by Amy Chan
If you already have a meditation practice, great! If not, here are some important things to know. First, science confirms that meditation is associated with decreased levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Research shows that it changes the brain, increasing gray matter critical for learning and memory, quality of life, connection, and compassion.30 Think of it as a daily habit; like brushing your teeth is a practice of good oral hygiene, meditation is a practice of good mental hygiene.
You may have tried it before and thought, I can’t meditate. I can’t clear my noisy mind.
The goal of meditation is not to have zero thoughts; it’s to be more mindful when the thoughts come up. This means to simply observe, without judgment, whatever thoughts arise. Imagine your thoughts are clouds floating by. Practicing mindfulness is not about resisting thoughts—this just makes them linger longer. It’s training yourself to be an observer, and understand that the thoughts, just like clouds, are impermanent and eventually pass.31 If you stick to the practice for a month, you’ll start to notice subtle differences, such as improved mood and reduced reactivity. You might notice that you start to pause when something provokes you and that you don’t react with the same emotional intensity. Meditation is like athletic training for your brain.
There are many different kinds of meditation: transcendental, mindfulness, mantra, Vipassana, yoga nidra, loving-kindness, tai chi, and more. Do some research, test the various forms, and see what works best for you.
But—But . . . I Don’t Have Time
Good news! Meditation actually saves you time. And science backs this up. Meditation has been shown to dramatically increase your productivity and improve your sleep so much that you need less of it.
If you’re meditation leery, try this hack: Set aside three minutes a day when you play your favorite song. Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and do a deep-breathing exercise as the song plays.
Humans are wired to do something they look forward to, and if you look forward to hearing the song, eventually you’ll start to look forward to the mental pause. After a few days to a week of breathing while listening to your favorite song, add a ten-minute meditation after the song. Consider an app like Headspace or Insight Timer, which offers guided meditations. After about two weeks, wean yourself off the music.
WHEN YOU’VE FORGOTTEN YOURSELF
One of the most challenging parts of separation is suddenly all the time, energy, and attention that were going toward your partner now have nowhere to go. There’s a vacancy that can feel strange and unbearable.
Think about it. Before your relationship you probably spent a lot of your time and attention doing things for yourself, like seeing friends, going to fitness classes, learning new things, and so on. Then you met your partner. Your “you” time gradually became “we” time—dates, then sleepovers, then Sunday mornings. Eventually you settled into a relationship cadence in which your schedules were fully integrated, and the time and space that was once spent focused on your single lifestyle merged into the lifestyle of partnership. After a breakup, there’s suddenly a big gap. It’s no wonder you may feel discombobulated, with a schedule and lifestyle you no longer recognize.
To put into perspective just how much of our time, energy, and attention we invest in our relationships (often at the expense of developing other areas of our lives), Dr. Zendegui leads the women through a “draw your pie” exercise. On a blank sheet of paper, she instructs them to draw a circle and divide the circle as if it were a pie, each slice representing how much time and energy they devoted to an activity or priority. Within minutes, there are gasps and chuckles within the group, half ashamed, half shocked.
Dr. Zendegui asks for a volunteer: “Who wants to share?”
Cindy raises her hand. Embarrassed, she reveals how the biggest slice of pie, over 70 percent, was consumed by her relationship. Upon further probing, Cindy admits that she misses the independent woman she once was: “I didn’t realize how much of myself I lost. I had all these dreams and put them on hold. But I got so stuck I never even went back to those dreams.”
This makes the perfect segue into the second part of the exercise, in which Dr. Zendegui instructs the women to draw another circle to represent their new pie moving forward. This time, they’re guided to divide the slices to reflect a more balanced pie, one that includes making time for self-care, friends, and other activities that they find fulfilling.
By not filling the gap that used to be reserved for the relationship slice, the missing and aching for a love lost is going to persist. And if you don’t fill it with other things that are important to you, you may just fill in that gap with rumination of your ex!
You need to fill that part of the pie with activities that feed your sense of identity and independence, and you need to make sure the next time you’re in a relationship, you don’t allow the majority of your pie to merge into “we” (relationship). Balance is key, and if you devote over half your pie to an external factor—a person, a job, or a vice—eventually, when that external factor changes, you may find yourself wiped off your feet.
Cindy’s pie before and after. On the left is how she used to spend her time and energy. The right is the new pie—how she’s going to fill up her new blocks of time with new focuses, from self-care to meeting new people to taking a trip to Costa Rica she’s been dreaming about for ages.
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EXERCISE: Balance Your Pie
Using the example on the previous page, draw two circles to represent your “pie”—your pie when you were in a relationship and your ideal balanced pie moving forward.
Make a plan to fill up the pieces of the pie that were once consumed by “Relationship” with enriching activities that nourish you—self-care, volunteering, traveling, taking up a new hobby, or whatever else creates joy and empowerment in your life.
