Let’s talk about Grief!

Losing someone or something you love or care about is very painful. You may be experiencing different kind of emotions. May be you feel sad, worried, scared, shocked or confused! You might feel angry, exhausted, or unpredictable. Your emotions mixed together something that you have never experienced before. Like, lack of concentration, studying, sleeping or eating. All of these feelings and reactions are OK-- but what can people do to get through them? How long grief does last? When will things get back to normal?

Grief is a natural response to loss. It’s the emotional suffering you feel when something or someone you love is taken away. How you grieve depends on many factors, including your personality and coping style, your life experience, your faith, and the nature of the loss. The grieving process takes time and healing usually happens gradually. Some people start to feel better in weeks or months. For others, the grieving process is measured in years. Whatever your grief experience, it’s important to be patient with yourself.

There are five stages of grief:

• Denial: “This can’t be happening to me.”
• Anger: “Why is this happening? Who is to blame?”
• Bargaining: “Make this not happen, and in return I will ____.”
• Depression: “I’m too sad to do anything.”
• Acceptance: “I’m at peace with what happened.”

With time, the loving support of family and friends, and your own positive actions, you can find ways to cope with even the deepest loss. Any loss can cause grief, including:

• Death of our love ones
• A relationship breakup
• Loss of health
• Losing a job
• Loss of financial stability
• A miscarriage
• Loss of a cherished dream
• A loved one’s serious illness
• Loss of a friendship
• Retirement
• Moving away from home
• Selling your family home
• Death of a pet

Coping with grief:

Here are some suggestions which might be helpful for you to bounce back from this critical situation.

1.     Believe in God and follow your religious traditions.

2.     Believe in yourself, surround yourself with love and love yourself no matter what situation occurs

3.     The most important factor in healing from loss is having the support of other people. Connecting to others will help you heal. Sharing your loss makes the burden of grief easier to carry.

4.     Avoid talking to the wrong people about your situation. Some people may give you bad advice or could even make the situation worse.

5.     The mind and body are connected. When you feel good physically, you’ll also feel better emotionally. Looking after your physical and emotional needs will help you get through this difficult time.

6.     Write about your loss in a journal, write a letter or poetry or make a scrapbook or a photo album. Write down all the feelings that are in your head, especially before going to bed, as this may help you to sleep better.

7.     Fight with your stress and fatigue by getting enough sleep, eating right, and exercising.

8.     Cry when you need to cry. Let the emotions pass through you like a current and move on. Crying is a normal response to sadness it doesn’t mean that you are weak.

9.     Go for a long walk, take deep breaths, listen to your favorite music or watch a good movie.

"You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair". -- Old Chinese Proverb

Believe in yourself

We have to accept that we cannot change the past, so don’t live in past. Affirm to yourself, “I accept and release the negative past and I am prepared to move forward”. Everyone fails to achieve some goal, but if you learn from the failure, you will be more likely to succeed in the future. Believing in yourself is the first step to success. When you do this, you will get positive feedback and respect from others. Just think! If you don’t believe in yourself how can you expect anyone to believe in you. It’s time for you to live your life for fullest without any regret.


I want you to find out a way to release your anger and stress. I want you to start something new. You born because God has given you a reason to live. All what you have to stand for is strong believe in God and pray to Him. Life could be hard but He has the power to make it easy. Believe in yourself even if nobody else believes in you. I am here to encourage you and cheer you. Sometime you really feel like there is nothing you can do and it leads you to lose your identity. Believe in yourself and don’t lose your hope even for a single minute. We need to remember that life is for living and our ultimate aim is to experience joy and happiness and when you believe in yourself life becomes much, much easier.


If you don't believe in yourself you will end up discarding your ideas and no one will remember you. On the other hand, if you believe in yourself and continued fighting for what you want then people may reject your ideas in the beginning but they will be forced to believe in you in the end after seeing your success


Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve - Mary Kay Ash


Here I also want you to give some tips which help you to believe in yourself:

1.     Believe in God

2.     Love yourself

3.     Be confident and believe that you will achieve your goal.

4.     Keep a check on your weaknesses and work on them.

5.     Celebrate your successes and always congratulate yourself

6.     Be in a positive environment, this is a nice way to bring out ideas about how to accomplish your goal.

7.     Prioritize your self-esteem

8.     Never give up, remember, any effort to improve yourself, in order to accomplish your tasks, will not be a waste of time.

9.   Concentrate on the areas where you have proved your capability.

10. Everyone fails to achieve some goal, but if you learn from the failure, you will be more likely to succeed in the future.

11. Give your time and energy to others. When you do this, you will get positive feedback and respect from others which is essential to believing in yourself.

