What’s up everybody. Welcome to the fit to fat to fit experience podcast. I’m your host, drew Manning and I’m your cohost Lynn Manning. And today we have a special episode for you guys. We are not interviewing anybody today. It’s just going to be Lynn and I, uh, being in this episode out. Um, it’s going to be an interesting one you guys. We’re going to open it up and get personal, get vulnerable. We haven’t done this yet on a podcast. We’ve haven’t really done this at all in front of our fans, but we’re actually going to talk about our divorce and I know it’s going to be uncomfortable for some people. We’re going to make it lighthearted. We’re going to make it fun and interesting, but we will get personal, we will get vulnerable, vulnerable. So you’re gonna want to stick around to listen to what we have to say. I think it could be beneficial for a lot of people and it might scare some people away. What do you think, Glen?
Oh, well, I mean I, I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be interesting. We might, we have not rehearsed this. We actually don’t even know a hundred percent of what we’re going to talk about. And so there might be time for glaring at each other and being like, why are you saying
you guys love us or hate us after this episode? And that’s okay. We might actually end up hating each other even worse after this episode or you know,
is that possible? I’m just kidding. That was the divorce joke didn’t when juror is asking me, he’s like, well what, what should we name this podcast? I said let’s name it. 99% of my socks are single and you don’t see them crying about it.
Glen has jokes for days about divorce.
But now we’re going to talk about, we’re not going to go into specifics about our divorce, but we are going to talk a little bit about um, transitioning a little bit about, uh, you know, what had helped us, cause a lot of people ask, how are you still able to work together or I’m so surprised you’re divorced cause you seem on friendly terms, which we are and people have asked us how and why we’re able to do that. And so we thought we would share, open up and share a few tidbits that have really helped us, um, transition and stay on a, on a good note, especially for our children. And so we actually have about three major points that have really helped us. And that’s what we want to share with you guys today along with bringing a little bit of light humor into the situation. Because if you cannot laugh about your relationship, then it’s going to be hard to move forward in a positive fashion.
Life’s going to be hard, that’s for sure. Uh, but before we jump in, you guys, let’s go ahead and open up with our show sponsors. First and foremost, a key gen X is our main show sponsor. Our key genics. You guys have heard me talk about exoticness ketones. I’ve had dr Dom D’Agostino come on and talk about these exoticness ketones that he created and a scientific clinical studies on. Um, and basically what key genics is you guys, it’s a supplement that supplement that you can take that literally puts your body in a state of ketosis within 60 minutes of taking it. Now, what is ketosis really quick? Cause I get so many people ask me what it is. Basically in a nutshell, it’s a metabolic state that your body can enter into when there’s no glucose available or present in the body. So it’s your body’s backup mechanism when you have no food.
That’s why you can last multiple days without food. You guys. Um, so when you have no glucose available, your body is forced to produce these ketones for energy to keep your brain functioning, your muscles functioning, to keep you alive. Um, but it’s not fun to get into ketosis by starvation. There’s two ways to hack that and one is to eliminate carbs completely, right? Uh, for the most part, uh, eliminate or minimize the amount of carbs you put into your body by eating a high fat, moderate protein, low carb diet, which is called the keto diet. Or, uh, you can also take exogenous ketones like key genics, uh, which takes, uh, literally within 60 minutes of taking it. You’re in a state of ketosis. You can test your blood ketone levels before and after to show that you are, uh, your, you do have ketones in your blood.
Now with nutritionally, you can do the same thing, but sometimes it can take up to a week or even longer for some people to get into a state of ketosis. So this is just a convenient way of hacking that and getting in quickly. Now, uh, there are many, many benefits other than fat loss and weight loss, which are great. You know, when you’re in ketosis, your body’s forced to use its own fat stores for fuel in your body. And just know this, you guys, your body can store only up to maybe 3000 calories of glucose before you need to replenish it, right? But your body can tap in to, you know, 30,000 calories of stored fat in your body for fuel. When you’re in ketosis, your body is using the that stored fat and which is why it’s a lot more efficient for some people to be in a state of ketosis. Now, kegenix.com is the website. You can go get a 30 day supply. I use my code fit to fat to fit that fit number two, fat number two fit for a 15% off. And yeah, go check it out. I’ve been using it. I love it and I promise you it’s definitely something to experience at least once to see how it feels to be in a state of ketosis. Yeah.
And our other show sponsor is quest nutrition. You guys have heard us talk about them for years. I always like to joke around. I’m like, I love them. Even before they were popular, now everyone sees them. Everyone knows what they are. They’re an amazing, um, well they actually have several different products, but my favorite staple of course is just their protein bar. Um, and you guys know we preach eating whole foods. Okay. We obviously eat whole foods. We believe in proper nutrition, but it is very hard when you’re on the go to find good whole foods. Um, especially if you’re like going through the drive through, obviously you’re probably not getting a lot of great nutrients in your food. Um, and this is a way I always like to have a quest bar. In my purse, in my console, in my car. I like to have it in my office for me in order to avoid the fast food trap, having a quest bar is set, has saved me, especially when I’m running my kids around. I like to take them on the go. My kids love them. My favorite flavor is of course the cookie dough. Also. Their quest chips are amazing and their protein powders too. So go ahead and check out the show notes if you want to to go over to their site and try one out.
