I stumbled upon this note while skimming my old journal.
“It’s 7:45 pm and I’m still writing. I closed a big deal today. I published an article this morning. I worked out. I’m just about finished with a rough draft of my next article. I was not feeling well at all today. All I wanted to do today was shut myself, but I still accomplished all this. I can do anything.”
I know what was going on that day. I got dumped.
Heartbreak, whether from a break-up, divorce, or whatever, is one of the most intense emotions we deal with. The event happens and all you want to do is get back to work, get back to you, but the faucet of worry and fear won’t shut off no matter how hard you try.
Heartbreak doesn’t have to change you. The truth is, how it affects your actions is a choice.
I thought hard about what was going through my head that day. The anxiety never fully went away, but I remember this specific mindset that kept me going when all I wanted to do was crawl into the earth.
Put Things In Their Proper Place
Fear is the masked ringleader behind heartbreak.
It’s paralyzing. It’s embarrassing. It distorts our reality and takes us away from our purpose.
I’m a creative—albeit a shitty one. I exaggerate and imagine fake scenarios when something like a break-up occurs.
“How could I possibly move on?” Or “What will become of me?” And “How could I live without her.” I’ve found that these questions serve absolutely no one. Why? Because what successful person has ever thrived under a cloud of fear and doubt like this?
When questions like this start racing in my head, I know it’s time to step back and remind myself to put things back in their proper place.
What do I mean by that?
There’s a cool quote from Marcus Aurelius talking about how we should never get too emotional over things (or people) because we tend to make them more important than they actually are.
While describing a fancy banquet (Marcus was the Emperor of Rome so he enjoyed many banquets) he takes luxury food and strips them down to their reality.
He writes, “How good it is… to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this is the dead body of a pig, the wine is mere juice of grapes.”
Then he goes on: “Intercourse is no more than friction of a membrane and spurt of mucus.”
Marcus is saying that you defeat complicated (and wonderful) emotions with logic.
So instead of placing a person on a pedestal and thinking a breakup is the end of the world, call it for what it was. A passing moment. A person in your life for a season, but not the long haul.
You didn’t date an angel, you dated an imperfect human being— just like you.
No logical reason to let it affect your actions.