The Single Spark with Chantelle the Coach (previously The Single Girl's Guide to Life)
Welcome to "The Single Spark" podcast – a journey dedicated to single millennial women who want to reignite their confidence and shine brightly in their dating lives. Hosted by Chantelle Dyson, this podcast delves into empowering stories, expert advice, and practical tips to help you rediscover your inner glow and build meaningful connections.
In each episode, we'll explore topics like self-love, personal growth, and navigating the dating world with confidence. It's the perfect podcast for all the single girls out there who want to know they aren't alone. "The Single Spark" is here to help you navigate the crazy world of being single alongside someone who truly gets it! Stop asking, "Will I be alone forever?" or "When will I have it all worked out?" and start having fun enjoying this messy thing called life as you embrace your singleness and celebrate with other single women ready to live and love their life, no matter their relationship status.
Whether you're overcoming heartbreak, leaving a situationship, or just seeking to find joy in your single life, "The Single Spark" offers the inspiration and tools you need to embrace your brilliance and attract genuine love.
Learn what it takes to be single and confident so you can enjoy your single life, regardless of your relationship status! Instead of wishing your life away, hoping to meet a partner before you start living fully, "The Single Spark" encourages and inspires you to embrace your single life, whatever you choose to do with it. Whether you're looking to date or choosing to stay single, this podcast is about enjoying life and all its ups and downs while being single.
Join us every Thursday as we uncover the secrets to shining brightly and connecting deeply.
The Single Spark with Chantelle the Coach (previously The Single Girl's Guide to Life)
How to Avoid the ‘September Slump’ and Stay Confident as a Single | Ep 113
September is here, and it's the start of Autumn creeping in. Having worked with singles over the past three years, September always has a single shift.
Gone are the highs of all those sunny days, and in come the lows of the short, dark days. With Christmas items already appearing in stores, I'll be sharing the importance of preparing for the colder months ahead with practical advice on maintaining positivity and making the most of this period for self-improvement and future readiness.
Let's get you ready as winter is coming...
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Music from Ep 110 onwards by Kadien Music. Get your own podcast music here!
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life coaching for singles, how to be okay on you're own, overcoming loneliness, how to stop feeling lonely, single women, divorced in your 20s
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DISCLAIMER: The podcast and content posted by Chantelle The Coach is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such c...
Okay, ladies, it is September and this is when it all becomes a little bit interesting in the space, because what I notice, having been working with single women across these three years, being one myself, is that summer is so much easier to be positive about being single, and it makes sense right. In summer, days are longer, full stop, our whole worlds are influenced by the blooming sunshine and the fact that we have longer days, more hours of sun, sunlight, daylight, and in terms of our routine, it means that we also have more time socially in the light. When we think of easter at school, when you're at school, you always do easter activities and there was bunny, rabbits and chicks and, if I remember rightly, it's to do with rebirth. Ie, if you go to the religious connotations, you know the rising, rising of Jesus. Oh my gosh, testing my religion knowledge I should be better at this. But obviously it's the springtime where we see all of the new babies being born in the animal world and everything just feels more positive and it is like a new life, new opportunity, hope, optimism, and so that's why you'll notice sometimes that my content becomes more, even more, aspirational at that time, because people are up for it, people are ready to get going.
Speaker 1:Now we are hitting September, where I also noticed the equal opposite, where we start to see the turn, because I don't know about you, but I have started noticing that it's getting dark at like eight. When. When did that happen? And it happens every year, we know this. Sorry, but I was in Tesco's yesterday and is it Tesco or Tesco's Anyway and they were putting out Christmas stuff. I was checking out the summer reduced stuff just because there's any good presents. Now that my friends all have kids, I'm more like, oh, I should probably buy them presents at times. But hey, I'm still going to do this as best possible and look in the reduced section. But behind me I was like this chocolate biscuit tin looks very Christmassy and lo and behold, honestly, the chocolate. You know when the gold coins come out, you know that it's Christmas. I'm like I'm sorry. I appreciate Halloween coming through, but Christmas Come on now and I know it's 16 weeks, but really, either way, it is on its way and we're headed towards that winter solstice. I think it is where we head for that shortest day of the year. You know we're hurtling towards it. We've had the summer one, we will be headed towards the winter one, and it gets darker. It gets darker earlier and so our social time like you, can still socialise in the dark, but it's just not as optimistic.
