“may love find you. even. when you are specifically. strategically. hiding from it.” Nayyirah Wahid
She liked my quote about finding love again.
I liked her post about her recent trip.
The exchange of heart-shaped likes filled our Instagram pages.
This was the beginning of a modern romance.
She was on a mission to travel the world and said she was an independent woman.
She also had 10,000 followers on Instagram!
I’ve never had had hundreds of Instagram crushes.
Well, I’ve had plenty of Instagram crushes but I’ve never actually engaged with an Instagram crush.
What was so intoxicating here was not only was she beautiful and from the homeland but she was spiritual and loved helping people.
A match made in Instagram heaven.
We exchanged messages and continued to become each other’s Insta fans until I decided it was time to share my feelings for her.
How do you tell someone you like them?
Normal people, “Hey, you’re cool and we should talk more to see if we have more in common?”
Me:
“Hey, the universe has parted ways, the divine has awakened and destiny has called upon me to initiate this conversation. We have known each other for life times and we must speak to discuss our future marriage, where will live and how many kids we will have together.”
This is a fantastic first message, if I do say so myself.
Also, a good way to never hear from her again.
I turned the woman I thought I had been waiting a lifetime for into a woman I would never hear from again.
The love of my life had gone silent on Instagram.
We were both on the Titanic when she just pushed me off the ship into the stormy waters to find myself, to fall into an emotional thunderstorm and to frantically search for a rescue boat.
Now, what’s the moral of this story?
Well, first, don’t fall for Instagram influencers on the internet.
(Oh random – have we connected on Instagram? Let’s connect on Instagram here – you could be the next internet crush I fall in love with)
But here’s the bigger point here.
Love.
We rise in love and we fall in love.
This mini modern romance was not of much consequence. It was likely a romance in my mind than in reality. Maybe she didn’t even think twice about me before I sent her an essay professing my love to her.
Yet those real romances that we have gone through in our lives and have fallen hard in are like those violent thunderstorms that took down the Titanic.
When a relationship or the marriage hits the sea floor, you’re likely dead. Or if alive, bruised, battered and can’t breathe by the time you get your head above water.
You don’t need a reinvention.
You need a resuscitation.
You don’t need a recovery.
You need a revival.
The worst breakups take us down and put us out for the count.
You will never feel like getting into the boxing ring of life again after one knockout.
You will never feel like dating again after one hard-fought, knock-down, dragged down breakup.
Please dear God never torment me and try to kill me like this again.
Yet, I am here with a message for you on why you need to get the heck up and give love another try.
No matter how much you were hurt and no matter how badly the other person did you wrong, I want you to know that it is worth giving love another shot.
As much as you have suffered in love, fell in love, drowned in love, knocked down in love, died in love, be willing to give love another chance.
The love that you desire is waiting for you on the other side of the love that destroyed you.
Your job is to heal the wound, forgive the past, rebuild your self-worth, find yourself and show up for love again because love is worth it.
Love will help you become the person that you were meant to be.
Love will help you expand and grow as a person.
Love will help bring you connection, joy, affection and intimacy.
Love will help break down your barriers of what you believe to be possible and break down the walls that are keeping you from fully experiencing life.
Even if love doesn’t show up, keep going in love because I am convinced that the journey to love is the path to love. You are not going to get to the final destination in love until you go through all the stops along the way.
Keep moving forward in love, keep falling down in love, keep getting up in love.
A broken heart is an open heart.
Falling down is an opportunity to rise up.
What’s possible is out there if you can stay focused on the path and stay open to the possibilities.
You and I are on a love journey.
Keep going.
If you haven’t even started, start.
If you haven’t considered the possibility yet, be open to it.
Don’t swear off love because that one cosmic relationship you were in devastated you.
If you don’t know where to start, reach out to me for some support in this process. I’m going to be unveiling some coaching options soon that will help you on this journey to overcoming heartbreak.
In the meantime, check out this book that I wrote. It’s a good first step to finding love, Does True Love Exist? The short answer is yes but love requires your participation.
“There’s no greater battle in life than the battle between the parts of you that want to be healed and the parts of you that are comfortable and content being broken.” Iyanla Vanzant
We had a phone conversation 3 years ago.
At the time, I was thinking she was the nicest and sweetest person I had spoken to.
Yet after one phone call, I went against my intuition, and thought this would be too complicated.
She too lived half way across the world.
It would be so hard to get to know each other.
It would take forever for her to move here.
It would blah blah blah
So I left it at that and went back into my happy world of trying to understand heartbreak, learn how to overcome breakups and learn the steps of letting go.
Little did I realize that it were these very things that was heartbreak and not being able to let go that was keeping my stuck in my own life of dating and meeting new people.
While I was learning about letting go and trying to actively let go of the past, I also found that being stuck in the past does nothing for your love life.
In fact, you could meet the right person and you wouldn’t be interested or care because you’re still caught up with your ex.
You’re still wanting the old relationship to work.
You’re still blaming yourself for what you did.
You’re still hoping the old person comes back into my life.
3 years ago, this was where I was at.
Fast forward to 2019 (the year I wrote The Sacred Art of Letting Go) and this wonderful person who I met is coming to meet me.
