Getting Un-Stuck in Your Divorce Recovery - Dr. Ben Ritter || DPTSP #081 || David M. Webb

[00:00:00] All right. Today we're joined with Ben Ritter, a renowned leadership and career coach over 10 years of experience working with top companies like Amazon, Google, and Pinterest. Ben specializes in helping individuals get unstuck, that's the theme I'm going to concentrate today, and align their values with their careers. With a doctorate in organizational leadership, he empowers people to live authentically at work and in life.

[00:00:24] Let's dive into his expertise to help you navigate your divorce recovery journey and truly move forward. So welcome to the show, Ben. We did some talking earlier. Tell the listeners a little about yourself and we'll go from there.

[00:00:53] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during, or after a divorce. Check it out. Ben Ritter Yeah, thanks for having me on. Basically, I split my time with helping people figure out how to love their world of work and help organizations become places that people can do that at.

[00:01:20] So one-on-one personal coaching and then corporate workshops and leader assessments and coaching as well. Ben Ritter I am really proud. Last year, I launched the book Becoming Fearless. And really underlying everything that I do in the work world is just truly helping people become the best leaders for themselves. And that involves becoming fearless. And this kind of happened through my own learning how to become fearless journey from not knowing the direction I wanted to go, not believing in myself, and not showing up intentionally to my life.

[00:01:49] Ben Ritter And there are many different phases of how I evolved from figuring out who I was, figuring out that it was okay to be that person, and then learning how I wanted to bring that to the world. Ben Ritter We talked about earlier about a divorce and a job loss. Ben Ritter How do you think those compare? Because we're talking about that. That's why I reached back to you because I saw you were more in the workplace and people ask, why do I have a workplace guy on a divorce recovery podcast?

[00:02:19] Because sometimes losing the job is like a divorce. What do you think about that? Ben Ritter You can lose a job in a variety of ways. You can be laid off to no fault of your own. You could be absolutely terrible and deserve to lose that job. Ben Ritter You could be working and realize that you're not in the right job. You can just have kind of an epiphany. And so there's a lot of different ways that you can decide that, or it could happen to you, that your job is not right for you. And all of a sudden now you're left without it.

[00:02:48] And a lot of people define who they are, like what they bring to the world, the impact that they're going to have. So their self-identity, their confidence, how they even show up and why they wake up each and every single day through their work, through their job, through their career. Ben Ritter And the loss of a relationship can happen in all those ways as well. Ben Ritter Exactly. Ben Ritter And in generally both situations, no matter if you want it to happen, it hurts. And there's a loss.

[00:03:13] And there's a now forced change in how you have to show up in the world and how you have to act and who you have to act for. Ben Ritter And one of the biggest mistakes, one of the biggest consequences of losing a job is generally people are not working for themselves. They're working for their employer. And so when you also lose a relationship, you realize that now you have to live for yourself. And that's like you have to show up now differently. You have to make your own decisions. You're now living for one instead of two.

[00:03:40] Maybe you're now actually living for three or four depending on your family situation. But truly though, you're living for yourself. Ben Ritter Wow. What does being stuck mean to you? And why do so many men feel this way after a divorce or a job loss? Why are they stuck? Ben Ritter Our brains like things to be easy.

[00:03:59] And so even if we're not happy, we are waking up and going about our day, doing the things that we think we need to do based on our previous experiences and our environment and our life. Ben Ritter When we lose that thing, because we can be stuck in that situation. But let's say we lose that thing, the thing that kept us at least partially sane or to have some level of routine. All of a sudden now we don't know what to do. We are left without order, without tradition. It's actually like when you go travel.

[00:04:29] Like I used to have to travel for work. And I'd go somewhere and my routine would be completely messed up. And I'd feel lost. I'd feel lonely. I'd feel stuck. I'd feel confused. I'd feel like I was in the wrong job. And it's because you end up having space. And you have no direction. You have no clarity. And then you have no confidence in what you're supposed to do. And so when we're stuck, we're basically just confused, honestly. And we lose our sense of purpose and impact. And as well as we have no idea what we're working towards.

