Episode 107 - Healing Past Divorce with Joshua Ludlum
Leh Meriwether: Welcome, everyone. I'm Leh Meriwether and with me is Todd Orston. Todd and I are partners at the law firm of Meriwether & Tharp, and you're listening to Meriwether & Tharp Radio on the new Talk 106.7. Here, you'll learn about divorce, family law, tips on how to save your marriage if it's in the middle of a crisis and even, from time to time, tips on how to take your marriage to the next level. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com.
Leh Meriwether: Todd, are you ready?
Todd Orston: Oh, I'm always ready. I was just enjoying all the hand gestures, Vanna, I am Leh, and with me is Todd and ... That was nice.
Leh Meriwether: That's just how it is.
Todd Orston: Yeah. We're sitting higher today than we normally do, so-
Leh Meriwether: We're in a new studio.
Todd Orston: Yeah.
Leh Meriwether: With new mics, so hopefully it sounds better.
Todd Orston: Well, tuck it in. Flex a little bit for the camera.
Leh Meriwether: I'm gonna start calling you Sasha.
Todd Orston: You are not Rick. I know Rick, and frankly you're no Rick.
Leh Meriwether: You'll have to watch our YouTube video to understand what we're talking about, 'cause we're recording this to YouTube at the same time. All right, well today we actually have a special guest.
Todd Orston: Yay!
Leh Meriwether: I was sure you were wondering who was sitting next to you.
Todd Orston: Yeah, it was either a guest or I'm calling security, so ...
Leh Meriwether: Well, today we're gonna go beyond the law a little bit and we're gonna give ... what's so funny.
Todd Orston: We're going beyond the law?! What is that?
Leh Meriwether: That means that sometimes-
Todd Orston: Are we breaking the law? Are we- You're gonna watch us commit some crimes today.
Leh Meriwether: No, what I'm saying is sometimes on the show we break down the law.
Todd Orston: Absolutely.
Leh Meriwether: We talk about the law surrounding family law and divorce, and how it especially applies here in Georgia, sometimes how it applies in other states, but sometimes we bring additional information to help people that's beyond what lawyers normally do because family law is an area that ... It's so raw, it's so personal, and lawyers, we have a limit of what we can do through the legal system.
Todd Orston: And on top of that we're always looking at it through the lens of an attorney.
Leh Meriwether: Right.
Todd Orston: And so we are ... it's not a bias issue, it's just the lens that we're looking through, it clouds our vision sometimes. It allows us to see things as an attorney and see things in a way that a person going through the process can't. That's why we are helpful to people. But sometimes it is absolutely good for attorneys to step back to try and look through their client's lens. Look through and see it in a way that we may not be able to see it because emotionally we're not connected.
Leh Meriwether: Right, exactly. So, we're not personally experiencing it and we are thinking very clinically sometimes, so to help us with that today, we actually have Joshua Ludlum. He's a realtor at Woodstock, he's a coach, a speaker, an educator at heart, and he loves to teach people how to live more abundantly and fearlessly. Now Joshua puts a significant focus in those areas on individuals with families going through a divorce, and after going through a divorce himself, and realizing there had to be a better way. Recognizing that much of the fear and shame that comes from divorce has to do with untrue beliefs that we hold about ourselves, about the resources around us, and about the people around us, he uses exponential evolution program, an exponential evolution program, that he's come up with to help people take action in their lives, get out of the scarcity and into the beliefs of abundance, and live an unstoppable life and the healing post-divorce program to help individuals know what resources are available to make the best decisions through the divorce process.
Leh Meriwether: You can read more about Joshua online at evolveexponentially.com and healingpastdivorce.com. Joshua thanks so much for coming on the show.
Joshua Ludlum: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Leh Meriwether: Well, we're glad you're here. I met Joshua, what two months ago?
Joshua Ludlum: About two months ago.
Leh Meriwether: Yeah, and he was telling me what he was doing and what he was trying to put together, and he shared with me his experience of going through it, so I of course invited him on the show, and since you weren't ... You know some people are afraid to talk about their experience going through a divorce, and the great thing about the way you explained it, what you went through, was it was you were focused on you. You weren't complaining about the process per se, you weren't complaining about your spouse, it was just, “Hey, here's what I went through and I wish I hadn't experienced these things,” and gosh. I don't want to take your story away from us, but before you tell your story-
Joshua Ludlum: Yeah.
