If you are about to start the new year fresh and ready to improve yourself and your life, then surely you need to leave the past in the past. Literally, this is your chance to leave your ex, together with any regrets or negative experience, in the past year, and cross to the new year with an open mind, and a great positive attitude. Obviously, talking is much easier than moving on, but not to worry, we gathered advise from real life experience to assist you in moving on from your ex, and into an ex-free path in your journey. Here is what you need to do:

Step 1 – Close the door

Closure is the most important step of moving on, if you are still genuinely convinced that your ex is the right person for you, then part of you, will always be thinking and plotting how to get them back, this is not good news as you will be spending more of your time, attention and energy going in circles, and we all know how precious these resources are, given they are limited most scare commodities.

So, this is what you do: sit down by yourself, with your favourite drink, in one of your favourite places, and think of or write down the reasons your relationship did not and will not work. Below are few reasons you might find are common:

• Luck of compatibility: you have a different mindset, ideology, attitudes to life, values & beliefs, background, or dreams for the future. The diversity is just not in your favour and is causing perpetual fighting and negative vibes.

• Dealbreakers: you have reached a dealbreaker and you cannot compromise. It is clear you or both of you cannot move on from this, and you reached the stop loss This can be a breach of trust, a financial problem, and so on.

• It is not enough: your relationship or your partner is not giving you enough of what you need or expect from them. You aspire for more, and your unmet expectations are causing your happiness to reduce significantly and repeatedly. You are simply better off by yourself or finding an alternative. This might also apply to your partner: you might just no longer be enough for them.

• You are better than this: a healthy relationship makes you a better version of yourself, or at least not make you a worse version. Your relationship is making you into someone you do not like, or even not recognise. This is the worse reason, as it challenges your morality, the essence of both your humanity and personality.

If you have found the reason and is satisfied with it, then congratulations, you are on the right path to acceptance: that this is now part of your past, and it is time to move on and rebuild.

Step 2: Accept yourself

When you come out of a relationship, more often than not, you will find kios in your thoughts, and possibly even in your identity. It might cause self-doubt, lower your self-esteem, bring up other past bad memories, feelings of resentment towards the universe, or other people in your life. But do not despair, the best is yet to come, and you can rebuild yourself and rise like a phoenix. How you ask, below are some tips:

• Walk down memory lane: who were you before your ex came into your life? what were your personal achievements? what were your passions? how did you go about doing all that? And who was in your network? or simply put, how amazing were you without your ex. Focus on the positive, your strengths, your best traits, and accept that this is who you are.

• Lesson learnt: What did you learn from your ex-relationship? since your past-self entered into the relationship with your ex, what have you learnt? Some life lessons are hard but remember what doesn’t kill you make you stronger. Consider every mistake to be an experience, a learning opportunity you can leverage into your rebuilding. Accept that this experience is now a part of you, that you learnt and grew, and though being out is good, and your investment in your ex did not pay off dividends, at least your invested time pays of a life lesson. This is part of your journey, do not beat yourself up, and please do not spend your precious time on regrets.

• The best is yet to come: truly, as long as you live, it is highly likely that good things, better things will happen for you. This is just how life works. So, if the devil on your shoulder is pulling you back, whispering that no one better will come along, that you lost this golden opportunity, you messed up, and you will die alone, then please brush him off now. It is never too late for any of us humans to rebuild, so be a realistic optimist. We are always more resilient and capable than we think, so be confident and allow yourself to hope.

• Make peace with the universe: still holding on to any negative feelings towards the universe? Feeling like why did this happen to me? Well, hold off the entitlement please. Happiness = what you get from the universe – what you expect to get from the universe.

This means though you cannot control what happens to you or who you meet in your life, surely you can control what you expect from yourself and from them. If you expect a lot more than what you get, then your happiness will be massively reduced, and you cannot reach your happiness aspiration or potential. Please do not get me wrong, I, by no means, mean you need to lower your standards in your potential partner. What I am saying is do not expect much from the universe in terms of who you might meet tomorrow or next year. We make our own happiness, and this is how happiness is truly made by lowering our expectation / our entitlement of what the universe might give us, and keeping a positive proactive attitude towards what might come along.

