Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / The Cost Of Choosing You

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The Cost Of Choosing You · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, a podcast covering all things relationships, separation, and divorce.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: How to create healthy, happy, fulfilling relationships without sacrificing any part of yourself.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce or reorganising life afterwards.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship or marriage, divorce with less drama, and consciously choose what's next for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Warrentry people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this week's episode of Reflect, Reclaim, and Liberate.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been here for a while, you'll know that this episode is not the first time that I've spoken the words choose you.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's come up before in different episodes, different seasons of the podcast, different seasons of my own life, even.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So consider this a bit of a revisit, a return to something I clearly haven't finished talking about yet.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth really is that choosing you, choosing yourself isn't a one and done moment or decision.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a process.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a process that actually costs us.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: It costs to choose you.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a process, it's a learning.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So today, what I want to do is really slow it down a bit and show you, talk to you about what choosing you actually costs.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not the big picture version, not the concept, not the lovely Instagramable social media reels version, the real kind of meat and potatoes of it, the texture of it, the stomach in knots, did I do the right thing?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Questioning myself at 2am version of it, right?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't talk about it, if nobody tells you, if you never think about or appreciate what this is costing you, what it really costs, it's easy to trick yourself into thinking something's wrong with you or you're doing it wrong when it does cost something.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where many of us get a bit tripped up or stuck.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're thinking about choosing ourselves and we picture the beautiful afterwards, you know, the calm, the clarity, that person who seems so settled, so anchored in her own life, in her own decisions, that nothing shakes or wobbles or touches her.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing external can tip her off balance.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that rock, solid, unshakeable human.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: We don't think about or picture the middle, the part where your even mid-decision, your mid-conversation, your mid-relationship, and everything in you is screaming that you're doing or about to do something that is wrong.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Even though somewhere underneath all that noise, you know you're not.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we talk about that part enough, and I it's come up in coaching conversations that feeling that this I'm doing the wrong thing when I really underneath know it's right, and so I thought revisiting this on the podcast is probably a really good thing.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let's actually go there and let's talk about the cost.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you, choosing yourself will ask you to do hard things, not brave quote hard, actually hard, reality hard, real hard.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It might ask you to disappoint people.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, strangers or people that you don't know very well or interact with much, but often the people who are closest to you, the ones whose opinion of you mattered, matters, maybe it still matters, you know, though the ones whose idea of you used to feel like part of your foundation, part of your anchor.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those whose opinions on life, the universe, and everything, including yourself, were opinions and ideas and thoughts that you valued.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you might ask you to disappoint those people.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It might ask you to let others think whatever they're going to think about you.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the hard part inside of that is that you don't get a vote or a say in that anymore.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Never really do, but I think when we really start to choose ourselves to put ourselves at the centre of our own life, it asks us to let go of this.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get to manage or soften or explain your way out of it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to let others think whatever they think about you.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to let that exist out there without your input or your ability to touch it, especially if you choose to separate, leave a relationship, divorce.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a whole raft of people whose opinion of you, of your choices, of your decisions, of your actions, of your life, you don't get to know.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you do, you don't get even have a conversation with them about any of it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to let it go and let it exist out there without your input.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So choosing you asks you to let go or to let others think whatever they're going to think about you.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: It might ask you, no, I'm going to qualify that.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: It will definitely 100% absolutely ask you to say no.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes to do that, to say no when every part of you, every inch, every centimetre, every cell of you wants to say yes.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: It will ask you, demand of you that you say no, that choosing you means saying no, even when you want to say yes, you want to keep the peace, you want to be chosen, you want to be loved.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there is nothing wrong with wanting those things.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the issue or the failure or the problem here.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: The learning is realizing you can want all of that.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can want to be loved and still have to say no.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can want to be chosen and still hold a boundary.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wanting to be chosen, but knowing that to choose yourself, you have to say no to something or someone else.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wanting to be loved, but saying no to what is the wrong kind of loving for you.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you forces us to say no to things that are no longer for us, no longer aligned with us, no longer ours.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you might also ask you to let go of connections, of relationships that aren't in alignment with who you're becoming.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You will have heard me say this a thousand times.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you will ask you to let go of relationships that aren't in alignment with who you're becoming, even who you are right now.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that don't have the capacity to hold you where you are now or while you grow, while you change, while you expand, not because the other person is wrong or bad or unworthy or anything.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing about the other person really.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just because this relationship has stopped fitting the shape of who you are now.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: This relationship, this shape of this relationship doesn't fit who you are or who you're becoming.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: There is not room enough in this particular container for you to expand.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that might be a relationship with friends, with family members, and it might be that relationship closest to you.