Thoughts on Living and Dying

Non-Specific Grief: A Problem or a Signpost

You lose a job, a husband, wife, child. There are gobs of suggestions on how to deal with these losses. I've written some myself. Some of these suggestions can be wonderful and powerful. I think however that sometimes out of these specific losses and sometimes out of nothing at all comes a non-specific grief. This is a grief that doesn't necessarily lend itself to "How to deal with the loss of a spouse." It can be at times an overwhelming and yet somehow vague feeling of loss that is incredibly hard to define. It is a grief that oftentimes we do learn to live with but it is like having a tiny bleeder somewhere deep in our body that is slowly sapping our life away.

Yes, losing that spouse or job is very real and there are issues to be dealt with concerning that loss and its implications. But many times something darker and deeper starts to get hold. Maybe it could be called the loss of possibility, or the loss of a dream or the the loss of feeling that we can make a difference. Maybe it could be called those things or maybe not. That's what makes it so difficult to deal with. It's hard to put this loss into words or thoughts. It becomes really an existential loss; something that reaches into the bone. Just being "positive" in the superficial way we love to say that word isn't going to get it done. Even though that superficial "positive attitude" term is sometimes actually annoying, within it does lie a grain of truth, a hint of what must happen. But because so many of us are enamored with the simplicity of just staying positive, we run from the work that must be done and the vulnerability that must be faced. I actually believe this non-specific grief can transcend individuals. It can become a group type of suffering, even a societal ailment.

This would be the point where I would start giving some great insights on what to do. I've got a PhD in Counseling. I've worked for years with people dealing with specific losses. I've

dealt with my own losses. But I'm sorry. I don't have nice pat answers. I do think that somewhere in this process of dealing with this non-specific grief we must explore Mystery. We must engage The Mystery. Instead of embracing simplistic solutions we must embrace the complex to find the simple. Perhaps we need to not look at this feeling as a problem but as a signpost. If we see it always as a problem we then look for solutions - specific, all embracing solutions. If we look at it as a signpost we go deeper into the woods to discover something that we just have a hint of, but something we know is critical to our spirit.

 

You need to know you have it before you can distribute it

Most of us have occasionally thought, “If only I had a lot of money, I would give a big chunk of it to some deserving entity.” But since we know we don’t have that kind of money we just accept the fact that we can’t give away what we don’t have. If however you discovered a hidden cache, you would probably be excited to give some of it to your good cause. The key element here is that you needed to know you had it before you could give it away.

Before you distribute your good, you have to know what your good is. What do you really have to offer? In our society expertise is often held up as the highest good. Is it? If someone is in pain or struggling and you can’t “fix” their problem, do you really have nothing good left to distribute? How about your silence, your integrity, your peace, perhaps even your own confusion of what to do but that you want to do something – you care. 

Do you value those things as good? We say we do but many times we don’t behave that way. “I just can’t face her. I don’t know what to say.” Are magical words the “good” we are looking to distribute? “It’ll be OK.” “Everything happens for a reason.” We are more than willing to share clichés because we don’t know the real good we have to share. How about our humanity, our own sense of vulnerability, our own fears? Many people would ask, “That’s good?” I say it is. I say it is better than magical words and expertise. I say our realness is our good… our willingness to keep going and searching and believing even when we struggle and we doubt. I say the good we distribute is not about answers. It is about our willingness to share the journey with each other, to walk through that valley and hold each others hand. What do you think? 

Possibility

With all the articles and books and coaches and gurus out there I think one thing is often overlooked - the importance of people being able to see the possibility of what can be. This might be the possibility of what they can do or what they can become or how they can be different than they are now. I worked in substance abuse for years. There are no people that I respect more than recovering people. It is incredibly difficult on so many levels. And what has to happen, at the beginning of this whole process of change and recovery, while the person is still struggling with the alcohol or other drug induced hazes, is that the person has to see, if even for a second, the possibility that it can be different. They have to see the possibility that they can be different. It might not take root right away but it starts somewhere. 

To see that little flicker of a flame and keep it alive through incredible hardships most of which they brought on themselves and inflicted on their loved ones is an amazing feat. It gives truth to the possibility that we can change. Sometimes that belief in possibility comes because we see someone else doing it. The beauty of AA rests in that fact. People see that sobriety is not a pipe dream. They hear stories from people who were a mess. They get support from people that just awhile ago were totally screwed up. 

