How to take bigger strides in your healing

In my conversations with hundreds of widowed people each year, I’ve observed key habits that either facilitate or stall healing. While there are many, I’ve summarized what I think are the most important.

If you would like to be taking a more efficient path to healing, here are 3 things to stop doing, and 3 things to start doing, starting today.

1) Stop questioning whether you’re grieving “wrong.”

If your grief ever makes you wonder whether you are crazy, rest assured, you are not. You are grieving, and that’s a messy process. Comparing yourself to others mostly leads to despair. And attempting to conform to societal myths about grief leads to more suffering piled on top of the pain. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re simply doing it your way, on your timeline.

2) Stop devaluing your worth

If your brain offers you thoughts that sound like, “I don’t deserve to be happy,” or “For me, this is as good as it gets,” or “I’m just not good enough,” then it may be time to focus on your self-worth.

It’s common to outsource one’s value to a spouse. If he thinks you’re valuable and worthy, then you can lean on his belief.

Life after loss is a process of learning to create for ourselves that which we formerly outsourced to our spouse. Nothing is more important than self-worth. We don’t ever look at a baby and doubt their value or worth. Why do we devalue our own?

3) Stop judging yourself and your actions.

If you believe that you are your own worst enemy, there is very likely a lot of judgement happening in your brain. It also sounds like, “I just can’t get motivated,” or “I used to be confident, decisive, and a contributing member of society.”

What if you are just grieving? What if grief is exactly this hard? What if life after loss is so difficult that it takes up almost all your bandwidth, and is so demanding of your time and attention that there’s little room for anything else? And that is perfectly okay.

1) Start observing your thoughts objectively

Brains offer thoughts. It’s what they do. Ask yourself, “what is my brain offering me today?” and write down the thoughts word for word, without judgement.

2) Start thinking about what you think about.

Decide which thoughts are not true. Decipher which thoughts seem true but are not useful. Circle only the thoughts that are both true and useful. In other words, decide which thoughts you want to keep and which you want to delete.

3) Start thinking true thoughts, on purpose.

Think true and useful thoughts, on purpose, regularly. And here is an added bonus: thoughts create feelings, so any time you are thinking true and useful thoughts, you get to feel differently. You get a break from the heartache. You deserve that.

If you want to take bigger strides forward, and you don’t want to go it alone, I’d love to walk alongside you. My coaching program is exclusively for widowed people. It’s the perfect mix of private coaching, group coaching and 24/7 access to the most life changing tools. Simply click here and we’ll see if it’s a fit.