Your thoughts, not your circumstances, determine if you thrive after divorce. You could end up with the house, your preferred custody plan, the china and the crystal, and still blame your ex for messing up your formerly picture-perfect existence.

Or, you could trade the house for an apartment, less custody time than youd hoped, mismatched Ikea flatware, and recognize your divorce as an opportunity to create an authentic, meaningful life.

So what makes the person who got what they wanted (or thought they wanted) bitter, while the downwardly-mobile one grows empowered?

The presence, or absence, of shame.

People who feel shame blame themselves or others for their choices and their situations. After awhile, the negative stories they tell themselves become a life narrative thats hard to shake. Negative thoughts lead to poor choices which create more shame, and the cycle repeats itself.

Those who believe that, despite some bad choices, theyre still good people, tend to manifest positive change. They recognize their errors, make amends where they can, and move on to the only thing they can control: the choices they make now.

And those choices are fueled by thoughts.

If you feel neck-deep in divorce shame and shame often comes disguised as anger, sadness, and fear notice your thoughts. Are they mostly of the gloom-and-doom variety? Do they resemble any of the following?

Shame festers. Youre chronically depressed. Angry. Resentful. You react to your ex in ways that invite more drama and conflict: knee-jerk replies to emails and texts, fighting battles that arent worth fighting, trying to control what goes on in his or her house. The chaos begins to shape your worldview. You stop trusting people. You see trouble where there isnt any. You expect the worst.

You dont have to live this way.

Personal empowerment begins with accepting things you cant control and choosing how you respond not just to events, but also to your own thoughts. If you tell yourself your ex ruined your future, as well as your childrens, how do you think youre going to act? Since your current way of thinking isnt helping you turn your life around, why not replace your bad thoughts with good ones?

Changing the way you think takes discipline and time. Your brain is used to following the well-worn tracks of negativity, so have patience with yourself. When you catch yourself ruminating on the same bad story, watch those destructive thoughts float by, without judgment. Set your intention to swap out your bad thoughts for good ones. Make this a daily, even hourly, practice, and one day youll realize that you havent just survived divorce.

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The Secret To Getting Over Divorce Is Telling Yourself These 5 Things - HuffPost