how to be happy when your heart is breaking

So, I just read this blog post on one of the links I consistently follow. Just thought I'd share this with you; I know it would be big help to some people I know.

Watchin' the time go, the second hand is movin' too fast
Whoever thought that it ever really would last
And if your conscience weighs a little heavy tonight
Maybe you'll find it, maybe you'll find...
Nobody told you that nothing plays out like it seems
Twenty years now, runnin' scared of all your dreams
Is it everything you thought it would be?

When you come back, I'll be alright
On your own again, back where it all began
The phone don't ring, and the tears they fall
But you carry on and on and on and on

Past is past; you never really gave it a shot
To survive with your one last shot in the dark
And if your conscience weighs a little heavy tonight
Maybe you'll find...
Empty boxes on the stairs
Remind you that there's no one there
Is it everything you thought it would be?
You'll see...

When you come back, I'll be alright
On your own again, back where it all began
The phone don't ring, and the tears they fall
But you carry on and on and on and on 

You gotta go, you never knowjust how it'll all turn out
Forget what's done, the western sun
leaves no doubt

When you come back, I'll be alright
On your own again, back where it all began
The phone don't ring, and the tears they fall
But you carry on and on and on and on

"On Your Own"Green River Ordinance

Though I'm not suffering from a broken heart right now, I've been there. Man, have I been there. Many, many times. More times than I'd like to admit I've been broken hearted by breaking someone else's heart. It always seems as if it'd be better to be the one ending things, but it's not. It still hurts. Like hell. But you didn't come by to hear all about the heartaches of Dani, did you? Nope, you came by some for a Dani-sized dash of positivity and that's what I'm gonna give you. What's spurred me to write about heartache when my own heart's not aching? Lately I've been receiving a lot of questions about how to be happy even when your heart is breaking from my readers, and, though I must admit that in the past I haven't been the best at dealing with my personal pain, I think I have a new outlook on how one might deal with a broken heart and I want to share my advice with you (and store it for myself for later should I ever be faced with a broken heart myself!).

So, those of you suffering from a broken heart (or anyone who has suffered from one) knows that it's probably one of the worst feelings in the world. When you're down in the depths of heartache it feels like nothing in the world will bring you out of your pain. It feels like nothing you do, nothing anyone else says, can make you feel better. I know that feel. It flat out sucks. I'm not going pretend I have a cure all for getting rid of that terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach. I'm not going to sit here and claim I have a solution that will make all of your sadness go away. But here's the deal. You have a choice. You can either continue to be miserable (which, let's face it, isn't exactly bringing him or her back to you, is it?) or you can pull yourself together and move on. So what's it gonna be? It's totally up to you. Believe me, I know first hand that you can wallow in that self-pity for as long as you please. Days, weeks, months can go by before you even realize that you're wasting your life away, completely consumed by your sadness. Is that what you really want? To be sad? To be feeling sorry for yourself? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure most of us want to be happy. It's not at all easy to be happy when it feels like your heart has been splintered into a million little pieces, but it's up to you. Cheesy as it might sound, you can be anything you want to be. You want to be sad? Be sad. But if you want to be happy, read on...

How To Be Happy When Your Heart Feels Like Someone Smashed It With A Hammer

Accept the fact that you feel terrible, alone, and worthless. Yes, you feel like your heart and mind have been beaten. You feel defeated. You feel alone. You feel, for brief moments, like just throwing in the towel and giving up. It's okay to feel bad. You're supposed to. It's normal. One of the most important things I've learned in my path to positivity is that you can't just brush the bad emotions aside. Sure, it would be fabulous if we could be oh-so-happy all the time, but that's not life. Life sucks sometimes. Really sucks. We get mad, we get sad, we get hurt. That's just how it is. I used to try to avoid any of the bad feelings. I used to just drink or distract myself with other unhealthy pastimes, but that only caused the feelings to hide out in the back of my mind, building up on one another until they became this big, horrible mess of sadness and anger. It was not good. You don't want that to happen to you so deal with your pain and sadness. You're experiencing a loss and that hurts. It's okay for it to hurt. Sit with your sadness for a bit and allow yourself to feel how you feel.

