Tag: wisdom
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Why I Thanked My Ex and Now Appreciate the Heartbreak
“How thankful I am today, to know that all my past struggles were necessary for me to be where I am now.” ~Unknown
I met my ex-boyfriend, let’s call him Derek, through work. We were introduced through mutual co-workers, and then we hit it off and began dating.
We had a connection right away, partly based on physical attraction, but also we laughed a lot together, and I felt cared for by him.
We lived in different cities at the time, but would see each other every other weekend. We dated this way for a year and then talked about moving in together.
We decided that I would uproot myself and move to his city because he had a steady, stable career and could not leave it. I had extreme anxiety about moving away from my friends and my life, but for several reasons, the fear of being alone being the major one, I decided to move.
Living together was tough at first. We had different ways of doing things, but we figured it out—or so I thought.
A few months in, I became severely depressed and my past anxiety came back in full force. I’d gained twenty pounds in four months due to extreme emotional eating. I used food in a desperate attempt to feel better, trying to fill the void any way I could.
Six months after moving in together, Derek broke up with me one day when I got home from work. I was emotionally and mentally unstable and completely blindsided. I felt totally alone and given up on, and I had no idea what to do. I packed a suitcase, put my cat in her carrier, and left.
There wasn’t one person I knew who didn’t support me during this time. I moved back to the city I had left six months earlier and lived with my sister for a month while borrowing money from my mom.
I talked to my friends and family every day to try to feel better, and they offered their help as best they could.
Support from most people though meant bashing Derek, the breaker-upper, and letting me know why I shouldn’t have been with him or why we weren’t meant for one another. For some reason, though, I knew in my heart that focusing on his negatives was not the way I needed get over him.
Derek was not a bad person; after all, I had fallen in love with him not that long beforehand. He was not evil, nor selfish, nor a coward. He was necessary. He was in my life for a very specific purpose, which I now know was to crack my wounded, scared, anxious heart wide open for healing.
The depression wasn’t enough to get my attention, and neither was the anxiety, nor the extreme weight gain I had experienced. I needed him to guide me toward an opening that I was completely blind to.
Had I not felt my heart break a thousand times over at the end of that relationship, I don’t know what torture I would have put myself through or how long it would have taken for me to begin the healing journey I have been on since then.
In putting myself back together, I knew I needed help. I knew I could not do what I needed to do by myself, nor did I want to. I wanted support, I wanted tools other than medication, and I wanted a different life than the one I had been living.
I began seeing a spiritual counselor who helped me heal and learn to listen to my heart. We worked extensively on my wounds from childhood and my fear of abandonment, which came from losing my father to suicide at a very early age.
I needed to come face to face with my inner self and recognize she was crying out for attention and love.
In the past five years since getting help I’ve also changed my diet, the way I exercise, my view on my body, my friends, my relationships with my family, and view on romantic relationships.
I now believe that every single person we come in contact with shows up in our lives for a reason. Had I not dated Derek, I would not have woken up to my life. I would have stayed asleep and continued to live in a way that did not nourish my soul.
I never would have healed enough to allow another beautiful soul into my life—a man who is now my partner, who supports me in a way I would haven’t thought possible five years ago.
Two years after my relationship with Derek ended, I was back working for the same company where he and I met and we had our annual meeting coming up. I would see him for the first time since I moved out two years before.
I was nervous but knew the healing I had done around our relationship would help me. I had also practiced, in meditation, what I wanted our meeting to feel like when I saw him again.
As I sat down in the restaurant and got settled at our annual meeting, I felt someone behind me come around for a big hug. It was Derek, and nervously smiling at me.
I opened my arms and hugged him warmly, my heart beating out of my chest. I was scared I was going to get emotional, and that all of our co-workers would see me break down and get upset. Instead, I hugged him, smiled at him, and asked him how his family was.
We chatted pleasantly for a few minutes and then I paused. I looked him in the eyes, feeling a fondness and said, “I need to thank you.”
He looked at me with shock and asked what for. I told him about the journey I had been on since our breakup, the healing I had done, and the forgiveness I was able to feel. I owned up to my part in our relationship being unhealthy and told him if it hadn’t been for him, I may not be alive today, happy, and connected to myself.
He had no words for a moment. Then he said he was afraid that I was going to be upset, and that he felt extreme guilt for how things ended, but he didn’t know what else to do at the time. He also shared that he’d learned since then that he needs to communicate better with people and work on understanding.
