Turning the Sh*t of Divorce into Compost for a New Life

By Lisa Brick

What if the divorce process could be a crash course in discovering outdated and limiting belief systems and thought patterns about life, love, relationships, family, and money and letting them go forever?  Would your pain have less sting and more promise if you could discover what you needed to learn about yourself that would allow you to experience the quality of life that you desire through the process of your divorce?

Imagine discovering new tools to reduce your pain, like utilizing journaling for introspection and some type of mindfulness training to learn to distance yourself from those negative and fearful thoughts that pop up in your head, confounding you from taking positive action.  Imagine being able to choose thoughts that are life enhancing and affirming.  Consider how you would feel if you began to be more comfortable asking for assistance moving out of your old life and into your new, tapping spiritual sources, good friends, and supportive family members whose lives you respect and would like to emulate while you are navigating the turbulence and turmoil of divorce.

Whether the choice of getting divorced was up to you or not, how you navigate your divorce is completely up to you.  You can choose the path of self-blame, blaming your spouse, and non-forgiveness, and stay stuck in the past. Or, you can use the pain to learn and develop empathy, patience, strength, faith, appreciation, intelligence, intuition, and other qualities that will empower your life moving forward.  Incorporating these qualities will ensure you against creating further hardships and future pain and suffering for yourself.  Every life comes with unavoidable pain from illnesses, deaths, financial turn-a-rounds, and the struggles of those you love.  The key is to not to create any for yourself or your loved ones that can be avoided.

This is an invitation, despite the pain, loneliness, and fear you may feeling, to choose to hold on to and maintain a balance between your tenderness and your power, your vulnerability and your ability to feel joy and love.  While your pain may have temporarily eclipsed your ability to feel joy and love, you can love through the eclipse, like the corona of the sun that is seen most brightly during an eclipse, and exercise your ability to be authentic and gain clarity about the outcome you desire. You can choose to keep walking bravely towards your vision of life as it can be, while embracing the simple gifts and pleasures life continually offers.

Here are some actions you can take to love and shine during the eclipse of divorce:

1. Invest more time being with your extended family and friends. This doesn’t have to be a big deal or a big money expenditure. This can be going to minor league ball games, free local performances, walking the kids to the bus stop, taking outings to the loveliest public park around, playing games together, having a regular story time, or showing classic films that all ages can enjoy with home made popcorn.
2. Invest more time outside playing and exercising. Exercise makes us happy. Time outside makes us happy. Purchase the minimum amount of gear to make this possible, and consider getting gear second hand.
3. Build, make, or fix some things yourself.  There is a satisfaction in the art of creating something that does not come from a stop at the store or paying a professional to fix something you can fix yourself.
4. Get Sufficient Sleep. It’s a fact that many of us sleep too little. It has been shown that sufficient sleep, defined as between six and nine hours per night depending upon your constitution, can support you in thinning down, increasing your level of vitality, reducing tension and stress, improving your memory, allowing you to exhibit greater patience and creativity, and reducing your risk of depression.  (http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongenergy/tp/healthy_sleep.htm)

Maybe in the end this is about much more than being a party of a divorce. Maybe this is about choosing to invest what you do in a way that is more aligned with what you say is important to you and understanding that happiness is not about getting your spouse back or finding a new one. It is about investing your energy in ways in which you get the greatest return.  In fact, you can invest your way to a happier life if you get clear on why, what, and how you are investing yourself, even when market conditions initially seem impossible!

Winston Churchill is quoted to have said “If you are going through hell, keep going!”  When you determine that the path through hell will take you to where you eventually desire to be and utilize the sh-t within and around you for compost to grow that future that you are crawling, walking, or running towards, then you will begin to see hell as simply the current and most available route to your destination at this time.  Don’t stop. Keep going.

If you are wondering how you can transform the sh-t of divorce into compost read more of our posts, peruse our resources page, join in on our free monthly calls, make a commitment to yourself and sign up for one of our new four-week programs that include a private coaching session, and consider the benefits of hiring a personal coach to champion you through the confusing, overwhelming, and often frightening process of divorce!

Don’t do this alone. Click HERE to stay up to date, and let us help you ‘Journey Beyond’ into the life you want to live!

Lisa Brick, Journey Beyond Partner

Our team of coaches at JBD is passionate about helping men and women navigate the emotional difficulties of relationships, breakups and divorce. We work together with you to open the possibility that your current relationship challenges can lead to a rewarding voyage of self-discovery and an immensely more pleasing life experience. Together we create a path to clarity. Find out if Coaching is right for you, and accept my gift of one FREE session.