Transforming Sadness into Strength

Watch the episode here:

• Gain a new perspective on handling sadness in your life.
• Learn the difference between sadness and grief and how to approach each.
• Discover how to find hope and options in the midst of sadness.
• Get practical advice on transforming sadness into empowerment.
• Understand how to use sadness as a stepping stone to personal growth.

What’s shakin’? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today, we’re going all in. All right, the topic for today is sadness. And before you like, hit next on the thing, because everyone’s like, Oh my God, here we go, we’re gonna get emotional. No, this is for real, because it doesn’t matter the situation in your life, there’s stuff that’s gonna hit you, and it’s gonna hit you hard. And in those moments, there are a couple of things that you can do, rather than not do. Now, I want to make a distinction because when things in life hit you hard, no matter what area of your life, if it’s a relationship, if it’s your job, if it’s a business, you started, no matter what area, maybe at school, no matter what area it is, doesn’t matter. The difference that are the distinction that I want to make today is sadness and grief is two very different things. Because grief is something that you absolutely have to process. And there’s not necessarily anything that you can do with that. You have to allow yourself the ability to grieve things like lost opportunities and lost people in your life, you have to allow yourself to be able to feel those things in order to move beyond those things. 

That’s a process grieving is typically a process something that isn’t over overnight, at least it shouldn’t be because, especially when it comes to people, if you’re grieving the loss of someone in your life, it just does not make sense to just move on super fast, because you can always remember the good times that you had with them, you can always remember the positives, rather than the negative and be grateful for the impact that person made in your life, if was a partner or parents, even a child, or a best friend, there’s always positive impact, for the most part, that everybody has on your life. And I’m sure you can find those things when you think about it. And that’s part of the great process is smiling through that with grieving, there’s a distinction, a big distinction between that and sadness. Because sadness, when you sit down and you feel sad, you know, because of a situation that happened, or maybe something else with someone a situation with someone in those moments. Sadness is really like a lack of options. Or rather, it’s a perceived lack of options. And that’s why hopelessness, consent, and hopelessness are sadness cousins. Because if you feel like there’s nothing for you to do, and you just have to sit there and take it on the chin, or get pounded in the chest for it, get knocked on your ass, that can feel pretty hopeless. And you will be sad because you have a perceived lack of options when you’re sitting like what am I going to do? If you lose a job? I have been in that scenario where it’s like my kids are born, and I’m laid off from a job, what am I going to do? 

At that moment, it wasn’t sadness for me that said, and it was more action-oriented. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today is sadness. When you look at it can feel a lot like hopelessness because a lack of options produces hopelessness. But sadness really is not a lack of options. Because this is the difference between sadness and grief, grief, there’s not really much that you can do something happens and there’s nothing that you can do to change it’s zero, right? Because that can be a lost opportunity and a lost opportunity, it could be a job, it could be a lifelong relationship with somebody, it could be a spouse, it could be a friendship that went south. And so something got between you two, it could be a business that failed, that can never be revived. That is grief. And that’s something to process through and take the learnings from, to apply it to other things you might do or experience. Sadness is a scenario where it’s like, Oh, what am I going to do, but you think you have no options. And that’s where you feel hopeless? In those moments, if you can separate those two you can say, What is there for me to do? This isn’t a how this isn’t a how yet, you know, and that’s where fear kind of sets into, because if you can actually get to the point to where you think of your options, or maybe some things and you start to dismiss those because you don’t understand the how, because in sadness, that’s where it’s the lack of perceived options, is what actually generates this. Because if you can get to the point where you ask yourself, What can I do about this? 