Leh Meriwether: Tell us a little bit about ... give me a short summary of what you're doing.
Joshua Ludlum: What we're working on together?
Leh Meriwether: Yes.
Joshua Ludlum: Yeah, so you are a part of my program that I'm putting together, that's really about bringing all kinds of resources together for people going through divorce. When I went through the process I didn't know where to turn. I had zero clue where to turn, and part of the shame that just came up culturally for me, and even some of the religious upbringing that I had that said divorce is never an option, kept me from seeking out the resources that I need. So I wanted to bring those resources to people and so I'm bringing ... You are gonna be a part of that program talking about specific ... the law-specific questions in regards to divorce, but financial professionals, talking about it from my lens and from real estate; bringing in mental health professionals, even local church resources and saying, “Here are programs that are available to you so that you don't have to go through this alone.” And that you can get some questions answered, know who's on your team, and then go have access to those resources to be able to really dive into those really specific areas that you're gonna need help with.
Leh Meriwether: Awesome. So what is it that you're ... I know you're putting something very specific to help people heal past this divorce, and you've got this concept behind the three-limiting and the three-freeing beliefs. Do you mind mentioning what those are real quick?
Joshua Ludlum: Yeah, I'll talk about them really quickly. They're ... the idea is that we believe three different ideas about ourselves, about the resources that are around, and about the people that are in our life, we can either have a scarcity mindset that says, “I am not enough, there is not enough, the people that are around me are going to try to take from me or from the resources around me,” or we can live in abundance with those that says, “I am enough, I'm worth standing up for myself, I'm worth going out and finding the resources.” Those resources are there so I can act with the knowledge that I can find those resources.
Joshua Ludlum: Whether the people that are in my life right now, because divorces obviously a trying time where you're losing trust with some people that you've had trust with over the course of a long period of time, now it's going to be necessary to find out people who you can trust again and know who those people are. So we get into an alignment of I'm enough, there is enough and there are people around me who will support me in both of those beliefs. I believe that there's really nothing that we can't accomplish when we get those in the right alignment and. It takes a little bit of work and tweaking with all those, it's not just a change that happens. It's a cycle of action and then changing a belief and then taking an action again and that's what this program, the healing past divorce program is also designed to do, is to give those little action steps that people can take as well.
Leh Meriwether: Great. Well, do you mind sharing your story, your own personal story? What's led you to want to build this healing past divorce program?
Joshua Ludlum: Honestly, the divorce that I went through was not the worst one that you could probably tell many stories about, but it more came from the idea that as I grew up in the way that my religious upbringing was and the societal upbringing that divorce was not an option for me. I was the one who made the decision to go through the divorce and it left me feeling with a lot of guilt, left me feeling with a lot of shame so between those two, I stepped away from friends and family that probably could have helped me going through that. Also, I made decisions on things that were in guilt that were not in my best interest, and then probably also were not in the best interest of this new family that's emerging and how our family changed and grew, it wasn't in their best interest either.
Joshua Ludlum: I wanted to make sure that no one else ever had to go through that again, that they didn't have to feel like that they were alone, they didn't feel like that the financial decisions that were in front of them were so daunting that they had to make silly and stupid decisions really out of fear, that they can have the resources and they could always show up with abundance and that they could make the best decisions possible.
Leh Meriwether: Todd, we had to show a few months ago about Pro Se Divorce and we were talking about one of the things we have seen when people do it themselves is, when they're coming from a place of guilt they try to be generous, but what happens is they wind up being what we say stupidly generous. When I say stupidly, like they're-
Todd Orston: Overgenerous.
Leh Meriwether: Overgenerous, it puts him in a place where they can't be generous later on and they even have trouble making ends meet because they promised to pay too much in support or whatnot.
Todd Orston: The one thing I will say and the reason it resonates with me so much is because obviously divorce is a negative thing. I know it's positive, you can always look for the silver lining, but it is the breakdown of a relationship and the ending of a marriage. Sometimes it's for the best and it's going to be the best choice for the husband, for the wife, for the children, but it's still a breakdown of that relationship and a lot of people are impacted negatively. What's resonating with me is I love the positivity of this, it is be confident in yourself and obviously tell me if I'm wrong, be confident in yourself. You are surrounded by people that you can trust, that you should trust, don't hide the fact that you're going through the process, reach out because there are people out there and there are whatever groups out there that are there to help and I love that messaging.