We’ve been talking since the new year and I’m curious as to how this visit is going to go.
She’s a simple and spiritual person which in the Indian world of meeting people is a rarity.
She works in helping children in poverty get educated.
I’m wondering how someone so right for me could have fallen off my radar?
And it’s as simple as this.
When you’re stuck in the past, you’re wearing lenses that make you look at everything in the present as something in the past.
You view everything today from a perspective of what happened before.
You lose interest in today or tomorrow because of this weight that is holding you back.
The problem of trying to meet new people when you’re stuck in the past is that the new people and the right people for you may seem like the wrong people for you!
You’re so blinded by the lenses of the past that you can’t see things as they are.
I have no idea where this is going but I can tell you this.
The relationship you want and the person you want might be around you and might be closer than you think but if you can’t let go of the past, your view of relationships might be skewed.
You won’t be able to find the very person you’re looking for if you’re stuck in the past.
The solution?
Do the work.
Walk through the 12 steps of letting go.
Yes, I have a book on the topic 🙂
Practice actively letting go each and every day.
Similar to grief, not letting go means unprocessed emotions and holding onto something that once was.
The longer you hold onto what was, the heavier it weighs you down in life.
You can’t be open to what can be when you haven’t let go of what once was.
I’ll let you know how things are unfolding on my end.
Where are you in the process of letting go? Hit reply on email or sign up for the blog to join me on my journey from heartbreak to love.
I’m sad to confess my favorite song of all time is a song about being stuck in the past, called Nobody Knows.
I’m even sadder that nobody knows of this song.
It was a song that I played over and over and over in my life before I ever felt a pang of heartbreak.
It’s a song by a profoundly sad Tony Rich (at least I like to think so) regretting his broken love for a woman that he regrets not having in his life. He sings about how nobody knows the pain of his breakup except him.
You can watch the song here to know the depth of his pain and know what kind of a weirdo I am.
You might find this weird only because I had listened to this song thousands of times in college. It was the one song on repeat. The one song I played over and over and over again.
I listened to this song while I was up at night studying for finals. I listened to this song while I was sleeping. While I ate. While I talked about the meaning of life with my roomie James. What was even odder was that this was his go-to song as well.
Yet this post isn’t about what two single college-aged men were doing sitting around listening to a profoundly sad love song by another sad man.
Instead, it’s about putting something on repeat and listening to it over and over again.
You hear something, you like something and you choose that repeatedly instead of turning off the song and listening to something else.
Unfortunately, I came to find out a few years later in my life, as someone who was going through a divorce that I also tended to do this in another area of my life.
Since the marriage was over and the relationship no long existed, I fell into this sweet longing and remembrance of the past marriage.
I stayed stuck for years by continuing to repeat what had happened in the previous marriage.
I also reflected on the sadness and pain of the heartbreak and I enjoyed being in that place.
See, a powerful habit forms when we go through heartbreak that keeps us stuck.
You have these negative painful feelings of the past that over time become familiar and comfortable.
You become attached to the these feelings in the past and continue to ruminate on them.
Becoming familiar, comfortable and used to the pain of heartbreak can keep you stuck for months and years.
Holding onto past pain can keep you stuck and stop you from letting of the past relationship.
Pain can actually become addictive if it makes you feel good because it is a known and familiar feeling.
The habit of ruminating on past pain can become a habit that keeps you stuck for years.
You just want to hold on to this thing that is unpleasant (pain) but also feels good (familiar and known pain).
You feel connection and familiarity.
You feel familiar emotions.
You put it on repeat, turn it into a habit and become stuck in this place for years of your life.
The solution out is to acknowledge that this is in fact what your mind is doing.
To let go of the past, you have to be willing to let go of the known and the familiar.
Once you realize that you keep going back and taking comfort in the pain of the past, it’s time to break this habit.
To release the addictive habit of holding on to the past pain:
1) Acknowledge that your mind is replaying the past repeatedly.
2) Pin-point the thoughts that are creating these addictive feelings of pain and sorrow in your life.
3) Get clear on the underlying story about your past relationship that you’re telling yourself.
4) Work on changing the story you’re telling yourself about the past relationship.
5) Re-frame the past or generate new thoughts about the past that are healthier for you and cultivate more positive feelings.
6) Practice immersing yourself in new and unfamiliar feelings of peace and happiness.
If you’re addicted to past hurtful feelings, you might have no idea what healthier emotions and feelings may feel like.
I’m suggesting you try those on ahead of time, feel those feelings even if you’re not quite there yet.
If you’re good at feeling bad feelings of the past, it was because you’ve practiced it for years.
If you want to break free and move on from years of feeling bad and feeling stuck, try on a new set of feelings. Explore, experiment and try out something you’re not used to.
If you need some support in letting go and working through the insurmountable negativity of the past, I’d be happy to support you in this process.
If you’re tired of living in the past and feeling stuck in the past, check out my Awaking coaching sessions or Letting Go coaching sessions.
“You cannot let go of a relationship you still want to be in” ~ Vishnu
It was the third getting-to-know-each-other Skype date.
