Back to Life
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Back to Life:
How to Recover From a Breakup Fast
By Stephen Hussey
Introduction The Purpose Of This Bonus “It’s hard to tell your mind to stop loving someone when your heart still does” —Anonymous
I open with this quote because this bonus is not going to sugarcoat the process of getting over an ex. I’m not going to pretend there is a magic elixir or set of aphorisms you can chant in a mirror that will make you suddenly feel better about your break up. So what’s my purpose here? My aim in this document is to give you what actually works. Breakups are always going to be painful, but there are smart ways to go about dealing with this pain, and there are also bad routes that, if taken, will prolong your feelings of despair and loneliness for way longer than necessary. I don’t want you to take a year off before you’re ready to get back out there again. I’ve seen many people try to simply ignore their love lives for a year after a breakup. They also indulge in their pain so much that 3
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they ignore themselves, their needs, their friends, and sabotage all the parts of their life that should be an essential support structure during this difficult time. Now, if you haven’t read or listened to any of the main program yet, and have instead chosen to jump to this bonus straight away, I recommend you don’t read further than this paragraph YET. Go back first and listen to Matt’s main program (Get Him Running Back to You: The 5 Simple Steps to Win Your Ex Back Fast). During certain points within that program, Matt is going to explain how crucial it is to rebuild your life and recover emotionally from a breakup, and he’ll direct you to this short guide; therefore, the best way to use this bonus is to start with the main program and then jump to this guide when Matt directs you toward it at various points during the 5 steps he outlines there.
Ok, now that you’re here, let me just say once again: There is no magic formula for immediately getting over your ex. In these pages, though, you’re going to discover why some people remain hung up on their exes for months and even years, while others come back stronger and better than ever. If you follow the plan in this document (not all of which will feel easy during the tough stages of losing someone), you will bounce back so much quicker than if you go about recovering in all the ridiculous ways most people do. You are going to set yourself up for more than a full recovery. In fact, you’ll feel so much more fulfilled and positive about your life that when it comes to the question of getting back with your ex, you’ll feel like you’re making this decision from a position of power and choice, rather than from the despair of just not being able to imagine your life without him.
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Most people fail to win back their ex (or move on from their ex) because they never truly recover from the break up. They stay in limbo, and this causes them to make desperate plays for their ex that only drive him further away. By the end of this document, you’ll never have to be in that position again. Instead, you’ll be able to both imagine and enjoy a fulfilling life without your ex, and from here you’ll be in the perfect position to choose whether to accept him back into your new, happier existence once again. So let me summarize what this short guide is intended to do for you: 1. Explain how you should approach this break-up mentally, so that you can make a recovery without screwing up other aspects of your life. 2. Give you the tools to pull yourself out of the depths, bitby-bit, so that when you emerge you come out stronger and ready, with even higher self-esteem than before. 3. Put you back in a position of power so that you can attract your ex (or any guy you choose) with complete confidence again. It enables you to choose your ex again, instead of desperately needing him to fill a hole in your life caused by his absence. This guide is a gift you’re giving yourself. Let me stress again: the purpose of this guide is not to make you attractive enough to win back your ex. The purpose is to give you a happier, more fulfilled life without your ex so that you can choose whether you want him in your life again. Now let the healing begin!
Part 1 Where Is Your Head Right Now? Right now you’re going to feel in “survival mode”. You’re going to be looking for a ledge to cling onto so that you don’t free-fall all the way down a deep ravine of despair and self-pity. You’re going to feel like that scene in The Dark Knight Rises, where Batman is thrown into a well at the bottom of the deepest, darkest prison on earth. You can see the light up above you long in the distance, but you have no idea how to reach it. Fear not, for, like Bruce Wayne, this is a place from which you can build yourself back up and from which you can rise again. When we undergo a break-up, our self-esteem can take a massive battering. We have transitioned in a heartbeat from having a life-partner who always has our back, who always makes us feel attractive and wanted, to suddenly having the rug is pulled out from under us, not knowing what to cling onto before we hit the ground. The feelings of loss and loneliness are sharp and immediate. You feel waves of fear hit you as you wonder whether you’ll ever feel complete again without that partner in your life. When this happens, if we’re not careful, we revert to “survival” mode and feel completely desperate and helpless. 7
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Survival mode is characterized by the following: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Acting entirely on emotion Impulsive and erratic behavior Losing all sense of direction Your life becomes disordered as you seek constant distractions
What are the results of this survival mode? Well, typically this is what forces people to make extremely bad decisions straight after getting their heart broken. Perhaps they become obsessive about their ex and harass them at every possible moment, or phone them with tears and even begging to be taken back, or maybe it manifests itself in your ability to control other areas of your life – your work suffers because you make rash decisions and can’t stay focused. You become unreliable and unresponsive to friends and end up feeling more isolated, or maybe you start damaging your body with alcohol, food, or cigarettes as a way of letting everything fall to pieces. So now I’m telling you to STOP. RIGHT NOW. Get off this runaway train now before you end up a thousand miles from where you want to be. This isn’t me lecturing you by the way, because, lest it bear repeating again: I’ve BEEN there. I know first-hand how much this period sucks, how bleak things can feel and how it can feel tempting to succumb to oblivion and ride the storm head first into a pile of misery and junk food, but this path only makes your eventual return to normality take even longer.