Joshua Ludlum: The other side of that is you might not be in a situation today where you do have people that are surrounding you that they can help.
Todd Orston: That's right.
Joshua Ludlum: And knowing that those resources exist allows you to get outside of that nondecision and find those people. Realistically you might not have them today, you might not have the resources, they're out, here they are, let's go find them.
Leh Meriwether: Up next we're going to get it ... We're going to go a little bit deeper about how to get out of the scarcity mindset and into an abundance mindset.
Leh Meriwether: Welcome, everyone. I'm Leh Meriwether and with me is Todd Orston. Todd and I are partners at the law firm of Meriwether & Tharp, and you're listening to Meriwether & Tharp Radio on the new Talk 106.7. You want to read more about us you can always check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com. Well, today we've got Joshua Ludlum in studio with us in our new studio with signs in the background. We've had to explain that to Joshua but it's still exciting. Brand new studio, new equipment-
Todd Orston: We already agreed here playing Sasha today.
Leh Meriwether: No.
Todd Orston: I thought we agreed. I am fairly certain we agree the other way.
Leh Meriwether: What we're doing is we're talking about healing past divorce and Joshua just finished sharing his story of how he went through his divorce, how he felt like because of guilt he probably didn't work out the best agreement that he should have and not that it was an ugly divorce, it's just, it may have given it away a little bit too much that put them in a bad situation that he had the coal out of and it was partly because he had what he describes as a scarcity mindset at the time. Right now we're going to, we're going to dive in a little bit more about the three limiting beliefs and the three freeing beliefs and how you can work past it so we can better understand Joshua's new program and what he's putting together to help people change their mindsets so they can get through the divorce and come out in a better place. All right, so let's talk about the first one, you talked about getting out of the scarcity and into abundance of your view of yourself that you're enough, what do you mean by that?
Joshua Ludlum: We're bombarded on all sides by messages that says you're not enough, you'll never, you'll never meet up to the standard that's out there on social media, all of that. You add on top of that in divorce, the feelings of shame and the guilt and in isolation sometimes that comes with that and it exacerbates a problem, I think already exists within people in some cases. There's a movement to talk about oh, I am enough, but it's not enough just to look in the mirror and give yourself positive affirmations that says I'm enough, I'm enough, I'm enough because those things that are affecting that are at the core of who we are and not just on the surface. It's less about just reciting this positive affirmations and really getting down to the core of what do I believe about myself, what do I know about myself, what does the outside world, how does that outside robin effect on that and how can I turn that volume down on the outside world and turn the volume up on the things.
Joshua Ludlum: Some of it in the outside world with what my church says about me, that I am enough, what my family says about me, what I say about myself and turning the volume up on those-
Leh Meriwether: On the positive part.
Joshua Ludlum: Yep.
Leh Meriwether: A lot of people that you talk to, there is that feeling of that I'm a failure. My marriage failed, that's the biggest expression of my person is my marriage because we thought we had a solid relationship and now I failed.
Joshua Ludlum: One of the things that I remember texting to my ex wife at the time was I had, I had also at that time right before that left the church that I grew up in, and then now I'm leaving a marriage and now I texted her and I was like, “I don't have anything left to fail at.” And I was seriously considering divorce. I was like, I failed my religion, I failed my marriage, what's next to fail at? That was kind of the rock bottom for me, that was like, I can't stay in this. This is a terrible spot to have, but it did feel like that much of a failure to me that it was, where do I go from here?
Leh Meriwether: A belief that I'm enough, what does it help create for people?
Joshua Ludlum: It's hard to go looking for the resources that you need when you don't feel like you're worthy of getting them. It's hard to stand up for yourself with your soon to be ex-spouse with the people that are around you when you don't believe that you're worth standing up for, it's hard to set boundaries, it's hard to live in integrity when you don't believe that the things that you are worth standing up for, so it creates a lack of connection with other people, it creates isolation in some cases but really getting into that belief that I am enough says no, I'm going to stand up for myself. I'm going to set boundaries here, I'm going to ask for the things that I need going through this divorce, I'm going to ask for the things that I need from the people that are around me to be able to help support me and not live in that fear that people are going to reject me or that if I go searching for those things, that they don't exist, they're not out there.
Leh Meriwether: What is it that you're doing with healingpastdivorce.com to help people work past that feeling that I'm not enough?