[00:04:59] And so we're just, you keep digging the hole. It keeps getting deeper. And it's a really difficult place to be emotionally, physically, mentally. And then if we don't have community around us, oh, so when a divorce happens, I imagine you lose a lot of the relationships that you've been a part of. Same thing with the job. You lose all the relationships that you were within that employer and that organization. Without community, without support, it's very empty, very lonely.

[00:05:23] And a lot of research on, I don't want to use the, I'm not going to use like big words, but sadness occur because we end up losing those connections to the people around us and losing the routine and the meaning from the work or from the relationships that we have. How can men identify the specific areas of their lives when they're feeling trapped or alone or anything like that? How can they identify that and then maybe move out of that hole that you talk about? Yeah.

[00:05:53] I know you have some thoughts on this too, so I'd love to hear your perspective. But when we're generally stuck, we know that something's off, but often we stay very high level. We stay in the cloud. We stay in the idea that we're stuck. We're staying in the idea that we don't know what to do. We're very macro and we have to become micro. We have to zoom in. We can't change everything at once. And maybe we want to change everything at once.

[00:06:19] But if we change one of those things, we can actually start building momentum and some magic can happen. We don't need to change everything. We just need to change one thing. And so identifying those areas where you are feeling stuck means that you have to zoom into your day. Actually start logging your day. What do you spend your time on? What are your thoughts during that day? And after you build information, you create greater levels of awareness without being just stuck in your head in this kind of difficult space.

[00:06:46] Once you have the information of what actually is happening, you can start then asking questions like, what do I want to happen? But very often people think about the future before realizing what they're doing in the present. And same thing with a job. When we lose a job, we all of a sudden are disrupted. We don't know what to spend our time on, but we don't know what we're spending our time on. And then once we figure that out, we can say, what do I want to spend my time on today? And how is that going to help me serve what I'm working towards in the future?

[00:07:13] So once you get that information of what you're doing now, you then want to make a list of what do I want to be doing? If I was to fast forward in five years, what type of life do I want? And when we're stuck in a sense of, okay, I'm going to use the words like trauma, stress, sadness, depression in some way, shape or form. I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist. Just using these words just because people can understand them. But we tend to lose the ability to perceive a future that's different than today. And so we don't realize that we can find love.

[00:07:42] We can find an incredible job. And so by first figuring out what we're spending our time on, we then give ourselves space to figure out what we want to spend our time on. And then we can actually start creating some goals around those areas. But I don't know generally what someone needs to focus on. But often if we lose the person that we were spending our time with, some of those areas might be health, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It might be learning how to love yourself because maybe you were loving someone else instead.

[00:08:10] It could be finding a personal hobby or passion because, again, you weren't spending time on yourself. You were spending time with others. It may be reconnecting with community or creating friends. So where are these gaps that are different from your future self to your current self? And what's one that you want to immediately focus on? This is ironic. Just yesterday, we did a podcast with other podcasts because I'm an overachiever, I told you. The Divorce Devil Podcast with Rachel, my co-host. And we were trying to pick a topic.

[00:08:40] And our topic was hitting the divorce wall. It's very ironic that we talked about that yesterday. So we were talking and my take on it was you were asking me that when you hit that divorce wall, you're healing, healing. Then all of a sudden it's boom, like you're lost. And I suggested that just take small steps. Do something. Hey, I didn't cry 30 minutes today. I cried 29. So take those small wins and those small steps and move forward.

[00:09:09] What do you think about that too? Yeah, there's a wonderful book. I think it's like Tuesdays with Maury. And it's about this gentleman that was diagnosed with a terminal illness. And it's him sharing how he's dealing with that. And the illness actually started deteriorating his body. And people were asking like, how are you so happy? How are you so joyful? He's like, give myself time to grieve. And then I realized that I need to focus on something else. And how do I want to live? Do I want to live in grief?

