Takeaways & Reflections | Follow Your Curiosity, Even When Grieving

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY

Curiosity is sorely underestimated. It’s not given headlines or attention, but, in my eyes, it’s responsible for most inventions. Curiosity has led to some of the world’s most significant innovations.

If there weren’t people who allowed themselves to be led by their curiosity, we never would’ve evolved from stick rubbing to flint. Someone, along the way, asked themselves better questions or was open to learning something new.

Grief makes curiosity seem like a luxury. But, what if we took the one thing that helps our society evolve and apply it to our lives at a heart and soul level?

What if you received the idea one day to go to “Google” and search for “grief support” and you do, and you find the one thing that helped you and changed your life?

What if you kept hearing people talk about Reiki and you kept seeing it popping up online or in random places, and you let your curiosity lead you to contact a Reiki Master to explain the whole “Reiki thing” to you. And you take it ten steps further and end up becoming a Reiki Master yourself after never even experiencing a Reiki session yourself? Then, to your surprise, you find that it’s the one thing that helps you maintain balance and protect your energy in support of the grief work you’re doing.

Yes, intuition plays a role, too; going within and being open to the whispers. But, curiosity is where so many great things begin.

When it comes to grief, maintaining your curiosity could be the very thing that leads you to a life-changing program (as it did for me). Don’t shortchange yourself or let fear get in the way.

What message do you want hindsight to say to you in the future?

RESOURCES:

Hey, it’s your host Victoria Volk of the unleashed heart, and you are listening to Grieving Voices. And today is episode 83, considering this is a deeper dive into the previous episode with my mentor Kristin Sherry, who is the founder of YouMap. I really highly recommend you do listen to that episode; I say that on every takeaway episode. But truthfully, I think if you’re listening to the takeaway’s episodes, you’re going to want to listen to the episodes I’m talking about. So anyway, I highly recommend that just to give some more context into what I’m going to be sharing today.

Curiosity is the Engine of Achievement

But I’m going to give like the highlights and again, dive a little bit deeper into career grief and into hindsight. Because hindsight is really this underestimated gift that we have, but it can also feel like torture. So, one of the things that Kristin said was that research shows that those who focus on others are the happiest, but what if, what you’re doing in focusing on others isn’t your calling? or isn’t lighting you up? Or isn’t ticking all the boxes of what you expected for your life? I think at 18 and even maybe 24, I don’t know, early 20s? We still think about what we want to be when we grow up. But you know, my son’s kind of facing that right now. And my kids already talked about it, and they’re 13, 15, and 16. So anyway, it’s been a topic of conversation many times in my home with our kids. And just reflecting on in our conversations on what I wanted to do or what I thought about doing when I was their age. Just the other day, I actually mentioned to my youngest that I wanted to be a marine biologist at one time. I love science. I geek out over it but that’s not how my life went. And we can make all sorts of plans and God just kind of laughs at our plans, doesn’t he? But anyway, it’s so important that we follow our curiosity because it is our curiosity, that I’ve learned, it took me probably until my closer to my 30s for me to learn this, but its important to follow your curiosity because that is what lights you up, that is what gets you excited, whatever you’re curious about, that’s what will set your priorities for the day. It’ll nurture your personality and nurture your essence of who you are. And so, I can’t stress it enough to follow your curiosity, to actually wrote that on the front page of my planner for this year. “Follow your curiosity” as a reminder to myself if I find something interesting. But I have to be careful with the rabbit holes, but because I can get down some pretty deep ones. But if I am curious about, “I wonder if this would work”, or “I wonder if I did that differently”. It’s not even just about what interests you, it’s what sparks an idea in you, or if you have a thought that you hadn’t thought before, and you don’t want to experiment and play with that thought. Especially in business, and as an entrepreneur, we’re always trying to come up with different ways of doing things. And so, it’s following that curiosity, letting that be your guide. You maybe want to pivot your business and see what is that going to look like? What looks to your curiosity to be kind of a glimmer of light in which direction to go.

Every One can Master their Grief

Kristin Sherry developed and came up with this brilliant thing that’s called YouMap. And I am a certified you map coach. I’m proud to say I’m the only certified you map coach, who is also a certified Grief Recovery specialist, who utilizes your map in grief work. And I found that YouMap was the missing piece in the work that I was doing with clients. Especially as I included it in last year’s work with clients. Kind of like as a pilot program, just to see what difference it would make. If it would make any difference at all. After I got certified, for me, it was the missing piece I felt. And so, I wanted to prove it. So, I included it with every one-on-one grief client that I worked with in 2021. And I can say that it was phenomenal for me to better understand them as a client and their grief. To be able to explain, and help them see as a client, the real true impact of their grief amongst their relationships. Because I think so many times if we really don’t understand ourselves, like, why do I keep doing these things? Or why do I keep resorting to those behaviors or, you know, a part of that, in the behaviors that we exhibit in grief is wrapped up in our personality, wrapped up in who we are, and what we value and our strength, right?  And so, it is a huge component, for me, to better understand the clients I’m working with. Also helps me to better support my clients and helping them understand how their grief is different from those who are close to them, and how it might be showing up in their life differently than other people they know, who maybe have experienced the same loss.

