67: The Divorce Glow-Up Is Just a Skillset

What if the things you think you’re “bad at” aren’t flaws, but simply skills you haven’t practiced yet?

This week’s episode is about stripping away the shame and drama around struggle and seeing it for what it is: a skill you can learn.

I share a moment with my health coach that completely shifted my perspective—when she told me that eating three meals a day instead of snacking was “just a skill.” Those three little words took the heaviness out of the struggle and opened the door to an entire framework for the post-divorce glow-up.

Together, we’ll explore:

• Why reframing struggles as skills changes everything
• Dating as a skill (from profiles to boundaries to spark)
• Money as a skill (budgeting, investing, and yes—fat bank accounts are sexy)
• Parenting as a skill (it’s not you, it’s just practice)
• Strength and health as skills (lifting, eating, sleeping—learnable)
• Making new friends and building a support network (awkward at first, then easier with reps)
• How to release shame and practice your way into a life you love

Your glow-up isn’t about perfection or innate talent. It’s about repetition, practice, and compassion.

So the next time you think you’re failing? Remember this: you’re not failing—you’re practicing. And your glow-up is just a skillset away.

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Transcript

0:49

Hello, Leva. I am so excited to talk to you about our topic today because my mind was blown away this last week. Sometimes they're just those things that people say that are such common sense that it just hits like, I guess my mind was just ready for this information, a few months ago. I hired a health coach to help me with My post-menopausal metabolism and body that I got going on, it's like driving a different kind of vehicle. So I'm trying to learn how to be the best steward of this body. I've still got kids at home. I'm just starting college again, and so I needed some extra support. One of the goals that I had set in working with my health coach is that I've noticed over the past year since I've been working from home, taking my classes from home, just being home so much. That I had started to snack all day long. If I wanted to take a break, I would go and snack. If I went for a walk, I'd come home and I'd go get a snack. The kids are coming home soon. Let's go get a snack. And one of the goals I wanted to work on is simply eating three meals a day. You know, like a grownup and stop eating all day long. And my coach paused and looked at me and said, oh yeah, we can do that. That's just a skill. And I was like, what? Because when I usually set a health goal, I assume. I'm going to need the quote unquote correct diet, or the correct timing, the optimal nutrition, the motivation, the self-discipline, and she's like, oh, no, no, no. It's just a skill. It's just a skill. And those three little words, just a skill, it drained all of the drama out of me. It wasn't, oh God, I'm broken. I am doomed to struggle with snacking forever. Why can't I get this right? It was simply, oh, I haven't mastered the skill of just eating three meals a day and not snacking. I simply have not mastered the skill and that my darling is where we are going today. Because what if, what if. Just, just listen to me. What if dating financial decisions, parenting, building a strong healthy body, making new friends, getting a better job? Finding a career of your dreams, building a supportive social network. What if all of those things that feel so heavy after divorce learning to be alone without being swallowed up by loneliness? What if those are all just skills? And if they are all just skills, what if you can learn to master each one of those or in any area of your life? Because here's the thing, when something feels hard, many of us make it mean something bad about us, as if it's a character trait. Or a character flaw, and we start defining ourselves in that way. Like, I'm just a spender. I'm bad at money, or I'll never be good at dating. I am, I'm a bad flirter, or I'm a bad parent. I'm just not strong. I'm lazy. I hate working out, or I'm just not good at making friends as an adult. But what if. It's not a character trait. What if you have just practiced the wrong skills? What if this isn't who you permanently are? What if you're not broken? you just haven't learned the skills or maybe a big skill that needs to be broken down into smaller skills. You as a human, you have this incredible power over your mind. We don't control a lot of things. We don't get to control our husbands, their new wives, our children, our ex in-laws. We have zero power over outside events and outside people, but we do get to decide how we think. How we act and how we feel because we have this ability to give meaning to our lives and to focus our mind in such a way that we get the results that we want. And when we start to realize this and we stop defining ourselves by where we lack skills. As a personal deficit to our character, and we look at it all as, oh, this is just a skill, just a neutral skill. This is where we find strength For those of you that have given birth to another human, they learn how to eat. They learn how to sleep through the night. I promise you they do. If you have young ones, you may not believe me, but they actually do learn how to sleep through the night. There are so many things that we just take for granted that of course, this little human is going to grow up and they're going to hit these certain milestones. And yet all of those are simply skills. But we get to a point in our life, many of us as adults, and we think I'm fully baked. This is all I've got, but I promise you, you are not