July 22, 2025 • 29 mins
After being blindsided by her own divorce, JoEllen Marks turned heartbreak into healing—and built a life-changing movement along the way.
As a Soul Coach, speaker, and founder of Stop, Choose, Start, JoEllen now helps high-achieving women rebuild self-trust, reconnect with their intuition, and begin again—with purpose.
In this episode, we talk about:
-The shocking way her divorce unfolded
-Climbing out of her darkest moments
-The spiritual disconnect many face after heartbreak
-Why “self-trust” is the foundation for healing
-How to begin again, one conscious step at a time
This conversation is raw, soulful, and full of wisdom for anyone navigating loss, reinvention, or the sacred messiness of starting over.
Follow JoEllen: @stopchoosestart
As a Soul Coach, speaker, and founder of Stop, Choose, Start, JoEllen now helps high-achieving women rebuild self-trust, reconnect with their intuition, and begin again—with purpose.
In this episode, we talk about:
-The shocking way her divorce unfolded
-Climbing out of her darkest moments
-The spiritual disconnect many face after heartbreak
-Why “self-trust” is the foundation for healing
-How to begin again, one conscious step at a time
This conversation is raw, soulful, and full of wisdom for anyone navigating loss, reinvention, or the sacred messiness of starting over.
Follow JoEllen: @stopchoosestart
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to The Rewrite, a podcast about divorce, choice and
new beginnings. I'm your host Wendy Sloan, former TV producer,
mom of two and one sweet golden retriever. This is
a space for real talk about the moments that break us,
the choices that define us, and the power we have
to begin again. You'll hear personal stories, heartfelt insights, and
(00:22):
honest conversations about healing relationships and reclaiming your life one
choice at a time. I'll be joined by experts in divorce, finance,
mental health, wellness and more and everything you need to
support your next chapter. The most powerful chapters might be
the ones you write next. Let's begin your rewrite together.
This episode is brought to in part by the Needle
(00:44):
Kuda Law Firm guidance that moves lives forward. Welcome to
the Rewrite. I'm your host Wendy Sloman, my guest today,
the founder of Stop Choose, Start three Seconds to Happy
and the support of online community your Breakup Happy Place.
After being blindsided at Biba Tree and divorce followed by
ten years of bad choices, she turned her pain into purpose.
(01:06):
Her rewrite became a becoming a soch, a sole coach
for women healing from heartbreape. I've never heard that before,
and I love that so much. A soul coach. Welcome
to my show, Joe Ellen Mars.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you, Wendy. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm so happy to have you and I love everything
that you stand for. I love what you say, stop, start, stop,
choose start, three seconds to happiness, to happy, and your
online community and of course being a sole coach. I've
never heard of that before, a sole coach, and that
just rings so beautifully.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You know, It's funny how I had not heard it either,
and I was working with the chet GPT and I
was feeding it ever stop right there.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I love chat gp g GPT Chat GPT, even though
I've argued with it so many times as well because
it has glitches, but I do love it.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So I have been working a little bit with chat GPT.
I've been writing a lot, and I have a lot
of writing, and I want to create some cohesiveness and
so I mean, I have a book, I have blogs
that I've written over the last twenty years of my life.
And I put all this in and I was helping
(02:27):
the GPT help understand who I am in the world,
and they said soul coach back to me. And even
when you said it and I just said it, it
gives me goose bumps. I was like, I have Like,
that's the perfect way to describe what I really do
help people do is discover their own soul work, their journey,
(02:51):
what's calling them, and what resonates with them now in
their new life. Because that's what opened up in my
life through my divorce and my process. So it was
really exciting. I'm glad that you enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh, I love it. And it's so funny because I
was using chat when I was so I just rebranded
last month and I said, I need a title that
like that. It's more mindful, it's more healing, it's more soulful,
it's you know, from within, and it's happy ever after.
And it came up with the rewrite and I'm like,
that's perfect too. So so you and you, your rewrite
(03:31):
story began when you got blindsided, So let's start there.
You were married, for let's let's hear your personal story.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So I met my now ex husband at work. Ironically
at first I didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Like him, of course.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And then he really started to grow on me. And
we went out on our first date, and I knew
on my first date with him that I was going
to marry him. I just knew. I remember saying, I
remember where I was when I thought it to myself,
this is what people are talking about, like that's the magic,
(04:08):
and truly and honestly, we had a magic relationship. And
my now ex husband was in medical school in his residency.
