and the heart brain emits an energy field 5,000 times as powerful as as the brain does itself. How you feel, the energy that you put out is incredibly powerful at influencing things. But most importantly, where intuition comes into play, is that too many people, when they're going through divorce, defer their higher self, their inner guidance, to the experts, to the lawyer, to your mother, to your father, to your brother, to your friend, maybe to your children yeah, there's only one expert.
Speaker 2:There's only one expert. There's only one expert, and it's right here. You know what you want and how it feels. So when I say, tune in, you know, harness the power of your intuition what it really means is okay, I've got a big decision to make here. You know, it's a custody issue, or it's a living arrangement, or it's a financial arrangement. It's a custody issue, or it's a living arrangement, or it's a financial arrangement.
Speaker 2:How does that make you feel when you are considering option A or B? Sure, make the pros and con lists and check them off, but then sit with it. You know how does it feel? Does one feel more expansive or constricting? Does one feel more expansive or constricting? Does one feel just more painful? Does one feel aligned with your values? Does one feel in conflict?
Speaker 2:It's not a natural thing. It's something you have to cultivate. But I promise you that the answer is always there and if you listen to your feelings, if you tune into that and you have to get quiet and find solitude to do that the answer will emerge. And the answer doesn't come to you as obvious as an email that says do this. But sometimes you do get these little winks from the universe, if you will, that kind of reinforce your idea. But it does come to you with a sense of calm about the answer and this is what guides you and I promise you, when you follow your heart, it will never be the wrong answer. Period Period there are no mistakes to be made. That's why it's such a powerful concept.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and that's the philosophy. We talked about it on the show that life is working for you, not against you.
Speaker 1:And so that's a and that's a, that's a. Chat like that was an aha moment for me in life in general, but through this process particularly, because it's so incredibly challenging. But again I have the hindsight of looking back and saying, oh well, I see why that happened the way that it did and that's led to something that's been better and I can connect the dots now. So we're fortunate to have that. But at least those of you listening can can, if you can, reframe and say there is no. I love what you said. There's, there are no bad decisions. There's no negative decisions, there's just decisions, and it's it's moving you in a direction that you're supposed to go, for whatever reason that might be. And the other thing I want to say is one of the words that I like to use is does it make you feel empowered? That's it, that's really it yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, does it make? So when you think about the decision you want to make and if everybody is telling you the opposite, trust if it makes you feel empowered, because nobody else what you said is spot on. Nobody else knows what is best for you, so everybody can tell you the opposite. But if it doesn't make you feel empowered, or all the other ways that you described it, or however you want to get quiet and you want to do this process, that, if it doesn't feel right to you, don't do it. Just trust your intuition.
Speaker 2:And I made mistakes going through, where I made concessions to my ex for the wrong reasons. Yeah, that didn't feel right to me, like I made concessions to try and make her happy or that it would ease the friction with the kids and so forth. Right, guess what Didn't? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I just lost out financially Right.
Speaker 2:I just gave away money which worsened my ability to support my family over the long, many years ahead. You know what I'm saying. This is why you've got to listen to. You really have to listen to yourself, so yeah, yeah, absolutely, and, and.
Speaker 1:and I'll add you know there've been times where I've done that and there have been times that I finally learned, finally, after beating my head against the wall so many times, to just trust it and had the attorney say I absolutely, adamantly believe that you should not do that, and I'd say sorry, and then have it turn out and have my attorney say that's not how I would have done it, but you are right and so it's only. It will be right for you because it is empowering to you and, again, the attorneys you're a segment of a part of their day, of many people, and so they're not tuned in to all of what you are tuned into in your life, in your families, in your children, in your ex and all the other experts and people that you might have working on your team. That's why you're the CEO. So trust your intuition. It's just like a coach that has the intuition to go for it on the goal line, or a certain player to take that last second shot, or whatever it is. You're doing the exact same thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly it. It's just hard. We're not taught to do it this way. We're not taught to consider ourselves in this way, because it's not tangible.
Speaker 1:It's not tangible and we're doing it through this high pressure situation that we've never been in before. It's not like we've practiced this over and over again and over and over and how to figure it out. We might just be learning how to do this right now, which is like what I was doing and it was like a lot.
