Wake Me Up: Morning Positivity - Morning Routine for Overcoming Grief

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

A calming and uplifting morning routine for those dealing with loss or hardship. Welcome to Wake Me Up, the podcast where morning people are made 🌞 Don't waste your morning hitting the snooze button. Turn on an episode of Wake Me Up, and just follow along. In no time, you'll be relaxed, focused, and excited about your day. If you're enjoying Wake Me Up, be sure to subscribe/follow on whatever platform you use. Share it with friends and family as well. A great morning is a wonderful gift! Please share your thoughts and ideas at www.wakemeuppodcast.com. There's truly nothing better than hearing from you! If you're enjoying the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wake-me-up-guided-morning-mindfulness-meditation-motivation/id1493287286). And find the podcast on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/wakemeuppodcast/. Have a wonderful day 😃 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you'd like to enjoy Wake Me Up completely ad-free and get access to exclusive bonus content, check out the link in the show notes for the Wake Me Up premium feed. Good morning and welcome to Wake Me Up. The way this podcast works is pretty simple. Just turn on an episode while you're still in bed. All you have to do is follow along. As I guide you through a refreshing morning routine, that's sure to leave you relaxed and excited about your day. To have consistently great mornings, you really just need to have a regular morning routine. That's why Wake Me Up works.

If you tune in consistently, you'll become a morning person in no time. And you'll find that if you consistently win your morning, you'll consistently win your day. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. It would be really helpful to show others how they might benefit from the podcast as well. And since this podcast is quite new, your feedback is really helpful. So share your thoughts, stories, and ideas at wake meuppodcast.com. And be sure to subscribe or follow the podcast on whatever platform you're using. So you never miss a great day.

On that note, I want to thank Iron, a podcast listener whose wonderful feedback provided the inspiration for this episode. Now let's get started. As this morning begins, you can just listen to my voice while we take the next few minutes to wake up. If you're still in bed, roll onto your back and open your eyes. Take a few deep breaths, filling your lungs fully with each inhale, pausing for a moment at the top, and then exhaling completely. Take a few more breaths just like that at your own pace. Start to wiggle your hands and feet. Circle your wrists and ankles or stretch out in bed.

Whatever feels good, just bring some movement to your body. And as you're beginning to wake up now, notice if there's something on your mind that's keeping you here, holding you back from a wonderful day. Perhaps you're in a big life change right now, or you just went through one. Or maybe you've recently lost a beloved friend, family member or pet.

Whatever it is, know that it's normal to feel pain, sadness, or confusion at these moments in life. But remember that this is just one moment. It's just one day. These feelings are temporary. And like a phoenix, you will rise once again, stronger and wiser than ever before. The universe is conspiring to make you the best version of yourself. And sometimes that means you have to endure pain. It can help to dedicate this beautiful day to someone.

If you'd like to do that, take a second to dedicate it to them now. Your good day starts right here, right now. Take one more deep breath in. and as you exhale, roll over on your side, place your feet on the ground and stand up. Feel the energy starting to move through your body. You can take a gentle stretch if you'd like. Just keep it nice and easy. Now that you're beginning to wake up, let's take a moment to get ready for a bit of meditation.

Have a sip of water if you'd like and make your way to a comfortable, seated position. You can sit anywhere you'd like. Just don't sit in bed. And while you get situated, I'm going to share my tip of the day, which is a bite-sized piece of information that will help augment the morning routine you build with this podcast. Nobody ever promised that life would be easy. Bad things happen all of the time.

We experience sadness and grief for a variety of reasons. A personal failure, the loss of a loved one, wrongs committed against us, the list could go on and on. That's why resilience is a fundamental trait of all humans. The ability to overcome is deeply ingrained in us. But that doesn't mean resilience is easy either. Usually, in moments of sadness or grief, our minds are swirling with a ton of different thoughts.

How could this happen? Why would this happen to me? And what do I do now? If you're in a moment like this, know that you're not alone. Other people have gone through the same thing, and some are probably going through it right now as well. There's no perfect way to deal with grief, but one thing is for sure.

You can't run and hide from it. The best thing you can do is to sit with the pain, stare it down, straight in the eyes and seek to understand it. Learn why this moment is so painful for you. This way, you'll sort out your emotions a lot quicker and more clearly. I've found that writing or journaling works really well for me. But you can do it however you'd like.

Whatever you choose to do, let the thoughts flow freely. They are all real thoughts. but you don't have to stick with any of them. Accept them for what they are. Just thoughts and feelings. They will pass in time, just like every other thought and feeling you've ever had. If you sit with the pain instead of running from it, you'll learn from it. You'll come to accept the source of your grief much faster and more fully.

You'll be a stronger person because of it. Now, let's turn to the mindfulness portion of this episode. Today, we're going to do a guided visualization to help you deal with loss. As always, we begin with slow and steady breaths. Draw them deep into your belly. Hold it for just a moment at the top, before exhaling slowly. And you can just let the air fall out. There's no need to force it.