[00:09:38] Or do I want to try to live in joy? And so realizing that you can feel stuck, you can hit a wall, but that's not where you have to stay. And to your point where you take little steps and realize that how you feel isn't who you are. How you feel is a part of who you are. It is that you are greater than your feelings. You're greater than your thoughts. You're greater than your beliefs. You're greater than your relationships. And this is another concept that helps me stay focused. You are greater than yourself.

[00:10:08] And I like to think of each of us as like a wave. I don't know if you've heard of this. When you're a wave within an ocean, and a wave has a lot of concerns and worries. Oh, no, I'm going to hit the beach, and I'm going to crash, and I'm going to fall, and I'm going to be hurt. Well, when the wave next to it then turns over and says, silly wave, you're not. You're actually the ocean. You're bigger than yourself. You're bigger than your pain. You're bigger than your grief. You're bigger than the day-to-day struggles that you have.

[00:10:33] And so knowing that your wall is just one wave, and there are going to be many others, can sometimes help broaden our perspective on what we're dealing with. And generally, we are not, generally have a very varying emotion depending on the day. And our mind doesn't like to just stay on one point.

[00:11:01] It likes to reflect and reminisce and cause us, and make us feel like we're not enough at times, or try to. And those are just moments. Those are just moments in time. And as you said, if you feel that you need to cry for 30 minutes, wonderful. Cry for those 30 minutes, but then realize that, okay, that moment's over. What moment do I want next? And decide where you want to focus and spend your time outside of the reaction to the pain that you're feeling.

[00:11:29] And it may be difficult, and you may have 95% pain and 5% joy or movement or something that you're doing for yourself. But the next day, try for 90% pain and 10% joy or movement or connection. What about self-care? Men suck at self-care. We want to take on the world, fix everybody else, take everybody else first. And we kind of don't take care of ourselves.

[00:11:58] And all we tell people is it's like when the plane's going down, the oxygen mask come out, you put your kids on first. You don't put, no, I'm sorry. You put yours on first, then you put your kids on. You put your kids on first, you're screwed. Yeah. And sorry, my mind was reflecting back on another exercise as you were talking about, how do you get unstuck? How do you, this is part of self-care. Going back in time and going forward in time can really help the brain shake itself loose

[00:12:28] of grief that it's feeling at any moment. So what were you doing five years ago? What were you doing 10 years ago? What were you doing 20 years ago? What were you doing 35 years ago? And writing down that moment, that part, that time of your life. And that can sometimes help you, help us realize that how we feel today is not how we're going to feel in five years. We just sometimes lose hope. We lose faith. And remembering that we could not have predicted where we were today 10 years ago or 15 years

[00:12:58] ago, 20 years ago. And so what makes you think you can predict where you're going to be in five years or 10 years and can shake you out of the pain that you're feeling today or the hopelessness that you might feel about tomorrow. So that's a little exercise that we can do for self-care. But other than that, even when we are unhappy, taking care of ourselves is, how do we commit to that? I don't know if you see this, David.

[00:13:24] It can be very difficult when we don't, when we don't feel good to do the things that we know are going to help us feel good. Like going to the gym or eating, eating right, eating a certain way or calling the friend that we don't really want to talk to or picking up the phone or going to, going to a community event and figuring out how you can prioritize at least one of those, one of those moments that, you know, brings you joy.

[00:13:48] Even if it's not bringing you joy in the moment itself is the key to creating a little bit of unstuckness in your life. It's, it's not about the joy that you feel in the moment. It's about doing the thing because it can be very difficult to feel happiness or joy or motivation when we are dealing with something negative that happened to us recently. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't go to the gym. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat a certain way.

