June 5, 2024 • 25 mins
Grief is experienced when you lose someone or something that means a lot to you. You can go through a grief process when you lose your job, when a friendship ends, and even when that car you have been mothering all of these years is no longer roadworthy. Your life is unique so your grief and the way you express that grief are also unique. One thing is true for everyone…there is a lot of strength to be gained as you work through grief. With that strength, you can lift yourself up and help yourself work through any tragedy you're trying to process.
Wisdom and Chocolate is a common sense approach to Mindset Development, Self Empowerment, and Happiness. The real transformation in life begins with Celebration….so grab your coffee and chocolate…It’s time to Celebrate You!
Highlights:
Your Grief Is Real
Turning To Unhealthy Habits When You Grieve
Set Goal To Help Process Grief
Check out www.BetsDanko.Com to get more information on blogs, podcasts, courses, and monthly memberships.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bets Danko (00:03):
It's time to combine a guilty little pleasure with a
new healthy habit. Kick up yourfeet and listen in. This is
Wisdom. & Chocolate. My name isBets Danko and you are listening
to Wisdom & Chocolate. And todaywe're going to be talking about
a subject that many people don'twant to deal with, for good
(00:27):
reason. That is grief. We'regoing to be talking about what
grief is, what it is youexperience while going through
grief, and how to work throughall of that.
So I gotta tell you, this hasalready been a crazy morning.
This morning I came out to myoffice and there were yellow
(00:50):
jackets, very large ones, justflying around making a whole lot
of racket on the front of myoffice. Yeah. It was 6:30 in the
morning, people. This was like areally big warning sign because
they're not that active at 6 (01:05):
30 in the morning. I come in here,
and I don't know if you can seeon the camera. Yeah, there's
something hanging from theceiling back there. A couple of
weeks ago, a branch a very largebranch fell off a tree here, and
it went through the roof andthrough the ceiling. Luckily, by
(01:27):
the time we got through theceiling, it was only about yay
big. But what fell onto theground was much larger. Anyway,
we are fixing that hole. We'recleaning up a whole heck of a
lot of stuff going on with theroof right now. And to top it
off, I have had so many largeants in here. It's like, what
(01:49):
the heck is going on. And then Isit down to do this recording.
And this morning, I'm a oneperson shop. Like, I'm doing
everything by myself, right. AndI can't tell you how many times
I have hit the record button onthe video on the audio,
whatever, and thinkingeverything is fine and then I
realized I've forgotten to dosomething. It got to the point
(02:11):
where it was quite comical. Andso now I'm a little giggly.
Which, I don't know how wellthat will lend to the subject of
today, but I'm hoping that itgives a little bit of a positive
edge to this subject that a lotof people don't want to talk
about. And that's grief. We'regoing to be talking about
(02:33):
working through grief.
And, you know, I think that alot of people assume that when
we're talking about grief, we'retalking about the loss of
another person. But in reality,grief has to do with losing
someone or something that meansa great deal to you. So you can
(02:53):
go through a grief process whenyou lose your job. You can go
through a grief process whenyour best friend is no longer
your best friend. You can gothrough a grief process when the
1960 car that you have beenmothering all of these years and
taking care of just is no longerroadworthy. There can be grief
(03:19):
definitions for you that arevery different than the person
next to you.
Now, I've experienced grief onmany levels. And the weird thing
is that many times I didn't evenrealize I was going through
grief. And so now as I'm talkingabout these things, I'm
realizing, wow, I I actuallyknow a great deal on this
(03:40):
subject. And it may seem reallyweird that I wouldn't even
realize I was going throughgrief. But let me explain
because sadness is somethingentirely different than grief.
But you can actually go throughsadness while in the process of
grieving. And so sometimes thesadness that you're feeling,
(04:05):
you're like, 'okay, I can copewith this, this is fine it was
just a job or it was just a caror, you know, whatever,' and you
can talk yourself out ofexperiencing the emotions. You
can sort of push your emotionsto the side and essentially tell
yourself that they're notimportant. And I think that I've
(04:27):
done that many times in my life.
And then several months later,feelings of loss come up in and
now they're disjointed. I don'teven realize why I feel a loss.
And so as I'm looking backthrough my life, I'm going,
'Gosh, that that happened a fewtimes where I've rationalized
myself out of my own emotions.'Who does that? Well, the answer
(04:50):
is a lot of people do it. A lotof people do it, and perhaps
you're one of those people,because we identify things that
are negative or challenging tous, and we try to avoid those
things. It comes naturally to usto behave this way. We don't
(05:11):
want to feel unsettled, unsafe,uncomfortable...these are all
things that don't feel good tous. So we are naturally wired to
identify those things and getinto offensive mode and try to
eliminate those sensations.