Drag yourself out of that puddle of self pity. Okay, it's one thing to let yourself experience your emotions, but enough with the cartons of ice cream, the bags of chips, and the endless reruns of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Pull yourself together. It is, no matter what you feel like, completely unacceptable to sit around in your PJs for days, doing nothing but crying and watching Lifetime movies. It might sound harsh, but you have to get a grip. It feels awful, yes, but life goes on. It has to. You won't spend the rest of your life wallowing (even though right now it feels like you might) so you might as well get a jump start on your new, exciting, single life right now. Get up. Get dressed. Get going. Do something -- anything -- other than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Sadness in small doses is fine. Sadness is large quantities is just selfish. Get out there and do something productive, happy, and fun. Think about it like this: This is your life. Right now. What if today were your last day? Would you want to spend in wallowing in sadness? I think not!

Gather up your best friends and do something fabulous. Whenever you're going through a rough time, one of the best things you can do is surround yourself with the people who love you (and, yes, this is different from the people youlove). Surround yourself with positive, happy, loving people and you'll instantly start to feel better. Think about something you really love to do (maybe something that your ex didn't ever want to do) and do it. Take your friends and get going on a fabulous adventure, even if that adventure is just a night of dining out. (Remember: Anything can be an adventure if you make it into one!) The key to going out and doing something fun with friends is not to think about and dwell on your sadness. Yes, you might want to bring it up, but don't. You probably discussed it plenty when it first happened, so leave it behind for your fabulous adventure of fun. Your wonderful friends are making an effort to spend time with you -- they love you! -- so don't bring everyone down by being a huge downer. Distract yourself. Ask them about their lives (and don't you dare make a face when they bring up their wonderful significant others!). Engage people (maybe even strangers!) in a random conversation about an interesting topic. Don't go out and sit in a corner and mope. Go out and have fun!

Remember who you are and embrace that person. You are you. No matter how close you were with your ex, you are not a product of the relationship you were in. You were you before you met that person and you are still you now. And, you know what? You're pretty awesome. No one else can be you. No one will ever be. And that's pretty cool, right? So let's think about you. What are you? Who are you? What do you like to do? What are your favorite songs? Favorite activities? Favorite movies? Think about these things (write them down if you want) and remember that no one -- no matter how bad they might make you feel in a moment of heartache -- can take you away from you. No matter what happens in life, you always have yourself so you better work on loving that person and celebrating how awesome he or she is. If you really love yourself, really believe that you are great, no one can take that away from you. People will hurt you, yes, but that's okay. It's okay to be hurt and to feel shitty, but it's not okay to let those feelings take away from your self worth. You are an awesome person -- we all are -- and you deserve to be happy. Since you can't be happy with someone else right now, you better be happy with yourself. Take this heartache and see it as a reminder to celebrate all of the great things about you -- the you that is just you, not the you that is half of a pair.

Learn from the heartbreak and let it go. Every heartbreak hurts. It really does. Even when you go out with your friends and tell yourself you're great and do all of the things you loved to do before you met that other person, you're probably going to still feel pretty bad at times. Let yourself feel bad (but not for too long!) and think about how you can learn from the pain you're feeling. I really do believe that there's a lesson in everything and every painful experience I've gone through has proved that to me. Even when I've felt like giving up, like just screaming until my lungs collapsed, I was learning. Even though it didn't feel like it at the time, I was becoming stronger and better and learning more about myself and the world. I've always had a hard time letting the pain and sadness go. As I've mentioned to you before, I identified myself with being the downer, with being sad and sarcastic. It's hard for me to look at my pain from a distance and say, "Oh, you again. Go away!" I'm much more tempted to say, "Oh, hello old friend! Please come in!" But it does no good to hang on to pain and sadness. It's okay to experience it, to learn from it, but it doesn't do anyone (especially you!) any good to hang on to it. It's not a raft. It's an anchor. And it will drag you straight to the bottom of the ocean of self pity if you cling to it. My advice? Accept it. Learn from it. Let it go.

And that's pretty much what I'd say to sum up this post: Accept it. Learn from it. Let it go. It doesn't work to pretend it's not happening and it doesn't really help you in the long run if you don't try to learn from it and it certainly doesn't do any good to cling to your heartache like a drowning, desperate crazy person. Not only are sadness, desperation, and anger unattractive qualities (should you ever feel like dating again), but they are pretty damaging to any attempts you're making to live a positive life. As I said before, I'm pretty sure we all want to be happy. It's a pretty basic, human desire. And, as you know, I do believe that happiness is a choice. When you're battling a broken heart, choosing happiness is far from easy, but it is still possible. Remember that it's up to you. No one else is going to make you feel better. No one else is going to truly be able to pull yourself out of your sadness. It's up to you. Choose to accept it, learn from it, and let it go. Choose to be happy.

Source: Positively Present