- If you feel like you're still in love with your ex
and you're trying to get over your ex
or maybe you're trying to get back together,
I want you to know you're not alone.
So many of us have had the experience
where we fell in love with somebody,
things didn't work out, and then there was a part of us
that was still in love with that person.
If that's you, then this video is gonna be super important
for your love life.
Check it out.
(bells chiming)
Hey, I'm Mat Boggs,
and I'm the founder of the Love & Relationships Division
of the Brave Thinking Institute,
where our mission is empowering people
to create and live a life they love living,
and that includes your love life.
So if you like this video,
click the subscribe button and click that little bell,
because every week we bring you new videos
to empower you in your love life.
And today we're talking about
when you're in love with an ex, what can you do?
Because that unrequited love
is one of the most painful experiences
that we can have in our lives.
And so today we're talking about what you can do
when there's a part of you that's still in love with your ex
and one thing you should never do.
And so I've got six things for you
that will absolutely support you and your love life.
The first thing is what you should never do,
and this is chase him.
Never chase your ex.
Instead, realize there's a reason why this person
is your ex right now.
There's a good reason why you two
are not together right now.
You should never chase someone,
especially if they broke up with you
or if you brought it to an end
and there's a part of you that's missing them.
And here's the deal,
when you begin to chase an old flame,
when you begin to chase an old feeling,
you miss out on the growth that's here right now.
My mom would say this way, growing up, she says,
"Mat, the content of your life
"is the curriculum of your evolution."
I was like, "What does that mean?"
She was, "Here's what that means.
"What's going on right now,
"the circumstance you're in,
"the pain you're in, or the joy you're in,
"whatever it is, is the curriculum,
"it helps you evolve, it helps you grow."
And so the first thing to do is to begin to ask yourself,
what are the gifts inside this experience?
What's the blessing that's here for me?
What's seed of good could I harvest
out of the fact that we are no longer together?
What can I learn and how can I grow?
That's step number one.
The second step is to cleanse your doubt.
What this means is it's really easy
when we break up with someone or they break up with us,
we're in love with them to feel like that's as good
as it's gonna get.
Especially when you have insane chemistry with that person.
It's really hard to imagine anything better than that.
And this is why cleansing your doubt is so important.
Cleanse any doubt that you can find someone even better,
because here's the truth,
you live in an abundant universe,
governed by a higher power that wants to support you
into experiencing freer, fuller,
more grand expressions of love in your life.
I put it this way,
do I believe in a higher power
that would have someone better for me or worse for me
if this doesn't work out?
Well, I absolutely believe in every ounce of my being
that I live in a universe with a higher power
that would want someone even better for me.
So think about that for a moment.
If this thing doesn't work out,
that means there's someone better for you.
If you really believe that, how would you feel?
Because here's what's interesting,
the speed at which you can connect to that possibility
is the speed at which you bring that possibility
into your life.
Let me give you an example.
One of my clients, her name is Jennifer,
went out on a date with a guy, first guy in a long time.
I'm talking years that she'd had some chemistry with,
they dated for a few weeks, they kissed, it was electric.
And then about a week later,
he calls her and says, "I'm sorry, Jennifer,
"but I've had this woman in her late 20s."
Jennifer and this man were both in their 40s.
"This woman in her late 20s asked me on a date.
"She says she's really attracted,
"and I just feel like I'm so attracted to her.
"And I just want to explore this with this other woman."
And so this guy was being upfront and honest,
but it just felt like Jennifer got kicked in the gut.
And so she hung up the phone and very interestingly,
she had been doing this work in Manifest Your Man,
a program that I coach,
where she was building the belief
that if it doesn't work (indistinct)
that if it doesn't work with this guy,
then it must be someone better in store for her.
And she got on the phone with me and she said,
"Mat, normally I would have been devastated.
"I would have taken a month off from dating
"just to heal and recoup from this experience."
She goes, "What was interesting is when this guy
"said no to me, I instantly felt this strange excitement.
"I've heard a little bit, it stung a little bit,
"but I was connecting to this possibility,
"well, that must mean there's someone even better,
"and I like this guy."
So that night she got online,
reached out to the hottest guy she could find, he responded.
They went out, started dating and fell in love.
This new guy, way better than this other guy.
She was a perfect match for her.
He's sexy and tall and successful.
And the two of them have an amazing relationship.
And it didn't take her a month
of going down into this trough of grieving
because she connected to the idea
there was someone even better in store for her.
In other words, she was willing to cleanse the doubt.
That's step two.
Now, if you're interested in doing same course
that Jennifer did, it's called Manifest Your Man,
I'm gonna post a link below this video.
Check out that link.
It is phenomenal at helping you become the version of you
that attracts an amazing relationship
and draw him into your life even faster.
Check that out, I think you'll love it.
And this brings us to step number three,
which is to cleanse your physical space.
You see, you are rewiring yourself
to allow for more free, full and expanded expressions
of love in your life.
And in order to do that,
you've got to rewire the patterns of your life.
In other words, remove any triggers
that would cause you to think about him
and then experience the emotion of him in your life.
Whether that's positive emotion or negative emotion,
it doesn't matter.
We want to remove any triggers
that cause you to think about him.
Here's what this means. (whooshing sound)
So here's what you do.
You get yourself a box
and then you put any physical item
that reminds you of him in this box.
So it might be his toothbrush,
or it might be his sweat shirt.
It might be a picture of the two of you or his cologne,
or maybe his slippers,
anything that reminds you of him,
you wanna put it in the box.
And then what you do is you take your box
and you throw it in the garbage,
just like that.
And if you're not willing to throw in the garbage,
then you tape up the box
and put it in the back of your garage
where you're not going to see it.