(05:32):
But sometimes the grief is very,very difficult to get over. I
spoke to a mother and fatheryears ago. Their adult son was
found dead. And there were somany questions around that
death, that they were having adifficult time getting over it.
(05:53):
As a matter of fact, it was thefather who was having the
hardest time. And yet, they allhad gone through, and all
meaning all of the people whoknew him, the the extended
family, the people who workedwith him, they had all gone
through different levels ofgrief. But for whatever reason,
(06:15):
the father was having thehardest time getting through the
questioning stage. There had tobe a reason. There had to be
somebody to blame. There had tobe something that he could hold
on to that he could say, 'thisis why I lost my son.' But,
unfortunately, he was leftwithout answers and so he was
(06:39):
sort of spiraling in that griefmode for a really long time. And
if you looked at the mother, themother had gotten to the level
of acceptance much quicker, shehad gotten to this level of
okay, this is my new normal,this is where I am now this is
how I'm going to go through therest of my life. She had gotten
(07:00):
there, before he had. So she notonly was grieving her son, but
was also helping to support andlift up her husband who was
having a harder time with it.
That became an entirely newlevel of processing and another
step in her experiencing thegrief.
(07:27):
So it's important to recognizethat even though those those
ways of experienced grief werevery different, they were both
experiencing that grief. It wasreal for both of them. And it
was real for all of the peoplewho knew this young man who had
passed. Everybody experiencesexperiences the things that go
(07:52):
along with grief, but in adifferent order, in a different
way, that your life experiencehelps you to process grief
differently. As a matter offact, when my father passed
away, my mother used to say, Idon't think you've accepted his
his death, I don't think you'veworked through his death. But I
(08:13):
had. I had in my own way. Andthis was difficult for my mother
to understand, because her wayof processing it was different
than mine. I had learned tounderstand it, to cope with it,
to live with it. And I'd gottento that stage faster. And so
this is actually something tonote. A lot of people say that
(08:37):
there are five stages of griefor seven stages of grief. There
are two different levels ofthought there. And some people
say there are no levels at all.
So let me let me break that downfor you.
All those levels or stages ofgrief, they are real for
(08:58):
everyone. But they're not stagesthat happen in a linear fashion.
Your way of grieving is going tobe unique to you. That doesn't
make it right, that doesn't makeit wrong. That doesn't make it
questionable. It just means yourway of grieving is unique to
you. And you can accept that.
And you can feel good in knowingthat you are on the right track
(09:24):
if you are processing thepassing of a person.
So let's go to a job. When youlose a job, what is that going
to look like? Are the stagesgoing to be the same? Do you go
through shock, denial, anger,bargaining, depression? Do you
(09:47):
start testing things? Do you gointo the acceptance phase? Yeah.
This is what's so amazing aboutit. It is grieving - exactly the
same as when you lose a person -but it's just over something
different. And a lot of peoplemight say that that's no,
(10:08):
because there's, there's morevalue to a person's life so
you're gonna grieve itdifferently. No, not
necessarily. If you're devotinga great deal of time and energy
to a life that feels good toyou, and it's around your job.
All of your friends are at yourjob. Your value, your self
worth, everything seems to bewrapped up in the into the job,
(10:31):
and then that job is gone. Phew.
There is a grieving process thatgoes on that very easily can
take you to places of anger andbargaining and acceptance and
but right back to shock. Andit's important that we recognize
that that grieving process isreal. So if you are talking to
(10:52):
somebody and you've just lost aloved one, and they've just lost
a job, and you get angry becausethe person who's lost their job
is going through their grievingprocess. You need to recognize
it's the exact same process overa different thing. Devaluing
their loss of job does not makeyour loss of your person any
(11:14):
more valuable. I'm hoping thatthis is making sense to you that
this is valuable information foryou. Because I don't think that
enough people spend time talkingabout this. And it's important
that we do share our emotions,our feelings, and that we start
(11:35):
understanding that all of thesethings have value. And they're
important that we look at them,that we experience them, that we
validate these things forourselves.