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Despite how damaged you feel after a breakup, it is actually now more important than ever for you to protect certain parts of your life that can become crippled and wasted if you don’t look after them. Here are some of those essential areas you must now value and protect MORE THAN EVER: • • • • • • • • • •
Your family and loved ones Your self-esteem Your body Your time Your emotional energy Your career and goals Your friendships Your view of relationships and men in general Your optimism Your pursuit and enjoyment of love
The end of a relationship is going to threaten all of these things. When you lose someone you love, the whole world can seem colder and more brutal, and even things that once gave you joy will be hollow and soulless. You’ll walk through familiar places and feel your stomach turn at the thought that you’ll never get to be there with your ex again. You’ll have holiday pictures around your house or on your laptop home screen that you can’t even stomach looking at anymore. There will be corners of the internet you can’t bear to click for fear of triggering that flood of longing when you stumble upon some activity your ex is getting up to. I’ve been there. Believe me, I’ve been there. So now I want you to resolve with me to start a new chapter. After reading each strategy, make sure you write down a couple of ways
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you are going to implement each one in your own life starting TODAY. The more you do this, the sooner you are going to feel better every single day and start living a fulfilled life without your ex.
7 Strategies To Recover From “Breakup Trauma” And Build Your Life Back Up Again
Strategy 1 Turn Self-Loathing Into Self-Love Break ups are a lonely place to be. Your friends and family, however much they love and care for you, and no matter how much they empathize with what you feel, are a million miles away from the daily pain you are currently experiencing. When you’re going through this pain, it may seem to you as though everyone is going about their normal lives while your world has just come tumbling down. That’s why this period now is where you need to show yourself serious love and care in a way that you never have before. Many people turn instinctively toward self-loathing after breakups. Smart people turn to self-love. In tough times, it doesn’t pay to damage yourself further with a bunch of negative self-talk and destructive behaviour. Right now is when you really need that extra determination to give yourself the energy of bringing yourself out of that place. So lesson one is simple: Turn self-loathing into self-love.
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People with self-love don’t destroy their bodies by gorging on food and making themselves feel worse. They don’t let their work and career fall apart just because of relationship troubles. They don’t allow themselves to feel like they are worth anything less because some stupid label of being “single” vs. being “in a relationship”. I want your question for the next few month to be: How would I treat myself if I totally loved and cared about everything that happened to me? Even in the tiniest actions, be it your choice of food to eat, your decision to exercise, your decision about how much time to spend with your friends, your decisions regarding your career, treat yourself as you would your best friend in the world. Look out for yourself and make choices that your future self will thank you for. Also, don’t be afraid to push things a little towards just feeling good right now and giving yourself pleasure. You need to remind yourself that you can enjoy life again and that exposing yourself to the beautiful, inspiring, enjoyable, pleasurable activities that you’ve always enjoyed is all going to help. Too many people just torture themselves, thinking that because they’ve been through a breakup they have to hide away and act miserable all the time, doing nothing and merely exist through their usual dull routine. Don’t get caught in this self-loathing trap. Remind yourself that you care about your well-being and give yourself doses of pleasure again. That might be going to the movies with a friend just because you enjoy it. It might be enjoying a night out and giving yourself some fun by dancing and being among people. It might be taking up a hobby you’ve put off that you never had time for in your relationship.