And while he was in his residency, he was in
a really bad car accident. And this is in a
time before we know what we know about traumatic brain
injuries and hindsight being twenty twenty, he had an undiagnosed
(04:31):
traumatic brain injury. Because who he was completely changed, and
he wound up being incredibly depressed. He was leaving a
double life, and I had no idea. And when I
would ask him about it, he would gaslight me and
he would say, what don't you trust me? And he
(04:51):
would get very defensive, and I'd say, of course, I
trust you. Really, my gut was saying I didn't, but
I didn't pursue it. We were in counseling, so I
knew he was actually having suicidal thoughts as a as
a result of the counselor and what she was asking him.
(05:14):
And we had gone to a regatta, and we were
volunteering at that regarda that day, and a girlfriend of
mine walked up to me and said, I'm so sorry
to hear about your divorce. And I looked at her
straight in the eye, and I said, what divorce? And
(05:34):
she wanted to crawl away and hide. And it was
the greatest thing she could have done, because now I
knew he was telling everybody we were getting a divorce.
And that afternoon I came I that evening, I came
to understand that he had been lying to me, dating
multiple women, taking them out on my credit cards, because
remember he hadn't been working. I'd been the sole provider
(05:57):
of our home. He had put six thousand dollars down
on a car without asking me on the credit card.
But what I made all of this mean was I
was unlovable. If this human being, who I was, my soulmate,
my partner, could then do everything that just was happening
(06:21):
to me, then I must be the one who is
unlovable in this equation. And I lived the next ten
years of my life believing that, being incredibly self righteous,
that I was right, and he was wrong and being angry,
and on top of that, trying to date, because that's
the best choice you can make at that moment, is
(06:43):
when you're in absolute breakdown and trauma and self loathing
and shame, go out there and start dating. I made
a lot of mistakes as a result of that, but
those mistakes wound up being gifts to me, so I
could start to unravel who I really was, and it
was hell for ten years, and it wound up bringing
(07:10):
me to where I am ultimately now, which is I
discovered that everything we need is within us, as opposed
to without us or outside of us, and that the
love I had always been seeking was actually from within me.
And once you discover that in your life, no one
(07:33):
can ever take that away from you.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
That's very true. I think it has to. I talk
about this often on the podcast, that you have to
start with self love. Self love, because if you don't
love yourself, it's hard to love somebody else.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yes, yes, it is possible, though, it is possible in
the right relationship to grow into self love, and that's
asking a lot of another human being. So if you
can discover it within yourself first or on your own,
(08:14):
it just provides something else in a relationship.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So tell so when was the moment that Okay, so
this happened all this ten years, but a lot of
growth happened, which she wouldn't be where you are today
if all that stuff had happened. What was the turning
point that led you to create stop to start?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So I had been wanting to share my experience and
my journey of what I was learning, and honestly, I'm
going to try to keep this story very very short.
In I was in three back to back car accidents
in a very short period of time. You can make
(08:55):
all the lady driving jokes you want, but none of
them were my fault, quite frank And as a result
of my own brain injury. With the third car accident,
I had to slow down, I had to go inside,
(09:17):
and I would wind up having these racing thoughts where
my brain wouldn't shut off, and I would just have
to start saying stop stop to these thoughts because they
would go on into infinity if I didn't interrupt them.
I would have to choose something, say a deep breath
or a pause, and then I would have to actually
(09:39):
focus myself specifically on one task. So I would have
to start one thing. And I started practicing it as
a result of a brain injury, which is ironic because
at the same time that I was doing my own
healing journey for my brain injury and learning from doctor Dan.
(10:00):
You know, aim was when I realized my ex husband
had a brain injury that was undiagnosed because of the
uh about Doctor Amon was sharing a story that was
so specific and so closely related to my personal experience.
It just took my breath away. And so I started
(10:24):
using stop to Start in multiple areas of my life.
I use it around nutrition. I work out for a living,
but some days exercises is not always easy when you
have to get up early in the morning, and so
I would use it for that. Like you're in bed,
you don't want to wake up early, and I go stop,
(10:45):
choose to stay in bed or get up, and then start,
like just get present to the moment. Ask yourself what
your commitment is. Is that still what you want? Because
you can choose anything. There's nothing right, wrong, good or
bad about what you're going to choose. You just want
to choose something, and then as soon as you make
the choice, you can start moving into that area. It's
(11:09):
the not choosing. It's the feeling overwhelmed. It's the feeling
like you are always at the effect of everything, as
opposed to understanding that you are actually the source of
everything that's happening in front of you. Where we are
in life right now is the sum total of every
(11:30):
choice we've made up until this moment. There's been other influences,
but ultimately it's it's the sum total of every choice
we've made. So what if right now, in this moment,
you could start making different choices with the small things
and start to change the trajectory of your life going forward.
(11:51):
You know, I'll use golf as an analogy. When someone
is driving the ball, they're on the te box and
they're driving the ball, millimeters of rotation in the golf
club head completely change the trajectory of the golf ball.