I'm going to talk about thechocolate moment. You know, it
seems weird to talk aboutchocolate at a moment like this,
(11:56):
but I'm going to talk about itbecause there are things that we
do that are self destructive,when we are in the middle of a
grieving process. And one ofthose things is all of the good
patterns that we have beensupporting that we've been
working on that we've beenputting in place, all of that
kind of thing - all of thosegood patterns suddenly fly out
(12:17):
the window, as if you now have alack of importance - you're not
as important as you were fiveminutes ago. And that's just
crazy. I, you know, I'm sorry, Idon't mean to devalue you by
calling this this crazy. Butlisten to me for a second, the
best way to recover fromanything, whether it's an
(12:38):
accident, a grieving process,you know, whatever the thing is,
is to keep yourself strongmentally, emotionally,
physically, spiritually. So,when we're going for chocolate,
let's say in a moment of crisis,it's important that we stick
with the healthy stuff. Go forthe antioxidants. Go for the
darker chocolate. If you want afix, have it be something that's
(13:02):
more pure. And when I talk aboutfix, I'm talking about the
chocolate, right? Because we weneed something to lift us up.
Well, I'm going to tell youabout a chocolate that tastes
Right?
really, really great. I'm notgoing to tell you the brand
because I'm not, you know, I'mnot about bashing people who are
trying to do a great job. That'sthat's not what I'm about. But
(13:25):
I'm going to tell you about thischocolate because it was a
caramel cold brew chocolate. Andthat just sounded amazing to me.
I'm like, Oh my gosh, carameland dark chocolate and coffee,
what? Am I in heaven, right?
And it was dark chocolate,toffee bits, ground roasted
coffee beans. That just soundedamazing. But immediately when I
(13:46):
picked it up, I noticed on thewrapper that there was nothing
that said organic. There wasnothing that said gluten free.
There was nothing that said nonGMO, right? Warning signals all
over the place. And there wassomething on the label that
actually said, oh my goodness,it said caramel, something
(14:08):
caramel flavoring, naturalcaramel flavoring. So for those
of you who are not glutensensitive, that basically means
there's gluten in there. And socaramel coloring, caramel
flavoring, you know that thatgives you a little bit of a red
flag. So that was on there. Itcontains milk. It contains soy,
and it contains something I hadnever heard of before and I've
(14:31):
got to read it because I'm noteven sure. Trag... trag...
tragacanth. I had never heard ofit. Didn't know what it was so I
had to look it up. Andapparently it is made from dried
sap of a Middle Eastern legume.
And this is fabulous. It'sbasically a binding agent -
(14:54):
holds things together. It's usedin making incense. It's used in
making pastels for creating art.
It's made for tanning leather,and treating burns. So it's got
a lot of different things thatare really fabulous for humans,
right. But the one thing thatnot so good for somebody who has
(15:16):
a gluten sensitivity is that itstimulates the bowels. Not super
great. And if you have it in toohigh a quantity, it actually can
not be super healthy for you. Sowhen it's put in chocolate, that
should sort of be a red flag,especially if, when you are in a
(15:36):
depression state, when you're ina grieving state, you definitely
don't take care of yourself. Ifyou know that that's a pattern
that you have, what are yougoing to do with chocolates in
front of you, whole bar baby -the whole bar. That's definitely
not what you want to havehappening. So perhaps a bar like
this isn't one you should reachfor. But let me tell you
(16:00):
something, I tasted it. I tasteit in any way; did not eat the
whole thing. Didn't do it. But Itasted it anyway. And you know
what? It was delicious. It wasabsolutely delicious. It was
like, Oh, my goodness, my tonguewas like, in heaven. It tasted
so good. And then after that onebite, wrapped it up, threw it
(16:23):
away. kept the wrapper so that Icould make sure that I wrote
down all of the information offof it. But I threw away the rest
of the bar, because it wasn'thealthy for me.
And this is something that weneed to recognize when we are in
a grieving state, that we stillneed to respect our bodies, we
(16:46):
still need to respect our minds.
And when it comes to theemotional state, we need to
respect that too. And what doesthat mean? Well, you need to
give yourself time to grieve.
You need to cry. You need to getangry. You need to have those
(17:06):
moments when you're feeling likethings are not working out your
way. And getting frustrated andangry about that. We don't want
to keep those emotions in. Youdo need to talk about them. It's
important that you recognize ifyou're going through a grief
process, and you're sharing andyou're talking about your grief
(17:30):
with other people, people wantto understand. They want to be
there for you. But there may bea point, when the grief is so
overwhelming for you that youneed to seek out additional
help. There is no - you don'tneed to feel guilty for doing
that. There's no shame in doingthat. And as a matter of fact,
(17:51):
if you can process the pain withsomebody who's qualified to talk
about a grieving process withyou, then you may be able to
work throughGrief never goes away. It just
sort of floats further back inyour mind. So what do I mean by
that? I have experienced thegrief of the loss of people in
(18:14):
my life. And still to this day,and one of the persons was, oh
my goodness, 30 years ago. Itwas a long time ago. But still
to this day, I can find myselfcrying because this person is in
my life isn't in my lifeanymore. It's not something that
we should be embarrassed aboutbecause it doesn't go away for
(18:38):
anyone. So if I start cryingbecause of that person that
passed 30 years ago, and someonewalks in the room, Hey, are you
okay? I just say yeah, I wasjust thinking about, you know,
this person and I couldn't holdback my emotion. People do
understand. They do. And I havehad people go, didn't they pass
(18:59):
away like 30 years ago? It'slike, yeah, but you know what, I
still miss them. I still havemoments when I'm sad because
they're not here. And that'sokay. And it's okay if you know
you're still in counseling 5,10years later because you're still
working through the grievingprocess. Allow yourself your own
(19:22):
process. Allow yourself, the toexpress your feelings, to
express your emotions, to talkto loved ones, to hire someone
to help you work through.