It also has helped my clients after because grief just disrupts everything in our lives or careers or money, relationships, finances, physical, emotional health, well being. If you’re in a business, it will impact your business. Many people, especially in COVID, have found that they, you know, they call it the “big quit”. And there’s other terms that they’ve called, where people leaving their work as a result of COVID. But people have found what they value in COVID. Time and priorities have shifted. And maybe they’re following their curiosity, or maybe they’re exploring other avenues of providing for themselves. But when we’re deep in grief, as we are in during COVID, for many people on the COVID Grief on top of any other loss or issues you’re experiencing, it’s all compounded. And I would venture to guess that many of these people that are included in the statistics of the big quit, did that is an emotional response. They may not have done that, otherwise, maybe they wouldn’t have had the courage to, or whatnot.

Find Hope and Strength in Your Grief

But I’ve really given some thought too, and wondered, and pondered. I wonder how many of those people are really, definitely sure of what they’re doing or want to do. Because when we are deep in grief, it’s like as if we have a veil over our eyes. And I’ve said this many times before on the podcast that we just don’t see ourselves clearly, we don’t see other people clearly, if we’re in that frame of mind, how can we really truly make a clear decision? a confident decision of our path forward? And so that’s what YouMap has solidified for me, and actually affirmed for me, is that I am on the right path. I am doing what plays to my strengths and what I value. But for many people, they don’t have that, or they don’t experience that. And what YouMap shows them is it becomes their guide, it becomes their compass for making decisions of moving forward. You can be faced with a decision, and you can look back at your YouMap. And well does this align with my strengths? Does this match with my skills and my personality? And how I work and show up in the world? And so, we can really use it to discern big life-changing decisions in our lives. But we can also utilize it to help us better understand ourselves and those around us. I love this quote that Kristin had also shared, “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are, you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” And that was by Jim Rohn. But isn’t that the truth? And that’s maybe where a lot of people during COVID times with the big quit felt like. “I’m building someone, I’m helping someone else build their empire”, and it’s helping them accomplish their goals. But what are my goals? What do I need? what do I want from my life? And so, I do think that those people who were a part of that big quit really gave that much more thought and realize that maybe they were doing remote work with their employer, and thought, well, this isn’t so bad.

Probably many people possibly also experienced work in a different way that they didn’t think they would like, and then they found they do. Yet, they realize the job isn’t a great match for them anymore. But whatever the case, may be, the landscape in the corporate world and in how we work in this world has dramatically changed. But what hasn’t changed is that there’s still going to be grief there. And that’s still going to impact your work. it’s still going to impact your finances, and your relationships, and your physical and emotional health. And so, if you are not in alignment with what you’re doing in your life, and you’re not feeling fulfilled in your life, it’s going to create even more grief for you. And on that note, I want to bring to your attention, there is a portion of the interview with Kristin, where she talks about this threatened-defend mode. It’s what she called this perception continuum. And it’s a great portion of the interview that I think really helps us better understand why we kind of put our walls up in relationships sometimes. So again, I’m going to recommend that you listen to that episode.

But I just wanted to talk about YouMap a little bit with you. Did you know that only one in thirty-three million people share the same five strengths? Because of this, you likely would never meet anyone with the same five as you. And using your strengths, decreases-stress, increases quality, productivity, and engagement in your work. People who use their strengths at work are three times more likely to say they have good quality of life, and six times more engaged at work. And this is according to Gallup polls, engaged as defined as four and half hours of the day going by unnoticed because one is so focused on what they’re doing at work. And that often happens to me. I’m sitting on my computer, I’m in the zone, I lose track of time. Before I know it, it’s 3 pm and I’m like where did the day go? That’s when I know I am in the flow. I’m utilizing my skills and my strengths. And for me, honestly, that is much of what I do in my business. It really is ticking all the boxes for me. And I want more than anything for other people to experience that too.

Bring Yourself Back To Balance

As I’m going to circle back to COVID because in everything that it’s disrupted our lives. On top of it, you might be homeschooling, you might be caring for an aged parent. And there’s actually few research centers, just over one in eight Americans is both raising a child and caring for a parent. And seven to 10 million people are doing that from long distance. There was a 2012 article called The Boomerang generation, 29% of 25–34-year-olds also live with their parents. I would actually be really interested in learning what it is today, that’s quite an old statistic. I should have looked it up a more recent one, especially with COVID. But I imagine with COVID, it’s probably much, much higher. But with inflation that we have today, as of now it’s January 2022, inflation is on the rise. And that’s kind of a hot-button topic in our news. But I can imagine that statistically, there is a whopping percentage of 25- to 33–34-year-olds that have moved in with their parents if they didn’t, before. So, what do you do if you find yourself in the situation, as I’ve described? Well, there are some questions you can ask yourself, how is the situation changing your life? Specifically, what are the elements of change at hand? And I would actually go through, and I would list all these changes, COVID-19, your feelings, your elders, youth helpers. We have to give each other grace because they’re grieving too, especially with COVID. What challenges do these changes present for you?