I know some people hear my story and think there’s no way they could ever forgive their ex or be friendly or open to them again. And please understand that forgiveness does not mean condoning. I chose to forgive Derek for me. I needed to forgive him in order to properly learn and grow from our experience together, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize there were things he could have done differently.
If you were treated badly, cheated on, talked down to, or lied to, I understand the pain, but I also invite you to open up to the idea that we are in charge of our lives and what we get from our experiences.
We each have the opportunity to look under the surface of our pain and see the end of one thing as an opportunity for another. We can take our heartbreak and turn it into heart growth. It’s begging for us to do so, in fact.
If we can infuse gratitude into our pain, we will experience miraculous shifts in our lives. My hope for you is this: that you can move through your pain, heal your heart, and one day, when you run into that person you once dreaded seeing, you can look at them, recognize yourself, and say “thank you.”
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You Deserve to Chill: How to Create Space to Heal and De-stress
“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Why do we stress ourselves out? Why is it that being productive and getting tasks done is more important than healing and taking the time to feel calm?
Stress and anxiety can affect our lives in so many different ways. A few years ago, it manifested itself in me physically, in a pretty gross way.
There was a time I had a plantar wart on the bottom of my left foot, and it was very painful. When the pain got to the point that I couldn’t walk normally, I went to the dermatologist to get it burned off.
I did this repeatedly for months on end, as it kept coming back. The wart was so sore that I walked differently, causing my knees to swell and my hips to become inflamed. This whole time, I didn’t think of myself as sick and needing to heal. I just took it. In both mind and body, I surrendered to the wart.
In the meantime, I would always talk about how blessed I was to be so healthy.
I mean, a wart doesn’t count, right?
Then, it dawned on me. This was a question of deserving. Since I “wasn’t sick” I didn’t deserve sympathy for my pain, I didn’t deserve help around the house while I healed, nor did I deserve to stop doing everything for everyone else so I could focus on getting myself better. If I didn’t deserve to heal, did that mean I deserved to have the wart?
This was crazy! I sat down in meditation and asked my inner wisdom what having this wart meant. It told me that I walked around all day serving everybody else, but I had to take care of myself, too.
The wart was trying to get me to stop being everybody’s maid, waitress, nurse, teacher, and office manager by making it too painful to walk.
I was so ready to get rid of the wart that I listened. My inner dialogue became more soothing. Again, in meditation, I told myself silently that I was committed to taking care of me. I stuck to that commitment by delegating chores, making plans with girlfriends, and going to bed earlier. After two weeks of this, the wart was completely gone.
The first step in addressing this “not-deserving wall” was to show myself some compassion—to give myself some understanding for the pain and suffering I experienced. This meant that instead of judging myself for being weak and stupid, I could acknowledge myself by saying, “I get it.”
What an incredible relief this was to my psyche!
Saying, “I get it,” changes the game. We’re validated and can lay down the cross (the “negative self-judgment”) and rest. Then, we can get up and—with that more loving relationship with ourselves—start to get better faster.
I realized that suffering was suffering. No one, not even me, deserved to suffer. And everyone, even me, deserved help to get rid of it. So I practiced being easier on myself, stopped beating myself up about my anxiety, and I looked to my inner wisdom for help.
This self-compassion helped me to like and trust myself and begin to see glimpses of the good skills I used to cope with life. Quickly, I felt less vulnerable and more empowered to make the change I so desired—to get better.
So, back to the questions at the beginning of this article…
Why do we stress ourselves out? Why is it that being productive and getting tasks done is more important than healing and taking the time to feel calm?
The answer? Because healing isn’t tangible. You can’t check it off a list. It takes time and commitment.
The next step was realizing that in order to make my healing a priority, I needed one very important thing: respite.
Respite became part of my day. I transformed a corner of my home into a sacred place of contemplation, and I decided to spend time there everyday to breathe, meditate, and pray. In addition to taking time for stillness, I added a walk into my daily schedule to move my body and get out of my head.
I also started going on retreats. This was an incredible source of solace for me. It allowed me to take a break from my usual daily grind and focus solely on myself and my healing. The memories I cultivated from these retreats have become touchstones for me when my life starts to get chaotic.
We deserve to chill. We deserve to take a break from our lives. We deserve to heal. We deserve respite.
Here is your invitation to chill. I hope you accept.
You are cordially invited to heal from past and present hurts.
You are invited to let go of worries, because you now know that you can handle whatever comes your way. You can gain confidence in your skills in managing yourself and you can be proud of your response.
You are respectfully invited to connect with people. See relationships and situations from the big picture where things are not so personal, and not as “against you” as you thought. You see that everyone is going through their own stuff.