There's no shame in any of that.
Now, as we're getting to theclosing of this podcast, I just
(19:44):
want to remind you thatchallenges and pain can actually
lead to strength and there is alot of strength to be gained
when you work through grief andthe strength is basically a
reminder that you're okay. Youhave been okay. You will
(20:05):
continue to be okay. And you canlift yourself up and help
yourself work through thistragedy that you're trying to
process. It could take a year.
It could take more time, butyou're going to make it through.
And that's an important thing toSo how do you make it to the
other side of grief, where thegrief is still there, but it's
(20:28):
just a little further back andit's not constantly on your
mind? How do you get there?
Well, one of the things that youdo, after you have expressed or
even while you're stillexpressing your grief to other
people, is set goals. And theycan be little goals. Maybe your
(20:49):
grief is such that you justdon't even want to go look for a
job. Because you were soattached to this last one,
you're afraid of losing anotherone, you just can't get yourself
out of bed. Well, maybe thefirst goal is to start looking
online, just see what's outthere. Maybe you put yourself on
(21:11):
LinkedIn, and you allow thepeople who are looking for new
employees, to find you, there'sa setting that allows people to
find you, when they're lookingfor someone like you, so that
you can see that you still havevalue, that people are looking
for people like you. Maybe yourgoal is to just get out of bed,
(21:34):
get into the car, go somewhere.
Maybe you make bigger goals. Butstart small, allow yourself the
space and the peace that'srequired to just, you know,
focus on you, right? It'simportant that you give yourself
that opportunity. So make, makesome of the goals very small,
but eventually work up tosomething bigger because as you
(21:55):
work through challengingsituations, if you bring in
positivity, if you bring in newgoals, if you allow yourself to
experience something new, you'resort of attaching these positive
things to adrenaline that'sgoing on inside your body while
you're experiencing challenge.
(22:17):
And what happens? It actuallycharges you up and creates more
motivation. So as you areworking through the challenges,
you're feeding your motivation,and empowering yourself to get
better at whatever it is thatyour goals have to do with. So
maybe it's, you know what Ineed, like, I don't know, three
(22:39):
months off cause this is justtoo much grief for me, and I
just need to process it. Soabout three months off, I think
I'm going to learn how to cook.
I'm going to spend the threemonths perfecting a souffle. I'm
going to spend the three monthsmaking the best sugar cookies on
the earth, right? Give yourselfgoals that will serve you, that
(23:02):
will motivate you, that willkeep you empowered, and attach
those goals to the challengingsituations so that every time
you start to feel the grief, ittriggers your motivation. If you
attach the positive to thechallenge, and this is true if
you're working out or if youare, I don't know, chopping down
(23:24):
trees and hauling wood for thewinter, like it no matter what
it is, if it's a physicalchallenge, a mental challenge an
emotional challenge, if youattach positive things to those
things, then all of a sudden,every time that challenge raises
its head again you are lookingat the positive and you feel
(23:46):
more motivated. It's science.
Right? This is scientificallyproven, it actually works.
So in your grieving, allowyourself to grieve and then
bring in goals to help lift youout of the grief and motivate
yourself to continue on withlife. Whatever it is that you're
(24:09):
grieving is real, it's valid.
Give yourself the space to feelthose emotions. Give yourself
grace, feel compassion foryourself. And allow yourself to
avoid all of the shame so thatyou can share the emotions
you're feeling with the peoplearound you. People who are
closest to you and the peoplewho are paid to help people who
(24:31):
are in your situation. There isno shame in looking for help and
talking about what you need.
With that blessings to each andevery one of you. I hope that
this message today served youand that you will be comforted
(24:52):
by the thought that grief cancome to a point where you can
recognize.
progress in your life again.
I am determined to increase selfawareness and help people to
really value what it is that isspecial about who they are and
what they can bring to theworld. And with that in mind, I
(25:13):
designed this fabulous programcalled Celebrate You to help you
slow down and pay attention towhat's going on in your life so
that you can find value at everyturn and design a life that is
more fulfilling. So do a littleextra, start celebrating you. By
checking out Celebrate You onBetsDanko.Com and signing up
(25:36):
today.