Yep. All alright, you guys, let’s go ahead and jump in to today’s episode with yours truly. And I, so should we, uh, should we start with a joke? Um, yeah. I think Lynn has some jokes, but before we do, just so you guys know, we do understand that divorce isn’t always something to laugh about. It’s not always something funny, but we just want you guys to know that life does go on and life can get better and life is so much better if you can learn to not take yourself so seriously, which trust me, I am still learning this lesson not to take myself so seriously. Um, but it’s always good to start off with a little humor. So I think Lynn’s prepared some jokes. So bear with me.
No, I th I just read this funny one liner by Woody Allen. We all know he’s slightly inappropriate, so this is going to be slightly inappropriate if you’re with your children. Just go ahead and turn down the volume or bleep this out. The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.
Oh, you went there, huh? Hilarious. Okay. You guys liked her, said
a lot of times people get so serious about different topics and there isn’t a time and a place for that. You guys, you don’t know the background of anyone’s life or their experiences. And with Jersey and I’s divorce, you could fill up an entire swimming pool with the amount of tears that we went through, um, collectively through this experience. So it’s not to joke around or just be like, Oh, divorce is so easy. And it’s funny, but it drew is absolutely correct. And if we take life so serious, if we always focus on the negative, if we always bring so much seriousness and sadness to a situation, it’s going to be really hard to move forward with your life and focus on the positive. Try to be grateful for what you have. And especially in a situation like drew and I where we’re trying to work together and raise children together, I really think by trying to focus on the good and having that lighthearted attitude makes a huge difference, which is why we may throw in a few jokes here and there, but we kind of wanted to start off. Drew’s going to go ahead and start off a little bit with some of the basics about our situation.
Yeah. So where do I start? Um, when I was a baby. Just kidding. Um, we won’t, we won’t go back that far, but you know, we’ve been married for 10 years or we were married for 10 years before we got divorced. Um, and when you get married, you never think you’re going to get divorced, right? No one ever goes into marriage thinking, well, I’ll get divorced after seven or so years. Some people might, well, hopefully you don’t go into the marriage planning that, but basically, you know, we grew up at least, you know, I did very religious background and you know, marriage was a very sacred event and we’d looked at it that way and we had a very, very happy marriage. I mean, for the most part, you, you ask anybody that knows us, we got really well, we hardly ever argued. But about five years ago, six years ago, we hit some, some serious bumps in our relationship, like hardcore where we struggled and we didn’t know what to do.
We went to counseling. Uh, we had some ups and downs. Um, you know, there was times where Lynn at that time, you know, wanted to, to end our marriage and me being very prideful, you know, I obviously worried about what other people would think and for me, prideful reasons actually held onto our marriage. And, um, you know, we went to counseling, we try to work on it. Trust me, we, we did everything we could. We even went like the religious route, which we won’t get into specifics, but, you know, whatever it took to fix our marriage, I just thought, you know, we just had to do, we had to try harder and, and work on it and it would get better if we just, you know, both put in the effort. But I realized that now I realize now that it was mostly my pride of not wanting to be looked at as a failure.
Cause I knew that the way I was taught and, or my perception of what I knew divorce was, was it’s, you’re a failure, right? If you’re divorced, you’re, you failed. Um, and I was devastated at that time. And we, the counseling did help out like temporarily. Um, we had good moments and bad moments during the past five years where we went through our hell, but then things seemed good for awhile, but then, you know, they dip back down and we had ups and downs and I just finally realized, um, that I was making both of us miserable by hanging on to this marriage for prideful reasons. Right. And we had two kids and we could have said, you know, Hey, let’s stick and probably cross both of our minds, right. Let’s just do this for our kids. We’ll just fake it till we make it kind of thing. And you know, we might not have the perfect marriage anymore, but at least we’ll be there for our kids.
Yeah. And people have to realize, I mean, it’s kind of crazy actually that we’re opened up on such a public forum. I can’t even count how many times. And I’m actually surprised. I’ve gotten several messages from people I don’t even know that our followers asking about our divorce and asking for specifics. And I’m not trying to knock anybody who, who’s done that. I just found it was rather bold of them to be asking says personal questions. And here’s the thing, I have never been the type of person that speaks about other people. You know, the joke around my friends is they always call me the volt cause they’re like, if you tell him something, it’s not coming back out. And so I was never one to complain about my spouse, even though most women at a girls night can joke around about their spouse. And there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of light humor.
Um, but for me, I just felt like a relationship, especially a marriage was something that really sacred and really personal. And I just felt that in order to keep that special, in order to keep a good relationship, you don’t air any, any dirty laundry and you don’t talk about fights. If you’re going to be talking about problems or fights that should be done with the person you’re in the relationship with. So for me, what is kind of interesting is a lot of people were shocked about our divorce. And I think a lot of people even jump to assumptions, which has nothing to do with me. And you know that’s, that’s their, that’s their doing or their business and they don’t realize that we were in hardcore intensive continual counseling both together and individually for over five years before we were divorced. This wasn’t something like, Oh you know, we’re not getting along so we should break up.