Create an action item for yourself to proactively build on a specific piece of the pie. Does one piece of the pie go toward exercise? Book an additional fitness class. If it’s community you crave, volunteer with a charity or nonprofit to help others in need. Also, reach out to two friends you haven’t invested much time with lately and ask them out for lunch. Create tangible action steps that will help you fill up your newfound freedom and appreciate the independence in a positive light. How will you use your time, energy, and attention?
This pie exercise is also something to refer back to when you start dating again. To prevent yourself from gradually devoting more and more of your pie to your relationship at the expense of the other things that light you up, you can use the pie to remind yourself to create discipline around how you exert your time and energy. Balance is key!
THE ADAPTATION PRINCIPLE
Do you know what winning the lottery, losing your limbs in a car accident, and a devastating breakup have in common?
While each scenario seems like it will alter your levels of happiness forever, in reality, you’ll likely adapt to it. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis, explains how humans tend to overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions: “Within a year, lottery winners and paraplegics have both (on average) returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness.”32 He notes that while humans are extremely sensitive to changes in conditions, they are not as sensitive to absolute levels. Nerve cells respond to new stimuli (a jackpot of money, a loss of limbs, or a separation) and then gradually habituate and recalibrate.
Humans are pretty bad at predicting how they’ll feel in the future. During this time when you may believe there’s no end in sight for the pain, remember that this simply isn’t true. If we apply Haidt’s theory, then it’s probable that once your cells recalibrate to life without your ex, you’ll eventually return to your baseline of happiness. Note: This doesn’t mean that having chronic conflict with your partner doesn’t affect your happiness. According to Haidt, “you never adapt to interpersonal conflict; it damages every day, even days when you don’t see the other
person but ruminate about the conflict nevertheless.”33 But after the shock to the system, you do eventually adapt to loss and hopefully, after reading this book, extend your range of baseline happiness.
BECOMING A HUMAN AGAIN
After a separation, your heart, mind, and body are in a state of shock. Reality can seem foggy and chaotic. Routine creates order in the chaos and is something self-made that you can count on. While in survival mode, you may feel like you don’t have control over your emotions, but you do have control over your routine. So, it is time to double down on that practice.
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EXERCISE: Create a Morning Ritual
Each morning, set aside time for yourself so that you can get grounded and start your day feeling inspired. Ideally, you would have an hour for this, but if you can only afford fifteen to thirty minutes, that’s a good start. Begin your morning ritual before you look at your phone and allow the outside world to start dictating your mood. You’re the boss here—set the tone of the day the way you want: calm, positive, and inspired.
PART 1
Meditate. If you need some assistance to start meditating, try an app like Insight Timer, Headspace, Mindful, or Calm.
PART 2
In your journal, write down one intention/goal for the day. When you write, use phrases such as “I can” and “I will” instead of “I should.”
PART 3
Choose one of the following mood-enhancing exercises that you will complete during the day. If you wish, you can choose to complete more than one.
Remind yourself to pause and notice your surroundings today. Look for three things that are beautiful. Write them down in your journal.
Get your heart rate pumping by exercising for a minimum of thirty minutes.
Write a letter or email of gratitude to someone you love (not your ex!) and tell them how much they mean to you.
Do something to pamper yourself—take a long bath, buy yourself flowers, have a manicure.
Do something that gets you in touch with your body—yoga, tantra, dance! If you can’t make it to a class, play your favorite upbeat song and dance by yourself at home for five minutes.
Spend thirty minutes with a friend. It’s best to do an activity together while talking, and make it a rule to not talk about the breakup.
Play with a dog. A study conducted by the University of Missouri showed that non-pet owners who played with a dog for just a few minutes a day had increased levels of the brain chemicals serotonin and oxytocin—both mood elevators.34
Get a massage. Massage also boosts serotonin levels and reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Force yourself to smile. Laughter helps stimulate production of the feel-good hormone serotonin. Watch a funny movie or your favorite stand-up routine on YouTube.
Help a stranger. Be kind for no reason. Volunteer. Studies show that people who were assigned to do one random act of kindness a week for multiple weeks showed a sustained increase in happiness levels.35 Research also shows that volunteering has a significant impact on mental health.36 It helps shift the focus from yourself to others and helps break the cycle of negative thinking.
Learn something new. Whether you pick up a language, an instrument, or a hobby, learning a new skill physically changes the brain. The brain builds new neural connections and strengthens the synapses in the cerebral cortex.37 This can help improve working memory and verbal intelligence and increase levels of self-satisfaction and happiness.38
THE ABSOLUTE GAME CHANGER: EMBRACING GRATITUDE
Guess what the antidepressant Wellbutrin does? It boosts the neurotransmitter dopamine. You know what else does? Gratitude. Feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine and makes us feel happier, more connected, and positive.
