How to Get Through Hard Times

We're in the here and now. Take grace and connection with the moment for yourself. We've all had pain. We've all had sadness. We can allow the moment now to refresh us. A moment now to have a new feeling, a new emotion, a new sense about ourselves, a new belief about ourselves, a new faith in ourselves, a new faith in the world. Right now, this is a new moment. And with new moments, there's second chances. And with new second chances, there's new abilities to begin anew. But even if we don't begin anew, to allow ourselves the peace and the grace of the moment. Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard. We have an incredible session for you here today. Thanks for joining me this morning for a very important topic as we discuss some of difficult, difficult topics of life. Those topics of loss, of grief, of dealing with tragedy, difficulty, struggle, loneliness, of how do we carry on when bad things happen, how do we find strength and grace and peace in some of the most difficult situations and moments of our lives? That's a big topic today, and I know it will probably be the least participated topic that we usually get. Anytime I say we're going to talk about something related to something like this, a lot of people I'd rather avoid that session today, Brendan. But I'm here to tell you we can discuss life's most difficult things still with peace and joy. And that's hard and that is difficult. And arriving to that space is no joke. And so today, tough topics. I know that we'll be taking on some sensitive topics today. So I encourage you today to enter and frame this conversation in your own mind, to develop your own mindset and attitude towards these conversations before we even have them. Because that is one secret, in fact, to dealing with difficulties of life, to set our minds in advance, to set our intentions in advance, to think through and contemplate. How will I cope with that? How will I face that? How will I endure that? That ultimately is one of the great strengths of consciousness, of presence, of intention, of anticipation that allows us to deal with some of the worst issues of life. And so we're going to do that together as a group here, set our intentions of let's have a difficult conversation about the difficulties of life, of loss of grief. But from a perspective that we're going to step into our strength from a perspective, we're going to set a positive mindset, to have a beautiful conversation, you know, because sometimes when I say, well, I'm going to talk about, you know, many of you know, I've been on stages around the world, and I always, you know, talk about my car accident, or I always talk about the death of my parents or family or friends or clients, or the difficulties at hand, the tragedies might be going on in the culture at that very moment that I'm literally speaking on a stage to hundreds or thousands of people. It's always something I know can hook a lot of people and can trigger a lot of people and can set you in a place of uncertainty or fear or just a bad feeling. And so what I've always thought of as a speaker, as a trainer, as a coach, is like, let's set our mindset up front. Let's not wander into this conversation surprised by it, but rather say, what a beautiful conversation we get to have about what's important in life. What a beautiful conversation we get to have about people who we miss. What a beautiful conversation we get to have about people that we will potentially lose in our lives. Or what a beautiful conversation we get to have about the times in life where things don't go right and we lose other things. Because this is not just a conversation about loss and grief in the traditional way that many of us go to. We think of loss and grief of, oh, just losing a person. But loss and grief applies to a lot of areas of life. Collectively, a lot of us are experiencing that. A loss of a way of life, loss of the normality of life can bring on grief. Many people around the world are experiencing a collective sense of grief, a loss of way of life, a loss of a certainty because of how we felt before in terms of our health or our safety. And when we lose something, it brings up unpleasant emotions. And the secret to coping and enduring and building a great life is learning to understand, be aware, accept, move through, and navigate unpleasant emotions. You want the secret of life? I'll tell you what the secret to enjoying life, a lot of it has to do with how do you manage and navigate unpleasant emotions. Notice I didn't say get rid of them. So today, as we talk, we're talking about. There's no doubt that when I'm talking today, it will bring up emotions. And not just for you. For me, too. For me too. And so I want to bring up this idea with you right off the bat. Let's frame this intention to have a beautiful conversation. Gotta get high fives across the board here on this one. Let's have a beautiful conversation, an honoring conversation, a meaningful conversation, because we can talk about life and death and tragedy and just incredible Times of discouragement and shock and sadness. But we can still do it from a place where you are right now, you're in a safe place. We're in a safe environment here. We're in a place where we can have a conversation. And whatever conversations we're going to be talking about, in some ways, whatever situations we're talking about, there's a degree of removal, a degree of detachment that we're not there right now. As an example. I lost my father two nights ago, 11 years ago. So this is always a tough week for my family because we miss him. And there will always be that part of us that, you know, has to deal with the emotions that come up. And I'll talk with you how I approach that, but also talk in general because some of you have experienced a loss, again from loss of certainty because of you. Maybe you were in a relationship and that relationship ended, or maybe your life used to be like this and then you got laid off. Or maybe life used to look like that and then, you know, you got sick or you were divorced, or the job got changed, or the project, you know, or the rug got pulled out from underneath you and things suddenly and shockingly shifted on you. And it's in those times that we're introduced to unpleasant emotions and incredibly difficult emotions and feelings like grief. And so today I'm not just talking about my dad. I'm not just talking about the dozens of friends I've lost in my lifetime already or the dozens of emotions that come up every time I think of the dozens of mentors of mine who have passed away, or the times that I've. In my life, I've spent, and a lot of it in hospice care, helping and serving. I'm familiar with these topics, but also share with you. