One of the hardest things to go through in life is a complete overhaul and change of what you thought you had built as your stable “forever”…. It’s truly traumatic, I know! I want you to be extremely patient with yourself as you go through it! Cry, yell into a pillow, feel all the feelings , it’s ok to be brave enough to go through it !
But something that really helped me on hard days was finding myself an outlet …. I always enjoyed casual running but I never ever thought I’d do anything more than a mile or two. About 5 months into the divorce , I was doing a lot of searching for ways to improve myself (knowing that if I put some of my energy into my mental state that I could come out even better than the person that I was going into the divorce ) I mean, that’s the goal…right ? We always want to improve, be better than we were yesterday!
Listen though , when you are going through trauma it is HARD to think about progress and improvement. And that’s why I decided (during one of those days I actually could get out of bed) to set a goal for myself , something I could work towards that would also give me something to focus on ( a distraction, if you will). I called a friend up and said , you know what … that’s it let’s go run a 5k in Disney …turns out the universe had my back here , it saw what I was doing … the 5k was sold out ! Sooooo we were basically forced to up our goal and registered for the half marathon and just like that I became a distance runner ! I found a plan (an app that had a training plan) and I started focusing on my accidentally set new goal!
It’s probably the best thing that could have happened for me – I learned through the process that I can achieve crazy things I didn’t think I could , things I had previously written off ! Anddd this new focus and outlet gave me meaning outside of my trauma of the divorce , it gave me something to focus on besides my feels and truly helped me through. To this day , I still run – today I did 4 miles !
So I challenge you all to think – What is something you can use as a new focus or outlet ? Maybe something that’s always intrigued you but you have yet to pursue ? What’s something you can set a goal for (6-12 months from now) and slowly work towards ?
*Feel free to share your answers in the comments or in our Free Support Community Here so we can cheer you on!*