Ben Walter (13:47)

Foreign.

Podcast Host (13:54)

Sometimes leadership isn't about putting out fires. It's about building the right team so the fires don't start in the first place. And when you're stretched in, you realize this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you connect with quality candidates exactly when you need them most. Instead of struggling just to get your posts seen, you can focus on finding the right people and hiring the ones who can truly drive results. In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored Jobs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves to@ Indeed.com podcast just go to Indeed.com podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs when we talk about well being, we often focus on what we eat, how we move, or how we manage our thoughts. But our environment matters too, especially the air we breathe every day at home. Many people don't realize that allergens like pollen, dust, mite matter and pet dander don't just stay outside. They can linger in the air inside and get trapped in fabrics around us. That's why Clorox Pure Allergen Neutralizer Daily Air Spray really stands out. Developed with allergists, it neutralizes common household allergens in the air, helping you create a more comfortable space before those allergens can get in the way of you feeling your best. And because allergens don't just live in the air, Clorox Pure also has a fabric and carpet spray that works on carpets, curtains and bedding, where allergens love to hide. Add Clorox Pure to your daily routine to stop allergens before they become allergies Find it in the air care aisle at a retailer near you. Hey, it's me, Jay. And I just wanted to share this one phone call I had with a friend. It was when I just made one of the biggest decisions in my career and I was nervous about how it would be received. Then my friend called me out of the blue just to check in. And hearing their voice, their encouragement, completely changed my perspective. That moment reminded me how powerful a simple connection can be. And did you know that 2026 will mark 150 years since the first phone call? March 10, 1876. From that one call, it all grew. The first long distance lines, the first call across America, the first across the Atlantic, the first commercial cell service, even the first 911 system. AT&T has been connecting people in so many ways for 150 years. I can't help but wonder how many lives were changed, how many important conversations happened, even how many lives were saved, all because people could reach each other. 150 years of connecting. That's not just history, that's a reminder. When technology brings people together, we can do incredible things. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. The other thing that hurts is making life altering decisions. When someone breaks up with us, we're thinking, wait a minute, maybe I need to move city, maybe I need to move home. Maybe I need to quit my job and pursue my passion. Maybe I need to, you know, change my whole life. Like we start thinking about these life altering decisions because in some way it's again, protection. It makes us feel better. We're dealing with something so much bigger. But the chances are, in that raised emotional dichotomy, it's very hard to make good decisions. Your best decisions are not made when you're angry. Your best decisions are not made when you're sad and upset. Your best decisions are not made when you're not thinking clearly. They're made when you feel a little peace, when you feel a little centered and you feel a little distance from what caused you pain. Don't force yourself to make big decisions after a big challenge. Stage two is bargaining and obsession. This is the stage people confuse with overthinking or rumination or procrastination. But clinically, this is bargaining. Your mind replays conversations, rereads messages, imagines alternate endings. Why? Because the brain is trying to restore attachment. Bargaining is like, if I did this, we could have had this. Maybe if I didn't say this, I would have saved the relationship. Maybe if I acted this way, we'd still be together. Maybe if I wasn't so annoying and so needy, we'd still be with each other. That's what bargaining looks like. You're bargaining, negotiating with yourself, thinking about all the things you could have done. Studies show that after romantic loss, the brain increases rumination as an unconscious attempt to regain control and proximity. This is where your thoughts sound like. If I had said that differently, they'd still be here. Maybe we could still fix this. I just need closure, right? So we start bargaining. And the challenge with this phase is that it feels real. It really feels like if you did that one thing, they'd still be here. When you know that's not the case, but you can't access that. Your subconscious can't access that. Your subconscious is convincing you that you're absolutely right. If you did that one thing or didn't do that one thing, you'd still be with them. This is probably one of the toughest stages to get through, and I'm really glad that we're talking about it after the first stage, because it's the stage that can feel the longest. It's the stage that can feel the hardest. You tell all your friends, look, I really feel I could have made it work. And they're looking at you like you're crazy. What's wrong with you? Right? You keep playing it over and over in your head for days. You're looking at pictures, you're looking at social media, and you're thinking, wait a minute, why they're with that person? Like, I thought they liked me for those reasons. And maybe I was just too annoying. Maybe I asked for too much, Maybe I needed too much. Here's the truth. Closure doesn't come from answers. It comes from accepting the loss of the bond. Here's what helps here. Writing thoughts down instead of replaying them. When you replay thoughts in your head, they all feel real. When you write down thoughts, you can actually question them. It's really hard to question a thought in your head if you're replaying in your head. If I did that, they'd still be here, and then this would happen. It all