Speaker 1:All the SAD, the sad lights start coming out as people try and get that kind of daily light and we're all feeling it. And because we're not out and about doing as much fun stuff, because it's not as easy hey, there are no festivals to go to. That's the point. Actually, there's a couple that do like skiing festivals, which is pretty cool. I haven't done that yet One day. But it becomes harder because there's just seems like there's less time to do stuff, more dark time. That affects literally affects our mental health, the way we feel about it, and therefore that whole idea of loneliness starts creeping in more. Because we've got to spend more time in our houses. It's not as easy to just go round to someone's house, sit in the garden and chill out for the evening. That's not quite the same.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to talk in this episode about how you can start preparing for that and beat what I call, like the autumn, winter blues, of being single. Now, if you're interested in dating, I don't think you should stop dating. I think there's plenty of people that are always looking for dating at any time of year, and actually we know from the dating apps that the spike is in the new year, fyi, and everyone meets anyone at any time of year. I don't think there's a significant pattern in that at all, but what I want to do is make sure that you are well equipped over the coming months to get through. Whilst it is still pretty okay, we're in the turning point. Obviously, we're getting these quite bright, sunny days at the moment. They will soon go by the time we hit sort of mid-october, end of october. How are you going to get through when it's dark, gloomy, rainy and your circumstances, your environment, for example, doesn't really support positivity and optimism, quite like spring and summer do. That's what we're going to deal with today, so let's start looking at this.
Speaker 1:Number one is that you are going to use this kind of hibernation time on you Because people are just less inclined to be social with you, and we'll talk about the importance of that in a bit. But I want you to start hunkering down and finding the time for yourself. If you're going to spend more time inside, we're going to spend more time with ourselves, and that is a beautiful opportunity of single life and kind of miss it sometimes because don't prioritize it as much, because don't have as much time. Like it's like is it like the first world problems thing? It's like the inner relationship problems thing? Like suddenly, yes, you did want to be in a relationship and now you've got the limitation of what a relationship brings and now I'm all like I don't have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do, which is the exact opposite to what I say to you guys in terms of being single, which is that you just have loads more time. And this is the time for really going deep with knowing yourself, because this is going to prep you for your entire life. And this is a great time. Right, we are.
Speaker 1:We are in the last four months of 2024. Like, before you even know it, it's going to be 2025. And we're going to be ready and do all the work in the December to be like what is my 2025 going to look like? For me? We're not going to review the year just yet, but actually time to if you haven't been doing it already set aside just yet. But actually time to if you haven't been doing it already set aside getting to know yourself and I didn't really acknowledge this at the time. But my divorce obviously happened over the summer, although my separation it was the July August time that it was all really kicking off Not the most positive, optimistic summer I ever had. But my year started really of working on myself during these exact months because I started school again and I was living with my mum and I was getting into all of my routines. And they are they are the hardest months, they're the darker months.
Speaker 1:So the ways that I did that was lots of different modalities but in particular, a self-help book, not one, many, although mark manson basically says if you've caught one, you've read them all, which I can understand. Like a lot of the books on my bookshelf, or if I go back to them, I'm like how this is slightly too high level now, like I need something deeper. But there's a bunch of books to start reading about yourself, about single life, whatever it might be, and I'm just gonna I'm gonna throw some out there. I'm not not got any affiliates if I mention one that I have been paid to mention before, like it's not applied now, but I'll give you full um disclosure when I say that I've only ever been paid for one book, so I just won't mention that one.
Speaker 1:So where do we begin? So we have to. We have to go to some classics. So for the single life five, you want to go to the Unexpected Joy of being Single. It's a beautiful book that highlights all the great things about being single. So if you're finding that struggle, go there.