[00:14:17] It doesn't mean that you shouldn't connect with that friend, even if you're just sitting there unhappy. But it is, there, there are so many benefits if you do the act of self-care, even if it doesn't feel like self-care at the time. How do you think men can regain a self of purpose? Purpose is really big with men and direction when their old life plans no longer apply. That happens in the job space. That happens in divorce space.

[00:14:44] How does that, how can we gain, regain a sense of purpose and direction? I used to work in healthcare and it was amazing that people saving other people's lives, doctors, nurses, anyone, even non-clinicians working with them would forget that they were doing that because they'd become overwhelmed with the stress from the job, from the work. Or maybe they'd have a negative experience with a boss that said something that kind of knocked

[00:15:12] them down, it didn't help them feel recognized in a positive way. And so sometimes purpose is just looking at things a little differently than what you're doing. Sometimes it's just a reframe that I'm helping someone, that I'm changing someone's life, that I'm making an impact. It's realizing that you just can't see the purpose right now because you're so worried about the tasks. And so it's a little bit of a change in perspective.

[00:15:37] Other times, purpose, especially when you're not, when you're feeling like you don't really know what to do, can come from taking the focus off of yourself and instead doing something for someone else. So an exercise, if we're struggling, is giving back to the community, volunteering, going to a soup kitchen. For me personally, I love soccer, so it's volunteering at like a kid's camp for inner city youth and going and teach some soccer. Or going to a local library and teaching individuals how to read.

[00:16:06] When you do something for someone else, you get out of your own way. And it can open up the doorways to figuring out what you want to do for yourself actually and what purpose you want to create for yourself. We put a lot of pressure on this idea of purpose. And sometimes we just have to find something that we enjoy or something that we feel is meaningful to others and do that. And that can actually start paving the path for ourselves. What about the cousin of purpose and direction? Self-confidence. Self-confidence. That's when it gets rocked.

[00:16:36] When you get fired from a job or you get divorced, your self-confidence goes to crap. And it's almost like crawling into a hole that you can't get out of. Yeah. You're on that rim, but you can't make that last hole out of that hole. What are some of the things people can do to increase their self-confidence? I'm not sure about you, but dude, have you ever read a book about confidence? Listen to a podcast about confidence? This podcast, I think, hopefully builds confidence.

[00:17:06] I can't tell you how many people that I've worked with who doubt their own abilities but have never tried to build the skill of confidence. They think it's something that they're just innately supposed to have or something that they're not supposed to have if they're not doing something a certain way. Confidence very much is a skill. It is something that you practice. It's something that you learn. It's something that becomes a belief because it's a skill just like anything else. And it's something that can be diminished based on things that happen to you.

[00:17:37] But if you work the muscle, and generally that muscle is going to be there in the times that you're trying. Yeah. Confidence is generally a belief in yourself and a belief in your skills. A belief in yourself can be unwavering depending on how much you invest in it. And belief in skills can be something that also is something you always have. Sadly, when we lose a job, we believe that we're not good at that thing anymore.

[00:18:02] When in actuality, we just experienced a moment with one company, with one leader, and that didn't work out. It doesn't change your ability to do the thing. And we forget that we've had other jobs in the past. We forget that we're going to have other jobs in the future. And with relationships, same thing with jobs. Our last relationship, if it didn't work out, then you can make sure the next relationship is even better.

[00:18:26] It doesn't mean that you're less of a human being because something that you didn't control ended up being out of your control. So now when you move forward, especially with building that confidence, you focus on what you can control. Great. What skills do I have? How do I want to take care of myself? How do I treat the people around me? Am I proud of how I show up each and every single day? And those are the things that can truly start building confidence in yourself.