In terms of business success, possibility has to be developed and nurtured. A person sees something that they can do that can make a difference and that people will want and appreciate. Obviously a lot of work has to come after the awareness of possibility, but without the possibility all the work in the world won’t make a difference. That’s why people beginning businesses have to have business plans. It makes them focus the possibility and minimizes the chance that possibility will get lost in the vagueness of what is trying to be accomplished. Somebody who is trying to get sober doesn’t muddy the water with trying to make other personal changes at the same time. They are focused. 

On a personal level, possibility, I believe, is at the deepest core of who we are. I think it is there for everyone but we have to be open to acknowledge it. Sometimes it is almost beaten out of us as we grow up. “You’ll never amount to anything.” “Face it. You’re a loser.” “I always mess things up.”  “This economy is too messed up, and that business idea will never work.” If we eliminate possibility we kill our spirit.

To make possibility come alive we have to notice and nurture our strengths. If all we notice is our shortcomings that’s all we notice! There’s obviously nothing wrong with improving areas that need improving, but we have to acknowledge our strengths. These strengths can run the gamut from good with numbers to being kind. I’m not talking sainthood. I’m talking strengths. If people like many of the recovering people I worked with can find that possibility of discovering their strengths when those strengths seem to be well out of sight, any of us can do it. 

Again I don’t care where your strength and your insight comes from. If you call it God, great. The Universe, great. A powerful psychological streak, great. Just find it. And don’t tell me it’s not possible.

Courage

I travel around the country doing talks on stress and motivation. There are a lot of people doing that. I don't think however that most speakers and writers talk about courage when they talk about stress and change. It takes courage to be a person who sees his or her power and accepts responsibility for his or her life. It takes courage to say, "I define my life." On a more day to day level, it takes courage to resist the efforts of so many others to pull you into their thinking pattern. If you don't think so, the next time people at your lunch table are whining and complaining, you be the one to say, "Hey, let's not be negative. Let's be positive," and watch your friends turn on you like sharks at a feeding frenzy.

If you begin to think you have to make some changes in your life, even small ones, make sure you understand that a great deal of courage will be needed, not just to make the changes, but to deal with your friends during the change process. Don't expect a lot of your friends to say, "Oh, you're trying to better yourself. Very good. We're so proud." In fact, I'll bet a bunch of you reading this have had the experience of trying to better yourself, maybe by changing careers or quitting smoking or getting your life together after going through a divorce. And as you were struggling to deal with that situation someone said to you, "I liked you better the old way."

Many people get frightened when they see someone actually being an active person in their own life, a multidimensional person and not a cardboard cutout. They also get frightened when someone else is actually trying to do something to change their bad situations. Do you think that if five alcoholics were sitting around a table drinking and one of them said, "You know, I'm starting to think this drinking is affecting my life in a bad way," that the other four would respond, "Geez. Good point. Let's catch an AA meeting tonight." Yeah, right. Instead they would probably say, "Shut up and have another drink. It'll pass." In other words don't be surprised that all the resistance to change is not coming just from you but that a lot might be coming from your friends.

Please, no shortcuts to understanding

One of the most inappropriate comments that is made, usually with all good intentions, is the statement, "I know how you feel." Somehow we think that if we have gone through a similar or even identical experience as someone else we know how they feel. So if you have cancer and I have or had cancer I can immediately say that I know how you feel. The cancer becomes a shortcut. You lost your job and I did too - " I know how you feel." 

When I worked in a hospital we would have volunteers come in who had experienced breast cancer and were there to help breast cancer patients. One of the first things I would tell them is to not say that they knew how someone felt. Not only is that not automatically true I would tell them, the saying of that statement often times actually minimizes what the other person is experiencing and blocks developing a relationship where you might actually have some idea of what is going on with that person. I would tell them the only thing they "knew" for sure is how they felt when they went through it. They could share what they felt and what they did as they went through it but if they wanted to know what the other person was feeling they were going to have to listen.

We need to be listened to and we need to listen to others and get away from always fixing them. How many times have you shared a story of something you were going through and the person you were sharing it with  immediately shared a story of an aunt or friend who went through it or something they went through that was similar. They're not listening to you anymore. It happens all the time.

The important statement and one which is actually demonstrated much better than spoken is, "I don't KNOW how you feel, but I CARE how you feel." Relationships take time. Don't use an event as a shortcut. Be willing to listen. Don't assume the other person is in the same place you were when you went through it. 

The other side of this coin is that this means you don't have to have gone through the exact same experience to be able to be of help to a person. Some people do that to themselves. "You can't help me unless you've gone through the same experience." If somebody does that, it's them blocking the development of the relationship not you. And don't do that to yourself. "I can't help her because I never lost a child."  I have helped people who were dying, or who had lost a child, or who were dealing with an illness I never had. We help each other by caring. . . caring enough to listen, to support, and even to challenge sometimes. The actual building of the relationship helps much more than some great insight or magic bullet. Take the time. Don't assume and don't rule yourself out as a helper. 