And when drew talks about, you know, Oh we hit some rough times, it’s not a situation where like, Oh marriage was perfect. And then we got in a couple of little fights and realized that we didn’t work well together. It wasn’t like that at all. You know, we are just like everybody else. We realize marriage isn’t perfect. We realized marriage is hard and that is the only reason we stuck it out for so long was trying to work through some of these huge hurdles and determining if we really could be happy and continue on in our relationship. And for drew, not letting go was a lot like he, he had mentioned to do with his pride not wanting to seem as a failure. And for me it was the kids. You know, I went to so many different counselors and I’d hear varying things about, you know, how divorce can affect children.
And I thought even though I’m so unhappy if my children will turn out better for me staying, maybe I should stay. And long story short, you know, after obviously going through years of counseling and us talking about it and even meeting with a child sites, a therapist who talk to me and basically said, you know, the key to children being happy actually isn’t whether their parents are divorced or not. It’s actually if they’re happy and how they treat each other. And so in the end, this is not about whether or not anyone that’s listening to this should get a divorce. Um, that’s none of our business and no one can know your relationship but you for, but you, but it’s more so to explain that as you transition out of that and for those that are divorced or maybe you’re in the process of that, that the relationship post divorce doesn’t have to be so ugly.
You know, a lot of people are surprised. Drew and I worked together. A lot of people are surprised that I’m not going around bashing my ex husband, um, and saying all these terrible things about him and I don’t think that is ever helpful or necessary. Um, drew and I try to, to keep a really, uh, good line of, of course we’re not friends to the point where we’re calling each other on the weekends going to the movies. But we do do things together, especially with our kids, to, to show them that we are still a family even though we’re not married.
Yeah. So, um, let me kinda like back up a little bit, but also catch you up to speed to where kind of we’re going to talk about how this, the relationship between Lynn and I now exists because it wasn’t always like that, right. When we went through our rough times that we went through some really rough times, like Lynn said, it wasn’t always, you know, sunshine and rainbows and it still isn’t right. We still, I mean we still have hard days, but, um, it’s kinda getting back to the story of, you know, we went to counseling and then just, you guys know we’re, our official divorce was October of 2015 is when like everything was finalized. But I think, you know, we kind of, uh, filed the papers earlier that summer, you know, like in may or June. And even before that we had looked through the process of like, okay, or we decided we’re going to get divorced like almost like a year before that, like the summer before.
So we’ve known for a long time. But just so you guys know, like Lynn said, we didn’t talk about it to people. My family didn’t even know her family didn’t even know. So this was a shock for a lot of people. Even our family, we kind of kept through all these things inside. And this was even happening with, during my fit to fat to fit journey. Like I appeared on all these TV shows and so did Lynn and, but no one had any clue. So that just kind of goes to show that no matter how perfect someone may seem or some people may seem, we all go through our own hell, you know, and we don’t understand. We don’t, everyone has their own problems. It was pretty much what I’m trying to say. Like even though like people think, Oh they look so happy, like they’re such a good couple.
You don’t know what people are going through. Um, but anyways, it was about two years ago that we met this life coach lended through a mutual friend and it was introduced to her and she went to go meet her and I think the name of her practice is clarity. Catherine Dixon at Claire clarity coaching. Yeah, clarity. coaching.com or just Google it, you’ll find it. But Lynn went and had a session with her and it was amazing. And it was just an individual session with her. She wasn’t a marriage counselor therapist, but she’s a life coach and Len loved it so much that she even booked an appointment for me. Right. And this is like after we decided that we were going to get a divorce and stuff, um, and I was kind of hesitant, but I figured, you know, I believe what Lynn says, if Lynn thinks this will help me and it helped her, then I’ll do it.
And, um, it was just basically three hours of me crying like a little, little baby. There’s like, I’ve never cried that hard in my life. I mean, maybe I have, but like it was just like, man, all these things came out. Cause like I said, we didn’t talk to anyone about it. We didn’t really have an outlet. Um, and this basically what this, what at the end of the day, what it did for me on a personal level was helped me finally realize how to love myself my entire life. I’ve never been good enough or perfect enough in my eyes. And that’s just kind of like the way I was raised was, you know, you can always do better. You’re never perfect enough. You always gotta try harder and that can be good and bad. But for me it was definitely bad because I hated who I was on the inside, even though I appeared to be good on the outside. Right. Um, and she finally opened my eyes to, wow, I’m really, I’m deserving of love for myself for the first time in my life, 34 years of existence. I never knew how to love myself until this moment. And so that’s kind of like the biggest takeaway for me was learning how to love myself. And that’s where things started to change for the better. And that’s where our relationship started to become a better between the, both of us was healing on an individual level through this life coach. And then,
yeah, and that’s going to be one of our main points that we talked about at the end. Number three, but number three of how to transition and be, you know, happy posts post-divorce, especially with each other is, you know, a lot of people focus on the other person and what they’re doing. And we’ll talk in more depth about this later in the show, but it’s really more important for you to focus on you.
