If you ever had your heart broken by someone you love, you know that everything in life seems to lose its meaning after a breakup. The only thing you care about is if your ex will send you that text, reaching out with a rekindling message like “i miss you..” so you can get back together again.

If you find yourself in this situation or have a friend that’s currently facing a breakup, good news, i’m about to share some tips to improve the situation. And no, I’m not talking about Netflix & Ben n jerry’s marathon type of advise. Here is some two healthy actions you can take towards recovering from a breakup:

Number one: Reach out to an old friend for a coffee

People are great mood changes! You probably recognize the feeling when you and a friend have planned a get together, but your having a bad day so you’re not feeling like it anymore. But as the good friend you are you end up going anyways, and to your surprise, your mood changes because your friend takes you off your a mind, and afterwards you feel grateful that you got together.

Why an old friend, does not my best friend work?

The reason and old friend is good it’s because it keeps you from falling into your habitual behaviours you have with your closest friends. You want to put yourself in a new situation so you can feel present and alert. This will feel like a splash of cold water in the face, it will wake you up.

So take up your phone and send a message or call to a friend you haven’t been in touch with for a while that you know will cheer you up.

Number Two: Invest and improve yourself

After a breakup there can be a lot of emotional pain, you might feel that this is the time where you are supposed to crawl down in your bed and just watch movies until the pain vanishes.

Do this and you be wasting a great opportunity!

You see, in order to make improvement with our ourselves we have to change, it’s simply impossible to improve something in our lives while staying the same, change happens outside our comfort zones.

The problem here is that were not designed to wanna to push ourselves outside our comfort zones, we are designed to maintain survival, not peak performance.

Another word for comfort zone could be “survival zone”, it’s a place your body and mind feel safe. Your body and mind knows that if your actions stays within this zones you’re more likely to survive, so it’s does everything to keep your action inside these zones.

This is why people struggle with reaching new goals and make changes in their lives.

Breakup pain creates an opportunity for growth!

Let me explain.

When were experiencing pain our body and mind gets more open to change. The pain sends a message to our brain and body and its saying: “we can’t stay like this, we are under attack, something needs to change”.

So this is the time to cultivate pain and make sure it’s works for you and not against you..

Since you’re feeling low, it does not really matter what you do, in every direction you go there will be pain, so you might as well make sure you head in the best direction possible.

So start take actions that will make your life better than it was before the pain even started. Break up expert Patric Tarnhamn talks about this in his post about the no contact rule, that is designed to help you get your ex back.

List of ideas with healthy changes and new habits:

• Start working out and create your dream body
• Buy some self improvement books and start a daily reading habit
• Create a mindfulness habit like yoga or meditation
• Make new friends and connections by networking at social events
• Try new hobbies with a friend or by yourself

The idea is to do new activities that also contributes to personal growth so that when done habitual for a longer timeframe, your will experience identity change as a result of personal growth.