The line I would often use in the hospital with patients was, "I can't feel what you're feeling but I care what you're feeling and I'll get on the road with you as best as I can." Maybe we'll laugh, maybe we'll cry and maybe we'll get lost on this road but we will be together. And if I"m holding your hand, your holding mine. So we're helping each other." I've always liked that image of being on the road with each other. We earn it though by taking the time and listening.

 

 

 

 

 

The Power Of Hope

If there is one bad habit that we have with our language (we really have many) it is that we tend to trivialize words or phrases so that they lose the original power that they had. The word love is a great example. It has gone from "God is love" to "Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name." "Stress" has gone from a word describing a physiological reaction in the body to a ubiquitous phenomenon - "you stress me out," "I'm under a lot of stress," "this is a stressful job," etc. The word hope has turned into a poor substitute for "wishing." "I hope I win the lotto" is a typical use of the word and more importantly a typical representation of how our thinking has degenerated into wanting outside events to determine our happiness. 

I think the real meaning of hope is much more complicated than just wishing for an outcome. In fact I probably will fumble at saying what I think hope is because it is deep, complex, and at its most profound it reflects a belief in ourselves, in life, and in our relationship to life. People who rise above seeing hope at the basic level of wishing for a favorable outcome, move to a sense that whatever is being experienced now does not have to stay that way. Obviously most people in very bad situations would like the situations to end no doubt, but the hope I write of reflects a sense that the outcome of the situation is not the decider of their spirit. Their engagement with life and the events they are facing as well as their belief in themselves and for many, though not all, their belief in some type of higher power become part of the mix of hope. There is a belief for those people who take hope at its highest level that they have the key for abiding all that is happening inside of themselves. Victor Frankl talked about it from his experiences in a concentration camp. James Stockdale talked about it from his experiences as a prisoner in Vietnam. Abraham Lincoln alluded to it during his experiences in the Civil War. 

Hope reflects belief. Not the belief that faith reflects but a different type. Hope believes in the better, in the higher, in the possibilities. Hope rejects cynicism. People with this higher level of hope believe that though events might not work out they will not be defeated. "You might kill me, but you will not defeat me." Frankl and Stockdale both thought that not only would they survive their terrible situations, they would grow from them. They were in fact growing from them while they were there. 

Explore what hope means to you both on a personal level with your own personal situations and on a bigger level. Think about it. What does hope mean to you? What is your role in the process?

The Generic Rut and The Conscious Coma

What really hurts us in this trek we call life is that we get numb to it. We start developing routines, which in and of itself isn't bad. But then what happens is that the routines turn into ruts and as I read once, the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth. We just keep digging until it's official. We're dead. I know a lot of dead people who are still walking around waiting for the coroner's report.

Now when I say this in my presentations a lot of people start going, "Not me. I don't have any ruts." Right. Denial is a wonderful thing. I worked in substance abuse for a long time. I know how powerful denial can be even when the facts are hitting you in the face.

Let me give you what I call my generic ruts. In other words, a lot of you have a variety of schedules and lifestyles and therefore have different ruts. If I try to get to specific you will say that that's not what you do. So here is a generic approach. If these examples don't fit your specific lifestyle just plug in your own. Be honest and look at your own life.

Here we go. Let's pretend it's the middle of the work week. You get up about the same time you did the day before. You probably get out of the same side of the bed. Maybe you go into the bathroom. You take care of business pretty much in the same order you did the day before. When you're done in the bathroom you come out and get dressed pretty much in the same order you got dressed the day before. . . probably in the same spot you got dressed the day before. Then if you have young kids, you get them going pretty much in the same order you did the day before. If you have fights in the morning they're pretty much with the same people, about the same things as you did the day before. Then maybe you go down into the kitchen and have a little coffee or maybe a little oatmeal or eggs. You have it in the same place you did the day before. Then when you're done you put your plates in the sink or the dishwasher and then you go to your car which is parked pretty much in the same place it was parked the day before. Then you drive to work. . . pretty much in the same way you drove the day before. Then when you get to work you park pretty much in the same place you parked the day before. . . unless some jerk took your spot. Then you're a basket case. After parking at work you walk in and say high to the same three and a half people you said high to the day before. And if you're really good at this you don't really wake up for about three hours. Oh, you're working. But you're not really awake. 

