5 Things to do when life leaves you broken

by Jesse L. Dunn

Life. A truly wonderful adventure! And we might as well think of it as an adventure, with its roller-coaster ups and downs, thrills and disappointments, victories and defeats, joys and griefs.
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Someone has pointed out that, when it comes to life, none of us get out of it alive. Meanwhile, all of us will experience those times when life breaks us--those truly mind-blowing, soul-stretching periods that can be devastating for a time. Yes, there are times we become broken. We cannot always know what or when, but it's axiomatic that each of us will experience one or more types of breaks during life's adventure: broken minds, broken bodies, broken hearts, broken finances, broken spirits. Whether we grow from or are beaten during those times ultimately depends on the thoughts we choose to handle them.
   
The bowl you see above is a Japanese art form known as kintsugi. While most of us want to hide or disguise imperfections or our broken pieces, kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold dust or other precious metals. Something broken becomes something beautiful and precious—more beautiful and precious than the original. 

Whatever the past has been—good or bad, positive or negative, success or failure—the principles undergirding the VisionLight(tm) System (www.newviewconcepts.com) can guide you into a path of understanding yourself, of faith, and capacity to take what you are and make something of you mentally, physically, financially, socially and spiritually more beautiful and precious than before.

Here are five ideas to help with that journey:
1. Realize that your broken parts are not the same as your worth as a person. Remember that all and each of us will have broken pieces: death, divorce, financial loss, career disappointment, family troubles, addiction, disease, disability, conflict; the way life can break us is endless. Like a Japanese bowl, being broken, however, does not lessen our value or significance. In fact, like the bowl, we can become more valuable as a result of being broken and repaired. Sometimes our hearts are set on the wrong things and it is only a heart that is first broken that our purpose, passion and true worth are revealed to us.

2. Pay attention to physical health. Whatever the hardships that break us--physical, mental, social, financial or spiritual--to the extent we are able, now is the time to be good to yourself. Exercise. Eat the right foods that can heal the brain and the soul. Get active in mind and body. Eliminate the negative thoughts that invariably try to creep in on the stage of your mind; replace them with good thoughts. You can thereby direct the actual chemistry of your brain and body that affect mood and capability.

3. Walk away. Move forward. Grant yourself permission to let it go. You really can heal from your brokenness. It was meant to be a lesson, not a life sentence. Be grateful today for the good you see. Be happy in this moment, whatever is going on around you. Surround yourself with supportive friends and family. Make the journey toward healing. One step. Then the next step.

4.  Make necessary course corrections. Do the work on yourself. Make the changes you need to make. In our courses we teach how to overcome the barriers and roadblocks that are stopping you from healing. It takes effort. It takes growth. Sometimes there might be discomfort or pain of various sorts in making the progress to repair your brokenness. You might find our tool helpful, called ICE Tool: Breaking Through Your Roadblocks and Barriers. We are offering it to you free at www.newviewconcepts.com/ice-tool-request.html  "ICE" your broken parts and transform problems into solutions, and defeats into victories.

5. Serve others. Service is light and light is life; therefore, good service is good life. Perform five random acts of kindness this week and note the change that comes over your broken self. It's like the gold cement in the broken bowl--you become more valuable and beautiful. You grow. You enlarge. When you lose yourself in serving others, you end up finding yourself. And the broken parts become stronger.

BONUS: Prayer. Both science and religion have shown that people who have been broken heal much faster if they have a faith tradition that relies on the power of prayer. That data show that those who pray (and, remarkably, those who have a prayer network, i.e., people praying for them), are able to more readily conquer the "dragons and demons" that life inevitably presents, whatever way they show up. 
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Whatever the past has been, walk forward in faith, confidence and light that you will heal from your brokenness.There are great blessings that await you. Be open. Receive them.
​Meanwhile, See the Change and Light your Vision!

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