Micro-compliance with your own goals

My absolute favorite book discovery this month is Reimagining Grief by Kate Doerge with Sara Bliss.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know when I first faced loss: grief will always be hard, but you choose how you move through it. You can take actions that will help you heal. The people you loved and continue to love, even after they are gone, will always be alongside you in some way, and that is vast and difficult at the same time. I often notice in myself and in my friends, when they are going through something, that life feels stuck in a way that is nonlinear to pain.

When you have been through the darkest times, it can make you come out on the other side stronger, more alive, and in a brighter space. You have a deeper appreciation for life and how precious it can be. But it can also completely destroy a person. I recently met an athlete who told me that after the glimpse of seeing his own death so close in a race accident, how fragile that line is and that it makes you humble. I could never imagine someone so strong and disciplined saying that we are all replaceable, no matter how important we feel in someone else’s life.

I think when you’re worshipping or living by other people’s expectations for a long time, you start forgetting to allow yourself joy. When you move through your life as your biggest cheerleader, every experience deepens your understanding of who you are, and it teaches you how to navigate pain and challenges.

I think the biggest problem is when people don’t know who they are, because then there will always be someone who tells you. What keeps us from taking risks and getting to know ourselves is holding back with shame, guilt, and self-judgment. It is a form of self-indulgence and self-neglect—that you generally need to create the perfect environment around you, your status, or your achievements to make you feel trustworthy, free to speak your mind, ask for help, be vulnerable, or live in peace. It is an exhausting reality to live in.

The best way of reading these patterns is observing what a person is trying to convey and show. People are always wearing masks to hide insecurity, shame, or guilt. The behavior shows it immediately, and I learned so much about it through communication.

I have unlimited self-forgiveness. I want to be so self-forgiving that it seems delusional. I live by a worldview that things are generally going to work out, and I am not afraid to give and transfer that confidence in communication. It’s the first rule.

After being in the hospital for a long time and dealing with chronic and disabling pain, I realized that you cannot make a change by continuing to live your old life with your old self and thinking in the past.

After loss, we often find ourselves thinking not just about what’s gone, but what was left unsaid or undone. Grief brings questions to the surface: Am I spending my time well? If it all ended tomorrow, would I feel good about the choices I made? Am I doing what I really want to do? What can I do differently? Yet you must shine your light to honor your own life. You are alive, and you have a lot of living to do.

No one wants the catalyst for change to be loss or illness or tragedy. But the reality is that those things do make you reevaluate, and it happens at any life stage. Whether you are aware of it or not, your energy, words, and positive actions can ignite a spark of change.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder vs. Post-Traumatic Growth

Most people have heard of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, but post-traumatic growth is less well known, even though it is the more common of the two, according to numerous studies. PTSD is a mental health condition that can develop after a person experiences a traumatic event—especially in cases of violent loss, such as an accident, natural disaster, suicide, or homicide. Symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression, and insomnia can lead to emotional and physical stress that disrupt daily life and make it difficult to function.

The term post-traumatic growth originated in 1996, conceived by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Tedeschi and Calhoun studied over 600 people who had experienced a range of traumas, including the terminal illness of a loved one, sexual assault, and tragic accidents. What they discovered was that trauma changed people—not in the negative ways they had anticipated—but also in positive ways that lasted long after their suffering.

Tedeschi and Calhoun had expected to find that trauma would have lasting negative implications, but their results showed that staying in that state for the long term was only one possible outcome—and it was actually the least likely one. Incredibly, 89 percent of their subjects reported experiencing at least one form of post-traumatic growth. In their study, Tedeschi and Calhoun found five main areas of growth: a greater appreciation for life, deeper and more meaningful relationships, a stronger sense of personal strength, new possibilities or life paths, and, for many, a renewed or transformed spiritual perspective. While no one felt that the initial trauma was a good thing, they did report that they came out of it with a new focus on their lives and what was important to them.

This doesn’t diminish what people with post-traumatic stress disorder experience after loss. However, the fact that even those who experience the most intense grief eventually face the reality that there is no deeper loss or turning back than to take a leap of faith and make decisions that will expand your life experience, fill it with beautiful and joyful moments, broaden your worldview, and make you a stronger version of yourself than ever.