The Secret To Life After Divorce

“Even the smallest stone thrown with great enthusiasm, can punch a hole in the sky.” Hindu Proverb

By Lucas Webb

When it seems like everything is crashing around you. That knot in your stomach won’t go away. You miss your kids so bad you can’t stand it. You worry and stress constantly about how they’re dealing with the divorce. How will you ever support yourself let alone them with just one income? What is everyone going to say about the divorce? Will they think it’s your fault?…

Have all these fears made you just want to stop; crawl up in the bed and hope the world just goes away? It did for me; I lost my appetite for everything life had to offer during those beginning few months after my divorce. I missed my kids so bad, and wondered what might happen to them as the years went by. How soon would my Ex re-marry? Would he treat my kids right? Where would they live? Would I get to see them as often as I’d like? All the unknowns were killing me. To say it another way, my divorce was literally kicking my butt. If you find yourself going through the same thing then please keep reading because it took me a long time to discover the secret to life after divorce, but once I did my life begin to change drastically for the better. This is different from what you might expect—it’s not riches, changing careers or self realization; all those have their place but the real secret to life is as simple as this—having something to look forward to.

If you can look forward to something no matter how small or insignificant it might seem then you will always have reasons to keep moving forward in life. This should be your sole focus during the beginning stages of your divorce. Even if it’s just a single step each day; keep moving forward and you’ll eventually get to where you need to be. The great motivational speaker Les Brown says, “when life knocks you down try to land on your back; because if you can look up; you can get up!—Let your reasons keep you moving.” Right now you may feel like the divorce has knocked the wind out of you. Your reasons for moving forward with life seem hard to rationalize, but don’t stress, this will all soon fade in time if you have something to look forward to. It may seem more complex but trust me the secret to a happy life post divorce is just as simple as that. Here are a few ideas that’s helped me and I know will help you:

1. Plan for your children visits. Start planning the activities you and your children are going to be doing together when it’s your time to see them. For my oldest daughter she had never seen the TV series Lost, I knew she would love it so I bought her the entire series on DVD. We would watch one or two episodes every time she came over starting with episode one. (We did this for the entire X-Files series also) I began to look so forward to our time together. It allowed us to bond, talk about things, and this one silly little insignificant thing like watching a TV show together, became one of my reasons to keep going during the week. My youngest daughter loved to play basketball. So I had another reason to look forward to our time together as she and I would shoot basketball together. I would look so forward to the upcoming season knowing how much time and effort she was putting in to getting better. Each new game brought me yet another reason to keep going forward. There are thousands of other examples like this you have to chose from with your children. Whatever brings you closer together and gives you reasons to move forward each day, this should be your first and sole focus post divorce.

2. Plan your own activities. Despite if you have children or not, plan your own activities solely for you and you alone to look forward to. It could be joining the gym, or taking a cooking class; anything that you can do to simply change the same old scenery for a moment. Getting into new settings allows you to renew your hope for the future and make new memories not tied to your previous life as a married couple. If you find, like I did, money is tight post divorce, then look to do free activities like taking a daily walk or go to the park. Re-connect with old hobbies and talents that were put aside through your marriage. Invite over some friends and look forward to planning that event. Anything you can do to distract yourself from the trauma of your divorce is an effective way to speed your recovery.

3. Reward Yourself-This is something I did a little later than I should have. It’s so important to be good to yourself during your divorce. If you’re beating yourself up during this time, Stop! A simple present to yourself can go a long way to restore your optimism for life. I wanted to buy one of those new high def smart TV’s. However, being very short on money I knew that I couldn’t afford one. Instead of being depressed about it, I made it a challenge to see how quickly I could get one. I planned and saved and the whole time I was doing this, I found I was looking forward to the day I could actually buy one. This kept me moving forward towards that goal and when I finally was able to reward myself with one, the feeling of accomplishment was a way better feeling than even the enjoyment of the TV itself. Whatever the reward you wish for, having it to look forward to is where the key to finding real happiness lies.

4. Set goals– This is the most important thing you can do, and I know, I used to hear people say to do this and I rolled my eyes too. But let me tell you when I started to do this my whole attitude and outlook on life changed. What I did was instead of a new year’s resolution each year, my personal goals began on the date of my birthday. So I would write down about 40 or 50 goals I wanted to accomplish during this my 35^th birthday year. (O.K. 45th:) Instead of writing them on paper which I would certainly lose and not ever look at again, I used my smart phone and kept up with them there. I would write things like: I want to make “X” amount of dollars extra over my current salary. I want to payoff this bill or that bill. I would write down that I wanted take a vacation during the year; certain number of sells I wanted to make, fix the brakes on my car…etc. Anything that I expected to get done that year I wrote them down and crossed them out when accomplished. (Your memo app on your smart phone is perfect for this) Sometimes a new goal would come mid-year, that was fine too I wrote it down right then adding it to my list. Each time I got to cross one of those goals off my list, I rewarded myself. This doesn’t sound like much but this absolutely change my whole outlook on life especially my post divorce life. I looked at my goals all the time and found myself scanning it often. (Because my phone is always beside me) I’m proud to say I rarely have left anything undone on my list from year to year, including writing this post which I have just crossed off! On my birthday next year I will look back and celebrate my accomplishments achieved during the prior year and then start all over and begin my next years list giving my birthday an added meaning to me. Now I feel like the skies the limit and whatever I write down I can achieve it which is an awesome feeling to have. This feeling was so far removed from those moments of curling up inside my bed hoping the world would end.

We all know life is too short to waste on emotions that hold us back and not move us forward. If you’re ever going to defeat this dinosaur of divorce then you first have to let it go and move away from it. Start with the first step, I promise you will look forward to doing the next step.

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