Rebuilding Confidence After a Breakup
How to find yourself again by Kayla McCullough
Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
‘It took losing you to find myself again’ – it’s a phrase that has been often repeated for the past half-century or so. The concept of finding yourself after a breakup or after outgrowing someone takes time. It takes an inquisitive nature, a feel for it and near-constant exploration. And when you get to the end of that journey, if there is, indeed, an ‘end,’ your knowledge of your true identity will have made your quest wholly worthwhile. It will be an awakening whose completion will be well worth the wait, wonder, and work you put into it. Finding out who you are can be a journey that takes years, but it doesn’t have to be an abstract concept, and there are concrete actions you can take that will help you find out who you are, where you want to go and be in life, and ways to get there more quickly to begin living the life you want—and begin being the person you want to be—before too much of that life has slipped by. But when the person with whom you were most vulnerable breaks your heart, it's easy to feel inadequate and worthless, even if you have a laundry list of reasons you should feel good. When it comes to love, our rational mind isn't running the show. Instead, breakups often make us think the worst things about ourselves: The person who knew me best and loved me the most now thinks I'm a piece of garbage, so it must be true. The journey back to who you are will take time and effort, but thanks to Ms. Jill Sherer Murray, award-winning journalist, founder of Let Go For It®, and TEDx speaker with OVER 2 million views and her honest, heartfelt guide - Big Wild Love – the road to recovery has become easier and liberation has never been sweeter.
Losing the love of your life makes you realize that love can truly be a double-edged sword. It can make us feel so uniquely connected to the world and fill our hearts, and then also slash our hearts to shreds, leaving pain and inadequacy seeping from our wounds. Jill describes her experience of staying in a dead-end relationship well into her forties before she let it go. She was like millions of women who stay in bad relationships. Her book, Big Wild Love will put you on a path to teach you that, wherever you are, it's never too late to start anew and find the love you crave. “I wrote this book to expand on the fact that we all need to let go of the things that are not serving us. Because ultimately, it comes down to how much we love ourselves and understand our needs and desires,” Jill shares. Because knowing where you came from can help you figure out how you got to where you are right now. And knowing how you got to where you are now can help you figure out who you are, where you want to go, and how to get there. Here are three things that you need to ask yourself to rebuild your confidence after a relationship.
Why did I choose this relationship and why did I stay?
Without blaming yourself or dwelling on past mistakes, when a relationship comes to an end there needs to be a time for reflection when you get to know the things that you’ve learned about who you are and what you want out of a relationship and a spouse. “So often the conversations that I have with women regarding this topic are spent on them reflecting about the actions of their partners. ‘He promised me this...’ ‘He said we would be this…’ and what I like for them to understand is that the reasons for those questions have nothing to do with your partner. What’s the most important thing to understand is WHY you chose him. WHY did you stay? Why would you choose and stay with a person who couldn’t fulfill your needs? It’s really about understanding yourself so that you can learn what you truly want,” Jill advises.
Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?
It’s a popular piece of poetry for a reason, and it raises the question among the heartbroken: Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? And if you’d ask anyone with a raw broken heart, they'd tell you they'd much rather erase their memories and go back to a time when they didn't know the other person existed. But if you were to ask Jill, she’d have a much different answer – “When you have Big Wilde Love for yourself, you are making different calculations on how you spend your time and where you put your energy than someone who doesn’t have that and isn’t calculating anything. Life is full of uncertainty. There is never going to be a moment in our lives when things outside of ourselves are certain. So yes, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
How can I raise my confidence once more?
Once you acknowledge that your self-image likely stems from your ex's perception of you, you are ready to handle your negative thoughts about yourself differently. Instead of allowing the harsh parting words to crush your self-esteem, treat the memories and verbal daggers with compassion. This doesn't mean to push those negative thoughts away or think they are problematic. Just let them be and do so with care and love. “It is the action of taking care of yourself and not racing into another relationship. Ask yourself those questions of why… why did you stay? Why did this relationship happen in the first place? What is it that I believe about myself that stops me from making better choices for myself? After I asked myself those questions, I finally realized that the reason that I stayed was that I didn’t think I deserved what I wanted because of [childhood] limiting beliefs.”
There is a reason why some of the most beautiful songs and pieces of poetry are written in times of heartbreak, and why so many people write their most inner thoughts while dealing with the loss of a relationship. Heartbreak is life-altering. Breakups open your soul, split you in two, and leave you in a state of overwhelming nothingness. Voluminous vacancy. Deafening silence. Big Wilde Love is a guide that will help you navigate through those voids and ultimately learn the most valuable thing – how you can love you for you.
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