Seeing and taking advantage of the opportunities in the midst of challenge, whether it be a diagnosis for you or your loved one is where my coaching practice is evolving. Here are some ideas of what to do beyond following your health care provider’s recommendations.
Allow yourself time to grieve the loss of health, the dream and whatever the change is bringing up for you. During this time experience it fully and get out your emotions – cry, get mad, blow off steam, be afraid and feel sorry for yourself; you can feel sorry for your loved one too. As mentioned in Heart Sisters recently, “sugar-coating illnesses can exact a dreadful cost.” Regarding her own experience with heart disease, the blog author Carolynn Thomas wrote “The truly shocking thing to me after finally being discharged from hospital was how utterly unprepared I was for the bleak emotional crash that struck during those early weeks of recuperation. Nobody … had warned me … up to 65% of heart attack survivors experience significant depression, yet fewer than 10% are appropriately identified.”
While grieving is important, having a time limit for this kind of grieving is also important. There comes a point when it is no longer to your benefit to wallow in awareness of loss, self-pity, anger or sadness. These feelings of loss and fear will come up again, and they don’t have to be the dominant experience ahead. When you have reached the end of your identified period for intense grief get ready to look and move ahead.
Take some deep breaths and allow yourself the freedom to dream and reconnect with your values and what’s important to you. Make a list of what you’ve always wanted to do, but were restricted to because of time or finances, or just fear. Perhaps you’ve had an idea for a project, type of work, organization or even vacation. Spend some time with these hopes and dreams which you dared not consider before. Enjoy dreaming; you are entitle to this, especially now while/after all you’re going through.
Notice if there are any consistent themes to your dreams. Perhaps there is something within you which is yearning to be expressed. What is at the essence of these dreams? What is the impact of them on you? The impact on others?
Over time, pick one of the dreams which you would like to focus on and start generating ideas. It is amazing how once you have a focus and get involved with something you begin to notice it showing up in multiple places. See how you can take the essence of that dream and incorporate it into your life in some small way.
What are some of your dreams? What part of you is yearning to be expressed? Contact me to get connected with making your dream become closer to your reality.
Dina 203.744.YOU3 (9683)