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After a breakup you are going to have a surplus of time. You want to fill that time with things and activities that inspire and excite you again. And don’t feel guilty for prioritising your own happiness right now -- like I said before, this is the time when you need to say yes to yourself and prove to yourself that you have sources of pleasure other than your relationship. Remind yourself what an array of rich experiences you enjoy and that have meaning for you, rather than spending all your time brooding and fretting over the relationship. In the main program, I talk about the importance of giving yourself some distance and coming back to your ex as a different person. This step is the beginning of that process of making your ex see you in a new light, when he notices that you’ve been pursuing your own happiness and exposing yourself to new and exciting experiences. When you next get in touch with him after your No Contact period (which Matt discusses in Step 1 of the main program), he’s going to feel as though he has so much to learn about you again when he hears you’ve been busy with your own life. Now, is all this suddenly going to make you feel 100% again? Will indulging in your own life make you feel hunky-dory, full of pep and positive feelings again? Initially, the answer is no. Which leads us to strategy 2…
Strategy 2 Stop Trying To Rush To Feel Good Again You may treat yourself with complete love and care, but still, when you least expect it, you’ll be hit throughout the day with a wave of loneliness, regret, or a feeling of a hole in your life where your ex used to be. And that’s OK. That’s normal and you shouldn’t fight it. If you fight it, you’ll just make yourself feel angry and more depressed for not being able to get over your current sadness. Right now you will feel like there’s a hole in your life, and it’s because you’ve had a significant part of it cut away (possibly unexpectedly), and you’re probably feeling unsure about what you have left. This is all a ridiculous illusion; the truth is, you have tons of stuff left. But you won’t be able to see that right away. All your brain is registering right now is loss. It’s the same as when you face any trauma -- your emotions can’t help but notice the gap left by a
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loss, and so your brain naturally feels this absence more than anything else. That feeling of emptiness is passing, though it simply comes from the fact that you have invested a huge amount of time and care into a certain part of your life (i.e. your romantic partner) and you now don’t have that area to derive pleasure from. The truth is: filling that hole won’t be easy at first. At first it will feel like that hole is a black hole, where whatever you try and fill it with gets sucked up and disappears. Any short burst of pleasure you get from trying to replace that hole dissolves and leaves you still stuck, with a gaping void where your ex used to be. But here’s the thing: It’s actually a mistake to look at this like a hole waiting to be filled with something else. That isn’t how getting over an ex works. You can’t just pile on other activities, like work and friends, and hope that somehow this will prevent your hurting when you think of your ex. Other friends and activities will serve as a useful distraction and an aid to your recovery (which is good in itself, if only because they stop you sitting at home and being tempted to text/call your ex with desperate messages), but don’t expect these things to simply replace your relationship. Imagine if you got sick. You can’t simply recover by distracting yourself with other activities. What you can do, though, is use certain medicines to make yourself better, and avoid certain junk and activities that will make it worse. That’s exactly what a breakup is like. Other activities and friends are going to help you heal, but they can’t replace your ex and instantly make you well again.
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See, this gaping void you feel inside you isn’t actually like a hole at all. It’s not simply waiting to be plugged up with some other thing, like friendships, your career, or some new guy who can automatically replace the old one. This hole inside you is actually more like a wound. It’s a throbbing pain that comes from being bruised on the inside, and, like a wound, the only thing you’re doing right now is allowing it to heal. This is why it will actually make you feel worse if you suddenly jump into bed with a new guy. A new man can’t instantly heal a gaping wound. More often than not getting cozy with some other guy too soon will irritate the wound like salt. So when I’m telling you to look after your career, your friendships, your body, your health, your hobbies and so on, I’m not advising you to stop up the wound by using these things as a plug. Nurturing these areas of your life is more like taking care of your emotional immune system in order to build up your defenses while the wound heals. Certain things are going to act like an antiseptic defense that will stop the wound from spreading, while others are only going to provoke and irritate the infection further and further. So we have two choices: 1) Build up our “Emotional Immune System” so that we are in the best place possible to emotionally move forward, or 2) Provoke the wound further by irritating it.
Strategy 3 Don’t Prod the “Relationship Wound” There are various ways to prod the relationship wound. They are as follows: • Looking at old pictures of holidays and happy times with your ex • Sleeping with a new guy too soon • Calling/Texting/Emailing your ex with heartfelt messages about how much you miss him and love him • “Liking” your ex’s posts on Facebook or checking his social media pages • Only using friends and family to dissect and analyze the relationship All of the above have the same effect: THEY MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE. They’ll punch you in the gut and make you feel even more miserable than before. They all have the common trait of absolutely guaranteeing that you’ll feel more beat-up and hurt all over again afterwards.