(12:13):
And so if you just make a millimeter of change
one week, one month, one year down the road, ten
years down the road, your trajectory will change. And if
you keep being mindful of your choices and start to
ask yourself loving questions in the process, such as does
(12:34):
this love me and serve me? Or does this harm me?
You can start to see the power of the choice
in the moment and serving yourself one action at a time.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
That makes a lot of sense the way you say
it like that. We're going to take a very quick
break for one of our sponsors. Joe Allen Marx is
a sole coach, speaker and founder of Stop to Start,
three Seconds to Happy, and the online community your Breakup
Happy Place. We'll be right back after this break. You're
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(13:09):
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(14:16):
control of your finances and build lasting financial stability. We're
back with Joel and Marx. She's a sole coach speaker,
founder of Stop Shoes, Start three Seconds to Happy, and
the online community your Breakup Happy Place. So all this,
everything that happened to you, led you to today and
when some what advice do you give someone who wants
(14:37):
to thrive, not just survive after divorce.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I want them to begin to understand that it's an opportunity.
You know, this is a new beginning, it's not an ending.
One chapter of your life is concluding, and you are
the one who gets to hold the pen the next
chapter and beginning with identifying things that you really want
(15:09):
in life and maybe you've never verbalized them, maybe you've
never actualized them, maybe you've never believed that they were
part of your plan or that you were going to
be able to take on those steps. Is a beautiful
gift that you have now because a new door is open,
and in that in that next chapter, you want to
(15:34):
start to design a life that you're going to love.
And one of the biggest things that I encourage people
to start doing is a journaling practice practice that I
call journaling to Joy. And what it does is it
(15:56):
aligns with the sole coaching part of what I do.
It helps people start to slow down and identify what
is at their core and what they want in life,
not because their parents said they should do it, or
their families said they should do it, or society said
(16:17):
they should do it, but because they really want it
for them, by them, and discover that on their own.
Because once you help somebody discover something on their own
and you didn't have to tell them how to find it,
it's so much more powerful because it is their. The
(16:39):
word is escaping, man, I'm trying to find it, and
I should know it. It's their self actualization and it's
their their internal driving system that helps them move forward.
And one of the ways I help people do this
is through the stop to Start practice, And in that practice,
(17:07):
there's something called seven Levels Deep and I learned it
from a man named Dean Brasiosi, and it's a fascinating
journey to get out of your head and into your
heart and really uncover the emotion behind why you want something, because,
(17:28):
as doctor Wayne Dyer says, when your whys are big enough,
your why not disappear? And it really is true. When
people say they can't get go do something, it's not
to me that they can't, it's that they actually don't
want it enough to get uncomfortable through the process of
(17:53):
the change, because it's really the discomfort that we are
looking to avoid. So how do you help an individual
get past the discomfort? You pair their goal with something
that is so deeply emotionally resonating that they are excited
(18:17):
about it. And when the discomfort arises, their why is
so big that why not keeps disappearing.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
And I really I said that to my when you
were talking. I said to myself. A couple of times,
and I wrote it down. I'm like, when your whys
are bigger, your why not are less? Rights sense.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
As a personal trainer for the last thirty five years,
I mean I could see it. I mean it happens.
If you ever have watched a bride get ready to
get married, you know there's nothing getting in her way
of her workout. I mean she's getting up early, she's
going to the gym, she's eating healthy because she is
a huge why at the end of that, and it's
(19:00):
you know, it's the dress and it's the party, and
it's the pictures and she knows that date is written
in stone and it is coming. So she is a
pretty big why. But then after the wedding, women are
often puzzled like why can't I get that energy back?
Like why can't I get up early? Why am I,
(19:22):
you know, not following my diet the way I was before?
And it's because their why is disappeared and they need
a knew why so they can keep finding the energy
within them to have that level of intensity to keep
training that way.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Amazing when people okay, so what does spiritually aligned the
future look like for someone who's coming through that kind
of loss? Like, how do you coming what you went through?
And then you said there was years of not such
good stuff, right, what do you What do you want
to say to people who are going through this and
(20:00):
then their heartbroken and they're at a loss and they
don't see that they can't see the future.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Number One, I understand that the absolute devastation and pain
that it can have for some people, and everything changes.
Nothing is permanent. Good emotions don't stay forever. Neither do
bad emotions. All emotions are fluid, and over time it
(20:35):
gets easier and easier and easier. And I like to
often think of a moment where I was going through
a breakup after my divorce, but was a time when
I was in the healing cycle. So it was just
past that ten year mark where I'm kind of new
(20:58):
to this and I'm I'm exercising this part of my
nervous system. It's like exercising a muscle. You know it's there,
but you keep training it until it's really natural. And
that is part of the process, is that you start
to make discoveries and then you're retraining your nervous system
to get them into your long term nervous system, which
(21:19):
is called being deeply entrenched. That becomes your new normal
pattern and you stop focusing on the old nervous system.
