Recover from Heartbreak by Adopting a Mindfulness Journaling Habit w/ Komal Kapoor

Transcript

[00:00:00] Komal: I call it my Keep This Not That journaling method and essentially it’s writing out all the negativity. It’s like all the things you want to yell at your acts, all of those things, and I’m very big on rituals, so I’ll write it out and I’ll rip it up and do either a burning ceremony or do kind of like a letting go and do it very mindfully. So, you know, take a few deep breaths, okay, this is what I’m feeling and now I’m going to let that go. Exhale it out, and then I try to write all the positives that I’ve learned about myself from the relationships, so talking, you know, just things you realize being with someone else, and those are things that I definitely want to keep and, and like my journaling practice on a positive note, so that’s, what’s really helped me

[00:00:50] Amardeep: Welcome to Mindful and Driven Podcast, where we help you to decide what’s really important whilst chasing your dreams. Today’s guest is the wonderful Komal Kapoor. She’s an author, poet, and writing coach based in LA. She was a management consultant and she started writing short poems on the side, anonymously, thinking nobody would ever read them, but she now has hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers and she signed a book deal and released her first book called Unfollowing You. Much of her content is based around heartbreak and the effect it has on the rest of our lives. She aims to help people who are going through this to recover and thrive. I really hope you enjoy today’s conversation. So welcome Komal. It’s great to have you here.

[00:01:30] Komal: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:31] Amardeep: So how we actually connected originally was Komal read one of my stories on Medium and she reached out to me from that. So what are some common advice that you disagree with?

[00:01:40] Komal: There’s so much but I think the biggest thing that I’ve been seeing recently online is everyone is trying to be self-employed or an entrepreneur and it’s painful to see that because I feel like the younger generation is really going to struggle at finding happiness and work because it’s not for everyone. Being self-employed is really difficult. I mean, now you’ve been doing it for, for a little bit. Yeah, I left the corporate world. It’s been seven years and, I’ve done a lot of different things since, and the thing I’ll say is I had a very good foundation in business because I had done management consulting. I had run a lot of different projects and I’ve managed teams of up to 20 people. So I ended up, I understood how to run a business on my own. And I feel like there’s a lot of young people who are being pushed into this entrepreneurship lifestyle when they haven’t really experienced what it’s like to be in the middle of a business. And they end up really struggling. The other problem is maybe they start a side hustle or they start a creative pursuit and it starts making them a little bit of money and they quit their stable job way too soon, and when the first big issue happens, then it all kind of starts to fall apart and they feel so dejected and they never want to write another book or they don’t want to start another business. And they’re like, well, I’m just going to go back to the corporate world and it’s just, it’s sad to see, and it actually happened with one of my creative writing professors, where she graduated from the best MFA program in the country and her debut novel won a bunch of different awards. Like she was a very promising new writer and she had a few personal issues that kept her from writing or publishing for about a year, and when she got back to it, she had some much debt from college and, you know, just having to pay rent and everything that she ended up having to take a bunch of jobs on top of a teaching position and now it’s been 18 years since she’s been able to publish another book since then, and she’s just like, I barely paid off my loans a couple of years ago. And her biggest thing for me was if you have something on the side, I told her I’ve been consulting, she’s like, continue doing it until you are very, very stable and make sure that this is the path that you really want to continue full-time, writing wise. All of that to say, make sure it, try it out for sure, but make sure that you have financial stability.

[00:04:18] Amardeep: Yeah. And I think it’s one of those things where people are now being pushed, where they do something for fun. They have a hobby, but when they read things online or they see what’s on Instagram, and I guess I’m guilty of it as well, where people are making money out of this stuff, they’re doing it for fun. It puts pressure on you to try to copy that, but sometimes it’s better not to. Sometimes better to just do it for fun. Worry about the monetization later on, if you’ve got a stable job,

[00:04:42] Komal: I feel like a lot of the things that you see online aren’t true because they’ll say, oh, I made six figures in a month and when you start really digging in, it’s like, oh, you actually spent like $50,000 on ads, and managing your systems and then you had to hire other people, freelancers to create content, whatever it may be, and how much is really your profit, your take home from that. We never really know, but I’ve talked to people where it’s like, oh yeah, like my actual take home was maybe 7,000, but you’re spreading lies online. It’s so upsetting.