You are invited to stop taking yourself so seriously. Ease up. Relax.
I invite you to breathe easy since no matter what situation you are in, you are not alone.
I invite you to have more fun, more silliness, more love.
Humans have at least eighteen distinct types of smiles. I invite you to use one.
I invite you to share. Do you need more time to just chill?
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4 Ways to Boost Your Happiness and Overcome Hedonic Adaptation
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama
One of the biggest challenges in life seems to be the attainment of happiness. Everyone wants to be happy (or so they say). But what does happiness truly mean, and how do we not only find it, but embrace and maintain it?
Researchers have come to the conclusion that happiness has three separate elements. First, there’s the amount of happiness you are genetically predisposed to have, which accounts for about 50%.
Studies were done on identical twins who were raised together and on some who were raised apart. The researchers discovered that their happiness levels were extremely similar despite complete differences in rearing and environment.
In her book, The How of Happiness, Author Sonya Lyubomirsky calls this the “happiness set point.”
The second element of happiness is life circumstance, which makes up about 10%. These are the things that occur that you cannot control, including such things as gender, age, where you grew up, ethnicity, relationship status, occupation, neighborhood, and health.
Studies have shown that life circumstance only accounts for 10% of our happiness, which means whether you are a garbage man or a millionaire developer, it won’t really impact your happiness level all that much.
In fact, you would probably be surprised to hear that many African societies that live in extreme poverty are some of the happiest. They’re happier because they have a sense of community, and a sense of community is not tied to material wealth, status, or possessions.
The third element of happiness is what we do and how we think. This element accounts for 40% of our happiness, and is really the only element we have control over. What this means is that our intentional activities and strategies we take to achieve our goals can seriously influence our happiness.
The biggest problem we face with intentional activity and thought is a little thing called hedonic adaptation. Humans are fickle, and unfortunately, when wonderful, amazing things happen to us, the newness of it slowly wears off and we become immune to whatever it was that brought us that new form of happiness.
For example, if you buy a new home with stunning views of the ocean, and every morning you wake up and sit on your patio having a cappuccino or watching the dolphins frolic in the water, slowly the scene won’t appear as beautiful. You will become accustomed to the sites and sounds, and sitting outside every morning won’t bring the same pleasure.
We can’t change our set point any more than we can change the color of our eyes or hair (not withstanding contacts or hair dye!), and life circumstances will usually be dependent on our upbringing, so it can take time to change them.
However, we can fight hedonic adaptation and increase our happiness levels by making proactive choices for joy every day.
If you don’t wake up and choose to remind yourself that you are lucky to have spectacular views, then the joy you get from that activity will fade. On the other hand, if you choose to wake up every day and think, “Wow, I’m lucky” it creates a positive reinforcement in your mind and will help increase or maintain your happiness levels.
Everyone is different and there are a number of things you can do to increase your happiness. Here are four that seem to work for me.
1. Stop worrying; focus on the now.
Eckhart Tolle believes that one of the main causes for unhappiness is the fact that we live in or obsess about the future or the past. He says:
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.”
“It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.”
“The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.”
How many days and weeks and hours have you spent ruminating about what could have been or what might be, all the things you need to do, or all the things you should have done? If you’re at all like me I’m sure that answer is way too many.
This is wasted time, wasted life, and wasted energy. The only moment that matters is right now.
When I left my job and started working on my own business I began obsessing about the outcome. Would I get clients? Would I be any good at this? What if I suck? What if no one cares what I have to say? What if I run out of money?
Luckily, I had a life coach who helped keep me on track, and eventually I realized I was wasting my thoughts on things that may or may not happen, but that did not influence me in the present. The only thing I could control was what I was doing at the moment. If I am moving toward my goal and taking little steps forward, then I needed to stop worrying and let it be enough.
2. Meditate.
Nearly everyone extols the benefits of meditation, and I have to agree. Meditation can help you stay in the present and calm your mind, even if only for a few minutes a day.
Meditation is renowned for reducing stress, improving concentration, slowing aging, encouraging a healthy lifestyle, and increasing self-awareness. Meditation is a very centering practice. It allows you to focus on the core of who you are and what you believe without all the conflicting, self-effacing thoughts that can run through the mind.
If you have problems with concentration, try guided meditations. There is no right or wrong way to meditate. Take it slowly and do what works for you. What is most important is making it a part of your daily life as much as you can.