Yeah, exactly. Which I didn’t know how to do, um, from my experiences growing up. And so anyways. Um, but the other things that helped me on the individual level were honestly Bernay Brown’s books, daring greatly and rising strong, which I’ve read the past year or so. Um, learning how to be vulnerable and learning that vulnerability is a strength and not a weakness, uh, versus what I was taught or my perception of what I was taught as a kid was men are not supposed to be vulnerable. You don’t talk about your feelings, you don’t appear weak. That is not okay until I read these books. And it just gave me so much power over, uh, that fear of, you know, looking, appearing weak to others. But I learned how to own my story. And that’s what helped me overcome this fear of like, what are people gonna think of me if I’m divorced and what’s my family? Gonna think of me. But anyways, um, those are the things that helped me on an individual level. And then from there, we, um, decided to move to Hawaii as a divorced couple, but we moved to Hawaii.
Well and some background about that is, you know, Drew’s part Hawaiian. Um, his, his dad grew up on the big Island. His, uh, grandparents lived there until they both passed away and his older brother had been living there for, for years, but over a decade at least, right on the big Island. And so we felt a couple of things. One of the things is we had been so private about our struggles and about our divorce and especially being in the public sector with drew show coming out in a few different things. We didn’t want a lot of attention, especially negative attention on us for our kids’ sake. You know, we didn’t want family members or friends, you know, saying anything unkind about the other person in their presence or having us be so enthralled with all the attention that we neglected our children in any way.
And I know that not everybody can do this. And the truth is, is I, I, I think for the norm, you not everyone would need to, cause you wouldn’t be getting the same type of, um, crazy attention about a separation, at least not from maybe from a few friends and family. But, um, and so we thought, you know, moving to Hawaii would be a great way to give our kids at a different experience and to, you know, obviously them explain the separation and what that meant for them and let them have a little bit of their heritage and culture. Like my daughter took hula class and different things like that. Try to make it a, a positive experience even though of course divorce is not considered a positive experience.
Yeah. So, and plus both Lynn and I, we, we’d love to travel and we both agree that life is more about making memories then buying cool things. And so we’d rather spend money on making these memories that will last a lifetime versus, you know, a gift that you got for a birthday or Christmas and you’re like, I don’t remember what I got last year. Um, so we, we both decided to spontaneously up and move to Hawaii. You know, we didn’t tell people why we just kind of up and did it saying, Oh, we just want to change. We want to ex, uh, you know, experience something new. We work from home. Why not? Um, and that was part of the reason, but at this point, you know, none of our family even knew at this point in time, but we eventually did open up and tell them after, shortly after moving out there.
Um, and it was hard for our family or families. And that was like my biggest fear was, you know, what is my dad going to think? What’s my mom going to think? What are my brothers going to think? I knew like my followers and you know, my fans, I didn’t re, you know, not that I don’t care what those people think, but like obviously your family is important and you do care what they think. Um, and I was so nervous, but opening up and being vulnerable and talking about my past and, or my weaknesses and our divorce, I knew it was going to be hard on it, but you know, it was, and it was like I cried like a baby again, opening up to, you know, my family members and that was hard. But then the day it, we make up stories in our mind of how bad things are going to be when we tell us, you know, uh, our story, but that’s all in our head and it’s just a fear that we hold on to. But in reality, you don’t know what it’s going to be like. It wasn’t that bad. I mean, my family was very supportive and, uh, the outpouring of love, like I just felt the support and the compassion. And so it was a very positive experience at the end of the day. But in my mind I was just like so much anxiety and nervousness and you know, fear and all of that was washed away after being vulnerable. And that’s where you find true happiness in my, in my belief, in my experience.
Yeah. And I’m sure you guys are sick of hearing all about us. She’s, is this all about us? No, we did want to give everybody a little bit of background. Like you know, of course we’re not. And who knows in the, in the future if, uh, if we ever have a forum and when we decide to open up a little bit more. But the truth is, is what happened in our marriage really is about us and our business and it’s not everyone else’s business. So, but we did want to share obviously not specifics, but a little bit of background about that transitioning and then we wanted to leave everybody with just three takeaways. Three things that for cause people fast forward now. Um, cause I don’t want to get too much into detail. We could talk for hours about our divorce and the transition and everything. But, um, the key is, is a lot of people will ask, cause they’ve seen us together, we know whether it’s that the fit con event, they see us filming for dollar workout club. Um, and they wonder, you know, you guys seem amicable, you guys seem friendly. How are you guys able to do that? And so we wanted to share a few takeaways of what has helped us be on friendly terms, especially for our kids.