Joshua Ludlum: It's about breaking down all of the components that are involved with the divorce, there's the financial aspects of divorce, there is the emotional aspect to divorce, so I'm bringing experts that will be able to talk about how do you assess where you're at right now in each of those different areas so that you can make adjustments to say, again, I'm worthy of taking these steps, here's a great snapshot of where I'm at right now. Now that I know where I'm at, I know what steps I need to take, I know what other resources they need all and I know what other people that I need to pull in because going it alone is never going to be the right answer.
Leh Meriwether: I love what you said that when you feel like you're not enough, you don't reach out for the sources, the resources that are there. We're going to talk about resources in the next segment, but that's very powerful because-
Todd Orston: Yeah, no, you're right. I'm sorry, finish your thought. I was about to jump in.
Leh Meriwether: Go ahead, jump in.
Todd Orston: No, go, go, go, go.
Leh Meriwether: You're not talking, you haven't been talking.
Todd Orston: We have enough time.
Leh Meriwether: There are resources out there, sometimes that's part of the reason why we do this radio show for example, but some people will get so ... they put their head in the sand. They just allow ... they shut down personally, put their head in the sand and we've actually had a few shows about that. When you do that, you basically get run over in the divorce process. You can't ignore this, you've got to go through it because you put yourself in a much worse spot.
Todd Orston: I'll also say this though, absolutely divorce can be very isolating. I'm hearing that from you, you felt isolated because you felt like you would let down family, let down your church, but what I'm hearing is you really need to get your mind right because we've had other situations where they didn't feel that pressure regarding religion that they had let down a church or a temple or whatever, and they had plenty of family around them. But sometimes the advice they're getting from family isn't the right advice. What I'm hearing and please tell me if I'm wrong, is this is really about getting to know you, getting to know yourself and figure out where you are emotionally, where you are financially, where you are on all aspects, so that way you can really start to figure out for yourself, not be told by third parties who may not have your best interests at heart or who may just not know right from wrong, figure out where you are.
Todd Orston: Fix Yourself, get better, get healthy, and then you can really look in a mirror and say, “Okay, this is who I am and this is what I want to be.”
Joshua Ludlum: Absolutely, and I think it's an iterative process where you adjust that belief about yourself and you go, "Okay, people that are here in my life are not ones who are going to take me where I need to go, but because I have a stronger belief about myself that I'm worth it, I'm going to go find those people." If the resources are out there, but I don't feel like I'm worthy of getting them that I'm not going to go, I'm not going to do that." That first step is assessing where you're at, but the other two steps are not. The second and third step they are, they're kind of, I'm kind of tightening each of those dials individually so that each one of those are being addressed all at the same time.
Leh Meriwether: The irony of this is that if you, this is where the emotion sort of takes over which is what you've got to help, which sounds like you're trying to help people work through. But if you are able to pull the emotion out for a moment, you realize that from a faith perspective you look at faith of across religions, there's this concept of forgiveness, in most of them, there's a concept of forgiveness. We're human, we make mistakes, unfortunately, some marriages fails, the relationships fail but that doesn't mean the end of the world. That's what forgiveness is about and gosh, if they were, if the church was filled with perfect people, the churches would be empty, if that's all they accepted.
Leh Meriwether: You have that component, then take out faith for a minute and let's just talk about ... just look at businesses. You talk to a lot of successful business owners and they say, our business was built not on a bunch of but on hundreds and hundreds of failure. So if you pull back and try to think a little more logically, which I know is extremely difficult going through a divorce, but that's when you allow the others to sort of what you just said, turn up the dial and those positive thoughts. Let them sink in, turn the dial down on some of your negative self talk and it'll help you pull out of this and start searching out for resources.
Todd Orston: I don't know if that marketing is going to work for our business though, come to Meriwether & Tharp the hundreds and hundreds of failures. I'm going to work on that during the next break and see if we can.
Leh Meriwether: I didn't mean we were failing in the courtroom and I wasn't mentioning Meriwether & Tharp, I'm talking about other businesses.
Todd Orston: Got it, success after success.
Leh Meriwether: That's right.
Todd Orston: All right, I got it.
Leh Meriwether: That's what builds up ... for attorneys it's success in the courtroom.
Todd Orston: You learn more from your failures than your success and again, you really need to self analyze. You really need to understand who you are and where you are to figure out how to get to that next place and make sure that next place is a good place.