makes sense when you write it down and you read it out to yourself. You might even look at it and go, that's bizarre. That's absolutely crazy. I can't believe I thought that. I want you to really ask yourself to write down what you're thinking. Write down your most repeated thoughts, read them out to yourself, and recognize the flaws that they hold. Another thing that can help is reducing contact and checking behaviors. A lot of the time, we're reading old messages, delete them. A lot of the time we're looking at their social media profile. Block helps to have distance At a time when you're thinking about all the things you could have, should have, would have done. It's good to have distance. And it's also healthy to recognize that this is a phase you're going to have to go through. You will negotiate, but know that your negotiation doesn't mean that it's valid. It's important to name what's happening. This is withdrawal, because here's what's really going on. You're not stuck, you're detoxing. If you keep remembering only the good moments, remember this. Your brain edits memories during loss. It highlights comfort and hides pain. Healing begins when you remember the whole truth. Not the highlight reel again. To protect us, the brain just keeps thinking of all the good times, all the amazing moments. And so now, when you're negotiating, when you're ruminating, when you're overthinking, when you're bargaining, you're only bargaining based on the highlights. You're. You're forgetting everything they did wrong. You're thinking, actually, yeah, they did show me flashes of greatness, beauty, attraction, romance. And you're forgetting the time they ignored you. You're forgetting the time that they weren't emotionally available. When someone breaks up with you, it's so easy to just remember the good times. But you forget the time that they ignored you. You forget the time that they weren't emotionally available. You forget the time that they put you down in front of your friends. Just because your mind only remembers the good things doesn't mean that relationship was meant to last. Don't get lost in the highlight reel and remember the truth. Stage three is anger and protest. Something shifts. Anger appears. Aggression is back. Sometimes explosive, sometimes quiet, sometimes delayed. Right? I think we think anger is just like this brute force. Sometimes anger can be boiling inside. You're quieter, you're scarier. Anger is not regression. I think a lot of us feel, if I'm angry again, I've gone backwards. Not realizing that if you go back to stage one, that's why these stages are important. When you go back to stage one, you never felt angry because you were protecting yourself. So that's why when we feel anger later, we go, oh, no, no, I'm going worse. I'm going in the wrong direct. That's the biggest mistake. We think we're not improving, we think we're not evolving. We think we're going backwards because we feel angry. But the reality is your body was waiting for you to have space to feel this. Your body and mind were waiting to give you permission to feel anger in a safe way. Anger is not moving backwards. In grief research, anger is understood as self respect returning. Let me say that again. In grief research, anger is understood as self respect returning. It sounds like that wasn't okay. You're finally saying to yourself, actually, yeah, the way I was treated wasn't okay. You're not bargaining anymore. You're actually realizing, I deserve so much better. I don't want to settle. I can't believe I was going to settle for that. I can't believe I was accepting less than I deserve. You start to acknowledge I ignored things I shouldn't have. And sometimes you get mad at yourself for thinking, wait, why was I bargaining? Right? Why was I actually not mad earlier? I should have been mad before, and now the mistake is I should have been mad before. I'm actually going backwards and I want to give them a piece of my mind. This is the point at which most of you want to text that person or pick up the phone to them or get your friend to phone them and have a go at them, right? This is that moment. And you want to recognize you're fair to feel your anger, you're valid to feel your anger. But it's all happening in the right order. It's all happening at the right pace. It's happening for you. Anger scares people because they think it makes them bitter. But research shows healthy anger speeds recovery when it's expressed safely. Expressed safely means you'll share it with a therapist, you'll share it with a coach, you'll share it with a friend. You're not sharing it in a text to that person. I think the biggest challenge we have here is we're judging ourselves for being angry. We're either thinking, I should have been angry earlier, I should have been angry at them, or I'm being angry now and it's too late. It's not too late. Everything is moving in the direction that it needs to. That's why I want you to really stay till the end of this episode, so that you can hear all the phases, so that you're not harsh on yourself when you're going through it. It's almost like if you're doing a triathlon, you know you're going to have to run, you know you're going to have to cycle, and you know you're going to have to swim and you'll know the order. But if when you're swimming. You're wondering, wait, why am I swimming right now? I don't want to be swimming. I should be cycling. It doesn't work that way. What helps here is movement, channeling that anger physically. The other is boundaries, setting boundaries as to how you want to communicate with that person and how you're going to avoid communicating with them. To be honest, honesty really helps. Honesty with yourself, honesty with others. Because up until now, you've been bargaining with your own honesty. But here's what hurts. Shaming yourself for anger. That's what holds you back. Using anger to reattach through conflict. Oh, now I need to connect with them, to tell them how I feel. Let anger inform you, not define you. This is why I really want you to listen to the next phase, because this might be where you're at. Stage four is sadness and depression. This is the stage most