Boring Is Good: Why Haircut Budgets And Dog Food Lists Might Save Your Sanity

What if the smartest move after divorce isn’t to reinvent everything, but to slow down and stabilize? We take you inside the quiet work that makes a comeback possible: calming your nervous system, reducing chaos, and rebuilding simple routines that help you survive the early months without burning out. No hype, no rushing—just clear steps to get your feet back under you and protect your energy while life resets.

We start by getting honest about emotions that refuse to disappear: grief, relief, anger, fear, loneliness, and shame. Naming them is the first lever that lowers anxiety. From there, we walk through one daily grounding practice—walks, prayer, journaling, or breathing—that signals safety to your body so your mind can think. You’ll hear a personal story about letting others help, and why dropping pride is not weakness; it’s oxygen. With that support, stabilization happens faster.

Then we get practical. Money clarity reduces fear, so we detail how to build a budget that mirrors real life—haircuts, pet food, co-pays, kids’ activities, and all the “small” costs that add up. We talk about simplifying aggressively to cut decision fatigue, finding a small daily rhythm you can protect, and creating predictable routines that make kids feel safe. Boring is good when your world tilts; repetition calms the body and steadies the day. We close by framing stabilization as foundation work: the base for the life you want next, even if chaos still pops up.

If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs steadiness, and leave a quick review so more people can find it. Have a question or want to connect? DM ToniThrash on Instagram—let’s start your comeback together.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose Questions
• 0:45 Why Stabilization Comes Before Thriving
• 2:27 What Emotional Stabilization Looks Like
• 5:01 Grounding Practices And Permission To Hurt
• 6:40 Let Others Help: A Hard Lesson
• 8:16 Take Control Of Money And Time
• 10:18 Simplify, Find Rhythm, Build Routines