Leh Meriwether: Up next, we're going to continue to go into this and we're going to talk about the resources and that there are enough resources out there to help you. Welcome, everyone. I'm Leh Meriwether and with me is Todd Orston. Todd and I are partners at the law firm of Meriwether & Tharp, and you're listening to Meriwether & Tharp Radio on the new Talk 106.7. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com. Well, today we're talking with Joshua Ludlum who has a very interesting story, a very compelling story about how he went through his divorce.
Leh Meriwether: He had a scarcity mindset going through the divorce may have made some decisions, not catastrophic decisions, but in hindsight he might have handled it a different way, he would have handled it a different way. He doesn't want others to kind of experience the same thing, he's actually come to Meriwether & Tharp to talk about working with us to help people with the nonlegal parts and the legal parts too. In fact, that's what we're going to talk about this segment, we're going to get into ... the last segment we talked about the scarcity mindset that I am not enough, I'm a failure and switching that to I am enough.
Leh Meriwether: Then when you start having the right positive mindset, that's when you reach out for help because you say I'm enough, but in some respects you're taking, like Todd said, you're taking a grasp of a handle on where you are right now emotionally, financially, and you're going, “I need some help.” Because you're enough as far as you're not a failure, but you need help. I mean, because you can't get through this on your own. Now we're talking about the resources side so you get to yourself in the right mental state, you start reaching out to people now. When I first met with you, you brought up something really interesting you said about lawyers, how you were afraid to bring in lawyers at first, can you talk about that on, on Erin, about what's your thought processes were when you were going through that part of the divorce?
Joshua Ludlum: Well, frankly, it was an amicable divorce and we didn't want to make it unamicable and we were afraid that by bringing lawyers into the process that they would put us at odds with each other. I think also I partially didn't want to hear some of the things that ... we talked about that guilt piece of it, I didn't want to hear some of the things. I knew what was best for me, so don't give me the law, but it wasn't until towards the end of, as we were getting ready to finalize the divorce process that some things came up. I won't go into what those were because they're very personal, things came up that were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we didn't talk about this, I've got to find out what's the legal process?
Joshua Ludlum: I was literally five days away from going into the courtroom and having to scramble to get the information that I needed for this. If I had gone through and I had asked some of these questions, that still may have come up, but I wouldn't have been in a scrambling situation in order to get through that so that fear that number one, I wouldn't be able to afford it, number two, that it would put me at odds where we thought we already had a great resolution and I didn't want to stir the pot.
Leh Meriwether: Let me say this, there are attorneys out there who might do more to stir the pot than keep you on that amicable track and there are attorneys who will really do everything they can to keep things amicable and work things through. That goes back to what you were talking about, about the importance of surrounding yourself with people, the same thing goes for an attorney. Make sure it's the right person for you, ask the right questions, we've done shows on that, ask the right questions, interview that person. Don't just pull a name from online and say, “This is who I'm calling and this will be my attorney.”
Leh Meriwether: Absolutely interview, talk, ask the right questions, and you may not even know the right questions yet, again, what's resonating with me is I love the thought of get yourself right. Get your mindset in the right place thinking about things in the right way, and then you'll be able to go out there and surround yourself with the right, because if not, if you don't feel like you're good enough, then the first person that opens their mouth and says, “I'm here to help you,” you're probably just going to trust and you're going to say, well, okay, because I don't think anybody better's coming along. It'll allow you to really ask the right questions and surround yourself with great people.
Joshua Ludlum: That's exactly right and the point of, again, from the resources' standpoint is yeah, there might be some terrible lawyers out there who would do that, but there's good ones as well. One of the things, honestly that attracted me to working with you guys and having you on my program was this program and really talking about, yeah, your business is divorce but you're not rooting for divorce. You're not rooting for people to go into a divorce, you're rooting for people to go into it with all of the best options and then be able to say, let's come out on the other side and let's come out with, with some grace and hope and that's what I'm about as well. To your point, when you are really strong about what you believe, those right people will show up that will be able to support you and those right resources will show up.
Leh Meriwether: At the end of the day it is ... You're the one who makes the ultimate decision so don't ... I would just say this to anybody that may be considering divorce or at that point that don't be afraid to go talk to the lawyer because ... And just make decisions like you don't have to hire the first one necessarily, question them, investigate them, heck, we have a whole show on the ... I think one of our first shows was the top 10 questions you should ask your divorce lawyer before you hire them. So it's all about learning and at the end of the day you can get the advice and choose to not to follow it.
