When you’re in the middle of a separation or divorce, it can be easy to slip into a negative mindset and develop habits that get you stuck in rut. But making an effort to develop positive habits can ensure that you move on quickly and happily.
Here are some key positive habits to develop when you’re going through a divorce.
8 Positive Habits To Develop When You’re Going Through A Divorce
1. Positive Thinking
Attitude is everything in life. How you tackle any adversity, depends entirely on your attitude. Positive thinking is best defined as the ability to focus only on ways of overcoming an obstacle, while totally ignoring how difficult the task may be.
Going through a divorce may feel like the lowest point of your life. As hard as it may seem to you right now, the best way out of this feeling is not to worry how deep it is, but to concentrate on how you will get yourself out and back to top: that’s by taking one step at a time.
Learn from the past but move forward with your life. Once you start moving forward, you may be surprised to find that these obstacles weren’t all that difficult in the first place.
2. Be Proactive
Being proactive involves taking whatever necessary steps to keep you motivated to prevent any negative thoughts entering your mind and dragging you back to your old habits.
Occupy your mind with positive and meaningful thoughts and deeds, and make that a habit.
If you have children to take care of, spend as much fun time with them as you can. Don’t neglect your job or your business, or you may end up with financial worries too. And more importantly, don’t neglect your closest family and your friends.
3. Use Your Support Network
Your family and friends are the people that care for you the most, so don’t be afraid to lean on them for support.
Keep away from negative people who are not as supportive as you need them to be – especially those who want to tell you all about their own negative separation experiences – and choose instead to surround yourself with positive minded people who offer good solid advice and have a sense of humour. You’re going to need lots of that.
You may know people who have been divorced who could tell you what to expect, which can help you to see that you’re not the first person to be experiencing this. But, be careful of those who remain bitter towards their ex and haven’t got over their own divorce.
4. Give Yourself Space & Time
There is no better healer in the world than time. So give yourself enough space and time to process all this grief. Make time to do fun things, spend quality time with your kids, and make an effort to be around your family and friends. All these things will help you to process your emotions from your divorce.
5. Start A New Routine
Whatever routines you and your family have had prior to your divorce may have gone out the window, leaving you feeling lost and in a higher state of anxiety.
By establishing new routines, a level of normality will begin to creep back into your life, easing the level of stress for everyone. These routines could be simple, like setting times for going to the gym or a jog or a walk. It could also be simple things like setting meal times, bed times or homework times for the kids. All these small routines create familiarity which in turn can restore some order and harmony in your lives.
6. Prioritise Your Health
Remember your health is the most valuable asset you possess. And if you have children to look after, you need to remain healthy in body, mind and spirit in order to take care of them effectively.
It can be so easy to fall into unhealthy habits when you suddenly find yourself living on your own. Cooking a healthy meal for you and your children may seem such a chore, when it’s just so easy to get dinner delivered to your door at the tap of an app. Treating yourselves to take out is fine every once in a while, but make sure it’s not every day, and that you generally try to eat healthy, exercise regularly and get enough sleep.
With so much focus on mental health lately affecting so many of our sporting heroes, it is important to keep our minds ticking over and staying on the straight and narrow. This means limited intake of alcohol and definitely no drugs. They may numb your senses for a short while but they can quickly become very harmful.
7. Keep A Journal
Going through a divorce is one of the most stressful events in anyone’s life, sometimes triggering waves of emotions which can cloud our brains and thought process. If you’re finding yourself unable to think straight and your mind is all over the place, try diarising your thoughts.
By writing down exactly how you feel at that precise moment and reading it at a later stage, it can be therapeutic and also help you to see what progress you have made. That alone will give you so much hope when you see just how far you have come.
8. Join A Support Group
Joining a support group and putting your energy into helping and supporting others in need, while you are in such need yourself, can be a super helpful way to work through your own divorce experience.
Support groups can be found through your church or your local community centres. Look for them if you need support – that’s what they are there for.
If you’re going through a separation or divorce, family mediation can help you take the stress away so you can move on.
Make those important decisions together with your ex, instead of relying on a judge to make them for you. Get in touch with Ian today – he’s a specialist in family dispute resolution in Perth and can help you both move on quickly and amicably.