done. You can learn new skills One of the challenges that I repeatedly see is that many of us come out of divorce with a lot of shame. Shame for having stayed in a marriage that maybe we wished we would have left sooner, or shame for having picked the partner that we did, or if we're a stay at home mom. We have shame about having not developed a career or the financial capacity or education that we think that we need to, But bottom line, there's generally a lot of shame But if we take the shame out of the things that we struggle with, and if the things that we struggle with are just skills, life gets so much easier. If you didn't have a bunch of body shame. It would be so much easier to exercise. If you did not have shame about breaking up your family, you would have an easier time parenting. I promise you. If you did not have shame about your past sexual encounters, it would be easier for you to slip into taking a lover now. And when we think of all of the things that we want, simply being an accumulation of skills without the shame and skills can be practiced. Anything you want is there for the taking, because we know we can get a skill, we can get better at it, and then we. Grow up into the person that maybe we wish we were 10 years ago, but we get to do that now and we get to do it now with the awareness of who we are as a post-divorce woman and post-divorce women Are really powerful and can be so joyful. I mean, I'm describing myself, of course, and all of the people that get to hang with me, so that includes you. But let's start talking, impractical terms of some of the skills Because I throw out a word like dating and dating is a skill, but dating is so many things, right? There's so many skills within that one word. So let's just start here because I know that some of you are out there in the wild world of dating. Some of you are literally out in the wild and others. Are on the wild world of Bumble and Hinge and Tinder and all of the other beautiful, amazing, kinky, funny apps out there. Now, nobody, and I mean, nobody is born knowing how to write the perfect dating profile or send a perfectly flirty text. It is a skill, and like any skill, you're gonna have some awkward reps. First dates can be boring. Text conversations can fizzle. There is such a thing as swipe fatigue when you get on the app and you're like, no, no, no, no. But none of that means anything about you and your character. It just means that you are not practiced. Because first dates can feel like a job interview, but they can also be super fun and adventurous and sexy and exciting. And yes, text conversations can fizzle, but that's also where sparks can fly and curiosity can build. Everything that you think is difficult about dating is something that you can learn to be good at. Think of dating, like playing the piano. You don't sit down and you're playing Beethoven on day one, you're practicing scales. You're banging out chopsticks, you stumble, you mess up. You hit the wrong notes. But it's the same with dating. If you're practicing the skill of romantic connection. Sometimes we can get in our heads about finding the one, but what if it's just practicing the skill? Practicing a skill of putting up a profile that gets responses. Practicing the skill of texting and making dates, practicing the skill of boundaries, and knowing the kind of person that you would most likely have the highest chance of connection. It's just a skill. Now, what about money? this is a huge one after divorce for many of us. A lot of us in my generation were raised in a time when it was far more common for the men to just handle the finances. So maybe your ex handled the bills or the investments, the taxes, and now you are trying to figure things out and feel overwhelmed. Maybe you don't even like to look at your bank account and you feel so much stress about it. But here's the truth. No one was born knowing how to manage money. Money is a skill. It is something you can learn and you can practice, and yes, you get to screw up along the way. Practicing a new skill is not about perfection, but every mistake is still a rep. Like when you go to the gym and you're going to be lifting heavy, you're doing warmup reps, you're doing lighter weights, so that you just get the muscle memory and you make sure that you have the mobility in your body to do the heavy lifts, but those still count as reps. Every bill paid on time. It's a rep. Every budget attempt, it's a rep. Every time you don't buy that thing that you suddenly think you want to buy in the middle of the night off of an Amazon ad, it's a rep. Learning to have a fat bank account. Oh, fat bank accounts are so sexy. I want that for each one of you. And it comes from doing the reps. There's so many amazing women talking about money. When I was growing up, I think it was. Susie Orman, but some of the women that I really love right now talking about money. a book came out recently called Rich Girl Nation. I loved that one. It specifically talks about relationships and marriage and how much it costs to be a woman and considering. All of those things and giving some just practical tips about money and investments. I love it. I also love financial feminist. Both of those books I think are great and can help you on your way to learning the skill of managing your money. But many of us get in our heads and we give up before we even start. some of us older gals may be afraid that you'll never be able to retire or retire in the way that you thought you were going to. And you know what, girl, you're gonna figure it out. You can learn the skills you can. Now let's take a step towards parenting. For those of you that have kiddos, parenting after divorce is its