The old system never goes away, by the way, It's
always there. It just starts to weaken and weaken and
weaken over time. And when I was out there dating
and I was in this place where I had been
(21:43):
dating somebody who I enjoyed and it didn't work out,
and I was in the swirl, and I was out driving,
and I was on a roadway and I was thinking
about this person and ruminating in my head, and I
realized I was passing the street for an X prior
to my husband, and how hard it was to get
(22:04):
over that X. And I was like, I don't feel
anything right now. And the irony that in the moment
I was going through this breakup, that I was passing
an area where someone else that was very hard to
heal from had lived and now I felt nothing. I
was like, Oh, so at some point this breakup's going
(22:26):
to feel like nothing as well. And my job is
to just keep focusing forward and keep growing and learning.
It always gets easier if you allow it to a
lot of people don't realize they hold on to pain
like I did as protection. You know, I did not
have to suffer for ten years, I held onto it
(22:51):
as protection. On some level, I got something out of it.
I got right. I was absolutely self righteous, and if
I was right, he was wrong and I got justified.
But I was always living in that energy, that tennis
match back and forth. I couldn't just let him go.
(23:12):
And what I had to start to realize is if
I had let it go a lot sooner, I would
have had more joy in my life. The choice that
I kept holding on to it and making him the
villain in my life, and even if he deserved it,
did never hurt him. It hurt me. I mean, for
(23:35):
ten years I suffered. I suffered. And when you start
to realize that, the more you hold on to being right,
being the victim, being justified in how you feel, there's
nothing wrong with it, and there's an enormous price to it,
(23:59):
and the cost is your joy and your happiness, because
when you are in that place and that push and pull,
you never really can get to peace. And when you
start to forgive yourself and accept that human being exactly
as they are and that is who they are, you
(24:23):
can start to unravel that connection. That you have and
start to release it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Your low moments became the foundation for everything that you
do today. You're a sole coach, speaker, founder, stop to start.
Three seconds to happy? I love that, three seconds to happy?
What do you want? What do you want the listeners
to know about your rewrite?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's still going on. It's a process. I am so
not perfect. Please know that. Like people reach out to me,
especially through so social media, and they say, you know
you can do this, but I can't, And I'm like,
I'm still a work in progress. I still make mistakes.
I still have to own my actions, learn from them,
(25:13):
grow from them, and move forward. This isn't about being
perfect as a reform perfectionist during that ten period of time.
This isn't about being perfect. It's about being the best
version of you in this moment and in the next moment,
and in this moment and in this moment and learning
(25:34):
along the way. And social media is how do I
say this? I mean, it's a bunch of people lying
and putting out their best selves, so you buy things
from them because you want to be like them. And
(25:56):
it's another reason why I really try to share authentically
about mistakes I'm making. Our challenges I'm currently having because
it's not like you figured out and then everything's easy.
You still have life. You just have a different hand
that you're dealt and you have more power to make
better choices that serve you and get you out of
(26:16):
upset faster. And it's okay that you're not okay. It's
okay that you don't know. It is okay that you
make mistakes. Learning self, love, self compassion, and most importantly,
forgiveness is critical. But it's not only critical. You so
(26:38):
deserve it that it's a gift you give yourself, and
a lot of people don't think they deserve that. They
don't deserve forgiveness, they don't deserve compassion, they don't deserve
the self love and absolutely starting from there, loving yourself
and allowing everything else to evolve is a beautiful gift
(26:59):
that you give yourself.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Absolutely not easy. Sharing your story is so helpful to
others who are out there who are going through something
similar or the same thing, and seeing how you use
your pain to and to move forward and to live
your best life, even though it's a process, even though
you're still learning and you're launching your breakup happy Place
(27:23):
community in July.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
At some points, cract yes, and what your Breakup Happy
Place Community is going to be is a safe space
to come together and start to learn tools.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
And techniques to help you. I like to look at
what I do as a tool a toolkit, and everything
is inside the toolkit, and you open it up and
you take different tools out, and sometimes you need a screwdriver,
and sometimes you need a hammer, and sometimes you don't
need the tools that are in the toolkit, and that's okay.
