When a divorce or major break up hits, some men will embrace the challenge and life will become exponentially better.
This is part 2 in a series about How to Become a Badass After a Divorce or Break up.
You are a successful man. You have a great career, you are respected, you care deeply about family, relationships and community. The impact you make on the world matters. The impact you make on your kids, partners, employees and neighbors matter.
You’ve always taken life’s setbacks and faced them as obstacles for you to overcome and learn from.
Your divorce or break up is no different.
The first step in becoming a badass after a divorce is to embrace the challenge.
The world doesn’t want you to do this. They want you to hide and lick your wounds. Some want you to pretend it’s not a big deal, while others want you to fall apart so it affirms them. They want you to recover in private and keep both the pain and the joy of a relationship ending to yourself.
We live in a culture that relies upon the narrative that you are supposed to be great the first time around.
This is bullshit.
The expectation that you were supposed to know how to be a great husband, partner or father is bullshit.
Your high school, college, and corporate continued education didn’t teach you those skill sets. Most religious communities didn’t either. Even if you had great parents they often didn’t model what an amazing relationship looks like and if we assume they did, a lot of what made their relationship great happened before you were born and behind closed doors.
When we think we are supposed to just “be a natural” at what is arguably the hardest thing we’ll ever have to do, relationships, the natural response is to feel shame. The natural response to shame is to hide. When we hide, we don’t learn, grow, expand, heal or create.
It’s time for you to create a new life. But if you are stuck focused on how shitty it is that you are getting divorced, you won’t create.
Be honest with yourself. Don’t sugar coat the pain, struggle or cost of your loss. And don’t wallow in defeat either. This might be the ultimate challenge you face in life.
Cultivating the mindset to override what our world has taught you is what badasses do. Badass men use mental, emotional and physical tools to create their own reality. If you were to learn to step into the reality that your relationship ending was the exact challenge that will help you become the man that you’ve always wanted to be, you are 90% of the way towards becoming a badass after divorce.
This is what I help men do. It’s your turn.
Stay tuned for the next installment on taking responsibility.
If you have experienced a divorce, break up or lack of quality love relationships and you know you want help becoming a badass, apply to work with me.