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But there’s also another list. This is the list of what I call “Bogus Cures”. They are the common things that people believe will make them feel ok and yet have no effect whatsoever. They include: • Using drugs or alcohol to try and numb yourself to emotional pain • Trying to get some petty revenge on your ex or making him feel jealous by posting pictures of you out having fun and partying with other guys (i.e. playing games of emotional one-upmanship) • Running down your ex to others and giving him a bad name (i.e. airing your dirty laundry in public) • Going on an immediate and indulgent fantasy holiday where you believe you’ll escape all your pain and heartache (Money Saving Tip: You Won’t) I don’t blame anyone for succumbing to temptation and going down these avenues. In the throes of my worst break-ups, I’ve sampled a few bogus cures of my own (which is why I know firsthand how useless they all really are!). Remember, when you meet up with your ex again, you are going to need to make a SECOND first impression. To do this, you need to demonstrate INDEPENDENCE and SEPARATION from your ex (see Step 4 in the main program for more on this). None of this will work if you are still completely immersed in your ex’s world, for example “liking” his photos on Facebook and sending him gushing emotional texts every other day. You actually need time right now to completely separate yourself from the relationship and create mystery, so that your ex wonders what you’re up to.
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Regarding support systems, yes, it’s great to go to your family and friends for strength from time to time. This is an essential part of moving on by being able to speak about your feelings regarding the relationship, but resist the temptation to make every conversation about your heartache -- or else you’ll identify so strongly with being heartbroken that you’ll forget about the fact that you’re a multi-faceted person who is defined by many more things than her relationship status! So how else can we build up your relationship immune system so that you can inject positivity, and even fun, back into your world, and truly move forward in an empowering way? For that, we’re going to need Strategy 4.
Strategy 4 Surround Yourself With People Who Truly Want The Best For You We are only as good as the people around us. When you lose a relationship, you essentially lose your best friend. You lose the person whose presence probably filled your day more than anyone else. You lose the partner you confided in, shared your successes and failure with, not to mention enjoyed the person with whom you shared the most intimacy and closeness. Because relationships are so powerful and intoxicating when we’re in them, they often fulfill all of our social needs and cause us to neglect our wider social circle of friends and acquaintances. Which is why your overriding mission now must be to build (or rebuild) a vibrant, active social life once again. I’m not saying that anyone in a relationship doesn’t have a social life, but it’s true that a significant chunk of that life will have been sacrificed to do things with your partner. You may, for example, have skipped a few dinners and more than a few nights out with friends in favor of staying in to watch movies with your boyfriend, and that can mean that you need to rekindle 22
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a few friendships and be open to meeting new people to broaden your social horizons. During this time, friends and acquaintances are an enormous boon, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to invest in these relationships right now. Even if you feel you haven’t cared for your friendships in a long time, this is the perfect time to reach out to people, even if you just call an old friend for advice (most people will be thrilled that you called them), or if you grab lunch with a seldom-seen friend to catch up. Ideally, you want to surround yourself right now with three different kinds of people: 1. Close friends and kindred spirits who understand your pain and will be there when you feel down: your best friends and family members who truly love you unconditionally and want nothing but the best for you, and to whom you can open up about your deepest fears and pain about the breakup (I call these “Kindred Spirits”) 2. People who will focus you on FUN: friends, and even acquaintances, who you can trust to pick you up and with whom you can go out and have a good time (I call these “Fun-Lovers”). 3. People who might not be close to you, but who you can seek out for inspiration, wisdom, and personal guidance. (These are your “Sage Counsel”) The first set of people are those who care about you and want the best for you. These are people who you can lean on when you feel upset or just want to vent a bit, people who will hug you and understand. But you can’t live off sympathy alone.
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This is why you must crucially seek out the second set of people, those who will help you focus on having fun again. Preferably these are people who DO NOT have strong ties to you and your ex; ideally they will just be a group of friends you can call up, go out with and have cool adventures. Although the Relationship Wound needs time to heal, one of the best things you can do is have a separate life away from those involved with the relationship right now, those with whom you can just relax and have “away time” with, even if it’s just a night out once a week. If you have only mutual friends with your ex, really do take the time to seek out people who are entirely separate from the relationship, for these are the ones who can give you perspective and make you see that the social world is bigger than just you and your ex. It will be truly refreshing to hang out with people who don’t know your ex and will not have gossip or group politics to share with you, allowing you instead to focus just on connection and having fun again in a new environment. Back in the main program, Matt talks about how intrigued your ex will be when you tell him stories about new people with whom he’s not familiar (See Step 4 of the main program). This is a great reason for spreading yourself beyond your normal social circle. When you meet up with your ex again and your life seems fresh and different he’s going to want to know everything and be more enticed than if he simply heard you were hanging out with the same people you always did before.
