Sections
A blueprint is a combination of your beliefs, rules and expectations about how your life is supposed to be and turn out to be.
Everyone has an internal blueprint of what they think their life is supposed to look like, feel like, and progress into. Lets look at all the main areas of life: love, friends, family, money, home, work, health: you have a blueprint for each area - by blueprint I mean an expectation or a strong belief about how that area of your life needs to be in order for you to be pleased with that area of your life.
When an area of your life turns out worse than what your blueprint was for that part of your life, you will experience pain.
You have a blueprint about your love life. Parts of your blueprint here are a result of conditioning such as: having to be married with kids in order to be living a “good” life. Or: Not being single over 40 because if you are, that means you are loser. Or: Being in a healthy loving relationship and never divorcing. To name a common few. The problem with these beliefs or blueprints is when you convince yourself that your life has to have that in order for you to be fulfilled.
Pain vs. Suffering:
We experience pain when our current life conditions do NOT match our blueprint of what we think life is supposed to be. To be heartbroken over a relationship loss is not part of anyone's blueprint of love. Pain has many levels ranging from disappointment, stress, and deep feelings of loss. In other words, when we lose something important and that loss doesn't match our blueprint of how we expected life to be, we experience pain and or stress.
Suffering is when our current life conditions do not match our blueprint AND we believe we have no control to change it.
Pain is a part of life, and to deny that fact will lead to great suffering. Think about it: If we thought that life was supposed to be pain free, we would be setting ourselves up for daily disappointment, stress, and eventually learned helplessness. The best thing we can do with pain is accept it as a fundamental part of existence and do all we can with as much help as we need, to learn how to cope with the uncertainty of our lives. To be flexible and adaptable when our blueprints are out of alignment with our circumstances.
When our life conditions do not match our blueprint we have two choices: BLAME OR CHANGE.
Blame:
People either blame a person, an event, life, or they blame themselves. This is the road MOST travelled, and it’s also the road to nowhere. Blame is toxic. It is a liar and a story stealer that poisons both our relationship to ourselves as well as our relationship to the truth. It robs us of the ability to take responsibility and with no responsibility, we cannot change our lives.
Change:
Most change is a combination of the two: Changing ourselves and changing our blueprint. (*be sure to listen to the recorded training in this section to understand this more deeply.)
In any breakup or heartbreak scenario, there is a lot of uncertainty because so much is not in your control, and you know it. This is what would make you or anyone feel helpless and hopeless. But, the task it to look for things that are in your control and put your focus there.
To change yourself is to the action, to shift your beliefs, to shift your attitude and to make choices for your life in the name of your healing.
To change your blueprint is to surrender your old one and create a new one that you can start to live by. Either way, change has to be chosen over blame.
The process of choosing change over blame is the greatest act of self love because when you makes choices to realign yourself with your life, you will discover what you’re made of. It takes tremendous courage and grit to become resourceful and adaptable during times of turmoil. It also takes a lot of courage and grace to surrender to what is not in your control, and to refocus on that which you can control.
Therefore, when you find yourself in deep pain and feel out of control, slowly redesigning your blueprint is the most proactive strategy to diminish the suffering. This is also an act of self love.
To change is to acknowledge that you must take ownership of your life and learn how to truly fill your own cup - no matter what the circumstance.
You are brave because you will have to defy any addictions you have to blame and will have to further defy your addiction to certainty. Stepping into the unknown is paramount now. Again, its not easy, but its necessary.
INVENTORY
Reflect on your relationship and heartbreak: What blueprint of yours has been destroyed? Is it being single at a certain age? Or is it something else? Get as detailed as possible here.
Try to pinpoint the belief you have that says where you “should” be or have in your life that is creating suffering. What is it? *its very possible you have a few. For me, it was that I shouldn’t be single at 40 because that meant that my life would just be torture as a result of that.
Is there another area of your life that you’ve been neglecting perhaps due to your relationship stress? What is it, and can you shift your attention back to it
Do you feel called to help or serve others or a particular cause?
What inspires you?
What is one step you can take today towards creating change in your life?
PRACTICE
Begin this week with doing more of what inspires you - whatever that is. Maybe its art, maybe it’s learning a new craft or diving deeper into something that has fallen to wayside. Doing small things that inspire you each day is profoundly healing.