Experience the wisdom that helpsto motivate and empower you in
relationships, business, familyand most importantly, self
celebration. Getting thepicture? It's wisdom and it's
all about you. Want to hear thechocolate? Tune into Wisdom &
Chocolate weekly.
It's time to combine a guilty little pleasure with a
new healthy habit. Kick up yourfeet and listen in. This is
Wisdom. & Chocolate. My name isBets Danko and you are listening
to Wisdom & Chocolate. And todaywe're going to be talking about
a subject that many people don'twant to deal with, for good
(00:27):
reason. That is grief. We'regoing to be talking about what
grief is, what it is youexperience while going through
grief, and how to work throughall of that.
So I gotta tell you, this hasalready been a crazy morning.
This morning I came out to myoffice and there were yellow
(00:50):
jackets, very large ones, justflying around making a whole lot
of racket on the front of myoffice. Yeah. It was 6:30 in the
morning, people. This was like areally big warning sign because
they're not that active at 6 (01:05):
30 in the morning. I come in here,
and I don't know if you can seeon the camera. Yeah, there's
something hanging from theceiling back there. A couple of
weeks ago, a branch a very largebranch fell off a tree here, and
it went through the roof andthrough the ceiling. Luckily, by
(01:27):
the time we got through theceiling, it was only about yay
big. But what fell onto theground was much larger. Anyway,
we are fixing that hole. We'recleaning up a whole heck of a
lot of stuff going on with theroof right now. And to top it
off, I have had so many largeants in here. It's like, what
(01:49):
the heck is going on. And then Isit down to do this recording.
And this morning, I'm a oneperson shop. Like, I'm doing
everything by myself, right. AndI can't tell you how many times
I have hit the record button onthe video on the audio,
whatever, and thinkingeverything is fine and then I
realized I've forgotten to dosomething. It got to the point
(02:11):
where it was quite comical. Andso now I'm a little giggly.
Which, I don't know how wellthat will lend to the subject of
today, but I'm hoping that itgives a little bit of a positive
edge to this subject that a lotof people don't want to talk
about. And that's grief. We'regoing to be talking about
(02:33):
working through grief.
And, you know, I think that alot of people assume that when
we're talking about grief, we'retalking about the loss of
another person. But in reality,grief has to do with losing
someone or something that meansa great deal to you. So you can
(02:53):
go through a grief process whenyou lose your job. You can go
through a grief process whenyour best friend is no longer
your best friend. You can gothrough a grief process when the
1960 car that you have beenmothering all of these years and
taking care of just is no longerroadworthy. There can be grief
(03:19):
definitions for you that arevery different than the person
next to you.
Now, I've experienced grief onmany levels. And the weird thing
is that many times I didn't evenrealize I was going through
grief. And so now as I'm talkingabout these things, I'm
realizing, wow, I I actuallyknow a great deal on this
(03:40):
subject. And it may seem reallyweird that I wouldn't even
realize I was going throughgrief. But let me explain
because sadness is somethingentirely different than grief.
But you can actually go throughsadness while in the process of
grieving. And so sometimes thesadness that you're feeling,
(04:05):
you're like, 'okay, I can copewith this, this is fine it was
just a job or it was just a caror, you know, whatever,' and you
can talk yourself out ofexperiencing the emotions. You
can sort of push your emotionsto the side and essentially tell
yourself that they're notimportant. And I think that I've
(04:27):
done that many times in my life.
And then several months later,feelings of loss come up in and
now they're disjointed. I don'teven realize why I feel a loss.
And so as I'm looking backthrough my life, I'm going,
'Gosh, that that happened a fewtimes where I've rationalized
myself out of my own emotions.'Who does that? Well, the answer
(04:50):
is a lot of people do it. A lotof people do it, and perhaps
you're one of those people,because we identify things that
are negative or challenging tous, and we try to avoid those
things. It comes naturally to usto behave this way. We don't
(05:11):
want to feel unsettled, unsafe,uncomfortable...these are all
things that don't feel good tous. So we are naturally wired to
identify those things and getinto offensive mode and try to
eliminate those sensations.
(05:32):
But sometimes the grief is very,very difficult to get over. I
spoke to a mother and fatheryears ago. Their adult son was
found dead. And there were somany questions around that
death, that they were having adifficult time getting over it.