The Benefits Of Being Busy With People As I’ve already said, spending time with people now isn’t about replacing your ex. Its true value is in the fact that it keeps you
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busy, surrounds you with positivity and a feeling that you have people who care about you. Furthermore, it stops you from being alone and tempted to inappropriately bombard your ex with messages. This is why one of the frequently touted pieces of advice after breakups is to keep your calendar occupied with activities so that you don’t have time to be alone and be miserable. There is some truth to this approach, but what I’m advocating is more nuanced than that. If you just mindlessly go about doing activities alone, whether it be the gym, going to the movies, or taking long walks, these are all well and good if they keep you from hiding under the duvet and suffocating in your bedroom, but they are still very isolated activities. While you do need some alone time to think and reassess, you also need to see that life is still going on around you. You need to throw yourself back into the currents and the only way to truly accomplish this is to have different kinds of people around you. Variety helps a lot here. Have several different outings with different friends. Mix it up. Sometimes join big groups and become part of a big party, other times go for an intimate lunch with someone you haven’t connected with in a while. Learn about other people’s problems in their lives. Share yours, but be receptive to their grievances as well. Sometimes you want to be deep and intimate, on other occasions just loosen up and dance and meet some new people. Ultimately though, you must find that person or group of people who are going to get you out and doing things and having fun in different ways. Experiment here. Take yourself out of your usual environments and say “YES” to a lot more social activities, even if you don’t feel like them right now.
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That wedding or barbecue or Christmas party might not feel like you’re idea of fun at this point in time, but the more you expose yourself to these activities the more you’ll start to feel like a participant in the world again, instead of someone who lives isolated like a solitary creature licking her wounds alone. I find that it does wonders for me just to see that life goes on with everyone else, and it can be refreshing to be somewhere new where you won’t see all the familiar faces you would see if you went to the same local bar or restaurant you always go to. The third group of people noted above is what I called your “Sage Counsel”. This includes people who you look up to as having a repository of wisdom and knowledge, and whose opinion on all matters life-related you truly respect. Seek out these people and just talk to them – yes, you can mention your break-up – and you’ll often find that you hear a unique or different take on things than you thought of before. Because let’s face it, when it comes to your friends and family, as much as they care about your well-being and help in tough times, you can often predict what they’re going to say, how they’re going to console you or advise you, and it can be better to speak to those who are completely divorced from the situation but who may have something profound or wise to offer if you ask for help. This is why it helps to step back and listen to those who can give you the benefit of their refreshing perspective on things. You don’t have to take every single person’s advice, but use this opportunity to listen and soak in whatever they have to say. You should even read books by people who have been down the road of heartbreak, and seek out videos and passages that give you inspiration and tell stories of people who all go through the same process of thinking
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the world will never be ok again but eventually emerged to find that, indeed, life can be beautiful once more with enough time and healing.
Who Should You Avoid? A Brief Word Of Caution I’ve mentioned here the importance of having family members and friends close to you who truly want the best for you, and I still maintain that you couldn’t hope for better allies to build your life back up than those who love you most; however, I know that some friends, and some family members, if we are really honest with ourselves, are not going to be the most positive, inspiring, helpful, loving allies you can have on your side right now. You may have some friends, siblings or parents who are extremely negative, who see your break up as a total disaster or who use it as an opportunity to criticize you and make you feel bad about yourself. Maybe they constantly remind you of your ex and bring him up all the time, or they encourage you to wallow in your feelings, or maybe they just make you angry in the way they judge you for having a failed relationship. Whatever it is, we all have certain people in our lives who, although they can be great friends, are not the most positive influences in this situation. If this is the case for you, it’s crucial that you do one of three things: 1) Limit the amount of time you spend even discussing the break up with this person, 2) If possible, give yourself distance from this negative influence until you feel more mentally capable of handling them, or 3) Make sure you have other people to go to (i.e. your FunLoving group and other Kindred Spirits) that you can be in the company of instead.
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Do not dwell in the realm of deeply negative people right now. It’s not always their fault, and negative people may not even realize how much they are affecting you, but there is no need for you to be surrounded by anyone other than those who bring you up at this time, and those who make you feel confident and good about yourself.