Yeah. Before we get into that though, I just want, you know, we were definitely not the norm. Like we lived together as a divorced couple for like five months in Hawaii before we finally decided, okay we need to eventually get our own places and move out. But yeah, it was weird for so many people, you know, they’re, they’re like, are you guys sure you’re divorce? Cause he doesn’t appear that way. Yes. We slept in separate rooms. We made it work. It was actually, I think it was better for our kids that way to see, to see as still kind of friends. So friends and business partners. And so we’re going to talk about now like how we’ve been able to maintain that type of relationship and what’s worked for us, you know, so hopefully there’s some good takeaways here for everybody, whether you’re married or not. I think there’ll be some good takeaways for everybody as we go through these three things that have helped us maintain a good relationship post divorce.
Yeah. Uh, number one is having a longterm vision. And I know this can be really tough, especially because I actually preach always, especially people that follow my page. They know I preach about living in the moment and being in the moment, um, and S and that does, that is good. And actually if you’re really in the moment, um, in a way you already have that longterm vision. And so this kind of applies anyway. But the truth is, is it’s easy to be caught up in the coulda, woulda should’ves you know, it’s easy to be angry. It’s easy to be like, well, this isn’t fair or I can’t believe this happened or I’m going to be mad or I’m going to hate this person. And maybe in the short term you’d feel a little bit better like punching them in the face or something. Um, but in the longterm, that’s not going to get you anywhere.
And luckily for me had gone through several other really hard things in my life, especially my childhood, that it gave me a lot of perspective, um, to think of things longterm and to realize that everyone’s doing the best they can, which we’ll talk about in our point number two. Um, and so for me, I had to realize that longterm I wanted my kids to have a really beautiful childhood and to grow up and to know that they’re loved by both me and by drew and to be provided for, and I knew in the short term, yes, the divorce socked in guests. There were times that I had been angry or upset. Um, but in the long term I knew that, you know, 13 years from now when my youngest daughter is out of the house, I’m not going to look back and look at drew and be like, I’m glad that we weren’t friends and hated each other the last 13 years. That really improved our lives and improved our children’s lives. And so having that longterm vision and realizing that I wanted my focus to be on our kids and on their happiness really helped me in day to day things instead of, you know, of course there’s going to be times we’ve gotten on each other’s nerves or he would say something and I’d be like, that’s so hypocritical. And that in my head I wanted to explode and then I’d breathe and think longterm, longterm.
Yeah. And for me like it has to do with like the little things that could definitely annoy you as a divorced couple. Like, Oh my gosh, you’re right, 10 minutes late, she’s making me late. Or like she dropped the kids off later than expected. So that’s less time for me with the kids. Like it can be all about, you can make it all about you and it’s easy to blow up and get into arguments about that. And then you know, it causes, um, strife between you and then like, then you hold onto that grudge so the next time you’re like, okay, I’m going to get them back, I’m going to do this to them. And you just have to understand that at the end of the day it’s about your kids and if, if you make the other person suffer, you make your kids suffer.
Even like financially. That’s why like, um, you know, we won’t get into specifics about our finances, but we definitely settle on something fair because I realized, you know, if I make lends tougher financially, I think if we went to, if I hired an attorney and like, I want this money, like this is mine, this isn’t yours. If I make her suffer, then I make my kids suffer. And that’s one thing I have to have a have in the back of my mind is like, okay, how can I make this work between us without getting stepped on all the time? But you know, you have to, um, you have to have that longterm vision in mind when you’re, when you want to explode over little tiny things. But you have to understand those are just selfish things about like, you can make it about you, but you have to remember like, this is for my kids. Like I’m doing this for my kids and yes, this might suck, but we can make this work. Let’s talk about it. Um, let’s make this work so that our kids can be happy. Yeah.
And part of that is good communication. And I know some of you might be listening to this thinking, well, I could do this if only my ex was destined to die. And we’re going to kind of address a little bit about that. And number two and number three, you know, but the truth is, um, a lot of times it is communication of course, and it’s taking a moment instead of being so reactive. You know, for me, this has been years and years of practice, but when I’m immediately upset, I know that’s not the best space to operate in. So do I get overly emotional? Do I get angry? Do I get upset? Of course you guys, I mean everyone does. We’re all human, right? But instead of reacting out of that space, I usually take some time on, one of the things I do now is I’ll meditate when I’m in that space and after a meditation, if once I’m calm and collective and know that how I want to communicate or respond, that’s how I’ll do it.
Because if you’re angry, of course responding out of that and being like, well this isn’t fair and you did this and that is not going to get you anywhere and you may feel good temporarily, but, but what’s gonna react from that? And the repercussions from that blow up could last for months or years even. Cause you don’t forget what people say. And so I always remind myself, I’m upset or I’m angry. I need to take some time. And that might be a day, that might be an hour, that might be 15 minutes of meditation, whatever that consists of.
And just so you guys know, like we still have, like, we’re not perfect. We’re not preaching like, Oh we’re so perfect, like look at us. But you know, we’ve had our hard times, we’ve had our, you know, but we’ve tried to learn from those times of, you know, being selfish and so
going on to number two. So don’t bring up the past. Now this is a really hard one and I’ll be honest, it is, it is. And I’ll be honest, I’m probably the one that struggled with that the most because it’s so easy to be like, well you did this or you know, you said this and it’s so it, it’s easy to do that cause you feel justified. And I realized this isn’t, this isn’t justifying anything or helping anybody cause you guys, you know what? No matter what anybody did, no matter what anyone’s done to you. And I know I, I may get some backlash from this and I can tell you, if you knew my whole life history, you would not be giving me backlash for saying this. I’ve been through the ringer. But I realized what anyone does to you has to do with them.