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: The one with a partner, husband, wife, lover.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you might ask you to let go of relationships that no longer align with who you are, who you're becoming.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: It might ask you to walk away.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you might mean needing to walk away from friendships, from jobs, from workplaces, from clients, from relationships that you once thought were forever.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Those ones you hoped so hard would work out.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Walking away from forever, or what you thought was forever, is its own particular kind of heart, its own particular kind of grief, its own particular kind of cost, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody talks about that one enough either.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you often asks you to let go, walk away from things, from spaces, behaviors, jobs, businesses, relationships that aren't right for you, aren't aligned with you, your values, who you are, who you've become, and that can be intensely painful in the middle parts.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: There is good coming, right?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget that we're talking here about all the things it costs you, and it costs you in terms of walking away that can be painful, hard, and bring up all the grief.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It will ask you, choosing yourself, will ask you to sit with those hard feelings and other ones shame, frustration, disappointment, and the big one that often comes up, and that is guilt.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even when your head knows, even when you know, above the shoulders, intellectually, you know that this is the absolute right choice, right decision for you, for you, probably for others in your life.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know deep down that you haven't done anything wrong, you might feel it anyway.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: You might feel it in your chest, in your stomach, in the three o'clock in the morning, churning, wake up, can't go back to sleep moments.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: When you've done what is the right thing objectively for you, it might still bring up all those hard feelings.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So choosing you can cost you a little bit of peace in the moment, but on the other side, we know what's coming, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you will absolutely make you question.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: It will make you question yourself, it will make you doubt yourself, it will make you feel uncertain, you will overthink and over-analyse every version of the conversation or the decision that you perhaps have already had or you're about to have, replaying it, editing it, defending yourself against people who aren't even really in the room anymore.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: It will make you ask, is it me?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Am I the problem?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps in a moment someone reacts negatively or strongly pushes back on a boundary that you've finally finally enforced with them.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: That question will feel enormous in the moment, huge, loud.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is this me?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Am I the problem?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not actually new information, it's just a really old fear you have showing up right on cue, right?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is not new information.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is it me?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, it is, and no, it is you because you've made a conscious decision to choose yourself, to center yourself in your own life, to make decisions and behave in ways that keep you at the center of your own life, your own story.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, it is you, but that does not make you wrong, and that does not make you the problem.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So choosing you will make you question yourself, and also you have the answers.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is you, but it doesn't make you wrong or the problem.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes choosing you will mean will ask you to be alone, to get all the things done alone, to feel all the big feelings alone, to cry alone, to grieve alone with no one, to reflect back to you that what you're going through is real and hard and all the things.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: To be alone, choosing yourself sometimes means being alone, and sometimes being alone is hard and heavy and lonely, and also sometimes it's not.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes being alone is liberating, freeing.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: No one to ask, no one to consider.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, you might have times when you are crying alone, you might also laugh and dance and sing and travel and do all the joyful, wonderful, amazing, expanding things alone.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you will cost you all of the old versions of yourself.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: It will ask you to release those old versions of you, the ones who allowed, the ones who settled, the ones who tolerated less than what you really wanted or deserved, than what you are always worthy of.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: The version of you that maybe kept quiet, didn't ask for what you really wanted, the version of you that dared not dream too big.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing you will demand that you release all of those old versions, and that release is a loss too, right?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Even when the thing you're releasing was never or is no longer good for you.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're still allowed to grieve who you used to be, but also there's an invitation there too.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank her, thank him, thank them, thank all those younger, earlier versions of you.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Be grateful that they existed and for what they taught you because all of that learning has enabled and empowered you to be right here, right now, and if you're not already doing it, on the cusp of choosing you, or in the middle, the messy middle parts of choosing you.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And none of that is what choose you sounds like when I flippantly throw it on an Instagram post or when someone else says it to you.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening thinking, I can't, I can't, or yeah, but here's what I want you to know: it might not feel great, it might not feel empowering, it might not feel wonderful, not at first, it might feel destabilizing, like you're tipping your own world off-center, taking the snow globe and shaking it all up.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It will feel unfamiliar, it might even feel a bit scary.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: It will most likely feel uncomfortable and unusual, because it is unusual, it's new, you've never done it quite this way before, and there will be so much, there will be so much internal noise in your head, yes, but also in your body, screaming at you not to do this, not to make this decision, not to say this thing, not to do it this way, to stay back in one of those old versions of you who would not have chosen herself, who would not have been able or willing to pay the price, all those costs that we've talked about, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the part that matters most in this in-between phase of learning and leaning into choosing yourself is that every time you do it, every time you choose you, every small decision, every uncomfortable no, every time you push back, every boundary you set and hold, even when your voice shakes or your gut clenches and your body is telling you to do it differently, every time you do that, every time you lean into that and hold yourself to it, you are building evidence, a bank of beautiful evidence, proof for yourself and for your body that this is safe, that this is right, that this is okay, right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And slowly, incrementally, it starts to settle.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: That noise tones down.