(28:01):
But finding out the combination of things that work best
for you and serve you is a great gift you
give yourself. And so your Breakup Happy Place Community is
a place I'm going to be in every week. I
haven't set the day of the week yet, but it's
(28:23):
going to be a Monday or Tuesday, and I'm going
to be in there, either teaching or answering questions or
sharing parts of the toolkit so that people don't feel
alone in this process.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I love it. You turned your pain into purpose, and
thank you for being here so much. We'll have all
your social media up there, so look forward to your
Breakup Happy Place Community coming soon. Thank you so much,
Joe Allen, Thank you for being here Thank you. Wendy
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five seven nine to five zero zero
Welcome to The Rewrite, a podcast about divorce, choice and
new beginnings. I'm your host Wendy Sloan, former TV producer,
mom of two and one sweet golden retriever. This is
a space for real talk about the moments that break us,
the choices that define us, and the power we have
to begin again. You'll hear personal stories, heartfelt insights, and
(00:22):
honest conversations about healing relationships and reclaiming your life one
choice at a time. I'll be joined by experts in divorce, finance,
mental health, wellness and more and everything you need to
support your next chapter. The most powerful chapters might be
the ones you write next. Let's begin your rewrite together.
This episode is brought to in part by the Needle
(00:44):
Kuda Law Firm guidance that moves lives forward. Welcome to
the Rewrite. I'm your host Wendy Sloman, my guest today,
the founder of Stop Choose, Start three Seconds to Happy
and the support of online community your Breakup Happy Place.
After being blindsided at Biba Tree and divorce followed by
ten years of bad choices, she turned her pain into purpose.
(01:06):
Her rewrite became a becoming a soch, a sole coach
for women healing from heartbreape. I've never heard that before,
and I love that so much. A soul coach. Welcome
to my show, Joe Ellen Mars.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Thank you, Wendy. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm so happy to have you and I love everything
that you stand for. I love what you say, stop, start, stop,
choose start, three seconds to happiness, to happy, and your
online community and of course being a sole coach. I've
never heard of that before, a sole coach, and that
just rings so beautifully.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You know, It's funny how I had not heard it either,
and I was working with the chet GPT and I
was feeding it ever stop right there.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I love chat gp g GPT Chat GPT, even though
I've argued with it so many times as well because
it has glitches, but I do love it.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So I have been working a little bit with chat GPT.
I've been writing a lot, and I have a lot
of writing, and I want to create some cohesiveness and
so I mean, I have a book, I have blogs
that I've written over the last twenty years of my life.
And I put all this in and I was helping
(02:27):
the GPT help understand who I am in the world,
and they said soul coach back to me. And even
when you said it and I just said it, it
gives me goose bumps. I was like, I have Like,
that's the perfect way to describe what I really do
help people do is discover their own soul work, their journey,
(02:51):
what's calling them, and what resonates with them now in
their new life. Because that's what opened up in my
life through my divorce and my process. So it was
really exciting. I'm glad that you enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Oh, I love it. And it's so funny because I
was using chat when I was so I just rebranded
last month and I said, I need a title that
like that. It's more mindful, it's more healing, it's more soulful,
it's you know, from within, and it's happy ever after.
And it came up with the rewrite and I'm like,
that's perfect too. So so you and you, your rewrite
(03:31):
story began when you got blindsided, So let's start there.
You were married, for let's let's hear your personal story.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So I met my now ex husband at work. Ironically
at first I didn't.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Like him, of course.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And then he really started to grow on me. And
we went out on our first date, and I knew
on my first date with him that I was going
to marry him. I just knew. I remember saying, I
remember where I was when I thought it to myself,
this is what people are talking about, like that's the magic,
(04:08):
and truly and honestly, we had a magic relationship. And
my now ex husband was in medical school in his residency.
And while he was in his residency, he was in
a really bad car accident. And this is in a
time before we know what we know about traumatic brain
injuries and hindsight being twenty twenty, he had an undiagnosed
(04:31):
traumatic brain injury. Because who he was completely changed, and
he wound up being incredibly depressed. He was leaving a
double life, and I had no idea. And when I
would ask him about it, he would gaslight me and
he would say, what don't you trust me? And he
(04:51):
would get very defensive, and I'd say, of course, I
trust you. Really, my gut was saying I didn't, but
I didn't pursue it. We were in counseling, so I
knew he was actually having suicidal thoughts as a as
a result of the counselor and what she was asking him.
(05:14):
And we had gone to a regatta, and we were
volunteering at that regarda that day, and a girlfriend of
mine walked up to me and said, I'm so sorry
to hear about your divorce. And I looked at her
straight in the eye, and I said, what divorce? And
(05:34):
she wanted to crawl away and hide. And it was
the greatest thing she could have done, because now I
knew he was telling everybody we were getting a divorce.
And that afternoon I came I that evening, I came
to understand that he had been lying to me, dating
multiple women, taking them out on my credit cards, because
remember he hadn't been working. I'd been the sole provider
(05:57):
of our home. He had put six thousand dollars down
on a car without asking me on the credit card.
