Working Through Personal Hardship

12/07/19 • 7 min

Once you reach your 40s, or possibly even earlier, you’re likely to have experienced a profound personal hardship, which you had to navigate through while keeping your job. Whether it’s the death of a loved one, a divorce, a life-threatening disease, a significant injury or something else, personal hardship takes its toll on us all at one point or another.

Here are some tips to care for yourself and others when these twists and turns of life occur:

Check In with Yourself – The Emotion Wheel is a helpful tool to get you in touch with how you’re feeling. Give yourself the gift of being honest when others ask you how you are. When my father passed away and people asked how I was I’d say “really sad” or whatever was true. Then I’d notice people would either try to talk me into feeling better (Don’t do this! Let a person feel what they feel.), or they’d change the topic, or they’d meet me where I was with compassion and kindness. The latter always felt best. When you’re going through a hardship your job is to feel and process it, not to fake it to make others feel better. That approach will only suppress the grief and lengthen the healing process.
Ask For Help – Yes, many of us have been taught that this is a sign of weakness (as is vulnerability), but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. People want to help. It feels good. And when they are asked for help, it lights up the reward center in their brain and is deeply fulfilling to them [I suggest you look into the work of Naomi Eisenberger of UCLA if this interests you.]. Asking for help is actually generous to others, as well as to yourself. Saying you can’t do something honors your Organismic Rights to Exist and to Have Needs. It took me a while to let myself reach out to others, and it amazed me how eager they were to help, and how deeply satisfying it was for them.
Pad Your Schedule – When you’re in the middle of a personal crisis or profound hardship, you’re not fully present. You can’t be. Part of you is processing the trauma, grief, shock of the experience. And based on the degree of intensity, the part of you that’s temporarily “away” can be a huge part. When my stepson died it was a world-jarring shock—one day he was fine, then boom! The next morning he was gone. A large part of me was pre-occupied with deep grieving for many months. So I worked less, and set deadlines with 2-3x the wiggle room I normally allocated.
Get Into Nature – There’s nothing like nature to be life-affirming, especially when we need to remember beauty, grace and the peace of stillness. Even a 30 minute quiet walk in the trees or a park can bring one peace. Ideally you’ll be surrounded by quiet and forest, yet do what you can.
Meditate – Learning to cultivate internal peace and quiet provides you with a sanctuary you can always retreat to. Even a mere 5 minutes a day starts to train your mind that it’s not in charge—your higher self, which witnesses the constant barrage of your thoughts, is actually in charge.
Watch Movies That Help You Feel – You may need to laugh and lighten up, you may need to cry and let it all out. An executive coaching client of mine once told me he didn’t cry, it just wasn’t something he did. Then a personal hardship occurred in his life and he needed to cry, he needed the release. But he wouldn’t let himself. Then the suppressed sorrow became anger. I urged him to watch one of a variety of movies that would help him cry. Finally he agreed to, and he cried for several hours. He finally let it all out. And he’s been a different, gentler, kinder, more connected person since.
Honor The Process – Healing from a personal hardship will take different amounts of time for different people. Honor your and their process, without setting expectations and deadlines (hey! Aren’t you done grieving yet? = not cool!). The seasons take time, so does healing. Chill. Enjoy the process, let it unfold, gather the wisdom from it, as later you’ll look back on it as a transformative time.

The Net-Net

Sooner or later we all have to navigate our wor...

Here are some tips to care for yourself and others when these twists and turns of life occur:

Check In with Yourself – The Emotion Wheel is a helpful tool to get you in touch with how you’re feeling. Give yourself the gift of being honest when others ask you how you are. When my father passed away and people asked how I was I’d say “really sad” or whatever was true. Then I’d notice people would either try to talk me into feeling better (Don’t do this! Let a person feel what they feel.), or they’d change the topic, or they’d meet me where I was with compassion and kindness. The latter always felt best. When you’re going through a hardship your job is to feel and process it, not to fake it to make others feel better. That approach will only suppress the grief and lengthen the healing process.
Ask For Help – Yes, many of us have been taught that this is a sign of weakness (as is vulnerability), but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. People want to help. It feels good. And when they are asked for help, it lights up the reward center in their brain and is deeply fulfilling to them [I suggest you look into the work of Naomi Eisenberger of UCLA if this interests you.]. Asking for help is actually generous to others, as well as to yourself. Saying you can’t do something honors your Organismic Rights to Exist and to Have Needs. It took me a while to let myself reach out to others, and it amazed me how eager they were to help, and how deeply satisfying it was for them.
Pad Your Schedule – When you’re in the middle of a personal crisis or profound hardship, you’re not fully present. You can’t be. Part of you is processing the trauma, grief, shock of the experience. And based on the degree of intensity, the part of you that’s temporarily “away” can be a huge part. When my stepson died it was a world-jarring shock—one day he was fine, then boom! The next morning he was gone. A large part of me was pre-occupied with deep grieving for many months. So I worked less, and set deadlines with 2-3x the wiggle room I normally allocated.
Get Into Nature – There’s nothing like nature to be life-affirming, especially when we need to remember beauty, grace and the peace of stillness. Even a 30 minute quiet walk in the trees or a park can bring one peace. Ideally you’ll be surrounded by quiet and forest, yet do what you can.
Meditate – Learning to cultivate internal peace and quiet provides you with a sanctuary you can always retreat to. Even a mere 5 minutes a day starts to train your mind that it’s not in charge—your higher self, which witnesses the constant barrage of your thoughts, is actually in charge.
Watch Movies That Help You Feel – You may need to laugh and lighten up, you may need to cry and let it all out. An executive coaching client of mine once told me he didn’t cry, it just wasn’t something he did. Then a personal hardship occurred in his life and he needed to cry, he needed the release. But he wouldn’t let himself. Then the suppressed sorrow became anger. I urged him to watch one of a variety of movies that would help him cry. Finally he agreed to, and he cried for several hours. He finally let it all out. And he’s been a different, gentler, kinder, more connected person since.
Honor The Process – Healing from a personal hardship will take different amounts of time for different people. Honor your and their process, without setting expectations and deadlines (hey! Aren’t you done grieving yet? = not cool!). The seasons take time, so does healing. Chill. Enjoy the process, let it unfold, gather the wisdom from it, as later you’ll look back on it as a transformative time.

