Your Divorce Was Not a Coincidence with Sara Fishkin

The day Sara Fishkin stood in her shower, everything had fallen apart. Her marriage was over. And in that moment, instead of collapsing further into it, something shifted. She decided to stop being the victim of her story and get curious about what was in it for her.

What she found changed everything, including what she does now.

Sara is a transformational mindset and prosperity coach whose work is built on one core idea: your subconscious patterns, the ones you picked up in childhood, the ones modeled by your parents, the ones you never consciously chose, are running the show. And until you change the film, the movie on the screen stays the same.

In this conversation, we go deep.

We talk about how Sara's divorce played out as an almost exact replica of her parents' divorce and why that's not a coincidence, what it actually means that your behaviors in marriage were mostly automatic, not intentional, the difference between watching your life and leading it and the moment both of us realized we'd been doing the former, why saying yes to a marriage when you're not fully in it is itself a generational pattern and how we pass that down without knowing it, and what it looks like to work at the level of subconscious belief rather than just mindset or motivation.

Sara uses an analogy that's going to stick with you: the old-fashioned movie projector. The light is always shining. The question is what film you're running through it.

Her message to women newly out of divorce: it can be pretty dark at the beginning. But if you can just start asking, what's the gift in this?, it becomes able to find you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello everyone. Happy afternoon. I am so happy to have Sarah Fishkin here with us. Sarah is has an interesting story, an interesting journey. And I'm going to let you tell, I'm going to let you tell everybody about it. So welcome, Sarah. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Thank you. I'm I'm doing really well today and I'm happy to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yeah, me too. And we just found out we're uh bosom buddies because we both uh are living in New Jersey. So who knew? That's great.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Representing the garden state here.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