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your body learns that it's okay to do this, and that doesn't happen all at once, it doesn't happen dramatically in a single moment, but it will settle like sediment floating down and settling to the floor, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like something finding the floor and settling, and that knowing, that trust, that belief that in that evidence starts to carry more weight than the doubt, more gravity than the fear.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: The evidence overcomes the doubt and the fear.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can think about it like this: you don't build trust with another person from a single moment or a single conversation.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: You build it from a hundred tiny moments where they showed up the way they said they would, they did the thing they said they would do.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same with yourself.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't build trust in your own choices from one dramatic, bold decision.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can, you absolutely can, but you tend to build it in that same slow way as you do with someone else.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's from a hundred small moments where you showed up for yourself the way you said you would, where you chose the harder, truer thing to say, where you said no, held the boundary, did the thing.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where you disappointed someone and you survived it, where you did the hard thing, said the hard thing and the world didn't fall apart, where you sat with the hard feelings, with the guilt of letting someone down, disappointing someone, and that past, like the weather moving on, didn't stay forever.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Building evidence.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Each one of those moments is a deposit, and eventually the account has enough in it that you stop bracing every time you go to make a withdrawal, right?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can do the hard thing, you've got the evidence that you can do it, and the world doesn't fall apart around you.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one day you might not even notice the day that it happens, one day it will start to feel like you're normal, it will start to feel like you, and you'll realize something.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're not actually losing anything of value, you're not losing anything real.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: What you're actually doing is so much simpler than it feels.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're no longer minimizing yourself, your hopes, your dreams, your wants, your needs, your desires.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're no longer abandoning yourself to protect things you once thought mattered more than you did.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Other people's approval, other people's expectation, other people's comfort.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not actually that you're becoming someone new when you choose yourself.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's that you're finally becoming fully available to yourself, and then one day you'll just stay in that in that energy, in that power, anchored in yourself, anchored in the choice that you know is for you.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: You'll show up for yourself and you'll keep doing it over and over and over.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you show up not because it stopped being hard, but because you've stopped needing it to be easy before you'll just do it anyway.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm really honest with you, you might never stop questioning it completely.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might catch yourself years down the track in a quiet, unrelated moment, judging yourself for a decision they, whoever they are this time, might disapprove of.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Telling yourself, oh, I shouldn't do that or I should do that.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you'll also remember something else in that same moment.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're not the same person anymore.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're not that version anymore.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not willing to settle, to smile, to stay small in spaces that don't have room for all of you.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they, that audience in your head, the people who left, the people who stayed but never really saw you, they don't, whoever they are, they don't actually get to drive your life.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get to make your choices, they don't get to judge your decisions from the sidelines of your life when you're the one actually living the life.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one who's living it, and you no longer tolerate being secondary and afterthought in your own life, and that's what this comes down to.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: You no longer tolerate the version of you or the version of your life where you're the last consideration.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not quite there yet, if choosing you still feels an impossible thing, if it feels like okay for somebody else but not for you, if it feels hard and scary and destabilizing, like it's going to blow up your life, unfamiliar, maybe further outside your comfort zone than you've ever gone, if it's pushing you toward retreating, shrinking back to where it's familiar because.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like you're going to lose too much.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is your reminder.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are costs, and they are worth it.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this is me being your cheerleader on the sidelines for the next however many seconds, minutes, telling you plainly, keep going.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: It gets easier.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It might not get easy, but it gets easier, and it is absolutely worth it.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: You are worth it.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: The life that you're leaning towards by choosing you is absolutely worth it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you'll arrive there and never doubt yourself again.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how this works for me or for anyone, but because the choosing itself stops becoming, stops being, I'm sorry, the exception in your life and starts being the normal pattern, the normal rhythm, the normal way of showing up in your life for yourself.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: It stops being the terrifying hard thing you do once and starts being simply how you live.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: You will still have hard days.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: You will still have moments where an old fear taps you on the shoulder and tips you into self-doubt, questioning.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Have you made a terrible mistake?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't necessarily mean you've gone way back, doesn't mean you've gone backwards.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: It just means you're human and you're still building that bank of evidence bit by bit, decision by decision, moment by moment, deposit by deposit, right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is what choosing you actually costs.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred, a thousand, a million small, tiny, uncomfortable, unglamorous moments.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: The disappointing, the letting go, the sitting with big feelings, guilt that isn't really yours to carry.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is those moments that add up slowly, slowly, and then all at once to a life that's finally, fully and completely yours.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here for this for this one.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: If it landed somewhere with you in you today, sit with a little bit before you move on.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know someone who needs to hear this exact reminder right now, please send them this episode, share it with them.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: It might be exactly the nudge they need to keep going to, building their own bank of evidence.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep reflecting, keep reclaiming, and keep choosing you.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the pathway to liberation.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching, and if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get it in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Until then