You’re going through divorce. You signed the papers. It is officially over. The weight of life sits on your neck, back, shoulders and head. An elephant has just sat on you! Every day you question how are you going to make it emotionally, financially, and socially. If you could just get through this second, minute or hour, you might have a fighting chance. Where do we get the strength to move on? If your marriage is over, life isn’t.
I like to think that recovering from the trauma of divorce takes the same emotional and physical skills learned by athletes during years of training.
So how does going through divorce make you stronger?
It forces you to rely on self because no one can give the answers that force you to learn about you. There is a mental wall that has to be hurdled to get to the other side of coping; but each wall drags you back to the mirror and forces you to look into your own eyes. It’s the wall of truth. An athlete can never pretend to be a great player. Either they are good or they are not. The truth comes out in the game. Once your life is lived off the real self-truth, then it is easier to recover, stand strong, and move on.
How did going through divorce assist you with finding yourself?
First, most others opinions reflect their own lives and do not fit our personal life puzzles. One issue maybe small to one person and traumatic to another. This leaves you back in front of the mirror answering the questions yourself. Answering your own questions require understanding and knowing yourself, then applying your theory of self to the situation. If you were wrong at any point in the relationship, then you apologize and forgive yourself. If you were right at any point, then you accept the apology of those at fault, and then determine that you lived an upright life. Now you find strength in trying new ideas and doing new things without a person you relied on for so many years. Taking the first steps provides confidence and the second step builds on that confidence, then you realize more of who you are.
If you weren’t an athlete growing up, you may not have learned how to take the lessons learned in sports and apply them to everyday life, but you do have the same strength whether recognized or not. It may take longer to plan, plot, strategize and attack issues but you have the same ability to find, fix and move on. Life moves at a different speed for everyone and our upbringing has an effect on how we view and handle situations. Once we get into a marriage we forget to have fun in the sun and life becomes serious because emotions get tied in and life values passed to us get compromised. Sticking to the truth and the facts about the role you played in the demise of the marriage and who you are as a person will help you find the strength to move on and rebuild your life.
What core strengths did you find yourself relying on when going through your divorce?
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