That's right. That's right. So, Sarah, why don't you um tell everybody who you are, where you're from, tell us a little bit about your story and and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Sure. Okay. Well, first, uh, before I launch into that, I just wanted to remark on something that I could already tell right off the bat being in this community that is there's a different feeling in this community. I have I have joined other divorced women's Facebook groups, and I just want to first just say that um your community has a different energy to it. It feels like a very positive, um, growth-oriented healing space. And I just wanted to commend you on that because it's very apparent. And um, I have joined and left other groups because I um felt like the narrative was um kind of going in the opposite direction. And so I just first wanted to to say that to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Thank you for that, because that's exactly what we're aiming for. We don't want to be in the victim space, we want to be in the this is my time to rise and shine. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yes, and that's why I felt immediately commented to interview because that I'll I'll share a bit of my story, but that has what I have really divorced, it was a gift to me. And and I'll tell a little bit about my story, but my my my mission now is to support others to make it a gift for themselves. That really it's like opening a portal into um the life that you've always wanted to live, but we're being held back by by certain things. So I'll talk about my story and and and what I do first. So well, I'm from I'm from the East Coast, and I grew up just across the river here, and I grew up in a divorced family. So my parents got divorced when I was about seven, um, going on eight. And that really made a huge uh impression on my my life, though I didn't know it at the time. I um grew up and when I left high school, I was really instantly on a search, pretty much, like on a search to really understand um what my purpose is, what I what I'm here to do, and and really felt quite lost. Like I really had a very strong sense of myself as a um spiritual being as a very young child. I had a sense of like um that there's a much greater reality than than what appears to be. And my experience growing up, I was really around a lot of people who were not getting along, especially um my mother and stepdad after my parents divorced, as if that wasn't you know enough. Then my mom actually um had a more, even more difficult relationship with the person that she got together with. So I grew up around a lot of people who were constantly in conflict and there was a lot of instability in my home life. And this, like, you know, this physical life that we see just didn't make a lot of sense to me. Um, what made sense to me was was the greater realms of the unseen. I was just that kind of a child, but it made it very hard to navigate the life. I didn't have a lot of stability growing up, so I grew up and then felt very pretty lost and unstable. So I went on just this long journey and um never found the thing that was like my place. I I started college and then I quit college. I studied herbal medicine, I quit herbal medicine school. I went to massage school, I quit massage school. There was always some reason that what I was doing was just not right. And that left me in a position of not having an established career or an established livelihood and put me in a position of then just settling for doing things for to earn money that didn't actually nourish my soul. Um, I fell back on gardening and uh landscaping and did that for a long time, but wasn't nurtured by that. I would just like pick, you know, I was picking weeds out of the cracks of people's patios. I felt like an outdoor housekeeper, and all along I just was yearning to know what it is I'm supposed to be doing in this life and to do it, and to be financially stable and happy and free. And I would write about these ideas I had in my journals for for years. I have stacks of journals where I would write about what it is I wanted to create and do, but none of it was happening. It was like there was some sort of block in between my inner life and my outer experience. And I um in hindsight, I realized that what happened was growing up around so much conflict, my nature was to automatically try to take care of everyone around me. And I really lost connection with myself, with like what do I love? Who am I? What am I here to do? What, you know, what do I what do I even truly gravitate towards? It just became um something that I was totally disconnected from, and that even influenced choices I made in my relationships. So I married someone who um it's not that I didn't love him, but I wasn't in love with him. Like I didn't even know what being in love with anything meant. I had to just like shut that part down before I even knew I had shut it down. And I had three beautiful children with this with this man, and we were together and like best friends. I mean, it wasn't like we had a bad relationship, but um deep down there was always this feeling of like, this isn't quite right. Same with the rest of my life. That's the theme I was carrying just everywhere. And ultimately, the way that played out was he um had an affair with someone else, they fell in love, um, he left me, we got divorced, and I was suddenly um single parenting my twins who were three at the time, and my older one who was seven, in the position of not having an established career, not even really knowing like who I really was, because I always put everyone else first, and just um really having to scramble because our finances were already quite limited. So when it all came time to split it up, and you know, I got a pretty small alimony and child support package, and there I was just feeling uh totally abandoned, rejected, um, lost, and scared and overwhelmed. And that's all to say that sometimes we get to a point where what has come before finally gets to a head, you know, like a pimple, then it comes to a head and it pops. And that was my popping moment where it pretty much was the lowest point of my life. And I had a moment I remember very clearly in the shower one day, um feeling so sorry for myself, where I had this voice come into my mind that just said, There's gotta be something really good in this. There's gotta be something good in this because life itself is good. I remember making a shift in the shower that day to that said, to say basically, I'm gonna find out what, I'm gonna find what that is. And I remember opening the shower curtain and stepping out and feeling like a different orientation towards what was going on. Whereas before I had been feeling so much like the victim, then I was suddenly curious to to to find what was good in it. And soon after that is when I met my my mentor, Bob Proctor. I don't know if he was. Um, so I'm that's a long loop around to say, so I'm a certified coach with his institute. And I'm also a I call myself a transformational mindset and prosperity coach. And what I do now, like after coming through that experience and working with Bob and his teachings, to understand how literally my subconscious patterns from my childhood were were the only cause of all of my life experiences. And I mean all. That is what finally helped me to to discover my purpose, which is to help people. I help people to actualize their their hearts' desires in life through transforming their subconscious patterning because that's what was stopping me. I didn't know it. There was just always something, and Bob helped me to understand what that was, and it was my subconscious beliefs and and habits that were keeping me from everything that I wanted. And I don't think I would have necessarily found that if I hadn't had to really face it head on through my divorce.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah. It's interesting because your story reminds me of mine in that I don't think I knew really who I was until I went through my divorce. I don't think I I feel like I was more of a like I watched my life, I didn't lead my life, yeah. Until I went through my divorce, and I was like, wait a minute, who's in charge? Right. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Mm-hmm. Yes. And my divorce, this was the the real kicker for me. This is how I knew, like, okay, there's something in this that is a teaching for me big time because the way my divorce played out was almost an exact replica of my my parents' divorce when I was a child. My mom met someone else, left my dad. There was the the similarities were to to someone who doesn't understand the laws that govern um manifestation, they would say, wow, what a crazy coincidence. But no, not at all. Literally, what I ingested as a child just became reflected in my adult experience, almost to like exact details almost. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Yeah, it it's interesting to hear you say that because I think about who I had as a role model, and again, my mom, right? And she's awesome. Um but I modeled a lot of how I showed up in my first relationship after how I saw her showing up in her relationship with my dad and in her relationship with us, because mom was always mom always took a took a back seat. It was first, it was my dad and then the kids. It might have been the other way around, maybe her kids first and then you know my dad, but she was never part of that equation because she always put other people first. So I always thought that the way for me to be a good wife was to put my husband first, to put his needs first, to help him grow his business, to do all of these things. And when I came out of my divorce, I was like, who am I and what do I want?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yes, and and these things we don't even necessarily well, you said you thought for me, most of the way I behaved in my marriage was just automatic. I didn't even intentionally think any of it, it just was how I was based on exactly what you said, that modeling. And that's what I mean by these subconscious paradigms and these patterns. Like my mom, when I was growing up, she was an adamant stay-at-home mom. And she would say, I heard her say a few times that she would rather be on welfare than go to work and put her children in daycare. So, what did I do when I got divorced? I pretty much went on welfare automatically, assuming there's no way I can really get um a job that would allow me to earn plenty of money and also be really present for my kids. That just wasn't what was modeled to me. It was sort of like either or. You either just stay home and fully give it to the kids, or you go and you work and you never really see them. It's like, but that was all automatic. It wasn't conscious.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

