5 Ways to Be Happy During Grief and Change

Note: The first part of this discusses my own recent grief and how I've dealt with it. To go to the advice, scroll down.

A year ago, Sept. 23, 2016, was the last time I saw my good friend Pat Parkinson.

We had traveled to Denver to explore a business opportunity with a growing lead generation company. We spent the day discussing the pros and cons, learning about the business, and all that.

Everything was positive. Lots of energy. And it seemed we both would soon move to Denver to make it happen and work together again. Pat was excited for the next chapter in his life, to live in a new city and do something that had a lot of potential.

Two weeks later, I got a message from his brother that he had died from a heart attack in his sleep.

I immediately left my office and drove home. I made no sound, listened to no music. Just the hum of the tires and my blank stare down the road.

I got home, walked through the garage straight to the back porch and sat. My wife came out and asked why I was home.

"Pat died," I said.

Then I bawled.

Pat and I had worked together on and off for 10 years. Most recently, we ran a marketing agency together. We went in front of clients, closed deals, and fought in the trenches to keep clients and win deals from competitors. Over that time, we laughed, fought, argued, counseled each other, discussed philosophy, politics, ethics, music, alcoholism, you name it.

No conversation was dull with him.

Then he was suddenly gone.

It's interesting how something so common and expected (we all will die) can rock our lives. It's hard to deal with that vacant part of our lives that is suddenly gone, to understand it, and to grasp the reality of our own temporary situation.

During this first, real, experience of loss, I was simultaneously dealing with my own existential, mid-life crisis. All the typical stuff like, what am I really doing? Why am I doing it? Do I really like the things I think I like? Why am I wasting time with this or that? Is this all there is? Why hasn't this happened yet? The combination sent me on a course to find out how to deal with how to manage my mind better.

I've been reading and listening to various psychologists and motivational people. Some I liked, some I didn't.

And now I think I found a peace for me, both in dealing with grief and in dealing with mid-life crisis. Most of that type of frustration and unhappiness comes from:

• Unmet expectations

• Fighting change

• Attachments

• Ego

• Not living in the now

• Waiting for that THING to happen so you can be happy

Here's how I found my own happiness again despite grief, change and unmet expectations in life. This is my own experience and it may or may not work for you. I think Pat would agree with some of this since a lot of it is taken from stoicism:

5 Ways I Think I'm Overcoming My Grief and Mid-Life Crises

1. Accept the Change that Will Happen

Change is like gravity. It will happen to us -- whether it involves our health, finances, our friendships, or the death of loved ones and family -- change will happen.

And it makes us incredibly unhappy when we fight it. It's like a skydiver fighting gravity. That skydiver will lose every time.

How we respond to change is often what makes us unhappy, frustrated, depressed or even violent. Or it is exactly what can make us happy and live a beautiful life.

When we harbor the past, fear the future and ignore the present, we don't accept change. We don't accept and love our current situation and outcome.

This approach is not about denial of the change, or struggling with the mind to overcome mourning and grief. It's a stoic attitude of acceptance, it's managing what we do with how we feel, and for me it's been the single biggest mental exercise that helps me be happy.

"In the midst of grief, there is little internal space to do anything but feel overwhelmed by the new terrain and trajectory of your life.

"Both are suddenly and irrevocably altered when someone integral to you dies. Accepting the sense of despair and loss this brings about is important. We still need to try to exercise a sense of control over what we do with those emotions.

"We not only mourn the loss of the person, but the sense we carried with us of what our future life would look like with them in it. Grief is wading uphill through a cold, viscous liquid.

"The pain is bone-deep. It is lasting and ugly but it isn’t necessarily hopeless, and as time passes small moments of distraction will feel like patches of dry land you can rest on. I would advise talking regularly with someone you trust, trying to eat and sleep well (these will both be very difficult for a while) and being kind to yourself about your feelings and impulses while, like a true Stoic, still holding yourself accountable for what you choose to do with them.”

-Laura Kennedy, Irish Times “Coping” columnist

2. Distance Ourselves From Attachments

This sounds a little extreme and non caring. But hear me out here. I'm not talking about becoming distant, unfeeling or uncaring.

In life we bob along on an open sea and set anchors to stabilize us so we don't drift away and get lost. Those anchors are the attachments in our life. Oftentimes, they are our relationships. They can also be our addictions, our health, our career, or anything we lean on for meaning and happiness.

Problem with these anchors, is, they will eventually go away, lose their grip, get rusted and break. Everything is temporary.

When those attachments go away, we don't know how to react so we fight the currents and flow of life.

We need to learn to detach from those anchors, to stop depending on the attachments in our life for survival and happiness, to let go and flow with life.

Think on what makes you happy right now.

People may answer things like:

• Family

• Friends

• Exercise

• Health

• Pizza

• Biking

• Surfing

• Video games

• Career

• Drinking

• Fishing

• Stuff like that

If your answer is anything that can go away, are you truly happy? If your answer is something that only temporarily masks your unhappiness (drugs, watching TV for hours), are your really happy?

