When your heart’s broken it can feel like time is standing still. Every excruciating minute seems like an eternity. Getting over heartbreak can feel like the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

You may believe your heartbreak will never end but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and with the right approach you’ll discover how to love more deeply than ever before.

When your heart breaks, it breaks open to receive more love. Instead of building a wall around your heart to avoid getting hurt again, keep your heart open and mine your experience for the hidden golden nugget inside.

Time is your best friend when you’re getting over heartbreak, however, by taking the following steps you’ll become more resilient and resourceful in your relationships.

Golden Nugget Of Learning™: 5 Steps For Getting Over Heartbreak And Learning To Love Again.

Step One: Feel Your Feelings, All Of Them

As difficult as it may be, feeling all your feelings is the key to getting over heartbreak and healing your heart. There’s no shortcut to skirt around your bad feelings, so resist the urge to ignore them, soldier through, numb out, or eat them up with a bowl of ice cream.

This is the sucky part that most people try to avoid. There’s no avoiding the fact that heartbreak hurts, and some people even feel it physically in their bodies. Grant yourself the time to heal just as if you have a broken limb. Treat yourself with kindness and compassion through the healing process.

Whether you feel sadness, hurt, shame, guilt, anger, or just an overwhelming sense of grief, feeling your feelings will allow them to flow through you. Feelings are not static – they are energetic and temporary.

When you allow yourself to feel your feelings, you cause the emotion to crest and flow through you like an ocean wave with an ebb and flow. This allows space to be created for another emotion to enter your body.

Allow yourself to feel ALL your feelings no matter what they are. Indulge in feeling your emotions as best you can. Talk about your feelings to all your friends, family, and co-workers who will listen. (For introverts this may seem frightening, so please continue reading for our complete process to give yourself a chance to heal and move on quickly.)

Schedule time to just sit and feel your feelings. Put on sad songs, or a sad movie, and cry your eyes out. It might feel like it will never end, but the only way out of your current state is to go through it.

Step Two: Don’t Rush To Forgiveness

It may seem odd that this step is here as something to not do, however, so many people rush to forgiveness as if it’s the express lane to feeling better.

When you rush to forgiveness you ignore the feelings of hurt and anger that come with the end of a relationship. There’s nothing wrong with your bad feelings. Feeling them does not make you a bad person, your emotional experience is part of your human experience.

Don’t bypass your negative emotions by rushing to forgiveness. You don’t receive brownie points by getting over heartbreak faster than anyone else.

Allow yourself to think and feel whatever comes up about your ex. Thinking evil thoughts does not make you an evil person, however, this doesn’t mean that you should act on these thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with entertaining your thoughts and then letting them go.

Forgiveness can only come into play once you’ve truly mourned, grieved, and given up the hope that your ex may come back. There’s no time limit on grief, it may sneak up on you at any time or place. Your healing is not on a linear path so be okay with the fits and starts, the 2 steps forward 1 step back, and think of it as dancing with yourself to create a new relationship with the most important person – YOU!

Step Three: Kill The Hope

Stop fantasizing about a miracle scenario where you wake up from this awful nightmare. Getting over heartbreak requires you to release the hope that your ex will change.

Hope is the first thing that enters a relationship and the last thing to leave. As painful as it may seem, killing the hope that things will be different is one of the most powerful steps you can take.

As long as there is hope, you’ll settle for crumbs in your life. You’ll see any positive interaction with your ex as a signal that maybe, just maybe, the two of you will get back together.

Holding onto hope blocks love from entering your heart from someone else. There’s no space for new love when you still hope the old one will return.

Your ex isn’t a unicorn. Believing that they’re the only one you’ll ever love or who will ever love you is a false belief. Love is limitless and has limitless expressions. The lasting love you desire is available to you but only if you truly let them go.

When you’re ready, kill the hope that your ex will ever be your soulmate. This step will open your heart to creating the lasting love you desire with someone new who is better suited for you.

Step Four: Set Clear Boundaries

It’s best to cut off any communication with your ex (unless you have children or business together). Stalking your ex on social media or trying to be friends with your ex will only keep the wound open and prevent it from healing.

When you set clear boundaries, you’re exercising the right to protect yourself and your heart. Make a clear request that your ex doesn’t contact you in any way. Setting boundaries is self-care. Your heartache is a wound that requires healing. Every time you have contact with your ex it’s like tearing off a scab on a wound slowing down the healing process.

Set boundaries for your interactions and remember this important acronym — NRN (No Response Necessary). Unwanted texts, phone calls, and emails do not need to be responded to. Don’t respond immediately if your ex does contact you. Wait before you say or do something that will re-engage the two of you.

Change their name in your phone to “Do Not Answer” because you’ll always follow this direction from yourself. Don’t just delete their contact record. Your subconscious mind will highlight everything familiar, and whether you think you know their phone number — you don’t want to take that chance.

Getting over heartbreak requires you to set yourself up for healing success and ensure you feel better ASAP. Setting and keeping clear boundaries with your ex gives you the framework.

Step Five: Discover The Golden Nugget That Will Set You Free

Our dear friend and motivational speaker Les Brown says, “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

We believe that everything is happening for you (not to you). Events occur to move you toward your highest and best self. This person who has broken your heart showed up for a reason.

You had a relationship with this person in order to grow from the experience so you can become better to then connect with your beloved.

When you’re ready to let your ex go for good write a letter of gratitude that you will never send. This letter clarifies the Golden Nugget, the reason this person showed up in your life, and what you’re grateful they showed up to teach you.

This letter is for you not for your ex, so as tempting as it may be to send it – DON’T! Getting this letter written may take a few passes, and that’s okay. You can start by simply free-form journaling to prime the pump.

The exercise of writing this letter is to bring into crystal clear focus The Golden Nugget Of Learning™.

It had to be this specific person to teach you something about yourself or to highlight where you still have room for improvement.

When you’re done writing the letter, put it aside for a couple of days. Then come back to the letter and see if there are any edits you’d like to make to it. When you feel it’s complete implement this ritual:

• Read the letter out loud.
• Say out loud “I release this for the highest good of all.”
• Then burn the letter.

You can burn it in your fireplace, outside in a fire pit, or even in your kitchen sink. As it burns feel yourself freeing yourself from your old relationship. Imagine that you’re moving closer to the highest and best version of you for having been through this experience.

Once you’ve released your ex through this Golden Nugget Exercise take some time to celebrate your independence and freedom. Dedicate some of the time you would’ve spent with your ex to do things for yourself. Maybe sign up for a class at your local community college, learn a new language, or a new skill. Do something just for you and splurge – you deserve it!

If you’re struggling with getting over heartbreak and can’t seem to stop thinking about your ex, join us for a Soulmate Strategy Session. Isn’t it time you moved on to create the long-lasting love you desire and deserve? You are worth loving, let us show you how to put the past behind you.