Have you every loved someone so much that when the relationship ends it feels as if you can’t breathe?
Have you ever missed someone so much that you would do anything in the world to just have 10 more seconds with them?
Have you ever had so much regret over a failed relationship that your mind plays 100 scenarios in your head, over and over again?
love
1 . an intense feeling of deep affection.
Ahhh…Love is such a beautiful thing, but anyone who has lived in this world has most likely experienced losing love in some way, shape, or form. One of the hardest things that I have had to do is move past the fear that I experienced when I lost the love of my life to a breakup and move forward towards a place of peace. I know that I will always love this person, those feelings won’t change for me, but I know that I can find peace that will make me stronger and a more complete person as I move forward along my journey.
This blog post is not about how to stop loving someone. In fact, it is how we can use our love to transition and transform. I was given the book ‘Love is letting go of Fear’ about 11 months ago from my good friend D.J. When I read this book, I loved the concepts that they shared on how we can move from fear based thinking to love thoughts and how this shift in perception can have a dramatic impact on our lives. At the time I was trying really hard to use the concepts, but fear still lived in my head (he built a really nice home in there and he didn’t want to move). What I didn’t realize was that as I was struggling (struggling might be an understatement) with losing my soul mate via my depression and my fear based actions, it would be this book and the lessons that it teaches that would finally move me towards peace. Here are some key takeaways from the book and how I related them to my life to help me continue in my progression of living in peace/love, instead of fear.
This is the insight of a non-professional and I can not guarantee that what works for me will work for you. These are only examples of my takeaways from the book and how I have used what I read to help in my situation. I would suggest everyone read this book for themselves and take their own meaning from it, but I hope you find my experiences helpful.
Living In The Past & Future:
We can’t live in the past, it does not exist. We can’t live in the future it does not exist. We can only live in the Present.
I really struggled with this one, but as time has gone on this has turned into a major focus of mine. In every aspect of my life I have dwelled on the past and been fearful of not reaching my dreams in the future. This thought process has caused me to miss what was right in front of me: THE NOW. After re-reading the book along my journey, I have worked hard to focus on the NOW to help me through my painful heartache.
The Past: I was constantly beating myself up over the past mistakes I had made in my relationship. I would think: “If only I would have done x, y, z. If only I would have just dealt with my depression earlier. If only I would have allowed her space when she asked for it.” Etc………. (these are just 3 of the 100,000 fear based past thoughts I would replay in my mind all day long). The change happened when I shifted my thinking about the reality of the past. The past is no longer real, it is all just an illusions in my mind. I can’t do anything about the past anymore as the time has passed me and all I can do is focus on the NOW. In my relationship I was no longer able to go back and do anything about my past mistakes, so dwelling on them wasn’t doing anything but keeping me in a dark space that I no longer wanted to be. The past was the dark and the NOW was the light.
The Future: So if the Past is darkness and not real and the Now is light, then that seems simple: Just don’t focus on the past anymore. ALERT! I was also constantly living in the future and as painful as the past can be, the thought of the future when you are in a dark place can be just as gut wrenching. I would say, “She is my soulmate, I need to get her back. If I do this and that, maybe she will love me again. How am I going to live my life without my soulmate?” I again was throwing all these fear based thoughts into the future, a place and time that has not happened yet, again something that was not real and just an illusion. Don’t get me wrong, I would do anything to have her back in the future, but what I realized is that focusing on the future won’t do anything to help me move forward. I have to focus on the NOW! If I want to move forward and find love somewhere else, I have to focus on the NOW. If I want to work on myself and hopefully win her back someday, I have to focus on the NOW.
The NOW: You have probably seen a theme in the previous paragraphs, but the NOW is the only real reality we have. The past and the future are just illusions that are in our mind and the moment of right NOW is all that we can control. Through this thinking, I stopped focusing on what I did wrong in the past and what I was going to have or not have in the future, and instead I started to focus only on what I was going to do today, right now, NOW!!!
Changing Our Thought Patterns:
“I am determined to see things differently”, “I could see peace instead of this”, and “I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt”.
‘Love is letting go of fear’ articulates, in an amazing way, the concept that we have the power to choose our own thought patterns and reality. The way we choose to think will have a tremendous impact on if we have fear or peace in our hearts.
I believe that one of the keys is to focus everyday on telling ourself that we can “see things differently,” and “we can see peace instead of this.” I know that when I start to have “fear” based thoughts like “I wonder if she didn’t respond to my text, because she is out with someone else,” or “she hasn’t messaged me in 4 days, she doesn’t care about me anymore,” I have finally been able to stop myself and say: “I can see this differently.” When I start to have these fear based thoughts enter my head, I quickly work to change my thought process, because ultimately I hold that power. I have found this to work wonders for my anxiety and I am hopeful that this process will allow me to take the dark negative thoughts that are clouding my judgement and replacing them with ones of peace.