We had discussed how much we were each going to earn in our marriage, the value of the home we were going to buy and how many kids we were going to have.
No, we had not even met in person yet but nothing out of the ordinary here in the world of Indian dating.
As we chatted about our lives and our histories, one question she kept asking me was if I had moved on from my ex.
I can’t imagine why except for the fact that I probably spoke about this aspect of my life unconsciously or consciously for a good part of the time we were chatting.
We (I) talked about my past relationship, the painful breakup, the creation of Vishnu’s Virtues and how I helped people in similar situations.
Several women I been speaking to in the months and years to come asked me if I had gotten over my ex.
I didn’t realize this at the time but I likely was a bit too immersed in the happenings of the past relationship.
I was living my life in the past.
As a matter a fact, I think I was living so much of my life in the past, that I wanted my old life back.
Despite all the pain and the unhappy marriage that we had, I wanted that relationship back. I could not move on from someone I had loved.
Which brings me to this basic point:
You can’t move from someone you love when you’re still holding on to that past relationship.
Let me repeat: you cannot move on if you’re still holding on.
I know this sounds like common sense but it’s important to keep in mind.
If you’re still reminiscing, ruminating, feeling sentimental about a past relationship, you’re not ready to move on from someone you loved once before.
If you’re still wanting to be back in that old relationship, you’re not ready to move on.
If you keep refreshing your email and waiting for your ex’s text to pop up, you’re not ready to move on.
If you’re thinking that you can go back to your old life where your ex would have had an awakening, changed and become a different person, you’re not ready to move on.
You also may be living in California, breathing in that late night ganja, having delusions of the beauty of the past.
You cannot move on when you’re still holding on to your ex.
You cannot invite new people in if you haven’t shown your ex to the door.
Get it?
If you haven’t moved on from someone you loved, why not?
Yes, holding on and going back to someone you loved is convenient but it’s not going to help you grow.
It’s likely not going to lead you to a happy relationship.
Things may not be very much different than before.
If you’re still wanting this relationship of the past, stop dating and meeting other people now.
I knew when I was doing that, I just found reasons about why every single person wouldn’t work. Or sabotaged my own dating so I wouldn’t get to know someone new.
We need to start getting real around here.
You need to have your life back.
You need a new relationship, new love and more happiness.
Isn’t it time to let go once and for all? Isn’t it time to call it quits on the past and honestly let go of the person you once loved so you can find someone new?
If you’re ready to move on and let go and need some support in this process, reach out to me.
If you’ve let go and ready to find someone new, check out my book, Does True Love Exist, in the Amazon store. The book is on sale this week for $.99.
This is especially hard when you’re having trouble letting go of someone who did you wrong, or cheated on you or you were in an unhealthy relationship with.
Why is it even harder to let go of your ex when they hurt you so much?
I’m going to break it down for you today on why you’re having so much difficulty and can’t let go of your ex.
Oh, I made that video for Instagram. Are you following me on Instagram? You can find a lot more regular content from me over there.
4 reasons you can’t go over your ex.
1. What is everyone going to think about about the relationship ending.
You are so terrified about what your family, colleagues, office mates or religious community think.
You are desperately trying to stay together to show everyone that your life isn’t a complete and utter mess. A broken relationship feels like you’re airing all of your dirty laundry outside.
2. You’re not going to have a future.
You think all the good things that will come into your life have passed.
You look back at your past and believe that the past was the best your life is ever going to be.
All of your joys, celebrations, happy moments were in your past. You mistakenly believe that you can never have this again in your future.
3. No one will want to be in a relationship with you again.
This is one of the biggest reasons you can’t let go of your ex no matter how bad they were to you or how badly they did you.
You fear that you never will be in a loving relationship again. You fear that no one will ever want you again.
You fear letting go of last relationship because your battered heart doesn’t feel like it can weather another relationship.
Not only does your heart feel like it can’t handle another relationship but you start believing that you can’t attract another partner again.
The more you believe your ex’s hurtful words, the more likely you will attached to them and the less likely you will feel like getting go.
It’s counter-intuitive because they made you feel so badly about yourself and you started believing whole-heartedly what they said, that you don’t think that you can do better.
You wonder who will ever want you again?
4. There is something wrong with you.
Once again, you believed all of your ex’s words.
Your ex consistently and over time, found all your vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and used them against you.
They exploited your weaknesses so now you believe that your weaknesses are permanent.
The wounds of your past relationship are so deep, you feel like you’re scarred for life.
You believe this because it was repeated to you by someone you loved dearly.
You’re stuck because they made you believe that you were only good enough for them and not good enough for anyone else.
You were a sizzling fire before they tried to extinguish your flame.
You think you can’t let go of your ex but you can.
You can let go of your ex if you become aware of all the things that are keeping you stuck.
You’re stuck in the past because your ex’s words broke your heart and pierced your soul.
I want to assure you that happiness, love and joy are possible.
You can let go of these thoughts and feelings but I want you to know that this is going to take some work.
If you stand by the default story you’re telling yourself about the past and let time pass, you can stay here forever.
If you’re needing some support to start on this journey, get a hold of me for some coaching. You can complete the coaching inquiry form or the contact form to contact me.
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