12.  Listen to critics, some critical advice may help you to improve yourself.

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe - Gail Devers

And they live happily ever after …

Marriage is a lifelong commitment! A good wife or a husband should be honest, loyal and dedicated to each other. Good relationship between partners requires love, care, trust, understanding, tolerance, praises and appreciation. Above all make the best of your time together.

B. R. Ambedkar once said, “The relationship between husband and wife should be one of closest friends”.

Daily life can be happier as it’s a matter of choice. It is our attitude that makes us feel happy or unhappy. 

Here are a few simple tips to keep your spouse happy.

1     Understanding: This relationship expects each other’s support and understanding especially in times of troubles. To be happy it is necessary to understand each other a lot. This is a basic element to live happy and healthy life with a strong relationship. 

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding, Albert Einstein

           Love and Respect: In order to grow a healthy relationship, take the initiative to show love and respect. Greet each other with smile and be courteous to your spouse, use phrases such as please, thank you, if you don’t mind …., etc. It will make your spouse feel appreciated and respected.

"I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me." - Richard Bach

   

     Trust:  A relationship with no trust is like a car without fuel, you can stay in it but you can’t go anywhere. Trust is probably the most important ingredient in building an intimate relationship between husband and wife.

  

      Communication : Communicate with each other because it is the key to a good and solid relationship. That means you are able to share things about yourself and your feelings. It also means that you also listen to what the other person would like to share. Find time to sit and talk with each other on a daily basis even if it is for only half an hour or less.

"Communication is the solvent of all problems and is the foundation for personal development." - Peter Shepherd

        Tolerance: Tolerance is another key for a strong relationship. Love and tolerance turns a man into a human being. Be able to resolve conflicts smoothly and don't argue with each other. Couples who start fights with name-calling or personal criticisms come out of control and have unhappy relationship.

“There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.”-  Bryant H. McGill

        Make your spouse feel most important person: Women love to feel that they are the most important in their man's life. Make small sacrifices for her and she will love you unconditionally. Men crave for attention but never talk about it openly. Try to understand his needs from his mood and expression. This might be hard in the beginning but the more you spend time with him and make an effort to understand him, the more you will learn about his needs.

"The happiness of life is made up of the little charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment." —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A husband is responsible for the protection and happiness of his wife. He should be kind, understanding and forgiving, and must treat his wife in a tender and loving manner. And a wife should create a home with a soft relaxing atmosphere in which she and her husband can live together smoothly, happily and enjoyably. A wife must be faithful and devoted to her husband and should take care of herself in order to appear always cheerful, charming and attractive to her husband.

The woman, who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.

Healthy relationships bring happiness and health to our lives. Studies show that people with healthy relationships really do have more happiness and less stress.

Being hopeful for something is blessing in disguise

 To keep our dreams and expectations alive, we do hope. It’s a human weakness. Hope is a wish in our heart of good things to come. Or we can say that hope is the bright shining light that we can see in the dark. To achieve any goal we have to struggle hard and hope for the best. 

“Life is not easy for any of us. We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” - Marie Curie

I have in my mind a poem of Eliza cook named “Try Again” in which she emphasized on importance of hope and aim. She practiced throughout her life the same. The central idea of this poem revolves around strong will and hopeful attitude towards life. She has expressed the true sense of life in that small poem, “Solutions to the problems are the key to success”.

The poem tells us story of the famous King Bruce of Scotland who was defeated by the English men. Due to his failures, he was very upset and took refuge in a cave. One day he saw a spider who was trying hard to reach its destination. Spider started its journey with great anxiety and force but it falls down to the initial stage from where it had started its journey. Thread was the only pathway for the spider to reach her destination. At last spider succeeded in its10th attempt to reach its cobweb. King Bruce then decided to try once more in order to fight again and win over his enemies and at last he succeeded.

Here in this poem both of them were having a very slightest hope to achieve success i.e. the spider had a single thread to reach the cobweb and the King Bruce also had a very tiny hope to win over his enemies.

                                       OBSTACLES CAN’T STOP YOU

                                        PROBLEMS CAN’T STOP YOU

                                                    MOST OF ALL

                                  OTHER PEOPLE CAN’T STOP YOU

                                  THE ONLY ONE WHO STOPS YOU

                                                 IS YOURSELF

And that is why you should never lose hope in life.

Some people lose hope in their job and believe they cannot survive, some lose hope in marriage & relationships, some lose hope because of their career and some people lose hops in health and mentally became ill enough to kill themselves.

Things will happen in your life that you can't stop, but that's no reason to shut out the world. There's a purpose for the good and for the bad." -Crazy Pete

Being hopeful for something is blessing in disguise. If you wish to be happy and satisfied in your life, be thankful to Almighty God for what you have. Work hard to make things better and hope for best, this will make your life worth living. 

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” - Albert Einstein