BREAK-UPsides: Feel-Better Quick-Fixes for the BREAK-UP Aftermath

By Bartholomeus Nicolaas Engelbertus

This book is a Quick Fix D.I.Y. pocket guide for reinventing, redesigning, and reevaluating your life after relationship break-ups. It is full of pick-me-ups you can refer to whenever your mood calls for it.

Inspired by finding a natural sense of self after a near-death surfing accident and a marriage breakdown, Change-Readiness coach Bart

• Language: English
• Publisher: ONI
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780957141810

Book preview

PART 1 THE DEEP FIX

Natural Self & Change Ready

PART 2 THE QUICK FIXES

Instant Relief

Picking up this book is pretty darned brave. I know.

Your relationship has come to its end; the cycle is complete; the couple you were is no longer. Whether you deem it good or bad, life will serve you grief. The relationship role is dead.

So, here you are, still you, minus the identity of your relationship. You still being you immediately points to a fundamental truth: you are not, and never have been ‘the husband,’ ‘the wife,’ ‘the partner,’ etc. You were a person with that role.

When you identify too much with the name of your role, your grief becomes unbearable, as something you perceive to be ‘you’ is no longer alive.

Try a subtle perception change: you have been a person relating to another person in something called a relationship. Chances are, you hooked too much of your sense of happiness, contentment, well-being, and safety into being in that relationship. Look back at your relationship and watch yourself do this. Look at it as if you are watching it from a distance, or on TV. See yourself in the picture. Do you see? This person was a role in life. It was you in your relationship role. Roles define how you see yourself, the relationship you have with yourself, and so, how you feel about yourself.

We all identify with being part of the relationship. The human psyche innately desires to belong, to define oneself as a person that finds meaning and purpose.

In other words: How you see yourself dictates how you feel, think, and act. If too much of your self-image relies on being part of your relationship, your sense of wellbeing ties to being ‘successful and happy’ in that relationship. When the relationship is no longer there, the wellbeing has vanished as well. Ultimately, drawing contentment from People, Outcomes, and Objectives is a 'P.O.O.' way of creating life joy.

It is paramount to express your true self in life and find meaning and purpose in every moment, everything you do, by just being you.

That frees you to enjoy the roles you assume in life entirely. I learned this the hard way by compromising my needs and wants, purpose, and well-being. I became the person I thought my wife wanted me to be. By the time she announced she was becoming my ex-wife, I was so disconnected from my natural self that who I thought I was shattered.

I felt so lost, so disconnected from what had been ‘myself’ I managed to ruin my business shortly after. My burnout ignited a blaze, so intense none of my bridges were left standing.

Within a space of three months, I had fallen from a family/businessman to just me. I say ‘just’, however, in retrospect that ‘just’ should be omitted. ‘Just’ does not do justice to any pronoun. For the first time in my adult life I felt like my true, authentic, natural self. The freedom of ‘just me’ is life’s purest gift. I still marvel how liberating this sense of self is.

The epiphany of finding ‘just me’ lit up my darkness. I came face to face with that which is before birth, and after death.

Years earlier I endured a six-wave hold down while surfing big waves off the northern shores of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The terror of drowning turned into the most serene beauty of life itself. Floating is the azure blue light; my loved ones came to say goodbye one by one. Then I transitioned. I went somewhere best described as ‘not here.’ Aware, yet without a body, name, and spatial environment, I felt a complete sense of timeless joy. I remember being a little bemused I was still ‘me’ even though I did not experience myself as a body with a name and a range of labels like ‘business partner’, ‘surfer’, ‘man’. . .

In the end, it was the beginning. It wasn’t my near death experience itself that has given me the insight into how to flourish in times of unexpected and undesired change, but the recognition that nothing, no life experience, good and bad, touches my real natural sense of self.

When my socioeconomic status imploded, I felt I had lost everything until I realised that 'everything I am not' lay shattered on my rock bottom. No life event, not even death itself, changes who you truly are.

When you have a strong sense of self, you live in the knowledge that nothing external can ultimately affect your potential for contentment. You are free to get the most out of the roles you take on in life. Imagine how you can flex with life’s uncertainties when there is no need for your roles to remain the same.

In relationships, you will now enjoy what the other offers, what relating brings, without preventing your partner from expressing their fullest sense of self.

Let us now get back to considering you and your present situation. You have, for one reason or another, found yourself broken up with your partner. When this happens, there is pain and suffering. Renowned yogi Sadhguru describes divorce and separation as tearing off the other person’s soul, a severing of intertwined energy and memory. Pain is unavoidable whether you are the instigator or recipient of the breakup. There is no way to avoid it. Waves keep on coming. In time