Leh Meriwether: That may not be the best decision, but um, but you still have control over it and you don't have to going back to the cost part, you can use them on a consultation basis. We've talked about that. There's this feeling that I've got to pay 3,500 or $5,000 to retain a lawyer but you don't.
Joshua Ludlum: That's what I did, just take them on a consultation basis.
Leh Meriwether: Okay, and that's what you did towards the end?
Joshua Ludlum: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Leh Meriwether: Not at first.
Joshua Ludlum: Yup.
Leh Meriwether: Do you think that if you had talked to a lawyer early on it might have made a difference or you might have asked better questions?
Joshua Ludlum: I definitely would have asked better questions, I still feel like that ... you and I talked about the generosity piece of not allowing guilt to turn you into an overly generous person. One of the things that we talked about was part of that idea that there is enough is to be generous, but to be generous, you have to come from a place of actually having enough and believing that there is enough. When you are being generous because you feel guilty and because you live in a lack, that's not actual generosity.
Leh Meriwether: That's a great point.
Joshua Ludlum: That's a deprivation mindset that says I am going to do this because I feel guilty. We are talking about you can still be generous, but don't put it in the legal documents necessarily so that you can still feel like you're being generous, but it only if it's coming from that right spot.
Todd Orston: And you can feel guilty about an act, using adultery as an example because where we see that a lot is we will see a spouse who engaged in adultery, they feel guilty and then they go into negotiations and that guilt is affecting their decision making in terms of what they're going to offer. You can differentiate your guilt about an act from the feeling of scarcity and allowing that guilt to be so pervasive that it just clouds your judgment on anything and everything else. It doesn't mean you have to get to a point where you go, “Yes, I had an affair and I'm proud of it.” That is not what we're saying, but you can take that guilt and you can say that was behavior I should not replicate. I shouldn't do that again, it affected this relationship and put that to the side and say, okay, now I have to still be secure in who I am, I have to figure out the next steps and be truly generous.
Joshua Ludlum: Absolutely.
Leh Meriwether: Let me ask you, in addition to lawyers, what else have you seen, I'm just curious mind sharing, what else have you seen a looking back on things might you have wanted to bring into or what others may be getting ready to go into a divorce? We haven't talked about this question, so I'm just throwing this at you, what do you think people ... other resources people should consider?
Joshua Ludlum: Resources are definitely the ... part of looking at these resources is looking at all of your resources so we talked about taking an assessment of where you're at, but then look at all of the options that are available to you. It's not just when you go into a divorce, we've talked about that on this on your segment on my program is what are the other options that are available to you besides going straight for litigation, what's the spectrum of options that are available to actually do the divorce? When you are talking about selling your home, what are the options that you have available to you? Those are part of the resources that are there.
Joshua Ludlum: We'll talk about the people part of that here in a second, but it's looking at, okay, this is not a binary decision, sell my home or whatever other decisions are there, you've got six or eight other decisions that are there. When you start looking at your finances, how are you going to go about dividing those up? It's not just she gets the house, he gets the 401(k), we can do that in a way that there's more options that are available so we're not just making a binary decision.
Leh Meriwether: Good point, because that is one of the reasons why we like settlement. When you get into court with a judge, the judge, I mean-
Todd Orston: Options are taken away from you.
Leh Meriwether: Yeah, a lot of options and I've even heard some judges say, “When you work through a settlement with your spouse and the two of you worked through that together or with the lawyers, it's like performing surgery with a scalpel but when I'm doing it, it's like a chainsaw.” I have even heard judges say, “I don't like telling grown adults what to do with their lives and their children.” I think people keeping that in mind that, hey, look, there are options, there are resources, there's lawyers that care that will help you get through this, there's CDFA, Certified divorce Financial analysts, there's counselors, there's co-parenting coordinator for so many resources out there today that weren't there 20 years ago.
Todd Orston: I don't like telling adults what to do either, but there's something that we got to take care of.
Leh Meriwether: Up next, we're going to continue. We're going to finish up our talk about scarcity and abundance. Todd, while we're on a break, let's take a moment to speak just with our podcast listeners.
Todd Orston: Great Idea Leh. First, thank you for listening. If you're a client of ours, thank you for taking the time to educate yourself, it really helps us help you.
Leh Meriwether: I want to thank those that recently took a moment to review our podcast, we really appreciate it. If you feel like you're gaining a value from this show, please take a moment to post a review. The reviews help others find the show, which allows us to help even more people.