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm nothing that ends in ist that I'm aware of. I am a person who spends his life in the trenches with people trying to help you improve your lives. I'm not a qualified medical professional or a psychologist in any way, so I'm not going to speak from that perspective. And if you sense that you need that support, you hear me say it so often. If you need therapy, if you need professional assistance, never feel bad about getting it, especially in some of the topics we'll cover today. Because I can do so much work with you here in our two hours together, my friends, I can't cover everything and healing doesn't usually happen in a two hour segment I'm sure you're all aware of. So let's enter this as a community positive to have a beautiful conversation. Let's do it from a perspective of knowing that we're going to deal with some unpleasant emotions that might come up. And let's face that willingly, with trust and faith and gratitude, because I'll share one thing that's beautiful about loss and grief, and that is you only experience those things and feel those things. If you had something and you were connected to something that you enjoyed, something that you felt was important, something that was beautiful, something that was meaningful to you, and so you had a sense of meaningful connection and something maybe shifted or changed, but that was a beautiful gift. And so today I approach our conversation with reverence. I have great respect for each of you, and I know inevitably, with as many participants as we have around the world, you are experiencing or going through a loss. And so right off the bat, I send you my love, my prayers for my family, our condolences and our honor and our respect, knowing that many people are going through incredibly difficult times right now in our community Here too, you know, it's inevitable when you do work like this. Lots of people are going through a lot of big struggles. And so let's be respectful and caring and compassionate with one another in our chat. And let's do the work today. Let's do some. Let's do the work. Let's do it. Let's jump in willingly to have a beautiful conversation. Today I'll be sharing five principles with you that I've seen over and over and over again in hospice care, over and over and over again in coaching clients who've lost family members over and over and over again in coaching people who've experienced loss of any kind, literally loss of physical mobility, loss of family members, loss of job, loss of business, loss of their sense of self, and the grief that comes along with change. We're talking about five things that I believe will help if I can. I do want to set the stage a little bit more, too, because I probably have a different perspective about this conversation, as many of you have heard about, you know, and I know I got a lot of questions in advance. Are you going to talk about the five stages of grief? And no, I'm not. If you've studied Elizabeth Kubler Ross or the work or the ideals behind the five stages of grief, if you haven't heard of that work before, the idea that there's these five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, I'm more of the mind of which of Elizabeth's who came up with that idea and wrote about that so compellingly towards the end of her life, she mentioned that she wished that it had never been framed in as stages, because as she wrote about and spoke about towards the end of her life as a theorist and a person who had given hospice care, she thought, you know, I wish everyone didn't think there were these stages you're supposed to go through. You know, some of you, you feel like you're supposed to feel great by now. You feel like, well, I should have moved through these stages. I should be okay by now. And some of the greatest moments of grace that you ever allow yourself in life is the grace of time, the grace of allowing like every single person here, if you look at what we're doing here, every person here will cope with grief differently, right? Everything I'm going to share with you today is just by nature going to be a generic nature. Everyone will cope differently. And if you're still struggling through and you think, geez, I should be in the stage of acceptance by now, you know, I want to let you know, the person who literally came up with the idea of the five stages of grief wished it wasn't called stages because she thought everyone deals with it differently. It's not sequential. These things become circular in time. And not everybody feels all of these emotions either, right? The people who I've lost in my life, I've never yet had the sense of anger toward. I didn't have a sense of anger that that thing happened. I didn't have anger towards my father dying. And I know that might sound completely crazy to people, but that was an emotion that I experienced with death, partially because the way that I have faced mortality throughout my life, which we'll talk about. But not everyone goes through all these stages. So I want to set that frame