(05:53):
As a matter of fact, it was thefather who was having the
hardest time. And yet, they allhad gone through, and all
meaning all of the people whoknew him, the the extended
family, the people who workedwith him, they had all gone
through different levels ofgrief. But for whatever reason,
(06:15):
the father was having thehardest time getting through the
questioning stage. There had tobe a reason. There had to be
somebody to blame. There had tobe something that he could hold
on to that he could say, 'thisis why I lost my son.' But,
unfortunately, he was leftwithout answers and so he was
(06:39):
sort of spiraling in that griefmode for a really long time. And
if you looked at the mother, themother had gotten to the level
of acceptance much quicker, shehad gotten to this level of
okay, this is my new normal,this is where I am now this is
how I'm going to go through therest of my life. She had gotten
(07:00):
there, before he had. So she notonly was grieving her son, but
was also helping to support andlift up her husband who was
having a harder time with it.
That became an entirely newlevel of processing and another
step in her experiencing thegrief.
(07:27):
So it's important to recognizethat even though those those
ways of experienced grief werevery different, they were both
experiencing that grief. It wasreal for both of them. And it
was real for all of the peoplewho knew this young man who had
passed. Everybody experiencesexperiences the things that go
(07:52):
along with grief, but in adifferent order, in a different
way, that your life experiencehelps you to process grief
differently. As a matter offact, when my father passed
away, my mother used to say, Idon't think you've accepted his
his death, I don't think you'veworked through his death. But I
(08:13):
had. I had in my own way. Andthis was difficult for my mother
to understand, because her wayof processing it was different
than mine. I had learned tounderstand it, to cope with it,
to live with it. And I'd gottento that stage faster. And so
this is actually something tonote. A lot of people say that
(08:37):
there are five stages of griefor seven stages of grief. There
are two different levels ofthought there. And some people
say there are no levels at all.
So let me let me break that downfor you.
All those levels or stages ofgrief, they are real for
(08:58):
everyone. But they're not stagesthat happen in a linear fashion.
Your way of grieving is going tobe unique to you. That doesn't
make it right, that doesn't makeit wrong. That doesn't make it
questionable. It just means yourway of grieving is unique to
you. And you can accept that.
And you can feel good in knowingthat you are on the right track
(09:24):
if you are processing thepassing of a person.
So let's go to a job. When youlose a job, what is that going
to look like? Are the stagesgoing to be the same? Do you go
through shock, denial, anger,bargaining, depression? Do you
(09:47):
start testing things? Do you gointo the acceptance phase? Yeah.
This is what's so amazing aboutit. It is grieving - exactly the
same as when you lose a person -but it's just over something
different. And a lot of peoplemight say that that's no,
(10:08):
because there's, there's morevalue to a person's life so
you're gonna grieve itdifferently. No, not
necessarily. If you're devotinga great deal of time and energy
to a life that feels good toyou, and it's around your job.
All of your friends are at yourjob. Your value, your self
worth, everything seems to bewrapped up in the into the job,
(10:31):
and then that job is gone. Phew.
There is a grieving process thatgoes on that very easily can
take you to places of anger andbargaining and acceptance and
but right back to shock. Andit's important that we recognize
that that grieving process isreal. So if you are talking to
(10:52):
somebody and you've just lost aloved one, and they've just lost
a job, and you get angry becausethe person who's lost their job
is going through their grievingprocess. You need to recognize
it's the exact same process overa different thing. Devaluing
their loss of job does not makeyour loss of your person any
(11:14):
more valuable. I'm hoping thatthis is making sense to you that
this is valuable information foryou. Because I don't think that
enough people spend time talkingabout this. And it's important
that we do share our emotions,our feelings, and that we start
(11:35):
understanding that all of thesethings have value. And they're
important that we look at them,that we experience them, that we
validate these things forourselves.
I'm going to talk about thechocolate moment. You know, it
seems weird to talk aboutchocolate at a moment like this,
(11:56):
but I'm going to talk about itbecause there are things that we
do that are self destructive,when we are in the middle of a
grieving process. And one ofthose things is all of the good
patterns that we have beensupporting that we've been
working on that we've beenputting in place, all of that
kind of thing - all of thosegood patterns suddenly fly out
(12:17):
the window, as if you now have alack of importance - you're not
as important as you were fiveminutes ago. And that's just
crazy. I, you know, I'm sorry, Idon't mean to devalue you by
calling this this crazy. Butlisten to me for a second, the
best way to recover fromanything, whether it's an
(12:38):
accident, a grieving process,you know, whatever the thing is,
is to keep yourself strongmentally, emotionally,
physically, spiritually. So,when we're going for chocolate,
let's say in a moment of crisis,it's important that we stick
with the healthy stuff. Go forthe antioxidants. Go for the
darker chocolate. If you want afix, have it be something that's
(13:02):
more pure. And when I talk aboutfix, I'm talking about the
chocolate, right? Because we weneed something to lift us up.
