How can you be ready or how not to let your heart grow cold?

Someone I care about a great deal asked me this question. She was amazed that I was ready to commit so soon after my divorce. After years of therapy, she herself didn’t seem any closer to being ready.
Immediately following my separation and our subsequent decision to divorce, I never imagined I would be ready this quickly. But to all of you in a similar situation, here is what allowed me to be ready to love again.
Grieve
Don’t skip this step. It’s miserable but it’s necessary. Those days, nights (mostly nights) will suck. Cry, rage against it all, get it out.
Seek Help
What divorce taught this anti-social shy introvert is that friends and family can play a crucial role in your healing process if you allow them in. Don’t worry you won’t need to beg them for help. They’ll naturally gravitate back to you and ask you if you are ok, they’ll want to talk. All you have to do is let them in.
Be Grateful
It may seem impossible, but that is precisely why you need to try to list out one to three positive things in your life every day, either at the beginning or end of each day.
Heal
Seek out professional help to heal. I did both traditional therapy and life coaching. And while traditional therapy didn’t work for me, life coaching helped me tremendously. Its emphasis on concrete steps and quantifiable results was exactly what i needed.
Be Willing
As the cliche goes when you least expected someone will present themselves. You’ll know this isn’t just another Tinder or Bumble date and you will chose to push them away or take the plunge. Do us a favor and be willing to take the plunge.
Trust Yourself
She use to ask me if i was a confident person. When it comes to love I responded, I am and you should to. We all make mistakes, we all fail, we must fail better. Trust yourself…
As I like to tell her, if you are looking for real love, the kind that makes your stomach twist into knots,makes a four-hour date feel like ten minutes, you have to be willing to be vulnerable, in other words to you have to be willing to pay the piper.