off the bat. Everybody copes differently. There's no right or wrong way to experience loss. There is, however, a healthy way to re engage life. We know from 50 years of psychological study, and you all know inherently and innately that there's ways that we cope that are healthy, and there's ways that don't make us feel good. There's things that we do that can lead to less ability to continue on with life in a happy way. And so we'll talk about some of those too. Here's the way I believe we can deal with this. Well, and I'm going to start with a couple different ideas before I'll tell you when I get into the five principles for the day. I'm just framing things up for today. One of the most important and powerful frames I can give you for loss and grief above all else and above everything else is conscious anticipation. Conscious anticipation. Consciousness or awareness in life is so important if we're going to cope well. And what we usually mean when we speak about that, especially with loss and grief, is having the ability to anticipate that it will happen. Okay? That it will happen. That if you haven't faced your own mortality and your own death yet, I deeply invite you to do that at some point. It doesn't have to be here during the two hours right now, but I want to encourage you face your mortality, your own personal mortality. Most people have never had a conversation about death in their own mind with themselves, let alone contemplating that maybe they would lose a parent one day or a sibling one day, or a job one day. In other words, in a spiritual practice, we would talk about this as a concept of awareness to impermanence. You've heard that phrase before, awareness to impermanence, that nothing is permanent. That in a lot of spiritual principles you might think of, well, what is permanent maybe is if it's God or if it's universe or it's the dao or the way that there might be something spirit that is permanent. But in the human experience, in our natural world, things are impermanent. Can you face that? Can you face that? Can you anticipate that? Let me switch metaphors for you real quickly. As many of you know, I do this for a living. I talk to groups of people all the time. I'm out on social media all the time. And I talk with so many influencers, so many people who want to be leaders and who are building up their brands and their careers, and they're shocked, shocked when someone judges them on the Internet. They're amazed when someone posts a negative just mean comment. They can't believe it. Can you believe this person post this mean thing? On my video, I spent months on, on my life's work, I posted a message that's beautiful about my family, and this person attacked me. Can you believe it? I'm like, yes. Why are you surprised? It's called the Internet. Anyone ever been surprised you got a mean attack on the intern? Well, I tell my peers all the time. I'm like, please don't be surprised. That is something that I guarantee that will happen. If you are commuting, if you are driving to work or you are driving somewhere and you are cut off by somebody in traffic and you go into a rage about it. I'm like, you were surprised. And I know these are simple and simplistic and almost silly metaphors here, but I just want to switch your mind into that anticipatory power that we all have, that when we actually anticipate, oh, this is going to happen, we are way more capable of being centered than when we don't anticipate it. I'm not saying there will not be shock. I am not saying there won't be heartache. I am not saying there won't be incredible like fear or denial or regret or sadness. We'll talk about those things. But what I'm suggesting to you now is find peace with the inevitable. If we can find peace with the inevitable in advance, we are more able to cope. Switching metaphors again. I have so many. We have a lot of people who served in the military before. And as you know, I've been blessed to coach some of the highest level groups in the military across all branches. And the way that they deal with what is about to come, when it is just like one of the most difficult missions or projects or tours of their lifetime, is they rehearse it over and over and over and over again in their mind and in practice and in the field. They get comfortable with what is going to be an uncomfortable, unpleasant, potentially terrorizing situation. I don't pretend that's easy. And that's one reason I love the military. Their willingness to do what is incredibly difficult to protect the freedoms that we all enjoy. But I will share. There's some kind of power in that. And I had that when I was a 19 year old kid and I had my car accident. It forced me to face death. Any fans here of philosophy? Anyone ever read philosophy? Well, I've never really gotten to the study of philosophy. I hope you will and you'll know. Chapter one in all of philosophy, almost across all philosophers in the history of the world. Chapter one, if we could generalize, says, you're gonna die. Now let's talk about life. That's like the fundamental of philosophy. So I read so much, I got comfortable with the fact that I was going to lose people and there was going to be loss in life anticipation. Now I know this does not sound really like motivating, but that's not the point here. The point is to say, can we anticipate it? When I received the call from my dad letting me know that he had been just diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, out of nowhere he woke up, was lacking some balance. As he walked down the hallway. It was Mother's Day of 2009. So he woke up on Mother's Day, didn't feel good. Mom said, what's wrong with you? He said, I don't feel good. He's kind of unbalanced. The weeks before, he's playing golf and racquetball and bowling. He's healthy. All of a sudden, something's wrong, doesn't get better. They go to the hospital. Within a few hours, he's sitting