Ask Becky: Break-up interfering with your uni productivity?

In my experience, break-ups have been really brutal on the old emotions. Some felt like my heart was in my butt, I’d been stabbed in the chest and my life was ending. In essence, I understand the feeling of heartbreak and I empathise with you greatly.

If it’s any consolation, I look back at those times in my life and smile, because that was a very dramatic reaction to a situation where I ended up fine. I’m sure one day you will do the same. It’s just another coming of age story, with endless possibilities of how things can turn out.

When it comes to moving on with your life at university, it’s very important to give your feelings the clout they deserve while they are so strong. If you repress and try to bury things, they can scream at you until they make you sick.

Allow yourself time to sit quietly and journal, listen to your feelings, and ask where they are coming from. Watch Ted Talks on how to get over a break-up, and how to forgive and love yourself; see if there are any deeper emotional issues surfacing as a result of said break-up.

When we truly give our feelings the attention they deserve, we notice areas we need to work on for ourselves. And when we notice those gaps, we have a logical understanding of how to make ourselves feel better again.

Understanding how to work on those gaps helps us get proactive – that’s when life feels lighter again and now you’ve found the potential to be the most motivated version of yourself.

When it comes to a break-up, it is very easy to spend so much of our time focusing on other people and what they are doing, how we could have fit into their lives, or what they think of us. In reality, this is the time we need to love and be with ourselves the most.

Break-ups feel like a minor death and rebirth. It’s the death of a potential future we thought we might have had with someone and usually, that’s what hurts. As much as we are allowed to grieve, if we listen to our feelings, they will tell us what to do and what distractions will help.

Uni is a place where we come to develop and build our lives. We are so lucky to be surrounded with people from different backgrounds that we can learn from and over 300 societies to immerse ourselves in. It's easy to take our minds off something that’s stealing too much of our energy.

Now is the time to better your future, by filling your life with as much energy and passion as you can in the present.

If you’re spending too much time wondering which direction to head in, explore them all and see what makes you the happiest.

You will be gifted with so much motivation when you are able to make sense of your feelings and channel the energy into something practical.

Remember that you can never be on the ‘wrong path’ for too long. Things are taken away for a reason. Just do the best for yourself and things will line up the way they should.

Edited by Michelle Almeida