Have you recently considered a divorce? Are you researching the internet to ultimately decide whether or not it’s time to break free from the toxic relationship that no longer serves you? Do you blame your partner for how unhappy you are? Guest blogger Mark Kozminski of Bluemind shares.
If so, good news! You my friend are in the right place. Are you willing and brave enough to make one of the biggest decisions of your life?
The toxic relationship you should consider divorcing, is however ONE WITH YOURSELF.
“The one with myself?” “The one with myself!” I hear you say. Yes, the one with yourself.
Has there ever been a time in your life where you’ve questioned your behaviours? Identity? Beliefs? Values? How do you define your identity? Who you are? Where your identity came from? Why you are here?
How many of you are living week to week, working, socialising, working, socialising, and in between, finding time to spend with the wife and kids. On a hamster wheel of matching up to everyone else’s beliefs but not your own?
Here we are challenging the identity we’ve created for ourselves by forming bad habits, poor routines, self-destructing behaviours, not challenging inherited belief and value systems These systems and habits may have come from our parents, teachers, sporting and business environments, and of course, the culturescape. It’s time to REMOVE THE MASK, people! Who are you? Really, who are you?
How many of you are thinking, “What is this guy on about!!” “Identity?” “Who cares!” “I’m fine. No bad habits, self-destructing behaviours or inherited belief system here”. If so, either, that’s great and I applaud you, or, unconscious incompetence (you don’t know what you don’t know), and you are simply not aware. That is probably why you feel unhappy deep down. You pretend you are being the real you, but something feels off so you blame it on other people.
August 2018. While walking out Crawley Magistrates’ Court, drink driving conviction in hand, embarking on an 18 month driving ban, divorce proceedings underway, addressing a compulsive gambling addiction, binge drinking, drug habit, and living with my parents.
I reflected on, “Where did it all go wrong?”, “How has this happened?”, “I’m a good person, right? Why is this happening to me?”
The trauma of my car crash really was the icing on the cake to what I would later realise was one of the most important years of my life. In February 2018, I separated and walked away from a ten year relationship (six years married) and young twin boys. The feedback, “Having me around is detrimental to the boys’ upbringing”. My response…. “Why won’t you help me?”, “How f**king dare you!”, “Everything I’ve done for you!”, “What about you and your behaviours?”, “I’ll show you!”, ”You’ve wasted ten years of my life!”….I’m ashamed to admit even the c-word made an appearance. I blamed her for my own metaphorical car crash. I hit rock bottom and I needed to
It’s important to mention, through a combination of time, reflection and insight, I learnt to applaud anyone, including my ex wife, that held the courage to walk away from a toxic relationship. I know, due to my inherited belief systems and values, I did not have the courage to ‘walk away’ but more fundamentally I wasn’t able to take responsibility for myself and how this impacted my life
Something had to change. It was time to take extreme ownership for my life. To divorce myself
Starting with my health. I was arguably in the worst shape of my life. Drinking too much, poor eating habits, lack of exercise. I thought to myself, “I’ve been here before post-knee operations”, “I know how to start a fitness journey”. Action and consistency were the key. To this day, I don’t know why I did it, but, I picked up my mobile phone, held it up on the air, pointed it towards me and hit record. I was talking to myself. I accepted my situation, decided to take action on the things I could control (health) and set goals as I embarked on the journey of independence.
My Managing Director encouraged me to read ‘Legacy’ by James Kerr (If you are a rugby fan curious about high performance and business, ‘Legacy’ is an absolute must read!
I can remember the feeling of reluctantly thanking my MD and toyed with the idea of reading on the commute to and from the office. Boy I’m glad I did! The book instantly spoke to me.
I would go on to digest a truck load of books, personal development programmes, MindValley being the best personal development platform I have ever invested in! (Thanks, Vishen and the MV team).
When you grow through insight, you start to realise you have been living a life based on other people’s belief systems. Your parents, your teachers, early friends. Your parents inherited their beliefs from their parents and so on, and so on. At what point do we stop and challenge the family thought process? The family beliefs? Oh, usual responses are along the lines of “We can’t discuss that” or “We don’t talk about that because it might upset so and so”. You’ve probably head similar conversations over Sunday roast or Christmas lunch.
Read our blog here on the Inner Child for more on this
Remove the mask. Track your behaviours. Raise your level of consciousness and awareness. If it doesn’t serve you, don’t do it. If it’s not aligned to your vision for the future. DON’T DO IT. If it jeopardises your relationship with the people that matter the most to you. DON’T DO IT.
Hopefully the key takeaways are clear – Acceptance, Ownership and Growth. I challenge you to ‘remove the mask’, your beliefs and shift your identity to the person you want to become. If you are married you won’t be needing a divorce either!
3 Ideas that can change your life – We are designing an ebook with ideas that heavily influenced our lives, and that we believe can influence your life too and a 12 week transformation programme coming 1st June
Evolve or Repeat,
Mark
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Mark Manson – The Subtle Art of not giving a fuck
Vishen – Buddha and the Badass
Robin Sharma – 5AM Club
Darren Hardy – The Compound Effect