Well, I'm going to tell youabout a chocolate that tastes
Right?
really, really great. I'm notgoing to tell you the brand
because I'm not, you know, I'mnot about bashing people who are
trying to do a great job. That'sthat's not what I'm about. But
(13:25):
I'm going to tell you about thischocolate because it was a
caramel cold brew chocolate. Andthat just sounded amazing to me.
I'm like, Oh my gosh, carameland dark chocolate and coffee,
what? Am I in heaven, right?
And it was dark chocolate,toffee bits, ground roasted
coffee beans. That just soundedamazing. But immediately when I
(13:46):
picked it up, I noticed on thewrapper that there was nothing
that said organic. There wasnothing that said gluten free.
There was nothing that said nonGMO, right? Warning signals all
over the place. And there wassomething on the label that
actually said, oh my goodness,it said caramel, something
(14:08):
caramel flavoring, naturalcaramel flavoring. So for those
of you who are not glutensensitive, that basically means
there's gluten in there. And socaramel coloring, caramel
flavoring, you know that thatgives you a little bit of a red
flag. So that was on there. Itcontains milk. It contains soy,
and it contains something I hadnever heard of before and I've
(14:31):
got to read it because I'm noteven sure. Trag... trag...
tragacanth. I had never heard ofit. Didn't know what it was so I
had to look it up. Andapparently it is made from dried
sap of a Middle Eastern legume.
And this is fabulous. It'sbasically a binding agent -
(14:54):
holds things together. It's usedin making incense. It's used in
making pastels for creating art.
It's made for tanning leather,and treating burns. So it's got
a lot of different things thatare really fabulous for humans,
right. But the one thing thatnot so good for somebody who has
(15:16):
a gluten sensitivity is that itstimulates the bowels. Not super
great. And if you have it in toohigh a quantity, it actually can
not be super healthy for you. Sowhen it's put in chocolate, that
should sort of be a red flag,especially if, when you are in a
(15:36):
depression state, when you're ina grieving state, you definitely
don't take care of yourself. Ifyou know that that's a pattern
that you have, what are yougoing to do with chocolates in
front of you, whole bar baby -the whole bar. That's definitely
not what you want to havehappening. So perhaps a bar like
this isn't one you should reachfor. But let me tell you
(16:00):
something, I tasted it. I tasteit in any way; did not eat the
whole thing. Didn't do it. But Itasted it anyway. And you know
what? It was delicious. It wasabsolutely delicious. It was
like, Oh, my goodness, my tonguewas like, in heaven. It tasted
so good. And then after that onebite, wrapped it up, threw it
(16:23):
away. kept the wrapper so that Icould make sure that I wrote
down all of the information offof it. But I threw away the rest
of the bar, because it wasn'thealthy for me.
And this is something that weneed to recognize when we are in
a grieving state, that we stillneed to respect our bodies, we
(16:46):
still need to respect our minds.
And when it comes to theemotional state, we need to
respect that too. And what doesthat mean? Well, you need to
give yourself time to grieve.
You need to cry. You need to getangry. You need to have those
(17:06):
moments when you're feeling likethings are not working out your
way. And getting frustrated andangry about that. We don't want
to keep those emotions in. Youdo need to talk about them. It's
important that you recognize ifyou're going through a grief
process, and you're sharing andyou're talking about your grief
(17:30):
with other people, people wantto understand. They want to be
there for you. But there may bea point, when the grief is so
overwhelming for you that youneed to seek out additional
help. There is no - you don'tneed to feel guilty for doing
that. There's no shame in doingthat. And as a matter of fact,
(17:51):
if you can process the pain withsomebody who's qualified to talk
about a grieving process withyou, then you may be able to
work throughGrief never goes away. It just
sort of floats further back inyour mind. So what do I mean by
that? I have experienced thegrief of the loss of people in
(18:14):
my life. And still to this day,and one of the persons was, oh
my goodness, 30 years ago. Itwas a long time ago. But still
to this day, I can find myselfcrying because this person is in
my life isn't in my lifeanymore. It's not something that
we should be embarrassed aboutbecause it doesn't go away for
(18:38):
anyone. So if I start cryingbecause of that person that
passed 30 years ago, and someonewalks in the room, Hey, are you
okay? I just say yeah, I wasjust thinking about, you know,
this person and I couldn't holdback my emotion. People do
understand. They do. And I havehad people go, didn't they pass
(18:59):
away like 30 years ago? It'slike, yeah, but you know what, I
still miss them. I still havemoments when I'm sad because
they're not here. And that'sokay. And it's okay if you know
you're still in counseling 5,10years later because you're still
working through the grievingprocess. Allow yourself your own
(19:22):
process. Allow yourself, the toexpress your feelings, to
express your emotions, to talkto loved ones, to hire someone
to help you work through.