[00:05:18] Amardeep: It’s the thing about revenue versus profit? Isn’t it, people always use their revenue numbers. For example, for me, for writing, I don’t really have expenses, in terms of, I just sit at a laptop and whatever, but if other people have different businesses, they might be loss-making. So to say, oh, I made this much but I then say, I spent twice as much as others that do it. And then other people will follow them without knowing that.

[00:05:39] Komal: And I see that even in the self-publishing world where a lot of them will put a ton of money in ads and then they’re trying to push other people. They’re doing coaching to help people be full-time writers. It’s like, well, are you actually sharing how much your take home is? And it’s dangerous to follow advice online.

[00:05:59] Amardeep: Was there a time in the past where you really struggled with finding a balance? Like you’ve mentioned, like you had the consulting career, you’re doing things on the side until you are stable in what you’re doing. Did you have like a particular flashpoint and how did you realign?

[00:06:12] Komal: Oh, gosh, I’ve had a few. I think the biggest one was I was working for a tech startup and it essentially crashed and burned and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next in my career, and I also simultaneously had a really difficult breakup. It was just, everything felt like it was falling apart. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next, so for me, the biggest thing was writing and journaling. Journaling really helped me realize what I was feeling. That was my biggest thing. I couldn’t even really parse out all of my emotions and it helped me also capture a lot of the lessons that I learned from the different careers that I’d done in the past and the relationship. So I would say journaling was the biggest thing and then having writing as an outlet that I stuck to almost every day.

[00:07:05] Amardeep: You had to kind of two different parts of her life at once come down. Did you find that the journaling helped with one side more than the other or one that was a bit more difficult to recover from?

[00:07:14] Komal: I think journaling was very holistic for me, so it was, it was for both, both aspects of life. If I think about it, actually, that’s a really good question. I think it helped with the relationship a little bit more because it was the first time that I felt very, I could see a potential future with the person, and I hadn’t felt that before and journaling helped me realize all of the things that I valued in that person, but also all of the ways that it wasn’t the right fit, and I think without the journaling, in my mind, I just kept romanticizing the relationship rather than concretely articulating to myself that no, there were a lot of huge flaws in how we work together. And I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that without actually writing it all out, and, the way that I journal I’ve done a lot of different journaling techniques, but I do a, I call it my, Keep This Not That journaling method, and essentially it’s writing out all the negativity. It’s like all the things you want to yell at your ex all of those things, and I’m very big on rituals, so I’ll write it out and I’ll rip it up and do either a burning ceremony or do kind of like a letting go, and do it very mindfully, so, you know, take a few deep breaths, okay. This is what I’m feeling, and now I’m going to let that go, exhale it out, and then I try to write all the positives that I’ve learned about myself from the relationship. So talking, you know, just things you realize being with someone else, and those are things that I definitely want to keep and end like my journaling practice on a positive note. So that’s, what’s really helped me.

[00:09:03] Amardeep: Yeah, I like the, Keep This, and what was it? Keep This and…

[00:09:08] Komal: Keep This Not That.

[00:09:10] Amardeep: Do you keep that other parts of your life as well? Or is it for mainly like relationships and friendships? Also for work?

[00:09:16] Komal: Yeah, I’ve done it for literally everything. I’ve even done it for travel where it’s like, oh, this was a difficult trip for all these reasons, and I just need to kind of let that go, but all these are all the things that came out of it, so every, every single aspect and I’ve actually used it in workshops for heartbreak now. A few times I’ve done burning ceremonies with other people. I’m finally putting together a heartbreak journal to help other people with that because I’ve seen it at workshops be really, really transformative where people just are releasing. I’ve seen so many women crying and just feeling like they can finally let go of everything that they’re holding onto. And that’s so rewarding. So I’m excited to share that with others.

[00:10:04] Amardeep: Can you tell us a bit about your book, right? Because I’m guessing the workshops are related?

