Part II: Getting Over It

At the end of any relationship it’s easy to blame the other person, create countless reasons why it didn’t work out, or make it their fault or your own. But when we do this, we are unconsciously returning to our old programs that cause us to be the victim in our life, rather than the creator of it. From an objective biological perspective, this automatic thought process means you are allowing someone or something outside of you to control how you think and how you feel.

When it comes to trauma and loss, we have all been betrayed, experienced fear and doubt, and have had dark nights of the soul. At some point, however, when push comes to shove, you have to make up your mind—is the loss going to be the end of your life or is it a new beginning? It all comes down to choice.

If you decide it’s the beginning of your life, then you have to get over the painful emotions and start trading them in for the emotions you want to experience in your next relationship or experience. In doing so, you fill the gap created by the loss with the energy of your future, as opposed to giving your energy away to someone with whom you are no longer relating. That’s because where you place your attention is where you place your energy.

It makes sense then that the stronger the emotions you are feeling, the more you put your attention on that person who is connected to the past experience. In doing so, you are essentially giving away your power to them—vital energy which can be used to create something new. By the same means, if where you place your attention is where you place your energy, then when you focus your attention on those familiar emotions, you are syphoning your energy out of the present moment into the past. Needless to say, when we live in the past we are asleep in the present. However, as you overcome the intense emotions of your past relationship, you are taking your power back because you are no longer keeping your attention on (or thinking about) that person, and/or the corresponding emotions that keep you anchored to the past. As you free yourself from these past emotions, you free up energy which can now be used to create something new in your life.

Healthy people who see these moments as the beginning of their life as opposed to the end will do anything (in a constructive way) to get beyond the pain, and once they do, something greater always comes along. When that greater opportunity or situation appears in your life, you realize that the pain and suffering was a wakeup call in order for you to get clear on what you do want, and that the relationship you experienced was an opportunity to end some cycle or unconscious program. When you do this, you begin to fill that lack with your own personal sense of worthiness and wholeness, and when you live from that place, that’s when you start creating an equal, instead of a polar opposite. If you don’t live from this place, however, you simply create more of the same.

After any loss, it’s healthy to lick your wounds and realize it’s going to hurt for a while—but you will heal. Especially after a relationship, there is a period of time where you will go through an emotional detox. It’s healthy to feel, process, and then own all of those emotions as opposed to running from them. It can definitely be an emotional roller coaster, but at some point you have to get over it and move on.

To do this you have to realize that what you are feeling is not actually who you are. If instead you can keep your attention off of that person or thing and frame your experience as an emotional detox, then you just have to keep yourself busy and ride out the storm until the feelings go away. As the writer Saul Bellow said in Henderson the Rain King, “Time was invented so that misery might have an end.”

If emotions are a record of the past, it makes sense then that if you stay living in those emotions every day, you can’t believe in a new future (or even see one) because you are looking at your future through the lens of the past. And by the way—I now know that no new information can come into your nervous system that is not equal to the emotion you are experiencing. Why? Because it’s not relevant, so no friend or person’s advice is going to make sense to you until you start doing the work to trade the painful emotions of your past for an elevated emotion of your future.

It’s important here to note that if you think you are your feelings, you’re going to have a hard time moving on. To combat these feelings, you need to get up every day, keep working with your body, keep watching your thoughts, keep up with your meditation practice, and stay away from your past. Lots of people believe that by thinking through or analyzing your past you will be able to resolve your problems, but what you want is the wisdom from the relationship and your past—and wisdom is the memory without the emotional charge. I have seen enough brain scans of so many people (in real time) who are analyzing their past and their lives within some disturbing emotion—and I can tell you it always makes their brains worse and more incoherent. The bottom line is, if you believed there was a better future, you wouldn’t stay lost in the past. The answer to all your questions and dreams lives outside the analysis that exists in the box of your emotional past.

So what if the worst thing that ever happened to you was the best thing that ever happened to you? Because all possibilities exist in the quantum field as potentials—what if you just realized you ordered the wrong meal? Are you going to cry at the table for hours or are you going to place another order? Why not learn your lesson, move on, and make your next order a happy meal?

As soon as you move on and decide to place another order, this is the jumping off point into the unknown. This is when you make up your mind with firm intention that it’s finally over and that you are completing some cycle. It takes that kind of will to move on—and yes, there are periods of ups-and-down and mood swings, and these will ultimately add up to good days and bad days. But if you wake up every morning saying—I’m in, I’m ready, I’m going to create—the unknown is going to show up in a greater way than you ever could have ever imagined with your limited, human mind. This is how greatness is born.

So why not romance a new future instead of romancing the past?

Read Part 1:  Moving On and Getting Over