Strategy 5 Take On Responsibility When you go through a breakup, it’s natural to lose a sense of purpose. You start to let things slide and nothing seems to be worthwhile. That’s ok for a short period, but one thing you must do during this time is take on small responsibilities. Why? There are a few reasons: 1. It gives you a sense of order and routine. 2. It keeps you “in the game” so that everything in your life doesn’t fall apart. 3. It gives you an internal feeling that there are important things in life other than your relationship. It is often said that the happiest people in life are those who focus on a purpose bigger than themselves. This doesn’t require you to join a cause or go on a moral crusade, but it’s important that your brain has daily reminders that there are responsibilities in life completely unrelated to love, relationships,
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and matters of the heart, and that you can derive emotional and spiritual satisfaction from all these different areas. One thing I don’t recommend here is burying yourself in work and overloading yourself for no real end. This can have a counterproductive effect of making you feel over-anxious and in need of a “relationship fix” to cure your problems at work, which can in turn leading to you doing something dumb like texting your ex to tell them how lonely or difficult things are right now. To keep the balance, just take on some responsibilities. Maybe it’s one big work project that you can busy yourself with, chipping away at for a few hours a day. Maybe it’s a weekly goal that people rely on you to achieve and which will give you some focus while you work towards it. You need at least 3-4 hours of your day that is occupied with productive or creative work, something other than “getting over your ex” or “thinking about your ex” activities. I’ve seen many people foolishly stop taking on work after a breakup, choosing to isolate themselves from all responsibility in an effort to “get their shit together” again before they move forward in their lives. They act like a tortoise withdrawing into their shell who decided they will only poke their head out when they feel 100% better again. This can take a long time, and it’s much more effective to take on responsibility in small doses, even if you don’t feel anywhere near your best self right now. Always be patient. Your old self will return eventually, but you can’t put your life on hold until that happens. Otherwise, you could be on a long downward spiral as you wait endlessly for all the bad hangover feelings of your relationship to go away. Remember, this
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is not like a hangover. A day, or a week, of lying in bed, watching movies and eating pizza isn’t going to suddenly sober you up and make you ready to take on the world again. Recovering from a breakup is much more like an athlete recovering gradually from an injury. In the Athlete Recovery Model, when you sustain an injury, it’s important to get back to light training as soon as possible. An athlete begins physical therapy very soon after being injured. She might have a day or two of lying in bed feeling sorry for herself, but after that it’s straight into recovery. Even if it’s the lightest exercise possible, professional physiotherapists realize that to return to full fitness, it’s necessary to put a little strain on the body and keep exercising it, gradually building the muscles up again so that they don’t go slack and get progressively weaker. So some strain (not excessive amounts) actually helps you build back up again. For quick reference, just remember: You are adopting the Athlete Recovery Model, not the Hangover Recovery Model (These two models are mentioned in Step 2 of the main program). To take this on right now, I want you think of three negative modes of recovery you’re currently adopting and turn them into three positive forms of recovery (embodied by the Athlete Model). For example, you could write down the following as positive actions you can take today: 1. Choose a friend you could call up right now to arrange a coffee and a catch-up or a night out. If possible, also find a friend with whom you can go to something completely new: a concert, a new cocktail bar, or a fun event like a boxing class or group activity that will involve meeting other people.
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2. One positive exercise you could do to feel more confident in your appearance (e.g. signing up for 45 minutes of circuit training in a group class at the gym, buying a new outfit, getting a facial to take care of your skin, or even taking care of your teeth by booking a dentist appointment). Remember: These aren’t changes to make you good enough for your ex, these are changes to make you feel good about yourself. They are to prove to you how happy and fulfilled you can be with or without him. 3. Write down 5 things you are grateful for in your life each day. Many sources, from Buddha to the most cutting-edge, modern neuroscience, have shown the benefits of gratitude and taking the time to make a practice of acknowledging all the good in our lives on a daily basis. Even if you were proud just to have sent an email you really needed to send today, or you were happy that the sun was shining and that you were able to get a good hour of creative work done, or you were pleased to connect with a loved one, or you’re just grateful to be alive and healthy, write it down and you’ll start to see areas everywhere to be grateful. Even be grateful for the pain you’re feeling right now; it means that someone mattered to you and that you experienced a unique and intimate connection with another human being on this earth. You are now well and truly in recovery mode and it’s only a matter of time until you feel confident and capable of deriving fulfillment from many areas of your life other than just your relationship.