[00:10:07] Komal: Yeah, I, so I released Unfollowing, You, which is a poetry collection. It’s a modern love story told through poems, text messages and unsent letters. So it’s a full narrative and most poetry books are being based where maybe it’s about love or forgiveness, that this is an actual story that follows these two people falling in and out of love. When I did the book launch for that, I decided to do a burn book because it’s, I wanted people to write down anyone that they needed to unfollow, and that doesn’t necessarily even have to be an ex. It can also be toxic people that you follow online that give you unrealistic expectations about your body or your business. Anything. It was just so fun to see people just scribble all over the burn book, and then at the end of my book tour, I did a big burning ceremony. I did like an Instagram live and I also had a bunch of people. They were like, I couldn’t come to your book tour, but you know, I’m, can you write this down in the burn book? And they would DM me all these things and I would write it all out and just, it was this like collective letting go. That was so fun, and that’s what really inspired me to do other burning ceremonies. In LA just, you know, I would have different people just reached out to me and I’d be like, yeah, you know, that sounds fun. Let’s do it. And we would go through a few exercises where, you know, they would write out answers to the questions that now I’ve put in the journal and just talk things through and then do a burning.

[00:11:42] Amardeep: I think there’s quite an interesting aspect there of where it’s the group aspect as well, the group ritual. So I’ve seen mainly your journaling is a solo thing that you do. Do you find making it public as well as helping you, because you’re able to show the confidence to tell the people what’s been happening? Is that a next step for you?

[00:11:57] Komal: Exactly. I think it really depends on an individual level and on the heart rate for some things, it just is so nice to have a group because then you feel less alone, and I like to tell the groups that, look, at a certain age when we were getting like our late twenties, especially maybe early thirties, there’s only so much our friends want to hear about it, a heartbreak, but it’s still very real to you, and sometimes it feels like it was a situationship. It wasn’t even an official relationship, but for whatever reason, you’re having a hard time moving on from it. And having other people voice that and feeling less alone in that is just so powerful. And, that’s also why I really encourage journaling because it helps you really get to the bottom of it, because it’s usually not about that other person. Right. It’s usually what are your expectations that you had tied to that relationship? And if you kind of work through all those things, with yourself or in a group setting, it releases that and it, then you can finally move on.

[00:13:05] Amardeep: Hi everyone. I hope you’re enjoying the episode so far. I want to take a quick break to ask you to check in with yourself. There’s many people struggling with balance and it’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s tips that my guests might share can hopefully help you along the way, but if you already feel overwhelmed or burnt out, it’s probably best that you ask somebody for help too. For some, this might be a friend or family member, while others might feel like they have nobody they can talk to. If you’re one of these people, check out the link in the show notes, it’s for United for Global Mental Health. They’ve got health plans all across the world, with people willing to listen on the other side. It’s important to let somebody know how you’re feeling. Now, back to the show.

And I think we mentioned about the late twenties is quite interesting because that’s where I am now, and I didn’t think it’s just relationship, I think it’s almost everything where this kind of stage, when you’re younger, you think by like your late twenties, you’ve kind of got things worked out and you hit, you see like 30 approaching and you think you’ll be happy in your career, you’ll know what you’re doing, and some people might be listening and they might kind of have what they thought they would have, but it still doesn’t quite feel right. That’s why things quite interesting about this kind of an age, because after you’ve graduated from university or whatever you’ve done with your first job, then you have this kind of honeymoon period where it’s new works exciting, work is new and once you’ve done it for a few years, you’re like, well, I just got to do this for another 20 or 30 or 40 years. That’s kind of a, quite a shock to the system. I think it was a shock to the system for me, something which I think isn’t talked about enough and that’s what I’m trying to do for this podcast is let people kind of explore a bit more of like, you don’t necessarily need to follow the traditional path as everyone reacts differently.