But how you respond has to do with you never let anyone’s choices bring you down. And it’s not to say it doesn’t affect you or make you emotional or make life. Life can be hard because of other people’s decisions, but you know what you’re getting. You’re making it harder by rehashing it. It was really interesting. I, um, without getting into specifics, when drew was talking about that counselor we went to, one of the biggest things that helped me was I always would feel like anytime something happened that it had to do with me, you know, what, if I was different, maybe it’s me, maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m not pretty enough. Maybe I’m not thin enough and I could never let that go. When bad things would happen. Instead of being like, this is, you know, a situation or circumstance or that person’s decision, I’d always make it about me.
Like, well, why aren’t I good enough? And I know you guys can probably resonate with that. Especially as women. I know a lot of times we are so hard on ourselves. We’re our own worst critic. And in that first session she helped me to realize that people’s decisions have to do with them and it has nothing to do with you, but how you respond has to do with you and say, for example, let me think of a good one. Say for example, your boss, you know, this is something a little bit more surface, but it’s a good analogy. Your boss screams and yells at you because they’re saying that you did this project horrible and that you suck and dah, dah, dah. Now it doesn’t mean that you can’t reflect and see how you’re going to improve, but if you’re reliving that story day in and day out and you’re rehashing about what your boss said to you two months ago and every day you’re thinking about it, and everyday you go into work and you’re hating on him and you’re hating on yourself.
Yeah, he made a mistake once by up on you, but how many times have you screwed yourself over by rehashing that? You know, somebody does something to you once and it’s a painful experience and then you do it to yourself every day. You relive that story every day, you’re beating yourself up every day. You’re telling yourself how much you suck or you’re not good enough. And so one of the things about not bringing out the past that’s important, it’s not only important to the for the people that maybe you feel wrong, wronged you, but also to yourself is remembering that we’re all doing the very best that we can. You know? And, and that seems hard. I’ve actually asked people before and Bernay Brown the both those books drew and I both read, um, is so good at explaining this. I know a lot of times we think, well, they could have done better or they should have done better.
But the truth is, is the way that we all react has nothing to do with other people. The way I’m reacting doesn’t have to do with drew and it doesn’t have to do with my kids. I can blame them if I want, but it has to do with me. It has to do with how I grew up with my life circumstances, with my trials and the walls that I’ve created because of that. You know, the, the stories that I’ve told myself because of my life experiences and that’s how I’m reacting. You know, if I would have grown up in a different family or with a different set of values or a different religion, you know, my responses and my reaction would be different. So you have to realize everyone is doing the best they can with what they know with their life story, with their walls, with their insecurities. They’re reacting out of that space and they are doing the best they can, but, and also their reaction has to do with them and it doesn’t have to do with you. And when you can separate that, it is a lot easier to let go of the past.
Yeah. It took me 30 plus years to figure that out and you know, to finally learned that. But man, it makes life so much happier. One other lesson that I learned from, uh, this life coach was, you know, there’s God’s business. There’s your business and there’s other people’s business. And when you live in God’s business, wondering why things happen and why did God allow this to happen? Or you live in other people’s business. You know, why, why did this person react this way? Why did they do this to me? That’s when you’re miserable. That’s when you’re, you know, stuck in fear and grief and shame. But when you live in your business and you control your controllables, the things that you can control, um, that’s how life is, is so much easier to be happy. Is that when you’re living in your business, not focusing on other people’s business, like they should do this or they should do that, or God should have done this, or why don’t I have this, you know, I’ve been asking for this, those kinds of things. When you’re in your business, that’s when you can find true happiness.
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s also when you find that confidence in yourself and that, that joy in who you are is when you’re living in your business. You know, I think we all focus way too much on other people, comparing ourselves to other people, how they look, how they act, their marriage, their kids. You’re never going to find joy there. You guys stay your own business. Um, and then the last thing we’ll talk about, and I’ll let drew lead with it and since I talked so much number two, but it’s focus on you. Focus on yourself.
Yeah. And this is where like, you know, this is a good segue with what I just talked about. You know, staying in your business, focus on improving your own relationship with yourself. And I know that sounds weird, but like I said before, I never learned how to truly love myself. I always hated myself. I always thought I could do better or you’re not good enough. And I thought that was good motivation, you know, as a, as a kid. But ultimately it just broke me down as a man and I finally learned how to love myself. And so definitely focus on your relationship with yourself from a physical standpoint, mental, emotional, spiritual first and foremost. Cause then you’ll, you will be a better version of yourself if you can have that better relationship with yourself and you can love yourself. You’re a better husband, you’re a better father, you’re a better employee, you’re a better brother, sister, friend, whatever it is, you’re a better you when you learn to love yourself.
