The need to manage the “crazy” that likes to hang out in our minds is never more crucial than when you’re going through a breakup. In a moment, this hugely significant role that we play of spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend is suddenly stripped away.
So often we define who we are and measure our worth by those roles we play in our relationships. It’s so easy after a breakup to feel lost. It’s so easy to fall into the rabbit hole of negative thinking. Perhaps this experience also triggers our favorite limiting beliefs; the conditioned stories that we’ve been telling ourselves suddenly rear their ugly heads and become the narrator of our life.
Sounds pretty grim, huh? Luckily that’s not the end of this article! I’m here to introduce you to your ultimate breakup buddy: meditation.
Here are 5 reasons that meditation will save your sanity and your heart:
1. Meditation gives you an expanded awareness around your thoughts.
You will slowly become more and more aware that you are not your thoughts. You are the thinker of your thoughts. Instead of operating on auto-pilot, thinking the same 60-80,000 thoughts per day, you will begin to become aware of what you are thinking.
More importantly, you will begin to develop the ability to choose which thoughts you want to give your attention to. The thoughts that you focus on are the thoughts that shape your experience of life, that shape your reality. Meditation offers you the ability to witness your thoughts and decide which ones you want to feed.
Spoiler alert: You do not need to feed the thoughts that don’t serve you. You have the power to control the thoughts you choose to believe.
2. Meditation helps shift your set point.
Your set point is the way you look at the world. When you’re moving through a break up it’s easy to slip into a “glass half empty” kind of mentality. It’s easy to start looking at “what’s wrong with this moment”, rather than “what’s right”.
Meditation helps you see that glass as half full. It will help you move to a place of gratitude for everything in your life.
3. Meditation will help you understand what the lesson of this situation is.
It’s not uncommon to continue playing out the same story over and over again, especially in our romantic relationships. There are lessons to be learned in every moment. There are opportunities for growth in every moment.
Is there a story that you’ve been playing out that you’re ready to let go of?
4. Meditation will nourish your physical body and slow everything down.
The state of restful awareness that your body goes into during meditation is the exact opposite physiological response than that of our stress response. This will allow you to be less reactive and more responsive.
5. Studies have shown that practicing meditation shrinks the more primal part of the brain responsible for our fear and stress responses, and thickens the part of the brain responsible for higher order functions.
More thoughtfulness and emotional stability is certainly something I could’ve used more of during some of my breakups.
How about you?