with two doctors who is look who are looking at his blood work. And then do some more tests. And they let him know he has seven days to. And they say, you have aml, acute myeloid leukemia. There's two types of leukemia. AML is the one that usually takes the person quickly. And they said, you have seven days, because what happens is you're creating blood that's not good and ultimately shuts down your organs. I know I could go deeper into that. But those who know what I'm talking about with leukemia, it strikes fast. So he had seven days. As soon as he told me that, I was like, okay. And I was in shock, and I wanted to deny it, and I had fear. And that comes from shock. You know, when you hear news that you didn't anticipate or something happens you didn't anticipate, you're going to have a shock reaction. And for me, I was shocked about it at first, and those emotions come in. And by the end of the conversation, though, as I felt those emotions come up, I also was releasing them because I'd already contemplated my father's passing years earlier in journaling activities of how I would think of the passing of people. And I know that sounds almost fatalistic, but, you know, have you ever heard that saying, you don't want to leave things unsaid? I was reading a book one time and said, you know what? Contemplate the passing of people who are important in your life so that you don't leave things unsaid, so that you think of, like, wow, what if this person. What if this is my last moment with this person? If this was my last moment with this person, what would I love to say to them and communicate to them and. And don't leave those things unsaid. Now, I know that's difficult because all of us have had situations where someone has passed or know someone who's passed and things were unsaid, and that is incredibly unsettling. It brings up shock, and it brings up regret, and it brings up sadness, which we'll talk about those emotions, but also in this moment, in the here and now. Listen, none of us can take back whatever's happened in our lives, right? Whatever has happened, has happened. It is as it was, as it is. We are here. We are here now. And all we can do moving forward together as a group is anticipate moving forward. We can't. Like, this is not a thing where I'm going to try to be on a healing journey of the things of the decades past for any of us, because we all heal in our own time, in our own ways. But I'm here to say it's incredibly powerful if we can contemplate mortality and anticipate it and go, wow, what should I say to my kids? What should I say to my loved ones? Let me make sure I take care of people and treat people in ways that I don't regret and that things are said. One reason I was at peace, because my father had already said everything he'd said needed to say to me. I was lucky on that. I'd already said everything I needed to say. Now we just had to go through the process with honor and integrity and respect and love of end of life and not deny it. Face it, my dad faced it with a positive attitude. He knew it was coming. They told him, you have seven days. He's a Marine, so he made it 59 days. Good job, dad. And he fought with great, great attitude. I just couldn't believe it. I kept waiting for his attitude to sour. Never did. Couldn't believe it. He anticipated the end and he anticipated how he wanted to face it. And it was incredible. And I was lucky to witness that. And I want to let you know I've also witnessed the complete opposite in care before, been with families where it was the opposite. And that wasn't right or wrong either. It is. People cope with the end of life is the way that they can. And for those of you who've cared for someone at the end of their lives, I want to let you know that caregiver guilt is something that if you are facing it or you've ever faced it, that's okay. That's entirely normal. And that you need to grant yourself the peace of knowing you did the best you could at the time with what you knew. You know, I've had the blessing of working with a lot of medical professionals, doctors and hospice care workers who talk about this. Gosh, I wish I could. You know, we all wish we could take back time and go change things. We can't. And so today, grant yourself the peace and the gift of knowing you did the best that you could at the time that you knew how to do. They did the best they knew that they could. I wish, you know, that was the first time I've ever cared for somebody personally for months on end with leukemia. I wish I knew more about leukemia. At the time, I didn't know. I didn't know. So some things I would have done differently and dad would have done differently and my family would have done differently. We did the best we could and so did dad. And I want to let you know that no matter what you have dealt with in grief in the past, your family or others loss, losing a job, your divorce, your breakup, your loss of job, listen, you were as conscious as you were at that moment. You did what you could and you need to give yourself grace because please listen to me, my friends. At that time, you were in shock and you were coping. And if you just need a little science from Brendan right now, let me drop some science on you. A stunning fact that when people are in shock or coping, they don't always perform at their highest level, best. Oh, my gosh. Did the performance guy just tell us that and say it's okay? Yes. I'm letting you know it's okay that you weren't absolutely phenomenal and perfect and other people around you weren't absolutely and phenomenal and perfect. It's okay if you. You were getting divorced and the two of you fought, it's okay if you're getting fired and you screamed at your boss, it's okay. Whatever happened, you now must go. I accept it as it was. I'm at peace with what it was. I did the best I knew how at the time. And even if you don't believe you did the best as you could