Strategy 6 Feel Desirable As Often As Possible I’ve already given you reasons why jumping into bed with someone, while tempting, is a very bad idea when you feel vulnerable and heartbroken. That being said, it is important that you remind yourself you are still desirable. When you are in a relationship you receive practically all of your sexual and romantic validation from one person. After you lose that person, you undergo similar symptoms of withdrawal to a drug addict going cold turkey. Recent science has shown that when you are fresh from a breakup, you have many of the same symptoms as someone withdrawing from an addictive substance. This isn’t to say that love is some nasty drug you need to wean yourself off from, but rather, it’s a reminder that coming down from the intense love of a relationship is going to throw you into a loop for a while. Some days you’ll feel clean and marvelously healthy, and others you’ll be hit by a wave of longing and despair, much like a craving for something you’ve been used to every day and no longer have. You’ll be tired, you’ll lose your appetite for food, and for a while your mind will be drawn magnetically to thoughts about your relationship at every stray, solitary moment. 33
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Feeling desirable then is a way of combating this withdrawal by raising your self-esteem. If the breakup was particularly rough or sudden, it’s likely that your confidence will have suffered a blow, and you’ll now need to build it back up bit by bit. The best way to do this is to make yourself feel desirable as often as possible. This might involve taking care of your body and looking after your health. Even small rituals like doing your makeup and looking your best, while not a specific cure, will remind you that you can still look good and will give you a dose of self-esteem. You should also feel ok with flirting a little with guys you meet (though just keep it to flirting for now), and even take a phone number or two, just so that you can remind yourself of your own desirability. Note: This doesn’t mean you’re officially declaring yourself “back in the dating game”, it just means that you are not isolating yourself or cutting out the romantic part of your life entirely. Allow yourself to enjoy the company of guys and flirt by all means. If you end up going for coffee with a guy or something similar, just be totally honest about your breakup. Say “I’m too vulnerable right now for anything serious and need time to recover from a recent breakup, but it would be great to hang out sometime”. On that casual date, do nothing physical (no kissing etc.). Just hang out and have fun right now. You can date all you want when you feel ready. To practice this, start a few conversations with guys when you’re next out. Make it your mission to speak to at least three new guys before you leave a party or social venue. Start with something really simple such as, “You have great shoes!”, or ask him a favor (all guys
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love being asked for help by women). So you can say, “I really need your help with something…can you help us pick a cocktail from the menu?” Do this and gradually increase your flirtation and you’ll eventually start to feel more desirable with other guys, which will make you all the more confident when you next see your ex. Being out there and meeting other people right now will also help a lot when you have the meet-up with your ex that Matt discusses in Steps 3-5 of the main program, and it will help you embody those traits of CHALLENGE and DESIRABILITY, since your ex will notice that you’re in demand when he hears indirectly that you’ve hung out with other guys (even if he doesn’t know the full story of whether they were dates or not!).
Strategy 7 Use the RISE UP model to rebuild and feel invincible I want to look at some daily practical ways you can take charge of your life again and set yourself on the course for emerging from the murky waters of a break-up feeling rejuvenated and at your best. For this, I’ve created what I call the RISE UP model. This is a checklist of things you need to have every single day to bring you out of your funk and help you grow and move forward. As human beings, we feel happy when we are growing and moving forward in some way. When we make progress we sleep better, enjoy relaxation more, and are better company around our friends. But we can’t just make progress in a single area. This is where the RISE UP model comes in. It consists of the following four elements (plus two extras) that you need to have present everyday in order to get back to yourself and take those crucial steps forward that, like an athlete, are going to help you rebuild and come back stronger than before.