But what I made all of this mean was I
was unlovable. If this human being, who I was, my soulmate,
my partner, could then do everything that just was happening
(06:21):
to me, then I must be the one who is
unlovable in this equation. And I lived the next ten
years of my life believing that, being incredibly self righteous,
that I was right, and he was wrong and being angry,
and on top of that, trying to date, because that's
the best choice you can make at that moment, is
(06:43):
when you're in absolute breakdown and trauma and self loathing
and shame, go out there and start dating. I made
a lot of mistakes as a result of that, but
those mistakes wound up being gifts to me, so I
could start to unravel who I really was, and it
was hell for ten years, and it wound up bringing
(07:10):
me to where I am ultimately now, which is I
discovered that everything we need is within us, as opposed
to without us or outside of us, and that the
love I had always been seeking was actually from within me.
And once you discover that in your life, no one
(07:33):
can ever take that away from you.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
That's very true. I think it has to. I talk
about this often on the podcast, that you have to
start with self love. Self love, because if you don't
love yourself, it's hard to love somebody else.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yes, yes, it is possible, though, it is possible in
the right relationship to grow into self love, and that's
asking a lot of another human being. So if you
can discover it within yourself first or on your own,
(08:14):
it just provides something else in a relationship.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
So tell so when was the moment that Okay, so
this happened all this ten years, but a lot of
growth happened, which she wouldn't be where you are today
if all that stuff had happened. What was the turning
point that led you to create stop to start?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So I had been wanting to share my experience and
my journey of what I was learning, and honestly, I'm
going to try to keep this story very very short.
In I was in three back to back car accidents
in a very short period of time. You can make
(08:55):
all the lady driving jokes you want, but none of
them were my fault, quite frank And as a result
of my own brain injury. With the third car accident,
I had to slow down, I had to go inside,
(09:17):
and I would wind up having these racing thoughts where
my brain wouldn't shut off, and I would just have
to start saying stop stop to these thoughts because they
would go on into infinity if I didn't interrupt them.
I would have to choose something, say a deep breath
or a pause, and then I would have to actually
(09:39):
focus myself specifically on one task. So I would have
to start one thing. And I started practicing it as
a result of a brain injury, which is ironic because
at the same time that I was doing my own
healing journey for my brain injury and learning from doctor Dan.
(10:00):
You know, aim was when I realized my ex husband
had a brain injury that was undiagnosed because of the
uh about Doctor Amon was sharing a story that was
so specific and so closely related to my personal experience.
It just took my breath away. And so I started
(10:24):
using stop to Start in multiple areas of my life.
I use it around nutrition. I work out for a living,
but some days exercises is not always easy when you
have to get up early in the morning, and so
I would use it for that. Like you're in bed,
you don't want to wake up early, and I go stop,
(10:45):
choose to stay in bed or get up, and then start,
like just get present to the moment. Ask yourself what
your commitment is. Is that still what you want? Because
you can choose anything. There's nothing right, wrong, good or
bad about what you're going to choose. You just want
to choose something, and then as soon as you make
the choice, you can start moving into that area. It's
(11:09):
the not choosing. It's the feeling overwhelmed. It's the feeling
like you are always at the effect of everything, as
opposed to understanding that you are actually the source of
everything that's happening in front of you. Where we are
in life right now is the sum total of every
(11:30):
choice we've made up until this moment. There's been other influences,
but ultimately it's it's the sum total of every choice
we've made. So what if right now, in this moment,
you could start making different choices with the small things
and start to change the trajectory of your life going forward.
(11:51):
You know, I'll use golf as an analogy. When someone
is driving the ball, they're on the te box and
they're driving the ball, millimeters of rotation in the golf
club head completely change the trajectory of the golf ball.
(12:13):
And so if you just make a millimeter of change
one week, one month, one year down the road, ten
years down the road, your trajectory will change. And if
you keep being mindful of your choices and start to
ask yourself loving questions in the process, such as does
(12:34):
this love me and serve me? Or does this harm me?
You can start to see the power of the choice
in the moment and serving yourself one action at a time.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
That makes a lot of sense the way you say
it like that. We're going to take a very quick
break for one of our sponsors. Joe Allen Marx is
a sole coach, speaker and founder of Stop to Start,
three Seconds to Happy, and the online community your Breakup
Happy Place. We'll be right back after this break. You're
listening to the rewrite schools out, which means increased parenting
time with decreased oversight, a potentially dangerous combination for those
(13:09):
co parenting with an ex who abuses alcohol. In situations
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(13:30):
in this business a long time and I can't tell
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(13:52):
seen firsthand how difficult managing finances can be, especially during
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With Phil's compassionate expert advice, you can move forward with
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(14:16):
control of your finances and build lasting financial stability. We're
back with Joel and Marx. She's a sole coach speaker,
founder of Stop Shoes, Start three Seconds to Happy, and
the online community your Breakup Happy Place. So all this,
everything that happened to you, led you to today and
when some what advice do you give someone who wants
(14:37):
to thrive, not just survive after divorce.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I want them to begin to understand that it's an opportunity.