Speaker 1:The next one that I like to reference quite often is Untamed. We used to have it in the book club there or Daring Greatly. I feel like they're equal. They're very different. Untamed is all about more of your boldness and going out there and just being the absolute authentic you. It doesn't really tell you how to get there, but, um, it does help you. Um, daring greatly, on the other hand, is more about developing this kind of internal authenticity in having brave conversations, and by brave conversations we mean vulnerable. So I would start in that kind of zone. I'll throw in you are a badass as well as ways to start to get to know yourself. The only other one I'm going to mention is you were not born to suffer. It's got a really great set of prompts to work through.
Speaker 1:Now, for some people this kind of idea is not fun, but for me. That's how I started. I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it with some of the books. I'm literally looking at my bookshelf telling you what I was working through. I mean, there were some other generic ones. I'll mention them Atomic Habits, one of my favourites ever in terms of learning about being efficient at what I was doing. The 5am Club, also a great one helped me get into my routine. And Limitless by Jim Quick. That's more about learning, though. So they're not quite single specific, but you should find the ones that are right for you.
Speaker 1:Now, if you don't want to read, maybe you're an audio booker, maybe you're just more audio based. I mean, you are here listening to this podcast, so I expect that podcast is for you. Now people always go to me what podcast should I listen to? Obviously, I work in the podcast space as well now, by helping other people produce podcasts that are there to help other people. I mean, I don't. I don't listen to the entertainment podcasts ever, apart from I watch lots of shorts, but I never listen to them all.
Speaker 1:I'm after the personal development, so my entry point was Jay Shetty. I thoroughly enjoy his work and that really brought me into this space. Now you've got to find whatever works for you in that sense. But I loved that because he had a coaching group that went with it, just a Facebook group, and there was a weekly kind of coaching call and that would then prompt me to listen to his podcast once or twice a week and then be in there following that kind of guidance. It was very general, very generic.
Speaker 1:I had to get more deep with some more specific books like these single life books, but that was kind of the things that really helped me get through that and what you want to do in that time is start to really appreciate your circumstances. So you heard me not long ago, just now, mentioning like ah, and now I don't have the time to do half as much because I've got to deal with this other person, who I adore, of course, but like there is a daily tax, a daily tax, and I'm not. I'm not complaining, I wouldn't complain, but there is that difference of okay, okay, hang on, I've ignored this more than I probably should have in some respects because I've got this and I haven't really adjusted sometimes and so, yes, I can say that, but I have to go, but I'm getting to experience this every day with this person. And that's one of the things that I did learn from the J Shetty podcast at some point, which was, instead of it being, oh, it's like this, it's like that, it's well no.
Speaker 1:I get to do this because for every single circumstance in your life, every choice you make, there is a positive and a negative every single time. Think of a circumstance in your life. So okay, people could look at my situation where I don't work full time, I work for myself. Brilliant. I do have a lot of time on my hands. In theory, I use a lot of that on the business, on stuff, but you know, I have great flexibility. I get to choose what I do. But there are days where I'm worrying about money. Of course I am, because it's cash flow Like this is not the same as working in a job where you are paid the same pretty much every month Security, certainty but then I have to be in every day and I can't just necessarily pop out to Cafe Nero when I want and you know, trade off. Which hard are you going to experience? Which negative thing, which compromised part are you going to accept? And that's a great concept.
Speaker 1:That kind of comes from my best memory from the Subtle Art of Not Giving an F, which is a Mark Manson book also another great read, just to add to your reading list for you. And on top of that I just journaled. So not just from the podcasts and the prompts, but I mean I journaled every day what was going on in my life, how I felt positive, negative. Now I can go back now and the reason I think that I'm so good at remembering what it was like to be single and finding it difficult, because once you are single and happy with that, it's hard always almost to remember that, and then if you're in a relationship, it's even harder. But I have my journals so I have my own insight of how I was feeling at the time. So I can I can't, if you ask me right this second.
