You know you have made mistakes. Perhaps they were even big mistakes. You must keep living though. You are not the type of person for whom anything else is an option. You must move on somehow and you would like that somehow to include a second chance with the one who has broken your heart or whose heart you have also broken. We all want second chances because as humans we naturally make mistakes as we are feeling our way through the complexities of life and human relationships. Naturally, part of the process is messing up and learning from our mess ups.
Obviously if you want a second chance, you will have little likelihood of getting that chance and even if you do, no likelihood of it succeeding, if you do not change. As the famous definition of insanity makes so clear, you cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Have you experienced that getting older and wiser moment, when you are reflecting on the past and exclaiming to yourself, “How could I have been such an idiot!? I was so blind! I was so selfish! How could I have been so stupid? What a fool I was. I feel so ashamed and embarrassed that I was like that.”
If you have not ever had that realization numerous times in your life, than you are still the blind stupid selfish idiot. Sorry to break that to you. It is a natural part of acquiring experience and wisdom in life. So instead of continuing on directionless, do something about it. The most important thing you can do to get a second chance with the person you love is to make yourself a better person.
In an ideal world, everybody would be trying every single day to become a little better person before the end of that day. Unfortunately, if you watch the news ever and care at all, you are well aware that we do not live in an ideal world. The vast majority of people in the world are not interested in becoming a better person. Mostly they are primarily interested in what they can get out of all the other people in their lives. They are not seeking to grow as a person except in terms of wealth and/or pleasures. None of these types of people will ever be truly happy. But isn’t that what you really want? To be happy? Certainly happiness would be a much preferable alternative to the way you feel right now.
Right now your heart is broken. Perhaps you feel broken. Getting your ex back into your life is likely just about all you can think of. If you want to succeed in being happy, whether or not that results in getting your ex back, without making yourself a better person you are never going to get him or her back and if you do by some bizarre chance, it is never going to last. So in order to succeed in a relationship with your ex or anyone else in the future, if that’s what it comes to, it will require you to change.
Not that it is all your fault. The other person will have to make changes to if you end up back with that person. But you cannot control that. All you can do now is to change yourself. You must take this pain from your broken heart, and channel it into making yourself the man or woman he or she or anyone else would want to be with. But how?
The same way you rebuild a broken down building; brick by brick. The same way an alcoholic quits drinking, and that is one day at a time. As a fourth stage, seemingly hopeless worthless alcoholic myself, who has, with the help of God, successfully quit drinking and turned my life around, I can explain a little about this. I am sure you have heard of the phrase, “baby steps.”
If you think about where you are now and then where you need to be, the distance and the obstacles will seem overwhelming and unmanageable. You are not likely ever to succeed in getting where you want and need to be. You must set daily objectives for yourself. You must sit down and think about where you are now, where you want to be and then plan out, preferably write down, every step that it is going to take to get there. You then must focus on each of those small goals and work until you achieve them. You then check that one off of your list and move on to the next one. Before you know it guess what? A year has passed and when you look back to where you were, and where you are now you are going to be amazed and proud of what you have accomplished and of the person that you have become and are still becoming.
The chronic alcoholic cannot succeed in quitting drinking simply by quitting drinking. His entire life has to change. The only way for an alcoholic to become successful in recovery is to become a better person. How does he do this? He finds the courage to truly examine himself and honestly look at the person that he really is as opposed to the person he tries to project to the world.
Similarly you are never going to succeed in a relationship with the one you have lost or any other individual you embark on a relationship with in the future, if you do not change yourself in to a better person as well. In order to become a better person you must find a way to be honest with the person you are right now.
At the beginning of the day everyday, make it your goal to be a slightly better person by the end of that day. It might be that you are only incrementally better, microscopically even! But, if it happens every day it adds up. And when you break time and goals down to just concentrating on the one day in front of you and getting through it honestly, kindly, generously, modestly, and humbly, very soon you are going to be amazed about how much time has passed since you began this journey and all you have accomplished in that time. And guess what, he or she is going to notice as well.
To be continued…