You know, this is a new beginning, it's not an ending.
One chapter of your life is concluding, and you are
the one who gets to hold the pen the next
chapter and beginning with identifying things that you really want
(15:09):
in life and maybe you've never verbalized them, maybe you've
never actualized them, maybe you've never believed that they were
part of your plan or that you were going to
be able to take on those steps. Is a beautiful
gift that you have now because a new door is open,
and in that in that next chapter, you want to
(15:34):
start to design a life that you're going to love.
And one of the biggest things that I encourage people
to start doing is a journaling practice practice that I
call journaling to Joy. And what it does is it
(15:56):
aligns with the sole coaching part of what I do.
It helps people start to slow down and identify what
is at their core and what they want in life,
not because their parents said they should do it, or
their families said they should do it, or society said
(16:17):
they should do it, but because they really want it
for them, by them, and discover that on their own.
Because once you help somebody discover something on their own
and you didn't have to tell them how to find it,
it's so much more powerful because it is their. The
(16:39):
word is escaping, man, I'm trying to find it, and
I should know it. It's their self actualization and it's
their their internal driving system that helps them move forward.
And one of the ways I help people do this
is through the stop to Start practice, And in that practice,
(17:07):
there's something called seven Levels Deep and I learned it
from a man named Dean Brasiosi, and it's a fascinating
journey to get out of your head and into your
heart and really uncover the emotion behind why you want something, because,
(17:28):
as doctor Wayne Dyer says, when your whys are big enough,
your why not disappear? And it really is true. When
people say they can't get go do something, it's not
to me that they can't, it's that they actually don't
want it enough to get uncomfortable through the process of
(17:53):
the change, because it's really the discomfort that we are
looking to avoid. So how do you help an individual
get past the discomfort? You pair their goal with something
that is so deeply emotionally resonating that they are excited
(18:17):
about it. And when the discomfort arises, their why is
so big that why not keeps disappearing.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
And I really I said that to my when you
were talking. I said to myself. A couple of times,
and I wrote it down. I'm like, when your whys
are bigger, your why not are less? Rights sense.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
As a personal trainer for the last thirty five years,
I mean I could see it. I mean it happens.
If you ever have watched a bride get ready to
get married, you know there's nothing getting in her way
of her workout. I mean she's getting up early, she's
going to the gym, she's eating healthy because she is
a huge why at the end of that, and it's
(19:00):
you know, it's the dress and it's the party, and
it's the pictures and she knows that date is written
in stone and it is coming. So she is a
pretty big why. But then after the wedding, women are
often puzzled like why can't I get that energy back?
Like why can't I get up early? Why am I,
(19:22):
you know, not following my diet the way I was before?
And it's because their why is disappeared and they need
a knew why so they can keep finding the energy
within them to have that level of intensity to keep
training that way.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Amazing when people okay, so what does spiritually aligned the
future look like for someone who's coming through that kind
of loss? Like, how do you coming what you went through?
And then you said there was years of not such
good stuff, right, what do you What do you want
to say to people who are going through this and
(20:00):
then their heartbroken and they're at a loss and they
don't see that they can't see the future.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Number One, I understand that the absolute devastation and pain
that it can have for some people, and everything changes.
Nothing is permanent. Good emotions don't stay forever. Neither do
bad emotions. All emotions are fluid, and over time it
(20:35):
gets easier and easier and easier. And I like to
often think of a moment where I was going through
a breakup after my divorce, but was a time when
I was in the healing cycle. So it was just
past that ten year mark where I'm kind of new
(20:58):
to this and I'm I'm exercising this part of my
nervous system. It's like exercising a muscle. You know it's there,
but you keep training it until it's really natural. And
that is part of the process, is that you start
to make discoveries and then you're retraining your nervous system
to get them into your long term nervous system, which
(21:19):
is called being deeply entrenched. That becomes your new normal
pattern and you stop focusing on the old nervous system.
The old system never goes away, by the way, It's
always there. It just starts to weaken and weaken and
weaken over time. And when I was out there dating
and I was in this place where I had been
(21:43):
dating somebody who I enjoyed and it didn't work out,
and I was in the swirl, and I was out driving,
and I was on a roadway and I was thinking
about this person and ruminating in my head, and I
realized I was passing the street for an X prior
to my husband, and how hard it was to get
(22:04):
over that X. And I was like, I don't feel
anything right now. And the irony that in the moment
I was going through this breakup, that I was passing
an area where someone else that was very hard to
heal from had lived and now I felt nothing. I
was like, Oh, so at some point this breakup's going
(22:26):
to feel like nothing as well. And my job is
to just keep focusing forward and keep growing and learning.