I said this once to a group and a guy said, "Hey, I have been awake at that time of day. It's not that great." It was almost like he thought I was trying to sell him morning and he wasn't buying. My point is that when big chunks of your day disappears, your life disappears. How many times have you heard someone say, "I can't believe I'm (put in the number) forty." "Where has the time gone?" I'm saying that you missed it. Just remember time really flies when you're in a coma. And that's what a lot of us are in - a coma. A conscious coma but a coma nevertheless. 

I'm not saying that if you drive to work tomorrow in a new way that you'll be happy forever. You'll probably get lost. But at least you'll be in a new neighborhood. And maybe we need to get lost once in a while just to remind ourselves that we know how to find our way home again.

Don't Die With Your Song Still In You

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Finding the "little" things to keep you going

When you are struggling with a serious illness or injury and cannot do the things you have been used to doing, you can either stay stuck mentally and emotionally in that situation, or you can find other "little" things that keep your life meaningful and moving forward. There is no getting around the fact that the situation you are in is very sad, and/or frustrating, and/or frightening. People who say glibly - thinking they are making everything better, "Oh, it'll be OK." just don't get it. It takes more than just a feel good statement to make things better. If you want to, you can make a great case for being miserable. In fact, that's the crux of this article. You have choices to make. There are things that have happened to you that you didn't ask for. But here they are. 

The choices you make now will go much farther toward determining your future than the events you have experienced. When I say to notice the "little" things, I deliberately put little in quotation marks because that is such a relative term. I mean it as something you might have overlooked earlier before the sickness or injury happened. You might start to see that these “little” things aren't so little after all. Some of those things might be smells that trigger wonderful, comforting thoughts and memories. These "little" things might consist of things like noticing the way the sun comes through the tree in front of your house or how nice it is to really listen to some music and give it your attention. Take five minutes at the end of your day and ask yourself how many new things you noticed today. How many new things did you try. Even if you are bedridden you can try out new things, even in your head if necessary. Allow yourself to experience awe instead of resentment. Keep people around you that touch your heart.You will determine if these "little" things become powerful, positive "big" things or whether they fall into the category of "Who cares? My life is screwed." 

Notice the little things and then embrace them. They won't be little anymore.

Persistence is a friend of mine

Persistence (is a friend of mine)

(click on title to see video)

Most people become discouraged from time to time. Sometimes that discouragement can be crippling. When that happens, when we seem to be failing or when things seem to be going against us we need more than a slogan or a platitude. We need a friend. We need someone who reminds us that we can succeed and that we have what it takes. My point in the song is that persistence itself can be a friend.

Obviously a real “flesh and bone” friend would be a real advantage but sometimes we don’t feel that we have one or that our friends are the people letting us down or that we don’t want to bother them. Now obviously not asking for help when we need it is a strategy that has a lot of problems. However when a person has been burned in the past, maybe they asked for help and got rejected, it can be tough to go back to that well. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t reach out again. I am saying that at least having that ongoing friend, persistence, that is really working from the inside out and that won’t reject us, can get us over a hump or get us through a tough stretch. This persistence is more than just a stick-to-it-iveness. It is ultimately our belief in ourselves. Persistence is more than just being stubborn. Persistence becomes a strength and type of wisdom. It is our guide.

When used wisely, persistence helps us discern the difference between futilely continuing on a path that isn’t working and understanding what might be the problem. Persistence is about the small mid-course corrections that might be needed as well as just “keeping on keeping on.” Persistence becomes that small voice that also reminds us that the day is getting short and that we need to find the right trail and get on it. It reminds us when we start to beat up ourselves or when we want to blame others for stopping us that that type of thinking will not help us reach our goal. Most people have heard that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Persistence, this friend of ours, helps us avoid that trap. It encourages us to make the changes we need to make so that our journey is a successful one. 

From the strength perspective, persistence is like a muscle. The less we use it the weaker it gets. The more we use it the better developed it gets. All of us, kids and adults, need to have little projects where we might not be totally excited about the project or where it might be difficult but we continue on it until it is done. A few success stories, and by success I don’t necessarily mean winning but rather just finishing or completing something helps us see that persistence is an important muscle. We do feel stronger physically, emotionally and spiritually when we know we hung in there. We took part. We committed to the task. In many ways persistence is a self-worth muscle. When we finish something that was difficult to do, or when we overcome something that was knocking us down we feel good about ourselves. We tap into something deep inside of ourselves. We feel more self-reliant and yet we can ask for help because persistence reminds us that asking for help can be just one more strategy for getting the job done.