at the time, it doesn't matter. Because yesterday's darkness didn't rise with the sun today. You're in a new moment. You're in a new moment. Your cells are new right now. This spirit, this energy, if you take a deep breath in that air you're breathing that's fresh. We're in the here and now. Take grace and connection with the moment for yourself. We've all had pain. We've all had sadness. We can allow the moment now to refresh us. A moment now to have a new feeling, a new emotion, a new sense about ourselves, a new belief about ourselves, a new faith in ourselves, a new faith in the world. Right now, this is a new moment. And with new moments, there are second chances. And with new second chances. There's new abilities to begin anew. But even if we don't begin anew to allow ourselves the peace and the grace of the moment. So important. Hey guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmode.com, click on Private Group to apply to see you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com you know, if you think about anticipation being something that's really powerful, I also want to share Acceptance is really powerful. To accept ourselves as we are now, no matter what has happened to us. To accept life as it is now, even if it's not perfect. To be in a ready state of acceptance is really powerful. To be accepting when your kids act out and they're freaking out and they're angry. To be accepting when when your team doesn't get it right. To be accepting when the project falls apart. To be accepting when the video doesn't get the likes you want. Just to be allowing and surrendering to the outcomes of life and face them as they are. Identifying what are the controllable variables here, what's not controllable, and asking for the grace of the wisdom to know the difference between the two. There's a lot of things you can't control. Let them go. The things that you can control, you can only control in this moment. So if you didn't control it right in the past, let it go. It's now, uncontrollable now. What are the controllable factors? Living in the now will always be, always be the first sort of gate to enter to free yourself from pain. To step back into this moment of now. To accept. To realize this is what is. Even if I didn't want it this way, this is what is. And what is is here. Okay, now, how would I like to interpret it? What would I like to do next? These are the power you think of. If you can anticipate things will happen and you can accept as is what the world is, while you also accept your Power to shift and shape and control and move things around that you can. That's an uncommon perspective to come into things with, to anticipate them, and to accept. Those two things are so powerful. The third piece here, framing all this, is adaptation. To now adapt to the world as is to now adapt to what we're dealing with and to adapt to it with real intention. When you are in shock or sadness, there's often not a lot of intention there. It's reaction, it's feeling, it's emotion, which is okay. But there is a stage of adaptation when we start going, oh, okay, I guess life has changed. How do I want to change with it? Not I wish life didn't change, it did now, how would I like to change with it? Who do I want to be in this next stage? How would I like to think and feel and behave and do and become? Life has changed. How would I like to change? How would I like to adapt to this new reality? And we have to find our own way. It's not going to be fast yet. We must have the intention to adapt. I'm okay if it takes you years or two or three or four or five, that's your timing. But let's have the intention to adapt. Let's have the intention to feel better, be better. Let's have the intention to heal. You don't have to heal now, but please have the intention to heal. Can we all raise our hands on that one? Like, you don't have to get it right right now, but have the intention to heal. Have the intention to get better. Have the intention to carry on. Have the intention to build a new life. Have the intention to move forward. Because what is, is now, let's face it with intention. My dad chose to face the end, the new normal for him in a hospital bed. He said, I'm gonna keep my humor. And he was joking with the nurses and the doctors. When he left the hospital to go home for hospital care, all the nurses and the doctors cried because they liked him already. He was funny, he kept a good humor. He respected their work. He went along with the process, didn't want it, but he was there. So he engaged the process and he honored it as something that was happening. Didn't deny, did his best. Sometimes we can enter situations with intention and grace, and that makes the situation better. Even though you can't make the situation better, that make sense. Even though you can't change a situation or a circumstance, the way you enter it with intention and grace can certainly change how you experience it. And often changes how other people experience it. Please adopt that role model mindset. Other people observe your energy. Other people see how you cope and deal and heal. Other people witness your strength. And when they witness your strength or your faith or your goodness or your generosity or your patience, they feel inside. That's that neurobiological power of the mirror neurons. They see it in you, they feel it in themselves. And that can be a beautiful thing. That can be a beautiful thing. I don't say it's easy, but it can be a beautiful thing to enter things with intention. So I've talked about anticipation. I talked about anticipation. I've talked about acceptance. I've talked about adaptation. For me, that's going to set the frame for what we're going to do today. Ok, that will set the frame for what we're going to do today because I'll come back to some of these topics. I'll come back to these topics. Now let me share what I feel like will be a good framework