Building Confidence During Divorce
Although Divorce is a painful and challenging experience, it provides you with many opportunities to build confidence. When you actively develop your self-confidence, you will feel less stressed, feel more power, and get closer to your desired results.
There are internal and external ways to create confidence. Inner confidence is an awareness of where your personal choice and power reside. Awareness, acceptance, and making conscious decisions are internal disciplines that, when exercised, help build confidence. Seeking expert advice, building your divorce team, and testing your decisions are external confidence builders.
Inner Work for Confidence
You can choose your reactions for the feelings you're experiencing. You can decide how you want to act while you're experiencing anger, fear, and overwhelm. For example, in a heated interaction with a spouse, you can elect to act out, remain level-headed, or walk away.
Divorce presents an opportunity to create your future. Now is the time to consider what behaviors have worked in the past, and what new practices to cultivate. Take time to journal on the following topic: "Because of all I've experienced so far, I couldn't think, feel, act or be any different...until today." This exercise helps you accept the past and the present. Accepting what was and is empowers you to take confidence-building action and build a new life.
Seek Expert Advice and Make Conscious Choices
You don't have to go through this experience alone. Before making decisions seek expert legal and financial advice. In a Collaborative Divorce, your team consists of an attorney, financial neutral, and a divorce facilitator. You can add other professionals: child specialists, divorce coaches, therapists, real estate experts, and accountants. Working with experts provides you with a reality check of what is possible, and enables you to move forward with confidence.
To feel confident about your options, apply the 10-10-10 rule. Invented by Suzy Welch, a business writer for publications such as Bloomberg Businessweek and O magazine. Think about your choices in three different time frames:
How will you feel about it 10 minutes from now?
How about ten months from now?
How about ten years from now?
When you slow down, do the inner and external work, you'll feel self-confident and create a new future that feels good.
About Sue Horwitz
Sue Horwitz is a certified Life Transition and Divorce Coach. She works with women in both minor and significant changes. Download her e-book "What to Expect When Life is Changing. A Change Readiness Assessment and Five Ways to Stay Calm, in Control and Make Change Easier" at https://www.SueHorwitzCoaching.com