[00:18:56] But then also creating an environment around yourself that builds confidence. One of the greatest mistakes people make in a work environment or in their relationships is they spend the most time with people that bring them down or that detract from who they are and their self-esteem and confidence. And also take away from who they want to be. And one of the greatest things anyone can do in a journey for personal development for a job is to build relationships with people that are a mirror of who they aspire to be, who

[00:19:25] they want to work towards becoming. And that can truly build a whole ton of confidence as well. How can men develop and what is, and I've seen this before, but I don't know what it is, the executive presence. How can men develop the executive presence in their personal lives, not just their professional careers during recovery, during a big event like that?

[00:19:52] A huge part of executive presence is knowing what you stand for and showing up in that way no matter what. Walking into a room and not worrying about what people think about you because you're so confident in what you think about yourself. That presence is powerful. People see it and they recognize it and they're going to challenge it and to make sure that it's real.

[00:20:21] And then if you act a certain way and continuously show up a certain way, then they start building trust in you because they believe that you're credible and they believe that you do stand for what you stand for. So you're saying it's a skill. So executive presence 100% is a skill. Okay. Yeah. It is multiple components. So executive presence is vision, presence, and credibility or reliability, depending on how you want to define it. It's three things in the professional world and the personal world. So it's vision. It's what you stand for.

[00:20:50] It's who you, it's your values, who you are and your goals. What are you working towards? What's your mission? What's your purpose? When you walk into a room, what do people expect from you? What do you talk about? What excites you? It's credibility or reliability, which is you do what you say you're going to do. You follow up and you follow through. People can count on you. They know that when they can trust you. That is a huge part of presence, at least from a positive leadership perspective. And I think even from a relationship perspective. And then it's presence itself.

[00:21:20] It's the actual word. It's what is your energy when you walk into a room? How are you standing? What's your body posture? Are you interested in other people? You ask them questions. Are you curious? So how engaged are you in the moment? Are you looking at your phone? Are you not fully invested? Are you hiding? So if you can define what you stand for and live true to it, if you can follow up and follow through with the people around you, they can trust you and believe in you, and you're

[00:21:46] fully engaged in the moment that you're a part of, you will have presence and you will be an incredibly attractive person to the people around you. What advice would you give someone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of starting over? I keep going back and forth with the divorce. And I've never thought about a divorce and a job so closely aligned. But yeah, the starting over piece. What do you think about that? It is a big deal.

[00:22:15] But you're not starting completely over. If you lose a job, you just get another job. Like you still have your whole career, all the skills, all your network, potentially, like you have a bunch of stuff. If you lose a relationship and you're starting over a relationship, then you now have all of that learning and experience from that last specific relationship to bring to the next one. Good and the bad. So you're not starting over. You're starting new. What was that?

[00:22:44] The good and the bad. Yeah, the good and the bad. And hopefully the next relationship is even better. Yep. But it can feel like it's going to be a lot of work. And it will be. Because you're, you have to like, you don't really have to prove yourself again, but you have to find the right place again. You have to, but now you have more information to do that. But the beginning is going to be a lot of work.

[00:23:10] But if you define it as work, if you define it as starting over, it's going to feel like a wait. It's going to be very difficult to actually start having fun again, to be excited about the moments. But I'll tell you, I've been now in this relationship for eight years, engaged, going to be married. And I talked to a lot of my married friends, talked to my divorced friends, talked to my single friends. Everyone thinks the other person has it better. Every single person.

[00:23:37] And so now, instead of starting over, instead of starting over, what if instead you say, wow, I get to relive those moments of meeting someone new. I get to relive the excitement and the joy and the fun and the passion of starting fresh with someone, of finding love again, of being in those moments. And I have more information now to make sure that what happened to me this past time isn't going to happen to me again. Correct.

[00:24:05] So how do we change our perspective on it and show up differently in those moments? Wow. How can men take small, actionable steps to feel like they're moving forward to their divorce recovery? What are some of the small steps they can take? Accept. Acceptance. This is the point in life where you are. Self-grace. Understanding. Connecting to a friend. Having a conversation about how you feel.