You have now moved on with no regrets, no fear of ‘lost opportunity’, no desperation, and no resentment. Now that you got the philosophy right, let us move on to more practical actions:

Step 3: Resume your plan

We all have plans and agendas as adults, a bucket list we desire to, a list of accomplishment we aspire to do, passions to pursue, and most significantly, a purpose to live for. Go back to your original self and dig out or rethink your purpose in life. What are your objectives, rewrite them if need to, after all your experience with your ex must have boosted your growth, and that list might have change accordingly. Write down your new bucket list, what you want for your career, travel, books to read, people to catch up with, your rebuild plan. If you are not sure where to start, we have a full guide hereon how to write your objectives.

• Delete them: if you do not want the exposure and potential trauma and drama from your ex, then just go ahead and remove them from your life, including your digital life and social media. Don’t be cautious of coming out as the immature one who doesn’t know how to stay ‘friends’. If they cannot let you go, then ask politely that they do not include you in their life anymore (and get restraining order if they harass you :). Be determined and be assertive with yourself and with them. Protect your mental health, your energy, and most important your time. Remember, you can never get this one back! If you get an itch to spy on your ex’s social media, then try to get a buffer: a trusted someone you can seek help when your addiction is about to manifest. If it gets too much, there is no shame is seeking professional help, do whatever it takes to help yourself and cleanse. After all, would you want to live with a virus knowingly? You won’t do it to your body, so why do it to your mind!

• Don’t wait up: when you write your objectives, do not wait for any contribution from anyone. It is great to have support from people, but do not put your hopes for the future in anyone’s hands. If you want to travel for example, then do it and go alone or book a guided tour. Don’t wait on other’s schedules. Don’t wait for happiness, execute it now. You will not be happy when you that trip, you will not be happy when you get married, when you have children, or when you get that promotion. Be happy now as you are: 0 expectation, maximum happiness.

• Go ahead and live: now go and execute your new plan. I personally found that the best way to move on from any unwanted memory is to fill my brain with new memories, the more the better.  I like to think of my brain as a computer, when you download too much, or run too many programs, you need to make space for all these new items, which means you need to delete old garbage to increase your storage. Live as much as you can and fill your time. If need to, do not give your brain time to dig out and reprocess your old memories of your ex. If you need inspiration, we have a bucket list to inspire you. Yours truly did 95 items from the list without waiting on anyone to do it with, I just grabbed any opportunity as it came, so why shouldn’t you.

• Hold on to the inner peace: once you find your inner peace, do not let go of it, practice whatever works for you: mindfulness, prayers, mantras, gym therapy, just try to get something that is sustainable. When I lost sleep to negative thoughts, I put the Calm application on, so find your calm.

• Talk about it, or not: some people can’t shut up about their ex-relationships and some go dead silent as if it is never happened. It is up to you how you want to handle it. I myself love my privacy, so when people ask me about someone I no longer want in my life, or they ask me what happened between us, when I don’t want to discuss it, I will just ask politely that this makes me uncomfortable, and I do not want to talk about it. Your support system should respect your needs to protect your mental health. It is your relationship after and no one’s business. On the other hand, if you like talking about it because this feels like letting go, then this is ok too. Find a trusted one, perhaps someone with empathy, and let them know what you expect from them, to just listen, to opine, to re-assure, or to provide guidance.

• Look great while you do it: yes, it is all about inner beauty, but confidence and self-appreciation do increase when you feel good about your outer self. Confidence leads to ambition, which leads to a positive outlook to the future, so why not look good while moving on, every little helps! And speaking of your inner beauty, why not also boost it with more self-development and awareness. We all should be constantly working to invest in increasing our emotional intelligence with or without traumatic experiences. Emotional intelligence enables us to identify with ourselves and the world, as well as increases autonomy while building deeper relationships.

If you would like to see similar topics or require further advice or examples, please do not hesitate to leave us a comment.