Take a few more deep breaths just like that at your own pace. And try to make your exhale just a little bit longer than your inhale. If thoughts arise, that's perfectly fine. Just note the thought and then let it go. You can use my voice as an anchor to keep you in this moment. And as you begin to draw deeper and deeper inside of yourself, you can visualize a beautiful country farm, sprawling green pastures lined with wooden fences, horses grazing off in the distance.

And on this farm, there is a quaint little home, and in the home lives a little boy, with his mother and his father. Together they run the farm all by themselves. They love their lives. They love working with their hands, building things together, growing food together, and raising animals together. One day, the parents tell the little boy that they want to plant a tree, so they go get a small, young sapling and plant it in their front yard. And like everything else on the farm, they take good care of the young tree, and it starts to grow. Year after year, it grows bigger and fuller.

Many years later, the boy is no longer a little boy, but a man. And he meets a woman and falls in love. Now the tree is quite large and beautiful as well. It looks perfect, with the lush backdrop of the farm behind it, so the little boy, who is now a man, gets married under this tree. and starts a family of his own. They have a baby, a baby girl, and year after year the tree continues to grow.

When one day the man's father passes, he and his mother are very sad. To them, the farm will never be the same. So they bury his father underneath the tree that they all planted many years ago. And a few years pass, Anne's mother dies. And with his wife, they bury his mother beneath the tree next to his father. And they move into the farmhouse with their baby

and continue running the farm and loving the work. The man was quite sad, though, living here on this farm that he grew up on because he'd always known it with his parents there. And now they were gone. But year after year, he and his family continued to love this farm. They loved this farm life. And like the tree, year after year, the baby grew. And eventually, she was no longer a baby, but a little girl.

And the man and his wife taught her how to work on the farm. The man continued to be sad about the loss of his parents, though. He just couldn't seem to shake it. Until one day, he saw his daughter sitting under the now large tree and the yard that he planted as a boy with his own parents. And he had a realization. His parents never left. Even though they died, they still lived in this farm.

They lived on in the way that he and his family continued to tend to the farm. and love the farm. They lived on in his daughter, who loved the horses just like his mother and father did. The man realized that as long as he lived, so did his parents. And as long as his daughter lived, so did he and his parents through her. And with that realization, the man finally felt his sorrow lift. It was replaced by a deep sense of self-worth and self-love,

and a deep connection to his parents, his wife and daughter, and to this farm. He knew that if he loved himself and his family and this farm, he was loving his parents at the same time. And they were loving him in return through the same things. so the man carried on with the farm life that he loved and he taught his daughter about the tree in the yard which he planted with his parents and he told her how his parents lived on

through every inch of this farm through the grass in the pastures and the horses in the barn he told her that one day he would pass on as well but she would never be alone because he will live on in her and this farm as well

and with that he and his daughter hugged and in this hug he felt the love of his mother and the love of his father he knew that even though they were not physically present his parents were always with him and he lived on with deep contentment and fulfillment in his life because of this.

So you can begin to bring yourself back to the present moment. Let the image of that farm fade away. Feel your breath move in and out. Feel the sensation of the chair beneath you. And feel your feet on the floor. You can begin to wiggle your fingers and toes. just bringing a little movement back to your body. And when you're ready, you can slowly open your eyes

and take a moment to collect yourself. And while you do that, it's time for today's send-off. In this final portion of the podcast, I share a bit of positivity to motivate you for the day ahead. The send-off today is fairly short and simple. But if you think through it on your own, it will be extremely powerful. This episode has been all about loss and grief.

Now, we've all lost something or someone important to us. And if you've been lucky enough to avoid that so far, it's surely going to come at some point. If you're upset from this loss, think about what that really means. It means that person or thing was so, amazing, so important. It means your relationship with them was that special. Take a moment to recognize how unique that is. People leave this world every day, yet we

are largely unchanged by that. This one changed you though. And that means this person or thing you've lost changed you before they passed on too. And that is extremely special. as well. It's a blessing to have had a single moment with a soul of that caliber. Imagine what that person would want now that they're gone. A person that wonderful wouldn't want you to linger in sadness. A person that wonderful would want you to live a full life, a thriving life, a happy life. Yes, they would want you to remember them, but they would want your memory of them to serve as fuel for this beautiful but temporary life you have. So go and be a better person because of them.

Go and change the world because of them. Go and live your dreams because of them. If you're struggling to conjure the energy to do that for yourself right now, It's okay. Do it for them. That's all today, friends. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you're enjoying the podcast,

please remember to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend. I'd also love to hear from you, so send me your feedback at wakemeuppodcast.com. I'll talk to you tomorrow morning. Until then, I hope you have a wonderful day.