GOOD GRIEF

For those of you who are going through the loss of someone or something, you know how difficult it can be to grieve in the midst of a busy life and schedule. The truth is, most of us don’t know how to grieve. We need a structured time and process in order to let go of what was and make way for new beginnings, new relationships and new goals.

It’s tempting to want to get it over with and check it off our list, but grieving doesn’t work that way. Grief has its own timetable, different for each and every loss and it will let us know when it’s done, not the other way around. A friend and Certified Grief Coach & Counsellor advised me recently, “Be sad for as long as it takes…Don’t rush it.”

Our tendency as busy people to rush things can hinder the grieving process. Additionally, running from grief will not resolve it, but delay the healing process. When we stuff them down, our feelings are put on ice until we take time to face them, embrace them and eventually erase them by letting go and making way for the new. Your current loss could bring up other losses from the past and complicate matters, but reaching out to your support group, coach or counsellor can get you unstuck and moving forward.

As busy entrepreneurs, it’s tempting to pour ourselves into our work, but we may find we’re not achieving the success we hoped for as a result. It’s been said that 99% of business problems are personal problems. So, when we avoid the grieving process, we delay not only the healing but the new beginning that awaits us on the other side. Dealing with it brings us to new places we may never have had opportunity to go otherwise, and that’s when a bad situation turns into what we might one day look back and consider “good grief.”