You have to use feeling words, you may not feel safe sharing for fear of being judged or thought less of because you have these feelings. But these conflicting feelings are grief. Maybe you feel guilt during these changes. You know, one thing with guilt, it’s not an intent to do harm. Having a job while others don’t, wishing the situation was different, better or more for friends or loved ones. If you have people in your life who’ve maybe lost everything, I know I do. I have people who are on my heart and my thoughts and my prayers because their situation is very different from mine. But I can’t feel guilty about not being in that situation. It isn’t the right word, right? Because I’m not intending to do harm. Someone who commits a murder, that was an intent to do harm. They are guilty because they did harm. Another question, what are your choices? Many feel powerless. But that’s not. That can’t change the big picture. But you can take 1% responsibility for how you respond. Look for and brainstorm choices, get creative.

 

Again, follow your curiosity, evaluate boundaries. So many of us lack boundaries or don’t even know a boundary if it’s slapped us in the face. I think once we work through our grief, our grief is what shows us where we didn’t have boundaries, or where we need boundaries. That was true for me. You can even make small choices. Making these small choices every day helps you get your power back. And for me, my small choices every morning, that is me. That is for me. That is my time. That is my physical mental emotional health is number one. And that the start of the day, that’s a small choice that I’ve had to make amidst the end of 2021. It was a terrible way for the year to go out. I’ve mentioned it before, that my son had an accident, weightlifting and we’re in and out of the hospital. Pretty much most of November and December, I didn’t finally feel like I could breathe and relax until probably two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago, probably the second week in January. So, it’s really the first thing that went out the window was my self-care, my meditation. When that happened, I completely stopped meditating. My self-care was no longer my priority. But you know what, I paid the price for that. I ended up with COVID two weeks after I stopped meditating. I had COVID and that was amidst everything that was going on with my son. And so, stress is a huge indicator to us and how our bodies respond to that stress is a huge indicator too, of a red flag, to hold on, and stop the bus. You need to address this. You need to do something about this. And so, again, with all of the grief that compounds, it’s just so very important to ask yourself these these questions and make the changes necessary to bring yourself back into balance again.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t say that with COVID, and all the losses that people have experienced that there are a lot of people walking around. Maybe even you, that have undelivered communications. People may have died, or they might be living, but because of COVID, you can’t see them, or you don’t have that deep connection like you did, like two years ago, or two years into this crazy thing. Anything, or any relationship where you wish things were different or had been different, or that they would be better or more. Those things are the undelivered communications that we have in our relationships with people, whether they’re living or dead. And if we’re not feeling aligned in what we are doing, that just adds to all of our suffering. And I would just like to say, if there’s anything you take away from this episode is that suffering is optional. For me, I thought suffering was inevitable for the rest of my life. Being a Griever for over 30 years. That’s what I’ve known. It’s all that I knew. And it’s all that I thought I would ever know. But I can tell you, after doing so much inner work and personal development, that is absolutely not true. It couldn’t be further from the truth. If you have hope in your heart today, I encourage you to reach out to me or someone you know, who you feel could be a safe heart with ears, for you.

much love, victoria

P.S. You may notice that it’s a takeaways and reflections episode, and I’m trying something new, where I’m going to follow up each guest interview with a takeaways episode instead of doing two guest interviews, and then a takeaways episode. Because I want to be able to give each episode that I do then record with a guest. I want to be able to dive a little bit deeper into the topics that we talk about things that come up in addition to my reflections, but I would like to go just a little bit deeper on those things. And so, to do that, without it becoming another hour-long episode are feeling like 13 minutes is like I’ve just skimmed the surface, which often is what happens, I’m just trying something new. So, we’ll see how it goes. I might switch back. I don’t know, I might start switching things up completely, maybe doing some more solo episodes. I’m not sure. I would definitely love some feedback if you like the conversations with the guests. If you just prefer those, I don’t even have to do a takeaways episode. But yeah, if you could please shoot me an email and share your thoughts with me, that’d be greatly appreciated, [email protected]. I would love to know what you think. This is your podcast, by the way, and I do this for you.

 In fact, I recently added a heart with ears session onto my website. It’s a 60-minute session, you can find it at www.theunleashedheart.com and then go under Services. And you will see a heart with ears click on that. And you scroll down to the page. There’s a button where you can learn more on that page. Also, there’s a button there to schedule and purchase. If that is something you are needing in the near future. It is something that I can do to support Grievers who maybe go to a therapist, who want to dive deep into the grief aspect. Or maybe you’ve never sought out therapy. And you just kind of want to understand your grief better. There are many different scenarios that would be a great fit for that type of session. All of that information is on my webpage that talks about it. And so, I encourage you to check that out if you’re needing some additional support right now.

And go back to Episode 82 with Kristin Sherry, career grief, and the gift of hindsight. Well, I think we all know that Hindsight is 2020, right? And 2020 seems like forever ago. It’s just been crazy that we’ve been riding this roller coaster for so long. It’s been two years going on. So anyway, I can support you through this podcast through a heart with ears session, through Grief Recovery work. I will be relaunching my one-on-one work as I will be making some changes to that program. And so, look for those details to come in the near future. But in the meantime, remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

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