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Leh Meriwether: Welcome, everyone. I'm Leh Meriwether and with me is Todd Orston. Todd and I are partners at the law firm of Meriwether & Tharp, and you're listening to Meriwether & Tharp Radio on the new Talk 106.7. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com, and today it's not about us, it's about Joshua Ludlum. Joshua has put together some resources in the process of putting together more resources to help people heal past divorce. These are resources and that are not just ... Well you've brought up in a segment on one of your shows and we're talking about how to move past from a scarcity mindset to a mindset of abundance so that you can get past this divorce and be in a better place and you ever were, especially if you learn from your failures.
Leh Meriwether: We started off talking about how you look at yourself first, take an assessment of yourself, realize that you're not a failure, that you are enough so that you can move to the next. I'm saying steps, but the next concept of like, hey, there's resources out there that can help me. You gave examples of different resources and I think I was referencing some professionals as resources and now we're getting into the third part, the people. When you move past feeling guilty, you're more like ... or there's guilt or shame or whatever it may be. When you realize you're enough, you start to reach out to get the right people in your life. When you were talking about changing that mindset, what were you thinking about?
Joshua Ludlum: There is a lot of trust that had been built in a marriage, that's why people get married, I trust you. Dissolving a marriage that trust has eroded for whatever reason, and it causes this mindset in people to say, "If this person is going to be like someone that I trusted, well that means that all these other people that I thought that I could trust, I can't trust anymore." Now this person, in some cases these individuals have actually created situations around them where they've caused their friend. They pulled their friends over onto their side and now, okay, who do I trust?
Joshua Ludlum: But when you get in that, when you get down that belief that I am enough, it allows you to be able to go back and really hit some of those hard conversations head on, to be able to maybe even go back to those friends that you've lost trust with, to be able to go back to this soon to be ex spouse or ex-spouse that you've lost trust with and say, "It's really important for our kids' sake, for our finances sake that we worked together on this and we that we trust each other through this process, at least to the extent that we can." It's about rebuilding that trust, but it's also about potentially finding other communities that aren't so emotionally biased in this as well, that can support you and say, "I've been here, I know what you're going through and let's rise up together." Not finding these communities to go into a spouse bashing session, it's really important not to do that, but to say, "Hey, this is where we're at. It's not the ideal situation, but we're going to grow from here together."
Leh Meriwether: I really love what you just said about the concept of people including regaining that trust with your soon to be ex spouse or your ex-spouse from the concept of not your marriage now, but as far as a co-parent, I think that's incredibly important. We've had several co-parent coordinators and co-parenting counselors like Diane Dirks and the Doughtery's, they're gonna kill me for saying your last name, right. Tammy and Jay-
Todd Orston: Keep saying it incredibly right, that will be great.
Leh Meriwether: They've come on the show and talked about the importance of the parents getting along for the children. So that's an excellent point that you get to the abundance mindset, it's easier to trust again from the concept of being a parent because there has to be trust. If your child comes home one day and says something, "Well mommy said I could have ice cream right a before bed," if you don't trust that parent, you might want to lash out at them but if you trust that parent, you can say, "I know mommy wouldn't have said something like that, and you can reach out to me by the way."
Todd Orston: It's also just healthier all around for everybody involved to get to that point where you trust and have a healthy relationship because the people who end a divorce where they maybe they have gotten themselves to a place of abundance where they can co-parent well together, they're communicating, they're not lashing out, who are the people that come back to us again and again for contempt and modifications and things like that? Are they the people who were amicable at the beginning of the process or are they the people who they were just cats and dogs fighting all the time, it's those people.
Leh Meriwether: Yeah, the ones that are number two.
Todd Orston: I can tell you right now that getting as quickly as you can to a place where you have found that place of abundance, I may not be saying it correctly, it's imperative. It's imperative for you just to get to a healthy place, your continuing relationship, if it's a co parenting relationship with the other parent and especially for any children that are involved, I mean, again, this resonates with me so much because I see the people ... and this has given a definition, it's given me sort of an ability to define where these people are or rather where they're not and where they need to get to in order to avoid having to work with people like Leh because it's horrible. Did I say ... Are we still on? Sorry. You can bounce back.
Leh Meriwether: Bounce you off the wall, just kidding.
Todd Orston: Just kidding, we don't do that here. We have that one recorded before it's ...