The point is that you're taking all of the items
that might trigger you to think about him
or feel the relationship
and you're removing it from your awareness,
removing it from your experience.
Now, number four is to cleanse your mental space.
Same reason why we cleanse our physical space
is to remove the physical triggers
that would cause us to think about this person.
The mental space is cleansing out any digital triggers
that would pull your attention and focus on him.
The theme here is to create a cleanse,
which means to remove your energy from his energy,
to give yourself a break from that so that you can heal
and really move forward and create something extraordinary
in your life.
So the mental triggers means unfollow him
from all social media.
if need be, block him from social media.
The last thing that you need to see
when you open up your social media are pictures of him,
what he's doing, adventures he's having,
who he might be possibly with,
or have him commenting on your stuff,
trying to reach out and trying to establish
that emotional connection with you.
Give yourself that cleanse.
And we're gonna take this one step further.
You might not like this.
You might really resist this idea,
but it's effective and it works.
And that is to take your phone
and remove all the photos of the two of you off your phone.
Now, I know what you're saying right now,
you're like Mat, "We were together for a year
"or two years or three years.
"There's a ton of amazing memories on that phone."
I know there are.
And guess what those memories are.
Those memories are a highlight reel
of all the best moments in your life with him.
So it doesn't give you a realistic picture
of what the relationship was really like.
Our brains are hardwired to selectively remember the good
and to block out the bad.
Our brains are programmed to forget painful memories, right.
This is why women will give childbirth more than one time.
Because if they really remembered how painful it was
the first time they were like,
"I ain't doing that again," right.
This is why we will get back with an ex,
we'll forget why we broke up in the first place.
It'd be like months later,
you're going through your phone,
you're feeling lonely.
And then you're like (mumbles)
And you're seeing all these great times.
And you're like, "We were really good together.
"Like, look how much fun we are having," right.
And then you get back together with that person.
You go on a date and you're like,
"I remember why we broke up."
You know, like it's over so fast, right.
That's because people don't take photos
while they're arguing.
(whooshing sound)
- Babe, are you ready?
- What do you mean ready?
- We have to be there at 4:30.
- No, I told you yesterday that I have a meeting at 4:30
and I won't be able to leave until after that.
- No, no, no, you forget.
We had two conversations yesterday about this.
- Yes. - We have to be there at 4:30.
- And in both conversations
I said I couldn't leave until after this meeting-
- Ugh, I am so frustrated right now.
- No, I am frustrated right now
and that means it's time for a selfie.
(woman sighs)
(camera snaps)
People don't do that.
So you don't have to delete every photo from your phone.
What you can do is take all the photos off your phone,
put them in a hard drive or in a thumb drive somewhere
and save them.
If you wanna keep them, save them,
load them back to your phone later but for at least 90 days.
Get all those photos off of your phone,
because as you're scrolling through your phone,
you don't want any accidental sightings
of something that you're trying to clear out of your life.
And step five is to clear your emotional space.
It's really important that you allow yourself
to cleanse your feelings so that you can move forward.
And the only way to do that is to feel your feelings.
I was watching a dating show recently
where the girl that was on the show
got heart broken by the guy she was dating.
And so she went to this other guy and just had a fling
and just hooked up with him.
And then in the post-interview with the producers,
she's saying, "You know, the best way to get over a guy
"is to get under someone new."
And I thought, no, that's not the best way
to get over a guy.
That's actually the worst possible strategy
for getting over a guy
because all you're doing is blurring out your old emotions
with this new, physical experience.
That doesn't heal anything.
What's really required
is that you allow yourself to feel the emotions.
To grieve, to give yourself time to be sad and to be angry,
and then to move through the spectrum of emotions.
And one thing that's really great for this
is to write a couple of letters.
The first letter is a forgiveness and gratitude letter,
where you write your ex a letter that offers forgiveness
and gratitude for the experiences that you had,
and then do a fire burning ceremony
where you burn that letter
and let the transformation of the fire
be a metaphor for the transformation
of the emotions you're willing to release
from that past relationship.
The second letter is a letter to yourself.
I would even encourage you to put this one in your phone.
So it's easy access.
And this is a letter of why you're choosing
to not be with him right now.
In other words, all the challenges in the relationship,
all the reasons why it's not a good fit,
this is a beautiful thing when you're feeling lonely
and your mind starts going to selective positive memories
that are only the highlight reel from your past.
You can say, you know what, why did we break up?
Let me remind myself.
And you pull out your letter and you read that letter
and you remind yourself why you've released
that old relationship to create something new.
And number six is to cleanse your old routine.
Don't just do the same old, same old.
The best way to attract someone new in your life
is to create something new with your life.
In other words, go on vacation,
someplace you've never been before.
Or take a new class, create some art, go zip-lining,
do something that will be a forever memory for yourself.
As you create something new with your life,
you create openings to experience the new
and attract the new.
Now, here's the deal.
Even if there's a part of you that's in love with your ex
and there's a part of you
that thinks maybe things could work out,
the only way that things will work out for the better
is if both of you use this moment to grow,
to become the next more expanded version of yourself.
And then as two of you become new versions of yourself,
you can create a new relationship moving forward
based on new agreements and new behaviors
that will serve you better.
If that person doesn't choose to come back into your life,
then you're already primed to meet someone new.
That's why the best way and the best chance
of getting your ex back, is to actually follow this plan
of getting over your ex in the first place
and creating something special for yourself.
Either way, you're empowered
to create something magnificent.
So my question for you is what strategies have you learned
really serve you in releasing the energy
of an old ex to move you forward?
Go and post that in the comment section below.
I appreciate you.
Thanks for watching.
Cheers to your amazing love life,
and I'll see you
(upbeat music)