Life after divorce: How to rebuild your self-esteem and confidence

With divorce often comes a feeling of shame, low confidence and low self worth – as if people who get divorced have done something wrong, or failed somehow. It’s only natural to perhaps feel scared at finding yourself single again. You may feel alone, isolated, and surprised by who has turned their back on you. This is normal. However, it needn’t be this way. Self confidence and self worth have everything to do with having a strong inner core. Often times, outer success can hide a weak core, but without a strong core true happiness is not sustainable long term. The inner core has to do with loving yourself for who you truly are. Here are some spiritual advice to help you remember who you truly are so you can rebuild your self confidence and self worth after your divorce.


Do

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  • deepen your inner connection
  • tend to your healing
  • look your best
  • improve communication with your ex
  • push out of your comfort zone
Don't

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  • ignore your needs and desires
  • get triggered by your ex
  • give up
  • go into negativity
  • stay stuck in the past

[publishpress_authors_data]'s recommendation to ExpertBeacon readers: Do

Do deepen your inner connection

To begin, you want to remember who you truly are, and what you are here to do. When you remember that, you cannot help but truly love yourself. Perhaps you lost yourself in your marriage and defined yourself in terms of being a wife, a mother, or other outward marker. A good way to find yourself again is by establishing some form of meditation or mindfulness practice. This will help you connect to the present moment so you can focus on who really matters – you.

Do tend to your healing

Feelings of anger, sadness, fear, disappointment, jealousy, loneliness and others are all healthy indications that you need to tend to some healing. In the same way we all need to eat, drink and exercise to stay healthy, healing, is something everyone needs. Your divorce has, no doubt, brought up to the surface some powerful emotions that need to be healed at this time. Rather than run away from them, this is a wonderful opportunity to give yourself some love and tend to your healing. Anything you do that fills you up with unconditional love heals you. As soon as you set the intention to receiving the healing you need, you will be amazed by the help you are offered.

Do look your best

Even if you don’t feel very attractive or inspired at the moment, do make an effort to look your best. This means taking care of your grooming as you normally would and making a special effort with the clothes you choose to wear. You may feel like wearing your cosy sweat pants to the supermarket, but putting on some pressed jeans and lipstick will lift your spirits. Your outwards appearance is just as important as your inner well being and both contribute to a healthy, happy you. It’s important to honor the vehicle that holds your spirit just as much as your spirit as both are sacred gifts.

Do improve communication with your ex

Ensure you are both communicating as effectively as possible. This may be challenging depending on where you are in the letting go process. It’s important to honor the process and what you are feeling while remembering that your ex has his own process, and his own feelings as well. Using clear language to express what is going on with you will help make you and your ex more attentive and respectful to each other. The more effectively you communicate, the less likely you will be to fall back into your old pattern, and the easier it will be for you to rebuild the self confidence and self worth you may feel you lost during your divorce.

Do push out of your comfort zone

Here, change is a good thing. There is no point sticking to the routine you had as a married person because it will just keep you stuck in the past and prevent you from moving forward. You don’t need to give up your old routine completely. You want to get rid of what wasn’t nourishing you and hang onto those parts that were. Here you want to make whatever change you need to make so you feel your life is expanding into a new direction. If you are not expanding out, you are contracting in. Whenever growth is dampened, suffering happens on some level. As long as you feel your life is getting bigger and better as a result of your divorce, you will feel happier and your self confidence and self worth will improve.


[publishpress_authors_data]'s professional advice to ExpertBeacon readers: Don't

Do not ignore your needs and desires

As a loyal wife you have perhaps spent years putting the needs of your husband first. If you have children, you have perhaps put the needs of your children ahead of your own as well. That was fine for a time, but now it’s time to reclaim yourself. Who are you? What’s important to you? What are your talents and gifts? How do you want to spend the rest of your life? You have talents and gifts the world has never seen and you have been put on this earth for an important purpose. Nurturing others is no doubt important to you, and the more you can nurture yourself too by paying attention and devoting time to rediscovering you, the more loving you will be.

Do not get triggered by your ex

Keeping a level head with your ex will help keep your self confidence high; losing your temper, showing tears, or clamming up will only reinforce past patterns and will not help your self esteem. Remember here, that under duress some bottle up their emotions while others let them all hang out – neither is sustainable long term. Healthy, happy people know when to share and when to hold back. Finding this balance is an important skill that is not always learned in childhood. Relationships in general and marriage or divorce specifically, provide great opportunities to learn this.

Do not give up

It’s important to just not give up. You will be tested. Though life is perhaps not flowing as you would like, it’s important to remember that you can handle it. The challenges will make you stronger, but they are setting the template for your new life. It took years to build a life with a partner, now it may take some time to rebuild a life on your own as a single woman. This is where it’s important to surrender into the unknown.

Do not go into negativity

It’s easy to get trapped in negativity, after all your divorce and the last days of your marriage were no doubt filled with negativity. Here it’s important to change that pattern. Let go of all toxicity – this means let go of negative thoughts, words and actions. You can do this by cutting out all negativity from your life or by transforming negativity into positivity. This applies to your friends, your job, your family, as well as your ex and your marriage. Like attracts like so the more you spiral into darkness, the harder it will be to get out and the less self confidence and self worth you will have. You may need to fake it a little at the beginning, but you will soon see how easy it is to be positive. The more positive you are on the outside, the more positive you will soon feel on the inside as well.

Do not stay stuck in the past

Here it’s important to really accept and let go. It’s the only way to move on and create a new life. When you keep a foot in one life and another in a new life, you are not fully anchored into the present. The more you can accept what has happened, the easier it will be to let go and then to create a new life which is more aligned with the deeper truth of who you are and the deeper truth of the life you are now ready for.


Summary

As long as your inner core is not strong, your divorce will affect your sense of self confidence and self worth. Making that core strong will pave the way to the next chapter of your life as a single, which will then set the foundation for the rest of your life. The stronger that inner core, the more resilience you will have to navigate any future challenge or crisis that comes your way. Hopefully this advice has offered insight to help you rebuild your self confidence and self worth after your divorce so you can bring in more of the love that you are, and remember the love that you have always been.

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