Speaker 1:I don't always remember how difficult I found it. I'll dig out the journal from when I was separating, which I know I've briefly mentioned on this podcast before, and I'll read it and I'll be like, wow, that was what I was thinking. Then I have notes where I've written I have to leave, like there is a girl inside of me that's not been unlocked yet and it's really like I don't remember writing that. I know I wrote that because I can see that and I yeah, that makes sense. I don't remember having that such a strong, clear feeling of oh okay, that is why I left, that's why I left, that's why I had to leave, like that was the knowing inside of me and so I love having my job. I'm really sad that I don't do it like I used to, and I always think I will do it and then I don't. So I need to sort that out for my own sake.
Speaker 1:But this is what we want to focus on. We want to focus on all of these things to have a record, to have a memory and to get it out. Because when you're expressing frustration upset, not determined what would you call that? That knowing, not determination? It's not that, but that certainty or just that instinct, like it's fascinating to then look back at. So that's more about you, and I also want you to combine that with some hobbies. It can be solo hobbies, it can be something that you go to a club with, but I want you to spend some time with you knowing yourself and then you having fun in your version.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the things that I have to help with this I have I bought was called oh gosh, what's it called? It's called the solo challenge. Oh, it's the adventure challenge solo edition. So there's a couple's version and at the time I was like, obviously I don't want that one, but they do this solo one where you scratch off. It's like a date night with yourself and you then do it. So one of them, for example, which I've not done yet but I it's in the back of my mind to do is that when I scratched it off, you have to have a canvas and paint. So I mean, that's where the stall is on that. But when it's a rainy day like you, open up door, you have your canvas and you paint whilst you have the rain in the background and I just I can visualise doing that and think it's, think it's wonderful. So I urge you to to have a go at that one, maybe, or to get the book yourself, scratch it off and work through, but find those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Fitness for me was the one during my divorce that I went for. Fitness is coming back into my life again now. If you haven't seen, I'm running many times a week, slow paces, mostly for the week. Park run. We go for it for the time. So that's coming back in, which is so important to me, of course. The next one is to connect with your friends, connect with people around you, and this is not just go around their house, because I made that fatal error of thinking that I could probably get by by, just, you know, seeing people regularly enough, and you do have to sort of come up with new ideas.
Speaker 1:When the weather is not so good, it's like, oh, should we go out? And also like cost of living, finances are okay, but I mean, let's not go mad with going out all the time. Necessarily, we do love Bongo's bingo, for example, bingo loco, etc. But there's only so many times you can do that. And, um, we're only getting older. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I, I, I'm really, on a personal note, I'm really struggling to do social activities that require a lot of travel and energy. I mean, a festival's slightly different, but I'm you want to go up to london? I, I can't like I don't know if it's because I'm busy and I travel a lot for work. Now, anyway, I'm like, oh, just let it be chelmsford, let it be home, let it be somewhere I can get to really easily. Oh yeah, I'm finding that I would much rather just come to your house. I'd much rather just come to your house and have a movie night, please. But this is ideal because in winter, movie nights are encouraged, welcomed. Oh my god, let's put the Christmas tree up with someone. What a beautiful experience. Please invite someone over to do that in your life as we get close to that time. But also, let's think of a really good way as well, of like, hey, how about you come to mine this week and I'll cook for you? And then in a month time I'll come on to yours and you could cook for me.
Speaker 1:Because what's the worst thing about being single? Having to cook for ourselves every day? And so let's find a way to like share that cooking up. And it's not necessarily the activity of the cooking or the movie night, but it's what it is, because I don't know about you, but when it's a movie night, for me it's like getting snuggly under the blankets. Don't have to snuggle up to anyone, obviously, but just being snuggly. But then also just sometimes not even having to talk with your closest friends. You don't feel like you need to talk. It's being able to scroll on your phone and ignore each other for an hour and then talk At the same time. It is the opportunity to talk to someone and not have to come home to a house where you're on your own.
Speaker 1:You know many of you might have pets. I've only just got a pet now. She's not that cuddly, which is such a shame. She's a hamster. It's fun to hold her for a bit, but she's not kind of hamster that you know. She's not going to just sit in your arm and cuddle like a dog or a cat might Dogs for sure. Nope, she wants to play, she wants to explore, she's very hyperactive, so she's fun to have but she's not that kind of same companion. And it's this companionship in part that we're looking for. And then we're also looking for this kind of connection to other people, because we're well and good knowing you and developing yourself. But if you can't do that and kind of share those developments with other people, open up about it.
