Hello, I'm Dave Matthews speaking for MH International. For Marriage Helper.
What do you do when the dearest on the earth to you leaves you?
How do you deal with that?
And that's what we want to talk about just for a few minutes in this video.
Because when somebody leaves me that I have invested time and
energy and my heart, my soul to,
and they're the dearest on earth to me and they leave me,
all sorts of bad things can happen in my mind.
So we want to give you just three points and I've labeled them the GPS
.I'm getting us started on this because when somebody I love
dearly, the dearest on earth leaves me...
There's so many deep negative emotions that come with that.
And often times we might do some things that don't help our situation.
First thing I want to share with you this morning,
it's under the heading of G is that this is a grief situation. This is loss.
My wife and I not only work with marriage helper.
We also work with our organization called spark of life.
We work with those who have suffered devastating loss.
We've done that for like the last 12 years, almost non-stop,
thousands of grievers and thousands of people in marriage helper with all the
workshops we get to do. And all the coaching I do with marriage helper,
I've taught us so much. Number one, when somebody,
the dearest on earth leaves me. I am left,
battered and shattered in my emotional, my emotional self.
And my self-confidence just goes out the window. What did I do to deserve this?
What did I do wrong? Am I not good enough for somebody?
I still love deeply?
And so it really does help if we reframe what happened as a
loss.
And oftentimes people think of loss as just death losses,
but there are so many deep losses out there that are not death losses.
This is one of the big ones.
When that person I love deeply thinks they don't want to be with me anymore.
That really hurts. So if I reframe it as loss,
a couple of things can happen here.
Two definitions of grief really help us. What is grief? Well,
grief comes from loss, right? So what is the definition of grief?
There's two big definitions that have really helped me. And that's this:
when loss occurs,
grief is the normal and natural response to loss of any
kind, even the non-death kind that we're talking about here.
It's the normal and natural reaction. When people suffer,
and go through this experience, they often feel something is wrong with them.
"What is wrong with me?
I wasn't good enough." And it just eats away at our self-confidence right?
But when you feel like that, you're actually experiencing grief,
because you've experienced a loss. What have you lost?
You've lost your dream of this relationship. You've,
you've lost your expectations. Many times we lose our trust.
We've been betrayed. We thought this person would never leave us, right?
And yet they do. They promised they would never leave you.
Huge losses right here.
And the second part of that definition that really helps here is that grief
is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of our change in a familiar
pattern of behavior. I repeat that.
Grief is conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end of a
familiar pattern of behavior. You had them, and now they're gone.
Your whole daily routine is shattered.
Everything changes about what you used to do and your patterns of
familiar behavior.
That for a time in the past gave you great comfort and stability.
And now that stability is just all over the place, right?
And so you're undergoing grief . And it's really helpful to label it that way.
For one thing, it's true for another thing,
it helps me not beat myself up so much.
And the second thing about grief is I've got to give myself permission to
grieve. And that's what we're talking about.
You're going to have some bad days when those waves of grief come,
really they're like tidal waves and they overwhelm you.
Let yourself grieve. Go to a quiet place. Go to a trusted friend. Dump. Cry.
Do whatever you need to do, but give yourself permission.
And in the same breath, give yourself permission to recover.
And that leads us to our second point. The second point,
the first point is you're grieving.
And the second point is a really powerful, too. And it is,
I can only do what I can do.
So give yourself permission to recover in a healthy way. Well,
how can I do that? Many of you have heard of the concept of PIES. It keeps,
I love pie, right? This, I don't know if this is chocolate or coconut,
but this is pies. When I give myself permission to recover,
I'm actually working on me, because that's the only thing I can do.
You know this by now, right? PIES means physical, intellectual, emotional,
and spiritual. I work on my PIES,
not my partner's PIES. I don't work on their pies.
I work on my pies. There's a phrase we use in our grief work. I've used it.
Often coaching. "All you can do is all you can do.
And all you can do is enough." You write this down.
"I can only do what I can do." That's brilliant. Isn't it.
I can't do what I can't do.
I can only do what Dave Matthews can do. I can't do any more.
So when I'm in a situation where the dearest on earth to me has left me
and I am battered and bruised. That's normal and natural.
You don't need to be fixed. You need to grieve, but you also need to recover.
So when you think about recovering,
think about "what can I do today?" I can work on me physically.