own special flavor of parenting. For some of us, like for me, I find it much easier. To parent as a single parent But some, some of you really struggle with parenting. And you're learning how to give your kids stability while you're trying to build stability within yourself. But what I have found over and over and over again is that if you are struggling to parent post-divorce, if your child is disrespectful, cannot calm down, will not follow instructions, or if you find yourself losing your shit and screaming at your kids, this is a skills issue. This is not a character trait. There's nothing that has gone permanently wrong with you or your child. It is just a skill, and I know this because I was that screaming parent many years ago, and I had children who were, um, disrespectful or who had a very hard time communicating with each other and their parents in a way that was productive. It's only when I really decided to double down on my parenting skills that life improved inside my home. To where now parenting feels pretty easy for me. I have kids from pre-teen up to full grown adults, and it's actually pretty awesome. we just communicate, we get things done. And I'm not saying this as a flex, I'm not bragging. I'm saying that I did the work. To gain the skills and to teach my children the skills so that. It's easy. It's easy. Now, I should say, side note, I don't have children who are autistic. I might have some A DHD sprinkled in there. My kids are pretty healthy. We don't have any mental health issues that I know of other than, you know, basic teenage angst. So I don't want to make light of your situation. Some of you need support beyond skills, but to get the support without the skills is never going to improve your life the way it would if you invest in skills, parenting skills for you, as well as self-management skills. For your children. I think the majority of the time we can improve the quality of our life at home with our children when we learn skills and the kinds of skills that I'm talking about for kids are teaching them how to speak calmly, how to accept a no answer, how to disagree appropriately, all those are simply skills Many women post-divorce that revenge body. And a lot of women struggle with both undereating and overeating for so many reasons because of our broken relationship with food in this country. But my goal for my clients. Is not to make your body your full-time project. I want it to be like, when you're learning the skill of driving after a while, especially on a stick shift, you no longer have to think through every single step. It's not push in the clutch, put it in this gear. But when you're first learning, it can feel kind of herky jerky and it can be difficult. But now I can just get in the car and drive. And when you've learned the skills of how to nourish yourself, how to get good rest, how to hydrate yourself, how to allow for good recovery for your body, how to manage your nervous system, it becomes really easy because those are just skills that you have learned. And I have recently learned that getting a good night's sleep is also a skill. I used to think I just roll the dice. What kind of a sleep am I gonna have tonight? But I know now that I am far more likely to get a deep restful sleep if I do certain things, just skills. Now admittedly, because I don't love to coach women around weight loss and make their body their whole personality, that's not something I love to coach around though. Something I will never shut up about are the joys of weightlifting and getting a really strong body so that you can do things. I'm not so into how your body looks as, as much as I'm interested in what can you do with that body? How much can you enjoy it? So I want to remind you, none of us was born knowing how to lift weights. Or the proper mechanics for running, or how to hold a balanced pose in yoga or to build an effective meal plan. But every time you work out, it's a rep. It's money in the bank for you. Every healthy choice is practicing a new skill. Every time you decide to take a little walk after dinner, instead of sitting and scrolling, you're learning that new skill. Discipline is freedom, but discipline is also just a skill. And as you practice certain disciplined actions, it becomes natural. It's not something you even have to think about. It's just automaticity. It's. Just the way things are. It's just a skill if your health is not where you want it to be, you have just been practicing skills that get you a certain result and you might wanna consider learning some different skills, but it is just a skill. Another area that women struggle with is making new friends. Adult friendship gets a bad rap, and it can often feel impossible, but it is not magic. It too is a skill. Last week, one of my college aged daughters, she went to her first networking event, so she called her mother for advice, and she went and she killed it by being curious, being truly interested in other people, asking questions, and then following up. All of those things are skills. Some of the other skills that you can work on in order to make new friends are introducing yourself, speaking up in conversations, asking people for their names, following up, offering an invitation to someone to coffee or to a walk in the park or to a concert. And the skill of being vulnerable, asking for what you want, it's likely you're gonna suck at it at first. It's not the same as when we were kids on the playground and we just walk up to someone and just say, hi, you wanna be my friend? But it's not gonna be that bad. finding new friends as an adult is a lot like dating. The romantic dating, it can be awkward, but it's just a skillset and you need to