Speaker 2:And you know what, when you're paying lawyers 400, $500 an hour, 300, whatever it is, it's a, it's a lot. I'm not saying you, I'm not saying dismiss them. I'm saying, if you're paying them, they have good information, but just use it as that, use it as information, and then get them off the payroll as quickly as you can. Amen. Yes, my god, the system is rigged to bleed you.
Speaker 1:Yes, it really is. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole nother podcast episode. Yeah, all right, so the.
Speaker 2:The fourth, uh, the fourth shift is to choose you first, and and you've used this analogy too, but it's like when you're on the airline and they say put the oxygen mask on you first before you try and help your children and your neighbor, or whatnot.
Speaker 2:Absolutely true. You have to fortify yourself in order to be strong for this journey, because if you don't and it hits on a few self-care is one of them If you don't take care of yourself physically, you're going to be anxiety ridden, you're going to fall into weight changes. You may well deal with sleep disorders during divorce because it's so anxiety provoking. You really have to take care of yourself, provoking, right, you really have to take care of yourself, and it's too easy for people, for parents, to fall into the trap of subjugating their needs for their children or for just dealing for the lawyers for their family, whatever it is, and not saying stepping back and going wait, I feel, I feel terrible, I feel like shit, I'm not sleeping, whatever. You know, I need to shore up myself if I'm going to make responsible decisions for my children.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's absolutely, absolutely, absolutely critical, and we talk on the show about it being mental, emotional, physical and spiritual, like a four-legged stool, taking care of all of those parts, because they all interact with each other.
Speaker 1:And if you're not, no matter what your dynamic, if you've maybe been the primary breadwinner and you've been at work and working all the time and now you're shifting to have to take care of kids, or the opposite, where you're not. So, whatever it is, you still have to step back and focus, because this is going to be a wholesale change in your life. So if you're making a wholesale change anyway, you may as well start with the foundation of what is most important, which is yourself.
Speaker 2:Which is yourself. Yeah, you want to be in a grounded position when you make these decisions. What does that mean?
Speaker 1:What does that mean?
Speaker 2:It means you're not emotionally charged, it means that you're letting go, You're pausing. If you were, I don't know. I don't want to speak for all the dads out there, but certainly for many of them they may be really angry at their ex or soon-to-be ex.
Speaker 2:Whatever happened, whatever the circumstances are, whatever led to it, they may be really bitter. That is not a foundation for making responsible choices for your children. It's just not. Or you may feel really shameful. You may have done something you feel your children Right. It's just not. Or you may feel really shameful. You may have done something you feel terrible about Right, so you're feeling weak and small. That is not a good foundation for making responsible decisions for you and for your children. It's just not.
Speaker 2:So what grounded means? It's taking a step back, anchoring again in your heart what you want. What are your values? Step away from the emotion. What is best for me, what is best for my children, what's best for the family in the long term? What's best for our finances in the long term? Not in the short-term? And that's often a mistake, because divorce, in the scheme of things, is a short-term process but it has long-term consequences and there are two layers of finances. Right, you've got the cost of divorce, which are primarily legal costs and court fees and admin costs, and then you've got the settlement costs, which are the alimony or child support, and you know that's the huge setup. Right there, there's so many expenses down the line Kids going to private school or college or camps and everything else down the line after divorce dust is settled. This is what you're living with, right, so you know the repercussions are huge on that.
Speaker 1:So grounding being grounded when you make these decisions is what's important or framing this as an opportunity. But man, we're going through all this. You've been off through this three kids. This is a transition and we got to work and we're still like how in the heck do you do that? I mean, how do you, how do you manage all that? Or where do you? How do you figure it all out?
Speaker 2:Okay. So there are certain things you step back and you have to. So, to get tactical about it, you have to write some things down Like okay, how do I want to approach my interaction with my ex? Okay, I'm mad as hell that she did this or that or treated the kids this way, or whatever it was. That she did this or that or treated the kids this way, or whatever it was, but for the sake of the kids, I resolve that I'm not going to disparage her in front of the children.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Right. You know I'm making these up. There'd be different for everybody, sure. And another huge one is truth telling right. As crazy as things may be for you right now, you can anchor yourself and say I resolve to tell the truth and be honest with my kids.
Speaker 2:It's a value right, Because it's very easy to not or to start lying a little bit, or maybe it's a little white lie that turns into a big lie, and then the thing is, if you don't tell the truth to the kids, they create their own truth about it and it may be far darker or more divergent than the reality, and that's very damaging.