There's no shame in any of that.
Now, as we're getting to theclosing of this podcast, I just
(19:44):
want to remind you thatchallenges and pain can actually
lead to strength and there is alot of strength to be gained
when you work through grief andthe strength is basically a
reminder that you're okay. Youhave been okay. You will
(20:05):
continue to be okay. And you canlift yourself up and help
yourself work through thistragedy that you're trying to
process. It could take a year.
It could take more time, butyou're going to make it through.
And that's an important thing toSo how do you make it to the
other side of grief, where thegrief is still there, but it's
(20:28):
just a little further back andit's not constantly on your
mind? How do you get there?
Well, one of the things that youdo, after you have expressed or
even while you're stillexpressing your grief to other
people, is set goals. And theycan be little goals. Maybe your
(20:49):
grief is such that you justdon't even want to go look for a
job. Because you were soattached to this last one,
you're afraid of losing anotherone, you just can't get yourself
out of bed. Well, maybe thefirst goal is to start looking
online, just see what's outthere. Maybe you put yourself on
(21:11):
LinkedIn, and you allow thepeople who are looking for new
employees, to find you, there'sa setting that allows people to
find you, when they're lookingfor someone like you, so that
you can see that you still havevalue, that people are looking
for people like you. Maybe yourgoal is to just get out of bed,
(21:34):
get into the car, go somewhere.
Maybe you make bigger goals. Butstart small, allow yourself the
space and the peace that'srequired to just, you know,
focus on you, right? It'simportant that you give yourself
that opportunity. So make, makesome of the goals very small,
but eventually work up tosomething bigger because as you
(21:55):
work through challengingsituations, if you bring in
positivity, if you bring in newgoals, if you allow yourself to
experience something new, you'resort of attaching these positive
things to adrenaline that'sgoing on inside your body while
you're experiencing challenge.
(22:17):
And what happens? It actuallycharges you up and creates more
motivation. So as you areworking through the challenges,
you're feeding your motivation,and empowering yourself to get
better at whatever it is thatyour goals have to do with. So
maybe it's, you know what Ineed, like, I don't know, three
(22:39):
months off cause this is justtoo much grief for me, and I
just need to process it. Soabout three months off, I think
I'm going to learn how to cook.
I'm going to spend the threemonths perfecting a souffle. I'm
going to spend the three monthsmaking the best sugar cookies on
the earth, right? Give yourselfgoals that will serve you, that
(23:02):
will motivate you, that willkeep you empowered, and attach
those goals to the challengingsituations so that every time
you start to feel the grief, ittriggers your motivation. If you
attach the positive to thechallenge, and this is true if
you're working out or if youare, I don't know, chopping down
(23:24):
trees and hauling wood for thewinter, like it no matter what
it is, if it's a physicalchallenge, a mental challenge an
emotional challenge, if youattach positive things to those
things, then all of a sudden,every time that challenge raises
its head again you are lookingat the positive and you feel
(23:46):
more motivated. It's science.
Right? This is scientificallyproven, it actually works.
So in your grieving, allowyourself to grieve and then
bring in goals to help lift youout of the grief and motivate
yourself to continue on withlife. Whatever it is that you're
(24:09):
grieving is real, it's valid.
Give yourself the space to feelthose emotions. Give yourself
grace, feel compassion foryourself. And allow yourself to
avoid all of the shame so thatyou can share the emotions
you're feeling with the peoplearound you. People who are
closest to you and the peoplewho are paid to help people who
(24:31):
are in your situation. There isno shame in looking for help and
talking about what you need.
With that blessings to each andevery one of you. I hope that
this message today served youand that you will be comforted
(24:52):
by the thought that grief cancome to a point where you can
recognize.
progress in your life again.
I am determined to increase selfawareness and help people to
really value what it is that isspecial about who they are and
what they can bring to theworld. And with that in mind, I
(25:13):
designed this fabulous programcalled Celebrate You to help you
slow down and pay attention towhat's going on in your life so
that you can find value at everyturn and design a life that is
more fulfilling. So do a littleextra, start celebrating you. By
checking out Celebrate You onBetsDanko.Com and signing up
(25:36):
today.
Experience the wisdom that helpsto motivate and empower you in
relationships, business, familyand most importantly, self
celebration. Getting thepicture? It's wisdom and it's
all about you. Want to hear thechocolate? Tune into Wisdom &
Chocolate weekly.
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