Happiness researcher Shawn Achor has conducted robust studies on the correlation between gratitude and happiness. He estimates that 90 percent of our long-term happiness is not predicated on the external world but rather on how our brain processes the world.39 Thus, if we change our way of seeing the world (through a lens of gratitude), we have the power to change our formula for happiness and success.
His research shows that you can train your brain to be more positive. Practicing gratitude for a two-minute span twenty-eight days in a row can actually rewire your brain.40 At the end of that period, your brain begins to form a pattern of scanning the world for the positive and not the negative. Building your gratitude muscle takes work, but the more you do it the stronger the muscle becomes.
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EXERCISE: Start a Daily Gratitude Practice
When you’re in the throes of pain after a breakup, it can feel impossible to find positivity or gratitude. But here’s the secret about grati tude: it’s a state that is cultivated, not something you simply have when things are going well.
Incorporate a gratitude practice in either your morning ritual or your evening ritual. Write down three things you’re grateful for today and why. Close your eyes to visualize what you’ve written down and feel thankful for them. Relive the moment. Put yourself back in a particular situation and smile the way you did at the time, recount what you saw, smelled, tasted, and felt that made you happy and grateful. You can re-create the feel-good chemicals by associating yourself into the memory, allowing yourself to re-experience the warm feelings of the moment.
BONUS POINTS: Find an accountability buddy—a friend or family member—and send a screenshot of your entry every day for thirty days. Have your buddy do the same.
Jenny
“YOU SAVED ME.” Jenny hugged me in tears at the end of the retreat weekend. “No, really, you saved me,” she emphasized.
Jenny, who was in a toxic relationship with an alcoholic for eight years, had gone through extensive therapy since being raped as a teenager. She found herself repeatedly in dysfunctional relationships and had reached the end of hope. She was considering taking her life, and Renew was her last resort.
Fast-forward two and a half years later, and Jenny’s life has completely transformed. She has been ticking off the bucket list goals she had set for herself at Renew, including setting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to help rescue animals in Austin. As of the time of this writing, she has continued the gratitude journaling exercise for 908 days straight. She hasn’t missed one day since Renew.
“There are days when I don’t feel like doing it. Dark days. Hard days. But I force myself to do it anyway. I also reserve Sunday nights as my journal time. It’s a small gift to myself. I’ve learned that healing takes 150,000 steps and you have to take one step at a time. It’s no one thing. There’s no magic bullet. My life has transformed in a way I can’t put into words. I see things differently, I feel different.”
She tells me that all the steps she’s taken have added up. They’ve helped her to stop feeling like the victim and to truly be able to see her ex with compassion. While she still wants nothing to do with him, she genuinely wishes him happiness.
“That’s what closure is to me—to not have any charge toward him, not negative, not positive, just neutral.”
THERE ARE NO VILLAINS HERE
When we are in pain, it’s easy to point the finger at someone else. Vilifying a person can feel good for the moment, just like eating a tub of ice cream feels good in the moment. But afterward, your stomach hurts. The same goes for having a hate-fest rally with your girlfriends. At the time, taking turns bashing the ex feels liberating and maybe even falsely empowering: “Fuck men! We are independent women, hear us roar!” But this exercise only feeds your victimization. Using pain to connect with others does not heal you; it hinders you.
Partners can do terrible things. They ghost, they cheat, they lie, they abuse, they act carelessly. In no way are the hurtful actions of others excusable or justified. And you have every right to feel hurt, sad, angry, and even resentful. But if you want to move forward into a new way of living, then the goal is to focus your energy on yourself—not the person who hurt you. You’re just giving
that person more power, more energy, more time, by staying stuck.
Sometimes we hold on to the pain because that’s the last part of the relationship we have left. Directing the pain at the person who hurt you unwittingly keeps you from having to really let go.
Every minute you spend diverting your focus in vilifying your ex, you are taking a precious minute away from creating a better future.
SOMETIMES A BREAKUP IS THE SHAKE-UP YOU NEED TO REDIRECT YOUR LIFE
To think your hurt is special is nonsense. You have pain, I have pain. The world has stories of pain. . . . It’s not your wound that makes you special. It is the light that shines through that does.
Kamal Ravikant
The women who come to Renew all come thinking they’re trying to get over their exes. But at the end of the retreat, they realize that they have unhealed wounds that have been lingering for decades, and the breakup just reopened them. Perhaps you’re reliving the sense of abandonment you experienced when your parents divorced, or the jealousy sparked by not feeling as prized as your sibling, or the sorrow of not feeling good enough for your father’s attention. The feelings that a breakup ignites are neither good nor bad; some are a natural part of the grieving process, and some are lessons waiting for you to learn. How did you get to a place where your pie was consumed mostly by the relationship? And how can you make sure you create balance the next time? Why did you choose this person? Why did you stay when you knew the relationship was wrong? Losing ourselves in our relationships happens to the best of us, and often it’s so gradual that we barely notice until we’ve completely disappeared.