Make Your BreakUp a BreakThrough
The secret to finding more love than
loss in your breakup
Without a doubt, breakups are sad. They
always include pain, even in the most agreeable splits. Pain is part
of the deal, but the struggle, drama and misery are totally optional.
In this article I am not going to tell you the secrets to avoiding
pain all together. That would just make me a liar and a bad friend.
Because the truth is that if you don’t feel your pain, it will
still be there, lurking in the darkness, waiting to pounce on you at
some unanticipated, and usually unfortunate, moment (do you really
want mascara and tears streaming down your face in the grocery line?)
Or worse, throwing you into so-not-good-for-you relationships and
activities – such as the rebound date or cocktail binge that seemed
like a good idea before you realized that while they numbed the pain
for a while, more pain just came later.
Yes, you do need to mourn the loss of
the relationship… because something has died. But, you do not need
to wrapped yourself up in the uber painful belief that somehow this
ending equals a loss of love. That line of thinking only leads to one
place, the pit of misery. The truth is that you haven’t lost love.
Love is indestructible, when you remember where to find it.
As a woman who has experienced the
devastating blow of a breakup of a 15-year relationship two hours
before her engagement party (ouch!), I can share with you the real
secret to breaking through to happiness and hope after a breakup:
Self-Love. It’s always there. No one can take it from you. And it’s
free. The biggest difference between people who blossom from the
experience of breakup and the people who just keep making the same
mistakes or never move on is the anchor point they choose. Do you
anchor in pain and the other person or do you keep yourself anchored
into self-love so that even on the ‘bad’ days you can pull
yourself forward out of the muck and into happiness and hope.
It’s your choice as to whether you
want to touch the pain or live in it. Whether you want to transform
through this experience or regress because of it. The people I’ve
seen – including myself – who have transformed themselves because
of a breakup into a person who is even more true to who they are,
and therefore have created more love not less – took these 7
daring acts of self-love. I invite you to do the same:
-
Turn your focus and energy from
the other person to yourself. Stop reaching out to him or her for
love, and instead reach inside you for love.
-
Remember that yes, while there are
no longer two people in this relationship, there is still one, and
you are not going anywhere.
-
Realize that this breakup, while a
loss of connection, is not a loss of love.
-
Know that there is an abundance of
love in the world for you. Surround yourself with healthy love, a
lot!
-
Remember you are never alone. In
the moments when you feel lonely, remember you have you.
-
Remember that you are going
forward, you are not being left behind. Something in YOU is pulling
YOU forward into something new. Keep an eye on what that something
is, and move towards it.
-
Be completely honest with
yourself, no matter what. No story telling and no illusions. It is a
deep act of self-love to have unwavering honesty with yourself.
Most of all, remember that loss of any
kind is hard, so be gentle and compassionate with yourself. Love
yourself extra. Reach out and ask for love – in a healthy way –
often. Get hugged. And be with your feelings. It is possible to feel
both loss and happiness at the same time. Your loss does not define
you. Love defines you.
About Christine Arylo
Christine Arylo, an m.b.a. turned
writer, speaker and teacher, is an inspirational catalyst who teaches
women how to love themselves. She is the popular author of Choosing
ME before WE, Every Woman’s Guide to Life and
Love www.mebeforewe.com.
Known as the “Queen of Self-Love,” Arylo created Madly in Love
with ME, the international day of self-love (Feb 13), and a free
Self-Love kit dedicated to making self-love a tangible reality for
women and girls around the world. www.madlyinlovewithme.com