for us to talk about loss and grief, specifically in terms of emotions. And then I'll share with you the five principles that will help you work through them. Okay. When anything happens in terms of loss, let's talk about that when there is loss. And specifically today I promised to talk about grief as well. Grief is an emotion related to a loss. It is a feeling or a state of being related to something that we have lost, that we cared for. Let me talk about what I feel like are like the four major parts of that that happen for people and that you might not use the same language as me. And that's okay. Allow me not to be exactly perfect in the descriptions here because we're not trying to do psychological training, but a general sense of what it feels like. Okay. The first, if you want to. If I was going to call it something a stage, stages or. Or what we all tend to experience. Let's talk about what we tend to experience. These are, let's call them commonalities. Commonalities of emotion or experience that happen with loss or grief. Okay. One that's just universal is this feeling of shock. Shock, which is I can't believe that happened or I didn't want that to happen. When there is shock, there's usually three very unpleasant emotions that come up. Right? Three very unpleasant emotions. And those emotions we'll talk about later how to deal with them. I just want to kind of like get your mind on the framework we'll be working through today and that with shock, often there's an immediate Sense of fear, immediate sense of fear, like, oh my God, that was scary. Or oh my God, I didn't want that to happen. Or even in the anticipatory mind because like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen next? But shock is like, there's no way to describe it accurately. So I'm going to bring up some of the emotions that come up. Often fear, often a sense of regret comes up with shock. Oh my gosh, this just happened. I didn't want that to happen. Or these things are unfinished, or these things are undone, or wait, I don't want. If that happens, it means all these other things. I didn't want this. I didn't anticipate that. I wish this didn't happen. A big part of it then leads to a thought pattern because emotions tend to lead to feelings and thought patterns. Emotions tend to lead to feelings and thought patterns are. I'll talk about the difference later. But that if we jump to the end, right at the end of all that thing of shock is often a sense of denial. Shock is going, I can't believe that happened. I didn't want that to happen. And I want to let you know, when you're in that place, and it often is accompanied by fear or denial or regret. When you're in that place of shock, the most important thing is to recognize that that's OK and that is normal. And your fundamental number one thing you want to do in that moment is get as soon as you can yourself back into your body. And what I mean by that is it's like you can't believe it happened and you've lost. Like your mind goes into fear and goes into rumination, whether towards regret or towards what the future might look like now that things have changed so suddenly, you can't believe it. And usually people in shock can't think backwards or forwards. They're just like, they're in stun mode. They're in stun mode. I need you to breathe when you're in stun mode. When you're in stun mode, which is what I'll describe as shock, it's just like you're almost like you can't even. You're not even with yourself anymore. Just so blown out, energetically, so surprised. And I just want you to just capture your breath. Capture your breath. When my father tells me he's going to die in seven days, first thing I do is start breathing. First thing I don't think, what do I have to do? Where do I got to go? What's going to happen with the family, what's going to happen to the finances? When I've lost a job in the past in my life, I didn't start the where's why and who's. Instead, I just breathe, Just reconnect to breath. Because your breath is also the gateway to the moment of now. Your breath is the gateway to the moment of now. And so just feeling yourself breathe again, just kind of put your. Okay, I'm here. Okay. It activates some of the somatic coping mechanisms that we're going to need. Right? Breathing is a hugely important thing through any issue of our lives, any moment of stress that you have, but especially when you're stunned by something. You know, I've been in several major accidents in my life, and as soon as it happens, like car accident or something else, I just. I know I'm in shock. So just take a moment to catch your breath. Just take a moment to catch your breath. Catch your breath. Take a moment to notice what's around, what's going on, okay? And I don't make that. Don't pretend that's easy. But today we're specifically talking about loss and grief. We're not talking about trauma per se here. We're talking about loss and grief. And if you get the note, if you find out you've lost something or you're going to lose a relationship or you're going to lose somebody, or somebody has passed, take a moment to capture your breath again, to reconnect. It's important. Shock is one piece that we feel. A commonality, if you will. The first commonality. Another commonality is sadness. Sadness usually comes after a shock, not always, but sadness is usually there next. And that sadness that can feel like a superficial sadness where you're just bummed and you're like, oh, darn. And it can also feel like the depths of real depression, the depths of real depression. And I know most of us here will experience that at some point in our life, and everyone here has experienced sadness. And most people here would say they've experienced depression, but we may or may not classify that as clinical depression. But what's important is to know when you're really, really down and you're really, really depressed in the face of