So, what is this about anyway?

It can be summarized with three words: Time, Goals and Thoughts.

Everything I will write about is meant to tackle these three axes. Fill up your free time, set and reach several short- and long-term goals, and put your thoughts to other matters than love.

Love is essential to a human life. I suspect most readers are reading this due to a lack of romantic love, although it’s quite possible other forms of love are lacking too, I’ll leave you the judge of that. Us being social beings drawn to live in a community rather than as hermits serves as a good reminder as to how hard it can be to go on without it. Hard, but not impossible.

The human desire to be loved is tough, perhaps even impossible, to be rid of in full. However, it can be reduced to a manageable and forgettable level. It is possible to live a fulfilling and content life without romantic love, but it takes a conscious effort.

Time is self-explanatory, if we can’t find love, we can at least make sure not to think about it to have an easier time.

An idle mind will fantasize and daydream a lot. An occupied mind has more immediate stuff to contend itself with. Filling your days with activities of various sorts will divert you from other worries.

Next up, and perhaps the most important aspect: goals. This isn’t merely about setting them. It is also about letting go of those you can’t reach. What do you want your future to look like? If there’s a family and children in there, it’s a problem. Giving up on romantic love while having the vision of a future including it will hardly do. Thus, there needs to be a shift in aims and priorities. These can be anything, although I insist you shouldn’t have one single goal in mind but several, both short-term and long-term.

It can be physical, like losing some weight or adding on some muscle or managing to run for several kilometers. It can be intellectual, like learning a new language on the side or dropping your job to pick up a new one or start studying again. It could just as easily be writing a book, or completing your first painting, or saving enough to travel to the country you always wanted to go to. Possibilities are vast, and it would be quite pointless to list them all. I will provide examples for the sake of helping you find a new set of objectives to strive for if you’re not well-equipped on that front.

Simply put, learning new stuff and seeing yourself getting better at something feels good and helps being happier in your daily life. And it’s easier to work on a hobby or job if you got clear goals in mind.

As social beings we tend to look for feedback and validation among our peers. Sometimes it’s the friends who do that, sometimes the pals we greet in the sport studio or martial arts club or even co-workers if the work environment is nice. Lacking that, clear goals to reach makes it easier to notice how you're getting better and thus helps with finding validation on your own.

The occupations presented won’t be new to you, quite the opposite. What can be new is the idea behind them. You’re not practicing hobbies to spend time until you cross path with a beautiful soul to build a life with. You’re arranging your daily schedule with the clear intent to reduce your desire for love until you can fully move on from it. This, in itself, should be one of your main objectives, because this frame of mind abandons the hope that love can still happen, and gets your brain working on getting over it.

Finally, thoughts. Even when occupied, there will be days when you’ll struggle, when it will be difficult not to think about love. There are ways to handle these intrusive thoughts, exercises you might know if you’ve read up on meditation or stoicism, short tricks usable during whatever you’re doing to get your mind back on track. If staying occupied will reduce the number of intruding thoughts, these practices can handle the remainders. The less they bring you down, the more you can focus on your task at hand. The more you can focus your head on your interests, the better for your everyday life and mood.

It bears repeating, it’s not a switch. It requires discipline, experimenting, and patience, you won’t find the perfect routine and solution over the span of a single day. There will be complicated periods, when even the mind tricks won’t seem to work.

It’s normal.

I won’t sell you immediate solace. To put it bluntly, shit takes time and efforts before you start feeling the benefits. There is an inertia to your brain, it needs long and regular training to change its state, to get over pining for romance, and it likewise takes time and practice for the effects of the various means presented to unfold. Think of it as a muscle, you don’t start amazing at meditation or soccer or basket-weaving, you try it out, find a method you enjoy, and then get better at it by practicing. It’s no immediate fun, it’s no immediate relief, it’s no immediate break and it can be frustrating as hell.

It's a sacrifice to make. Your brain will tell you how much you deserve a break because there’s no immediate benefit to what you’re doing. But this sacrifice is for your future health and peace, and sticking to a routine involving doing things with no immediate benefits is also how you train your brain to kick bad habits like lazying around or overindulging in daydreaming and take better control of your days and thoughts.

If I meditate now for twenty minutes, it’ll feel okayish, in part because I’ve been training for a while. But if it was only an okayish feeling, I might as well do nothing at all and lay around in bed. Yet I know that if I make the effort today, the little sacrifice, myself in several months from now will feel benefits that sleeping in won’t provide.

There will be hiccups involved, some days will be worse than others and that’s okay, it doesn’t mean it will never work out. The important part is keeping at it and looking at the big picture. Are these bad days getting fewer? Do you feel the effect after weeks of filling your time with hobbies? Do you feel how you can get a better grip on your mind over time?

Forget the notion that you will notice benefits right away; it's an investment for the future. Today you won’t feel squat, but future you will be happy you accomplished the tedious work.