Slaying Your Divorce Dragons And Moving On

When's the last time you heard someone say, "I feel stuck!"? It probably wasn't that long ago. In fact, you might have even heard yourself uttering or muttering those words. When I went through my divorce and the process of rediscovering myself, I felt stuck. It was all I could think about.

Everything in my life was changing, but I felt like I wasn't moving. I had repetitive thoughts that got in my way of healing. I had beliefs about being less worthwhile than others, and those beliefs often kept me from having, doing and being what I wanted. In short, my divorce derailed the life I was living, and I felt overwhelmed by all the changes around me.

What I understand now that I didn't know back then is that all of my feelings of "stuckness" were just my personal dragons. I needed to slay them before I could fully engage in my life again. So, to be clear about what it feels like to be stuck, these are some common feelings my clients describe when discussing the issue:

• Being stressed out.
• Feeling misaligned with what's going on in your world or life.
• Experiencing strong unpleasant emotions.
• Needing to get more knowledge about something, but not sure what, or how to do it.
• Repetitively trying things that just don’t work.
• Not feeling able or willing to take the actions needed for growth.

Maybe these descriptions seem familiar to you. Maybe you've seen your own fire-breathing dragons, and are tired of being at their mercy. If that's you, I'll bet you're wondering how to slay those dragons. And that, dear reader, is exactly the question I hoped you would ask.

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It turns out there's been quite a bit of amazing research done over the past hundred years on the human body. Scientists have discovered that we all have "multiple brains" — if we define a brain as a collection of a large number of ganglia, along with sensory and motor neurons, neural cells with inter-neurons, support cells and components such as glial cells and astrocytes. In addition, a brain has certain functional attributes, such as perceiving, assimilating and processing information, memory and storage access, ability to mediate complex reflexes via an intrinsic nervous system and a storage warehouse of neurotransmitters.

With this definition and capabilities, it turns out that we each have at least three brains (Sound confusing? You can read more about multiple brains in Oka and Soosalu’s book mBraining: Using Your Multiple Brains to do Cool Stuff).

Your three brains are located in your head, around your heart and in your gut. By understanding how to connect with each of your brains and in a particular order, you can slay your known dragons.

Here’s how I suggest you do it:

1. Relax. The exact method you use to relax isn't as important as that you just do it.

2. Step into the logic of the issue to get clear and specific about what the current situation is — and what your desired situation is. There's probably a disconnect.

3. Tune in with your heart. What is your heart telling you about the situation?

4. What is your head/logic telling you about the information perceived from your heart?

5. Now tune back in with your heart. What adjustments to the thoughts from your head need to be made?

6. Tune into your gut. What does your gut say about all of this information?

7. Ideally, at this point your gut has given you an indication of what actions need to be taken and given you the energy to take them. If not, then take the information from your gut and return to step three.

As you can see from the steps above, slaying your dragons is all about getting clear and becoming energized about taking actions, because you’ve been able to think about the situation (dragon) in a different way. Our hearts, heads and guts all work together to provide us the right path for moving on. I think Einstein said it best when he commented that "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Solving the challenges and problems that come with divorce requires you to think and act differently than you have been. Once you can see these issues from a different perspective, it usually becomes fairly clear how you can slay your dragons. How do I know? Because I've done it myself.

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

• Identify a dragon you’re ready to slay. I recommend starting small. What’s one small thing that’s keeping you stuck?
• Apply the process described above. Allow yourself the time to experiment with this process. I think you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll be able to get in touch with each of your brains and get moving in the right direction for you.

If you need an assist with this process, I'm just an email away.