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The RISE UP model of daily recovery • • • • • •
Reconnect (with people that matter) Inspiration Self-Esteem Energy Unattach Purpose
Consider this your new daily prescription. Initially this model might seem a bit overwhelming, but these are just the essential elements you want to think about filling your new world with, even if it’s just a tiny bit of each and every day. Allow me to explain each element in more detail. Reconnect – We’ve already discussed in Strategy 4 the need to reconnect with the people in your life. This is just a reminder that at least some part of your day, however small, should be spent on nurturing and caring for your relationships with people. They could be new people, family, an old friend you want to call and check in on, or just going for coffee with someone whose company you regularly enjoy. The better social support structure you build around you, the easier this entire healing process will be. Inspiration – Right now you need fuel to get you excited again. Inspiration can come in many forms: new books, new movies, music, dancing, fun hobbies, artistic endeavors, seeing a concert performance, watching an exciting or motivational YouTube video, having an intellectual conversation, building or creating something, walking through an area of natural beauty, perhaps even just cleaning
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your house and ticking off a few chores that will make you refreshed right now! Fill every day with something that will give you a dose of inspiration and make you connect with things that lift you emotionally. Self-Esteem – Commit to doing at least ONE thing per day that will be beneficial to your self-esteem. That could be physical exertion in the form of a daily workout to give you a boost in natural endorphins; it could be taking care of your appearance; or it could just be writing down three qualities that make you a wonderful person to be in a relationship with right now. Do NOT skimp on this part, believing that your self-esteem needs no work. Keeping your confidence and self-worth high is essential to everything in this program and must be practiced daily in order to truly last. Energy – Surround yourself with people, food and activities that ADD to your energy. Just as important, say NO to activities and laborious tasks or friends that drain you and leave you feeling more depleted than before. I don’t care if it’s green herbal tea or kickboxing, whatever makes you feel alive, make it a part of your day as something to look forward to. Unattach – This one is about letting go of your emotional baggage and taking some time every day to detach from your problems, your ego, and your turbulent emotions. Give yourself a 20 minute mindfulness meditation every morning and evening (you can find some excellent free guided sessions on YouTube if you search “20 minute mindfulness”). All you need to do is find some peaceful music and close your eyes for 20 minutes. Focus on just your breathing and the passing sensations and don’t
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allow your mind to wander off on a tangent. This is not a time for you to get lost in thought, it is a process for detaching from thought. If your thoughts and fears take over, just calmly guide yourself back to your breathing and focus on the present moment, feeling every physical sensation in front of you as well as the soft rise and fall of your breathing. After this process, it can also be helpful to write down some of your thoughts about the relationship. Externalizing your thoughts is a great way of putting your restless mind down on paper and will give you a form of emotional release now that these thoughts are no longer swirling in your head. Write down very honestly why the relationship with your partner failed and write out three key lessons you learned about love from being with your partner. Purpose – Not everyone in life has a singular purpose that they are driving towards. If you are one of those who already feels they know what they were put on this earth to achieve, simply take 30 minutes a day to put some energy into acting on that purpose (whether it is to write books, work on your business, help others, build castles, paint, dance, study, etc.). If you don’t have one particular purpose, simply take 30 minutes to exercise your curiosity and work on something you are passionate about. Choose work that you love for its own sake and which will allow you to lose yourself in something you connect with emotionally. When you reconnect with a sense of purpose and find a meaningful life project to act upon, you’ll start to feel as though you have so much more drive and motivation beyond your relationship. You’ll see that whatever happens, you are someone with talents and passions who is able to contribute something important to the
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world, which will in turn make you feel more attractive to others, who will see this burning purpose within you, as well as giving your self-worth an important boost when you know you are spending every day moving toward greater meaning. Now this model shouldn’t be seen as a monotonous list of tasks you have to accomplish to feel good. They simply connect you to a daily practice you can undertake to bring yourself up to a better emotional place, so that even if you’re undergoing emotional turmoil, in the grander scheme of things your life is improving on every level. If you fill your days with these practices you are RISING UP out of the ashes like a phoenix, ready to claim the world when you get back to normal again. This way, you won’t just come back from feeling bad to feeling neutral. In fact, I promise you you’ll come out of the break-up even stronger, better, happier and more energized about life than ever before. Now that you have these strategies you can rest easy knowing that, wherever your emotions are now, you are guiding them gradually back to their peak. Always remember, this model isn’t about giving you the magic button for erasing bad feelings. If it were that easy to rub out emotional pain, it would probably mean your relationship didn’t mean that much to you in the first place. What we are doing is “recovering smart”. This way, whether or not you get your ex-back, you rise up from the ashes stronger and better than you were before. People think that after a relationship they’ve suddenly lost their confidence, but confidence, in my opinion, is trust. Trust that you
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have the power to make things better. Trust that you are capable of pulling yourself out of the place you’re in now, even if you have to get there one day at a time. Confidence is also truly caring about yourself, instead of making the pain worse by talking to yourself in a way that makes you feel worthless, berating yourself for your own mistakes, or going down a path of self-destruction and letting your world crumble. Even if you feel broken inside right now, you’re not. Just by reading this guide you have already begun to heal and set yourself back on the path to confidence and power, which will allow you to approach all future relationships with a feeling of choosing what you need, rather than taking whatever you get. How you use that power, and whether you use it to attract your ex back is up to you, but you are no longer coming from a place of desperation and weakness. You are coming from the place of a person who expects the best treatment from her relationships and who has a clear sense of what she deserves. Your prescription has been administered. Now all you have to do is be a friend to yourself and take your medicine. Stephen Want more updates from me on all love life matters? Check out my Twitter prof ile @stephenhhussey where I post my regular blogs and thoughts. Whatever stage you happen to be at and whatever path you choose for your love life, I wish you the best and hope to continue helping in whatever way I can.
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