Post Breakup Struggle Tip #4: You Are Not a Victim!

This is the part where you start to realize it--although I hadn't thought of it this way until one of my sane, close friends came out and told me so!

You are NOT a victim. It doesn't matter what happened. Don't think of yourself in that way. You're already making a come-back, you're already making plans, you're already improving yourself and positively impacting the people around you. You are a dynamic human being. 

There are no impossibilities; only challenges! Why settle for victimhood when you can be victorious?

Feedback: Have a victory story? Feel free to share it in the comments!

Post Breakup Struggle Tip #1: Talk Enough to the Right People

If you're a human, you know what I mean when I say it's hard to keep it to yourself when you're experiencing emotional turmoil. That's what hard times do to you. After my first relationship, I realized that it was important to talk about how I felt. After my second, I decided only to talk enough, and only to the right people.

I went in search of guidance, reason, and just enough wise reassurance to know what to make of the confusing situation I was left in. I talked to the people I knew I could get those things from. I evaluated each person I spoke to based on the result I might get by talking to them--and I also felt I could trust their insight. When you only talk enough and only to the right people, you're stopping the bleeding and closing the wound, as opposed to getting angrier, more emotional, and--if you talk too much--annoying. Don't magnify an already disturbing experience. Let your conversations result in real calm, clarity, acceptance, and reassurance.

Keep in mind that you are looking for value, not an opportunity to bash your ex or make yourself crazy.

Suggested confidant:

• a priest you trust
• a parent
• close, sane friends
• people you trust who've been there done that
• people in you ex's family, if they're sane
• your ex's friends, if they're reasonable
• God

10 Tips for the Post-Breakup Struggle: Preface

Too much sunlight!!! But...I still like this picture.

I cannot say that I am the best at avoiding relationships that quickly go south. Each time I have agreed to date someone, it was always done with sincerity and with an end-goal in mind. Most of us are like that. We're careful, methodical. We hope and pray. A lot.

But it happens: We experience a breakup at some point and realize the crap has hit the fan.

While I may not be able to talk about what it's like to get it right when choosing to date someone, I feel reluctantly qualified in the post-breakup department.

So, read my next 10 posts, if you know the struggle (I'd like to meet someone over the age of 17 who doesn't). The following tips can be followed in order or simultaneously. They really work, I've got to say; it's proven every time one of my friends say to me, "You really do seem so much happier!" 

Here's a list of what you have to look forward to.

10 Tips for the Post-Breakup Struggle:

1. Talk enough to the right people.
2. Do not over examine the details.
3. Transform your emotional energy.
4. You are not a victim!
5. Take what was good and leave the rest.
6. Disown emotionally perturbed thoughts and own your reality.
7. Recite repetitive prayers spontaneously.
8. Jesus is too present in your life for you not to be okay.
9. Jesus, I trust in You!
10. It's a process.

Mentor Moment: It's a Struggle!

"It's a struggle!"

Thus spoke a successful woman in the business of real estate, Toni, whom I had the pleasure of spending time with when she agreed to sit down with me and my mastermind group the other day. She dropped a lot of gems as she described her life to us, so this post about her may be the first of many.
She was a mother of two, suddenly single, twenty-odd years ago. She had a job she hated, and a desire to create a better life for herself and her sons.  She was working for the airlines when she faced the reality that she had to do something different; she had to escape the life of an under-paid, over-worked, mistreated employee. So, she jumped ship.

"Don't be afraid to go for a swim and struggle!"
She had to struggle to be independent of her parents. She had to struggle to provide food and education for her sons. She learned that:

"Life motivates you."

and she pointed out that

"When you have a choice, you're complacent."
Sometimes God asks us to struggle by showing us that we have no choice to do otherwise. He asks us to go down paths that we don't necessarily like. Toni said that she herself had hated the path she had to follow! But she had faith and she persevered. She says that when you are ready, and God is ready, a light bulb will go off, and you will know what you have to do. And you will struggle. But you'll know you're in the right struggle. The key, according to Toni, is to remember to

"Always focus on how life can always get better."

And then you'll look back someday, like Toni, and know that you'd struggled for reasons much bigger than you can presently imagine.