And so, you know, if you take care of your health, if you, you know, um, and I know it sounds kind of selfish, but if you take care of yourself and make time for yourself every single day, you will be a better version of yourself. When we tell people this all the time and health and fitness is like, you know, Oh well I feel selfish. I should be given more to my spouse or my kids and I’ll just sacrifice my own self, you know, um, uh, care and, and that’ll, you know, show how good I am. But ultimately, you’re not a better version of yourself if you don’t take care of yourself. So a couple of things that have helped me, you guys, obviously learning how to love myself, I’m the life coach. She definitely helped me see that. Uh, the next things were obviously, you know, Bernie Brown’s books, learning how to be vulnerable, you know, uh, and we’ll put links to in the show notes of those, the titles of those books, daring greatly and rising strong.
Um, and then, uh, the other things that have helped me, you guys maintain this self-love over time is meditation and daily positive affirmations. I know all this sounds weird, you know, kinda, uh, Hocus Pocus type stuff or like, you know, hippie type stuff. But honestly, those are the, some of the things that have helped me, um, realize, uh, that I do love myself and I do care for myself and saying positive things about yourself. I know it sounds weird, it makes such a big difference in your life. And so if you can focus on your relationship with yourself and not focus on, well, my ex wife should have done this. Like, you know, she should have done that. Um, you will find more moments of peace throughout your day and, uh, you will be able to overcome certain situations where you would have been so fed up. And so angry, you know, for hours and hours and hours, you’ll find ways to overcome that and be like, you know what, it is what it is. I can’t control how she reacts to this. I can’t control anything that she does. I can just control me and what I do. And if you love yourself, you’ll be a better version of yourself and you will make better decisions,
uh, honestly, when it comes to your relationships. Yeah. And what’s really interesting you guys? Um, I have through personal experience realized that when drew and I both focus on us, because you are not able to control anyone else’s reaction, no matter what you do. Okay. I don’t care how hard you’re trying or how much you lecture them or how much you show them, but just see that you’re wrong and I’m right. You know, that’s never going to work. Trust me. As women, I know we like to do that cause we, I mean we were pretty much are always right. But anyways, that’s the moot point. So the fact is is when you focus on you and your reaction and self care and being the best version of you, it will astound you how the relationships around you change for the good. Okay? Because if I focus on drew and what he’s saying, or if I disagree with him and if I lecture on him on how he’s, what he’s feeding the kids, which of course you know is healthy feeding the kids or how he’s raising the kids or or his dating life or if I lecture him on anything like that, it, that is not going to improve our relationship and friendship.
That’s not going to make him be like, Oh your RA, I should, I should do this too. If anything, it’s going to create resentment and anger. It’s going to screw up our communication. It’s not going to be healthy for our kids. And you may think to yourself, well, if they’re doing something you really don’t like or approve, you have to discuss it. And that is true. You do have to communicate, but when you’re focusing on you, you will be surprised at how, if you’re coming from a space of love and self worth and instead of this belittling and be grudging and this judgment that you’re able to communicate better. So as drew focuses on him and as I focus on me and do the things that we want to do to improve ourselves, we operate from such a better space that we are able to communicate sometimes about tough decisions or big issues.
But we do it in such a more loving space, an open space, a space of non-judgment and acceptance that we are able to communicate and come to a resolution. Which wouldn’t happen if I was always focusing on him. Well, if you did this better, if you did that better. So I know some of you may have a hard relationship with your ex and be thinking they are completely unreasonable and you know what they, they may be. And I, I don’t have the answers. Again, we’re not marriage experts, but I can tell you, focus on you and focus on your reaction and don’t let anyone change you. Don’t let your ex change you to become an angry or resentful person just because they’re trying to push your buttons. And I would almost promise that with consistency and you staying in your own business and being true to you and being calm and collected and loving and accepting and just like kind of leaving it open like, well, I am here to communicate and have a really open relationship and I know this that you must be going through a hard spot.
I just want you to know I’m here. That eventually you may be shocked. I have several friends that have been divorced that have said that, that they couldn’t even, they had to drop kids off across the park from each other and watch them walk across. They couldn’t even look at each other and now they’re spending birthdays together, you know? So you just never know how that’s going to improve and so focused on yourself. I know drew talked about a couple of things. I will reiterate that the books by Bernay Brown, um, really helped. Also Byron Katie’s book, loving what is, was an amazing book for me. Um, and transitioning through of course, positive affirmations and meditation. I know a lot of you guys that follow me have heard me talk about that and we’re going to actually do an entire podcast just on our daily routines, exactly what we do. Anything, any type of routine meditation, supplements, anything we do, we’re going to do an actual podcast about our routines. I’m in a few episodes from now, but just wanted to, to remind you guys, I love the way that my friend Natalie Hodson says it. You know, self care, by taking care of yourself, you’re giving everyone the best of you instead of what’s left of you.