3. Develop strategies for coping.
We live in a stressful time in so many ways: politically, economically, and emotionally. We are connected and disconnected at the same time. If you focus on all the bad that is going on, you certainly are going to be a bit stressed and depressed.
Start off by focusing on what you can control and let go of those things you can’t.
As we speak they are demolishing the building across from me, which requires eight hours of jackhammering and bulldozing, six days a week.
It is extremely stressful, noisy, and discomforting, but they are huge developers and there’s really nothing I can do unless I want to pay a massive amount of money to get out of my lease. So, I have to find ways to cope with the stress of this activity rather than just become frustrated all the time.
One of the ways I cope with stress is to write. Writing is a huge source of stress relief. Some people like to garden. Some enjoy working out or reading or hiking, or social activities like playing pool or even just taking a bath and relaxing in a hot tub.
Everyone is different. Think of something that will take you away from the stress and strains of your day and will help you cope. If you are unhappy with your job it won’t do any good to keep complaining about it. What will help is creating an exit plan and starting to research and apply for new jobs, or maybe considering going back to school
Focus on those things you can change and what you can do to make your day, your life, and your existence less stressful. Can you carpool instead of commuting? Can you ask your husband to take the kids for one night so you can have girl time? Do you need a “guy weekend”? There is nothing wrong with asking to get your needs met.
4. Invest in real-time connections.
As I mentioned earlier, some of the happiest places in the world are those that live and exist within a community. Each is a member of a whole and they seek to help one another. I believe having connections with other human beings is one of the main reasons we exist and is a huge factor in the derivation of happiness.
Researcher Brené Brown says, “I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
Brené has spent her life studying vulnerability and connection, and she believes that in order to gain a deeper purpose and more meaningful life, we need to become vulnerable with others. I tend to agree with her.
In order to be vulnerable you have to connect, and I don’t mean trading pithy comments on Facebook; I mean truly connect. True connection means to understand, accept, and hear someone and to allow yourself to be understood and heard and accepted.
How can you do this? Start with people who are already in your life that you think you can forge a deeper bond with, or join a new social group that revolves around an activity that you like. Take up bowling or attend meditation classes. Seek out those who are interested in similar pursuits and it will be easier to form an initial connection. What you do from there is up to you. The world is open.
These may sound like generic answers to a really big problem, and maybe they are, but they’re a good start.
Take out a pen and paper or start typing. Make a list of a few things you can do every day to apply this advice—what might help you stop worrying, when you can make time to meditate, which strategies help you cope with stress, and how you can invest in real-time connections. Then do what you’ve written.
Try these four things for thirty days and see if you feel any differently. If you don’t, try another thirty days or move on to a new strategy. What matters isn’t whether you win or lose or succeed or fail but that you showed up every day and you did your best. Life is a journey, not a race to the end.
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3 Limiting Beliefs That Make It Hard to Get Over Your Ex
“The broken hearted are the bravest among us—they dare to love.” ~Brené Brown, Rising Strong
Are you finished grieving your breakup and want to get over your ex once and for all?
Don’t get me wrong. Grieving is important. Actually, it’s imperative.
But there is such thing as grieving for too long. When we get stuck in a downward spiral of negativity it gets harder and harder to get out. Our guilt over the way things turned out and regret over what could have been become heavy burdens to carry.
I was there last year. After the toughest breakup of my life, I grieved in a not-so-healthy way. I lived with my ex-girlfriend for a month before moving out of our apartment. Every day I drank beer and smoked pot all afternoon in my ex-neighborhood’s park. At night, I cuddled with my ex-cat since we were breaking up, too.
Day after day, the same routine.
Until I finally got the kick in the rear end I needed. It came from a close friend. He sent me a blunt text message telling me to get off my ass and get back to living my life.
After that, I started paying attention to the limiting beliefs that had been holding me back, getting comfortable with their presence, and being curious about how I could get past them.
One of the biggest obstacles when we’re recovering from a breakup is getting over our limiting beliefs.
A limiting belief is something we tell ourselves so many times that it seems true, no matter how false it might be. Limiting beliefs creep into our lives like chronic back pain, until one day we accept them instead of trying to fix the problem.
Here are three limiting beliefs that are preventing you from moving on from your ex, and some tips to get past them.
1. “My ex was my soul mate.”
“But we were soul mates, kindred spirits. How can I move on knowing that I’ll never find someone like them again?!”
I get it. Many of us want to believe in fate, soul mates, and happy endings.
But this isn’t a Disney movie and you need to move on with your life.
