“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, nor sailed to an unexplored land, nor opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” – Helen Keller
Since change is a condition of existence, we have to continually make adjustments in the way we deal with the altered conditions that we must face. Grief is about developing a new normal and often some new skills to deal with our different lives. And unless we have a vision of where we want to go and how to get there, the tendency to spin our wheels, cling to the past, and miss goals is guaranteed. Our vision has to include not only where we are going, but equally important, how we will establish a new relationship with our deceased loved one.
Accepting the new without our loved one is often fertile ground for creating unnecessary suffering. However, there is more than enough pain and suffering without unknowingly adding to our burden. So how can we reduce unnecessary suffering and work to accept the new life that we must live? Here are five starting strategies.
1. Strengthen your inner life. We all have programming that hurts or helps us when we are grieving. Coping well with any major life change directly depends on the condition of your inner life, what you say to yourself, your belief system, memories, choices, and most importantly, your willingness to change and be open to the new circumstances of your life. . The keyword here is “open”.
We all like the familiar and the certainty that usually accompanies it. However, life is all about continual change and how we choose to adapt to those changes.
We have to court insecurity to adapt new ways of facing a life that advances. Therefore, carefully examine how you speak to yourself. Are you more positive in your thoughts or are you thinking more on the negative side? The more positive you can be, the more capable you will be of being open to ideas and experiences you have never had before. Consciously practice self-talk that tells you that you can deal with the changing circumstances that you now face. Look in the mirror and say “I am capable and good.” Tell yourself that you have the courage to meet tomorrow and the next day and so on.
2. Work to get rid of your “labels.” People like to label others, especially in their early years. Sometimes we place them on ourselves due to an error or failure that we experience. Everyone has labels, interpreted as good or bad. Sadly, they are mostly bad. Can you remember in high school labels like nerd, flop, sissy, dingbat, loser, uncool, ugly, and the list goes on? Sometimes those labels come from people in our family (“He’s not our best student”) or from teachers. Think about the labels you’ve been complying with and whether or not they’re hurting your ability to cope with your great loss. The ones you bought can have a terrible effect on your self-esteem and your coping strategies.
If you’ve taken the labels that were given to you (or downloaded yourself) in your early years and turned them into fixed beliefs, you’re in serious trouble. Why? Because those beliefs prevent you from changing. They prevent you from assimilating more useful beliefs and behaviors. Remember, they are just labels, not what it really is. You can be whoever you want to be, not a fictional character that someone has put you. You have the inherent ability to cope with whatever changes life throws at you. And it will have an incredible influence on your inner life. Start with the fact that your thoughts create your identity.
3. Let go gradually and eventually remove the resistance. It is quite normal not to want to accept the great burden that you have to deal with. Keep in mind, however, that by resisting what cannot be changed, you prolong the intensity of your pain and add a lot of unnecessary suffering to the process. Yes, the pain will visit again as time goes on because we don’t “get over” our pain, we learn to live with it. One way to live with it is to let your emotions out as naturally as they arise. Refuse to be strong and hold back your pain and tears deeply. Let your tears and emotions run through you. They appear for a reason: to express them and to help you in the present moment. They are a normal human response to loss. So let them out. And in the process, become aware and rid yourself of disempowering thoughts.
4. Learn not to suffer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Pain is the expected response when something dear to us is suddenly no longer there. But it is not a process in which we are expected to be involved without a periodic break. Crying without a daily break is guaranteeing the development of a health problem. The reason for this is quite simple. Grief is a very stressful experience. It places great demands on both your physical and emotional self. Part of your grieving job is giving yourself time to give your body the rest it needs to revitalize itself, so that it can continue to adjust to all new experiences and challenges.
If you refuse to change the scene for an hour or two each day, to rest and recharge, you can expect excessive pain and sadness. Get out there and do something just for yourself like yoga, meditation, gratitude practices, shopping, nature walks, exercise, and strengthening your spiritual life. It’s perfectly okay to show some compassion for yourself and do things that make you feel better and enjoy a focus on something other than pain. Go places and seek to be with people who are at peace and full of energy.
5. Accept what is: the things you cannot change. This means looking at your great loss in a different way. It means putting aside some of the old reasoning you may have learned in your youth: how to be strong. Fight those tears. You will find someone else. You will find a closure (there is no closure). And the bogus list continues with additional problems that it tries to solve with little or no success. Such faulty thoughts and beliefs block task number one of the grieving process: accepting the reality of your great loss and integrating it into your life. It is not easy to do and it takes time and practice, practice, practice. Ask your Higher Power for “the serenity to accept what you cannot change.” Find a way to see death as an integral part of life. Ask those who teach or practice this point of view how they came to it.
In summary, note that the last four of the five described above have an effect on the quality of your inner life. In particular, one of the secrets of the good life and of coping well is resilience. Other words for resilience are changeable, flexible, adaptable, adjustable, and variable. Your degree of resilience and your search for ways to increase it will go a long way to help you suffer and accept the new. You are powerful and never forget it. Don’t let anything take that power away from you.