Breakups are tough, super painful and then the person you normally have around to talk to about the most painful parts of your life is no longer there to talk to. Woof.
I get it, been there, done that. SUPER SUCKY.
There are many things that go into surviving a breakup and I outline a lot of them in my blog post Break Through Your Breakup. Because the truth is, you don’t want to only survive your breakup, you want to THRIVE in your breakup. It’s one thing to go through the breakup and live your mediocre life, it’s a whole other ball game when you use that experience to catapult your life to the next level.
The Key to Surviving Your Breakup
So what’s the key to surviving your breakup and thriving in the next chapter of your life? SELF COACHING. Give me a minute to explain this here. Learning to coach yourself will open the door to possibilities you didn’t even know existed, you’ll discover that your thinking is creating everything in your life. WHICH IS THE BEST NEWS EVER!
Literally, this is the best gift you can give yourself, it treats the root cause of the pain, not just the symptom. All the action oriented things I teach you to survive a breakup will help but they are all treating the symptom, not the root cause. Let’s get at what is really going on and treat it for long term relief, not just temporary.
How Do I Self Coach?
Let me introduce you to “The Model” created by Brooke Castillo at The Life Coach School. This tool is going to become your best friend, your most valuable tool in your toolbox.
The premise of the model is that your thoughts generate a feeling, that feeling creates specific actions, and those actions create the results in your life. This is so amazing because we can control our thoughts, so no matter what circumstance there is, we control how we interpret it and can generate any feeling we choose to get us whatever results we want in our life….. MIND BLOWING!
There are five components to the model:
Circumstances:
These are the facts of the world, the things going on around us. My boyfriend said, “xyz”, the sky is blue, I’ve been in a long distance relationship for 2 years. These are things that everyone would agree upon.
Thoughts:
Thoughts are our interpretation of the world. Sentences in our brain. What you think about a specific situation. For example, “What he said was rude”, “I love being in a long distance relationship.” “The sky is so beautiful”. These are different thoughts about the circumstances. We control the thoughts in our mind and can choose which ones we give energy too or not. We can decide to eliminate a thought, stop believing it, and create new thoughts that serve us in life.
Feelings:
Vibrations in our body, these are emotions. One worded emotions. For examples, angry, frustrated, justified, mad, sad, upset, loved, grateful, happy, excited, empowered. There are SO many emotions in the world and you can choose to generate any of them.
Actions:
These are the movements and the way you react based upon how you feel. Sometimes this looks like inaction. So maybe you felt hurt because of your thought about what your boyfriend said, that might cause you to start crying, or yell back at him, or say something to him.
Results:
What you’ve created (or maybe not created) in the world based on your actions. This always and I mean always ties back to your thoughts. So if your thought was “What he said was rude” your result may end up being “You are rude”. You must always make sure your result is your own. You cannot control other people (trust me I’ve tried) so if your original thought was about someone else you have to turn it back onto you. What does that result in for YOU.
How Did You Self Coach When Surviving Your Breakup?
So let’s work with a real world example, and let me share my experience because it’s so important to see that this applies to EVERYONE in EVERY situation. When I went through my breakup I did a lot of things that aided me in “feeling better” (all outlined in Break Through Your Breakup) but those were all only treating the symptom. Toward the end I started to have a whole mind shift and then when I was introduced to the model, everything changed, all the pain dropped off my shoulders and I had a renewed sense of self and a relief I hadn’t felt since the breakup. Let’s do it!
Unintentional Model: (this is the model you start with, your subconscious thoughts that are playing in your brain currently)
Circumstance: Ex boyfriend from a 6 ½ year relationship, 1 month after breakup, posted a profile pic of him and another girl, comments stating, “so happy for you two”
Thought: He never loved me because if you truly love someone you can’t move on that quick.
Feeling: Betrayed
Actions: Talk about it with friends about how bad of a person he was, when he reached out I would ask him how he could do something like that?, Play victim, Live in emotional childhood, Seek approval from outside of myself via social media and other men
Result: I’m not loving myself or allowing myself to move on
Notice, I tried to get as “factsy” as possible. Do not load up your circumstance with your interpretations of the situation. And in the moment you most likely won’t realize this but since I’ve done work on this I see it now … I had this idea in my mind that if someone moves on from a breakup quickly that means they never loved me. That is completely made up! I made that situation mean something that caused me so much pain. I did that to myself.
When you’re in the moment and you complete a model I want you to take two steps before trying to create a new “Intentional” model.
Is your circumstance neutral? — did you make it as “factsy” as possible and do you believe it’s neutral, if not, take time and break it down, question it, how could someone else see this in a different way?
Do you recognize that the thought you’re having is completely optional? — do you really get it? Not only do you conceptually understand your thought is a choice but do YOU see that thought as a choice? Most of the time our answer is NO, it’s “the truth”. But I really want you again, to break it down, question the crap out of it. Is that story serving you?
Intentional Model:
Circumstance (stays the same because the whole premise is we don’t need to change our circumstances to feel better or create different results in our life, we must change our thinking first): Ex boyfriend from a 6 ½ year relationship, 1 month after breakup, posted a profile pic of him and another girl, comments stating, “so happy for you two”
Thought: That happened exactly as it was supposed to, who am I to say what’s right and what’s wrong?
Feeling: Grateful
Action: Write, create, meditate, question my thoughts and beliefs, share my findings with the world, have loving thoughts towards the time I had with my ex, send love, speak kindly of the past and the situation, think about what I beliefs I want to carry forward into my new relationships
Result: Everything happens for me not to me. Moved on, new belief systems, new ways of thinking, vlogs, blogs, clients, my own business.
Notice the difference here. When I dropped the belief that he didn’t love me because he moved on quickly and started to really question that thought and decide on purpose that I wanted to believe that everything happened exactly as it should, the pain disappeared. I decided on purpose to tell myself a story that served my life. That new thought generated a wonderful feeling of gratitude for me which created beautiful actions and results that have propelled me beyond what I thought possible.
Learn how to coach yourself my friends. It’s the key to surviving our breakup, and more importantly it’s the key to life. Treat the root cause, not just the symptoms. I believe in you and I know you may be feeling tremendous pain right now, but baby girl, it’s all happening FOR you, not to you. I promise.
Are you currently going through a breakup? Check out the free breakup first aid kit or, ready to talk to someone about it and start to move forward? Sign up for a free 30 minute coaching session.
With love and positive vibes,
Dorothy