And then you think of seven different things. And all of them, you’re just like, well, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how that could ever work. I’m so uncertain about going down that path to try to remedy my situation and fall flat on my face and then it becomes a total loss. It becomes a permanent failure rather than a temporary defeat. In those moments, that’s where you feel scared And when you feel scared, that’s where you don’t move, you freeze, and you feel like you have a lack of options. When I say feel, that’s literally what you perceive, you have a lack of options because you don’t know the how. So first, when you start to feel sad about something about a situation, at that point, start to ask yourself, Okay, you know, after you, if you center yourself, you ground yourself, but the way to ground yourself because sadness is solvable, sadness is solvable. You can sit there and think what is there for me to do? And it isn’t a woe-is-me question. It’s interesting because it can sound like that, right? Because at the moment, you can take it as, what is their formula, like, throw your hands up and play the victim and be like, there’s nothing here, no path forward? Nothing to do. It’s like, what is there for me to do? And you look out and you start to examine a couple of things like, well, I could do that. And you start to ponder those things. This is a scenario you might ask some trusted people in your inner circle to people that will be able to build you up to help you move through the situation, not people that will be like, Oh, that sucks. 

There’s nothing there. No, you want people that will be able to give you and present new possibilities. Because possibilities will allow you to now perceive that you have options. And some of those possibilities, some of those recommendations might not work. And that’s okay. Because you can find one that does work for your situation. Once you start to establish that there are options for you to push through for you to move forward for you to get across that line. At that point, sadness starts to dissipate, it starts to go away. Because now it’s like, okay, that really hurts. I can see that I can do this, I can see that I can do that. I can see that maybe I can do this other thing. And now you’re like, Okay, that’s, that gives you encouragement. Remember, the lack of options, or the perceived lack of options is hopelessness. That’s what produces sadness. But when you see possibilities, when you see options, now that brings you hope. And when you have hope, now, you can start to think of the how, as soon as hope begins to set and now you can be like, Okay, now I need to find out how to do these things. Now I need to find out how to approach this, and how to decide which action to take. Fear will keep you stuck, hope will allow you to move forward. Now, this is where you can get input from other people again, how do I do this, you can ask people for help. 

This is so important. Oh my gosh, do other people have the honor in your life of asking them for help? Because when they get to participate in your life, and help you move through something that will also increase their energy around you and with everybody else inside of them and bring them fulfillment to where they can now see somebody that they care about, continue on and press forward and move towards the thing that they want to because sadly, sadness is not loss. Sadness is not hopelessness, because you actually do have options. Hopelessness is only a perceived lack of options. And when you can ask the question, what are my options, now you no longer have hopelessness, you have hope. And you can figure out the how. In those moments, that’s where you can start to feel yourself rise up inside, you know, to where it’s like you can, you might have been sitting in a corner and crying and that’s okay. Because sadness is real. I want to validate you for feeling sad. It’s okay to feel sad because some stuff sucks. 

Some stuff hurts. Some stuff knocks you on your ass. And you need to sit there for a moment and take it all in and process it and sit there and maybe cry and then begin to ask yourself the question, all right, and it’s like, you might have been laying on the floor, you got knocked down. But now in this moment, you can start to maybe get back up to where you’re sitting. And in that sitting position, you’re like, hey, what can I do? And then all of a sudden, you start to feel the hope rise within you inside. And then literally, physically, you begin to rise up because it’s like, Alright, I just thought of three things. Or you know, what I just thought of two people to call. I just thought of another person to text to ask, Hey, what should I do here? Even those are options, just people who you can contact. Your network is an option. Your friends are options, your partners and options. Your kids are an option. Your parents are an option. You have options, which bring you hope. And now you start to begin to rise up and you start to stand. You start to stick out your chest a little bit, you square your shoulders back, and it’s like alright, now I can take a step forward. I don’t know exactly how I’m gonna get there. I don’t know exactly where it’s going to take me.

I don’t know. exactly how much effort I’m gonna have to put in but I do know that I have options and all the sadness just goes away those are the moments in life where you can start to look back in hindsight, and you can learn and be like I’ve been there before I felt that before and I know how to get myself through it and it’s with options.

GO ALL IN.