If you’re like most people that get dumped, you probably feel pretty low right now. Maybe it even seems like a real struggle just to get through the day. Every morning you get up and go to work, you have to pass by all the restaurants and other places that you and your girlfriend went to and shared good times at. It can feel like a real painful burden to deal with.
But here are a four things you should be doing on a regular basis to help you get over your heartbreak. It is especially important that you do these during the one month No Contact period.
First, take the time to reconnect with friends and family. A lot of people, men espe-cially, tend to put their other relationships on hold when they get a girlfriend. Suddenly,
of popcorn on the couch..
Try to reach back out to your friends and family and restore the connections that were there that may have slipped a little while you were with your girlfriend. Your friends are there for you. They understand that you’re going through a difficult time right now, and I’m sure that most of them want to make sure that you’re doing okay.
Your friends and family are great for helping you get out of the house and avoiding those days where you feel like you’ll just end up moping around in a bad mood. They’ll re-mind you all the good times you’ve shared together and they’ll help you build new happy memories.
They’ll show you, in a way that conventional wisdom and well-intended advice cannot fully get across, that life really does go on after a break up. At first it may seem hard, but with your friends by your side, you will eventually learn to laugh and enjoy life again by building new memories, sharing jokes and reminiscing.
Make an effort to do at least one social thing each week (bonus points if you do more).
Secondly, broaden your horizons and make new friends. In addition to rebuilding and strengthening your relationships with friends and family, it’s a good idea to get out of the house and do something new.
You can take classes, join groups, or even volunteer to help people in need. Pretty much anything that gets you out and away from the temptation of letting depression and sad-ness get the upper hand over you.
This will help you because it will keep your mind focused on something positive and pro-ductive, rather than the pain from your break up, it helps you meet new friends and inter-esting people, plus it will give you something intriguing and new to talk about with your ex-girlfriend when you meet up with her again after the one month of No Contact.
A great way to find groups, classes, or volunteering opportunities near you would be to simply spend more time in your neighborhood. Go down to a nearby coffee shop. Many of these have a community bulletin board where people can post flyers about things hap-pening in the area.
Most towns also have a free weekly newspaper that usually covers “hip” or “trendy” things like what all the cool kids are up to or which bands are playing in town and off-beat com-mentary on local news. Anyway, flipping through one of these papers can help give you ideas about things that are going on as well. Plus, many of these papers also advertise specific classes or events that are being offered in your area.
Another good resource, is to check out the website www.meetup.com. This website is an online listing of countless groups of people in cities across the world that meet for a com-mon interest. Group topics range from the normal things you can easily think up (pet lov-ers, hiking, poker) to more... um... eccentric topics (vampire groups, nudity groups, flash mobs), so no matter what you’re in to, you should be able to find something that matches your interests, especially if you live near a fairly large town.
When you go to one of these classes or groups, it is a good idea to try to make friends with other people there. This will help to build your social circle even more, which will only help get you out of the house more and keep your mind away from negative thoughts about your break up or your girlfriend.
Third, do something to improve yourself. Maybe you’ve got a few pounds to shed, maybe you spend too much time at work and neglect to do things for yourself, or maybe you need to try harder to get a promotion at work or a better job. Maybe this is even the reason why your girlfriend said that she left you.
Either way, we’re all imperfect people and there’s always something that we could be working to improve. Use the one month of No Contact time to work on improving this part of your life. Hit the gym, take some time for yourself, or work for that new job.
Doing this will help you feel better about yourself as you start to make progress toward a goal. This will help you chase away those negative feelings of sadness and depression and help get the momentum you need to start building some positive feelings of achieve-ment, satisfaction, or just plain happiness in general.
Additionally, when you see your ex again, you’ll be able to tell her about your self-im-provement. This is even better if she can see the results for herself, such as taking better care of your body.
She’ll probably find this very attractive, since women like men who are headed some-where in life. You don’t have to achieve everything, but if you can at least show that you’re making progress, it will go a long way. If you show her that you’re the kind of guy who can recognize that something isn’t working and take action to change it, she’ll see you in a good light and she’ll be more likely to want to be part of your life again.
Additionally, she may feel like you’re moving on without her and that she is losing her hold on you. Although, I don’t recommend pursuing self-improvement for this reason, this will make her want to take action to make sure that she is still important to you. This, of course, may seem a bit like manipulation, but if you’re making changes in your life for the right reason, then this isn’t something you need to worry about.
Fourth, resolve the emotions you’re feeling about the break up. It’s no surprise that break ups can really leave a deep emotional impact on our lives. After all, our relation-ships are one of the most important parts to our lives.
Now, I know that you’re a guy, and the topic of feelings and emotions may not seem very manly, but trust me, this is important. Besides, being a man isn’t about denying or ignor-ing your emotions and puttignor-ing on a strong facade while you are really sufferignor-ing inside, just as it’s not about being prey to getting caught up in the melodramatic whirlwind of them either. You can actually feel your emotions without getting caught up in them. The differ-ence is subtle, but it can d a lot for your own personal experidiffer-ence of life. For example, if you got fired from your job for some reason, you could feel bad about that and then
take action to find a new job and bounce back, or you could feel bad and get caught up in that feeling, spending weeks feeling depressed and rejected while you mope around the house.
You have to find a balance. A real man owns his emotions and experience. He holds them true without denying them. At the same time, he doesn’t let them control him. He can maintain his composure without being pulled off course and getting lost in his emo-tions (remember that section on Commitment?).
I strongly recommend that you get a journal and write in it on a regular basis about how you feel. I have personally kept a journal since I’ve been in high school and it has really helped me deal with some difficult emotional times in my life, including my break up. A journal is, in many ways, a safe place to vent and express how you feel. After writing about it, you’ll usually feel much better. Plus, months or years down the road, you can look back and see how far you’ve come and how much your life has changed.
There is an important guided meditation included with this eBook that will help you over-come the intense pain of heartbreak. This is in MP3 format and can be played on an iPod, iTunes, or most major audio players.
It is called the Funnel Meditation. This guided exercise will help suck the painful emo-tions out of you and help fill you with positive and healing feelings.
During the next few weeks, do this exercise as often as you want to help you whenever you’re feeling down.
Since this is best done while relaxing and listening to audio, I won’t bother to describe it here. Whenever you need a little help to get through the day, give it a listen.
Key Points to Healing Heartbreak
• Strengthen relationships with friends and family by making the effort to spend time with them at least once per week.
• Spend more time out of the house taking classes, joining groups, or volunteering. Try to do this at least once per week.
• Resources for finding things to do in area
• Local coffee shops
• meetup.com
• Newspapers
• Identify something you can do to move your life in a positive direction and work on that for at least the next month.
• It isn’t healthy to bottle up your emotions and pretend you’re not in pain or to fall victim to them and get lost in a dramatic whirlwind of feelings.
• Get a journal to record your thoughts and feelings. This will help you deal with your emotions in a healthy and safe way.
• Do the Funnel Meditation as often as you need to help you release any unpleasant feelings.