I’ve been reflecting this week on what I want to create this year and what it’s going to take.
I don’t mean what are the particular steps I need to take. I mean the focus and attention and effort I need to put in. The step away from distraction and procrastination, and towards what I want instead. The dedication and the self-discipline.
I’m not big on new year’s resolutions. To be honest I think they’re a huge waste of time mostly. I call them new year’s false illusions, because it’s the idea that suddenly, just because of a date on the calendar, something will become more important to you and you’ll magically be able to do it. It’s the reason why so very many people buy gym memberships just after New Year’s….and by about February why so very many of those have quit already. Because it takes more than just turning the page on a calendar to change things.
As I was thinking about this, I was thinking about how this applies to pretty much anything. Yes, there are people for whom certain parts of life seem to flow. People for whom friendships come easy, or relationships come easy, or work or money seem to come easy. But for the most part, for the things we want to change, we need to focus our attention and our intention towards them.
And healing from grief is absolutely no different.
You know what? Maybe there are people out there who have just healed with the passage of time. And I mean truly healed here… not what people call “healing“ where actually they’re still in pain, it’s just not as acute, they’ve gotten used to it, and it doesn’t come up as often (that ain’t healing). I’m talking proper healing, where it doesn’t hurt anymore at all. Where there is just love. Those people may well exist… but it’s worth mentioning that I’ve never met one yet. Outside of the clients I’ve worked with myself, I have met a handful of people who have truly healed their grief – the ones who tell me they have and I can feel that they have. And not one of them did it just with the passing of time.
There’s something about the psychological troubles like depression, anxiety or grief. All can be healed, though many don’t believe it. But often we imagine it wouldn’t take the same kind of effort as other things.
How many times during my depressed years did I tell myself “that’s it. That is it! I’m gonna pull my socks up and from tomorrow I am NOT going to let myself feel like this anymore”? And yet….tomorrow rolled around and guess what? Same old depression.
People sometimes do the same with grief. They can decide that they’re going to feel better and that they want to live better… and yet a day later, a week later, or a month later they realise nothing has changed. And they’ll use this for justification to prove that grief can’t be healed.
The best, most practical example often to look at is something like weight loss or fitness. Many times it takes a conscious decision – a line in the sand when you decide you’re going to do something different. But that line in the sand doesn’t change anything without you taking some different action next. It’s not enough to say “I want this to change. I say it will change…and now it is SO!” You can’t say you want to lose a bunch of weight and you’ve decided and that’s it, this is going to happen… and lo and behold you wake up the next morning 50 kgs lighter. No, you decide… and then you have to take action towards it.
Sometimes we forget this with things like depression or anxiety, and certainly with grief and the possibility of healing. You can get there, but you have to want to and you have to be willing to do something about it.
If this is you and you really are ready to make a change and you really do want to heal your grief, get in touch with me to have a chat about how I can help you do just this.
Kristie
Xx