loss and grief, super normal. You know, what you try to do is you try to fight, deny, push through or push down sadness. Almost everyone thinks they shouldn't feel sad, especially in a happy go lucky, you know, culture and world where we're all supposed to be happy 24 7. And if we're not happy? What's wrong with you? Who's ever been unhappy or sad? And literally someone said to you, what's wrong with you? Has that ever happened? And you're like, what's wrong with me? And now you even feel worse. You're like, at first you defend yourself, right? Because that's the defense mechanism. Someone says, what's wrong with you? Well, what's wrong with you? And you get in a fight. But then later on you're like, is there something wrong with me? Maybe there's something wrong with me. Listen, sadness is a huge part of the human condition. The entire experience of happiness and joy in our life only exists because we have something of juxtaposition. You have the beauties of joy and deep happiness and fulfillment in life because you've had the real life experience of things not being so good, not so exciting, not so happy. So, sadness. I want to let you know, a lot of you are experiencing sadness right now and you can't face it so you deny it. No, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I always tell people in my seminars, fine is a four letter word. F, I, N, E. Fine. Usually when someone says I'm fine, they are also a liar. Usually when we say we're fine, we're not willing to surface or feel the vulnerabilities of truth. That says, you know, I'm not doing so good and I want to let you know, Sadness, it's the first thing I see. Like people can accept that they were shocked by something. Well, that shocked me. I was surprised. But they're very bad at accepting that sadness is part of life and an emotion that they should have or experience. And we have to learn to sit with sadness, feel sadness, recognize sadness, and for what it is as a signal. And I'm going to come back to this topic later on about sadness. Just like shock being a signal, emotions are signals. Emotions are information. And we'll talk about how to interpret that information and feel that information later. So commonalities. It's totally normal to feel shocked. Commonality. Total normal to feel sadness. Commonality. Longing. Longing. Longing means I wish that was still here. And I miss it so. I wish he was still here. I miss him so. I wish they were here. I miss them so. I wish life was like that. I miss it so. We long, we wish for what was. It's more than nostalgia. Nostalgia is, oh, I think about the past. I connect with the memory. I wish it was that way. Longing Is. I feel it. I feel it. I deeply wish and feel that. I wish that person was here. And longing is normal. I still long for the days with my father taking a walk around our neighborhood 11 years later, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I still. The other yesterday, I spent a good 45 minutes crying my eyes out, missing my dad. And I didn't feel bad. I was like, I shouldn't cry. I'm like, this is part of it. Maybe you can all write that down. This is part of it. This is part of it. The shock, the sadness, the longing. This is part of it. It's okay. It's totally okay. It's so normal for you to long for situations and persons of the past to long for it to be the way it is. And if you try to avoid that, I shouldn't feel this way. That only complicates the issue later. Do you know what? You ever heard that term emotional baggage phrase? Emotional baggage, like you're carrying emotions from the past. What a lot of people realize, don't realize, is a lot of the emotions they're carrying from the past were unfelt emotions. We often think of emotional baggage as, you know, oh, well, she's got emotional baggage. She hasn't let go of these emotions she had. Oh, no. Often it's. She never felt the emotions she had. So they're still here because she didn't allow herself to feel it. It's still here. Emotional baggage is often an additional weight of unfelt things, not just felt things. It's why anyone who does the emotional work that we do in any setting, whether it's in my professional setting as a coach and a trainer in behavior, or in more of the professional licensed professions where they feel like, oh, their job is to sit with the emotion, to allow the client or the customer or the person they're working with to feel what they feel. And this is the one we often. We're weird about, the longing one. I shouldn't feel that. Totally normal. Totally normal. And so I wanted to bring up these three common experiences, shock and sadness and longing, so that we can anticipate them in the conversation we're about to have about these five principles. And begin with this simple statement to you that can be a saving grace. This is part of it. I say that to myself all the time. This is part of it. In every area of my life. I feel extremely sad about something that happened to a friend of mine recently. This is part of it. Unpleasant emotions, difficulty in coping. That's normal. That's part of it. So we must all begin in dealing with loss and grief in a sense in which we don't try to deny that that's part of it. Don't make yourself bad that you're experiencing it because it's part of it. It's part of it, not just for you. It's the human condition. It is the human biology. It's in other places in nature. Other animals and mammals feel sadness, loss and grief as well. It's not abnormal for you to feel it. And if you feel your listen, here's the damage that comes from loss and grief is often that part of us that creates self inflicted wounds when we think we're not normal for feeling entirely normal things. When you label yourself as not normal or not adequate to cope, that is an injury to yourself. Telling yourself you shouldn't feel something and you're so sensitive and oh, I wish I wasn't so sensitive, I wish I wasn't so weak, I