[00:14:37] Komal: Right. And I think it’s really interesting because what we’re fed as okay, in your twenties, you should really double down on whatever job you have, spent all your time there, build a solid foundation in this career, but often we choose these careers at like 20, 21, we graduate and we get our job and we, like, I had no idea about what other options were available in the world. And to then feel like, oh, this is, I picked something when I was so young, I knew nothing, and now I’m just going to do this for 30 years. It’s ludicrous. I don’t understand why that’s the setup that we have right now, but it’s really difficult because I went through everything you just described. You know, I got, I bought my house, you know, I have a condo, I bought my car, I got the six-figure job, and I was like, look, this is amazing. Like I am living the American dream, and I was, I think 23 when all of that happened, and it was just like, well, I just do this for the next 40 years, like what? This is, this is it? And I went on the whole, like, you know, I had over a hundred pairs of shoes. I had last minute trips. I would travel so much and spent a lot of money on things that didn’t really matter because I didn’t really understand that I needed to find a purpose. Right. Like my job was not doing that for me. It wasn’t making me feel fulfilled, and I worked in healthcare, so we were improving patient care through our electronic medical systems. That’s something that I could get behind, right? Like that was something that I could convince myself for a few years that this is great. I’m helping in some way, but it wasn’t the right fit for me. It wasn’t really. Simon Sinek says, right? Like you have to have your why, and I didn’t have that figured out. And it wasn’t until I started exploring a lot of different things that I started kind of honing in on what I liked, and it was a lot of trial and error, but it’s hard being in your twenties and not really knowing what, what to do or what will maybe make you happy. How well is that process for you? If I can turn it around?

[00:17:02] Amardeep: That’s not so fair. I guess it’s been just a strange year because obviously with everything that’s happening and it was kind of this realization of what I was doing, if I saw myself there in five years time, that didn’t really excite me. So it was a case of what I’m doing now is, let’s experiment. Let’s try different things and do it in a podcast of doing things that I never thought I’d ever do. And they might completely fail. Who knows? But then I try something else, then that’s fine. It’s okay to fail. One thing I want to know, because I can see, like, you’ve gone through quite a lot of journeys already, and you’ve learned a lot about yourself, but are there still things that you struggle with at the moment and like, what are you working towards? Is there a kind of a successful lifestyle?

[00:17:44] Komal: I would say those are two different questions for me. So as far as the successful lifestyle, I’m very happy with the cadence of my days. Right. I’m hoping to just build on them. I would like to have a bigger creative community around me, but it will just take time.

It’s not necessarily that it’s something that I need to be doing more of right now. I just need to be writing and writing is such a long process. Novels, sometimes take a few years and I just have to continually do that. What I’m currently struggling with is just very topical with the pandemic and now everything’s opening up here in the US and the socializing bit has been a little bit difficult and it wasn’t until actually this week that I realized a lot of us have very unresolved emotions because of the pandemic. We went through this huge global traumatic event and now I’m going, I went to a bunch of barbecues for the 4th of July and I’m seeing a lot more friends and I was feeling very distanced and withdrawn, and I wasn’t sure if it was just me, but the more I talked to my friends, they’re all feeling similarly and I’m trying to work through that right now.

[00:19:02] Amardeep: It’s a common problem to us. I’m trying to work out the same thing myself about, I miss social life, but at the same time, I’m not used to it. So it’s almost exhausting. I’m kind of questioning myself like, is this how I normally act like, who am I anymore? And it’s all these different questions that come out of it. Have you got any way that you’re going to try to deal with that? Or is there anything you’ve found that’s helping you at the moment?

[00:19:23] Komal: Yeah. So again, I’m going to go back to journaling because that’s what I do. Anything is difficult and I’m creating Keep This Not That style of journal which is going to be at pandemic recovery journal. I started sharing a little bit on my Instagram. I started showing a few questions that I’ve been grappling with, and the biggest one that I am struggling with is really, you know, in what ways do I feel that the government and society really failed us or failed, like how I felt personally let down and looking at the news now there’s just a barrage of very, and it’s not just negative, it’s very difficult to process news, and those are all things that I didn’t realize were impacting me as much as they were until I started writing about it, so I come up with a bunch of questions and also, you know, there are things that I’m disappointed about. There are goals that I meant to reach in 2020, and I, they kind of just went out the window and I was holding a lot of shame about that for myself, because if I look at everything I accomplished in 2020, there’s not a lot that I can really be proud of, but I also have, have to come to terms with the fact that that’s okay and there were a lot of other circumstances happening. So I started putting together a lot of questions around this and I shared a few online and the response I got was amazing. The number of people who are feeling the same way, feeling a lot of mixed feelings about socializing and everything that’s happened in the past, and I’m hoping to put that out in early August and it’ll help people. Especially before we start going back to school and college full time in September, I’m hoping it will help people get to the bottom of their feelings so that hopefully you can be more present when you are with your loved ones, because you don’t have all of this other turmoil going on underneath it.

