How to Change Your Life After Separation

While it can be easy to spend the months and even years after your relationship looking back with feelings of guilt and regret, it really is possible to change your life for the future. In recent years, there has been an explosion in self-help and spirituality books and DVDs that all claim to be able to change your life simply through the power of positive thinking. While positive thinking can help, it is not everything. This is because there is a big difference between positive thinking, and actual belief.

Conscious Versus Subconscious

You cannot tell yourself every day that you are rich, successful and happy when your subconscious mind tells you that you are useless, weak and a failure. This is because your conscious mind may accept things on the surface, but underneath your subconscious mind keeps reinforcing long-held beliefs about your weaknesses. Quite often these beliefs will manifest themselves into behaviour that we notice in our lives as being repetitive, but often we won’t know how to change them or worse we feel that we must accept them because that is ‘just how we are’. This is not true.

Train Your Mind

There are fantastic ways to change your life, without resorting to drastic measures. While positive thought is a very large part of change, you will need to begin to believe that you are able to change for there to be any lasting effect. For example, if you feel overwhelmed by guilt at the end of your relationship, and in particular the fact that you no longer spend as much time with your children as you would like, tell yourself that you are a good father every day.

Get in Touch With Yourself

To begin this process, it can be very helpful to look at yourself in the mirror and say “I love you and accept you, just as you are”. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do this with an audience, and no one need ever know that you have done this! A lot of people find it almost impossible to do this. Others burst into tears, while some burst out laughing and try to avoid it. But what is interesting about this is that you are telling yourself that you acknowledge your own needs. Once you have done this, you can begin to work on yourself and the ways in which you most want to see change.

Affirmations

To take our example, you may want to use the mirror again. Say: “I am a good father and my children love me,” followed by, “You are a good father and your children love you.” In doing this in the first person and the third person, you are telling both your conscious and subconscious minds. This technique can work with all areas of your life, from your personal relationships, to your career, social life and your successes, as well as being an effective remedy for stress. Take a moment to think about what you CAN change (rather than what you cannot) and formulate your own ‘affirmations’ to repeat to yourself every day.

The Effects of Affirmations

There are no over-night miracles with this process. When you begin to use affirmations you may begin to feel better very quickly, such as within 24 hours, or it may take several weeks to begin to feel the effects. You could notice that people begin to react to you differently, or that you feel that ‘things start to go your way’. You might realise that it was you holding you back rather than anyone else, or you could find the courage to face something you previously thought was impossible. Of course, if you dismiss this without having an open mind it is unlikely to work, but millions of people around the world have benefitted from these simple exercises. If you genuinely want to change your life, why not give it a try?

The Next Step

Now that you have read through the advice above, you might want to put it into practice. Our Rights Checker lets you check what legal rights you have as a separated father. Takes 2 minutes. Try it now →