It always gets easier if you allow it to a
lot of people don't realize they hold on to pain
like I did as protection. You know, I did not
have to suffer for ten years, I held onto it
(22:51):
as protection. On some level, I got something out of it.
I got right. I was absolutely self righteous, and if
I was right, he was wrong and I got justified.
But I was always living in that energy, that tennis
match back and forth. I couldn't just let him go.
(23:12):
And what I had to start to realize is if
I had let it go a lot sooner, I would
have had more joy in my life. The choice that
I kept holding on to it and making him the
villain in my life, and even if he deserved it,
did never hurt him. It hurt me. I mean, for
(23:35):
ten years I suffered. I suffered. And when you start
to realize that, the more you hold on to being right,
being the victim, being justified in how you feel, there's
nothing wrong with it, and there's an enormous price to it,
(23:59):
and the cost is your joy and your happiness, because
when you are in that place and that push and pull,
you never really can get to peace. And when you
start to forgive yourself and accept that human being exactly
as they are and that is who they are, you
(24:23):
can start to unravel that connection. That you have and
start to release it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Your low moments became the foundation for everything that you
do today. You're a sole coach, speaker, founder, stop to start.
Three seconds to happy? I love that, three seconds to happy?
What do you want? What do you want the listeners
to know about your rewrite?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
It's still going on. It's a process. I am so
not perfect. Please know that. Like people reach out to me,
especially through so social media, and they say, you know
you can do this, but I can't, And I'm like,
I'm still a work in progress. I still make mistakes.
I still have to own my actions, learn from them,
(25:13):
grow from them, and move forward. This isn't about being
perfect as a reform perfectionist during that ten period of time.
This isn't about being perfect. It's about being the best
version of you in this moment and in the next moment,
and in this moment and in this moment and learning
(25:34):
along the way. And social media is how do I
say this? I mean, it's a bunch of people lying
and putting out their best selves, so you buy things
from them because you want to be like them. And
(25:56):
it's another reason why I really try to share authentically
about mistakes I'm making. Our challenges I'm currently having because
it's not like you figured out and then everything's easy.
You still have life. You just have a different hand
that you're dealt and you have more power to make
better choices that serve you and get you out of
(26:16):
upset faster. And it's okay that you're not okay. It's
okay that you don't know. It is okay that you
make mistakes. Learning self, love, self compassion, and most importantly,
forgiveness is critical. But it's not only critical. You so
(26:38):
deserve it that it's a gift you give yourself, and
a lot of people don't think they deserve that. They
don't deserve forgiveness, they don't deserve compassion, they don't deserve
the self love and absolutely starting from there, loving yourself
and allowing everything else to evolve is a beautiful gift
(26:59):
that you give yourself.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Absolutely not easy. Sharing your story is so helpful to
others who are out there who are going through something
similar or the same thing, and seeing how you use
your pain to and to move forward and to live
your best life, even though it's a process, even though
you're still learning and you're launching your breakup happy Place
(27:23):
community in July.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
At some points, cract yes, and what your Breakup Happy
Place Community is going to be is a safe space
to come together and start to learn tools.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
And techniques to help you. I like to look at
what I do as a tool a toolkit, and everything
is inside the toolkit, and you open it up and
you take different tools out, and sometimes you need a screwdriver,
and sometimes you need a hammer, and sometimes you don't
need the tools that are in the toolkit, and that's okay.
(28:01):
But finding out the combination of things that work best
for you and serve you is a great gift you
give yourself. And so your Breakup Happy Place Community is
a place I'm going to be in every week. I
haven't set the day of the week yet, but it's
(28:23):
going to be a Monday or Tuesday, and I'm going
to be in there, either teaching or answering questions or
sharing parts of the toolkit so that people don't feel
alone in this process.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I love it. You turned your pain into purpose, and
thank you for being here so much. We'll have all
your social media up there, so look forward to your
Breakup Happy Place Community coming soon. Thank you so much,
Joe Allen, Thank you for being here Thank you. Wendy
Nito Kuda Divorce and Family Laws attorneys have guided Connecticut
and New York families through complex divorce actions, contested child custody,
(29:02):
and alimony disputes for over thirty years. Their Connecticut and
New York attorneys have extensive experience in family matters involving
substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, and many other X
factors that can complicate a divorce. Their attorneys adeptly manage
privacy and reputation concerns inherit to public divorce proceedings and
(29:22):
the related exposure for their ultra high net worth clients.
Find your new path forward, define your post divorce family,
and secure an enforceable agreement to protect your future with
Needlecuda Act now put the strength of their team behind you.
Visit them at Needlecuda dot com or call two three, five,
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