Chapter 303 - How To Get Better At Accepting Loss[6]

Step 1: Understand That Our Memories Lie To Us And Convince Us That Everything Was Totally Awesome Back Then, Even Though It Wasn't.

I graduated university in 2007, a.k.a., the worst job market in four generations. I struggled after school. I had no money. Most of my friends moved away. And damn, did I miss school. School had been easy. It had been fun. And I was good at it.

Then I went back. I had some friends who were a year behind me, and I spent a day visiting them, hanging out on campus and going to some parties that night.

And man, it was a downer.

I realized something: school had actually kind of sucked. I had just forgotten about all the sucky parts and only remembered the good. Pretty soon I couldn't wait to go back home and get away.

Our minds have a tendency to only remember the best qualities of our past. We delete the tedious and monotonous and just remember the highlight reel. Ever meet up with an ex a few years later and wonder to yourself, "Holy shit, me and this person dated?!?" Yeah, that's because our memories aren't accurate.

Our brain always thinks that there's one thing that will make us happy, that there's one thing that will fix all our problems. And the same way we tend to falsely believe that achieving one goal in the future will make us live happily ever after, we also tend to falsely believe that recapturing something in our past will make us live happily ever after.

But in both cases, our mind is simply reaching for something to remove it from the present. And the present is where happiness is. You know, buried beneath all the bullshit.

Step 2: Surround Yourself With People Who Love You And Appreciate You For Who You Are.

So, your mind is like a chair with a bunch of spindly legs. Some legs are bigger than others. And if enough legs get knocked out, you have to replace them.

Well, relationsh.i.p.s are legs on your chair. And when you lose one leg, you need to make the other legs bigger to compensate for its loss. Otherwise, the chair won't hold your fat ass—which, I guess, in this strange analogy, is your happiness—and you'll fall over and spill your milkshake.5

What that means is you have to reconnect with people who care about you. It's these people and these activities that will carry us through and be the emotional bulwark as we begin the hard process of rebuilding ourselves.

This sounds easier than it is. Because when you've been destroyed by some loss in your life, the last thing you want to do is call up your friends to go get a beer. Or to call mom and admit that you're a total failure.

This is particularly difficult for people exiting a toxic relationship. That's because people who have toxic relationsh.i.p.s in one area of life often have toxic relationsh.i.p.s in other areas. As a result, they don't have people who appreciate them unconditionally. Everything is drama. And their breakup in one relationship will often merely be used as another form of drama in others.

My recommendation: If you've lost one toxic relationship, why stop there? Use your mini personal crisis as a litmus test to see who genuinely cares about you and who's just in it for the drama injections. Good people and good relationsh.i.p.s will offer unconditional support. Toxic friends and family members will look to adopt the drama of your loss and make it theirs as well. This just makes everything worse.

Step 3: Invest In Your Relationship With Yourself.

Generally, people who depend on toxic relationsh.i.p.s for their self-worth do so because they've never really developed functioning relationsh.i.p.s with themselves (and no, copious amounts of masturbation doesn't count.)

What the hell do I mean by "relationship with yourself?"

Basically, how do you treat your own body, mind, and emotions?

This is the time to join a gym, to stop eating tubs of ice cream, to get outside and get reacquainted with your old friend called sunshine. It's the time to sign up for that course you've always wanted to sign up for, to read that book that's been sitting on your nightstand for six months, to finally floss for the first time ever. Now is the time to also let yourself feel sad or angry or guilty without self-judgment.

And if you find it hard to get motivated to do all these things, use your loss as motivation. If you're the victim of a disgusting breakup, well, self-improvement is the best revenge against any ex. If you've lost someone close to you tragically, imagine what they would have wished for you and go out and live it. If you've lost something dear to you in your life, or aged out of a time of your life when you felt important and wanted, commit to building something even better for yourself today.

Step 4: If You Were Stranded On A Desert Island And Could Do Whatever You Wanted To Do—do That.

One of the healthiest things you can do after a loss is get back to basics: do something for the simple pleasure of doing it. If no one was around, if you had no obligations on your time or energy at all, what would you spend your time doing? Chances are you aren't doing much of it. And that's part of the problem. Get back to it.

Of course, there are some people who have no idea what they would do with their time if they had no obligations or no one to impress. And this is an incredibly dire sign. It implies that everything they've ever done is for the simple sake of pleasing others and/or getting something transactional out of their relationsh.i.p.s. No wonder their relationsh.i.p.s went south.

(If you find yourself in this position, there's a new course on my site that can help you find that direction you need to get started.)

Step 5: If You Lost An Intimate Relationship, Don't Be Afraid To Stay Single For A While.

After losing an intimate relationship, many people's natural inclination is to immediately fill the void with either another relationship, or by seeking a bunch of attention, affection, and s.e.x.

This is a bad idea. As it distracts one from the healthy activities listed above.

If you're on the wrong side of a breakup (or even worse, you lose someone to tragedy), even if the relationship was healthy and secure, you need time to recuperate emotionally. And it's hard to do that if you're immediately throwing your heart to the next person who comes around.

Stay single a while. Learn to spend time on yourself again. And only re-enter the dating world when you're genuinely excited to. Not because you feel like you have to.