How do I stop thinking about my ex?

How do I stop thinking about my ex constantly? How in the world do I turn it off? That's what I want to cover in today's video. This question was actually submitted to me inside of my app. And so if you haven't downloaded my free app, the link is in the description. You can submit your questions in there if you want some help. And I will answer in video format just like this. There's also incredible content in there, including my divorce Recovery Academy, which is absolutely free, so you can start feeling better. This is something that gets brought up quite often. How in the world do I stop thinking about my ex? And people just want to stop thinking about them because we feel like that's what's going to make us feel better. But first we got to understand what's causing it. Okay, I'm going to keep this very short and very simple and straight to the point. We are the patterns that we constantly practice. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what people tell you. You are not anything else besides what you practice every single day. And this person didn't tell me how long they've gone through this breakup or this divorce. And so more than likely what's happened is you've gone through a breakup, you've gone through this divorce, and you have been trying to find closure by asking yourself, why? Why did they do this? Why did they treat me this way? Why wasn't I enough for them? I wonder what they're doing now. And you spent so much time practicing this pattern of thinking that now that is the pattern that you naturally just practice every single day. And so it's really hard just to stop it. Another reason why you're probably still thinking about your ex so much is because there's still some level of attachment. And we, we. We use all this terms for attachment. And I like to just keep it very simple. Okay? If I have this water bottle, this is the best example I have with me right now. If I have desire for this, I will be attached to it. If I can stop wanting this, I'll naturally want to put it down and I won't pick it up again. It's got to be the same thing with your ex. It's not about turning off in this season that you're in right now. It's not about turning off the thoughts about your ex, and it's not about not thinking about them. It's about choosing consciously to think about them differently. The more that you practice a pattern. And this isn't talking crap about them. This is just looking at the facts of who they are right now, how they're showing up currently, and also take some inventory of how they actually showed up in the relationship where you guys even actually aligned. Were your values aligned? Were your beliefs aligned? Is there some things in the relationship that maybe they were just unwilling to adjust and compromise in or fix that started causing you more troubles? Did they make you release some friendships that you didn't want to release? Did they make you quit? Some hobbies that you didn't want to quit? Did they make you. And first of all, I use that word lightly because nobody can make you to do it. You made the choice to stop doing those things. But did they influence you in those decisions? If they did, then start asking yourself this question. Is that the ideal partner that I want to be with? What's going to happen now is you're going to start thinking about your ex in a different light. And what will end up happening is slowly. As you practice this, it's actually going to happen pretty rapidly because slow is smooth and smooth is fast. One of my clients said that the other day, and I like, oh, that's sexy, man. I'm stealing that. Right? And so you slowly. What's going to start happening is your desire for your ex is going to start decreasing. You're going to be like, I don't really want to hold on to this anymore. And it's going to start happening subconsciously, and you'll begin to put it down. Another reason why we actually cannot stop thinking about our ex is because humans are wired naturally to avoid pain. Instead of experiencing fulfillment, we're naturally wired to operate that way. When you become aware of that, you can. You can now make the conscious decision of, okay, am I just trying to avoid pain, or am I trying to actually experience fulfillment? If you're trying to experience fulfillment, then you will naturally change the questions and the patterns of the thoughts in your mind. Instead of focusing on them, you'll start focusing on what life you want to build so that you can experience the fulfillment that you want to experience. Not a lot of people do this because it can be difficult. It can be difficult at first, and it's not for any other reason. That besides the fact that you have been practicing the pattern of obsessing over your ex. And so I want to submit this to you. Start thinking about your ex differently, to the point where you might not even want to think about them anymore. And then introduce something new. Introduce, what do I want to do with my life? What do I want my life to look like? How would I want to be five years from now if I was healed and, and doing great in life in five years, what would that version of myself look like? And start practicing these new patterns of thinking. It's going to take practice. Most people think that you can just sit down here, watch this video, or talk to somebody and you're going to feel great and it's going to cure all your issues. That's not how it works. You have to practice. You have to be willing to p put in the work. And the more you put in the work, the more you're going to get the results. This is something that I tell my clients often. What's annoying now? Because it's going to be annoying to choose to think differently about your ex and to choose to focus on the five year version of yourself. It's going to be annoying because you're going to have to choose to do it. But what's annoying now will become automatic later. Just like everything when you first started learning how to walk. Right? Or I'll use a different example. When I first learned how to play baseball, learn how to hit a ball, it was so annoying because I had to twist my foot and squish the bug. I had to sit down on the toilet, is what our coach said. Right? And that was fixing my stance. I had to make sure that my elbow was up and not down and I didn't drop it so I wouldn't pop out. It was all these meticulous details that were extremely annoying to learn in the moment, but later on in life they became automatic. And it's just how I swung the bat. So what will end up happening is if you make the conscious decision to give yourself, what, 21 days, 30 days, whatever goal you want to set for yourself, to, to be consistent on thinking new thoughts about your ex and thinking more about your future and the life that you want, the person you want to become. What's going to end up happening is you will naturally begin to operate out of that. And the next thing you know, I see it happen all the time. It's going to be like a light switch just hit and all of a sudden you're like, wow, I haven't been thinking about my ex as much. Or when I do think about them, I'm not feeling terrible about it. Because really, the reason why you want to stop thinking about them is because you want to feel better. So if you want to feel better, don't try and stop thinking about them. It's not going to happen. It's like these people that say I will forgive but never forget. Of course you're not going to forget, we don't operate that way. But will happen. What will happen though is you'll think about it different. Differently. This is how forgiveness happens, right? And so I want you to do the exact same thing and I want you to get very practical about it. Set some reminders on your phone like three times a day where you're going to choose to think about your ex, you're going to choose to think about them differently and you're going to choose to think about your five year self. Where would your life be? Where do you want it to be? Not where do you think it'll be? Because if you do that right now, you're going to think that you're going to be alone, you're going to think that you're going to be miserable, you're going to think that you're going to be, you know, not your best self. You think you're going to be in the same place and stuck all these things because you're not in a good place right now. So your thinking patterns are naturally going to lead you to disaster. So don't think about where you think you'll end up. Think about where you would want to ideally end up in a dream world in the next five years and who you would ideally be like become in those five years and obsess over being practical about this practice. And I'm telling you, if you can choose to think new thoughts, you're going to experience new feelings. I hope that helps you. And again, my name is Frank Ortega, I'm a divorce recovery coach. And if you need any help overcoming some of these situations that you're going through and you're just having a really hard time doing it on yourself, then I want to invite you to book a one on one call with me. The link is going to be in the description as well. You can also get my free app in there and if you're interested in joining my coaching group, we can also chat about that inside the life support group which is free inside of my app as well so that we can get you the freedom that you deserve so you can start living life as more than a conqueror.