Speaker 1:I remember having conversations and I was like considering sexuality. Sexuality, but not in terms of gender. It was more like there's different, there's the whole spectrums. I won't go into them all now. This may or may not be of interest to you, but yeah, there's just some terms out there. I was like it's identity questioning, I suppose, in that sense. So yeah, mine wasn't more to do with who I was attracted to, it was how I was attracted to people. So I would I've classed myself as what we call demisexual. I don't like stand there and talk about that all the time. It's not part. It's part of my identity, but it's not part of my like. That doesn't make or break me or something that I have to bring up with people most of the time.
Speaker 1:But if you look up that definition, it's that you're just, you're not attracted to people as they walk down the street to you. It is on depth and everyone goes to me yeah, yeah, I'm like that, but I'm like no, no, well, it's not that I deny them that, but I won't look at someone and feel any excitement towards them. I can appreciate if someone is, by social standards, an attractive person. I can objectively say I see, yeah, they're attractive, they're attractive, but there's no, I am attracted to them really until I've started talking to them in some way. My attraction is not created by visual sides. It's created by the conversation, by the mental stimulation, by the intrigue of that. That's what I would say on that front and that's when some like that's the real clarity, because of course, of course in most cases you can be totally attracted to someone as they walk down the road and then when they start talking to you I'm going to let it double down but you were really, you were attracted to them, you would eye them up.
Speaker 1:And there are people like I don't get it. I totally don't get it, but I can understand. I can understand it for other people, but I don't get it and other people will. So I loved questioning that and I remember talking that out with my friend and it's that kind of conversation where you're, you are revealing these explorations you're having with yourself in a safe space with someone that you hopefully trust. But like, having that conversation takes that trust another level and then that person might go. Yeah, I had this kind of question too, because I thought, xyz, but actually it was just I was with the wrong person or so on and so forth, and it's just there. That's's connection, that's conversation, that's when we're not talking about other people, we talk about our experiences and that's what we want to get to. You know, even if it's talking about your childhood upbringing Obviously I did a lot of work on that for understanding how I got to the way I was part of number one, the way I was part of number one, and so that was.
Speaker 1:That was what I focused on and shared with people in a safe way, not in an accusatory way, not in a blame way, but like I think this because that. So how do I become this as a result? How do I move on from that? Now? Of course, in amongst all of this, there are going to be some things that maybe trigger you, because we've got a lot of things going on with Christmas and New Year and peak time for engagements to occur, of course, right during those times. Now, we can't avoid those, but a great technique for managing your life in general doesn't matter if it's Christmas or not is like culling on Instagram and not people per se. Culling all the negative influences or the influences that don't really like, make you feel good about yourself. They're more about like oh, I don't look like that in a bikini. I don't look like that influencer. Get rid of all those. Off they trot.
Speaker 1:If you've got any kind of questioning about yourself and you and oh, I just don't have everything everyone else has now, if, if there is someone, even if they're close to you that you might feel triggered by because of what you inadvertently see on social media, ie lots of couple stuff like. Now's the time to use the lovely feature that they introduced called mute stories, mute feed posts. You can go into anyone's instagram profile and steal my main friends with them, but mute them. And you can do the same on Facebook. You can be friends with them but you can unfollow them, and what this means is that you will not see their posts, stories and or feed unless you click on their profile. Obviously, if they tag someone in their stories and someone else shares a story, you will see their story. That's the only only kind of workaround. But you can still say friends and it's for your own protection. You don't need to tell anyone you've done it. And someone says do you see my story? Just go. Oh no, I haven't been on it much, um, I haven't been using it and the child's like you're not going to use it anyway too much like you. Don't get caught off guard if you think there's an engagement brewing and it's going to bring something up for you. Of course, we can't control everything in our environment to avoid seeing anything like that.