And and I'll tell you, I say I thought because that's where I landed after I did all my own. Right. Okay. But when I when I was going through it, it was like, well, this is just like I it wasn't even like I didn't even think because it was just normal that this is how yes, it would be. Yes. So the the the the awareness came after it was like, okay, yeah, it's it's not all his fault. I clearly had a say in this, you know, how this relationship went. So let me do a little digging. And yeah, that's how I learned about, you know, all the different things I learned about.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah, and I would say, you know, even me, and I don't I don't have regrets about being married and having the children, all that. I I accept it all as a beautiful part of my journey. But if I'm a hundred percent honest, the very fact that I said yes to marry someone that I didn't have a 100% I I know, like full body, I know I want to be with this person, was exactly modeled by my mom. She the person that she then was with after my dad was was that really yeah, was not was um, she wasn't coming from I'm totally in love with this person. And so it's a long history. It's a we pass these things down through generations of um abandoning our ourselves and we don't even know it.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

There's there's a lot of social conditioning in that, right? Because there's a lot of we behave we behave most, I would say, or a lot of women behave in a way that they think is how they should behave based on what society says this is how a woman should behave. And yeah, I don't know if it's because I hit 50 plus now. I'm like, says ooh, exactly. Right, like says like first of all, the rebel in me that's never come out in my whole entire life is now don't tell me what to do. Yeah, I see that right, yeah, and and now it's like okay, it's my life, my rules, and it's such an empowering way to live.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yes, and that's why I love what I do. So, what I do is I help people to realize that the power, the creative power is within us, it's within us, and it has everything to do with how we are um thinking and then feeling, and it's our feeling that controls what we do, and but the power is on the inside. There's nothing happening to us, it's happening through us.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

It's yeah, what you just said right now, the the image that came into my head is Luke Skywalker training with Yoda, yeah, right? The force was always within, yes, and it's exactly the same for us.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yes, it is, and I like to use I love that analogy. I like to use an analogy of like that old-fashioned um movie projector. So there's the light, right? And it's shining, and that is the whatever your spiritual or religious orientation is, it doesn't matter. That is the um undying consciousness of of of life. It just is, and it's always shining and it's eternal. And then there's what we see on the screen, there's the movie that's playing, and then there's the film. And where we come in there, we think that it's all on the screen, and if we don't like what's playing, those like we're all trying to just go up to the screen and change it, but there's nothing actually tangible there to grab onto. It's all in the film, and so I'm here to help people just change the film because if you change the film, then what you see on the screen has to change. The light's gonna shine through whatever whatever you put in there. It doesn't say, ooh, those are really self-negating, self-limiting concepts there. Don't put that in. It doesn't say that or not. It's it's all it's unconditional, it's fully accepting. It just is. We're the ones who have to decide, okay, I don't like what's on the screen. So what am I running? And I realized, whoa, my life had gotten like I really didn't like almost any of what I was seeing on the screen. And I really was, if I didn't have three kids, was ready to just because I was fine on the spiritual plane. I I knew like I would be good. And this it was this physical life that was so hard for me, but I wasn't going to do that, obviously. So what I learned how to do was change the film.

unknown 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Yeah. So when you work with people, um tell us a little bit about the process that you go through with them.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

So what I like to do is the way that I work with people is in a um a goal-oriented way. Okay. So I like to first help people identify their purpose. Like, what is like, why are you here? What are what is your unique reason for being here? And it's some people are like, oh my God, what's my purpose? Big capital P. But it's like another way of saying that is like, what lights you up? Yeah. That you just love, that is your orientation that maybe you you knew when you were really young, but you lost it because you had all this conditioning about what you thought you should do or couldn't do, or what is your purpose? And then I help people to build a vision for their lives. And that's why I call my coaching business inner vision coaching. We build a vision of what does your life look like as the expression of this purpose? Like, what are you doing? What are you, how are you spending your day, your time? Who are you with? Where are you living? What is you what kind of activities are you are you in? And this is all coming from an ideal inner orientation towards what makes your heart sing. And then we create one or two goals. Because I work with people for about six months at a time. Okay. And so in that process of six months, we are setting out to achieve these. Goals that are helping you build out this vision that are connected to your purpose. And these goals are um very interesting. They are they're not something you know how to do. You already know how to do it. I say, let's go back to the drawing board and and find another goal because the whole purpose of this goal is your personal growth and to cause you to draw upon your true inner power.