Forgiveness:
“Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.”
Whether you need to forgive yourself or you need to forgive the other person, you can not move forward and have this inner peace during a breakup without practicing forgiveness. In my situation, it was me working really hard to forgive myself. She didn’t do anything wrong in the relationship that drove us to the end; it was my depression, anxiety, and my actions. Like stated further, I had to let go of the past and focus on the NOW, which included forgiving myself and loving myself. There was no way I could move forward if I was not able to forgive myself for the actions that caused so much pain. I am not sure if she will ever forgive me, but I hope she will for her own peace. This can be a really difficult task as forgiveness can be something that is hard to give out, whether it is to ourself or to someone else.
Love or Fear, But Never Both:
“Do I choose to experience Peace of Mind or do I choose to experience Conflict? Do I choose to experience Love or Fear? Do I choose to be a Love Finder or a Fault Finder? Do I choose to be a Love Giver or a Love Sender? Is this communication (verbal or nonverbal) Loving to the other person and is it Loving to me?”
“Fear and Love can never be experienced at the same time. It is always our choice as to which of these emotions we want. By choosing Love more consistently than fear, we can change the nature and quality of our relationships.”
Again this focuses on the idea that we have the power to change our thoughts. When we are thinking of our ex: we are either thinking in fear based thoughts or love thoughts. We can’t be thinking of both at the same time. In the book it explains that fear based thoughts are not real and love based thoughts lead to the truth. We are born to think with love in our heart and not with fear. After a devastating break up it is very easy for our thoughts to be so engrained in fear. Fear of losing our loved ones, fear of a future without them, fear that we are not enough, fear that they will love someone else soon and not even think of us. These fear based thoughts then lead to fear based actions that only drive a bigger wedge and add to the pain of the break up. When we choose to focus our thoughts on love, our hearts open up and light enters into our souls. Choose Love, not Fear; you have a choice.
Give Love & Receive Love:
“Today I will give to others only the gifts I want to accept for myself.”
“To give is to receive—this is the law of Love. Under this law, when we give our Love away to others we gain, and whatever we give we simultaneously receive.”
After the breakup, I decided to hit the road. I would say for the first month my entire thought process on my past relationship was fear based. I was so in love with her that all I could focus on was the loss. I have finally been able to be so in love with her and focus on how amazing my life was to have her for even for a short time. You can imagine the energy that I was giving off to others around me, before this shift: Depressed, Sad, Pain, Hurt, Etc. Of course with this type of energy I was not attracting the type of people or experiences I wanted to attract, which just kept putting me back in this hole of: “No one like her will ever love me again.” As my friend Shane would always say “There are energy givers and energy suckers, so don’t suck.” At this time of my journey, I was a energy sucker for sure. Because of this, I sucked and a lot of the experiences and energy I was attracting was sucking in dark energy.
When I finally decided that I needed to open up my energy and start giving my light to others, my experiences and contact with others started to shift in a positive way. I started to give to people I saw in need, I started to open up about my experiences, and I started to give people loving and positive thoughts and energy. It was amazing that as soon as I did this, I started to attract positive light energy. I quickly realized: “Ok, Someone amazing will love me again someday.” I started to get comments about how special I was, how amazing my energy was, how attractive I was, and how inspirational I was. Nothing really changed other than the idea that I started giving love to the universe and in return the universe starting giving me love back. There is no other way to move forward in a relationship, unless you start to give out the love & energy that you want to receive in return.
I Own My Peace
“Other people do not have to change for us to experience peace of mind.”
For so long I was telling myself if she changes and loves me again I can be happy. I tied my peace to her loving me and for me to have peace, I needed her to change her mind. Aghh…this was painful as everyday I would wake up with hope that I would get a text telling me how much she loved me and missed me and then and only then would I be happy. I quickly realized that A. this was not going to happen and B. I own my peace. I did not need her to change her ways and love me again for me to be happy. I needed to step out of my fear based thoughts, I needed to give love to the universe, I needed to forgive myself, I needed to change my thoughts, and I needed to live in the now.
- I will not sit her and say that I am perfecting any of this, but it is a work in progress. The book also shares that everyday is a new day. If we choose Fear one moment or one day, we have the choice to change that and choose Love the next moment or the next day.
- I also won’t sit her and say that I am not still madly in love with this women, I know I am, but I also have realized that I can’t tie my happiness on our past relationship (the good and the bad). I can hope for us to be together in the future, but I can’t focus on that either. I can only focus on my own growth, my own development, and living with Love/Peace in The Now.
With this mind shift I have had more better days than negative days and in my Game of Life Scorebook: THIS IS A WIN
A MUST READ BOOK:
No responses yet