I don’t say this to be callous. I say this because you need to hear it. Your friends and family can’t say it to you because they’re afraid of hurting your feelings. But I’m a stranger, and I want to give you the same kick in the butt that got me going.
Listen, you’re not totally wrong. Maybe your ex was your “soul mate.” But I think where we get confused is thinking we only have one soul mate on this planet.
What if we decided to believe we have multiple soul mates? What if we believed we have soul mates all over the world?
When I started to believe there could be other soul mates out there, I began to meet new, wonderful women who I made genuine connections with.
We have to keep in mind that some relationships have expiration dates. It’s not our fault or the fault of our partners. It is what it is. Sh*t happens and the world keeps spinning.
Soul mates, just like relationships, come and go. You have more soul mates out there, I guarantee it. But, if you stay locked up in your house watching Netflix, I also guarantee you’ll never find them.
2. “I deserve to feel guilty.”
“It’s my fault the relationship ended. I pushed them away. I didn’t know what I wanted but now I see I made a mistake. I can’t get over this guilt!”
I get it. Hindsight is always 20/20. You’re looking back and wishing you had made different decisions. But guess what? Unless you have a DeLorean and mad scientist, you can’t change the past.
I want to repeat that.
You. Can’t. Change. The. Past.
If you believe that, why aren’t you allowing yourself to move on?
Nothing good is going to come from beating yourself up over something that happened that can’t be changed.
Believe me when I say these next words:
You don’t deserve to feel guilty.
Even if you lied, cheated, or weren’t emotionally available to your partner, you don’t deserve to continue feeling guilty.
Sure, you should feel bad for a time. You screwed up. But you can’t take it back so it’s time to get over it.
If you were a crappy partner, start asking yourself some tough questions. What needs weren’t being met in your relationship? Do you know what your needs are? Do you love yourself? Do you have healthy relationships with friends and family? What do you want more than anything in your life? What’s stopping you from getting it?
Sure, it would have been better if you could have talked to your partner about your true feelings and broken up before things fell apart, but that didn’t happen. C’est la vie.
Still, it doesn’t mean you deserve to feel guilty. You made mistakes, and that’s okay. That’s part of being an imperfect human.
If you feel guilty, look deep and see where that guilt is coming from. When you find the source you can start to find solutions. You’re single now. Take this time to work on you so the next time you get into a relationship, you’ll be confident not only that you’re with the right person, but you’ll also be confident in yourself and what you truly want.
3. “Love conquers all.”
“But there’s still love between us. How can I move on when I love my partner? All you need is love, right?”
When my ex and I broke up last year, without a doubt there was still love between us. But we knew our lives were moving in different directions, so we decided to break it off after five years together instead of growing resentful.
Our friends and families couldn’t figure it out. “If you guys still love each other, how can you not work it out?”
But we stuck with our decision despite the pushback. Now that I’m eight months out of the breakup, I’m still confident it was the right decision.
Here’s the thing:
Love does not conquer all. Love is not enough.
Boom! Did I just blow your mind? It’s like finding out frozen yogurt isn’t really good for you. How can that be, you say? Impossible!
Believe it.
Love is beautiful. Love makes us happy, fulfilled, and purposeful. When a relationship ends and there’s still love there, it’s hard to let go.
Still, as cliché as it is, it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. When we love someone else we learn so much about ourselves. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable, open, and true.
Just because you broke up doesn’t mean the love has to die. Let it be. Love that you loved and move forward. Staying stuck in the past because you believe love can save you is pointless.
Love isn’t a relationship savior; love is a relationship enhancement.
You will love someone else again even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. But if you don’t let go of your ex and start looking for love in new places (including self-love), you’re going to stay stuck for a very long time.
Final Thoughts
Limiting beliefs are tough to overcome, I know.
But if you’re reflecting on the three limiting beliefs I’ve mentioned or if other ones are coming up for you, then you’re taking the first step to overcoming them.
Once you know they exist you can take action. And when you start to take action you’ll begin to move forward. I promise.
Breakups are brutal. But if you’re tired of grieving and ready to move forward with your life, remember to take it one day, one step, one choice at a time.
Make the choice to go out with a friend for dinner instead of staying home feeling sorry for yourself.
Make the choice to go to the gym instead of creeping your ex on Facebook.
Make the choice to read a book like Rising Strong instead of drinking beer and smoking pot all day.
Getting over a breakup is a choice.
I believe you are capable of moving forward with more confidence, purpose, and authenticity than you’ve ever had.
But it’s going to take hard work to get past your limiting beliefs.
Are you up for the challenge?