That’s a good one. And the lens advice there at the end was actually really good advice for whether you’re a divorced couple, whether you’re a married couple, just for relationships in general. Focus on yourself, taking care of yourself first and your, your relationships will become better. Um, over time. Uh, but here’s the thing, you guys, and I tell people this all the time, like divorced versus married, you know, we’re not experts, you know, we’re not saying, Oh you should get divorced cause look how happy we are. All, all I say to people, especially my friends guys or girls like you know, asking about divorce and how it is, it’s like look, staying married is hard. Being divorced is hard. Choose which heart you want. Either way you got to work hard at it. You know, whether you’re a divorced couple or whether you, you know, are fighting for your marriage, respect to all of you, you know, who are trying to make this life the best you possibly can. Either path you choose is going to be hard. You guys, there’s no easy path in life. Just know that. And so choose which hard you want. It’s going to be hard no matter what. There’s no grass is green on the other side, in my opinion, that doesn’t exist. It’s, you know, it’s green where you water it.
Yeah. And I like to, to add to that, cause it’s interesting, I’ve actually had several friends recently that have come to me asking about getting divorced and I think they expect a different answer for me because what you see on social media, you guys, you may have, you have to remember, you only see what people post. You don’t see the background. You know, people are like, well you seem so happy and you’re traveling and you’re out with your girlfriends. I’m like, yeah, well you didn’t see, you know, every night me crying myself to sleep for a year. Like every night. You know, you don’t see the background of the lonely nights when I don’t have my kids and I’m alone in bed eating in a container of gelato, watching the chick flick. Actually that’s not too bad, but it’s kind of sad. But um, you don’t see all that cause we don’t show that.
I tell people all the time, do everything you can to save your marriage so that if it doesn’t work out and you know, you know that it’s not best and you do end up separating, you have no regrets. At least, at least for me, like because we took, and I know it seems, and I’m not saying you have to take five years like we did, but I really felt like I did everything I could so that now I never look back and wonder, Oh should I have done more, you know, or could I have done, could I have done something different? And so just like drew was saying, you know, choose your heart. It is not easy being a single parent. It is not easy always co-parenting and you know, single life is not all roses. I mean have you guys ever been on Tinder? Just saying so, um, you know this again is not about whether you should or shouldn’t get a divorce. It’s more for those that are transitioning, um, or are divorced and want some tips on how they can improve the relationship with their, with their ex
and no, we are not on Tinder.
We are not on Tinder. Oh my gosh,
I’ve never done match. I’ve never done
farmers only.com. I mean I’ve really considered farmers only.com cause there’s a really good alpaca farmer that looked rather handsome. But, um, no, uh, we’re not there.
You guys, we hope you can appreciate and respect, you know, this episode. I know it doesn’t have a lot to do with health and fitness, but I think as being open and personal and vulnerable with you guys will help you get to know us better on a very personal level. And you know, that way, you know, you guys can kind of get a glimpse into what it’s like for us and what it’s like for a divorced couple of trying to make things work and trying to make the best life possible for us and for our kids. Um, and yeah, it’s, it’s strange, but I think it’s become more common where, you know, we’re doing the best we can with what we have and we’re doing it for our kids. You know, that’s my main focus in life is for me. Yeah. Maybe, you know, I wasn’t the best husband or, or whatever.
I could beat myself up over the, over living in the past. But you know, I can only focus on what I can do now and that’s me being the best dad that I can be in. That’s Lynn being the best mom that she can be. Um, so yeah, we hope you guys appreciate this episode. Please leave your comments, feel free to share this with anyone you think could benefit from it. And um, we will have some other episodes coming up. Um, and just to close really quick, our show sponsors, ketogenics.com and quest nutrition.com we’re very, very grateful for them, uh, sponsoring this podcast. We are grateful for you guys for listening because none of this would be possible without you guys. We appreciate you guys tuning in every single week to listen to these episodes and we hope you find this information valuable and we hope that, uh, you guys can, uh, help us continue to, um, share this with other people that might be able to benefit from, from this information.
Uh, if you, if you want to please, uh, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to us on iTunes. So you get updated each week when a new episode comes out, leave us a review. We definitely appreciate that. That helps our ratings on, on iTunes. Um, and we are getting close to 50 episodes you guys, which is amazing. This is 42. To do something special, I’m going to have to do something special. So if he has any, have any cool ideas for a 50th episode, let us know. Um, in the meantime, uh, I have a, my website is fit fat to fit.com. Uh, I have a newsletter you can send it for to stay in the know of what’s going on on a weekly basis. I update you guys. Cool new things coming out, you guys, a lot of new updates that have to keep you guys informed on and my social media is fit to fat to fit all across the board. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. Stay in touch. You guys and I should respond to most of your guys’ questions.
Okay. And if you guys want to find me, my website is the number to fit@home.com. My Instagram and Facebook is the number two fit at home. I tell you guys my Snapchat, but honestly, um, I mostly post all the delicious desserts that I eat, which is not going to help anybody trying to lose weight. So I’m not going to say it. So yeah, find us there. Please sign up for my newsletter. I send out a free newsletter, usually at least every month. Um, usually share like a healthy recipe and some health and wellness tips along with some recent blog posts that, um, can help you on your journey to better health.
Yep. And we’ll see you guys next week for another great episode here on the fit to fat to fit experience podcast. See you guys next time.
Yes.