[00:24:35] Asking them not to give you advice, but just to listen. Attending a group. Some sort of community support group. Listening to this podcast. Crying. You think about these little things. I could keep going. Keep giving a list. But none of these really are changing anything yet. They're managing. They're dealing. When I work with an employee who dealt with a really negative and traumatic leader in their past position or was a really toxic work environment, they come in wanting to change

[00:25:05] everything. And I go, no, you were in a burning building. You just got out. You're burned. Give yourself a second for your adrenaline to chill out. And we have to do that in life. And so first off, it's just getting settled and giving yourself an outlet for the things that you're feeling and to process them before you start actually taking any sort of like momentous action. So sit back and chill a little bit in it. That's the piece. Yeah. Sit back and chill, but not to be a victim.

[00:25:35] Yeah. But to understand. To process. To understand. To learn. And then slowly start building the life that you want to live. The routine that you want. So maybe it's going to different places. Maybe it's going to a new gym. Maybe it's getting a meal and delivery service. Maybe it's volunteering once a week. Before you start trying to rebuild your, rebuild like a whole new relationship, a whole new job. First, just get this moment handled.

[00:26:07] Wow. And so you talk about living for yourself. What does that mean for divorced men who may feel lost or disconnected? Living for yourself. Living for yourself is about living a life aligned to your values. No one else's. In really understanding what you stand for. A lot of people in relationships or in their jobs are sacrificing who they are, what they want for the people around them because they're afraid of losing those things.

[00:26:38] Now, you don't have something to lose. So who do you want to be and how do you want to live? And then can you show up intentionally in that way? Can you build an environment around yourself that serves that? No one's telling you what to eat anymore. What to wear. Or where to go. Or how late to stay out. Or who you can talk to or not talk to. That's right. What you can read. What you can watch. I'm a grown man. So build a life that you want right now. That's what living for yourself is. Yeah. Wow.

[00:27:07] Doc, let's see. We're at 2911. My men have about a half hour attention span. So out of everything you've told me, what are the top three things you want to convey to these guys and say, hey, this is what I want you to concentrate or think about as you're going on your journey. These are the top three things I want you to think about while you're headed down that road. So first off, this is your chance to truly live for yourself, not for anybody else.

[00:27:34] Not the friends of your ex, not your family, not your ex, not kids, like not anyone, not old friends. Literally for yourself. So let's take advantage of that. What do you want? What are the goals that you want to create for you, not for anybody else? Maybe difficult to think about because now you are you. You are, it's a different life than you thought you'd be on, but it's now, it's now truly yours. And so plot that out. So think, really think about that.

[00:28:04] Make, you can write a letter from your future self to your past self or write a letter currently in terms of who you are and who you want to be, whatever it is that can help you do some reflection around that. Remember that confidence is a skill and if you're not trying to build it, then it's going to get weak. And so listen to some podcasts, read a book, talk to friends, build that skill, belief in yourself and belief in the things that you can do.

[00:28:30] And then really take a hard look at the environment around you because based on those goals that you want, based on the confidence that you want to create, are the people closest to you, the people that are serving you? And if not, we need to change that. Wow, Doc, I appreciate it. And man, the whole time you're talking, my mind just going, work, divorce, work, divorce. The whole time, I have never done that with a guest because I was coming up with these situations. But let the people out there know how to get a hold of you and I'll have all your contact

[00:28:59] information in the show notes. Yeah, check out the book, Becoming Fearless. It's everywhere that you'd probably buy a book, audio, ebook, paperback. Amazon's a good spot to get it. If you want to learn more about me, go to liveforyourselfconsulting.com. That's liveforyourselfconsulting.com. And I'm super active on LinkedIn if you want to connect there too. All right, Doc, I appreciate it. Like I said, I've got, man, I think I asked you like four, probably six, seven questions. I got like 25. So we're definitely going to have to revisit this.

[00:29:28] This was fun. This was one of those things where it's way different than you think it was going to happen. And I had a blast.