[00:21:32] Amardeep: Yeah. I think that’s such an important point is that we’ve been in this world for the last year and a half. We’re not taught how to deal with that. You don’t go to school and learn this. If there’s ever a pandemic, this is how you can deal with it, and we can sometimes be too harsh on ourselves about that. Nobody prepared us for this and it’s happened and everybody’s going through the same process and that’s okay. It’s okay, that you didn’t achieve your goals in 2020, and I did the same thing. You start the year and you make your use of resolutions, and then by March, it’s basically just like scrapped. None of this is going to work. If, for example, it fitness is like one of the things which for me, it tanked in the second half of the year, because I started losing motivation because I wasn’t able to do the usual kind of sports I normally do. I was really harsh on myself about that, even though I know that it’s like me working out alone in my house, doesn’t really make me happy. It’s just kind of accepting that I’ve lost a bit of fitness and I’m going to get it back again. I’m going to start doing the things and doing the things that I stopped in 2020. And I think, Hey, like you just, yeah, we can just carry on and some things will have changed, yes, and we can learn about it a bit more, but you’re not broken because of you took a few months off in 2020, and you didn’t do the productive things you were meant to do.

[00:22:51] Komal: Exactly. And I think the flip side of that is you also, so much clarifies for us, right? So for example, you now know that you don’t like working out alone. For my brother, for example. He has now canceled his gym membership. He loves working out at home. He finds it to be so much more efficient. He’s has his whole new setup and that’s something he’s found for himself. And I think there are so many things like that and our strengths that have really cropped up and it’s something that we should really take stock of right now, while it’s still fresh, because emotionally, physically, spiritually, there’s so much that we’ve all learned. I don’t want all of that to get lost in the mix either, as we just kind of push ourselves back into this new normal, and I’m taking a lot of time, really trying to document and reflect on all the lessons that I’ve learned. And my ideal day and the way I look at my future life has completely changed over the last year and a half. It’s something that has been so refreshing because now it has helped me double down on writing and reading and approach reading in such a lighter way where I used to feel like I have to read all the classics and now I allow myself to read and enjoy just anything, any like guilty pleasures maybe, and really value that time, is also learning about my craft and in the past, it was like, oh, I’m busy, and I have to do coaching and I have to consult, and this is my writing time. And it was just so jammed. My schedule was always jam packed. It’s so silly because I love reading fiction, but I would never really let myself read the fun contemporary thing. It’s just really given me a really great perspective, especially, and also like the people that I want to hang out with, what energizes me, something that we all should be mindful of, but it’s hard to be because there’s just so much noise constantly. I live alone and being just alone with my thoughts for 14, 15 months and then experimenting with, oh, this person is really someone that I’m connecting with on a deeper, more spiritual level versus there’s someone else who, because we have a shared history, we’ve continued to hang out, but this isn’t really a good match anymore and sometimes you just have to start distancing yourself from that.

[00:25:24] Amardeep: [Unintelligible] about distancing yourself from certain people. I wonder if it’s a case of, when you’re both living normal lives, you have lots in common, but when you’re both kind of restricted, then you might have different outlooks then. So I guess why, I hope there is that in a few months time, some of those people that maybe you felt distant from, you you’ll reconnect with or you’ll feel closer to again, once life opens up and it’s kind of that phases, which you might change.

[00:25:49] Komal: No, I absolutely agree, but I think the other thing is, in times like this, you’re forced to realize what your values are, what you really want to be discussing with other people, and I find myself gravitating more towards people who are thinking about their purpose about mindfulness. I’m not really interested in having conversations about the next car someone wants to buy or something like that. And it’s just, it’s a very different approach, I think to friendships that I’ve developed over the last year and a half, and I find it very energizing.