Speaker 2:And now truth telling I mean that's a whole nother conversation too, but it has to be done in age appropriate bites, right, absolutely. They don't need to know everything that happened, but they do need to know what it is. That you tell them has to be truthful, right and something you can build upon.
Speaker 1:Right. So those, those are good tips, but but how? Like some of these, some of these tools need some facilitation.
Speaker 2:Let's have give me an example. Give me I'll. I'll try and respond to you. Tell me something that could be out of control. You can't get your hand around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what does my life look like as a single dad of three kids, when I've been working all of the time, because now I have 50-50 and I have no idea what to do?
Speaker 2:Okay, what would you like your life to look like?
Speaker 1:I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's break it down. That's a very broad question, so let's make it a little bit more specific.
Speaker 1:Because I've been working, I've been at the office for our entire marriage and, um, now I have three kids 50% of the time and I have to figure out how to get them to school and like their appointments and what they eat and how they dress and you know all all that stuff. Like I don't even. I don't even know how to think about what that that looks like. I don't know how to create that vision of what I want it to look like because I don't even know.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, going back to values, could you say, okay, I don't know how to get the kids dressed. I've never really done that, that's been her job, whatever that. Maybe that isn't so important, they will get dressed. Okay, I'm not worried about them going to school naked, so let's just take a little weight off that. Okay, they will eat, so maybe they don't. Maybe I don't have to have everything organized, you know, in nice neat little boxes the night before, or maybe I do. Maybe that's the way I can have control over this. Okay, engage them in the process. Okay, what steps?
Speaker 2:So, right now, what you just described is feeling out of control, right Out of control. I just don't know. I'm out of control. What steps can you do to bring control back into it? Okay, let's let's start with mealtime. If that feels chaotic, let's start. Let's start simple. Okay, what can? Can we do this together? Can we involve the kids together? Can we just say, okay, we will have dinner together as a family period, instead of it being chaotic, because mom used to do this and they used to be at sports and this and this and this. How can I do it differently to simplify all this chaotic nonsense that's going on?
Speaker 2:right, okay um, when I don't know how I'm ever going to date again or find love again or whatever, how about I don't worry about that right now, sure? I'm going to just take that off the table and let that evolve when I'm ready to open my mind or my heart to that kind of thinking. So I don't need to stress about that. What I need to do is not try and win the year or win the divorce. What I need to do is win the day. What can I do to win the day?
Speaker 2:Let's just focus on today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, I like that.
Speaker 2:That's it when you're blown apart. You just got to break it down to a little win. Can I make it to lunch? Can I get them to school today and make it to lunch and still get to work and get that project done? Can I do that? I don't know what chaos tonight will bring, but why don't we all center and come together for dinner and then we'll divvy up and see who needs to do what tomorrow and what can and can't work period? I'm not going to deal with all the overwhelm right now because I'm in the office. We'll deal with it at the end of the workday.
Speaker 1:Right, and this is going to be, would you agree, a process? Right? It's going to be a learning process. It's a new thing, and with anything that's new, you might need help, right? Yes, I think it's the last year, like your last.
Speaker 2:That's the fifth shift, really is to get help and what really you know.
Speaker 2:Get coaching, get a mentor, get someone who has kind of been through this and can guide you, and this is somebody different, as I said, from your team. This is not your. I'm not saying therapist. Therapy doesn't have a value. Therapy is incredibly valuable. It's different than coaching. Yes, the coaching is like a Sherpa. It's like you need to climb that mountain. I'm going to hold your hand and help you take the steps you need to get there. You know, therapy is more like my ankle hurts. I can't climb that mountain right now. Okay, the therapist is going to help you heal your ankle so that you can take the next steps.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, yeah, the therapy is backwards, looking, to get you to the point where you're at, and coaching is where you're at, in forward looking, where you want to be, and both are incredibly important but they're different, but combined they can be very, very effective. So if you've got a therapist, that's great, but if we're, we're just we're we're just talking about in the context of overwhelm and challenges and going through this time where you, where you don't know what's going on, coaching is completely, completely different because it's going to help you figure out where you want to get and clarify where you want to get and how to get there. Like we, like you just did a masterful job of breaking it down. You don't have to figure out dating and everything. Like you need to figure out how you're going to get meals for tomorrow and that might be. You do it together and it's as simple as that. And then how do you do that?