I can get some exercise. I can take a 20 minute walk. I can wash my face.
I can get out of bed. I can work out.
I can do something physical that helps my mind get rid of
that negative stinking thinking.
As we like to say about how this person has hurt me and what's wrong with me,
I take care of myself intellectually.
I can reframe this as grief.
And not that there's something wrong with me.
That's me taking care of myself intellectually. Emotionally, I can say,
you know what? I am not a bad person.
I need to stop doing bad things if I am. Everybody does, but you know what?
Emotionally I'm going to be okay through my pain.
The more I give myself permission to feel bad, the quicker I'm able to get up,
wash my face and start working on my PIES. So I work on my pies.
And that's the P of the GPS of when a loved one leaves me.
Somebody I have devoted my life to the third point this morning,
or this afternoon, whenever you're watching is this: it's
singular focus. Singular focus.
As I start working on my pies, if I need to gain weight,
I can't gain 10 pounds this week. I've never had that problem,
that I can't gain weight. If I need to lose weight,
I can't lose 10 pounds tomorrow. Right?
If I'm trying to take care of my spiritual life,
and I'm trying to reconnect with my God,
I can't just be super spiritual in the next moment.
I have to work through some stuff, but I can do something today. Right?
I can do something today. I can do the next right thing.
Singular focus helps people who are overcome with grief...
To get up and do the next right thing.
There's a book that I've referenced in other videos called "The One Thing" by
Gary Keller in this book, he talks about that.
We really cannot multitask very well, right?
Everybody I've worked with in coaching with marriage helper almost without
exception feels overwhelmed.
I've got to do 17 things today in order to live forward with my
recovery from this broken relationship. No,
you can't do 17 things today. You can do one thing.
Do the next right thing, whatever it is. And Keller's book, he says,
do you know if you start with a two inch domino and you line up Domino's and
you've seen the world record for domino falling,
when you line up Domino's and you hit one and they all fall is like 4,
500,000. That's the world record in this book.
Keller mentioned that if you start with a two inch domino and every domino you
put after that, the succeeding dominoes,
if they're each one and a half times bigger than the previous domino,
you get it. The first Domino's two inches, the next Domino's three,
the next Domino's four and a half. The next domino is 6.7832,
whatever. Right?
Every domino is one and a half times bigger than the previous one.
If you line up those dominoes...this is so amazing.
The first domino,
it is two inches. The 18th domino would be as big as the leaning tower of PISA.
The 23rd dominoes is big as the Eiffel tower.
The 31st domino would be at 3000 feet higher than Mount McKinley,
3000 feet higher than Mount Everest rather.
And then the 57th domino would be as big from the earth to the
moon. If every domino is one and a half times bigger than the first one,
which was two inches high,
you want to get to the moon in your recovery from somebody
hurting you deeply.
If I start with the 57th domino that's as tall as from the earth to the
moon, and I am going to use all my energy.
I'm going to run into that domino to knock it over because I'm so tired of being
hurt. I'm going to be hurt worse. I'll probably break a shoulder,
right? I can't start with the 57th.
Domino are the 31st or the 23rd are the 18th.
You know what I start with? The two inch domino. That's what I can start with.
And there's a synergy that happens when I do the next right thing.
No matter how small it is.
Because as I keep doing the next right thing, one day at a time,
that energy starts to geometrically progress.
And it's amazing what I can do because it starts to gain
momentum, that I got to start with a two inch domino every day.
What's the one thing you need to do today? Make it a two-inch domino.
You can knock that over. And knocking that one over,
leads to knocking the next one over. That's bigger than the previous.
Do you get the principle? It's powerful. It's incredible.
So that's GPS,
when a loved one that you have devoted yourself to has taken your heart out,
and has crushed you emotionally and has left you. Do the next right thing.
And maybe the next right thing,
is one of Marriage Helper's tremendous resources.
One of those is the "Save My Marriage" course.
That would really help you through this,
and put more details to what I'm talking about in this video.
So if the dearest on earth has left you... Do the next right thing.
Knock over that two inch domino. Give yourself permission to grieve.
Work on your PIES.
And knock over that two-inch domino with singular focus.
This is Dave Matthews from MH international.
I hope this has helped you to find more help, go to marriagehelper.com.
[Inaudible].