[00:26:28] Amardeep: You mentioned, you learned quite a few lessons about yourself during the pandemic. Is there anything that you learned that you think other people could apply to themselves? Any mindset shifts that they could make to make themselves happier?

[00:26:38] Komal: The biggest thing for me has been figuring out my routine and I know that that’s something that’s talked about so much already, but, it’s talked about for a reason. It’s so important and understanding that just because it works, you know, waking up at 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM works for someone else is not going to work for you and really experimenting and allowing yourself to kind of feel out what are your peaks of energy throughout the day. For example, like, because I’m at home so much, I can now work out right before lunch, and I used to try to force myself to work out every morning and I just kept failing and I kept feeling like, this is my fault, like I’m not disciplined enough and it wasn’t that. It’s just, that’s just not my body’s tendency first thing in the morning. Now I read, I go for a walk and I read for about an hour and it’s such a better way for me to enter into my writing world and to do everything I need to do, and then, I’ll work out, have lunch, and then I have this second kick of energy in the afternoon. That only happened because I finally was like, look, this morning thing is just not working out for whatever reason. Let me try other things.

[00:27:54] Amardeep: I guess the point there though, is that routine is important, but it’s also important not to stick to a routine that isn’t serving you, so because you had a routine, but it was the wrong routine. So if you stopped that, then you’d still be like feeling low in energy. It’s tinkering with that routine is the kind of lesson there, isn’t it? Where you have a daily routine, but it doesn’t work and you’re not feeling energized, then change it. Like have another go, like see if a new routine works for you.

[00:28:19] Komal: Exactly. And also giving yourself a break because there are days where it doesn’t happen often, but I’ve been tracking everything on my calendar now, and every about five to six weeks, for whatever reason, I just need two extra days during the week where I don’t do anything. I may just like read fun fiction all day. Maybe I’ll watch TV. And I started seeing that pattern. And in the past I would be so hard on myself. Like, no, it’s a Thursday. I need to do XYZ. But now I’m just listening to my body and my brain also, because you need to recharge your ideas, fuel your creativity, and if it’s just not there after an hour or two into the day, I will just give myself a break and say, look, because I’ve been tracking how I’ve been feeling for the last like seven months now I know that this doesn’t happen very often. It used to feel like, oh my gosh, I’m such a bum and now I’m just going to lay around every day for the rest of my life, and it’s like, no, it happens every five to six weeks. I haven’t quite figured out if there’s something that triggers it, but I’m not gonna stress about it too much. I’m just going to let myself have the day or two. And that has really. Helped me be more productive, just be more centered with myself.

[00:29:39] Amardeep: It’s been a pleasure to talk to you. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well. Where could they hear more from you if they want to learn more about you?

[00:29:46] Komal: So I am very active on Instagram, on @komalesque, K O M A L E S Q U E.  And you can also sign up for my newsletter through there, and that’s where I share any upcoming projects. If they want to hear more about the heartbreak journal or a pandemic recovery journal, it’ll be through the newsletter or Instagram.

[00:30:06] Amardeep: The thing I want to finish off on is what’s one small thing that’s brought you joy recently?

[00:30:12] Komal: I bought myself flowers yesterday and I try to do that every few weeks and it always makes me

happy.

[00:30:19] Amardeep: Do you have a trigger for it, or is it just like you pick a random day?

[00:30:22] Komal: If I’m feeling down, I definitely will go out and buy flowers and like a, a lush fruit that I want to try, like a, you know, good mango or dragon fruit.

I don’t know why that always puts me in a really happy zone. But I try to be also preventative with it, and I know that looking at flowers every morning just makes me smile, so I try to have them like every two weeks.

[00:30:46] Amardeep: That’s great. Well, thank you again.

[00:30:48] Komal: Thank you for having me. This is fun.

[00:30:56] Amardeep: If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, I’d love it If you could leave me a five star review, it really helps get the message out further. Wherever you’re listening, it would be awesome If you could subscribe and share in your social media channels. If you want to see more of my work and advice, you can find all of the links in the show notes. Thank you again for listening and I hope you have a lovely day.