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Is there a major life transition pinching you? I know you may be asking, what's next? What's my purpose? What if? Because I've asked those two. Welcome to the Start Your Comeback podcast. I'm Tony Thrash, a certified life coach, and I want to share the tools and practical steps to help you create a winning game plan to move into your new adventure. Today I want to talk about how to stabilize yourself to a degree and your children, getting your feet back under you as you walk through divorce. Because if you're in the early months after divorce, here's the truth no one is saying to you out loud. You're not supposed to have it all figured out yet. Stabilizing after divorce is not about thriving, it's simply about surviving. It's about creating enough emotional and practical steadiness so you don't keep bleeding in every direction. Survival is the goal, and how we do that is to stabilize. Stabilization meets your immediate needs and lays a new foundation for the new life you've entered, this new phase. Because this phase is not glamorous, it's quiet, it's basic, and it matters more than you think. Let me give you an idea of what stabilization actually means, okay? Stabilization means your nervous system can calm down enough for you to think clearly. It implies the chaos is starting to shrink. Is it all gone? No, but it's starting to shrink. It means you stop waking up every day in a fight or flight mode. Well, for the most part. You just want to have a normal day, whatever that means. This phase of stabilization is not for reinventing yourself or reinventing your life. This phase is just strictly to regulate and stabilize your world. Let's talk about emotional stabilization. Like, there's got to be some calm before you have any clarity to make a move, right? Because divorce shatters emotional safety, even when it's the right decision. Your body doesn't care about logic, it's responding to loss and uncertainty. Here's what emotional stabilization looks like. Number one, calling things what they are. We don't go around saying, I'm fine. I I'm good, I'm good, I'm fine. I need you to name what you're feeling. Maybe it's grief, maybe there's some relief there. There's anger, fear, loneliness, exhaustion, some shame. Here's why that's important because unnamed emotions don't disappear, they just show up sideways, they creep into the very fiber of your being and cause physical damage you won't be aware of for years. So be specific with your words. Good, better, and bad are not identifiable or measurable. So be specific. Number two, create one daily grounding practice. One, not ten. You can take a walk, you can pray, you can journal, you can sit outside, you can do deep breathing exercises, but you need to do something consistent that reminds your body that you're safe right now. In my workbook, Start Your Comeback, it will help you with this. I make a habit of just sitting quietly for 20 minutes just to hear what my crazy brain is saying. Because it likes to tell me untrue things and cause me to have anxiety. And sometimes I journal through this, and others I just sit and listen. Number three, I want you to stop minimizing your pain because divorce is a trauma. You don't get bonus points for pretending it didn't hurt. Please don't neglect the goodness of you. You were created good. Celebrate that good, protect that, protect that good because you have worth and you don't have to put on a brave face to pretend you're not hurting. And here's your permission slip if you need one. You are allowed to say, This is hard and I need help. I want to share a story with you. After I'd walked through divorce and still had so many unanswered questions, one of my dearest friends sent me a text. It pretty much made it pretty much made me cry on the spot. I've saved it and I go back occasionally and read it. It was profound to say the least. And it said, praying for you too, Tony. Direction on where to live, when, and a peaceful release in letting others help you where needed. It is but a phase. Praying for your boys and their direction, and that God would speak loudly to you about every detail you are worried about. She knew. She saw it, she reached out, and I grabbed a hold because I'd had such trouble letting people help me. The pain was unbearable. And asking them for help just heaped more shame on. It's still hard for me to ask, but I've laid down that pride to a degree and I ask anyway. We like to think that we can control others and the situation and our surroundings, but we all know that to be untrue. But there are some things that you can control. So control what you can because divorce pulls the rug out from under the most basic parts of life, your finances, your schedules, roles, and routines. And stability starts with reclaiming what's within reach. So the first thing that you can control is get clear on your numbers. Like you don't have to be perfect or clear, or it has to be the exact penny. Maybe you operate that way and maybe you don't. But you need to know your income, your expenses, what are your obligations? Avoidance fools anxiety. Information, restore some sort of agency. Work on a budget and add everything to it. List everything. How often do you get your hair cut? Do you order special dog food? All of the things that you just lump into one uh grocery category, list it all. Then I want you to simplify aggressively. And this is not a season that we just keep adding more things and more things and overcommit ourselves. That's not what I'm talking about. I need you to be able to have a time where you can make fewer decisions, that you have fewer obligations, less noise, because stability thrives in simplicity. Find your rhythm. Your day might just be chaos 90% of the day, but that 10% starts a rhythm you can build off of. Doesn't have to be the whole day, just start somewhere. And the third thing is I want you to create some predictable routines, especially if you have kids involved, because that routine creates a sense of safety. And let me tell you, sometimes boring is good, it is fantastic. This is where many people dig in their heels. You don't have to be strong right now. You have a support system, you don't have to prove anything. You're already proving that you're doing hard things, right? You're managing it all now. You don't have to earn any kind of support by falling apart first. Just ask. That's what your your support team is for. That's what your people are for. Ask for help emotionally, practically, professionally. Because here's the thing stabilizing happens faster in a community. I'm watching it play out right now in my world. And because there's a community involved, the stabilization that is happening is unreal. Because the bottom line is when you are stabilizing, let me just say this: you're laying a foundation. That's kind of what I mean by stabilizing. You're building a foundation for what you want your life to look like from this point forward. Will there still be chaos? Absolutely. Will it always go exactly how you want? 100% no. But what I do know is that foundation is being laid, and that's just a fantastic way to stabilize your world. Next week, I have the privilege and honor of interviewing a Lassen's professional counselor, Dr. Lana Sneer. You won't want to miss. She's going to give us some ground rules and some framework on what to do when you're walking through a period of transition like divorce. And she has a lot of wisdom and a lot of insight, and I know you won't want to miss that. So let me leave you with this. For now, your job is simple. Lay the foundation, stabilize, get steady, get support, and stop rushing yourself. Because remember, it's a marathon, not a sprint. I'll see you next week. Hey, thanks for listening. I don't take it for granted that you're here. You didn't listen by mistake. If you want to reach out, you can DM me on Instagram at Tony Thrash. Until next week, remember, there's still time left on the clock. Let's get you off the bench to start your comeback. I want to give a special shout out to Country Club for the original music. You can find them on Instagram at Country Club.