people recognize. The heaviness, the emptiness, the tears that arrive without warning. I think a lot of us try and speed up to this point. We kind of skip the other stuff. We try and ignore it. And that actually makes the stage harder. It's easier when you get to stage four, having allowed yourself to go through the stages. Neuroscience explains why after breakups, levels of dopamine and oxytocin, the chemicals linked to pleasure and bonding, drop significantly. So this sadness isn't just emotional, it's chemical. And this is why motivation disappears, right? You start to feel like, what's the meaning in my life? What's the point? Am I ever going to find love? Joy feels distant. You're thinking, I can't remember the last time I was happy. I can't remember the last time I laughed. I can't remember the last time I smiled. Everything feels slower. You think, God, I can't believe it's only been a month. And here's what matters. Sadness means you're processing reality, not avoiding it. And this stage requires rest. It requires you to be the kindest, most graceful, most compassionate towards yourself. This is the phase that requires friendship. And we got to avoid pushing our friends away in some of these stages, because sometimes we can take it out on them. You can be angry at them for how they're dealing with it as opposed to just figuring out how you deal with it. And we all do that. It's natural. But friendship is so important at this stage. When you're going through a breakup, productivity isn't important. A timeline isn't important. Pressure isn't important. You don't move on, you move through. And if you're scared you'll never love like this again. I want to say something to you. You're right. You'll love differently. You don't want to fall in love like this again because then you'll fall out of love like this again. You want to fall in love differently, with more wisdom, more boundaries, more self respect and that kind of love that lasts. So many of us don't allow ourselves to move forward because we think what we had is the best, the epitome, the greatest version of it. Not realizing that everyone who has come before us has found love that was better, different and an upgrade. Stage five is acceptance and meaning. Acceptance doesn't mean you approve of what happened. It means you stop fighting reality. This stage is called meaning making. In modern grief psychology, this is where you begin asking, what did this teach me? So it's so interesting, isn't it? When you go through a breakup, you might even have a friend who says to you, what did you learn from this? This is stage five, not stage one. When you're going through pain, you don't have to learn from it in that moment. You learn from it when you're reflecting. Ray Dalio once said to me, pain plus reflection equals progress. But when you do that, reflection is so important, you'll get to it. At some point you can be grateful for what was left after what happened to you. When you have some distance, you can start asking questions like what did this teach me? What do I want to do differently moving forward? Who am I becoming now? Sometimes people say, just get busy in your hobbies and your passions and interests. You can't really think about that till stage five. Research shows people who integrate meaning after loss experience post traumatic growth, not just recovery. Notice the difference. You don't just want to recover, you want to grow. This is where your identity stabilizes. This is where self trust returns. This is where the past stops defining the present. Here's the reframe. Healing doesn't mean it didn't hurt. Healing means it didn't destroy you. Healing doesn't mean it didn't affect your self confidence. Healing means it helped you build self respect. Healing doesn't mean you didn't have boundaries. Healing means you'll have better ones next time. Here's what actually helps. Across all stages, research consistently shows these things help. No contact or low contact speeds. Emotional recovery routine calms the nervous system. Talking without rehearsing the story. That's processing versus just replaying and resisting idealization. Memory is always biased toward the good times. And this is crucial. You don't heal by erasing the love. You heal by releasing the attachment. You don't heal by blocking the other person. You heal by setting the right boundaries. You don't heal by pushing yourself through. You heal by processing each stage as it comes. If you're going through a breakup, it's proof you loved deeply. One day, this won't be the center of your life. It will be a chapter, a teacher, a turning point. And the way you treat yourself now will shape the love you experience next. Stay with yourself. This ending is not the end of you. Remember, I'm forever in your corner. I'm always rooting for you. I hope you'll pass this on to someone else who's gone through a breakup or a difficult time. What no matter what stage they're in or phase they're in. And I hope this helps them through. Thank you for listening and watching. Make sure you subscribe to Never Miss an episode. I'll see you on the next one. If you love this episode, you're going to love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get over your ex and find true love in your relationships. Make a list of the things that are truly important for you to find in a partner and then be that list. When you step into the Caribbean, something inside you softens. There's a rhythm, a warmth, a stillness that you can't manufacture. Sandals resorts were built on the Caribbean's most spectacular shorelines, from Jamaica and St Lucia to Grenada and Barbados. At Sandoz, adults celebrate, reconnect or simply unwind with suites that feel like private retreats. This is luxury all inclusive, pioneered and perfected for over four decades. Up to 16 globally inspired restaurants per resort. Discover the best all inclusive value in the Caribbean, designed exclusively for adults. 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That's the AT&T guarantee. AT&T connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com guarantee for details. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.