The Net-Net

Sooner or later we all have to navigate our wor...

Previous Episode

Combining Leadership & Gratitude

It is extremely powerful to combine leadership and gratitude.

For starters, gratitude helps you feel generally better. Choosing to recognize and acknowledge all the good things in life (which is what gratitude practices help you do), creates a more positive outlook. In addition, when you establish a true gratitude practice you're able to anchor that feeling of gratefulness and positivity into your body.

This anchoring creates an emotional reserve you'll be able to call on later.

Another gratitude superpower is that it gives you the edge you need to be able to pivot quickly, especially in times of stress or conflict.

By pausing and implementing a gratitude practice, you give your mind and body a chance to recalibrate. This will help you realign and refocus. It also helps you find hidden opportunities to be grateful. So, rather than only thinking of gratitude during holidays, we can use the entire year to store up a reserve of gratitude! And as you'll see below, just a little bit of gratitude can go a long way.

My executive coaching clients have found that the gratitude practice I teach is really practical and beneficial.

Close your eyes.

Focus on a blessing in your life - something you're thankful for.

See an image of this blessing in your mind's eye.

Offer a silent thank-you to the person or object of your blessing.

Relax into the feeling of gratitude.

Take a deep breath, and feel more gratitude. (Think of turning the volume up.)

The latest research shows that 6 doses of feeling 30 seconds of gratitude daily actually enables your neurons to fire together and wire together around gratitude in as little as two weeks! This means that practicing gratitude (and naturally having a more grateful mindset) will become more natural and be achieved more easily.

When I first learned, I started doing it. Now, I wake up each morning and automatically and easily think "thank you". It's right there, because I've grown my own personal practice of gratitude. This practice reinforced gratitude as second nature, and also increases myelination. (Grab the handy infographic here: https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/myelination-practice/)

All of these results, in under 3 minutes a day! That's an ROI that's hard to argue with.

If you want to learn more about cultivating an attitude of gratitude, check out the annual retreat, Beyond Your Brain at https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/stiretreat/.

Resources Mentioned:

Beyond Your Brain Retreat: https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/stiretreat/
Myelination: https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/myelination-practice/
Contact Christine: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/contact/

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· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

https://smarttribesinstitute.com/strategy-session/

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Next Episode

Why Leaders Need to Stop Their Thoughts

Humans have one hundred billion available neurons...yet only 15% are activated, according to Heart Math Institute. Why? Because we tend to focus so heavily outside of ourselves.

Today, I'd like to talk more about what mindfulness is, and how we might use it.

Last week, I mentioned how there was an 8 week study done that showed how meditation can start actually regenerating gray matter in the brain. We can increase our brain and cell function when we meditate. That impacts our ability to envision, plan, and remember. We can also decreases our tendency to have "monkey mind", a wandering brain that is just meandering from thought to thought for no purpose.

Dr. Wayne Deyer shares that we have about 60,000 thoughts per day, and about 90% of those are repetitive. What would happen if we only thought those thoughts once? Well, we'd have a huge amount of space! Space for concentration, thinking, sleeping, processing -- when we stop our thoughts, we stop the world.

After all, our thoughts come from the ego, and the ego is the voice of fear.

I believe we have repetitive thoughts because many of us haven't learned to train our brains. The good news? You CAN train your brain, and you can do it pretty darn fast. If you commit to 5 minutes a day, you'll notice a difference in 30 days or less . Let's give this exercise a try:

Sit up straight, in a chair or cross legged.

Visualize sending a thick root from the base of your spine down into the ground. This root can also come from the bottom of your tailbone and feet, into the earth. Picture the deep roots you're sending down into the ground. Envision them

Draw the energy from the earth into your body - let your stomach distend, as if you're full of earth energy. You'll want to feel it moving up your spine - the base, your pelvic area, naval area, heart, and into the chest. Hold it there until you feel a slight burn, then exhale it up through your throat, to the third eye, and then the crown. Envision it passing through the top of the head. (If you're familiar with the chakra system, you can visualize the energy moving through your chakras.)

Essentially, you're inhaling earth energy, holding it, then moving it up through the top of your head.

Once you're proficient doing that, try adding "running" energy. Now we're going to add down.

On the inhale, pull earth energy up through the top of your head. On the exhale, see white light moving down into the top of your head and through your body.

As you practice this, you'll start to notice increased levels of energy. You'll be more able to stand in the weight of your own energy. You'll have more insights, and more connection, and even a greater sense of connection with the divine. The more still you get, the more you'll find answers bubbling up from your subconscious mind.

Every great leader I know is able to stop the world by stopping their thoughts. This is one of the best ways to assess your strengths, decisions, and conflicts.

How are you stopping the world?

To learn more, visit www.beyondyourbrain.com, where you'll find information about our upcoming retreat!