Why is it so difficult for us to move through the sadness and heartbreak of a failed relationship and start again? Why do we struggle so much with the ability to feel good about ourself after the thing we were once so excited by has died?
It is tough to move on from something that didn't go the way we expected it to. This could be a job move that went badly and we left the company or business. It might be a friendship that we thought was going in a certain direction but which was then ended when we were not expecting it to. The biggest heart break comes from when a loving relationship ends and we were unprepared for it. Even when we knew that perhaps, somewhere in our heart, it was not the right thing for us or was a relationship that in various ways may not have been equal and mutually supporting, we still look back on it and wish that it had not ended. Or that it had ended with us being in control. Perhaps that it had finished with a clear bang and not a weak whimper. In any of these scenarios we are still facing the issue of letting go and struggling to know how to do it better.
In our mind we are drawn in to the whole process of "What if ..." or "Perhaps I could have ..." All you are doing in these cases is replaying the drama and stoking the pain to greater levels than you need to.
Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
If you could let go of the sense that you were hard done by when the company let you go, or that you were taken advantage of by your partner in the relationship, or just that you would have liked to have taken more responsibility at the time in order that the failure of the relationship or the ending of the work had not happened to you, then surely you would feel better about yourself right now.
It wasn't your fault! You have been made to look wrong! In your head you want to try and re-edit the history that has already taken place. You put effort and energy into rewriting the script of what actually happened or of the times when you had the opportunity to speak up for yourself but did not. You want to be the person who was right about how things happened or about the decision that was reached, instead of feeling that you were pushed out or dumped or ignored. In all cases you feel the hurt of the outcome that you didn't expect or want to happen.
You can think of the person who did you the harm. You can forgive them for their mistakes against you. How about seeing the whole history re-written such that you are now the innocent one who was not responsible for what took place or for your actions at the time. It can all be airbrushed out of existence or the story retold. This is at least one of the survival methods that are running around in your head. If this is your plan for recovering from the upset and the sadness, then maybe you need to be open to finding a different approach!
It's a frequently used analogy, but while you are moping around, staying home, criticising things that happened, or feeling sad and angry about what you consider took place, the other person could be out there dancing. Not literally dancing, but living their life and dealing with what is. They could be getting on, moving forward and already have let go. We are different because we are not the same. This is why, for example, four people could live under the same roof at home and have completely different perspectives on what their home life was like as children when they look back on it as adults. Try this as an easy experiment. Connect with a couple of your former school friends and get their take on what it was like to be in the same class room as you for several years. Their perspective on the same school and the same room will be completely different to yours.
It is difficult for us to let go because you have to face elements of your own behaviour and your own past actions. If you had made the right decisions earlier then you wouldn't have ended up here in this painful place, right? Wrong! Stop there right now. All these things have already taken place. What happened has happened. You have no scope to have the past be different to the way it took place.
What are your options from here? You could let it all go and admit defeat. You were wrong and you let all these things happen. Someone else was right and you got it wrong. How does that responsibility feel? Fortunately, there is another way for you to approach all of this. You could simply accept what is, let things be the way they are. It can be this simple. You have choice over your thoughts and the freewill to let go and move on.