build the skill of willingness to be bad at something so that you can get what you ultimately want. And friendship is built on showing up consistently. It's not about finding the perfect friend. I would've never guessed that Brita Joe would be my bestie. She lives two states over and is a very, very different kind of person than I am, but we're able to consistently show up for each other. So it's not even that. You need to have a best friend that lives. In your state or in your city, there are lots of ways to find really good friends. But one of the things that I think we need to get better at as far as our friendships is to be honest about how inconvenient friendship can be. But as we grow in our trust and our love for other people that we're building relationships with, we're willing to have those inconveniences for the sake of the friendship. And this builds into a larger issue of building a supportive social network. I know that was a really big deal for me. I had left Mormonism right before I left my marriage, and I moved to a new city. And when I'm talking about a social network, I'm talking about more than one new friend who lives two states away. This is like having local people And curating a whole support system. Some of the skills that are needed to build your social network are things like setting boundaries, being able to communicate with people about what you need, having clarity around how you can show up For other people so that you can begin practicing reciprocity so that you're both giving and receiving support. Not that you're always giving, but people with whom you feel like you can. It's safe to receive choosing spaces that feel safe for you to start building this network. You might find people that you can add to your network from neighborhood book clubs, maybe your. Actual neighbors on each side of your house, maybe at the gym? Not sure. I have met some awesome people at my gym, so maybe you'll luck out as well. Maybe alumni groups. churches are notorious for a lot of things, but I think one of the best things about churches is that they're effective at community building, whether those are healthy communities or not for women, you get to decide. Online communities can certainly be a part of it. All of these aspects of our post-divorce life are less about luck and who we are as far as character traits, and they are far more about strategy plus repetition. They're just a skill, and when we decide, like intentionally decide to build our life post-divorce, step by step, brick by brick, rep by rep, our life gets so good so fast, and it's kind of a two part process like I talked to you about. The need to let go of the shame and stop defining ourselves by the lack of skillset. So that's step number one. But step number two is actually choosing some skills to work on. I don't care if your parenting is terrible and you have no investments, and you feel like you're never going to retire and your dating life is non-existent, but you wish you were partnered. All of those things, all of them can be remedied by learning new skills. Dating is a skill. Money is a skill. Parenting is a skill. Building a strong body is a skill. Friendship is a skill. Building your social network is a skill, and that means you're not failing. You are not failing. We can let go of the guilt and shame about being where we are in our journeys, and we can decide to start practicing. some new skills. Divorce is such a great time in a woman's life. I know that some of you feel like, oh, I'm starting over. Wow. But for me it's like, oh my God, I get to start over. Fresh start here. I come. And granted it can be really scary. It was really scary for me. But starting over in that fresh start sort of way can be so exciting when you see it as simply a succession of skills between where you are now and the life that you want to build. We are what we. Repeatedly do so if you have a life that has created a certain result that you no longer want, be honest about it. Take a look at it. Decide what is the smallest, simplest skill that you can start practicing right now and repeatedly do that. This isn't about self-discipline, it's just about practice. It's not talent, it's not motivation. It's just what you repeatedly do. For me, eating three meals a day and not snacking, it's just a. Skill. It's just a skill. So if you catch yourself saying that you suck at something, just push back on that a little bit or a lot of bit, because you are simply lacking in a skill and that means nothing about you. Are you open to practicing the skill of. Looking at your bank account or taking pictures of yourself, of telling yourself good things about yourself and the possibilities in your life. Most women are very clear on something that they want, and it usually falls into health, wealth, or relationships, and one of those areas probably pops out to you. Just make a list of the skills that you're going to need in order to make that a strength in your life. And then just pick one, pick a small skill, and then you practice it over and over and over and over again. It's just a skill, babe. It's just a skill. So maybe it starts with parenting or friendship or money, or maybe for me it's learning how to do my school studies without taking breaks in the pantry. But the biggest glow up that you are going to experience is realizing that every area of your life can be changed by learning new skills. And if it's a skill. then you can practice it and you can become really fucking good at it. So my love, remember this, you are practicing, you're practicing some new skills, And your glow up is just a skill set waiting to be mastered just one skill at a time. You got this. I'll talk to you next week.