Discovering What You Really Want by Embracing Heartbreak Rather Than Resisting It
Embracing heartbreak as a path to clarity is a practice that involves learning to use and welcome pain and discomfort as valuable tools to create your ideal relationship or ideal job for that matter.
It is truly difficult to know for sure what we do and do not want without having some experience of both. When you do everything you can to avoid heartbreak, pain and suffering, you are working overtime to resist and clog up your energetic and emotional system with fear. This build-up of fear in your emotional “pipes” makes it impossible for other emotions to flow freely and impossible for you to fully experience joy, happiness or excitement. Not only does it slow the flow of other emotions, it slows creativity and productivity and takes your attention away from knowing what you actually want. If you focus your attention on resisting pain and fear, you fuel what you don’t want to grow and starve what you do want.
In order to experience the pleasure of having what you want, you have to be able to ask for and receive what you want. You cannot have the clarity to choose and the willingness to receive if you are all clogged up with fear and resistance. You can begin to reduce your resistance and open yourself to what you really want by appreciating the value of contrasting experiences. Heartbreak is a painful experience compared to joy and fulfillment, but it does not have to be unwelcome or avoided. I am not suggesting that you go out looking for heartbreak, but instead of guarding against heartbreak or resisting it when it arises, refocus your attention on welcoming it.
How do you welcome heartbreak? First, you simply acknowledge that it is there without judging it as good or bad. Just notice it is there. Then ask yourself what emotion is present when you feel heartbroken. There may be more than one emotion like fear, sadness and anger all wrapped up together. So these emotions are there, now feel them without resistance. Identify where you feel it in your body and breathe. Let it all flow wherever it goes. Once the emotion has passed through, you can take a look at it and see what it is telling you.
For example, you have been working for months on building a rapport with a potential client, getting to know how they work, where they need support and how you can provide the service they need. After excitedly submitting a painstakingly thorough proposal that sells you and your services, they decide they didn’t need the support after all. OUCH!!! That IS painful. Instead of closing up and telling yourself that you are not going to spend that much time with a potential client because you don’t want to feel that kind of disappointment again, turn your attention toward the pain and learn from it.
What was so heartbreaking? Was it the amount of time you put in to get a result you didn’t want? Then maybe what you do want is to feel like you are investing your time and effort in a way that reliably generates business for you. Maybe that leads you to fine tuning your qualifying process so that you only spend your time developing relationships with those committed to hiring rather than those in exploration mode. Maybe you end up developing a better business generating funnel on the front end. It doesn’t matter what you get clear about, just that you get clear.
This works in love relationships too. It is heartbreaking when you spend time getting to know and trust another person and then they begin withdrawing their attention without explanation until they announce suddenly, “I don’t really want to be in a relationship right now.” You could hold onto the heartbreak, fester in fear and swear off dating all together; OR, you could let the pain flow through and then with a clear head ask yourself what you want instead. You might find that rather than dating someone who doesn’t know what they want, you want to find a partner that is an excellent communicator and committed to developing a relationship with you. You might find that you want to vet people a little more to determine whether you want the same things before investing your time in them.
In either case, resisting the heartbreak would lead toward closing and protecting, which gives the power away to the situation. Embracing the heartbreak takes the power back from the situation and gives it back to you as a powerful clarity tool. Rather than shutting down, you open up and understand what it is that you really want instead and focus your time and attention there.
As we all know, what you put your attention on grows. So top focusing on resistance to heartbreak and instead turn toward the wisdom it brings. The next time you choose wisdom over resistance, stop and notice how it feels in your heart, mind and body. Feel the pride of knowing you have activated in yourself the super power that all conscious creators possess — the willingness to transmute pain into inspired action.