unknown 22:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

And so you set these amazing goals that you have no idea how to achieve, but it's something that you really, really want and you're really excited about it, and it kind of scares you a little bit. And then we get to work immediately on looking at, okay, what are your um beliefs regarding these goals? Like, what are the voices in the in the room? What are the naysayers? Who are the naysayers in the room right now that are coming up that are starting to talk to you about um your ability and probability of achieving these goals? And then we work with a process that involves a lot of visualization and auto-suggestion that reprograms the subconscious mind to um start affirming a new belief. And then we integrate that into behavior by identifying what are the habits that you currently have that are the biggest gaps between what you know and what you're like, what you know would take you closer to your goal, but you're not doing it. And what you know is really holding you back, but you're still doing it anyway all the time. We start to work on those those habits. And when you're when you're working on belief with the with the with the affirmations combined with the habits, combined with the visualization, um, a lot starts to shift. And then we we keep going, we go step by step through a program actually that I facilitate that was originally created by Bob Proctor. It's called Thinking Into Results. So it's a 12-step program that takes place over six months that takes you all the way from setting your goal all the way through the process of transforming your subconscious paradigms and reprogramming your self-image, how you see yourself, how you feel about yourself, integrating that into your behavior, dealing with fears, dealing, it's like it goes step by step through a logical progression, basically. And I coach people through that and bring my own personal experience to it. And we also really heavily delve into studying the laws, meaning like the law of attraction, the law of vibration, the law of polarity, the law of assumption, because law of cause and effect. When you understand how these laws work, because they're working anyway.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yeah, they're you might as well use them to your advantage.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

If you don't know how they work, what's happening is you're unconsciously allowing them a lot of unwanted stuff to get caught in that system, and it's gonna it's gonna do the same thing no matter what. So when you know how it works, then you have ability to deliberately operate in a harmonious way, as opposed to just sabotaging and creating chaos everywhere in your life. Now you're you are deliberately operating in in accordance with these laws, and and things really start shifting in a very positive way, and um, in a way that from the outside, people are like, that is a crazy synchronicity, that's an amazing coincidence. But it's very logical when you understand the laws.

unknown 25:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

That sounds very, very, very cool and how you it it feels like it's methodical, but it comes from the heart. Yeah, which I love.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

I love that way of saying it. I I agree, I feel that way too. And I was I had all the heart my whole life. I was really missing. I was missing like 99% of the methodical well, now you have it, which is a good thing, and it's so helpful because it brings organization, it brings order to us, to our lives, to our minds, and it we need that.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Yeah. So um any final words before we sign off? Anything that you think is important for the women in the group to know and to know.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Well, yeah, just back to well, I guess there's women in this group who are, you know, some have been divorced for a long time, some are just newly divorced. I think especially what I want to say to those who are newly or recently, and when I say recently, I mean gosh, anywhere within like first five years of being divorced, it feels recent to me. Um what I want to what I want to say is that um this truly uh is as you had said, you know, uh it's it's a it's an opportunity to really discover who you really are and what you're here to do. And what feels like adversity is there's it's always a gift in disguise. And that for me, that was the biggest thing when I just started to look for, okay, I don't know what it is, but I know there's a gift in this. I know there's something good in this. When I when I switched, made that switch inside of myself to just be the detective to find that, it started, it was then able to find me. So I I just want to say that for for more the newly divorced uh women, just to even start to just ask yourself that question because it can be pretty dark and um hard at the beginning when everything is crumbled.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, yeah, and piggybacking on that, I think it the approaching things from a place of curiosity versus a place of judgment. Yes, that's when the work begins.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yes, yes, exactly. That's when it all starts. Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Awesome, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here. Everyone, thank you so much for watching. If any of what Sarah said resonated with you and you want to get in touch with her, she'll put all her links in the comments below. Don't hesitate to reach out to either Sarah or to myself. Uh, we hope that you enjoyed this interview today, and I guess we'll see you on the next one. So thank you, everyone, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.