Speaker 2:Then you realize that that works. I can do that. Okay, now I can tackle the next, the next thing, right, yeah, absolutely it's, and coaching is very outcome driven. That's the thing, the therapy and I've been through plenty of therapy and it has helped for certain certain resolutions. It's far less, it's more process and less outcome driven, and there's, there's value in that. But, yeah, so if I had somebody like you or we're doing in my life 18 years ago, things would have been so different. And I think that's why I was driven to this work right now, because I felt completely alone. And that's the irony Half of the marriages wind up in divorce. So there are so many people going through divorce millions but you feel like you're the only one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:You feel like you're in a cave like you're the only one and you don't know where to look. I mean, you know you've got to call a lawyer at some point and they tell you some information and all this sort of stuff. Someone who can guide you through is priceless and, furthermore, you can put a dollar value on it because they can save you through the process. Through following your heart, through limiting this train wreck, this runaway train of a divorce, you can save a ton of money, both in legal costs and, more importantly, in making the right choices in terms of settlements that you might not otherwise make.
Speaker 1:That might be a show that we do in the future to talk about, because that's not something. You know, what you just described, and I think that other people like yourself and myself and others who have been on the show get into this for heartfelt reasons, to want to help people, because we went through such pain and difficulty and see that we now have the ability to help mitigate some of that. And what you said was exactly how I felt like it's crazy, right, all these people are going through it, but we all feel alone and that's why we've created the Divorced Advocate Community so people can get plugged in and we don't we don't self isolate that we're talking with other men and other men are sharing and we do this in our, in our group coaching. But but we I think it would be important at some point to talk about this from a financial perspective and how beneficial it is, because we I don't every week, almost every day I talk to, uh, one of the dads is decimated by a, a bad agreement.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's that the that he got into for whatever reason, but it is having an impact on his children because he's unable to be the best dad he can because it is so onerous and difficult, and this is happening all the time. So maybe that'll be something in the future that we can talk about and maybe quantify, because I don't think folks like us do that enough to put a value, if you will, because I don't think I don't think folks like us do that enough to to put a put a value, if you will, because I don't know about you, I just don't think in those terms like putting, trying to put a dollar value on it. But I think it's important that we start talking about that a little bit more. I got off track with that but I think it's important.
Speaker 2:Well, it's an important. I mean, look, money's the thing that wears you down. Many things wear you down, but you'll get worn down by money and divorce for sure it's just a huge elephant that you've got to work through in the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so well, bill. Thank you so much. It was. This was phenomenal. We could, like I said when we were chatting before, we could probably talk for a couple more and but I think we should come back and maybe revisit that and and have a show, uh, about the financial benefits of having somebody guide you, or a coach guide you through this process and taking control of your divorce. Where can the listeners connect with uh, with you and get more information on these, these five steps?
Speaker 2:So our program is called the best, best self intuitive divorce program. But if you go to best self, you know like be your best self, best self intuitive divorcecom. Okay, that's it. You go to that. There's a landing page that tells you about us and invites you to watch a masterclass that kind of walks you through these shifts, but in a more detailed and organized way so that you feel really empowered by the end of it. You know we offer free discovery calls breakthrough calls is what we call them with potential clients to help them really identify the true problems that they're facing and the stakes that they're facing and give them a solution forward. So yeah.
Speaker 2:Bestselfintuitivedivorcecom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bestselfintuitivedivorcecom, and it's free. So I mean, at the very least, anybody who's listening is going through this challenge. Every I would say everybody has got to get on a free call with somebody in those first hundred days to talk with somebody and not not just an attorney, a coach to get a global picture, or like we were talking about, of what's going on and just even if it's just pointing you in a direction that is going to help you, if it's free, why would you not do it? So go check it out and if you enjoyed what you heard today, please share this far and wide on social media. Share this far and wide on social media. Leave us a review, give us a like, give us a star or leave comments in whatever podcast platform that you're listening to, because our whole goal here, bill and Kristen and myself and everybody else in this community who's trying to help divorcing people or divorcing dads is to get this information out, and this helps us immensely by doing that.
Speaker 2:And it's so good to talk with you. You know this kind of conversation is it touchy-feely? Is it woo-woo? Maybe a little? Yes, honestly, it's really practical. It's really hardcore. Practical. This is about how you not only survive, but thrive through the process and beyond and set yourself up for a fantastic next chapter. That's what it's all about, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, bill, it was such a pleasure having you.
Speaker 2:Very good, till next time, take care.