wish I was better. And you start now labeling yourself as insufficient. You're only adding insult to injury. We've got to normalize unpleasant emotions. We have to anticipate unpleasant emotions will happen. We have to accept unpleasant emotions as happening. And we have to adapt once we sense them and we understand their signal. So I'm trying to tie those things together for you today. Our common emotions and feelings and experiences are often shock and sadness and longing. Those feelings that come along with it are sometimes just like regret or fear or depression or loneliness. That's totally normal. Totally normal. But you know what? If I drew out a commonality for you, if I was at my famous flip chart, I would draw out. The way I would draw it is I would draw like a line on a page and on the top I'd write the common things like shock and sadness and longing. And you know what I'd put on the bottom, though I put this word, honoring. Honoring. To me, the common denominator that helps us cope is to bring honor to the very process of coping, to bring honor to the very moment, reality as it is, and most importantly, to honor your own sense of self and feelings in those difficult times. Because when you deny them or you label yourself, you create more pain. When you deny the feelings or the emotions and you label yourself now, you create more pain. And please let me do this for you. For those of you who've dealt with loss and grief with others, family members, team members, people you're consoling right now, as I know many of you are coaches here who are Helping people. Please recognize this is also a social truth, that if you deny other people's feelings and you label other people, you add more pain. It's not just an internal game, it's a social game. When you deny your emotions and you label yourself as inadequate or unable or not doing it right or not normal, you cause pain, greater pain to the situation. When you do that to other people. When you think your brother or your sister should have coped differently and you told them not to be sad, when you told them they're not doing it normal and you said, you know something's wrong with you that caused more pain to them, telling others that there's something wrong with them is not helpful. We can notice when people are struggling and not label them. You can notice when you're struggling, not label yourself. A lot of the pain you still feel in your life from tons of situations came from the labels you stamped on your forehead about who you are. And a lot of the pain that we experience socially and culturally with others happens because we smack the label on their forehead. It's why you guys, many of you who've been with this community for a long time, I know some of you, it's your first time here and you haven't heard this from me before, but I did a whole session on judge less, feel better. The less you judge, the better you feel. The less you judge others, the less you judge yourself, the better you feel. And a lot of you, this is the day you're going to start allowing more grace into your life, more peace into your life, less judgment into your life. Recognize you're doing the best that you can and the very fact that you're here working on yourself. Could we all give ourselves a big round of applause for this? Let's go. Let's go. The fact that you, I mean, think about the fact that you are here, I think it's a beautiful thing that you're working on yourself. So few people will do that. So as hard as you've been on yourself, give yourself that spirited acknowledgement that we're talking through some tough things today. Give yourself a spirited acknowledgement to say, you know what? Okay, some of this might bring up some oceans I might not like, but you know what? Okay, cool, I'm doing the work. God bless you for doing the work. So many people won't even consider these topics. I guarantee the whole year in this HPX community, we can measure every single click in our emails. We can see how many people show up to these things, how many people watch the Replay. I guarantee this session will be the least engaged session. I guarantee it. Because people don't want to. It's so much easier not to ever contemplate and deal with these things. Ah, but you're here, you're doing the work. So one more round of applause, everybody. I really genuinely mean that. I genuinely mean that. I think it's a beautiful thing that you're doing. Such a beautiful thing you're doing. So if we can keep honoring as the baseline, honoring the process, honoring the struggle, honoring our emotions, honoring other people as they cope with difficulties too. Oh, my gosh, it gets so much easier. There's so much less pain. So much less pain. We stop fighting what is, and we start asking how we can engage it with integrity and kindness and peace in an honoring way. You know, for those of you who've ever been with people who are dying, or those of you I know, we have a lot of, you know, professionals here. We have a lot of doctors and nurses and first line caregivers. They would all tell you that a person in the hospital just wants to be honored. They want their feelings to be honored. They want their pain to be heard. They want their experience to be recognized. They want to be seen and heard, just like all of us. All of us want to be seen and heard and validated and recognized and appreciated and respected in life. In other words, honored. When I say I see you, I understand you're going through a hard time and I don't label you. I'm giving honor to you. When you see, hear, recognize, appreciate, love, adore other people, when you show kindness and patience to other people. That's what I mean by honoring. That's what I mean. Everyone wants to be honored, seen, heard, felt, respected, validated, appreciated, loved, adored, recognized. That's a sense of, I'm honored as a human being here. That's what we all want. That's what we want.