There is no more powerful stumbling block to moving beyond divorce than learning to accept your new life. Realizing that you will no longer spend the rest of your life with this man, who you once loved, is the hardest part in recovering from a divorce. Acceptance requires total honesty, courage and the willingness to let go of the life that we had … a life that no longer exists.
How does one learn acceptance? Although it takes time and a good deal of inner work, it can be done. Here is a step-by-step guide to move you towards accepting your new life and being happy:
1) It’s about you, not them (or him).
One of the most powerful lessons in life is the knowledge that we have control over one person and one person only, ourselves. If you are looking outside of yourself to move forward it won’t happen, because you can’t change anyone but yourself. It is when we turn inward and do the work on ourselves that we will be able to affect dramatic and positive changes in our lives.
Being a victim means giving away all control and power. If you blame someone else, then you are powerless, as you have chosen to absolve yourself from any responsibility.
We can create changes that will make our lives better but it not until we stop trying to change our ex or our current reality and we start to realize that it’s about us and our happiness.
2) Get support.
If you think you can do this all by yourself you are in for a big surprise. Choose a divorce support group, a therapist, a member of the clergy, a family member to lean on or a life coach. Getting support is a sign of intelligence as well as an indication that you really are serious about moving onward in life.
3) Get through the initial stages of loss.
The stages can include denial, grief, anger, depression and whatever else you might be feeling early in the divorce process.
These emotions are all natural and necessary feelings that need to be embraced and experienced fully. There must be an ending before a new beginning.
However, there is a difference between fully experiencing an emotional stage and getting stuck in it. Beware of excessive self-pity and real depression. Here is where support becomes important to your wellbeing and improvement.
4) Distinguish between facts and interpretations.
I cannot stress the importance of this step enough. People get stuck when they cannot face the facts and prefer to believe that their personal interpretations are actual reality.
You might be familiar with the exercise of a picture that has a hidden image within it. Ten people may come up with ten different interpretations of the picture. Some people will see the hidden image immediately and others will never see it until it is pointed out to them. Either way, the hidden picture exists. It is a fact. The same can happen here.
And, in divorce, oftentimes, it becomes the classic “he said, she said.” Probably a counselor will see a totally different picture altogether. There is your side, his side and then the truth.
Once you are truthful with yourself and can see the facts versus the drama of your divorce, you will be on your way to acceptance.
5) Be brutally honest and take responsibility for your marriage, divorce and life.
Those who can be totally honest with themselves, will be able to learn from their mistakes, move on, and better understand who they are. Being honest and trying to put yourself “in the other person’s shoes” allows you to see things you couldn’t see before. By setting aside our egos, we can look at our life for what it actually is versus a perception about our divorce.
Once you have been honest and have embraced all the facts about the divorce, you are able to accept full responsibility for your life. Responsibility is power and the freedom to choose what we want next in life. If we cannot take responsibility, we remain victims.
6) Learn to distinguish between what is and how you wish it would be.
If we are living in a nether land of how we think life should be, we are completely cut off from reality. If you are constantly thinking that you should not have to be experiencing divorce, then you cannot accept what is … that you are indeed getting divorced.
We all create a list of “shoulds” that keep us stuck in the status quo: I should be happier; I should be getting more support; I shouldn’t have to work; I should still be married. By concentrating on what we should be, we ignore what actually exists for us and cannot move on. By acknowledging the world as it truly exists, you can make choices as to how to live life and also how to address existing problems.
7) Consider the emotional wounds that you brought to the marriage.
Generally, it is not simply one person’s fault for the ending of a marriage. In a marriage, the parts of you that show up and create issues are the parts that now need to be addressed. They are emotional wounds from somewhere in your past and they have a tendency to pop-up in our close relationships or when we are faced with challenging times.
Now is your chance to address those wounds and heal them so as not to repeat your so-called mistakes again. Use your divorce as a catalyst to go inside and heal yourself.
9) Learn forgiveness for yourself and your mate.
You might not be able to forgive in the early stages to recovery, but if you first go through the above steps, you will be able to forgive your ex and more importantly, yourself. Forgiveness releases energy that can be used in other parts or events in your life.
Forgiveness is more to help yourself than the one you are forgiving. If we separate the person from the behavior it becomes easier to forgive. You know that just because you sometimes say mean things it does not mean you are a bad person.
10) Make conscious decisions; utilize free choice.
When you do the inner work of divorce recovery, you tend to many unresolved issues. You become more conscious of your actions and your choices. You become aware of the subconscious and how it can run your life. When you learn to observe the constant mind chatter that goes on inside your heads, you learn to snap yourself out of it and find something more important to think about.
Making conscious decisions based in free choice means that we are not letting our mind-chatter or our past, emotional wounds and interpretations of reality run the show. We take control of our lives. Conscious living allows for incredible freedom and the ability to create extraordinary changes.
And your bonus tip:
11) Find the gifts of your divorce.
Everything that occurs in our lives and everything that we are (warts and all) has a hidden gift. Speak to someone who has survived a divorce and has gone on to create a vibrant life based upon his or her own passions and values. Oftentimes it takes a good whack on the head to awaken us to life’s possibilities and our own happiness.
It’s the old adage: Every cloud has a silver lining. It is true. Search for what can come from your divorce and it becomes yet another step toward a successful recovery.
Recovering from a divorce takes inner work. Much like the work that takes place under the ground to bloom a flower, you must work on your “roots” to have a beautiful life.
Shelley Stile has been professionally trained at Coaches Training Institute and coaches people on a one-on-one basis guiding them towards the goals they desire to achieve in order to live their best life possible. She specializes in working with women and divorce recovery. Shelley also teaches the “Creating Change in Your Life” workshop at the Adult Schools of Montclair and The Chathams in New Jersey, and volunteers at the Center for Women in Livingston, New Jersey. She is a member of the International Speaker’s Forum and served as a Coach for Harv Ekar’s Life Directions seminar series. Shelley is presently undergoing certification for Divorce Coaching with the Ford Institute for Integrative Coaching.
You can learn more about Life Coaching with Shelley at changecoachshelley.com and http://shelleyblog.changecoachshelley.com or contact Shelley at shelleystile@changecoachshelley.com.