Leh Meriwether: It's a loving.
Todd Orston: A loving bounce, I get it, I get it.
Leh Meriwether: We have a lot of fun on the show. But let's ... serious, Todd, get me off track here. In all seriousness, you talked about the trust. The other thing I liked what you said was don't get into a group where you're bashing your spouse. If you do get one of those groups, get the heck out because that's just not healthy.
Joshua Ludlum: It's not healthy at all because again, the whole point of this is to grow from here and one of the taglines that I had talked about with my company, exponential evolution is that you can't ... wherever you're at, you can grow from here and it's actually easy to change when you have the right mindset around it, but when you're surrounding yourself with people who are going going to want you to stay there, you're never going to change and that's the whole point of this. I can do all that work, I can have all the resources around me, but if I'm surrounded by people who want to hold me down, or if I'm surrounding myself with people who want to hold me up, but I have a belief that they're trying to hold me down, then we're not going to get accomplished, but together we've got more.
Todd Orston: It's just a blame game, at that point you're with a group and it's all, "That person is the bad person, that person's a bad person." And you're just jumping on board going, yep, he or she is the bad person and you're not accomplishing, you're not growing.
Leh Meriwether: You're not learning from your mistake because you won't admit to any of them. Now you're working on ... You're trying to gather together all the resources, like in the ... I know you were focusing on the Cherokee area at first, you're trying to do it locally. That's great so you're reaching out, finding out the different groups that people can get in, some divorce groups of people get in. I know you've looked at different churches in the area, but I also know that you're trying to put together something that's not associated with a church, so people if they don't share the same faith that those around them or they don't have a faith or they want to go to something that's completely secular, you're working on putting something together.
Joshua Ludlum: This isn't intended to be completely secular either, it's just intended to be a resource that's available that's beyond what churches are putting together. Churches have really great programs that they're putting together, this is just a different way of thinking about it. The people that are going to come into my program and be involved with networking and that type of thing, they're going to be ones that are looking for how do we grow from here and it's not going to be in any way a spouse bashing session. These are people that are gonna have those same ideals that we're trying to cultivate here just by the nature of the program and we want them to be able to be a support and grow together. It's just an alternative to some of the other programs that are out there including those churches.
Leh Meriwether: Oh, so something just not necessary, not competing with them, just a different resource for people.
Joshua Ludlum: Absolutely.
Leh Meriwether: Awesome, if someone wants to get access to what you're putting together, how do they go about doing that?
Joshua Ludlum: Easiest way go to healingpastdivorce.com, it's just a sign up. All I'm looking for is your name and your email address and what we will do then is over the course of the next two weeks, once you sign up, we will be sending out all of the pieces that we've talked about along with all the financial pieces, all of the individual, all of the programs that I've put together, but also some steps along the way to really dive deeper into the exponential evolution program that's about the three concepts that we've been talking about. It's a full course that will be offering over the course of a two week period.
Leh Meriwether: The healing past divorce, is there a charge for it?
Joshua Ludlum: Absolutely not, no. This is intended to be my gift to you to be able to say, "Don't ever go through this again," or no one has to go through this again. I would encourage people to work with those people that I've put together because I've intentionally brought them because they have the same mindsets, but there's absolutely no charge to be involved in the program.
Leh Meriwether: Joshua, what's the best way for people to find you personally?
Joshua Ludlum: They can reach me at www.evolveexponentially.com. If you go to the healing past divorce page there, it will also take you to my contact page that's there that you can access me that way.
Leh Meriwether: Awesome. Well, that about wraps up this show. Hey, if you've missed any part of the show or you want to go back and learn more, you can go to our website, it's mtlawoffice.com/podcast. That'll take you right to the site that's got our past podcasts on it and we actually have the show transcribed there. So if there's something you want to go read or ... I'm assuming, I haven't double checked, I'm assuming it right, it's going to write out that web address right, but you can go look it up there. You can also find ... if you miss something ... you want to listen to this again, you can always check us out and we're on most podcast directories that I know of, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, am I missing anything?
Todd Orston: How about just all of them.
Leh Meriwether: All of them.
Todd Orston: Just go out and you'll find us.
Leh Meriwether: And YouTube, YouTube. So youtube.com/atlantadivorcelawyer, if you want to us you can find us there. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 4: This audio program does not establish an attorney client relationship with Meriwether & Tharp.