What happens if you lose that thing or that person, or unable to be with or do that thing again? Then what? Are you still happy?

The solution is to accept the outcomes of life and love the outcomes of life despite what anchors come and go. To accept what is and to love what is. And to be appreciative of the past while loving the outcome of the present, regardless of the situation.

3. Be Mindful of The Now

One of the great gifts I recieved from Pat's death was experiencing an extremely vivid NOW.

A week after I heard the news of his death, I went with my family to a fall festival. It was night time, there was a bonfire and rides. And my 4-year-old daughter was holding my hands and swinging around me. I was paying attention to every smell, sight, and my daughter's laughter and smile. Looking back on it, I can still feel the cool fall air, the twinkle of the lights, the stars, and my daughters hair, as if in slow motion, flowing around me.

That image is stuck in my mind. I seemed to drink in the moment, realizing it was so temporary I had to remember it. My brain took a photo that captured each sense.

Pat's death brought the temporary reality of life home to me. And for a few weeks, everything was so clear and detailed. I was mindful of each sense and moment. I looked around at nature and knew that the views of the mountains, the way the sun broke through the clouds on a sunrise or sunset, that all these things in life could be gone tomorrow.

Still today, I try to spend a few moments being mindful of the present, to pay attention to everything going on in life, to listen to the sounds, feel the wind across my skin, notice how the light seems to caress objects and cast shadows. To be grateful of what I do have and try not to think of what I don't have.

The results from this for my overall happiness is significant. It always helps my mind when it wanders into mid-life existential crisis mode.

Being mindful of the now will help us, as Alan Watts said, to avoid a situation where we're "65 and look back on our life" and think: "We simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line" because we "thought of life as an analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage with a serious purpose at that end -- and the thing was to to get to that end -- success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after your dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played."

4. Understand You Are Part of Something Bigger.

Whether it's a higher power or something else you believe in, it doesn't matter. Let go of your ego and admit that there is something bigger than you out there and you are just participating in it. You are not the God of your own life. You can't control everything. You don't have that power and you are never bigger than whatever forces exist in the universe.

You are just a drop of water in the sea that's participating in the great ocean of life around us. James Altucher articulated this well below, which is part of an interview he had here.

"I have to remind myself constantly, I am just a drop of water in the ocean. And ultimately that drop of water dissolves and is absorbed by this giant ocean of life around us. And that's it. That's the summation of my life.

"It doesn't mean I shouldn't enjoy being this drop. What a pleasure it is to participate in life.

"But I'm just participating it. I'm not the ocean. And I have no influence over the waves that spin me around, or the sun that heats me, or the land all around that I could spill into.”

5. Get After It

Being mindful, doesn't always mean to just sit there and enjoy your surroundings and watch the sunset. It also means to ACT NOW and get after it.

Marcus Aurelius had these two quotes:

"Get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active on your own rescue -- if you care for yourself at all -- and do it while you can."

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."

In the few months since Pat's death, I went to fish with a friend in North Carolina, flew to Seattle to watch a Seahawks game with my brother, visited a third-world country (which I had never done) with my wife and family, focused harder on building my own business, have worked out at least 5 times a week and completely changed my diet.

I'm still working on getting after it better, but there's only one life and the only time we have is now to seize the day, to be a good person, to see friends and family, and to have experiences in life.

The ability to do these types of things can vanish in an instant. So right now, get after whatever it is you want to get after, with whatever resources you have.

But a warning: "GETTING AFTER IT" can cause unhappiness, too. Many people have aspirations for greatness, and work hard to get somewhere, like:

• Graduate from Harvard

• Become a doctor

• Be a CEO

• Write a novel

• Become a movie/music star

• Become a millionaire or billionaire

• Be an Olympian

• Get married

• Have kids

• Play in the NFL

• Whatever

When someone finally reaches that success, a natural question might be, "but are they happy?" We know that not everyone who is "successful" is also happy.

But do you ever question it the other way around? Would you ever ask someone who is completely happy with, "but are you successful?"

Obviously there is no problem with setting goals and trying to achieve them. But many people will NOT let themselves be happy until AFTER they achieve those goals.

While getting after it, make sure to stay in the moment and love the journey to get there. Don't waste your life waiting to be happy until after you've achieved your goal.

Remember to sing and dance while the music is being played. Because the song will end.

Summary

1. Accept the outcome of life. Accept that change will happen and love the current situation of life despite everything.

2. Be unattached. Don't depend on temporary things, even relationships, to be happy. Those things can go away at any moment. Practice being happy on your own as if those things did not exist.

3. Practice mindfulness. Be mindful of the right now, of everything going on in your life in the moment. Pay attention to every detail and each of your senses and current situation.

4. Let go of ego and be part of something bigger. Realize you are not in control, that you are part of something much bigger than you. You are just a drop in the ocean.

5. Get after it. This is your only life, and this right now is your only moment to live. Get busy and enjoy the journey to your goal. Just don't wait to be happy until after you achieve the goal.

#Death #Grief #Happiness