Speaker 1:Christmas time for love time for families. I find it really difficult. We have a very different dynamic in my families all of them, all of the ones that I fit into compared to what I see sometimes of other families, and that can be interesting and hard. I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before. It's.
Speaker 1:The one thing that I really do miss about my ex-partner's families over Christmas is that they all honestly, there was like 40 people in a room, which to some degree I couldn't always deal with, but they were just all together at Christmas in a variety of ways, not all for Christmas dinner, but like on the evenings we would be playing mass games of mafia and I was quite good at it. Um, I hated being a mafia. But you know, we, we were, and I do miss that kind of experience because my family is much smaller. There's like six of us, seven of us when you total it up on in one part of it, it's like you can't play a game of mafia and then they're not really up for playing games. It it's like the TV watching and for me that's not stimulating, it's not fun. I don't watch a lot of TV on a good day, so why would I spend hours watching it on Christmas Day, for example.
Speaker 1:So I always find Christmas a really difficult period in general, and that's not even because I'm single or in a relationship, it's just because of oh, it's a really hard time to deal with everyone and keep going in a positive fashion when it's all going on and there's no routine and it's all stressful. And that's where you and I have something in common, even though the circumstances are different, because what needs to happen during that time is that you have to prioritise your experience through that, whilst balancing maintaining connection with your family in the way that you see appropriate and setting boundaries around that. So, for example, if I know that it's probably just going to turn into TV, you know after Christmas lunch, at what two o'clock, one o'clock there's not going to be a lot going on, then do I need to stay till 10 o'clock one o'clock there's not going to be a lot going on. Then do I need to stay till 10 o'clock at night? Or do I just leave at six Because I'll have had a nice time. We'd have done exchange of presents, I'd have been around for enough time for chatting. Then I can go home at six. I can go home and I can do any of the other things that I want to do with my time. Okay, I can sit there and think about wouldn't it be great if my family did xyz? But they don't. That's okay, and the same goes for you. In in that.
Speaker 1:Look, if you want to spend some time with your friends over Christmas, ask them early. Like this is September, ask now. In fact, I should probably ask one of the girl groups what we're doing for Christmas, because it's bound to be manic and actually, yeah, I already know that my schedule's quite busy in the run-up to Christmas, so this is gonna be awful, but people's diaries are manic. Get it in there now. If you want to do something for new year, start planning it out. Ask people that are in, uh, not included. Ask people that you want to be involved if they want to be involved. You don't know if you don't and you're ahead of the curve if you do it now, because everyone starts making plans as it gets closer and closer. All of this throughout the Christmas winter period is the way to get through Now.
Speaker 1:You won't do the boundary setting stuff if you aren't feeling confident in yourself, which is why you have to do number one and keep building on it over the months, especially if you're a badass, because that why you have to do number one and keep building on it over the months. Especially you're a badass because that's not going to let you get away with not prioritising yourself and not leaning into you, who you are, authentically Great book to read. You're also not going to get by by just setting boundaries and prioritising yourself only and doing this whole pilgrimage of self, because it's not going to mean anything to you if you don't then have people to share the experience with, to have those deep conversations with, to have fun with and share experiences with, combined with. Yes, you can totally have fun on your own, but you're going to want to spend time with other people and then, if you avoid the boundaries but you're just focused on yourself and other people, then you're going to. You're gonna feel out of alignment because you are gonna know yourself but you're not gonna be acting in alignment with yourself around the people that you're trying to connect deeply with.
Speaker 1:And it brings in this phase of inauthenticity, unauthentic, inauthentic, yeah, inauthenticity. It's not gonna feel quite right. You're gonna be. But I know what I want to do. But I want to please my friends because they're my friends. I want to stay connected to them. I don't want to push them away, but I'm doing something that conflicts me and that's where the boundary piece is really, really important to remember. So we're not in it yet, but we're starting to be in it and I would urge you to start building up some level of routine and structure that's going to help you get through these months as a single Dating whole. Other element I'll talk through that another time but, seeing as we're at the start of September, let's start getting our head in the game for hunkering down for September and August. Until next time, keep sparkling.
